A vision of the future

Me, this weekend:



Well, maybe not. But I'll be in the same geographical location, and sliding down a nearby hill using a similar method of long flat things strapped to the feet.

Suffer in ya jocks, Sydney Central Business District.

Yeah, the man is Ricky Martin, he's from Portugal, and the song is called Living La Vida Loca!


p.s. here's some Swedish I just learnt: Jag har ett nytt rum, barn, inre färgen är röd!
It means: I've got a new apartment, baby, the interior colour is red!

Irish pool party supplies??

A shop I spotted in Göteborg:



Fish out of water?

None!


According to this article, back in 2004, when we randomly met Tim Freedman in a bar in Nueva York (okay, perhaps not so randomly - it was an Australian themed bar) he was there to take a rest and try to get off the grog.

Dunno if he really chose the best location for that... New York, the spiritual home of Knob Creek bourbon and Mount Gay rum, and more specifically, the bar was Eight Mile Creek, famous for being the establishment Russel Crowe was drinking at before he threw a phone at a guy's head.


This is a cool idea. Hope it comes out before the next reef trip.

Glad Påsk, Göteborg

Update: hah, read this,

"Bloggers and internet pundits are exerting a 'disproportionately large influence' on society... they are increasingly dominating public conversations and creating business trends."

Suspected as much...

For the Easter weekend I with a gal from Svenska class took the train (all flights full) down to Göteborg, aka Gothenberg, aka Sweden's second biggest city, aka home of an authentic dug-up Viking boat in a museum which confirmed all my assumptions about Viking culture (most of their myths and sagas centre on drinking large quantities and then burning stuff).

The train trip was twelve hours, and I had a bunk aka liggplats to sleep on. Lying on my back feeling the weaving turns and rattle of the wheels on tracks I had a strange sensation that I am making significant forward progress just lying here doing nothing. I found that feeling very appealing, and am now in favour of more train travel in the future... maybe from Spain to Austria?

Göteborg is a very nice city, weather was warm and sunny (warm means +8 or 9). Here is a photo:



We took a ferry out to the archipelago, and had a look around one of the little fishing village islands there,




where everyone rides around on little tricycle mopeds, dog or wife or kids on a little platform on the front:



Back in Göteborg, the museum of world culture is very interesting and I learned many things, for instance: there is a club in Nairobi called "ZanziBar". Here's some friendly fellas from Venezuela:



This is Sweden 100%, graffiti on a tree saying "think of the homeless".



Oddly enough, they have an aquarium with a single lonely solitary Grey Nurse (and a few black-tip reefs) I was just itching to jump in and play with him... I bet he'd have no qualms about wearing a viking helmet!

After the snow comes...

A street near my apartment, spending some time as a river for tax purposes.

Weather here has been quite shit lately. Snow, whilst good for skiing, seems to undergo an amazing transformation, not unlike bananaman, except rather than consumption of bananas, the trigger appears to be the rising of the ambient temperature above a particular value, which I propose we refer to as "zero degrees celsius", at which point snow-covered townships become semi-submerged snork villages.


Investigations are continuing into holiday plans: Luckily enough, there are cheap ($60) direct flights from Göteborg to Dublin, so the Southern Sweden and Snuggles with Lil B plans sit very nicely together. Jess will be there by then, so it'll be a 3/5-scale re-enactment of Nueva York, minus Neptunes. There will be some consumption of alcohol with Pete H. in England, before he gets married (dropping like flies, I tells ya).

Then, continuing on a theme I've been developing of going places where I can get free accommodation, I am hatching (well, not really hatching yet, let's say nurturing with yolk) plans to hit up Robbo and Sabine in Innsbruck, and maybe do some walking in the nearby alps.

Here's a piccy of Innsbruck I found on the web, looks nice enough:

And here's a photo of Robbo taken by Mat on last year's reef trip. Notice B-Roq's framed photo of Hanson in the background.

Robbo's a dood, and Sabine is lovely.

Spain may also be graced with my presence. Depends on what they offer me. I think next summer I'll hit Svalbard. Then maybe Africa.

I should mention that these decisions are completely independent of the planned St Petersberg/Baltic trip mentioned earlier, which will happen, though I know not for sure when.

In other news, I keep forgetting to book time in the laundry room, and my socks are really getting Venga, so what did I do? Just went out and bought new socks! Lifestyles of the rich and famous. You can read about it, but I live it. Will my reckless spending eventually catch up with me? Not if I break its legs!

Reprazent

A girl from the swedish floopy monkey-bone fox-trot party sent me this image of me reprazenting my aussie background for the Swedes. Yeah, I'm still I-Rock from the block.

Unfortunately, her camera had an angle of view pitifully inadequate for the task, as I remember there being far more than four cans in the tower. Like going to the great pyramids of Egypt with a microscope and expecting to capture the majesty, not gonna happen sista.

Now, what is happening in the lower-right corner? Looks like someone is being tackled, but it could be a dance move. There's definitely a wayward elbow involved.

Next question: Where should I go for the summer? a.k.a. July, as these crazy northerners know it. Will probably take a couple of weeks off somewhere. Yeah, bout time I had another holiday, Swedes get 7 weeks of holidays a year!

Succumbing to fashion, as I so often do, I've created a poll in the right sidebar thingy--->
The options are:

• Ireland and Leeds for jubbliness with LB and Pete. This will almost certainly happen whatever the case , and would incorporate travel via London for my homies there.
• Spain for the running of the bulls. Was communicating with Tori D vis a vis this option before I left oz, but have not heard much in recent times.
  
• Southern Sweden (Stockholm, Göteborg) with a Swedish chick from the ski trip. Travelling almost anywhere requires going via Stockholm anyway, so this could easily fit in with other plans.
• Austrian Alps to visit Robbo and Sabine, plus general sightseeing in Alpy regions. There was also communication about this a while ago, but lines have been dead lately.
• Northern Norway and Svalbard. In Svalbard, you need to carry a rifle everywhere because there are so many polar bears. Cool! 'Twould be expensive, but I will definitely go there some time. Maybe next year though. Could prolly wrangle free accommodation in Trondheim and Tromsø.
  
• Somewhere else entirely?
  

Opinions welcome from people who've been to any of the above places, or who are just generally opinionated.

Star stuck on the uppety up, chicks cluckety cluck

If there's anything funnier than the swedish floopy floopy language, it's the swedish drunken monkey dancing.

Oh man. I had a pain in my tummy from all the laughing. They dance like the Wiggles. If the Wiggles did a song and dance about a monkey riding a pogo stick, that would be the trendy Swedish dancing style.

Also, speaking of monkeys and Swedes, Swedes call the tail bone the "monkey bone". Why? Who knows. Send your suggestions with a self-addressed stamped envelope to "Totally Wild", P.O. Box PP-51-Doo-doo, Queensland 4001, or click on the link below to post a comment.