Countdown

I start counting the days tomorrow morning, in just a few weeks I'm off to my favorite European city on a short holiday with one of my best friends. We are spending four nigths in Budapest, Hungary. We are going to take long baths here:

Then we are going to go to tiny café and eat Sachertorte:
(The last time I travelled around Central Europe I was taught that you can measure a cities level of refinement by the quality of their Sachertorte. In Vienna it's perfect, in Budapest it's bloody near perfect, in Zagreb it's a disaster...)

And in the evening we won't eat some of Hungarian nationaldish Gulash soup
(mainly because I know from reliable sources that you can never get proper Gulash unless you eat it properly homemade). But we will drink lots of Hungarian beer...

It will be a good weekend...

/Mel

New job

First introductory day at a new job. MarketingCommunications. My head feels like it's about to explode, so much information has gone in today and I'm really not sure how much will stay 'till tomorrow.

But they are nice, very nice people it seems, especially the guy sitting opposite me. It's all good. As long as my brain doesn't decide to drip out my ear when I lie down tonight.

Poof.

/Mel

No more kissing.

Remember the in-house couple I have at my office? The ones that sound like two horny guppies while kissing?

Well, no more kissing for them. I don't know who did it but someone took it to the boss and they got called in and told to keep it out of the office. My co-worker is pretty bummed and feels that someone should've told her in person rather than go to the boss. I didn't have the energy to tell her that we have told her but her standard reply has been; "oh, you're all just jelous!".

I guess she will live and learn then...

/Mel

Mattias Klum

Mattias Klum is my photographic hero. I've just linked to his website over on the left ---->

The last time I checked his photos had been on the cover of The National Geographic three times! And that's something as he's the only person to get his photos on the cover of NG twice...

Whenever I've looked through his photos I feel inspired to go out and take more photos, but also depressed because I'll never be even close to taking photos like his.

/Mel

I wanted to go somewhere today.

/Mel

Failure as a photographer

I love photography but it's not easy to get those good shots you want to show off on the internet. So I thought rather than just posting the one I'm happy with I'll show you all those failed shots leading up to the final good one.

Now all the following shots were taken in February on the London Eye. Don't know if you've been on it but there were three major obstacles between me and that one great shot:

1. Dirty windows...half the shots showed up covered in white specks and dots from the light reflecting on a few years worth of London grime.

2. Movement. The London Eye moves slowly but never stops. That in combination with disapearing light and the unability to use flash photograhpy (meaning I had to use a prolonged exposure) made most of the shots very blurry.

3. Time. £12 pounds bought me 30 minutes on the London Eye, about ten of those minutes are spent at the very top, ten minutes to set up and take photos while trying not to annoy the other passengers to much...

Anyway, here are a selection of my best failed shots...

First, that movement thing...this shot was taken while the capsule was was going down again and I reckon I was to tired hold the camera steady for the whole shot.



See what I mean about the windows?


Yep, I think I waited just a bit to long on that exposure button..


This one is great, not only does the window look like someone threw up on it, the structure got in the way and it got blurred..


This one makes me really disapointed. I was really happy with the composure of the shot and had it not been blurry it would've been the best of the whole roll. Looking at this shots makes me sad...


And finally, the one that turned out great. Unedited and London at it's most beautiful. Well, from 135 meters up anyway.

/Mel

Damn...

I had coffee with a friend...damn those chocolate cakes.



I can resist everything but temptation.
Oscar Wilde

Here fishy, fishy, fishy....

I can't dive with tanks because I've got asthma (something about my lungs not coping with the pressure and imploding, very charming and all that). Instead I freedive without oxygen, I hold my breath and go under. My asthmatic lungs which, according to some know-it-all-GP, are to weak to cope with diving can support me for 03:16 minutes underwater.

Diving is religious. Hanging over the drop-off at the edge of the outer reef in the Coral Sea, waiting for the wildlife, shafts of sunlight disappearing down through the clear water, fifteen, maybe even twenty, meters of nothing beneath my feet. It's all silent but the sounds of a distant engine, maybe the swell against the shallow parts of the reef. All around me are the small fish of the reef, it's like a tourist brochure, it's like I'm inside the worlds largest aquarium.

