Personal, Photography

Barcelona – Day II

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Buildings, buildings, buildings

Today we went sightseeing in Barcelona. First stop was the Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família, an enormous church that has been in construction since 1882 and is expected to last until at least 2026. We never went inside due to the extreme long line youn had to wait in. After that we walked around, ate bad expensive paella and watched buldings for a few hours or so. Getting close to our apartment, we jumped on an overpriced sightseeing bus and took a tour around parts of Barcelona. After almost two hours we were back were we started and decided to walk some  ofe the back streets and alleys near our apartment in old town. We started to get hungry again and had some good and fairly cheap local pan pizza.

By this time we were getting cold (it had rained twice earlier that in the day) so we went back to the hotel for a while to relax and warm up.

After some time we went back out again in a new direction. Walked for a few hours, found a giant cat, had a drink and bought some snacks on the way back. Now we are going to watch a movie: Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man. 😉

Personal, Photography

Barcelona – Day I

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My mom has a nice tradition. Whenever we kids turn 30, she takes us to a destination of our choice in Europe, just the two of us. Since I turned 30 just over a month ago,  it was my turn. I picked Barcelona.

My brother gave us a ride to the airport at 7 in the morning, and checking in went fine. We changed plane in Frankfurt and spent time watching two movies on my Eee: The Heroes of Telemark and The Good Thief. Both were surprisingly good!

After arriving in Barcelona we took the aerobus in to town. instead of taking a taxi to our hotel we decided to walk. Strolling through La Rambla, we  arrived at our apartment around 4 in the afternoon.

Shortly after, we went for a walk, did some minor shopping and had tapas.

Today we will have a general sightseeing day.

Personal, Photography

Iceland – Day V

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Monday morning we got up at around four in the morning, really tired. The first thing we noticed that there were a lot of noise outside.
What the Icelanders do when they party is that they have warm-up parties at home before going out, meaning that the night life doesn’t start in Reykjavik until around midnight (or 02:00 Swedish time) and continues until late the morning after.
We noticed this very much, as our hotel was located at the main street of the city, our room faced that street an there were plenty of clubs and bars around. This meant a lot of thumping bass and shouting people every time you tried to get to sleep, and sometimes still there when you woke up. Good thing we brought earplugs.

We got to the airport allright and the security check was a breeze. Did some taxfree shopping and had some breakfast before boarding the plane. Flight was nothing special but we had to wait for 10 minutes or so before we could get off the plane due to missing ground crew.

When we finally got out in the open it was warm. 15C and no wind compared to 2C and lots of wind makes for a big diffence.

Tomorrow I’ll be going to Spain. 🙂

Personal, Photography

Iceland – Day IV

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On sunday we went to the famous Blue Lagoon, a big spa resort with a great outdoor pool/constructed lake. The water was hot (almost too hot in some places) and milky. Under the water was black sand and all along the “shore” there was white mud that had a really strange consistency to it. There was also a waterfall with hot water and a couple of steam baths and saunas.

From being frozen a great deal of the time we’ve spent in Iceland, the Blue Lagoon was a great contrast. Even though it was a but crouded at the entrance, it was so big that you could simply swim out for a few minutes, and suddenly you were all alone. And due to the thick fog (hot water/cold air) there was not a human in sight for some moments.

Exiting the Blue Lagoon, we saw Dave Growl, singer in Foo Fighters. I didn’t talk to him or even take a photo, trying to respect his privacy. But a part of me regrets it today. 😉

After going back to Reykjavik, we spent some time in the hotel room and then went out to Balthazar Bar & Grill for dinner. Having to get up around 4:00 the next day, we made it a short evening and got back to the hotel fairly early.

Personal, Photography

Iceland – Day III

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Yesterday we spent the entire day in Reykjavik to do some shopping. It is a nice little town with interesting architecture, many restaurants and nice people – but it is not a town where you go shopping. During our stay here, all I have bought is two t-shirts and two comic books (Wolverine:  Weapon X and Zombie Stories: Good Eatin’).

Anyway, yesterday we  walked around for a few hours trying to find something interesting to buy. Failing that, we then took a bus out to Kringlan, the big shopping mall outside the city. A lot of stores but not much of interest to us. After that we met up with my brother and we had some dinner at the Mexican restaurant Santa Maria next to our hotel. A Mexican restaurant where you had to make a special request to get a Mojito, since the waiter didn’t even seemed to know what that was. Anyway, the food was quite good and the prices low (or odyr, as they say here in Iceland). We went on to Kaffi Zimsen, a pub that seemed to have a nice atmosphere, but turned out to have very expensive drinks and a busted-up bathroom. After a while four women that Fredde had been diving with turned up. After chatting with them for a while we went back to the hotel after a quick stop at our favorite pyslur (Icelandic hot dog) place.

Personal, Photography

Iceland – Day II [Updated]

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Just a quick update before going out:

Yesterday wee took the Golder Circle Tour, a guided bus tour to different parts of southern Iceland. First, we went to a geothermal plant to look at how the hot springs brings hot water and electricity to practically all of Iceland.

