Swine flu can be funny :-)

what to do....

Since I do not really have that much to do, I rediscovered "That 70s Show". Eric decided to take a year off and only do stuff he wants to do, like catching butterflies. Awesome!

Shocking!

The photographer Chris Jordan took pictures of Albatross chicks on Midway Atoll in the North Pacific.
"The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking.

To document this phenomenon as faithfully as possible, not a single piece of plastic in any of these photographs was moved, placed, manipulated, arranged, or altered in any way. These images depict the actual stomach contents of baby birds in one of the world's most remote marine sanctuaries, more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent."

If you are interested in the entire series, go to http://www.chrisjordan.com/.

Got lazy

Well, well, someone neglected her blog. I finally managed to get busy again with my job, meeting friends, house- and job-hunting and of course travelling. So this week I visited my sister in east-Slovakia. A lovely town called Kosice. After a flight to Bratislava and a 6 hour trainride I arrived in a different world. Everything looks like having stopped in the 60s to 80s, kind of trashy and poor, the busses have a certain Sovjet-touch, the streets are bumpy, the trams have flickering lights so you are afraid of getting a seizure soon and the houses look a little depressing.

The nightlife however is suprisingly nice though different as well: the music is oldschool (80s and 90s trash), though not in the good way, but the locations are cozy (without any ventilation) and expecially the cafés are snug. I have also hardly ever seen so many ill-dyed hair in shades of light purple, red, orange and yellow-white-greyish combined with white boots. Yuck!

It is pretty weird to be in a country, in which it is difficult to communicate: I do not speak Russion or Slovakian, while they don't speak English, though sometimes hints of German. Things changed when we went to Budapest, where it was no problem at all to speak English. The weather was not the finest, but the fog somehow gave the city a certain touch. The hostel, in which we stayed was lovely (Casa de la musica) and close to the center and a few bars and coffee places. In Budapest you actually get a hot chocolate with the consistency of a hot chocolate. In Slovakia it is more like pudding, really thick and incredibly sweet. I made the typical beginner's mistake by eating the whipped cream first before I discovered the thickness of the "chocolate". I learned my lesson and the next hot chocolate with whipped cream was mixed first: by this I could actually drink it and not sup it.

The time in the East flew by so quickly, what a pity!

The outlook from my sister's kitchen window:

Kosice Business Center... Impressive, right? 

The city center, which really is beautiful:

Getting ready for nightlife:

Cosmopolitan Bar with Jenny and one of my sister's classmates:

Club Ibiza, oh yeah:

Welcome to Casa de la musica in Budapest... well and the swine flu:

Weirdest dog I have ever seen. Looked like an old mop (and smelled like one):

Fortunately there are jackalopes

Helping against the Novemberblues:

Fun can change our behaviour

Most people probably already heard about "thefuntheory.com" or "rolighetsteorin.se", but for those of you, who haven't heard about this fantastic initiative (by Volkswagen Sweden), here are some clips.

The bottle bank arcade:

The world's deepest bin:

Piano stairs:

So the idea behind this initiative is, that people's behaviour can be change when they are having fun. I love it!

Most unproductive week of the year

According to the Daily Telegraph this week is the most unproductive week of the year. The reason for that is twofold: the clock change from summer- to wintertime and the darkness, especially in the northern regions. In UK the work-productivity goes down by 50 percent in the week after the clock change. Although there are no specific data for Sweden, I am pretty sure, that Sweden does not differ from UK. Nearly everyone I know moans about the tremendous tiredness, not only in the end of the day. I also feel like just collapsing into bed round 5pm, like about right now :-) I instead decided to make my room cosier than it already was by putting up some chains of lights and re-arranging my candles. I know for sure that I won't drink coffee again. In comparison to some other people I react intense to it: yesterday it just gave me tachycardia and made me run around like a nervous squirrel.

Also just staying inside does not really help, so tonight we are going to see "Friska Viljor" at Lilla Hotellbaren, as they just released a new album ("For new beginnings"). Tomorrow there will be the release party at Debaser. I can recommend listening to them, pretty nice music. Uplifting and happy music is what we need now! Their new single "Wohlwill" is not on youtube yet, but the last one "Old man" is:

Muse in Stockholm

One of my most favorite bands of all times, Muse, played in Stockholm last Saturday. I decided super-last-minute to see them and got lucky, as a few tickets were available again after the concert has been sold out for weeks. The seat, yes... seat, was in a crappy position as I thought from looking at the seating-scheme of Hovet. When arriving at Hovet and at my lovely seat, I was positively surprised: Since Muse used a round stage I had a perfect view onto the stage, well and at the crowd as I was nearly opposing them.

They started playing pretty early, so at 8.45pm and the first two songs just gave me goosebumps. What an amazing band! Their show was impressive: a shiny black stage with lasers and spotlights all around, cubes that could be moved up and down with videoclips projected onto the sides, cubes hanging in the air also playing videoclips... It was amazing. At the end of the show securities brought huge white balloons and threw them into the crowd. Once the balloons popped, confetti was exploding over the heads of the exciting crowd. This was yet another moment when I was happy sitting high above that spectacle. And of course I only managed to sit still during the first song, in the beginning of the second song I couldn't sit anymore. Luckily my seat was right behind a passage way, so I at least did not disturb anyone with my standing. Seriously, sitting during a concert?! Nothing for me!

So and since my camera, that had been broken for over half a year, that I send in for fixing, but when arriving at the camera service they could not find anything and send it back to me without any fixing but a nice bill, is now working perfectly fine again, the videos below are in a pretty nice quality. Small electronic devices seriously hate me!

Being in the best mood after the concert, I went to Debaser Slussen... as usual on Saturday evening. The music was absolutely great, despite the weird DJ guy. He hates Germans and lets everyone know it. Well he can like or dislike anyone he wants to, but him being German himself makes the whole thing a little odd.

Joke gone bad

... don't try this at home

Time for a change

Walking through the city with Amelie today had the big advantage that the day passes quite quickly and I get some motion, so don't sit in front of the computer the entire day. In the t-shirt store we stumbled over a nice t-shirt, that is pretty much expressing my situation right now :-)