close doesn't shoot a rabbit

Close call, I was this close going to Iran this weekend. But due to European and US sanction discussions as well a bunch of other factors I finally bailed out on that trip. You could say that "Iran away". Humour at it's peak.

soso song

Love youtube, and the content really represents the Internet: most of the things suck but every now and then you come across something good. "Something good" might not be the case here, more like "something very bad", which for the record can be just as good.

Hassan II

I went to Casablanca, Morocco for a couple of days work and one afternoon I got the opportunity to see the worlds second largest mosque - Hassan II. The current kings father had it built and it is quite magnificent. However they wouldn't let me inside due to 2 factors: 1 it was praying time and 2 I'm not a muslim.

La Linea

.. Or "Linus på linjen" as we call it in Sweden. Quite the nostalgic trip.

By the way, I bought the 360 last weekend and yes, games in HD are awesome. I agree with you Graeme, life is too short not to buy it - shockingly enough my girlfriend begs to differ.

360 or 180

A very existencial question is bothering me. Should I buy the Xbox 360 or not. Watched Frölunda practice today during lunch, I'm so looking forward to when the season premieres.

I love Wikipedia by the way. I know it's nothing new but I just realised I love the Wiki-stuff and the idea behind it. Long live democracy.

I heart NY, I no-heart Contintental

Good couple of days in Asheville with colleagues. On my way back I'm stoping in New York to see my friend and do some shopping. I was going to do some drinking as well but instead of arriving at Newark 9.15 pm Friday evening Continental decided to land in Allentown, PA at 11 pm for refuiling and then land in Newark at 0.15 Saturday morning. My 20 hours in NY were reduced to 17 - hence no drinks. Luckily I had a wonderful and sunny Saturday on my own strolling the 5th avenue with a smoothie and my Ipod. An excellent day in an excellent city.

Skysurfing - the nerdy way

I just lost my virginity. Well, don't get too excited: I've never before surfed the web and sent email/IM 10000 meters above the sea. On my way to the US I tried the wireless connection on SAS Airbus flight. Even though I didn't break any bandwidth records (it almost felt like I was travelling faster than the 1:s and 0:s) it was quite a feeling to be able to do all that stuff up in the sky.

The flight was to Washington DC so we (me, Bogdan and Pontus) just had a short trip to Greensboro left. But when we landed at Dulles it was almost like the gods had flipped a giant bathtub upside down. Heavy rain and thunderstorms made them cancel all flights to and from the airport so we decided to go with a rental instead. 5½ hours later we pulled up on the parking lot of the "faboulus" Comfort suites in Greensboro.

We're going to Asheville later this afternoon for a 3 day conference. After that it's flight straight to New York for 20 hours of fun and shopping with Gasse, flight back to Gothenburg on Saturday, arrive on Sunday, later that Sunday it's a Robbie Williams concert at Ullevi with my girlfriend and my sister and her husband.

I can't really complain right now. One small step for me, a giant leap for a Swede.

Superman?

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's the return of my blog.
Long time no write. Where the hizzle have I been you might ask - or maybe not, but then again, why the hizzle are you reading this blog for? (Apparently I've turned ghetto-rapper.)

To sum it up I've been doing things that fall under two categories:
1. usual stuff - the kind of activities that are filed under "everyday life".
2. unusual stuff - the kind of activities that makes life dandy.

travel-wize I've been to Johannesburg, Singapore and St. Tropez. The first two for work, the third for fun.

Too good to be true

Take 7 gold medals, stir it with 2 silvers and add 5 bronze. Voila, the ingredients for Swedens best Winter Olympics ever. Certainly better than even the most optimistic Swede would ever predict. I'm gonna miss the olympics, that's for damn sure.

In case you've been travelling to another planet (or you're just not interested in ice hockey) - "Tre kronor" won the gold medal 2 days ago. 3-2 against team Finland - our biggest rival - in an olympic final that had (almost) everything. The game winning goal scored by Niklas Lidström (the guy who is known as the best defenseman in the world, but has never really made it in the national team). The assist from Mats Sundin (captain, oh captain) and Peter Forsberg (the greatest). And Henke plays as good as it gets when he manages to save an open netter with 20 seconds to go in the game. Now, consider the fact that this was the last Olympic game ever for many of our greatest players (the top three involved in the goal above) and you have the ingredients to a great game in the best olympics with the happiest of happy endings.

Semifinals

After a somewhat questionable loss against Slovakia the other day, Tre Kronor finished 3rd in the group. Russia won the group with 5 consecutive wins and look extremely strong, I've got 3 kronor (humour) saying Russia will win the Gold. In the quarter finals we played the Swiss (who played well over the expectations finishing 2nd in their group after victories against Canada and the Czech Republic!). Fortunately we won 6-2, goals scored by Mats Sundin (2), Daniel Alfredsson, Fredrik Modin, Henrik Sedin and Henrik Zetterberg.

Semifinals next, against the Czech Republic. It'll be an interesting game considering they beat us bad on home turf last world cup. If we can just pick it up a notch and "Henke" plays insanely well, that we're spoiled with, I think we can win this. To be continued.

Let's get ready to rumble

Finally! A looong wait is over: Helloooo Winter Olympics! I'm so damn excited about the hockey..

New Caledonia - what ever happened to the old one?

One week of vacation in Ozzy and back to work. Well, I don't know if I'm even supposed to call a trip to New Caledonia "work"? Anyhow, I did work, I actually worked more than I kind of hoped for. I had scheduled for one extra day to look around this island outside of Australia but that didn't happen. But I had a good time anyway.

Nicolas and Nathalie were the two people I turned out to work most with. But after a weeks work I got to go out my last night in New Caledonia. A girl from work took me out together with a girlfriend of hers. We had a great time and they took me to this really cosy restaurant just outside of Noumea (capital of NC). After that we went to La Bodega, a bar on a pier just in front of my hotel. It was packed with people and we met up with Roger from work as well.

