Hitta din vinkel med Canon...

Jag vill verkligen vinna en Canon PowerShot G12! Jag hoppas att vinklarna jag hittade håller måttet...in the mean time håller jag tummarna! Min kortfilm heter 'You, me & Valerie: La colocation' (vilket betyder typ...att bo tillsammans) och handlar om mig och min roomy, vårt vardagsliv och vårt ovardagliga liv...Har finns tavlingen.

Le temps court, plutôt...

Time is just running away. It's not that I need it to slow down or change direction, I'm just surprised at its stamina of late. I'm not a friend of numbers so I'm not going to start counting how many weeks we've been in Lyon, but I do know that we've paid two months' rent so far, which seems absolutely absurd seeing as we don't even have a vacuum cleaner yet, and I still get lost around campus. (Seriously though, there is something shady about the architecture of that place. Every single time I come at a door or a corridor from a new angle or direction I get confused and lose it.)

I feel blessed to already have met a lot of warmhearted people here. It helps me miss my homegirls, homeboys and inamorato less - although these are all of course tremendously irreplaceable. Missing your loved ones gives me such an achy breaky heart, it's such an inescapable feeling, and can be so overwhelming. Recent events, and their accompanying reflections, have caused a (however small and perhaps wholly mental) shift in me...from having been perhaps overly confident of my independence, and narrowmindedly driven by my own goals and dreams and ideas, I've started to realize how much it matters to me to be more than emotionally close to those that are close to my heart.

The day we had to be ashamed of being Swedish

The Swedish general elections on Sunday left us very shocked, with tears in our eyes and lumps in our guts. Despite the European trends, despite the financial crisis and the ignorant need for scapegoats, having a extreme right party voted into government, was, for me and for most others, very unexpected. It's so incredibly shameful and hurtful that a significant amount of people from my country has cast a vote for a backward thinking, hostile, ignorant and ludicrous party.

Mentally exhausted from having gone over and over how this could have happened, and how to deal with the situation, one thing strikes me. Listening to Akesson speak, I find him not only rhetorically challenged, I am equally astonished by how he manages to get away with being wrong most of the time. His successful misleading of people - quoting distorted statistics, drawing false conclusions based on incorrect assumptions -  can be done because his party has been partly stigmatized and treated as the undemocratic party they are. The reluctance to approach the Sweden Democrats is 100% understandable, but I can't help to think it's very dangerous because it gives them the opportunity to present themselves as martyrs. A politics of discontent works for people who are angry with their situation, who don't sympathize with the other parties, who hear the latter criticize the Sweden Democrats.

Now when they are in government, giving them the silent treatment isn't democratic, isn't really possible, and I am not convinced it is the best strategy. Surely, when so many of us are convinced their politics is bullshit, exposure is what is most dangerous to them?

Yesterday Maja and I spent a sunny afternoon sitting by the riverbank, and some guys who were sitting a few metres away started chatting to us. Having spotted the hair colour they asked if we were Swedish, and when we confirmed they retorted: 'the country of the extreme right'. Having had a good reputation abroad, it inevitably and unsurprisingly seems we're going to be met by less positive responses from now on...

How we just talk out of our asses all the time

One of the biggest mysteries my mind has tried to crack since I got out of the stroller and into school is the question of whether everyone else is really as smart as they appear to be. I am still waiting for that day when everyone just admits that they don't really understand what an isotope is either, and that they're don't quite sure how stock market exchanges work. I spent my first year at uni secretly terrified that someone would find out I wasn't smart, and learnt to hide my secret by talking out of my ass all the time. And then it hit me. What if that's what everyone does? Maybe everyone else just seems informed about every angle of everything, but really they're just taking making an educated guess, wrapping it in beautiful and long words, and sound believable. Few people I know hesitate and say that they don't know or aren't sure, most people just talk out of their ass.

I was told in middle school by my home room teacher that I was too modest about what I knew and was capable of, and wonder sometimes if I still underestimate myself a little bit. My reality, though, is that I am quite convinced of the opposite: I definitely overestimate my own abilities. Whether we're talking driving, applying for jobs or playing sports, deep inside I actually think I'm a little bit better than I am.

