1 day left...

Today we stached up on material. Me and Christian went to the only sports store in the Small Town and bought a lot of things!!! All of a sudden we seemed to think material could save us. No, but we have our doubts about the wheather, it could get cold, windy and rainy and none of us had the right clothing for that as none of us normally would do outdoor sports in those conditions...
What worries me a little is that Christian only arranged with his moutainbike today and it still needs some adjustments before tomorrow and he also bought new jogging shoes... The day before the race!!! But hey, the man is cool, so I guess I should not worry either.

The medical coordinator at our office promised to bring the compulsory first aid kits also for us, but as he is also our main competitor and the instigator to this whole thing I am not sure we can trust him, but on the other hand, I am not planning to get hurt either. According to the instructions for the race one should also bring a water protected mobile phone, but what the heck, should that really be neccessary?!?! On the other hand the orientation part really worries me. And still we have not decided on who will sit in the back or front of the canoe. I think I will have to call Christian later...

Shit! I am nervous!! I know it is only for fun, but I am such a bad looser. I hate to loose and it would be terrible to be the last among the colleagues. And it is also a very long time ago I did any kind of sports competition.

Now I will start some carbo loading. Pasta!!!
Then I will motivate myself with watching Kill Bill I think!

Whish us luck!!!

2 days left

Today we had a crash course in how to handle and read a compass. We kind of thought we knew, but after discussing it a bit we realised we had some different views on the matter and as it actually is more important that we agree than that we really know, we had to ask a colleague. Some other colleagues overheard the conversation and got a bit worried that we would get lost in the woods, but then remarked that we do not only have access to our own ambulance, we also have professional Search And Rescue teams!

The plan for today was to develope our paddling technic, but due to the bad rain we did some spinning instead. Was ok, but I still don't know what's wrong with my pulse watch...

3 days left..

well, now it is onlyt three days left until the race! Training is going fine. Yesterday we did some paddling again, followed by jogging and that felt fine. Today I did 15 km on my mountainbike which also felt fine. Today we also secured that we can borrow a compass from a colleague, who also gave us some good advise on paddling, which we might need. Now Christian only has to arrange for a bike and then we are ready to go. I suppose you could say it is a bit late, but what the... better late than never....or?`
Unfortunately my digital camera seems to have given up so I am not sure I will be able to post any pictures. But I am sure you can see it in the papers and on tv etc... ;-)

Neighbours!

I do have an issue with my neighbours! The single mom next door really needs to put some grease on the hinges of her front door; the squeaking is making me crazy. I have been thinking about offering her to oil it for her, but am worried she might take it as a critique, which it also is in a way… Maybe I should sneak out when she is not at home or at night and put some oil on it. The little shit under me now has bought a hubble bubble, well to be honest it smells better than the normal cigarettes, but on the other hand this will probably mean that all of his disgusting friends will hang out here even more. Today they pushed it a little further still. They have for some time been using the lawn as an extra entrance and been driving their mopeds all the way up to his terrace entrance, but today there was a car driving across the lawn all the way up and parked right under my balcony, on the grass. Bloody spoilt kids!
On my way to tennis lesson I was almost stopped by the neighbourhood kids who were holding a “flea market”. Now I know how come this whole town is full of flea markets and “antique” stores! On the way back from tennis I saw what the neighbour with the Hyundai has done to his car. It is a black car but now he has put bright neon yellow windscreen wipers and bright neon yellow grating on the front of the car. It is a grown up man!!! What’s wrong with these people!?!?

Something's wrong

I was just going through the summary of my first experience of training with a pulse watch. Yesterday I was out jogging and to test it I just ran my normal 5 km round at my normal pace of 5 min/km. Ok, I had to slow down a bit at the end as I felt the pain in my right hip that has been bugging me for a while, but nevertheless I made it in 27.37 min, which is ok. I felt good and not very tired afterwards. But looking at the summary of the results afterwards I was confused. The watch told me that I had been running at an average HR of 165 bpm, which would mean 90% of my max HR. That does not make sense! Something has to be wrong, but is it the watch or is it me? Or is it simply that I have the physique of a 20 years old?! :-)

I am open for any suggestions on what could be wrong as I am not very experienced in these things. Now I will make a second test. This time I will try to run at 70-80% of max HR and see what that will do for the pace and the distance.

