Alright so it's been a month

So what's been up? To tell the truth not much. One could summarize Work-Work-God damn awfully sick-Work and some more Work.

Now, as you may notice 6 out of these 6 points suck. Well no surprise there, at the moment I seem to be doing little else than either working or going to work. For those of you that don't know I now, since august that is, work in Karlskoga with customer services for Viasat AB, satellite TV provider.
Awful hours at minimum salary with a complementary 3h of travel time every day. Which isn't exactly great for either health or sense of well-being. Especially since some of the customers we get really makes me lose ever more of that little faith in humanity I have left.

On the somewhat brighter side of things when it comes to work is that it's usually quite easygoing at the workplace especially at some of the odder hours of the workday. Shooting rubber bands at coworkers apparently is as much fun as it was to do so in kindergarten, elementary school and highschool. This is something of a frequent occurrence after 20:00. It's silly but it helps me and others keep our collective sanity.

Further, someone (who might or might not read this blog) once told me that she SERIOUSLY doubted I'd fit for a job involving handling people in any form, especially convincing them that I ought to be allowed to sell them anything. Well fortunately for me, and the customers,
she seems to have neglected the fact that I can be very good at hiding my more cynical side and fake that I'm actually nice and caring. At least I think the fact that I manage to sell so much more TV related stuff as to net me a couple hundred SEK every day (better than most) seems to point at something like that.

Mind that I'm not admitting that I'm pure evil when I'm not working, but when I think about it I'm not really all that much for helping people watch more and ever more TV instead of doing something productive with their lives. It's interesting how all my workmates do treat the customers phoning in, I come to think of someone in particular who's go just the draconian demeanor I'm sometimes accused of having. Yet, on the phone, he sounds like nicest guy in the world, no exaggeration.
It seems a bit strange and otherworldly when one finds concrete examples of how differently people react and behave in different situations. Speaking for myself I don't even consciously think about the way, after a couple of thousand customers, I behave on the phone. Obviously I'm only doing what keeps me paid with some nice topping in the form of sales as a direct consequence of how I'm perceived by the troubled customer.
Still strange to realize that most of my friends probably would not even recognize me.

Anyway, to summarize the bright points with my job, it's often easy in an easy-going atmosphere and I sell things and get cash for doing so. Droning on before getting a new job isn't so bad as it seems at times after all.

In other news and the one deviating point of the six I started this entry with I had a run in with a nasty influenza virus a couple of weeks back, something which I still haven't fully recovered from. It worked out something like this, one Saturday I got really drunk at Wictoria's place along with some other jolly people. Sunday morning I'm feeling a bit hungover and notice that my throat is hurting slightly. Something which I've learned over this past year usually means that I'm on the road to a couple of sick-days. Sure enough by Sunday evening I realize that 'Hey son, ya ain't going to be working tomorrow and there's NOTHING you can do about it'. When I wake up on Monday I can hardly speak because of my throat, let alone eat or drink. This later develops to something like 40 degrees (C) of fever and a state of lying upon my bed in a state I'd go as far as to call near comatose. One more reason to hate Mondays I guess.

Finally apart from work which as I stated takes up way too much of my time at the moment I thought I'd just mention that I have had quite a bit of fun most of the weekends I've had since I started working. Having little of it really makes for appreciating the spare time I do have. In fact I've had so much alcohol and late night fun that I've started to really think about my general state of health (the two friends mentioned above does not exactly improve upon it). Along with being out of the gym because of influenza this has been a nasty combination for my body, something I those that know me might guess have created an compulsive urge to take the bloody bull by the horns and straighten up my habits for the months to come. Back to gym and serious dieting from tomorrow is the name of the game.

With that I conclude this rather length post, if you've read all of it I wish you goodnight.

Missy With An M.

Beauty—such a fleeting thing

To see it around you—within you

But never without,

Is a beautiful painful thing

The now—such a fleeting thing

In it, I see you with me still

But you are receding!

Why do you leave me?

All that untouched beauty

In my past

Is such a very painful thing.

A.S

It's my birthday!

The title is self explanatory. Was a nice enough birthday, the only downer would be that it's absolutely terrifying to consider that it's been a whole year since my last one. It's been an eventful year by all accounts and to realize that it has not left a greater mark is somewhat unsettling.

Anyways, I'm off to bed. Later friends.

Why English?

You're Swedish, so why are you blogging in English mate?

The answer is simply that, strange as it may seem, I feel more comfortable when using a language (again, English) that's not my mother tongue. I can think of a couple of possible explanations why this is the case. One is simply that I'm a bit of an Anglophile when it comes to the written word, I've at this point read more literature in English than I have Swedish literature, and obviously familiarity breeds comfort.

Another reason is that using English seems to me a bit like stepping into a sanctuary: Switching language tends to make me see things, be it issues or emotions, in a different light. It's almost like I'm stepping away from what I believe I think and feel and go towards... A safe place where I can discover what I really think and feel. One could say that it adds a sense of perspective.

