ahhhhh

How could I forget? It has now come back to little bad me that the subject of my entry was to be:

"How to influence changes through internet".

Wow, you might be saying now. This should be really useful information. And yes it is.... for me. In short, following on my list of things that made me sad a few days ago, I have now an (even more) wonderful man who cooks for me and takes care of me and made me feel like a princess yesterday!!

You might remember my complains about being sooooo so tired, possibly due to too much time spent breathing in hair colours when I should have been working. So went home earlier than planned, skipped the gym, and just sat down in the sofa which has now found its preferred placement in the kitchen (I promise it loves it there!! giving colour to the whole room. Poor living-room though, ever since the red sofa moved into the kitchen, we have mostly abandoned the living-room - should perhaps think about renting it out...). With a book and a blanket as best company, I then spent most of the evening in my little hide-away. Watching, once N. arrived a few hours later, him cook and giving some probably very irritating tips from my princess seat, while partly reading but mostly enjoying N. cooking without any t-shirt and with a green beret as a chef's hat (some Portuguese tradition I would guess..., and yes, it is a good idea to put water to boil if you want the pasta cooked...). Paradise!

???

I was going to write a really cool and interesting blog entry, but the did something else in between and have now completely forgotten what it was all about. Miss scattermind!

tired hair?

New hairdo - skipped lunch and went for a late appointment. Then back to work. The idea was to work some more but feels like someone poured all energy out of me. Could it be the colours - breathing in toxics for 1h? Or could it possibly have something to do with the complete darkness outside? So cold, so dark and me, so tired... will go home now and hope for more energy tomorrow. At least my hair turned out nicely :)

Wonderful winter day

Walking into work this morning made the often asked question; "do you actually like living in Geneva", even more futile than usual. Check this out:

That's when I decided to walk in rather than taking the bus! Look at all that snow!!! Zermatt here I come (well, on Friday)

A bit windy and quite cold, but the sun is shining and everything so beautiful :)

Christmas decoration on a tree, singing a quiet song in the wind.

today's recipe for feeling sad and tired

• To never get any spontaneous gifts - not even small tiny ones. Only gifts so far have been for christmas and my birthday, plus a candle found on the street once.
• To never get flowers, not even one, and knowing that you will probably never get any as someone doesn't like 'dead flowers'. But 1) I do, and/or 2) he could buy me a plant.
• To be the one cooking 95% of the time.
• To be the one cleaning 100% of the time.
• To do dishes approx. 40-50% of the time.
• To be the one that buys groceries approx. 80% of the time.
• To be the one always washing the sheets although he has a washing machine at home.

I get compliments. And that is nice. But they are for free and don't require a lot of effort - hence easy to give away.

An unhappy sad green fairy today, who's also irritated with:

• my colleague's constant talking and highly irritating voice and laughter.
• the fact that the same colleague - although only here since 1 month and only planned to be here for 6 months in total - has managed to get a new big screen for her computer and a new better chair! reason - her back problems. My shoulder problem due to repetitive strain injury however went by without any improvement although I mentioned that the reason was my position in front of the computer.
• the fact that some people here manages to get high salary raises while others get the answer that their bosses tried but only managed to negotiate an extra tiny sum per year for you, but will try to get you a nice end of year bonus - ooups, no bonuses this year...

Anyway, i'll stop this ranting now as it makes me even sadder.

A good weekend to you all.

any stalkers out there?

well now is the time to show your faces, or not, as i have added the 'followers' gadget to my blog. my hope - to see if anyone actually reads my scattered thoughts since my supposed readers are a bit scarce with the commenting ;)

so who will be my first proclaimed stalker?

tired...

So tired today. A bit better now, but after lunch it felt like i was going to topple over and wake up with the different letters of my keyboard glaring back to me from my face.

Most days i'm ok, but then some, like today, it feels like the digestion of lunch takes away all my energy. I know a lot of people get a bit tiredish after a heavy lunch, but I cannot keep from wondering on days like today, if my slowed down metabolism due to my thyroiditis problems - meaning that my body has to work twice as much just to withdraw energy from food - is not causing this great tiredness. My body goes half limp, my eyes fall down to an extent that my colleagues make fun of me, and i can hardly keep my head up - my only want: to lie down! This happens sometimes after lunch, often after breakfast in the weekends, and more rarely after dinner. My lazy body (as a doctor nicely called it, although what's lazy about it working 100% at all times in order to just about manage i'm not so sure) would very much enjoy siestas, actually, on days like today, it's basically screaming for a break. But no place to lie down in the office, not even for 5 minutes.

hmmmm would this go away if i decided to start taking the pills? falling in a grey zone and having to make that decision myself is hell.

Bombing with books....

Impressing this young Iranian girl, Hana Makhmalbaf, from a film-making family, who made her first film at the age of 8 (one which is still forbidden in Iran), and just filmed a movie about children in Afghanistan in the wake of the destruction of the Buddha statues.

At one moment she quotes her father, Mohsen Makhmalbaf ("Kandahar"): "If you had bombed Afghanistan with books instead of bombs, the country would not have had to suffer so much".

Hence through education you get a lot further with less sacrifice than through war. Quite self-evident I would say, but regretfully not everyone agrees.

i choose freedom

Read this morning about the increase in people wanting to build walls, the higher the better, around their houses or wanting to live in so-called 'gated communities'. And I can't get my mind around why people want this? Especially not in Sweden!

I mean, I also want a big nice secure lock on my door (although I lived a couple of years in an apartment with a door that hardly closed and felt more secure than in my current one with bolts - which I did not chose to install). But that's it! I don't want to live behind a wall - hidden from other people but also closed away from any view and feeling of the neighbourhood. Choosing in fact to live in a luxury prison.

In addition, neither the gated communities, nor especially the individual walls actually provides more security according to research, since burglars easily make it over the wall and well inside can work on unnoticed. I couldn't imagine choosing to live in a neighbourhood like that, where when walking down the street you walk between walls, hence with none of the normal feeling of security by the light tickling out of windows, by the presence of other human beings, with no view of the gardens, but only sterile high walls, and with no view out once inside. Regretfully approx. 1/3 of Swedes disagree with me and although the regulation in most places makes it difficult to get the right to construct walls around your house - it is probably only a matter of time before it changes.

But why? Why do people want to put themselves in prisons? Me, I choose freedom any day!

pills or no pills, that is the question

so, went to see this new doc last week - a specialist in endocrinology, basically meaning a specialist in the different hormones of your body - and he called yesterday with the results leaving a message on my phone.

i have this thyroditis problem, nothing very bad or dangerous, but just something that makes me more tired, scattered minded, more easily cold etc. and which is probably also working a bit like a second contraceptive as it diminishes my possibility of getting pregnant ;)

anyway, i'm in somewhat of a grey zone. outside of the normal levels, but not far enough to be in the 'here are your pills, take them and shut up' levels. so basically, the decision is to either start taking a daily pill to boost my hormones levels (T4) since my body has decided to develop lots and lots of antibodies against my thyroditis gland - in short to attack itself (according to my ex-doc, it is as if my body was driving with the gas pedal pushed all the way down to do...50). or not start taking a daily pill.

there would be a trial period for 3-6 months, at the end of which we would check the outcome to see if it has improved my life and then either stop or continue the treatment. and the pill normally does not have any secondary effects since the body is fooled to think it produced these extra hormones itself (wow, today i'm very productive indeed...). and the day i want to try to get pregnant i will have to start taking the pill anyways to 1) boost my hormones to actually be able to get pregnant, and 2) when you're pregnant supposedly the thyroditis has to work 30-50% more than it normally does - hence not possible for my poor gland.

or i could chose to do nothing, get regular check-ups every 6 months, and wait until the day i want to have kids.... not taking any pills is part of the philosophy i was brought up in - a headache? drink more water, have some sleep, try to relax, get some fresh air... but not: take a pill.

anyway, what would you chose?

the joy of the first step towards my own baby

Had a meeting with my boss today about lots and lots of different things and in the middle I sneaked in an idea for a new project that I've been thinking a bit about lately, ever since I became the 'Civil society empowerment' responsible at my organisation.

Not only did he listen to what I was proposing, but he was very encouraging and thought this idea was a lot more interesting than this other one we've been working on for some time now.

So everything cleared with my boss, now I only need to sell the project to possible donors - perhaps not as easy a task. But it felt very good to have my idea encouraged - perhaps it will even grow into a baby with time :)

my silhouette...

having become a bit tired with my silhouette lately, and even more so with the floppy fat that likes to create a sort of truck tyre on top of my trousers, i have decided to try to go to Silhouette a bit more often. Kind of a cheesy but rather good name I guess, I have been getting lazy going there the past few months due to various vacations and the fact that A has left Geneva and hence our once-per week rdv have been cancelled.

