So far, so good... in Melbourne. 

Oh, I just love this city so much!!!!! I bought my Crumpler bad, jattabra! And, and, and walked around the city for some time. The flight was okay, slept more than 14 hours yesterday, and just 1 today. Met Jess, gave her some hugs, went to the gym, didn't try the sauna and the jacuzzi YET! People are nice in Australia, sweet and kind.... the guy at the counter in Cole's (grocery store) asked my name, was weird, but nice, and wished me a good stay. The guy at the Crumpler shop was so much fun, so my muc my type!!!! Cute, tall, nice accent, lovely sense of humour. Anyway, life is great... I am only writing in short and not compound sentences.... Yikes!

Btw, no Internet at my place, it costs way too much, so please don't expect mails from me. And as in Europe it is now a little too early, no chats I guess. However I managed to talk to Hele and Gio in US and Canada, cool, it is early evening there.

I have to leave around 4am from my apartment, now it is ten to 10pm, that's approximately 6hrs. Ehmmm.. what else. Probably it will just all work out fine, I mean the fact that I sleep during the first part of the trip and be awake for the rest, cause anyway I am landing at 8pm in Melbourne.

Even though i wanted to dislike it I quite liked Christiane Amanpour's documentary on God's Warriors on cnn the last couple of nights. I missed the one with the Jews, I saw the one about Islam, and from the Catholics my stomach felt bad so I had to switch channels. However that is  matter of personal taste and probably not Amanpour.... or both. I am not a big fan of her in general. 

Oh and there was this gay conversion show on cnn, too. Also today. Weird, people think they transfer people from being gay to being straight. But maybe these guys who actually transfer are not homosexuals, but bisexuals, just that they have periods in their lives when they prefer or exclusively like one gender. Maybe this is called exclusive bisexualism.

• charge my ipod
• charge my phones
• pack LAN cable
• pack chargers/adapter (ipod, phones, laptop)
• camera, adapter, usb cable
• pack hand luggage (books, tickets, passport, laptop, camera, ...)
• badges!!
• Havre ringar
• Ragfliskar
• pzs
• FOGKEFE, FOGKREM =)
  

You know what the funny thing is? My plane departs at 7:05 in the morning, and JC’s plane to Paris departs at 6:50, so we are definitely taking a taxi together to Arlanda.

I will land at 20:00 in Melbourne, and Hans is landing at 20:05, same place. Guess we are taking a taxi together to the hotel.

I am staying at Somerset on Elisabeth in Melbourne, while Jess is staying there too – for half a year!!! We will havee those evening >> gymming sessions << together for a week. Jattabra.

I am flying to Melbourne during the weekend, and this in total would take me some 29 hours. Real time. So, my question would be, what am I going to do during this time? My plane departs from Arlanda at 7:05 on Saturday morning arriving at Heathrow just after 10am. I guess that's going to  be the part when I sleep. And then we are taking off around 1pm and that fligh would take some 20 hours I guess to Melbourne. So gimme ideas:

... almost. It's crazy, life here in Sthlm. You don't give a damn, and there you are walking past Bill Murray driving a golf car in the middle of downtown Stockholm, and apparently drunk! Well, it almost happened, I was this close to him.... here's this guy, one of my fave actors, I just loved him in Lost In Translation, nonetheless in Broken Flowers, and he is in Stockholm one Sunday afternoon. It is a lovely sunny Stockholm, a little too warm, a little too windy sometimes.

So where was I last Sunday afternoon? I took a 3-hour walk around downtown Sthlm... with my camera in one hand, and that is how we almost met. Ma dai!

Everyone knows and talks about Amendment XXV of the US Constitution. We all watch these American series and movies and it is all about how Vice Presidents try to remove Presidents from the office arguing with Amendment XXV which deals with Presidential Disability and Succession. But do you know anything about any of the other amendments? Well, I looked into them...

What obviously made me smile was Amendment XXII entitled Presidential Term Limits. As soon as I ran through the list of the 27 amendments I went back to this one. I checked the date, 1947. I was sooooo sure that this was amended quite shortly after FDR died during his fourth term of presidency. Lol.

