Yoghurt treatment

Today it has been sunny the whole day! So great! I still had to study, but could do it in the sun at least, so not so bad. However, since it was one of the first really sunny days in a while, my skin wasn't ready for all this sun, and like most years in the beginning of summer I burned myself a bit since I didn't have any sunscreen. I didn't have any after sun lotion either, so I took what I had; a pack of yoghurt. Helped to chill a bit, and made me smell like summer strawberries! A bit of tip if you burn yourself and need to cool to skin down and don't have anything else.

Tomorrow I have my third exam out of five, so I can see the light. So far it has gone pretty alright I think, even though I can't really know for sure. I was really nervous before the first one I had Wednesday morning. Didn't know how everything would work and stuff, but it was more or less like any exam. On Friday I have my last one, then it's just fun and games. Can't wait!

Exams / Word of the day IX

On Wednesday I have my first exam, which I must say I'm quite nervous about. But that's how it's supposed to feel, and if it goes not so good, so be it. I have four more exams after it, and even though I feel a bit stressed I can't be too much bothered. Right now I just look forward to get over with them and enjoy June here fully free!
The exams here are bit different than I'm used to. Fewer questions and more writing, but hopefully not too much problem as we get to choose two questions out of six. Also, as an Erasmus-student I get a concession, which means I get to use a Swedish-English dictionary and also in most exams get some extra time. Not bad with some extra benefits. Some people, not I though, even get to answer less questions, which I think is a bit weird. Speaking for myself I might be a bit slow with things, but I got no knowledge problems.

• Concession: Förmån

A day at the library

Today has been like most days now for a bit more than a week. Going up at 8am (today Bibo knocked on my door since I overslept a bit yesterday), take a quick shower, eat breakfast, and then head to the main library with some of my fellow Erasmus-students to be there at 9am for a full day of studies. Even though we were there pretty early today there were hardly any places left to sit in the whole building, but found some eventually. Crazy! I wonder when some people go there, like 8??! I'm still a (Erasmus-)student, no way I get up that early! I can't describe how tired I am of just revising and revising everything before my exams, but it helps that everyone is in the same position, and also the really nice lunch breaks we have together in the sunny grass outside with lots of laughs helps a lot. The lunch consists of a double sandwich with egg, tuna, chicken, BLT etc, a chocolate buscuit and some fruits. Kind of actually like it now, and a bit fun to compare with the others and see what sandwich they had. The only negative thing about the break is that it is so hard to get back in again to the books and papers. Well, now you know what I will do for another week from today when my first exam is.

Don't call it a comeback!!

Been two busy weeks since I came back here to Durham again. Brought my boys, Joel and Aron, over with me for the first week. We left a sunny Stockholm and arrived to a rainy Durham. But the sun finally showed up after two days of rain (think I never actually experienced heavy rain two days in a row here before that), and no matter the weather we had some great days and even better nights together! After that it's been all about revision, just repeating everything I've studied (and not studied) this year, so just imagine there's loads to do. But as always you find tons of stuff that you think is more important to do, so think it's about time to start up this beautiful blog again for real, and see where it might going!

Tjuvlyssnat

Idag på eftermiddagen satt jag någon timme på Örebro universitets biblioteket och fick äntligen lite studier gjorda. Har ju tidigare uttryckt vad jag tycker om universitetet, och blev inte mer imponerad idag. Visst, en öppen, ljus och vacker byggnad, men (utan att låta elitistisk eller så) det var verkligen ingen ordning på folk som satt där. Folk satt och hade högljudda diskussioner inte långt ifrån läsbåsen, och flera pratade högt i mobiltelefon utan att gå därifrån, väldigt störande. Det sistnämnda gjorde dock att jag fick ett litet skratt mitt i det tunga läsandet. En tjej svarade i sin telefon och sa bland annat detta:

- Vet du vad jag gjorde imorrse då? Cyklade till skolan, och blev då stoppad av en polis, för att jag cyklade mot rött. Fick böter på 1500 kronor ... Visste inte ens att man fick böter om man gjorde det! Och då fick jag ändå 500 kronor i rabatt för att jag var så snäll.