What I most often do: prepare my bag in the morning and bring it into work just to let it sit there for one day after another as kind of a bad conscious, but not bad enough to actually make me do something about it.

What I did today: took my a*** out of the chair and went to work on my new and improved silhouette, at Silhouette ;) 30 min of cardio plus about 20 min of weights, not too bad especially since i'm going tomorrow evening as well (the instructor being a friend it's difficult to get out of it, especially now that my boyfriend has started going as well, he just received a free trial month so he will hopefully be a good motivator). Result: feeling tired in many parts of the body and worse so, in my head. This is always the problem when I go during lunch and the reason why I mostly go after work.

Exercise is supposed to give energy, and probably does in the long run, but in the very short run it snatches it all away. Hence me being tired, and my silhouette soon that of a very sleepy, possibly sleeping person.

in the footsteps of a 3-year old

I had promised to baby sit my god-daughter’s brother, or rather, my cousin’s first child this weekend and was pleased to leave work on Friday, but also a little bit worried - how would this quality time with my favourite 3-year old go?

Well, good. It all went good. Except for a short moment of tears on Friday evening after 'mamma' when falling asleep, he was as close to an angel any mischievous 3-year old with a sparkle in his eye could be. And it was all very lovely, and exhausting. At the end of it all, N and I quickly fell asleep in a sofa each - how do parents do it? Do they eat special super vitamins? And we only took care of one, easygoing, albeit full of energy, kid. How about if you have 2? Or 3? or..... And if the kid won't stop crying/screaming/make tantrums? hmmmm perhaps I need a few more years of me-time before engaging in anything so tiresome, albeit lovely and fantastic ;)

So in short what did we do?

Friday night (only a few hours of disposal):

• play doh ice-cream making with a new machine - resulting in concentration, happy smiles, and small pieces of play-doh all over the (newly vacuumed) floor


• 30-40 minutes of monster chasing - A's and mine all time favourite, albeit not the neighbour's - hence the reason we ended it all
  
• a bit of movie in bed (yes, my brain had a close-down and i suggested this stupid idea, making me have to then ask A. 4 times to stop watching the movie....)

Saturday (a full full day):

• 9.00 I wake up, thinking to myself that we were very lucky that A didn't wake up earlier. 2 second later i heard his voice asking for 'mamma' - luckily though I was accepted as a substitute since mummy was 'working' ;)


• breakfast - 3 petit suisses (on the shopping list directly), some juice and a little bit of bread - although mostly the buttery part


• drawing with the new colour pencils and the winnie the pooh book (the favourite of the moment, almost completely replacing McQueen)


• A and I leave for a walk, N takes off to get a haircut (good excuse for getting away from us for a while - understandable though ;)


• Swans (mums and dads) and other birds (small/kids) are swarming around some kids giving them old bread - luckily for us, some nice parents gave A some bread to through to the birds - happiness!
  
• Boats, boat accessories, boat equipment, jeeps (pulling out boats of the water) and anything else to do with boats, getting them out of the water and cool cars. The walk down by the lake takes very long when you stop every 5 meters to check something out for 5-10 minutes per item ;)
  
• Another boat - the 'mouette' this time (the kind of bus-boat that brings you over the lake) since it would have taken us hours to walk the whole way. Plus I figured that boat-loving A, who has already been on both motor and sailing boat, would love it... stupid little me... well, first he did - loved the idea of it, loved the yellow boat that was approaching. But then when we were to go on it, it was 'i don't want to go on the boat', 'i don't want the yellow boat', etc. And what did mean me do? Give in? I thought about it for a second, but figured it was probably something that would pass, so I carried a not-so-happy A onto the boat while talking reassuringly to him about the slowness and safety of the boat, about all the other kids on board, and about me holding him very tight in my arms. And it worked. He stopped making angry noises almost directly, and, half-way over, to comment on things we saw. And then we had to stay and watch all the yellow boats arrive and depart from the stop in Paquis for approx. 20 minutes until I said enough - might have been standing there still otherwise ;)
  
• Ahhhh - the joy of watching everything carefully - the next big thing was one of these hooks that pulls the boats out of water - or 'a broken bike' if A was to decide. We climbed up and had a close-up look. Wow!
  
  
• Bains-des-paquis - we saw the bridge/tunnel leading there from the hooky thingy so had to go there. Throwing rocks into the water is very amusing when you're 3, and not so bad when you're 10 times older either - hence we stayed a long time and got to see some 'mums and dads' and 'kids' again - up on land this time.


• Sushi for lunch - well for N and me, and pasta that A's mummy had prepared for A. He licked a bit on a cucumber sushi and said irk or rather the Swedish version: blä


• Gare de routière and a long pitch stop to look at the big buses. So cool ;)


• Manor 3rd floor - toy heaven, and at the moment, christmas decoration heaven. So cute with lots of moving animals, and all these fairies in the sky :) Spent quite some time in there, watching all moving animals, plus different stuffed ones (winnie the pooh and company was a favourite of course, although A wanted to know where Rabbit was), lego and other such toys, a huge red electrical car (still not sure how i managed to get A away from there in just 2 minutes, call me Marry Poppins ;) and then the aquariums with lots of colourful fish - great for any kid! And surprise - not one whine for gifts. A mentioned a few times that he wanted something, but when I said he should ask for it for Christmas, he accepted it without any fuss.


• Bus home since A was sooo tired I carried him from Manor to the bus stop. Strawberry ice-cream stop on the way (or red ice-cream stop) - it was Saturday after all. Movie for a bit of a rest and then...
  
• Pizza! Home-made one. A loves to bake, so this was perfect. I cut the ingredients (got the boring part) while A and N rolled out the dough and decorated the pizzas. Miam. Really nice and yummy, although A preferred to stuff himself with cherry tomatoes ;)
  
• A short story in a mixture of French and Swedish (the book was in French, but all comments made in Swedish since A refuses to speak French with me. Swedish is my language, just as it is his mum's language. French was N's language, just as it is his dad's language. These things are very important and he will often translate between mummy and daddy, but at least N and I escaped that), in bed and then sleep directly. Wow, we must have exhausted him :)

Sunday:

• Oh joy - another late morning. 9h30 this time before we heard any noise. Lucky us :)
  breakfast, followed by more ice-cream making (a tip, remember to put all the play doh back in the jars or it will dry!!!!, plus remember to clean out the entire play doh in the machine before it dries and sticks there!) and a bit of a run around the house while waiting for N in the shower
  
• back to the swans again - this time with our own old bread! these swans seemed very hungry as they came out of the water and tried to feed directly from our hands - a little bit to close up for my taste... but all went well.
  
• boats of course since down by the lake, but more fun (at least for N and I) - the cool swings made out of bike and car tires down at 'baby plage'. We all had our go and were all amused. Great fun!!!

• back home through a park full of red, yellow, orange, green, purple, pink, brown and any shade of these you could imagine. running through leaves, leaf rain, picking the most beautiful ones as a bouquet for mummy.....



• lunch and McQueen for A and N, while I read my book. At the moment N touched something and made the dvd-player jump to another movie, the doorbell rang and our babysitting weekend was over! and so were we - over and out in fact ;)
  

i have a dream....

Goosebumps all over when I listen to the speech of the new president of the US, a bit in the same way when listening to the old but never outdated speech of Mr. King.

Who would have thought it, hoped yes, but really believed it - that the Americans would actually go out and vote for a partial black man answering to the name of Barack Hussein Obama. A country full of diversity has finally gotten a representative for that diversity! What a day.

Part I and part II of the speech given at 6 a.m. this morning.

Geneva doctors - expensive but good. Me - relieved.

Went to the doc's this morning for an annual check up (although last time was almost 2 years ago) of my more feminine parts, and after a more thorough check-up than I've ever had in my life including checking for cancer and stuff (something which I have asked to have done in Sweden but just got a 'you feel better yourself if something is wrong' stupid answer), I started to think about my doc experiences of lately. In fact, following on a problem with my right arm and shoulder due to an incorrect positioning at the computer - that doctor pushed me to do some tests and found a problem of thyroditis, which many doctors have asked about but no one has ever really checked out. A problem which, together with my severe iron deficiency and lack of B12 at the time, helped explain my continuous problems of being tired, of feeling easily stressed, of overeating in the afternoons to keep awake, of being a bit moody, and even partly the problems with my arm and shoulder as the tendons get more fragile supposedly when you have an hyperactive thyroditis, plus that when I'm tired, I tend to put extra tension in my neck and shoulders...