Basically the amendment deals with the number of terms someone could do as President. It is maximized in two. If someone stepped in to resume some other President's office due to some events for more than two years, he/she can onlye be re-elected for once term. But of course this was not applicable to "any person holding the office of President, when this Article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term."

Harry Spencer Truman, that is. 33rd President of the US (from 1945-53). So actually he could have gone further... hand't the democrats lost the elections in 1954 and thus getting a new President: Dwight D. Eisenhower. Remember? He was the one who headed the Allied Forces in North Africe in WWII, he kicked ass! I couldn't remember rightwaway but now that I read it, of course he was the commander of all forces on D-day. How could I forget =)

Gosh I am so re-living my interest in former US Presidents again. Now that I have spent one or two nights browsing for information on the JFK and RFK assassinations. It is weird but you can find photos of JFK's corpse on the Internet. In colour, as well. Shocking and very interesting at the same time... thought I felt awkward about re-poting them. We'll see...

Here is a copy of the article I wrote almost exactly a year ago on karmapolice.de:

"Seems like I have a thing for musician kids. I mean, kids whose parents were/are pretty famous musicians. The other day it was Fiction Plane whose lead singer is none other but Joe Sumner, eldest son of Sting, and now it is Wallflowers lead singer Jacob Dylan, yeah, you can guess.

I only had the chance to get the first album, entitled Everything Will Never Be OK, by Fiction Plane. My very first favourite was a song called Hate, which goes like this:

We’re cool, We’re different,
And we hate things, Yea we hate things,
We hate people,

Take a stand and we will cut you down,
Be yourself and we’ll call you a liar,
Be somebody else and we’ll set you on fire,
Keep yourself to yourself and we don’t care if you’re dying,
Don’t tell me to look at myself,
I know that I don’t exist,
I am perfect I don’t exist,
In this stupid human world,

...

Actually this was the first song I heard by the band, and I instantly fell in love with them. It sounds like revolution against probably dad Sting's wealth and preppy upbring, money, and the whole world. Then my next fave song is Cigarette, and Fallow, perhaps Silence too, and Real Real for sure!

As for Wallflowers, I only recognized them today when I saw this video when Jacob sang together with The Boss, and I was quite surprised to see that he did a lot better than Mr. Springsteen. The original vide clip can be found here.

If I had to name some other musician children whom I did like at some point I would definitely mention Rufus Wainwright, and probably Lisa Marie Presley. Anja Garbarek, for sure."

And here is a little update. I just had time to listen to another Fiction Plance album, entitled Left Side of the Brain, and it sounds promising. I also saw them in concert when they played as a warm up band before dad Sting kicked off his last show in Budapest. The one before going back to play with The Police... the one where he again went back to his roots however.

The Wallflowers I fell in love again when I listened to this new compilation by artists covering Lennon songs, this Instant Karma : Save Darfur CD. Jakob Dylan sang a song (Gimme Some Truth) together with Dhani Harrison, if I remember well, and it sounded supergood.

Anja Garbarek, I cannot get fed up with, she is soo creepy, I just love her music. Absolutely great... nothing close to dad Jan Garbarek's music. It's weird to know that she is in the studio with him whenever he makes a new record. It's weird cause she has never ever been trained as a musician....

A'go is a collegue who has a supergood band, anf finally-finally here is their video (he's fave singer is Chris Cornell =):

I saw Ocean's 13, it did suck. Real bad movie, in my opinion, with great music however. As for Ocean's 11, I can't even remember if I liked the music or not, but i must have. Ocean's 12 is a fave of mine, not that it is such a well-edited or witty movie, or anything, but I just have a thing for it. I adoooooore it's soundtrack, L'Apuntamento is one of my all-time-fave songs. Maybe it's Europe why I dig it so much. And Vincent Cassel, of course.

Anyway, Ocean's 12 has just started 13 minutes ago on TV1000.

Here's a video for the song I was telling you about, though the footage is from another movie* with Rachel Weisz and Liam Neeson Ralph Fiennes.

