Finally great weather in Sweden after the last couple of weeks which mostly included melting of snow and refreezing of melted snow thus creating a 5 cm layer of ice. Not nice.

So yesterday and over the night we go 10 - 15 - 20 (hard to tell) cm of fresh snow which means only one thing: one more weekend of cross-country skiing.

But it seems like I better dress up for it:

In the meantime R experienced yesterday his first snow in Beijing. Turns out it was the first snow for this winter. Also the first snow / rain for the past three months :D Exciting times.

So here's the thing: R is in love with China. He loves the cuisine, he loves the chaos, he loves the crowd. He also never lived abroad so it came quite naturally for us that if we ever move somewhere then we should at least try to move to China.

We spent pretty much all of 2010 figuring out how we could do this. And here's the good news it seems like we might actually make it there quite soon. R got an assignment in BJ and he is leaving next Sunday (6 Feb). As for me, I'm still trying to fix an assignment. I'm quite hopeful about it but things are not fixed for 100%. I hope it will work out and I can move there no later than end of Feb.

Exciting times, I must say.

I guess that us moving to China will mean that I will pick up blogging again.

Yeah so now we packed up our (Nick and Kajsa's) apartment and are moving 13 boxes and 3 IKEA bags to R's grandpa's place tomorrow. Other than this we have 2 luggages each, seems like we will be able to bring an extra luggage when moving to BJ.

Well this is all for now... I'm getting more and more into I Blame Coco.

u get it, don't u?

"If he'd known how long he was going to spend in the airport lounge of his own life, he'd made different travel arrangements, but instead he'd sat there, sighing and fidgeting and, more often than was ever really acceptable, snapping at his travelling companions."

- Juliet Naked by Nick Hornby -

There's a lot that M gave me, one of the items on that lengthy list would be none other than Mr. Nick Hornby. Even if I needed about 6 years to come around and properly introduce myself to him.

I really enjoyed her art shown during the below TED talk.

Yesterday Ericsson has unveiled it's Twittering Tree at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The tree is a lovely orange tree that is somehow "connected to a device that turns [it] into an electromagnetic field sensor, enabling it to detect motion". Then they translate this data to some reactions, such as tweets or SMSs. Pretty fun stuff!

Although I never quite understood why they call it "Twittering" Tree and not "Tweeting" Tree, but then again, seems like someone hasn't done their homework in Ericsson. Just check googlefight, it is obvious that TWEET is the word, especially that I did vote on it when Ev and others asked Twitter users to pick a name for the action of posting something on Twitter.

Photo: courtesy of Ericsson

I've been spending the day at Klattercentret in TN at Solna Klatterklub's climbing competition. Sort of helping out Ammie. I got there at 11am to help put up the notes about the routes, the clothes ppl could shop for an extremely discount price.(I got myself and R a nice pair of Houdini Liquid capris, a Motion racerback, and another Houdini T)

The competition started at 12:15 and ended at 16:30 - you had to climb three routes for, a Lila for 5c, my favourite warm-up route in the big hall, and lead climb the yellow and blue routes on the other side of that wall for 6c and 6b+. The two latter I can't do yet, just about till one third, so for bout 30 points (holds). Then you also had to do ten different boulder 'kunsts' - I could absolve three, which for me is a big YEAY, a black and a red one upstairs and an orange one which ended in a frog, so most likely it was for kids. Btw, the black one was really amazing! They were all for blue... I couldn't do a yellow one downstairs, also for blue, there is one twist I cannot doe =((( Ooooh, now I should really start updating my climbing blog!

There was also speed climbing - but I haven't tried it. And we did some usual routes upstairs to warm up, but I always feel so broken when I do it.

Now dinner with JC, and R's friend from Gbg.

My usual breakfast on a weekday is a bottle of yoghurt that I consume in the office in front of the computer. And then on many occasions my usual lunch is a sandwich made by my boyf that I again consume in front of the computer at work. There are two reasons for the above:

1) I don't like to waste a lot of time sitting around eating breakfast at home and reading newspapers on weekdays

2) It is so darn cold nowadays in Stockholm that I prefer not to go out for lunch _and_ the cafe downstairs gets a little boring _and_ I am incapable of making sure that I bring cooked food to work.

But there was no bread at home this morning so we opted for buying some sandwiches on the way to work, and to my great joy we did that at Cafe Como (not very visible on the pic below) - a tiny cafe on the corner of Torsgatan and Odengatan.

They have really nice lattes but this morning what got me happy was their delicious chocolate-filled croissant. It wasn't greasy, it wasn't fluffy, there was cocoa powder on top of it and it tasted heavenly. Yummie.

Now I can't wait till lunch to taste the sandwich I got there :D

I first started to like Zoey Deschanel when I saw her on Elvis Costello's show singing with Jenny Lewis:

I truly fell in love with her voice. She sings in a band called She & Him. I meant to watch her movies ever since - and then there came one: 500 Days of Summer (imdb). It was a story of boy meets girl, but it was not a love story as it claimed. It was cute and nice and lovely and everyone would fall for Zoey's big blue eyes and sixties haircut and singing.