The thing is, this is not the first time I've been for check up with doctors - but this is my first really good experience with doctors. 2 in the same year, 2 in Geneva. I hope only that my doc's appointment on Friday to check the changes to my thyroditis problem will be as good. I regretfully have to go to a new doc, since the one that discovered the problem is not available anymore. Hopefully on Friday I get to experience another super expensive but skilled doctor and have this problem handled once and for all.

my boyfriend is a goldfish or was it gay.com

Saturday. On our way back from IKEA, we went a bit crazy in the car as one does, sitting in eternal lines of cars full of people trying to leave this Swedish heaven/hell. So we started to make up all these possible blog names - anything that we said became a .com, a .net, a .org and so on. Smoking Beijing.com; my boyfriend is a goldfish.com (he has a goldfish memory - asking if he locked the car 5 meters after we left it, every time); i'm hungry.org; sushi now.net etc etc

After 40 minutes of making up different blog names - and no, you would not have liked to be in the car with us, although we found ourselves very funny indeed - we finally arrived, had our Saturday sushi, stood in another line (the 20th this day) to enter a shop of disguise props and got what we needed (me: wings, feathers and green colour, him: green and white colour, green frog!! glasses), passed by another Swedish paradise and got a green t-shirt, and then spent approx. 1h going to every possible shop in Geneva to find t-shirt pens or paint - common, this is something that every shop should have no?? ;)

Exhausted. Tired. But luckily still in party mood - we came home, prepped frog/prince t-shirt, sprayed wings green, and got ready for Halloween (only one day late). Opened a bottle of Cava, V. came over with her fab red wig, attached the ears, wings, feathers and some sparkling stars and off we went. First stop: a friend's housewarming party. The 3 of us the only bizarrely dressed people there! N. going semi-crazy, scaring half the invitees, taking pictures and pushing random people together trying to play match-making, and talking to anyone who almost looked in his direction, in particular this guy who then started to look a bit freaked out so I just had to throw out a 'my boyfriend is gay.com' making V. and N. laugh there heads off while the guy in question and another person looked terrified. oooops

Some pictures later, N. realised that perhaps he hadn't been hired as the party photographer and that we should leave before everyone else were scared off. Second stop: ah that was more like it. Angels and Devils. Nurses and a gigantic sumo. A fly and vampires. Policewomen and monsters. Dreads and flight attendants. And then of course a frog, a green fairy and a red-haired devil in disguise. Great party and great pictures. And N. used his goldfish memory to forget how scary some people find a gayish frog ;)

sudden feeling of betrayal

How to explain how i can fall from feeling all happy and pleased with myself to feeling quite sad and unsure in just a few minutes. One second i was all happy and feeling good because i managed to get our counterparts to accept changes to budget and content of a project, while also getting praise for my work. Next, I suddenly got the feeling that one of my best friends was making fun of me behind my back. Paranoid? Perhaps. but regretfully i'm not so sure and hence i'm not so sure anymore that this good friend is actually such a good friend. So perhaps the sudden fall of my mood is explicable. Just sorry i could not have been allowed to feel happy for a bit longer for once.

my hat off for mr. cleese

Is there anyone out there who does not follow the US presidential election, at least partly? Anyway this is one of the better commentaries by an old favorite:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WR3eUjD6y6o

Gooooo Cleese :)

happy moments and grumpiness

You know when you're walking around being constantly a bit grumpy and easily irritated and you just don't know why? And then something happens that makes you feel all happy and warm and relived inside, and suddenly you realise what has been borthering you all the time.

So nice when that happy moment comes and you can relax again. This just happened to me today - so now i'm walking around with a stupid smile and don't even care anymore that it's raining outside :)

i'm a dreamer

Head up in the clouds, I seem to have a tendency to let my imagination run away with me, creating dream castles out of nothing and picturing myself living in this new place, this new city or....

Yesterday, we went to visit an apartment as we have been thinking about moving closer to N's work and perhaps finding something slightly bigger. In my mind before even visiting the place, I had pictured us loving this new superb big great flat, moving in and getting everything ready to have a christmas move-in party with a lovely christmas tree and decorations. I even went so far as to stand holding some decorations for the tree in my hand yesterday lunch. And I was so disappointed, still before seeing the apartment, that there was another person interested who would have priority to it.

My N. is also a dreamer in many ways, but perhaps a bit more realistic and kept telling me to wait until after we had actually seen the apartment before planning the things I need to sell in the old apartment, who should take over the contract and before being disappointed that perhaps we would not be able to move into the new dream apartment (ah, if he had only known about the housewarming christmas party all planned out in the movies in my head he would probably have been really worried ;)

And he was of course right. The apartment was nice and in the perfect location but the kitchen way too small for what I want, the apartment and building too old for N's taste, and my current apartment (soon to be OUR current apartment!) is at least as nice and has this great big sunny kitchen that I just love. So we are going to fix up my apartment with some new storing places and a big new kitchen table to be able to really use the kitchen as it is meant (meaning, having people over for dinner, brunch or whatever and not having to limit the number to only 2-3 guests since the current table is so small), I will need to make space in the cupboards (meaning finding other ways to store my small amount of clothes, shoes, handbags and… help!) and we will hence turn my apartment into our apartment. At least until we find an apartment that really takes our breath away.

In the meantime, I'm now dreaming about how to make the kitchen warm and cosy with a big table seating friends for Sunday afternoons/dinners, what to put on the wall to make the living room lovelier, and of course where to put the christmas decorations - in short how to turn our apartment into a dream.

The objects change - only the dreaming persist :)

Lunchbreak

The whereabouts of my babbling colleague...

I've already written about my new colleague who is constantly talking or making noises. And no, she has not stopped yet! No matter that I'm wearing headphones and trying to concentrate on something. Anytime anything does not work on her computer she has to share it with me and ask me for help! And no - i'm not the IT person here. And no - i don't really care if the internal notes from our last meeting are perfectly outlined in the document or not. And yes - I do have better things to do than helping her with the notes from the meeting, than helping her with layouts for a stupid internal document that no one will probably read and no one cares how it looks, than hearing about her problems with the colour printer when she wanted to print new etiquettes for the folders!!!! I thought hiding behind my headphones was a good idea - but I guess I have to find something better. the question is what???

I try to avoid her when working, but in contrast to my old colleague who used to sit behind her computer while i sat behind mine - meaning that we did not see each other except for when we looked over on purpose, the new one is sitting a bit off to the side of her computer (probably killing her back and neck) so that she can constantly see me when she looks up. Great...

the joy of a bathtub or the moment i went completely crazy

You might have heard about different people having a cold, or a real bad cough, or a stomach flu lately - the joy of autumn - and then there's me. In the last 3 weeks i've managed to cover them all, one after another. It seems that if someone so much as sneezes 200 m away from me I will catch it.

So yesterday, after a good wake-up and preparation for work, I left and half way to work decided that I was too sick to actually go in and hence turned around and went back home and into bed for the rest of the day. Or, part of it. In the afternoon, I suddenly felt really really bad, burning up and dizzy, sitting on the edge of the bathtub trying to feel better when I for some reason ended up in the tub AND then decided to stay there as it was so cool and nice against my burning skin, the only place where I actually felt ok. Stayed in there for about half an hour, no water, just my damp sweaty skin against the coldness of the ceramic tub, sleeping. If anyone would have walked in at that moment they would probably have thought I'd gone completely crazy. and perhaps i had.... ;)

sick and picked on

Figthing through the morning in order to feel ok enough to even get into work after spending more than an hour just coughing and feeling like shit (same thing yesterday). And what awaits me at work? A nice mail telling me that I need to start coming in between 9 and 9.30 although I'm not supposed to take the mail as criticism…. Fine - the fact that I was coming in between 8.30 and 9 most of last week when I was not sick (the week before and this week I have been sick) does not count, probably because I usually manage to come in early on the days when my boss is travelling or even on days when he has come in just before 10 and of course has no idea if I've been there for an hour or just 5 minutes………

I know I can be lazy some mornings, but it feels like shit to get picked on when I should have stayed in bed and the only reason I'm here to start with is for some stupid obligation feeling since we have a deadline tomorrow. Perhaps I should just pick up my stuff and return home again and not care about any deadlines or anything.

:(

travelling again...