An aquarium which is suddenly very empty. The fish are gone and below me, coming up from the drop-off are four dark shadows. Circling around each other and getting bigger by the second. To say that my adrenaline level is suddenly sky high is an understament... Every nature show I have ever seen is repeating itself in my mind, especially the shark attack bits. Especially the very detailed shots of row upon row of very very pointy teeth attacking underwater cages with divers inside. If I had a cage I'd be very happy...



The adrenalin in my body has quickly used up my oxygen supply and I'm forced to turn my back on the sharks and resurface for air. When I turn down again they are only three or four meters below me, swimming in a tight pack across the reef beneath my flippers. I try to stay as still as possible, heart racing, hands shaking and as they pass under me I turn around to watch them go. The last one, the smallest of the pack, turns and does a wide circle, sniffing the reef, almost stopping mid-water to watch me as I bob on the surface above him. With a sudden flick of his tail he turns around and swims off towards the rest of the pack and disappears again as dark shadows towards the edge of the reef and the drop-off.

I let out a stream of bubbles and go up for air again, suddenly very weak at the knees.

/Mel

P.s. turns out they were Black Tip Reef Sharks, a particularly nice and harmless shark the lives off small fish living on the reef. It thinks humans smell bad and in order to be attacked by one you'll need to seriously provoke it. But that makes me look less macho so just forget that bit.

Daylight savings

I hate daylight savings...Europe went back to summer time at 2am on Sunday morning, turning all clocks forward one hour. This meant that when I got up at 6 am this morning it was infact 5 am according to my body clock. I'm feeling the effects of it now, jetlagged and I haven't even travelled. So unfair.

/Mel

French kissing

Writing that last entry made me wonder why it's called "french kissing". I love words and the origin of words and I geek out on it every now and then so I decided to look it up.

Thanks to Wordorigins I learnt that the origin of "french kissing" is unknown but it dates to the 1920's and the idea that anything French is sexually naughty and that the French are sexually liberated. Wich makes me wonder what the French call that kind of open mouth, tounge tossing? Anyone?

I do know that in the ancient Swedish game "Russian Post" a french kiss was called "långtradare", an eighteen-wheeler lorry (the lorry is long and so is the kiss). The game included one person standing outside a room, knocking on the door saying "It's the Russian post, what will you have, hand shake, hug, peck or a kiss?". The older the kids at the party where the bolder the suggestions, including the french kiss. A member of the opposite sex was selected by random and the "letter" delivered. I tried finding out why it's Russian post being delivered but I had no luck.

I'm all geeked out now.

/Mel

snogging/pashing/kissing

No, sorry, not me. I haven't done any kissing in a while. It's my co-worker. She's got a new boyfriend since Christmas. The boyfriend works at the same place but in a different department. They kiss. Frequently. Like guppies.

Our office is one of those modern open ones, not even cubicles, just desks all over. I'm in a corner of the office with a few other people and my co-worker is right opposite me. The new boyfriend comes over about five, six times a day and snogs her. Loudly. I don't know what your companies say about kissing in the work place but ours doesn't seem to have a problem with it. We, the co-workers, do have a problem though.

It's the noise. The damn noise of the snogging. I don't know wich one of them it is that can't kiss properly but the sound they make when they kiss is like nothing I've ever heard before. And my co-workers are equally stunned. Imagine two guppies french kissing each other in a bowl of sticky jelly with open guppy mouths. Record that sound and feed it through the sound system of a fairly decent concert venue and you're close.

Jeez...it's like having an office on Reeperbahn.

Good thing I start my new job next week.

/Mel

My money goes to baby.

www.cdbaby.com is going to ruin me. There is to much great music in the world and they seem to have all of it. I limit myself, I can't go to this site more than once every second month or I'd spend all my money there.

/Mel

My Friday night

Now this is exciting stuff...Friday night in the city. I've been to the laundrette and washed all my clothes, bed linen and towels. I've made dinner, been sensible and made enough chili so I've got three lunch boxes for work and it's now four minutes past ten and I'm watching some bad sitcom, listening to the party my next door neighbour is throwing and wondering if I can be bothered to put the clean bed linen on my bed before I drive over to the airport to pick up my RyanAir flying brother..