And of course there is that most of my Swedish friends can read a blog in English with no trouble at all, whereas people I've met over the glorious Internet would feel that attempting to read a blog in Swedish might be somewhat....intimidating.

Now I'm going to run off to my somewhat monotonous work, and to see another day slip away into that blurry place we call the past.

Afterwork tiredness and 5 minutes of verse

Today, I've worked from 13:15 to 22:00. Meaning that I left with the bus at 11:15 and got home at 11. Oh the joys of being a regular working man.

Regardless of being ridiculously tired I feel that I've had a productive day involving a trip to the dentist (my teeth are pristine) and a trip to the gym. Seeing as this is going to be my routine (not the dentist, mind) until Friday and some bottled old friends comes along to shed some light on my tired soul there will be little in the terms of news regarding my daily life for the next few days.

I do however hope that I'll get at least some time to call/chat with/ambush some of my friends before the week's up. There are people that are sorely missed during the weeks I spend working, some of you I sadly won't see again for quite some time (since everyone and their hamster seems to have elected to leave the damn country.) I do think about many of you on a daily basis and I even spent a whooping five minutes of my precious working time writing a short poem on the subject.

Goodnight.

Nostalgia
Nostalgia is a powerful drug
I yearn for that dark peaceful place
Where I can greet the past and shrug
You see, in my mind I can trace
Paths to all the happy days
When you were still in my tiny world


A.S

Poetry ahoy

My singing voice

Once I could paint your lovely face
With all the colours I could dream
Impart singing joyous smiles with grace
Bridge the gluttonous crimson stream–

Yet my pallet suddenly and swiftly shifted
Almost black and a mythic mist was rising–
From our safe harbor we’ve both drifted
Alone on reddish waters–hardly surprising.


A.S

So.... what now?

So now for something completely different, as stated above I reckon that anyone who'd actually read this is someone with whom I already have an acquaintance the odds that you too are a former IB student seems quite high. If this is the case you might wonder why someone computer literate and fond of writing such as myself haven't written anything for the wonderful we are the IB blog (courtesy of Olle Eriksson). The fact of the matter is that it's jealousy and bitterness (or something close to these two ugly states of mind) that's so far kept me form telling my beloved (as indeed you are) friends about exactly in which direction my life is currently racing away from me.

During the summer (of which I, as promised, will speak no more) I applied for something like twenty different jobs to no avail. It's an obvious truth that the only thing you can get for an IB diploma with fucking beautiful grades is a swift pat on the back. This coupled with the facts that I had no money or any worthwhile pastime activity whatsoever (venting frustration in the gym excluded) had a somewhat detrimental effect on my sense of general well-being. Sigh, there I go and talk about my summer again. I'm sorry I butchered my promise but keep reading, I'm going to appear a bit happier and bitch about completely new content of my life as we get towards the end of this post.

To make a long story (that has virtually no content) shorter (and with something at least close to a point): Eventually, as some of you may know, I did get a job. I currently work with customer support for Viasat in the 'picturesque' town Karlskoga. I'm definitely going to post more on my situation at work in the future but for now I'm just going to say that contrary to what several people seem to think, I quite like the job.

For me, seeing the amount of work I put into it, getting a job with an entirely decent (and legal) salary is something of an accomplishment. I also recently (070903) managed to get my driver's license and have some more or less concrete plans to get an apartment (where work is) together with one of my friends. So there is stuff going on in my life of late.

Why then haven't I written anything in the wonderful IB-blog? The answer to this dear friends is bound to be a rather complex one as I haven't quite settled my thoughts on the matter myself. Therefore I'll leave this hanging for the time being, but I promise more on this will be forthcoming. I bet you're all absolutely dying with curiosity!

It's time to get this show on the road.

So i registered a blog back when I was still reeling from having completed the IB program. In accordance with the frame of mind I was in a couple of months back (depression, boredom et infinitus, physical spongy-ness etc) this blog fell into the same category in terms of priority as all other projects I may have contemplated at the time.
Priority: Zero/Null/'Go and hide in the closet you stupid project' are a couple of labels appropriate for any activity back during the summer months which would involve even a modest level of craftiness on my part.

If this blog indeed does have any prospective readers I suppose that such would be people that already know me, at least to some extent. And I'm sure you've all heard my incessant nagging about having had nothing to do all summer (and no money to do nothing with). Knowing that some of you think of me as a nagging bitch I'm henceforth discontinuing this particular line of bitching on my part: I've decided not to speak another word about the worthless summer of 2007.

There's a first time for everything!

This is a test, not one of those that involves chemicals, syringes, unsafe voltages or other horrors such as multiple choice questions. Nope, this is just a wheee little tiny test in order to check whether my "blog" will update properly or not. Then I can spend the rest of my evening fiddling with the layout and whatnot. Oh, wait, that's right. Time's already 00:20. I should be in bed getting ready for yet another uneventful day. Well, good for me that sleep is overrated, and that I don't have a fascist body insisting on me needing at least 8 hours of it.

...........................

Crap, I'm screwed.