It's sad to say, but that kind of was my trip to NC. Work, eat, sleep. and one night at a bar on a pier. Good thing I had a great time anyway. Long live San Remo - they must have thought I never eat anything but Italian food - 5 days in a row at the same restaurant. Almost scary how convenient I can get sometimes. By the way, Convenience (or lazyness) will be the doom of humanity. Remember where you heard it first.

Oh yea! I bought an Ipod Nano at the airport in Brisbane! According to my friend Eric in the states you're nothing until you have an Ipod. It feels so great to finally be someone.

Last days in Australia

When we came back from sailing the Whitsunday islands I spent my last days of vacation in Whitsundays at Chateau Koala - The backpacker hostel I mentioned earlier. Although it rained almost everyday we had an awesome time. It may not be the most incredible place on earth but hey, we were in Australia, it was 30 degrees Celsius and most importantly - we were on vacation. And it didn't hurt to know that it was a a few degrees below zero back home.

So what did we do during these last days? Allow me to quote Mr. Jerry Seinfeld: "Nothing!". We played some cards, talked about important and not so important stuff and just had a great, relaxed, time. It's amazing how exciting it can be to eat, sleep and drink sometimes.

Sailing the Whitsundays

"Koala Beach Resort", was maybe not as "paradise" as sounded at first, nevertheless it was our home in Whitsunday during the rest of my Ozzie-week. Arriving on Monday the 23rd we spent the night at Koala's, woke up and walked down to Shute Harbour to face our next great adventure - a sailing cruise onboard "The Card" (sailed Whitbread round the world race) for the next 3 days. Here's a short summary of what happened during those days:

Day 1:
Get to know everyone on board, such as Tössken, Huden, Benji, Skipper, Allie, Alice, Nat and so on.. during the day we snorkled at a beautiful spot in the great barrier reef (can't remember the name of it though). Day ended with a few drinks onboard while anchored off in between two small islands. During that night it starts raining, little did we know that that rain wouldn't stop until 5 days later. Slept up on deck together with Totte, Oscar, Tössken, Alice, Nat and some more because of incredible heat and humidity below deck. Woke up 4 am by rediculous amounts of rain. got below deck to get some more sleep.

Day 2:
Sailed to Whitehaven beach, a beauuuutiful spot. The sand is minute powder-size grains of quartz and has been assayed at 99.89% pure, well above the minimum requirement for glass-making and suitable for the finest glass for optical lenses for binoculars etc. Pretty damn cool. Did some swimming and returned to the boat. Later that night we ended up at South Molle Island. Another fantastic place in this paradise where we were to end up for the night. A few more of the sailing boats in the area came and we pulled an all nighter. Drinking games with Brits is not something I would reccomend though, they tend to yell things that sounds like different versions of "cheers", get naked, fall off tables and having their wiener flap around for everyone to admire. At least the ones that were on this island.

Day 3:
We ended this cruise with a trip to Blue Pearl - magic if you like diving and snorkling. This was the best thing about the entire trip. It was like snorkeling in an aquarium. We even saw a big shark facing us, which made both me and Totte walk, or should I say run, on water. After changing underwear we continued the trip back to Shute Harbour, left the crew and got back on dry land. The night ended with a few beers at Morroco's - Koala's own bar/club right next door.

If you have a few days to kill in Australia, I definitely recommend this.

Pulling a Simon in Surfers Paradise

It took some time but I finally arrived on the Gold Coast of Australia. Totte (see friends), Oscar (friends through Totte) and Simon (married to Tottes cousin, Carolina) picked me up at the airport in the evening of the 21st. During those 28 hours of travelling I managed to piss off a colleague, sleep a few hours in my comfy business class chair, smoke a cigg in Kuala Lumpur and loose my luggage in Sydney. However, I was too excited to be sleepy when I finally arrived.

We went to Simon and Carolina in Surfers Paradise, which would be our (me, Totte and Oscar) home for the next two days. Their house was out on Florida Gardens in Surfers, which is sort of a peninsula - very nice and cosy house by the way! Totte, Oscar, Carolina and Simon pampered me from the very beginning by preparing frozen margarithas and dinner - food and drink, that's pretty much all it takes. We enjoyed a fantastic seafood dinner in their garden while listening to the very green frog whose voice was disproportionately huge compared to his body size. The night ended at a night club in Surfers together with Lill-Janzon (BG's little brother who works at Charlie's - a shitty restaurant) and his friend. Oh yea, Totte managed to wake up Carolina and Simon in the middle of the night as well. No Comment.

A big thank you to Carolina for taking such good care of us all the time. Also a big shoutout to my main Ozzie-bloke Simon who craked us up and boosted our egos all the time. The coming days in Ozzie-land, me, Totte and Oscar "pulled a Simon" when we were lovebombing eachother.

Fly me to the moon

Well okay, not the moon, but to the other side of this planet. That's right, next stop: Sydney, Australia. I've been there once before and I just love Sydney! (big shout out to my main Shandy-drinker Graeme who's moving there soon.) But before I go to Sydney I have 2 days in Brussels with a bunch of old and new faces from work.

So when I get to Australia I will be heading for Surfers Paradise almost immediately to meet up with Totte (see "Friends") for a week of vacation. Unless I'm heading for Betty Ford, my travel continues to New Caledonia for a weeks work. So, one week in Australia, one week in New Caledonia. It's a dirty job but someone's got to do it.

As a sidenote, New Years was a blast. Spent it at Stenungsbaden outside of Gothenburg with my colleague Martin and a bunch of people from my soccer team. Good food, good drinks, good times.