Får man inte cykla mot

Study hard, party hard

Now I'm back home from home (hard to say where I feel most at home right now, kind of got three homes at the moment, which is mostly a good thing) in Örebro after a few days visit to Uppsala. Since my brother, who now lives there, needed to get some things I could take mom's car, and drove the 175 km over there Sunday evening. After some difficulties to find where he lives (not as far outside the city centre as I thought) I arrived and then got a ride to Tobias where I would spend the night. I left my bags in his room and then me, him and David went downtown to GH's pub for a couple pints since Cathy, who I know from Durham, would be over from Stockholm and keep her working friend company behind the bar. The place was empty except two other people, who left not long after we arrived, and none of us really expected anything else than a few beers, a nice chat, and then home. However, since the girls had nothing to do other than serving us beers they joined in and we got to try out the large selection of beers in the pub, like 8-10 % Belgian Trappist beers. Soon it was after midnight and closing time, but then we got the offer to head along to an afterparty, which we did. It was a group of people from the student nation who enjoyed some cold beers and a hot sauna, so we quite quickly joined in since I really like to sit in a steamy sauna. Me and Toby headed back to his place at 2am. Who could ever know a Sunday could be so much fun! Even though I woke up a quite much later than I had planned Monday morning I still got some work done at uni. Maybe not as much as I would need, but still better than nothing and compared to what I've done before in Örebro. After a couple hours there I met up with my sister and her boyfriend coming from Stockholm to have dinner at my brother's place with his girlfriend. It was very nice to meet all together and cook and eat together, especially since I had to rush away the night before. Also went for a walk around the neighbourhood, which ended up as a funny photoshot.

Tuesday morning I went downtown to have a bit of look in the shops in Uppsala. Had some friendly company and fashion advices (although we don't share likes that often) from my tenant Karoline. Found a cheap, just ordinary but still cool, white piqué shirt with a blue lines on the collar and on the end of the sleeves at H&M, and a pair of black classic sunglasses from Cheap Monday that together with my outfit for the day, black tshirt and black jeans, made me look a bit like Glasvegas-singer James Allan. Studied a bit in the afternoon, before I got ready to head over to Daniel's place for a party, where I found out I apparently and surprisingly, and much appreciated, was the guest of honour since I made a bit of homecoming, before going out to more than packed Snerikes for the night. Left the city late afternoon yesterday. It was gread to be back, and had a couple of great days in good company of old (and new) friends. Kind of look forward to be back in Uppsala for autumn, but now I look forward to head back to Durham again.

Get Busy

Haven't been much study time lately, just looked through some books. Haven't really done much at all. But Friday night I got my ass out of the sofa and met up with Tom and Jake to go out and grab some pints. Drank two, one Örebro Bitter and one Newcastle Brown Ale, paid £10. Not exactly college prices. The two pubs we went to were both really busy, and saw some old familiar faces, but after we had sit down for a while we decided to head back to Tom's. The night wasn't really anything special, but doesn't have to be when you're seeing your mates again after a bit more than two months, still cool.
Last night I just stayed home and relaxed with a film. Saw Woody Allen's latest one, "Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona". Really great acting from everyone in it, and it made you wanna go to Barcelona to see all the cool architecture, art and stuff in the city (and find some good looking American tourists too), but I don't think the film itself was anything special, worth seeing though.
So now it's time to get busy, and as I did during the last term break I'm gonna pack my bag and head over to Uppsala. Leave you with a great song from Primal Scream's latest album:

Primal Scream - "Uptown"