The City that God Forgot

Today I visited the village that God forgot, or at least that the people left. My sister just bought a motorcycle in a town/village not too far from here and I drove her there to pick it up today. She told me already before that the place was really depressing and everyone I told I would go there said the same, but still I was not really prepared for what I saw. The whole community has grown up around one big industry. The town is in a mining area and the factory was somehow connected to mining and steel industry, although I don’t know exactly what they produced there.
Anyhow, the factory is now closed and the whole place is withering down to nothing. At the entrance of the town/village you see the deserted factory and it is so depressing, empty and broken windows, overgrown grass and rusty steel works everywhere. As you then follow the main street that runs through the village you see a lot of empty houses and closed down shops everywhere. Nowhere much sign of life. It is a ghost town! The people who sold the motorbike where now also leaving. Very symbolic!!
I wanted to make some pictures to post here so you can see what I mean, because unless one has seen anything like that it is hard to believe, but unfortunately my digital camera seem to have broken down all of a sudden! But there is supposed to be a book about those “closed down industry towns” in Sweden. Right now I don’t remember the name of the book but I feel quite sure that this place is in the book.
After this little excursion it even felt quite good to be back in my Small Town!

Turning Sporty?

A little late maybe, but now training for the race has started. Thursday I and Christian did some paddling, and then we jogged down town, to the gym for an hour of spinning and finally walked back. Of course the distance was nothing in comparison with what awaits us on Saturday, but it felt really good. Yesterday I bought a lot of new jogging and training clothes. That is also important! And today I bought a pulse-watch and sport drinks “superior glycogen filling” so here we go!!

Team sport

Time is flying and August the 18 is approaching rapidly. That is the date for the multi sport event I have been tricked into. Some colleagues started teasing and challenging each other to sign up and somehow I got involved too. It is a team thing and we decided to sign up for the mixed version so I am competing together with my colleague Christian. This far we have not been training together once! Tomorrow we will do some paddling which might bee good as that is not one does everyday... The running and cycling might work anyway, although it also involves orientation, which I don’t know if any one of us is very good at. In total it is a race over 31 km but with a few misses on the orientation part and the race can get much longer… (about the race see: www.adventurerace.se)

Some of our other colleagues, who are not participating in the race, but only in the party afterwards, came up with an idea that they probably found brilliant. They will bring the ambulance! Our specially equipped Medical Emergency Response Team ambulance! They thought it would be good PR to show it, but I am not so sure what kind of PR it gives to the teams participating! Bringing our own ambulance….!?

Good things in The Small Town

All of a sudden I felt bad! And felt sorry for all the negative things I write about the Small Town. Actually I don't mean to be negative, I am just fascinated and write about the things I don't understand, but I can understand that this might look negative, so therefore I will try to write about some good things about The Small Town too(especially as I want people to come and visit me here!)
I will start by writing that The Small Town has a very nice art museum (for being a small town). It is very nicely situated by the water, has a nice café/restaurant and good muesums shop and seem to have ambitious exhibitions. This far I have only seen one, but it is very good, about Swedish and Norwegian pupils of Matisse, very interesting!


http://www.kristinehamnskonstmuseum.com

Cars

Since I moved to the Small Town, the word CAR has a new meaning. In the office CAR means Central African Republic, but generally cars seem to be a way of life here. I have already written about the young guys entertaining themselves by racing around the roundabouts on a Tuesday evening and though I never really paid much attention to what their car actually looked like, I know exactly. This is the place for homemade custom Volvos!

