Observations of Sweden

Well, we've had quite a few weeks of lovely observations so far...

Including, that they call it summer if it's still over 10 degrees in a week...  Let me well reassure you, that even by their standards - summer is now over, I'm sure we haven't climbed to the dizzying heights of double figures in our temperature for over a week now!

Swedish puppies are all refined, and like - I don't talk to strangers, they travel with their people on trains and wander around in shopping centres without much excitement (so, I guess they've kinda gotta be well behaved!)...

And, Swedish ads are in quite a lot of cases quite frankly funny - sometimes it's because we can't decipher them and they just sound funny, sometimes you don't want to decipher them because the Swedish is more funny than the translation is ever likely to sound...

And then, there's ads like this - designed for a company called Locum, who were wanting to wish people a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year:

Advertisement gone wrong, or disgruntled Marketing employee...?

London for the weekend...

Well, we are just back from London for the weekend...  I have always wanted to be able to say that - I'm just off to London for the weekend!

Of course, living in Oz and being off to London for the weekend would mean you're insane - you'd barely get there and make it back in a weekend, let alone do anything!

From Stockholm, that's a different story - we flew out at stupid o'clock Friday morning (about 3am), got to the hotel, had a nap (we'd been travelling since midnight and it was about 6.30am by the time we got to our hotel), went down to the Leicester Square half price tix box, then did a little bit of shopping.  Then off to the first of 3 shows on the West End for the weekend!

We saw "The woman in black" - oh my goodness, freaky scary play - but so well done.  Then Saturday saw some more (disappointingly unsuccessful shopping), "Avenue Q" matinee show - so so politically incorrect, and yet funny as, and to top it off went last night to "We will rock you" it certainly seemed the right way to see out the weekend!

We were up again at 4am this morning to get ready for our early flight back 'home' to Stockholm...  A whirlwind, but so enjoyable anniversary weekend!

Anniversary

And so, tomorrow is mine and my SO's anniversary...  Which anniversary you ask - why it's our 2nd 1st anniversary!  Crazy and confusing I know, but we have had a bit of a hard slog at times to get where were are (as all couples do) and so we were together for a year or so, not really together for a year or so, and now we've been back together for a year...

This last 12 months has been a real adventure ride - he travelled solo for a month or so, and then we met up in South America.  After a bit of an uneasy re-meeting, our adventure began - our opening chapter had us travel through South America: Colombia - Bogota and Cartagena, Argentina - Buenos Aires, Iguazu Falls and Perito Merino, onto Peru - Cusco, Machu Picchu and Lima, Ecuador - Quito and the Galapagos Islands, and finally Chile - Santiago and Valpariso...

Our next chapter had us set up house together in our home town Melbourne, moving into a city apartment and moving back into 'normal' day-to-day life and beginning to 'settle down' until the next opportunity arose...

Our current chapter has seen us travel through the UK - Nottingham (and surrounds) and London, France - Paris, and Sweden - Stockholm and now back to working together, which is how we started in the first place!  There are some interesting things about working together that has sometimes worked well for us and sometimes not, but I think at the moment the understanding and support that we can give each other is extremely good...

In this last year that I've spent with him, I've learned a lot about myself and done things that I never thought I would or could...  I trekked for 4 days, camping along the way to fulfill a long held dream to walk into Machu Picchu (almost concussing myself and meeting a friendly snake along the way!), I put my fear of heights aside and and went para-sailing over the Sacred Valley in Cusco, I went white water rafting in glacial waters, I've seen more countries and used more currencies, and learned to live in more different places and circumstances than I ever thought possible.  And I have done it all because I've had his support - and while I'm pretty confident that I really could achieve most things I put my mind to, I really don't think I'd have done some of them or coped so well with it all without him.

I am a different, more accepting, more adventurous, outwardly deeper thinking, more aware person because I have him in my life.  I am lucky enough to have had him as a work colleague, a lover, a boyfriend, a casual pal, a travel companion, a partner and most of all a very close friend.  We've not had the smoothest of roads to get to where we are, but I love that place and if getting here means going through all that, then I'm glad we did, and did it together.  I would not trade him or us for the world, and luckily I don't have to.

There are so many reasons I love him, some of which you'll gather from what I've already said - but who else would buy me a bunch of flowers because I was nice to a friend and he thought I deserved something nice in return, make the bed because he knows when I see it (even if he's not there to see me when I do) I'll smile, wake up in the morning and look at me with my bed hair and sleepy eyes - half the time with yesterday's make up smudged under them and smile like there's no place in the world he'd rather be, support and encourage me to be me - even when that means turning our dining table (even in the hotel where we currently live) into a scrapping desk, voluntarily come into the bathroom to wash my hair for me because I'm sick, tired or just because he feels like he hasn't done it for a while and he knows that I like it, those and a million other things that don't come to mind right now and would make this post longer than the war and peace that it already is...