I'm off travelling for another weekend and really looking forward to it since I'm going to see my sweet friend A who has moved to Barca for a year, and I love both her and Barca :))

At the same time, I must admit that I'm very pleased that my next weekend away, to Budapest that time, will be with my lovely boyfriend! I love travelling, love seeing new places and revisiting old ones. And I know that I'm privileged in that I can travel and see so many wonderful parts of the world. However, I'm also privileged to have met a wonderful man and being away from him all the time feels a bit sad, so just happy that I have a great trip ahead of me now and that the next one I get to share with my love.

And then a resting cocooning homey month all in Geneva in November, before going off again in December. The perfect time to make some more space in my drawers... ;)

Yummy dessert

On Saturday after an afternoon cuddling with my cousin's kids, I just didn't feel like going out so we decided to stay in eating something nice and watching a movie. However, what was this 'nice' dinner going to consist off when the plan had been to eat outside. Well the main course and salade was fine, but dessert (and we both LOVE dessert)?

In my usual way of throwing a few ingredients together to see what happens, I was lucky and made one of the yummier desserts so far. Very easy and good, so thought I'd include the recepy here:

1 banana
1 fresh figue
perhaps 15g of butter
some brown sugar
ice-cream (walnut one if possible) for serving

approx. 220°

I cut the banana into slices and the figues in 8 quarters and put all the pieces in a glass form on top of a half of the butter. Then I sprinkled sugar over everthing and finished by putting the second half of the butter on top of the bananas to melt over everything. Left it in the owen for approx. 20 minutes, taking it out after half the time to poor the created juice over the fruit, and checking regularly. Served in bowls topped by ice cream. Yummy and perfect size for 2. miam

new haircut...

As usual after a few months, I felt the need for a change and went and got a new haircut yesterday. A bit shorter, but nothing extreme (and I am known for having gone from blonde to blackish brown, or to kind of zebra striped white and dark brown or....) and I got nice comments from everyone at work. But at home.....

Well, my boyfriend asked me why I had cut my hair without asking for his permission first (his permission!!!) as he preferred my old cut (which was not a cut but a grown out old one falling into my eyes every two seconds). I countered that I did not ask since I do not need his permission to cut my hair... his argument was that now since we live together.... but that of course has nothing to do with my haircut! However, I would now ask him before I painted the living room green for example...

Thinking about it, why haven't I painted it green before? A green living room must be the perfect colour for the green fairy, and had I done it before he started to move in (well, move in and move in, so far he has about one smallish bag of clothes at my place so let's re-discuss it in a few weeks) I would not have had to ask for his permission ;))

Oh, and I almost forgot. Before going to bed when I was thinking out loud if I actually liked my new cut, I got the lovely question: why, has your hair started to turn grey?

Men!!! I guess you just have to love them :)

I'm grateful...

Read somewhere that it is good to recall some things that you are grateful for at the end of each day (minimum 1, but if possible 5), and although it is not the end of the day I will start making a list for today's good moments to try to send out some positive vibes in the world instead of my normal negative views (although our assistant is still driving me crazy ;).

So here we go. Today I'm grateful for:
* my mother - as every day, the fact that she is always there for me no matter the subject, important ones or small stupid ones like the recipe I asked for yesterday and she provided with a smile today
* wakening up in the arms of someone I feel so good with, and having the right to fall asleep in those arms in the evenings, to lie down next to him and just feel all the tension of the day disappear
* not to have to worry about one thing anymore
* asking for help from friends and receiving it with a smile - thank you!
* my job - yes strangely enough for once I am ;)

constant mumbling....

Monday afternoon (I first wrote morning so you can understand my state of mind, I’m still trying to wake up and get back into working mood) only and I'm already getting irritated with my new colleague's bad mumbling habit. She is, in fact, constantly speaking or mumbling, probably about 80% of the day.

If it drives me crazy? Guess!
If it makes it just a tiny bit difficult to concentrate on anything of value? Of course not... I like having my thoughts interrupted every 2 minutes ;)

The mumbling part is almost ok as I can block it out with my ipod when I need to concentrate. But the constant talking part, the 'oops, did I disturb you, I did not see that you were listening to music', followed by me explaining that I do this when I really need to concentrate, followed by another break-in 5 minutes later. To ask about something work-related you imagine... incorrect!!! To bla bla bla about something. Inconsiderate is just her first name... and she is here for a 6 months replacement, sitting right opposite me. Is she the person that will finally drive me to change jobs?

How long would you go before you told her off? I don't want to create a bad feeling at work, but if a person does not understand subtle and not-so-subtle hints, there must come a moment when you have to sit down and ask her to kindly let you alone. No? As it is, I can really only concentrate after 17h when she leaves for the day, to be disturbed again at 18h when the cleaners come... Maybe if it continues like this I will get fired for not producing anything and won't have to worry anymore about mumbling and talking colleagues ;)

good night, and good luck

A few nights ago I watched Clooney's movie Good Night, and Good Luck - a bit late perhaps considering that it came out in 2005 but still very interesting. If you haven't seen it, do so as it will remind you of the red scare hunt in the US in the 50s under Senator McCarthy's insane reign. And for a historian like me, who loves to make correlations between old insanities and more current ones (and other things than insanities of course), this communist hunt in the 50s reminds me a lot of the similar hunt on anyone that might be a terrorist in the US following 9/11.

In a book I just finished on a completely different subject, was mentioned the story of this man from Bali who had been living in the US for years without problems, was married to an American woman since a while back but hadn't come around to apply for a regulation of his situation - hence the marriage was for love and not to get the right to stay. Following 9/11 and the fright for anything Muslim or anyone from a Muslim country in the US, all people from certain countries including Indonesia were asked to go and register with the authorities. And this Christian man from Bali followed this decree and went with his wife. He was called back for an individual meeting in the afternoon, and asked to neither bring his wife nor a lawyer, and in a naive stupid way he followed the order - just to be sent off to a camp without any news to anyone about his whereabouts (his wife only managed to track him down after several days). He was kept there for some months and then shipped off back to Indonesia with his hopes of ever being allowed back to the US close to a minimum - although being married with an American! His crime? Being born in Indonesia and therefore was accorded no trial, no lawyers and not even the right to inform.

Witch hunts seem to come and go, only the subjects of imagined terror changes.

ToT Groningen

My first training course where I went as a participant rather than as the organiser, was a train the trainer's course in Groningen, NL. It was nice to go, both because it means that my boss finally seems to take some interest in providing me with more experience and hence a chance of actually doing some more interesting work and to get somewhere at work, and because I was curious to be in receiving end again. On top of it, I was, as always, excited about seing a new place. Especially since Groningen is a city I would most probably never visit on my own choice. This is something I really like with my work - the fact that it has taken me to places like Skopje, Podgorica, Zagreb, Belgrade, Garmish-Partenkirchen and now Groningen - all places I would probably never think of going to on my own. Well, exception perhaps of Zagreb and Belgrade.

The ToT course went well. There were 11 participants and 2 trainers for a 2.5 days of extremely stuffed schedule, leaving me with a headache at the end which it took me more than 3 days to get rid off (and I hardly ever get headaches!). I learned a lot - both about training but also about myself. Before going I was quite worried about the first day when we had to hold presentations/trainings with the group - something I had never done before (outside of Uni) and which I wasn't that sure that I was able to do.... However, I realised after a few hours that 1) I did indeed manage to hold a training, and with people who some of them were quite experienced trainers already; 2) and that I did it quite well :))

It is always nice with a self-esteem boost :)

As already mentioned, I did manage to find some time on the second evening to walk around first in the city and then in an outdoor festival that was on that week in a park and where there was a mixture of organised concerts, spontaneous small ones, small theatre shows, different kinds of food and all other kind of happenings. I tried to local specilities, although I have forgotten the names now. The first is a kind of tiny pancakes that pop out of the wholes on the first picture - really yummy. The second was ordinary vanilla ice-cream served in a different way between two thin pieces of waffle - this ice-cream was pushed out of plastic tubes that reminded me of sausages... but it was nice was well. Or perhaps this was due to the sugar overload that night ;)

Local food stuff and happenings in pictures:














Other Groningen pics:

Me a globetrotter?

Well although I still haven't set out on my trip around the world (when will this ever happen, when will I manage to put enough money aside to leave, to forget everything and just take off?) this summer I have still been a bit of a globetrotter, if I can say so myself.

Following on a visit to Stockholm as usual during the summer to spend some time with family and friends, and a few weeks back at work in Geneva, I took off for an approximate month of travelling to more or less new places. First on the list was a 3 days visit to Groningen in the North of the Netherlands - the Northern Capital if they may say so themselves. This was a nice and interesting stay, but an exhausting one as I was there for a Train the trainers’ course. Although we spent most of the time with the group, I did have time to walk around a bit on the second night and to see not only the city but also an outdoor festival that was going on that week which was a real nice change to the classroom.