You see them everywhere. Old Volvos 740 or 760, from the 80:s or early 90:s but looking nothing the way the car looked when it was new, still not like the real fancy custom cars you can see on TV or in magazines or on exhibitions. No, these are really homemade stuff. Among the standard equipments are of course low profile tyres on aluminium rims, spoilers and some new fancy colour, preferably bicoloured. Then there can be all kinds of extras, no limits! It is soo obvious that there is some young guy who bought the car cheaply and then spent a lot of time and money on it to rebuild it. So it is probably not a matter of money, with all the money spent I am sure they could have bought a newer and cooler car if they wanted but that is not the issue here. To me this is completely incomprehensible!

Even more incomprehensible to me is what one of my neighbours is doing. Almost every day I pass a garage in the area where I live and every afternoon one of the garage doors is open and there is one person and often two or three others are there chatting with him. To be honest I don’t know exactly what the man is doing but he seems to be working on a car. As this man is in his 50:s and seem to be spending all his spare time in this garage I felt pretty sure that the car had to be some very cool old classic veteran car or something like that, and I somehow thought I could understand that you could have that as a hobby. Until the other day when I had a closer look in the garage as I passed and saw that the car is a Hyundai!! How cool is that?!?!

Not even now when I am a car-owner myself can I understand the fascination in cars as such. How you can have cars as a hobby (and then I don’t mean driving!). I am trying not to see my car as just a waste of money and hence an impediment on my oversee travels and therefore I have given it a nickname, to try to personalize it and try to build some kind of relation to it, but I am not sure it works. I am just not a car-person!

Bad Neighbours

Another thing that is different in The Small Town is the phenomenon neighbours.
I have moved a lot and lived in many strange places, but I have never had any problems with my neighbours. I have hardly been aware that I had neighbours. Ok, some of my friends might have heard me complain about some neighbour at some time, their memories seem to be working better regarding these things than mine, but as far as I am aware of now have never had any problems with neighbours. Until now! I absolutely hate my downstairs neighbour who is always playing music too loud and is generally annoying. The other neighbours do normally not disturb me, although I think some of them seem a bit strange. Of course I could try to talk to my downstairs neighbour, but I am afraid that won’t be too fruitful. I could also talk to the landlord and have them talk to my neighbour, but I really hate these things, so instead I keep quiet and suffer. I have also been thinking about looking for another apartment, but the funny thing is that all my colleagues seem to have problems with their neighbours being loud, aggressive or dirty or some other problems. The only one who was not complaining about his neighbours today was a colleague who has a hearing problem!
Could it be that this is a general problem here?! Or are we big city dwellers more sensitive about our neighbours’ activities?! I don’t know.

Exclusive blogging

Last week I read an article in the major daily about the three most read blogs in Sweden. Apparently they all belong to the same family, two brothers and the wife of one of the brothers. Out of curiosity I had to check the three blogs out, although I had never heard of them before. But honestly, I only managed to read two, three, maximum four posts before I was fed up. They were just so uninteresting! They were mainly just throwing shit on people and trying to be as arrogant as possible. The big thing right now was obviously the wedding of two of them and all three of them seemed to think everyone is immensely interested in the planning and the preparations for the wedding. Honestly!!! Who the hell can bother to be interested in some unknown peoples wedding?!?!? Don’t people have friends of their own who get married??!! But I believe that most of the readers are very much younger than the bloggers themselves, so that might explain it. The small kids might think they get something of the “coolness” these people are trying to display, by reading and commenting on their blogs. But how pathetic isn’t that?!
I am by no means trying to say that my blog would be more interesting, but I don’t have thousands and thousands of people who read my blog every day, which I honestly am very happy for! You, my dear readers are a much more exclusive bunch

Small Town Exotica

Some of my Swedish friends use to say that the stories I tell about The Small Town are just as exotic as the ones I told about Harare or Manila and this one is for me, one of them too. It is just hilarious!