So, this one's for you babe - thank you (seems such an inadequate phrase), I love you, happy 2nd 1st anniversary...  I look forward to many more and all the adventures that will get us to each of them!  *mwah*

Being very brave - Part II

Well, let's just say it was more traumatic than it needed to be - I've heard of people crying when they get home from the hairdressers because they hate their hair...  But really, tears while you're still in the shop??  Ridiculous!

You have to understand - I'm as sick as a dog, along with the head cold, last night saw me literally trying to bark up a lung (I may also be pre-menstrual - possibly not the best time for a hair cut!) and I have had this long straggly hair for so long, because I frankly couldn't decide what to do with it, thinking I'd done so well researching magazines and internet sites until I found what I wanted...

I went in there with 3 different pictures of the hair - from different angles and stuff (it's one of Kelly Clarkson's old styles - so not too hard to find pics of the chick!) I thought I was odds on to get what I wanted - I'd actually decided what that was, and had photographic evidence!

So, we got to what should have been near to the end - 3 and a quarter hours in, when the 12 year old who was doing my hair cut a fringe into it...  Now, my hair was as long as it had ever been since I was in high school - all my adult life I've had short hair, but not for a lot of years have I had a fringe...  I had been sitting there biting my tongue because the colour, which the owner lady of the shop had said wouldn't look so nice so dark in my hair so she thought a lighter colour would be better - was NOTHING like what I had shown them.  Not only was it nothing like the photo, but I had specifically said to the 12 yo and the owner lady that I wanted the gold (blonde) colour out of my hair...  I have had issues with this since South America, where they quite frankly don't understand that once your hair gets to yellow - that is NOT blonde!!  Anyway, I digress...

12 yo sees the shock in my face, or reads the tension in my body, or something and asks how does that feel - I say SHORT, 12 yo: oh short?  Me - yes, I haven't had a fringe for a very long time and the hair style in the photo doesn't have one either...  Cue owner lady who has a chat with me about the things that I'm unhappy with, and reassures me that they will make sure that I'm comfortable with it before I leave - they'll put more darker bits in (so you can actually see them without a magnifying glass) and they'll try more to tone down the gold that appears to still all be there...  And yes, of course they can blend in the bits of hair 12 yo has cut short with the still straggly long piece at the back...  There were tears, they were frustration tears - from feeling so crappy and sick, from having such fine hair that nothing really ever works the way you think it might, from my head (which was already mighty sore) being pushed and pulled and yanked around for over 3 hours. I wasn't really happy to have to spend another 3 hours of my Saturday in the hairdressers...

Anyway owner lady explained (about 10 times) step by step what they were going to do, and what we'd expect each step to achieve toward my hair goal...  Which now she tells me is unrealistic because I don't have that much hair, and that it's not going to look like now because it's still wet and not styled etc like the chick in the picture, I'm not sure that she understood that even in the state I was in I wasn't buying you can't have that hair, well maybe once it's styled you can...

She did manage to calm me down though, I decided I would reserve judgement until they got through the second process before running screaming from the shop - well, I couldn't really leave at the time I had half a hair cut and a ghastly colour!!  After owner lady sorted out the colour and went back to the poor girl she was supposed to be working on 12 yo came to apologise and then went on to rinse, finish cutting and blow dry my hair - mostly successfully...  That is about from still pulling on my hair from the roots, clocking me in the head with the blow dryer 6 times and waaayyyyy overdoing the product (I think she was still feeling bad)...  Owner lady also gave me a bag of goodies to go with my new hair style...

All in all, it was certainly not the way I wanted to spend a Saturday I'm feeling particularly crappy (especially the one where scrapbooking goodies have arrived and I wanted to play with them) but the result is quite good...

I will get pics up, as soon as my head stops pounding so much - right now, time for some panadol and to see if I can sort out some photos so I'll have something to scrap with...

Being very brave

Well, today I'm about to be brave again and entrust my hair to someone I don't know and don't share a first language with...

I did it at New Year's - found a hairdresser in Cusco, Peru and entrusted my hair to her with my very basic Spanish...  Now, I have to do it again but in in Stockholm, Sweden - without a word (well, other than your basic hi, bye, thank you type words) of the language!  I think that's brave...

I have this horrible lanky blonde mop at the moment - courtesy of months of travelling in the last year, where it's always just easier to stick it up (and not being near my trusty hairdresser!) and the fact that my SO likes long hair.  I keep trying to get the message across that my hair is never going to be this beautiful long thick mane that he admires on other women - my hair is fine, and mostly straight and really needs work to get it to look decent (of course after all this time of neglect, even a lot of work has stopped making it look decent!).

And so, with (for a change) a very firm idea (and multiple photos) of what I'd like my hair to resemble when I leave the place, and my big girl panties on - I'm off, to brave the hairdresser and hope like heck I get something decent - preferably resembling in some way the idea I have in mind!  Wish me luck!