Look-a-like

The term is really going towards the end, and as I have handled in all my summative essays there is not much to do then to try to read all the literature that's left. However, this afternoon I had a tutorial in Geographies of Health and Health Care. As always the tutorial was lead by a PhD student or such that I never met before. He was a tall black guy, and he spoke with a quite slow, low and dark voice that was very calm, soft and relaxing to listen to. As I sat there, trying to keep up with the discussion going on, I couldn't stop thinking about who he reminded me of, and suddenly I realize who it was. A bit because of the looks but mostly because of the voice, and I was just waiting for him to stand up and start singing this song:

Little Sweden

Yesterday I handled in my last summative essay for this year in the Social and Cultural Geography module. It was about 'race' and racism, which I have found very interesting. Sometimes you struggle with an essay to fill out the words you need, but this time I really had to limit myself as five pages is not that much. There were lots of things I could have expanded and written more about, but in the end I'm really satisfied about it, and that's what counts the most for me! So after that I gave myself a bit of reward and took the train to the Newcastle Metro Center to visit Little Sweden, Ikea!


It was the first time I visited an Ikea store abroad, and I must say it was a really weird experience in a way! I have heard, and seen big posters in Bukarest, that all the furnitures and stuff have the same Swedish names as at home, but once I started to walk around looking at everything I got a bit overwhelmed with all of a sudden all the Swedish around me! Kind of an linguistic overdose! Then when I checked the book shelfs I found that all of the books also were in Swedish (even Nick Hornby!), so shocking!!


I was there by myself, as it wasn't gonna be for a long time, so had really no one to share this crazy experience with. I felt like I was sneaking around and knew this secret that no one else knew. Almost wanted to jump up to people and yell like "I know what all the words mean!! You want me to tell you?! Or maybe read one of the books in the shelfs! I can read it, I'm Swedish!!". Of course I didn't, would had been a bit inappropriate, so I had to curb my enthusiasm a bit.
My main purpose with this trip was to visit the Swedish food store they have there, and I had hoped they had frozen reindeer or elk meat, but they only had small sausages so I bought a lot of meatballs instead. So tonight I'm gonna serve Swedish meatballs with potatoes in cream sauce with pickled cucumber and lingonberry jam, with a bit of reindeer sausage and knäckebröd with snaps cheese and of course ginger cookies!!

Cut and marked

Today I picked up my first marked summative essay. Before I have just got back my formatives, which is essays or essay plans that you have to do but that is not marked and therefore not that important, so I was quite excited to see how the result, if I had failed totally or done well. I received a 53 %, which is pretty low but still ok and one of the comments on it were "an interesting essay, abd you have raised relevant points" so I'm pretty satisfied it anyway.
After that I went downtown to cut my hair at my regular shop, for the third time, for £7.90 (and then they don't even have student prices on Fridays). This time I was cut by the same girl who cut me the first time and did a very good job. It doesn't hurt that she also looks like a blonde doll, but she talks like a bald drunk, which is a mix I strangely somehow find quite attractive. She talks with a very distinctive local accent so I understood half of what she said, but that didn't really matter as long as it didn't concerned my hair. She asked me in the end if I wanted it 'squared or ... (the other word I didn't hear or understand even when she repeated it) in the back', and the latter meaning just a straight line in the back (who the hell wants that unless you're a hooligan or something?!) so I said I wanted the other thing which ended up perfectly.

Those who think that students don't study a lot...

...can as they say up here in North England "fock off!!". Although I mean that in the most polite way of course. But today I'm very tired since I had 8 hours of lectures, which is like a full-time job except you don't get paid and you have to sit on your bum and listen to someone talking for almost an hour straight at a time. Normally I have first Political Geography from 9-11am, then Social and Cultural Geography for another two hours right after, and then Governing Cities from 4-6pm. The lecturer in the last module has missed three out of five lectures for various reasons, so today we had a double lecture starting from 2pm. The man is from Glasgow, or something (at least Scotland), so he got a strong accent, which you can especially hear when he say, the rather oftenly used because of the subject, "downtown", which he pronounce [doontoon]. I was a bit bored after some time so I started counted, and I reached 84, so if you account the times he said it in the beginning I'm sure it was a three-digit number in total. Said to Felix, who even fell asleep some time, that it would be a brilliant drinking game, to take a sip of beer everytime he said it. Although the subject is quite interesting I think it would make the lectures much more bearable.