Unfortunately I am not sure if it will work in English, but I will give it a try. Today I went out with some colleagues to celebrate a birthday with a couple of drinks. After a while the colleague who was sitting next to me wanted a small beer and asked for that. And here comes an explanation for the non-Swedes: the standard order for a draught beer at a Swedish bar is “en stor stark” which actually means “one big strong”. That will give you ca 40 cl of any random beer of the stronger class. It is the equivalent of ordering the house wine; it will most likely not be the best kind of beer, but the cheapest.

So my friend had had some of those but now felt she wanted a smaller one. When the very young and very inexperienced and maybe not too smart waitress brought the beer she asked “vem var det som ville ha en liten stor stark?” “who wanted the small big strong?” I spontaneously burst out laughing; I thought it was just so hilarious. Especially as the waitress did not react or seemed to see the missing logic of what she said. It can not have been that she did not hear it as I was not very subtle and my other colleagues also started laughing. After a while my colleague wanted another one and this time she was a bit hesitant how to order, as she did not want to start another laughing orgy. We were all paying attention and heard her ask for a “small beer”, but apparently the waitress noticed her hesitation and to confirm she asked; “en liten stor stark?” I think you can guess our reaction.

My colleagues jokingly blamed me for being an arrogant big city snobb, and were making jokes about us living like expats here and making fun of the locals, but they were laughing just as much. This is, however, quite much small town and the truth is, we are living quite much like expats and do not mingle with the locals!

Modern Freak Shows

To follow up on the TV-theme I just have to come back to another theme that I have touched on earlier, the programmes that teach people how to live their lives. Just happened to end up watching a show about dieting obese children. It is a British show about an obese 11-years old girl. After only watching it for a couple of minutes I realise it is not only about teaching the family how to eat healthier and exercise, it is about educating them like parents normally educate their children. So the family even was thought not to use bad language!! It is amazing!! It is so prejudiced. It is almost like an old-fashioned freak show, where you put poor, uneducated white trash on display and then do a “good deed” by telling them how to live their lives and become better people!! How can they get away with that?!!? And how can any adult persons accept to be told how to talk and not use bad language on a TV-show??

Material Girl

Oh Gosh! I think I am becoming materialistic! I have started to buy and own Things! This last week I bought a bike and a car! The bike might be ok, although I actually already had a good bike. This one is more of a mountain bike type and I need that for the multi sport race I have registered for in August (another crazy thing, but more about that later!). But a car!!!
Ok, it is of course a used one and I have been thinking about it for some time (since I moved to the small town) but anyway. The day after I bought it I woke up in agony thinking about all the expenses I just bought me; thinking all my money will now be spent on the car and fuel and much less left for travelling!:-(
Anyway; it is nice to be able to drive more freely and it makes you more flexible. I just took a short ride just for fun, checking out beaches outside the town! But still; there is a lot of money involved, because it is of course not just the car; you of course need a lot of other equipment and accessories as well! And that is when I realised I was getting materialistic, because I feel I need a lot of car-things I never thought of before! I guess it is the influence of small town life. I am also considering buying a couch and who knows, if I live here long enough I maybe I even might buy a flat screen TV!!!

Pirates off the West Coast

Back from a nice sailing trip along the Swedish West Coast. Well the weather could have been better, but we had quite good wind and some really nice sailing. Being out with an old boat like that you get some interesting reactions sometimes. Especially if you sport a different flag, as this time when we had a Jolly Roger hissed. In one harbour I heard a little kid ask his father; "Are those real pirates?". The father answered: "yes, that's what pirates look like". I somehow felt compelled to add that we are rather nice pirates.


Our pirate ship found some friends! We are on the outside. Later we were sandwiched between some Polish juvenile delinquents and German MedDr and PhD:s, quite some pirates...

Ejdern aproaching the harbour, or actually moving to let the ferry let some people off!

Of course real pirates open beer cans with a knife!

The very idyllic Fiskebäckskil! Between the thunder storms!


A real "Idylla-Jävel"!