*Constant Gardener 

Life is about balance and compensating things in it. You don't often get the nice weather in Sthlm, but you can still get raspberry here at this time of the year. Even if it is a little rotten. 

This Monday I had a really delicious vegetarian pasta at M/S Gerda. I am thinking about cooking one myself sometimes next week, or the week after, perhaps with Jess in Melbourne =) why not. It is quite simple to cook: you cut vegetables in a shape as you see on the photo below. Usually zuccini, aubergine, and carrot. These have to be grilled with a bit of oil and herbs you prefer, but due to the fact that I lack an oven, I will saute' them on the cooker instead. In the meantime one has to cook pasta too, most likely farfalle, penne or fusilli, and finally mix them.

Some people like to add saute'd mushrooms and peas as ell. On top it is nice to add some ruccola, for isntance. Ohhh, and grilled tomato is also very nice in it!

... chances are increasing for my going to Melbourne next week. The thing is, they will hand in my visa application on Wednesday, and these business visas are ready right away, meaning that my assistant could mail it to me by Friday. Yippiiiee!

I would leave Saturday around midday touching down in Bankok, and then fly directly to Melbourne. Monday will be off, or just to settle down, and then 2-3 days of work. Friday I am taking as vacation, and will explore Melbourne =) Jess and I want to go somewhere by car on Saturday, I was thinking abut The Great Ocean Road, but we'll see.

I will most probably leave Melbourne late Saturday night or Sunday afternoon the latest.

How about the U2 version of the song (written by Bono and The Edge for Orbison) "She's a mystery to me"

And now ladies and gentlemen (mmmh, there is a certain movie by the same title with J. Irons and Patricia Kaas)... let's cross our fingers for my Australian visa. Meaning that it has to arrive next Friday the latest. Prego.

Today we again did a presentation for some big guys... I tend to like this let's sit down around a table, we do the presentation you ask question we discuss at any point of interaction. Feels great to get acknowledgement and praisal. I am absolutely impressed how we interact with these guys. Cause usually they are guys... a part of our conclusions they agree with - some we have to try to sell them. Mostly it goes smoothely, but there are times when we have to stand up for our opinion. I actually do not know if it is only because we are a team and then you have the supporting net provided by the others, or if I could be this definite alone as well. We will very soon see that...

I think the hugest praise is always when two people agree in fron of us who usually do not agree on strategies. This makes worth our work. Indeed. 

I had a superbra evening yesterday: a bunch of us went out for dinner to M/S Gerda an nice restaurant in my street, floating on the water. It all started with me and JC leaving Kista (=office) around 6, the train was broke so we had to wait for quite some time. I basically got back hom at ten to 7, and we were supposed to meet at the restaurant at 7pm. And you know, I am back in Sweden, so a dinner at 7 means 7 sharp! I was ten minutes late, and just when I lept on the boat Preeti called that she and Jess are going to be half an our late. OK. I called H but they were still ten minutes away from the reastaurant so I got our table, and sat a bit there all alone. Then JC and Marie arrived and it was so great to see her again she looked so fresh and happy! I gave them the book - it was a copy of Lazar Ervin's Domdodom. And the idea behind the whole thing was that JC is un oncle double now. So they could handle one more children's book... and actually I was smart enough to buy it in French... his nephew and niece will not speak English for a while I guess. Then came H + C, and it was soooo great to hug her again. And slowly Preeti and Jess also arrived.... and then there were we, chitchatting and smiling and laughing and excited about everything. It was so nice to look at each other... it was just perfect. Life is great at the end of the day, isn't it.

Today has been great again up until lunch which I spent with JC, Preeti and Ciara. After lunch came the bad news... I have some troubles with the Australian visa, so I might not go there in the end, but let's see what will happen.... I was quite sad during the afternoon. But Jackbauer cheered me up a little, and then I got a letter from Lucas, he is so happy about me going to visit him in NYC.... he wrote this (we are usually very cheesy and hands on each other, he kicks ass, my great friend):

P.S: shit can't wait!!!!!

And now I again have a huge smile on my face, in front of the laptop. I work in a weird way. 

Life is great afterall.