Next stop was the Gullfoss waterfall. Absolutely stunning! That was probably the most intense nature experience I’ve had, and is strongly recommended if you ever go here.

After that, we went to the geysir area, “where hot springs are in abundance, geysers explode and pools of mud bubble”. Cool experience – got some really nice photos as well.

Last stop was a visit to the Thingvellir National Park, the site of the oldest existing parliament in the world. It is located between two tactonic plates (North American and Eurasian), which has created a huge rift in the ground, still drifting apart with a few centimeters per year.

We got home to the hotel at about 17:00, where we met up with Fredde who had been diving in two degrees cold water (but with at least 60 meters of clear sight!) during the day. We went to a restaurant to have dinner, and did some barhopping after that.

Pictures and further updates will come when I have time, now we will do Reykjavik!

Update: Pictures!

Update 2: Captions!

 

Personal, Photography

Iceland – Day I

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Woot!

We are now in Iceland. The flight went wery well, comfortable seats with good in-flight entertainment (touch sceens in every seat). Hotel is absolutely faboulus with a really fresh room larger than my last apartment, located right in the very center of Reykjavik. We have had a great dinner, good beer, nice Icelandic company and the best hot dog (due to munchies) in ages.
Tomorrow we will go on a tour, seeing waterfalls, geysers and a national park.
Some pictures:

Personal

Moving to Japan!

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Japan!In June me and M will be moving to Tokyo.

I recently got a job offer as a graphic designer at a big (and I mean BIG) telecom company in Japan. Since we hadn’t decided whether or not to go through with this we have decided to not tell anyone until now. Last night we sat down again and came to the mutual agreement to take the job and go through with the move.

The company has arranged an apartment in Shimokitazawa, Setagaya district. It’s an older (but newly renovated) apartment fairly close to the subway. And most important, it has a 100mbit Internet connection. 😉

The salary is good enough to provide for us both, but M should have no problems finding job as an English teacher there either.

Now we have a little over two months to sell of our stuff. Some will be placed in storage at our parent’s places, but most electronics and furniture will have to go.

By the way, is anyone interested in our current apartment, 79 sqm in Helenelund, Sollentuna? Otherwise we will cancel the contract fairly soon.

These are exciting times. 🙂

Update:

As I still get questions about this half a year later, I feel I should explain that this was an April fools joke, originally posted on April 1st.

Still, I wouldn’t mind to actually move there. 😉

Gadgets, Projects

The Typewriter Project – The End

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dsc00238I was working on my typewriter project today and had finally removed all the parts needed so that what I basicaly had was an empty frame.

One of the beams wennt into the area where the motherboard would be located and needed to be removed. This was held in place by a number of pegs. Using a hammer and an awl/center punch, I began tapping the pegs to push them out. As they wouldn’t move, I used a little more force.

And that’s when the frame broke. Both front and back, so it was now completely in two pieces. As it is made out of cast iron, the chances of getting it repaired and still look would cost many times more than I paid for the actual typewriter (which was 80 SEK).

dsc00239

Economically, it’s no biggie. It’s just the time I’ve spent on it that feels a bit sour. It took over 10 hours to get it stripped down to the state it was in before it broke.

To commemorate the moment, I took some pictures of just the screws that I removed from the typewriter when pulling it apart. Note there were more screws than this on the typewriter, including tiny calibration screws for each and every key. These are just the ones I unscrewed.

So now what?

There are a few options. Either I find another typewriter with a more suitable frame. Or I use a NES casing (I have two in storage for such a purpose). Or I build a custom case. Or I find something else to build my computer into.

Let’s see what comes my way.

Personal

What should you do when people you don’t know are crying?

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Two times in two days I’ve seen people I don’t know crying in public.

Yesterday on the subway station on my way to work, a woman in her forties were crying. I wanted to do something, say something comforting but I didn’t know what. I didn’t know if she would have wanted me to.

Just now on the commuter train, on the way back home from a party, a younger woman around 20-25 were sitting on the row across me. Suddenly she got an SMS, and she started crying uncontrollably. As the tears started to flow, she turned away to hide her face, sobbing loudly.  Again, I wanted to do something but didn’t know what. As this was the last train for the night and the train was almost at my station, I felt I didn’t have time to talk to her. As I passed her on the way to the door, I gently stroked her back in a comforting gesture. I don’t know if  it had any meaning for her, but I simply couldn’t just pass her without doing something – especially since she and I were practically alone in the train compartment. Perhaps I should have stayed on the train, trying to talk to her and then grab a cab to get home – to have someone to talk to could be worth so much more than the money I would have spent. Perhaps she just wanted to be alone, whatever message her phone brought her needed solitude to digest.

What should you do in a situation like that? When you have no idea why the person in question is crying and don’t know if they want to talk to a complete stranger in a situation like that. It could be that a friendly hand means the world to them, but it might as well make things worse, putting them in an even more uneasy situation.

I hope both of them will be alright.