From Groningen, via a train ride to Amsterdam, I then directly flew down to Lisbon to meet up with my love for a day in the city before we took off to the South of Portugal where I had never been before for a 5-day beach-jumping event :), finishing by one day back in the centre for a crab-eating yummy lunch a bit north of Sintra and then back to Geneva for a few days. Although I did not travel myself during a few days, my friend M who lives in Zambia was visiting at this time so my mind went travelling a bit more following all her stories and pictures of her life over there. My friend J who is finishing her position in Angola was visiting just before I went off to Groningen and took me for another Africa mind-travelling event at that time.

And then suddenly, before I had time to unpack my bags really, I realised it was time to pack and leave for 11 days of Paris followed by Beijing. Took the afternoon TGV to Paris to spend two nights and days visiting V who has been living there since April. A great time going for dinner with her in les Marais, walking around together and then by myself, and doing Paris both by day and night before heading off to Charles de Gaulle airport to meet up with my mum, aunt and 3 cousins for a flight to Beijing!! This was the most exotic and exiting trip of the year, although the one to Portugal bestows as many memories. Beijing was just great!! The people nice, the food mostly good, the possibility to see all those things I'd only read about before thrilling - the closest trip to a real world trip that I have made in years.

And do you think this scared me off a future life as a globetrotter? well, except for the huge cockroach we saw in the last evening which scared me off going back for a swim in the hotel's pool although it was the last night so not possible anyway, the answer is a clear big NO! If anything I long even more to pick up my bags and leave!!! Seeing a little bit more of the world only increased my hunger - so the world, watch out, because soon I'll come for real :)) In the meantime I'll continue to enjoy a few more shorter trips to make me survive some more months of work. Next stop Barca to see my dear A, and then a romantic weekend in Budapest.

Although to enable my dream to come true I should probably stop doing all these shorter trips and start saving for the big thing.... soon soon soon...

today's recipe

Ingredients:

7 pieces of different kinds of salmon sushi
4 pieces of 'gras' tuna sushi - really yummy
4 pieces of fried eel sushi - surprisingly good
1 cup of miso soup
a good friend
1 small ice cream including 3 flavours: passion fruit, pineapple & basil, milk & lime & coconut - miam miam

= One lovely lunch. SO nice that Mikado has opened again!!!

Tell me why I don't like Mondays....

Should I start thinking about perhaps changing my job, changing careers, getting something more meaningful, something more motivating, something which does not involve me searching the web for anything interesting to waste my time on in the mornings as I don't have the motivation to start working. Should I start thinking about taking this step when my creativity this morning (low as it was at the start of the day) had me turn the well-known song "Tell me why I don't like Mondays" by Bob Geldorf and the Boomtown Rats, also song by Jon Bon Jovi, into a "Tell me why I don't like Mondays, tell me why I don't like Tuesday, tell me why I don't like Thursday, tell me why I do like Fridays, tell me why I do like weekends, tell me why I do like vacation...."? My boyfriend, overhearing this beautiful morning creation, somehow linked this song to my job... ;)

On another note, googling a song (or actually using ethicle since someone told me that just using this search engine brings profit to NGOs) sometimes give you a surprise as was the case with this song - I had no idea that it was about a 16-year old girl who used her new rifle (she had just received it from her dad for her birthday or something - this can only be the US!!) to shoot at her school, hurting several kids and killing 2 adults. Her comment when asked why she did it was that she didn't like Mondays....

Don't worry though - I'm far off from such a state of mind.

Bush's criticism of China's HR crimes...

It's a good start and a good thing that Bush brings up China's different human rights crimes and that he emphasises that the people in China deserves the basic rights that are all persons' rights. However, this is only a first step as there are many other countries out there who deserves the same criticism, especially perhaps Israel who have Bush and the US full support, and the US itself where Guantanamo has showed how far from this thinking of basic rights being universal the Americans really are. As the Swedish expression say, you should not throw rocks when you're in a glass house... meaning, that before criticising someone else's behaviour look into your own to make sure you're not engaging in similar behaviour yourself.

Divorces = an evil for the children?

Read this article today about divorces and how they influence children. The opinion article argues that divorces are bad for children in all relationships where the parents do not engage in explicit fights or violence. As the latter only supposedly make up about 1/3 of divorcees, in general divorces should be avoided and the state work for helping couples to stay together. Children to divorced parents apparently suffer from more troubles growing up, with tendencies to start smoking more easily, not get as well educated as children where parents stay together, have more problems making friends etc.

Although the article has some good arguments and the writers make sure to emphasis in the last lines that the society should not make divorces more difficult nor should single-parents be blamed, there is still something about it that make me want to scream... or at least write a blog input about it ;)

My first reaction is that the children of divorced parents that I have met have succeeded as well as those whose parents are still together. There life might have been a bit more difficult in times - missing one parent, not trusting relationships as easily (but then again, why is this considered a bad thing?) and so on - but these difficulties have often made them into stronger persons.

My own experience was to thank my parents for having gotten a divorce! Their relationship was unliveable at the end - for everyone including my brother and me who, like most children, directly felt when our parents were sad or angry with each other, even when they did not fight in front of us. You can feel the lack of love, of patience, of want to stay living together and it makes the atmosphere at home quite heavy indeed. My parents also fought sometimes in front of us, so I guess that should put my experience within the range of 1/3 of children to fighting divorced couples.

However, what couple - where the love has run out, where you want to continue with your life without the other person but where you stay on just for the sake of the children - what couple in that situation would never fight? Living with someone is often quite complicated, and if you don't have love to smoothen down things, how do you pass over all those small things that irritates you without ever fighting? I must say that I highly doubt that 2/3 of children of divorces had parents who never verbally fought... If this is the case, then perhaps it is because the parents were smart enough to get divorced once they realised that they weren't meant to stay together, rather than staying on for the sake of it and getting into one fight after another as you do... Perhaps there are other ways of making divorcee children fit better into a smooth life than trying to enforce marriages to go on once the love has died out. I would guess that one of the reasons why they get into trouble more often is rather due to the lack of money in many single-household families than to the fact that the parents have chosen to live their lives...?

Finally, I don't see why the state should get involved in this very private matter and I can't see why two people should stay together after their love is gone just for their children. Children are extremely important, but not at the cost of all the happiness of their parents. And people should be allowed to be happy and I have always believed that happy parents (whether it means parents that get divorced, parents that go back to work quite early as they feel better that way, or that want to stay at home for the first 10 years or so, parents that live their lives while still providing for their children) make happier children. Me for one, was happier once my parents divorced and they could calm down, be happy and become friends, going on living the lives that they preferred. Having my father moving back across the continent was very difficult, but for me not linked that much to the divorce as to his homesickness. In short, I am what you could call a happy child of divorced parents and recommend getting a divorce to anyone if the relationship doesn't work anymore.

My last 2 cents before leaving for holiday tomorrow, to see my mother and family in Sweden and to perhaps thank my mother again for having taken the necessary step to render the lives of her, my father, my brother and me so much more simple and happy. To be honest, I am quite sure that my brother and I would probably have had more problems growing up if my parents had stayed together.

me - an environmental threat?

Was just thinking about all my planned trips this year around the world, well mostly around Europe, but with one trip to China also planned. Was thinking about the trips with a big smile as feeling all happy about all the places I'll visit, the time I'll get to spend with family and so on. And then suddenly it kind of hit me that with all these flights I'm really not helping the environment :(

So how do you make the two ends meet? How do I continue to dream about travelling the world without destroying too much of it? How do I continue to work in a country other than the 2 where different parts of my family lives without going back all the time and hence being bad for the environment? How do I work in an organisation which is trying to make the world a safer and better place, but where half the staff travel 40% of the time?... So far I have some excuses - like the fact that at least Geneva is in between Sweden and Slovenia so I don't have to travel that far each time, and would still need to travel between the 2 countries to see both my parents... And some small solutions like paying the extra fee for environmental tax on my last flight ticket (only cost about 5 CHF for my flight Geneva-Stockholm-Geneva and made me feel a bit better), take the train to Paris in September, when I'm then flying to Beijing from there... And this year, I only flew once for work - better than all the years before although not by my own choice. And I almost always walk to work, or go by rollerblades. Sometimes I do take the bus, and sometimes I go with N's car or scooter, but most of the time I walk. However, one flight seems to cancel all the other effort. And this year might be one of the worst for my personal flights so far. Judge yourselves and let me know if you have any good tips for how to allow for both travelling and living environmentally friendly?