St Aidan's Day

Yesterday it was St Aidan's Day, which ment a full day of activities and party! The bar was open from 10am and team games, but I had to play a 5-a-side football game first so didn't join the festivities until noon (which was still early so didn't mind). As an Uppsala student I'm skilled and experienced when it comes to full day wet partying, so I took it quite easy with an even pace and fitted in a break for a nap so I could last through the night. Besides being able to hang in the bar early you could also try to play human foosball, listen to live music and other fun things around college as . In the evening the bar was packed with people, and there was kareoke so me and about a dozen other people went up and ripped off this classic in almost the same crazy style as the original performers. We stayed in the bar until they closed sometime after 11pm and were supposed to go out to a club, but everything went so slow so most of the guys I was with stayed in college. But after midnight me, James and Phil decided to go anyway and ended up rocking out at Revolver at the DSU for an hour, which was packed with people as well.

This is England

Yesterday I finally got to choose what film to see (since I most of the time watch films together with others), and it was bit more realistic and deep than the last two I have had to watch. I've wanted to see "This Is England" for quite a long time, especially makes sense since I'm here now, but it never happened until yesterday. I knew before that it was about original ska/reggae skinheads and taking place in the early 80s, but I was surprised to see that it turned out to be quite a lot like "American History X", which just made the affection on me stronger. The film is really well done with everything from the great music to the setting of the time and place, and fantastic acting especially by the young Thomas Turgoose in the lead role as 12-year-old Shaun.



Even though I think the film doesn't really break new ground with its theme about racism and who belongs where and why these things might come up, I think it's a topic that always needs to be brought up and discussed to prevent racism to evolve. These things are very current for me as I've have studied 'Race and Representation' in my Social and Cultural Geography module, and discussed 'What is Britishness?'. As a part of this module I was recommended by one of the lecturers to read the book "Even in Sweden", which I have just started to look into but it brings up many things that I'm more familiar with, such as cases from the early 90s, than British examples and which makes it more interesting and easier to understand. I really hope that the recession and crisis right now, which led to many companies having to cut down on employees, such as Volvo and Saab in Sweden, doesn't become a breeding ground for racist thoughts and organizations as it unfortunately often shows out to be (which is described in the book I mentioned), especially with an upcoming parliament election coming up next year (in Sweden). So even though "This Is England" is about this country the story could had taken place anywhere, and the theme is therefore very relevant for Sweden, in this case, and other countries too.

Therapeutic landscape

Today I handled in my second essay in less than a week, and it feels even better to be over with than the first one! It's not the best essay I wrote in my life, but it fulfills its purpose at least, can't really be bothered about it anymore.
The essay I wrote is about how natural environments can influence human physical and mental health and wellbeing. For example what is called 'therapeutic landscapes', which I had a seminar about in where we discussed our own therapeutic landscapes, places were we feel relaxed and well. I said that mine was probably the family summer house, which is on a small island south of Stockholm. When I was a tiny kid I was a bit afraid of it cause it was very dark and scary at night, since there's no electricity, and a lot of the interior is as old as the house, which is 120 years old. Then as a young teen I got very bored and restless as there were no TV to watch. But the last couple of years when I've been able to go there myself with friends for a weekend or so I have appreciated it much much more; the big quiet old house, the relaxing calm, the amazingly beautiful natural environment, the evening dips in the strait (which I think creates a need for "Word of the day"-special, since I didn't even know this word myself), and sitting on the balcony with a beer in good company and see the sun sets. Pure quality of life!