Finally we reached our final destination, Bovallstrand. We had quite some problems finding a place in the harbour. Because of the hard wind the harbour was completely full of boats and then arriving with 20 tonnes is not the easiest thing, but after having alerted the harbour management and engaged 15 people ashore to help us, we finally made it.
N.B. this picture was taken the day after, when the wind had decreased and many boats had leaft.

Actually, the only bad thing with the west coast are the nasty jelly fish! In Bovallstrand there was a proper jelly-fish-soup! Just as well the weather did not invite to swimming anyway!

Holiday time

It is amazing the way everything close down during summer. Offices in Sweden are really empty in July! This feels a little new to me as I have been working abroad during summer the last four years. Today there was not too many of us in the office and there will be even less next week, but then I will not be there either, so I don't care! :-) I just hope there will be no tsunamis, earthquakes, wars, floods or other disasters in the world next week or maybe especially not after next week when I am back in office again...

Next week I am off for sailing on the west coast! I really look forward to it and only hope the weather will be ok. It hasn't been great this far, but that means it is about time it gets good.
So; no disasters and nice weather and everything will be fine. Fingers crossed!!

Laundry Room Fascism II

Now I am back on one of my favourite topic of hatred, the laundry room fascism! Since I now live in a very typical (although very unusual to me) Swedish standard house with rented apartments I am now personally affected. When I first moved in and went down to book a time I was shocked to see I could not get a time in three weeks!! There are two washing machines and 36 apartments that share them. That should not be too bad, but since the day is divided in three bookable blocks per day whereof only one actually is an option for people with a normal daytime job, there are not so many options left. (I even discovered that people who work are further discriminated as the two daytime blocks are five hours whereas the evening block only four!!!) And if you then, as I, don’t spend your weekends here, there are two days less. Maybe you also have some meetings or other appointments during the week and you are in big trouble and there is no room to be spontaneous. I think you can understand than one does not want to miss a booked time. But still I refuse to let my life be governed by the laundry room fascism!

Today I had booked the laundry room from five to nine in the evening, but then a colleague asked if we should play tennis. Dilemma, I really didn’t want to say no to tennis, but as I am going on holiday next week I also really needed to wash. However, the tennis court is close to where I live and I booked it from six o’clock which meant I could go home and start washing to show my neighbours that I really was using my time (if you don’t someone else normally is allowed to use it after an certain time) and then leave it while playing tennis. When I came to the laundry room I saw a note from a neighbour (kindly) asking if she could wash after me when I was ready and left her phone number. First my egoistical me thought; what the heck, it is not my problem, if I have booked until nine I can be here till nine, but of course if I am ready earlier I can give her a call. But on my way out I met the neighbour in question and then my “real” kind and soft me took over and suggested that I just finished this first one and then she could wash between six and eight o’clock, while I was playing tennis. She was very grateful and happy. We were chatting for a while and complained about how difficult it is to get the time to wash. She agreed completely and added…”especially when you have three kids..” So I guess I felt kind of stupid, standing there with my tennis racket and my luxury problems…

Today I was planning to complain about that I don’t feel very comfortable with the normal life in the small town. Or the fact that the summer in Sweden is rather shitty this far. I haven’t spent the whole summer in Sweden in quite many years and now I think I will have to try to avoid it in the future as well.
But just before I started writing I heard on the regional news that someone had been sentenced for attempted murder on a pizza restaurant owner. The man had previously threatened to kill the same man, after having received mushrooms on his pizza instead of shrimps….
Somehow that made me rethink, look at things from another perspective and forget my complaints for a while. People are mad!!

Almost famous

I just love the way they call the local TV-channel here in Kristinehamn, KLTV. Ok, it is a logical abbreviation for Kristinehams Lokal TV, but still it makes me think of something completely different. It makes me think of that 80-th’s TV-series Midnight Caller, with Jack “Nighthawk” Killian as a late night radio talk show host. Do you remember? Ok, the name of that radio station was KJCM, but still….
“Good night America. Where ever you are!”