It's a hard, fabulous glam life but's someones got to do it.

But on a slightly more realistic note, someone burnt down the school next to my house this evening. Burnt down right to the ground. Firefighters, police and press all over the place. Must be a slow news night...to bad about the school.

/Mel

Ice

It looks cold and sharp and very, very empty. Scandinavia is to dark in the winter.

Nightmares

I have no proverbial job beans to spill. Work is unusually quiet this afternoon. I'll post some photos I like instead.



I had a nightmare a while back about being in a huge house wich for some reason was on top of a live volcano and lava was rising through the building and everybody was racing to get out. In the dream I went downstairs to look for my dad who'd gone to get something in the basement of the house. I remember seeing lava slowly creeping over the floor and pouring up from the shower drain.
This photo reminded me of that dream. I can't decide if it looks like the snow is on fire or if lava is coming up out of the snow. Either way, it looks like a bad dream.

Cheap trip

This site is for boring hours at work:

http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/index.html

My music

My favourite gadget is my iPod. I never leave home without it, I take the bus to work and I can't stand having to listen to other people early in the morning so the iPod is a vital part of my morning routine.

This is what my iPod's 2GB is filled with right now:

Alabama 3

Alcazar

Anna Ternheim

Annie Lennox

Billie Holiday

The Cardigans

Coldplay

Daniel Lemma

Depeche Mode

Dido

Franz Ferdinand

Gary Jules

Håkan Hellström

Jamie Cullum

Janis Joplin

Kent

Lisa Miskovsky

Louise Hoffsten

Manu Chao

Morrissey

Nirvana

Norah Jones

Oasis

Phoenix (playing now)

The Red Hot Chili Peppars

Robbie Williams

Shawn Mullins

Smashing Pumpkins

The Strokes

U2

Weeping Willows

Not very original, interesting or provocative. But who are you to judge me?

/Mel

My background

You know, to be honest I don't know why I'm writing this blog in English. I speak a few European langauges but it seems sensible to write in a universal langauge for everyone to read. Wich shows what great plans I have for this blog...let the world read my thoughts and marvel at the normality of it all.

Maybe it's a question of seeing how anonymous you can be online, how interesting one can be without giving up to much background information and details about ones life?

I'll give you this much. I'm European. Really European, four nationalities and five and a half languages kind of European. A left-wing, non-religous, bleeding heart liberal European with strange habits that the U.S. republicans warn their children about. Or so my American friends say. It's strange. I vote more to the right then to the left when there's an election but to my American friends I'm far to the left.

When I turned 25 (yes, I'm over 25, pushing 30 infact) I'd lived in three different countries, six different cities on two different continents. My feet itch. I blame it on my parents, we moved about every four year untill I was 13.
Anyway, I recently got a proper flat, a place to live in, for the first time in my life. My 20's have been made up of going between dorms, colleges, student flats and my parents house. The strange thing was as I went to Ikea to buy cheap, flat packed furniture panic rose inside me. For the first time in my life I can't dump my books and cd's in my parents house and take off for a year to where ever. If I want to leave now I have to give up my flat or sub-let it or put everything in storage. Suddenly I've got a kitchen table, a proper book shelf and ten crystal wine glasses. A friend cynically commented that here was the reson I'm still single. If I can't commit to a kitchen table, how on earth am I going to commit to a guy? I laughed with her but still....fair point you know?

But who needs yet another single in the city blog? I don't read them so I won't write one.

One of those four nationalities is Swedish. By the way.

/Mel

My job

Yesterday I hung up on two customers. You're not really supposed to do that but how much shit are you supposed to take just because you are trying to make a living by working for civilians?
It's alot easier dealing with corporate customers. Civilians get so angry all the time. Why do you get so angry? Do you think I care? Do you think I'll do more to help you just because you yell at me? No. You'll get; "I'm human. Ring me again when you've stopped yelling." Click.
I wish I could blog about your job without anyone finding out where I work. I'd love to share the antics of my customers with you without loosing my job because I broke the law. I'm not allowed to share anecdotes from my workplace. I had a sign a contract. How dull. I might bend the rule though, spill a few proverbial beans. We'll see.

/Mel