Now a quick word on opinions, seeing as election day is approaching and I've had to cast my vote two weeks in advance. I've never not had opinions (to no one's surprise), but I've generally always showed a great deal of respect for the opinions of people I find generally intelligent and thought-through. It's not because I am not confident in my opinions, it's rather that I have quite a strong belief in other people and realize that they - just as I and those that think like me - have reflected, and gone over, and concluded. I thus find it perplexing to reconcile the two ideas: opinions that I don't agree with, with intelligent and likeable people that I respect. It's a lot easier for the mind if bad people disagree with you, and good people think what you think.

On the other hand, it is incredibly valuable to exchange opinions and viewpoints; it's really a win-win situation. If you end up changing your opinions, having been enlightened, then you've won. If you end up having refuted the opposing opinions with even more vigor than before, then you've reinforced your beliefs, put your ideas to the test, and you've won. I've spent the last few weeks surrounded mostly by very wise people, and that's pretty much what I've learnt.

If I ruled the world...

...there wouldn't be dough in my hair when I left work...
...clothes would fold themselves...
...I would be allowed to play dancehall at work...
...it would be forbidden to make pretty deceptive heels that hurt after an hour...
...alarms would ring when you've set them...
...it would be so easy to find accommodation in Lyon you wouldn't have to even give it a second thought...
...parents would inform you when they make plans that involve you or your time...
...haircuts would be reversible...
...travel by Floo powder would work outside the realm of Harry's world...
...no one would sweat, especially short people who use public transportation and need to reach far to be able to hold on...
... no one would call it princessy behaviour to not like eating cardboard bread...
...TV would only show Americas Next Top Model, Sex and the City, Modern Family and Friends...(no one would have ever thought of producing the show 24, or of giving birth to Keifer Sutherland...)
...Jason Derulo would actually be able to sing falsetto...


Yeah, those are just a few things I'm working on.

(Excuse my French, but I had to write it backwards...)

Questions I would ask potential flatmates

It isn't easy finding the perfect flatmate, especially if you are venturing to live with someone you don't already know. But it isn't rocket science either. Despite being an outrageously patient, uncompromisingly compromising and pedantically tidy young lady I have had some interesting experiences in flat sharing and so have thought about how I would interview a person willing to move in with me. I would ask the following questions (with the following intentions).

• Do you generally close kitchen cupboard doors? (Because I tend not to and it annoys some people.)
• What is your favorite cheese? (Because chevre really isn't that good a steal to go with the end of the month pasta.)
• Do you know where bathroom fluff comes from? (Because I don't.)
• Do you like brussel sprouts? (Because I really do and I want them to myself.)
• Do you tend to be aware of how much shampoo there is left in the bottle? (Because I wash my hair a lot and sometimes you just run out, man.)
• Do you think having a cleaning schedule is the best idea in the world? (Because then we really aren't compatible.)
• Do you post little notes on my door even to say unimportant things? (Because that's my favourite form of communication.)
• Are you sensitive in the morning? (Because I've been told I can be scary in the morning...I assumed then it referred to my mood and behavior but realize now it could have been referring to the state of my face at this charming time of the day.)
• Do you knock again if a person doesn't open the door the first time? (Because I hear knocks, that's not it.)
• Do you know how to build IKEA furniture? (Because I'm not a real Swede.)
• Do you enjoy it when other people share their music with you through walls, floors and doors? (Because I'm quite one-way on that one.

 What a bunch of angels.

Where milk isn't really milk

My boyfriend told me to buy cereal because I've been bad at breakfast lately, and even though I said they have weird milk here I went ahead and did it. Erroooor.

First of all, having milk at all is a huge step for me. When I was young my parents tried to bribe me into drinking milk and because I since the age of zero have had an aptitude for feeding my consumerism, I should have been an easy target. I could never do it, I used to say it tastes and smells like liquid chalk. Today I'm not quite sure what that means. Anyway. During a moment of bravery a few months ago I reasoned with myself and figured that if the milk gets to hang around in the bowl with chocolate cereal willing to let go of their colour (an MJ joke would be so good here but what I really mean is RIP), maybe we could work something out. And so I found myself eating cereal with brown milk, all was frid and frojd.

The milk I bought today from the Belgian supermarket looked fine. It was white, came in a plastic bottle with a blew screw cap, nothing mysterious there. When I opened it, my nose that is innately and necessarily skeptical to all things dairy reacted immediately. It really must be a bad sign when milk smells like cheese. Only cheese should smell like cheese. I wasn't comforted by reading that its expiry date is in September.

So now I'm stuck with a shiteload of cereal that I can't eat and will most likely continue to be sleeping past breakfast.