This year in numbers of flights:
2 flights Geneva - Stockholm and back
1 flight Geneva - Lisbon and back
2 flights Geneva - Barcelona and back
1 flight Paris - Beijing and back
1 flight Geneva - Belgrade and back (for work)
???

Saturday's recipe

1 cuddly morning in bed
2 handfuls of mixed fruits for breakfast
2 filled cups of sailing on a windy, sunny day among friends
3 spoons of rollerblading down by the lake
a sprinkle of swimming in the lake
1 serving of mixed sushi
1/2 a bottle of excellent white wine from our wine tasting trip in May
1 big serving of laughter
1 handful of sunset against a cloudy sky
love, kisses and cuddles after taste
1-2 overfull glasses of wine offered by a russian group that like to speak a lot!
if possible - rollerblading back down by the lake, N trying to keep upright on his rollers, me rollerblading while bending over double of laughter

= happiness

today's recipe

Ingredients:
about 4 caipi's the day before
1 sangria
a little sprinkle of food only
a bit short on the sleep
a handful of quite crappy music
1 cup of good friendship

= a smile and a bit of a hangover.... luckily it's friday, the sun is shining and I found some nice rice and mais crackers to eat for breakfast - calming down the sloushing effect from the alcohol...

tonight i think we'll go to the parc for a free concert - looks cool :)

today's recipe

Ingredients:
1 airline starting a direct cheap fligth geneva - stockholm
2 weeks of christmas in stockholm booked
1 happy mum
a little bit of money only

= a big smile :)

photos from "la rue est à vous"

A bit late since it took place in May, but here are some cool photos from an event where they closed of several of the streets from traffic in my neighbourhood and lots of small happenings were going on with concerts, theater for kids etc...

wow

The best way to spend a lunch break in Geneva: put on rollers, down by the lake, stop for some sushi (today I had salmon speciality and nordic rolls = best sushi ever!!!), continue out on the pier to get closer to the water and away from car noise and most people, change, sit on a rock with a gentle warm breeze in the face, once warm enough after the cold air-conditioned office - dive into the water and swim, swim, swim and enjoy!!!, dry in the sun while eating, really making sure to taste all the flavours miam, lie down and let the sunstrokes caress the body, fall asleep for a short nap = relaxation guaranteed!!

This was the way I spent my lunch 1h30min today. So needed, so longed for, a perfect moment of paradise, vacation and wow :)

today's dream about a different life...

Woke up in a bit of a grumpy mood despite the beautiful weather and having fallen asleep laughing yesterday - not sure why, perhaps some forgotten dreams, perhaps the fact that it was yet another working day... Kind of made me ponder, as so often, if my job is the right one for me. It's not that i hate my job (well at least not most day), i actually like it quite a lot especially lately since i got a promotion and have been given more responsibility and more interesting tasks. It's more that i'm never really sure if this is really what i want to do but then i don't know what that 'thing' is, so i let life go on. Someone said, though, that when you found the thing you like to do you wake up with a smile on working mornings (at least most of them) feeling joy about going to work. And although i like my job, i'm far from feeling any joy from it except for very rare moments. So perhaps it's time that i have a change, that i find something different to do - the question, however, is both quite simple and oh so complicated: what?

Today's answer is to open some kind of book and lunch place. A place where you can go and have a nice break from your job, eating something healthy and yummy, with some allergic adapted meals, and where there are lots of different books to look in, read during lunch and perhaps even borrow, or buy... A place with nice and filling salads - something severely missing in Geneva where you can get tomate mozza anywhere but where it's very difficult to get a nice salad with filling and yummy ingredients...

Negative points though: my salary would most probably drop severely - and it's too expensive in Geneva, and my father, after a few decades as a restaurant owner, told me never to open or work in the restaurant business....

Positive point: to work with food and among books - 2 things i love! however, the idea is probably a bit romanticised in my mind...

Good girl...or...

Had a doctor's appointment this morning and came out in a bit of a sad, tired, depressed mood... If I'm a good girl I should now stop eating all products with gluten (pasta, pizza, bread, couscous...you name it), with milk (cheese, yoghurt, ice cream...), with yeast which regretfully seems to include not only vinegar and I don't mind eating salads but not without vinegar :( and all alcohols... Well at least according to the doctor - but I think that I will have to research this last bit a bit further... so either I continue eating as normal and will probably, in a few years, have to start taking some kind of awful pill for the rest of my life or I become a good girl and decide to eliminate all the products mentioned above and hopefully my body will regulate itself, but probably I'll still have to take the same pill... what to do? I could go without milk and gluten products although it will be a pain since it makes your life very inflexible since most restaurants becomes a no no. No wine or vinegar will be more difficult though... and part of my life will become really boring... Perhaps I will try to do my best, and maybe cheat at some moments and hope for the best...

No wonder then that I felt like getting some nice sun flowers on my way to work to try to cheer me up a bit and bring in at least some sun in my life :)

What would be the most difficult food stuff for you to give up?

Today's street shot

Two American men taking photos in front of Iran Air and looking very naughty... Wish I had my camera on me - next time ;)

The best sandwich in the world???

I had heard about this sandwich place close to work by several of my colleagues who swear by it as it is supposed to have these great yummy best sandwiches, in if not the world, then at least in Geneva. For some reason I have never gone there myself before - perhaps my normal resistance to following the crowds. When one person tells me a book is a great read I get interested and might well pick up a copy within a few days. When lots of people tells me that 'this is the book to read', the chances are bigger that I won't read it than that I will... Why? Good question - but I guess I prefer to find my own way, my own catches and to be surprised.

Hence my earlier reluctance to try out this 'great sandwich' place for a year or so. Yesterday lunch however, after a friend cancelled on me last minute and as I was starving but with no real idea of where to go or what I felt like eating, I finally tried out these sandwiches. Not to be disappointed, which was a surprise. Not really knowing what to ask for as there are lots and lots of choices, I asked for some assistance and the lady working there was very happy to help me out. Finally chose parma ham, parmiganno cheese, sun dried tomatoes with a marvellous taste, roasted aubergines in garlic and zucchini dipped in breadcrumbs. The result: wow! A huge, super tasty sandwich where everything seemed to melt in my moth with a mixture of flavours filling my senses. And all this for 12CHF. A bit more expensive than an ordinary sandwich - but a lot bigger and the ingredients are really top class.

If it was indeed the best sandwich in the world? I am not sure as I have some great memories of sandwiches from my vacations in Slovenia. However, it was for sure the best sandwich I have had in a long long time. Perhaps this should teach me to sometimes listen to what other people suggests ;)))

Or perhaps not. I kind of like going my own way in life...

Chinese interrogation methods at Guantánamo...

What can I say other than that some "lessons learned" are the wrong ones. This is one example(also in Swedish news). Shameful.

See also an earlier comment on the use of torture on 13 March.

stress release nr. 1

Today's recepy for stress releasing:

2 cups of rollerblading down by the lake
2 cups of sushi and teriyaki salmon
1 cup of swimming in the lake, facing the mountains, forgetting about the world
1/2 cup of reading a book while drying in the sun
1 big fat yellow sun
optional: a sprinkle of small thin clothes

Temperature approx. 25-30°

Mix it all up and shake before heading back to the office. Miam :))

Today...

I want a new job. A new life. To win a couple of hundred thousands on the lottery so that I can leave everything and go travelling around the world. I want to be happier, freer, have it easier, more passionate. I want a change - is it really too much to ask for?

a picture says more than a thousand words...

For explanation: Ingvar Carlsson, former Prime Minister of Sweden, hand in hand with the currently very actual Robert Mugabe. Quite shameful although Mugabe was quite popular among left-leaning intellectuals in Europe at that time. Shows if nothing else how many of the oppressing leaders out there that have been supported by very well-known 'democratic' countries earlier on (Hussein’s support by the US earlier, only one of many other examples).

why geneva?

Just read the latest update on my friend Kinitry's blog and she managed to express why I enjoy life in Geneva so much!! rather than repeating her words, i invite you to read her entry yourselves.