I can only recommend it for girlie evenings...

... but as of yesterday I own my own cross-country equipment. Yeay!

I moved to Sweden in March 2007 and when winter was approaching I thought I'll get my own pair of cross-country skis in no time. And then we got two very mild winters and it just made no sense to buy the skis. Bahh, so annoying to live in a country where there supposed to be a lot of snow during winter and then there is not, and all you get instead is dark gloomy rainy weather.

And then all changed this winter, we have snow since mid-December, and now that I have time too it was time to get the equipment. And so I did yesterday.

And so here are my new pretty boots:

So darn pretty they are!

I got so disappointed the other day - I had these gr8 gr8 plans for shopping this and that and they all fell through. So annoying when you plan how gonna weat a piece of clothing, in this case it was this insanely warm Peak Performance parka:

and the Burberry rain boots I wrote about in my previous post. So annoying. I did try on the coat and it has this wonderful yet weird down jacket that you can remove form the coat. Well, the thing is, I looked like a pregnant women in the jacket thanks to the down jackets. So stupid. Like a bit barrell or something.

Then yesterday I passed by NK with R to check out the boots. They didn't have the one I liked but I asked the shop assistant to give me any pair of rain boots they had in size 37. I just wanted to see that they are comfy and fit my calves (I usually have problems when buying boots). Then came the big haha - they had none of the 4 types of boots in size 37. I tried on 38, it was a little big.... I got disappointed - I really don't wanna order a pair of boots for so much money if they might not fit me. And then R thought it was stupid expensive. And BEAUTIFUL too =) That's what I think.

But this is how I will not have Burberry rain boots... Bahh.

Btw, I just started reading another one of the Shopaholic books... It's good to read one every once in a while to get me out of this urge to buy more clothes.

My sis and her boyf are visiting me this week so after a crazy-busy 4 hours spent with my office laptop in bed* we hit the town. It was all pretty fun until after about 15 min of walking my sister started complaining how her UGGs started getting wet - on the inside. Whooops. The snow was melting like crazy in the whole city and there were puddles and ponds and this ugly gray melted snow. Brrrr.

Anyways, my pair of leather boots weren't perfect for the weather which made me think that I might actually need to get myself a pair of weather (rubber) boots. I have already found one by Burberry that I quite like:

I have never actually thought that at one point in my life I'd crave a pair of rainboots. That is just soooo - for 5-year-olds. OMG.

* working that is

"People always think something's all true."

I couldn't summarize my life better than the above quote from Catcher In The Rhye. Hello - goodbye. This is goodbye.

R.I.P. JD Salinger.

It's past midnight and in less than 18h I am on my way back to Stockholm. Oh how weird it feels right now... spending twelve days or so in Bp was fun, happy and joyful and now I'm a little sad to leave. I don't think I have ever felt like this before... homesick? Not yet. Never been. Ahh....

Better go sleep.

I already like today. I'm soon off to meet my dear mentor and tel her about the innovation competition and the status of our idea. After that I'll run back to the office - me and my mentor sit in different offices on different ends of the town. Then a short and crazy day, and then off to meet the Head of HR @Skanska.... craaaaazyyyyy.

Listening to the Real Girl by Mutya Buena.

I always had a thing for FDR, and now I also have one for his wife Eleonor who happened to say something really smart. And damn she was right! I'm usually not the person who feels inferior or intimidated by other people, but it still happens to me every once in a while. And I also do have friends who get intimidated by others. So to me, and all of them, here's your new mantra:

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." 

It started raining cats and dogs just when we were about to leave for lunch with Emil from GGP1. Bummer! Oki, I really can't complain, as so far we stayed clear from the rain in Guangzhou. If you check the weather forecast for this lovely Chinese city you get dark clouds and thunderstorms for every day... ah well, it is rain season. We only got rain Monday evening so far, and now. I knew today was going to be bad... they already told us =)))

So for a while it looked like no lunch today for us:

And then the others decided to order (!) food from McDonald's which is just around the corner. Yeay! That is so cool that they deliver here.... this would never happen in Europe.

Here's a little extract from one of the posts on Dilbert's blog that I really liked when I read in my RSS feed this morning:

"We know that the brain is bidirectional. If it's happy, it can make you smile. But if you force yourself to smile when you are not happy, it can make you happier".

Dilbert's conclusion was that whenever someone asks him how he's doing he will answer 'I'm fabulous!'

So this is me than all smiley after the U2 concert in Göteborg last Friday. And now I'm in Guangzhou enjoying work and my hotel.... I'm fabulous!

I love Fridays because I get up at 6 am and it still feels OK.

I love Fridays because all I have to do at 6 am is put on my sports wear, sneakers, my backpack and then walk.

I love Fridays because I have a 1,5-hour walk to work with my dearest H and Per. 

I love Fridays because Stockholm is super-sunny even when it is around zero degrees.

I love Fridays because I get to walk on crispy snow in the woods around Kista.

I love Fridays because I get to the office, take a shower, wash my hair and then get a smoothies.

I love Fridays because I already have a grip on my weekend =)

I love Fridays...