Sanamki

Pålsundet

Word of the day V

• Strait: Sund
  

The curious case of Per Norberg

Went to the cinema last night, which I do quite often here compared to at home (my 4th film so far), and saw "The curious case of Benjamin Button". I had very high expectations, which I must say weren't really met. It's a very interesting and a bit weird idea that of being born as an old man and age backwards and it's a great story, but nothing more than that. A really good film has to leave me with something. However, it was good Friday night entertainment. Give it 3/5. I was joking last night that I'm a bit like Benjamin Button myself. When I first started to study at university I had a large apartment, which I shared for a while with a 25 year old friend. And now here I am more than three years later, 25 myself, living in a small college room as an Erasmus student surrounded by mostly teens. I also look very similar now to when I was a tiny kid, and I don't think I look like a baby now, although I was unlike Benjamin Button a super cute kid (which if I look now like I did back then must mean something). Moreover, like in the film, I celebrated my birthdays as a kid with mostly "old people", adult relatives and friends to the family, since most other kids were away on holidays in the middle of the summer. I don't really have any problem with my age or with becoming older (although 26 sounds really weird and far away right now), but I like feeling a bit younger here sometimes with younger friends around me. Just hope I don't age backwards for real. Don't wanna end up being 14 or something again, much better now.

3 or 25?

Essay and slades

Today I've put another summative essay behind me, and I'm pretty satisfied with the result. Feels so good! I was going to finish the conclusion and the reference list at the main library, but this morning it started to snow and it didn't stop. So now Durham is covered in white again, which I don't really mind at all (even though I really look forward to spring and summer). So after I had handled in my essay I went back to collage, changed clothes and went out to hit the hill. Even though I have to prepare a bit for a tutorial tomorrow and finish another essay by Monday, I saw it as kind of a reward to go out and play in the snow, get to be like a little kid again. Although tiny kids probably wouldn't ride like this:

Monday

Mondays are right now my most busy days with three lectures during the day. The first one starting at 9am, and the last one from 4.15-6.15pm. The last one is not only at a terrible time, but has so far been quite terribly boring. The subject itself is not that awful, which is about how you govern cities and who is doing it, but the lecturer is! Again, not him personally as he seems like quite fun and easy going, but how he holds his lectures. Today he had 42 slides, which were full of text, and which he just read off, word for word. Hell, I can read perfectly fine myself! If I knew he was just going to do like this I would not had gone, and he took a break with only half an hour left so was not worth it to leave. Can't be fun for anyone this way, for neither him or us. Luckily Felix is in the same class, which makes it more fun and easy to cope with, and some nice looking girls to rest the eyes on if you get bored by the slides.

Utan å, ä, ö

...så kan det bli ganska roligt. Skickade ett mail igår från universitetsbiblioteket till min institution i Uppsala och avslutade med "Vänliga hälsningar", vilket jag först i efter hand kom att tänka på blir "Vanliga halsningar". Blir ju lite fel, men dock så sant. Halsningarna är ju rätt vanliga som student.

Stress

Got pretty much school work to do right now, and it just stresses me out totally. Don't really know where to start with everything. However, gonna have a meeting tomorrow with my tutor, and then talk to some of my teachers, so after that some things hopefully been sorted out a bit and I can move on.
Here's two, bit differently, hip-hop classics on the theme:

Organized Konfusion - "Stress"

A Tribe Called Quest - "Stressed Out"

First Friday

Today has been my first Friday back in Durham, so also the end of the first school week for this term. It's strange how things quickly get back to normal, which mostly is a good thing though. One of my few New Year's resolution (didn't really give any, but kind of) was to be more effective with my studies, and I think I've actually been, believe it or not. I have been to the library everyday and reading and writing. Sometimes I get into a bit of a flow, sometimes I get into a writers' block, but all in all I get stuff done, and that's of course good. I even skipped two nights out to get up early to study, and since I worked in the bar again last night I fortunately for my health have served a lot more beer and drinks than I had myself. I'm really liking the bar job, and I know all the drinks now and when I'm serving a beer with some music pumping I feel like a real bartender! Well, tonight I will be back in front of the bar, as it is Planet of Sound at the Union. Have a good Friday!