Perhaps just this short input from my day to give an example of the joys of this city - the summer is here, finally, had sushi from mikado down by the lake with a friend (no swim today at lunch, but probably next time - it's so nice to have a quick swim and then enjoy lunch all refreashed drying in the sun), got an ice crem on the way back at a new place right next to work, melon and lemon miam (dangerous! just found this place today but will probably go back there once or twice more during the summer... or a hundred times...), back to work for the afternoon but with the plan to finish the day down by the lake with a dip and some sun before perhaps having a drink at the lakeside or going for a rollerblading tour and then off to dinner somewhere on a terrace :) having some great friends, my cousin and her beautiful and lovely kids (who i babysat saturday with great joy) in geneva of course helps as well!

paris in...september

one always hear about paris in spring or in april - and i have already visited paris in april and yes, indeed it was very beautiful and romantic!!! now however i will have the opportunity to visit this great city in september and hope that it will be as lovely as in the spring! what do you think?

am so happy, as always when i'm planning to go somewhere else, to travel and see, smell, hear new places :)) bought my train ticket there a few days ago and managed to find a real good deal at 20 EUR one-way. have to go to paris in order to catch my flight to china and decided to start the china trip off with 2 days in the city of painters, writers and cherry flowers. a change also to meet and stay at my friend v's place. hmmm although 3 months from now, buying the ticket brought a big smile on my lips for the rest of the day :))

so september paris watch out!

change???

wondering if it is not about time to look for a change... there does not seem to be any trip to africa on the planning anymore, at least not for many months to come and probably not for me and i'm a bit tired of the old... perhaps it's spring, one feels like getting rid of the old and in with some new things... perhaps i just need a vacation - another month to go and then some vacation filled months are here yippie!!

dear Africa friend

thank you for commenting on my blog and for thinking of me :)))

i'm sending you lots of sunshine back from Geneva and wish so that you were here with me!!!! when are you coming for a visit?

i have been booking tickets for my summer trips and hope that i will still manage to see you. this is the plan:

- end of july, beginning of august: stockholm
- end of august, beginning of september: portugal (lisbon and algarve - scary as it means meeting my BFs family for the first time...)
- mid-september: beijing :)))

a couple of crazy weeks....

wow, it's been a couple of crazy weeks with organising a conference in Geneva for a group of Kosovars (one of the more complicated conferences I have yet organised) taking up a big part of my time at work, my dear friend S coming for a 3 days visit with an outing to Annecy and a bit of sunshine in the middle of rain followed by a 5 days visit of my mum, and half my family in town for the baptism of my, I'm proud to announce, god daughter and the daughter of my favorite cousine who lives here as well.

Half the family in town meant a lunch with my aunt, mum, 2 cousins, and their families on day 1, dinner with mum, aunt, 1 cousin and her family on day 1 as well, day 2 spent with my mum, a visit from my aunt and yet another cousin and her daughter plus my god daughter on day 3, the baptisme with around 40 people followed by a smaller gathering at my cousin's in geneva for about 15 people on day 4, a calm day with just my mum ending with dinner with mum, BF and a friend on day 5, and back to work after mum's departure on Tuesday.

But did calm restore after that? no. with the Eurofoot ongoing it has been games games games (with a nice victory first by sweden and then by portugal) until i said stop, 5 games in 3 days is enough - let's have a break... that was yesterday though, tonight i'm normally meeting up my BF for the second game and then out... luckily the weekend is here with some calm and some not-calm = the Swedish game tomorrow night!

HEJA SVERIGE!!!

Why does everyone hate Mondays? Wednesdays seem to be my Achilles...

I was just about to write a semi gloomy tired grumpy message, when I realised that my last entry was exactly that and that I wrote it one week ago. It seems that Wednesdays are not my best days. Today's general feeling: an elephant nesting in my hair...

will try to write something more inspiring soon. now i'm off to pay 90% of my salary in bills... perhaps this can explain today's grumpiness partly ;)

Weather mood

Today the weather reflects my mood almost perfectly. It's a grey day, with a few tiny droplets coming down, some thin reminders of sunrays reflecting through the clouds, a little bit of wind but not enough to mess up your hair, and cold but not freezing, just a certain kind of numbness reminding of emptiness.

3-lingual

Got a comment about the fact that my blog uses several different languages. Although, I am not sure I really agree since the large majority of entries are made in English, with only one or two Swedish exceptions and no French ones, I though I should perhaps explain why. The fact is that I use the three languages in my daily life as I speak, write and read mostly English but also French at work, and speak all 3 languages outside of work with friends and family. The fact is that I do not really make a distinction, if something is written in French on the blog (which was earlier the case for the headings as I never made the effort to change the language of the blog - I did today though, but not sure I like it as I kind of miss the old French headings, liked the mixture of languages on my blog as in my life - what do you think?) I do not really take it in and hence do not take the time to change it.

However, I do try to write my entries in English so that everyone can understand them, since almost everyone I know understands English and many understands neither Swedish nor French. Exceptions are there to confirm the rule ;)

this is my life and i like it :)

student loans....

In Sweden almost all university students accepts the official student loan from the state without second thoughts. In fact, you are kind of made to believe that this is the best solution ever. So you accept it, you go on studying, you perhaps go abroad to study, you enjoy life in a way and never really thing about the debt that is accumulating. A debt you will normally spend your whole life paying off.

Today, there's an article about the fact that many Swedes who study abroad have loan for over 400'000 SEK (about 43'000 EUR) and that they will have problems paying them off and will possibly end up paying approximately 10% of their net income if the loan has not been paid off before they turn 50.... 400'000 SEK - I wish! Mine is a lot higher, and I did not go to some fancy expensive American school either, just the fact of having gone all the way to Master level... And yes, it is already a chock every 3 months when I have to pay approx. 900 EUR to pay off the loan. The worst thing of it all - of the total of near 3'600 EUR i paid last year, only about 56% was actually to pay off on the loan. The other 44% - to pay off interest accumulated during the year!!!!

If I had thought it through beforehand, if someone had informed me/us that student loans are great in that they are open for everyone giving equal opportunities etc and in that they allow you to go off in the world to study but that they will be a burden for you once you start to work. Perhaps if I had been informed about this, I would have put in more effort to survive on other means, at least for part of my 7 years of studies... Maybe it would not have changed anything, maybe I would have had to take them anyway, but perhaps it would have allowed me to have only half the amount in debt, meaning that I would actually be spending most of the money paying off the loans rather than the debts and that I would most certainly be able to pay them off before I retire. Maybe... Why not take the chance and inform kids about the real costs of taking student loans? The real cost of being indebted to CSN for life?

7 loads of laundry!!! hell anyone?

so yesterday was laundry time after a couple of weeks of procrastination since i hate doing laundry!!! used to never even think about it, but ever since i live without my own washing machine it's an excursion and takes the whole evening. no difference yesterday, from 19.30 to 01.00 with about 1h break for dinner... nice huh :( well at least i had someone very special to keep me company for part of the time and he brought me an ice cream in the middle of it all ;)

7 loads of laundry in one evening... that must be a record!?!? well, those that have several kids probably wouldn't agree, but for a single person? and yes indeed, i have loads and loads of underwear!! and clothes, towels....

welcome back miss summer!!!!

lovely weekend with sunshine sunshine sunshine and warmer weather by the day!! must admit that everything that needed to be done (washing clothes - extremly urgent since really down to the last ugly underware; cleaning the apartment...) was saved for some other day and the weekend was mostly spent down by the lake. saturday with some friends, met with one friend and walked to the other side together and then hung out at bains-de-paquis the whole afternoon with more and more friends joining as the day passed. sunday, rollerblade tour with my love, first to the end of the small lake (the lac leman alias lake geneva is made up of the small lake around geneva and what you can see from the city, and the whole lake or big lake which goes all the way to montreux) on the right side for some exercise and then back again and over to the other side to bdp again where some friends then joined! the rollerblade tour supposedely burned some 900 calories according to my love's new cardio watch - if that's true, i should have had even more to eat yesterday ;))

so a lovely start of the summer and the first weekend spent mostly in a bikini :)))
feeling in real good shape, full of energy in spite of my severe iron deficency, but perhaps that's also due to having indulged in meat these last days...

soon off for lunch in the sun, wow i really love the summer!!!! welcome back, you have been longed for!

massage addict

the one-armed monster from a few weeks ago is now more or less history. i'm still using my left hand on the mouse, and i'm not allowed to lift up heavy things with my right arm, but i'm allowed and was even encouraged to go back to do sports and live my life as normal. supposedley if i protect my arm/shoulder too much we will not be able to see if the physiotherapy actually works. yep, am now going to see a physiotherapist 2-3 times per week for 9 times total. not too bad i must say, though i have only been once so far (wasn't allowed to go for the first week since my muscles were too tense and it would only have made the problem worse, and then there was 1 week waiting list which almost drove me crazy especially since after my arm started to feel better following the muscle relaxing and anti-inflammatory medecins my lower back and then my neck started to play up, the latter being the worst as it gave me headaches and made me feel like a complet wreck).

second session this afternoon (luckily i have an understanding boss) which i'm looking forward to as i feel a bit stiff again this morning... the 40 minutes or so there consisted last time of about 20 minutes massage (first hurtful but then nice) of the shoulders and neck, concentrating on the right one, and then 20 minutes of lying on a hot mud-paraffin mixture which was so hot it felt it would burn my skin right off, but which is supposed to help the muscles relax and felt quite good actually, though i must say i prefare the massage, but then again i've alway been a massage addict ;)) hopefully the massage is on the schedule for today as well!!!

one-armed monster back at work

so, after 2 days off last week followed by the weekend, i came back to work yesterday - for half a day! had to leave in the afternoon since the medicin made me feel like i was going to melt away (and i had been freezing in the morning) and possibly faint - i desperately needed to lay down for a while and not possible at work (why don't we have a bed or even a sofa???) so left early. went home and slept for 3 hours and then felt a lot better again. luckily it was the last day of medication so shouldn't happen today - hopefully. and considering that i was in working for 2.5 hours on friday morning (2 meetings, so no computer work which i was told to stay away from) it feels ok to have left work early yesterday.

my arm i better, do not good. using my left hand on the mouse, trying to not keep it linger there. will get in touch with the doc again to get the physiotherapist contact etc, will probably also try a chiropractor which everyone keeps recommending to me, and i got a name for a good masseur - so hopefully this will soon all be a bad dream... keep your fingers crossed and any recommendations are welcome!

one-armed monster

that's me today - working in slow motion because only one hand for typing, and the left one!! going to see a chiropractor tomorrow, surviving on painkillers until then... poor me! ;))

bad day...

today is not the best of days. woke up with a bit if a sore throat... didn't feel taht much at home but once at work i feelt completely drained of energy and i was freezing!!! one colleague asked me if i thought i was in siberia considering that i was wrapped in two pashminas and more or less sitting on top of the extra radiator with a cop of steaming tea in my hand....

feeling better now after a comfort yummy lunch with mashed potatoes. however, my right shoulder which has been giving me trouble for some weeks now has really started to hurt today. changed hands for the mouse so using the left hand now which works fine, but my shoulder, forearm and hand are still hurting... need to get a massage but not sure where to go.... i must be getting old. perhaps time to change jobs - doesn't seem i'm made for sitting in front of a computer all day... or perhaps time for that trip around the world...one can always dream right? :)

stupid drivers..

just have to mention this stupid driver that almost ran me over yesterday. was out rollerblading with my N, enjoying the nice sunny spring weather. first went to tour carré on one side of the small lake in geneva, sat for a while enjoying the sun and having a drink. we then went to the other side, to join A for b-day party planning. anyway, on the last part of the way, when i was about to cross the street at a piedestrian crossing (and yes, rollerblading counts as walking!), following on N already crossing, i hesitated because it felt like the small smart that was arriving was not slowing down although N was just crossing and I was cleary on my way over... luckily, i hesitated, since the guy seemed to almost have speed up when he saw the situation, and if i had not hesitated he would have run into me :(( N was scared, I was scared, and it seemed that most other drivers were quite chocked and for sure after that the cars on each side stopped and let us pass... there are really some stupid dangerous drivers out there!

abba party

so, a bit late, but better late than never, i am going to celebrate having survived yet another year keeping the smile on my face, with a big (hopefully, we only sent out the invitations 5 days before the party actually takes place) birthday party. Together with my great friend, Anki, we decided that a nice theme for our 63 b-day party would be Abba - to make it a bit easier for our friends we made the theme bigger and included also Sweden -. Deem our surprise yesterday, when looking around for some pictures and costum ideas we found out that the day of our party, 19 April, is the official Abba day!!!!!

Bizzarely enough this offical Abba Day takes place in Roosendaal, the Netherlands!! Guess swedes don't like to celebrate our own groups as much... hmmmm

anyway, next to the party in NL, a Abba party is hence also organized in geneva :))

after snow comes....rain

following on yesterday's full day of snowing and freezing weather, today's weather i guess should be classified as spring since it is now raining... however, it's still freezing and can only be around 2° more than yesterday so to be honest, if this is what the weather is going to be like in april then i prefer snowing, actually i prefer to use my last money on some trip to a warm beach where i can forget about this horrible cold times! brrr

dream career

do you ever dream about changing jobs? i do!!! but i can never really figure out what i really want to do instead... any ideas? what is your dream career?

i want my bonnet!!!!

back after 3 days in spain, where the sun was shining most of the time and the temperature was around 20° - where in short it felt like April - , and what's the weather like today in geneva????? well, take this for a surprise - it's snowing!!!!!!!!!!!! it's 8 April and it's snowing! and this in a city where you usually see snow a maximum 10 days per year... if at least it was 1 April it could be explained as a weather joke ;))

brrrrrrrrr it's freezing cold outside and i wish i had brought my bonnet in to work! actually, i wish i had missed the flight in spain and was stuck there in the sun for a week ;)

guess the skiing season isn't over afterall. i knew there was a reason why i kept my skis in the apartment...

Security sector reform and....babies!

i work with SSR, SSG, parliamentary assistance, civil society and defence etc etc. you would probably think that this is a hard core tough'ish environment with lots of serious meetings, men and women in suits or military outfits, important research and so on, and you would not be completely wrong. though it is also a working place where people burst into laughter all the way into snorting, where jokes are shared, and today, where babies come to visit!!! two babies were here today, the first one, a little boy of almost 2 months and already all 6kg, the second, a one day younger girl of almost 4 kg, who already has been spotted behind the computer, sitting all by herself in her mummy's chair.... so today is more of a baby day than a serious SSR day - just so that you know ;)

autumn anyone?

walking in to work this morning, or actually to be honest, walking from the bus station, it really felt like a beautiful autumn day! The sun was shining, the air was fresh, so fresh and felt so good to breath in, the temperature was just like a day in October.... but it is spring you will tell me... and you're right. how do i know this? well because when i lifted my eyes towards the mountains I saw how much snow they are capped in, hence it is spring, normal. but i still insist: it felt like autumn, that crisp lovely air that I so look forward to in autumn, rather than the cold air that I am just longing to leave behind me at this moment when I am longing for bare legs, my lovely red spring coat, the opening of beautiful flowers (though not the sneezing that comes with it for me, luckily i know how to forget that fact until I don't have the choice anymore), the arrival of warmth, the long evenings (i went rollerblading after work tuesday and only came back at 20.30!!!) and the slow arrival of summer and all that encaptures.

in short, this morning was an autumn day which made me smile when coming in to work!!! and since i'm going south for the weekend (though seeing the mountains this morning i sooooooo wanted to go skiing) to zaragoza and madrid where they promise sunshine and at least 16° for Z and around 20° for M, i can enjoy having a stroll in the autumn weather :)

honestly though, i love all the different periods and am not sure i could live without them!!!

miss you M

Just had a message from my friend M who lives in Zambia. Felt so good to hear from her that i just had to share it here :)) I actually received a mail from her yesterday as well, but the difference this time was that I had just written to her less than an hour before and then got an answer - made it feel like she's a lot more closer than the actual geographical distance. So wish that I could go there to see her!!! It is definitely in my plans, especially since it seems that she will be staying in Zambia for longer than the originally planned one year. But there is the travel cost, and there are regretfully no cheap flights to Lusaka :((( Easy Jet, if you here this - start a flight ;)

This is one of the consequences of living in Geneva, this city so full of remarkable people from all over the world who move back and forth... The advantage is that I now have good friends all around the world - if I ever go to Zambia, to Washington D.C., to Angola, to Oslo, to Sydney, to Brussels, to Belgrade, to Paris, to.... I know that I will be well received and make my friends happy! The disadvantage, especially regarding those living so far away, is that they are far away and it's too expensive to go and visit everyone. Especially since I also have friends and family in Stockholm, and in Slovenia who I also want and need to visit. But i will try to go and see one person after the other. Possibly going to Oslo and then on into the Norwegian mountains in August for the wedding of one of my friends there. And then hopefully to Lusaka sometime in late 2008, early 2009. And probably Paris sometime in between.

For my dear family and friends living elsewhere, either far away or closer by, but not here with me - I miss you all!! But I am happy that you all live good lives in the place of your choice!

ps. since my brother told me that green is not a very easy colour to read and that my blog is difficult to read because of the colour and size choice of my text, I will from now on keep the text in black! hope this facilitates the read :)