So far, so iffy.

Big-E is going to help me out to get my CPR and first aid certificate for my RD (Rescue Diver) course, so that'll save me some money and time. Also, if I'm lucky, I'll learn to use a defibrillator! How cool isn't that?! Hopefully I'll never have to use one in a real life scenario, but just being able to say "I can use that!" is pretty cool in it's own right. And then the basic CPR too. I remember a bit from the army, but I forgot about how long you should be doing it for. The rest is simple (I got a lot of training during the scouts and army) so I'm pretty confident about that.

Herk told me that she'll hook me up with a good first aid kit for my trip too, which is a relief too. One less thing to worry about.

But now I'm having some minor problems, what to buy? :-S

I was out looking for backpacks the other day, and I saw two more that had a lot of potential, but they were that much more expensive. No surprise there. And the biggest worry of them all is the tent: will it hold, what if it breaks during the night, what if...you know what I'm talking about.

I'm currently looking at two tents: The North Face Particle 13 and Hilleberg Unna. With a price tag of 2800 SEK and 4500 SEK respectively, the Hilleberg is definitely the more expensive, but the more secure bet. So that's why I'm looking for some outside sponsorship (read: birthday money; I turn 24 October 27th). It seems like The North Face is a bit bigger, which makes it seem a bit more lucrative than the Hilleberg, and it's cheaper. But I'm a sucker for paying for good quality. Then again, I know for a fact that just because it's cheap, doesn't mean it's bad quality (and vice-versa). If you're thinking something along the lines of, "Just look for reviews on both tents, it's called Google Chris, heeeelloooo!" Well, I have. The Unna is reviewed as being a gift from the Gods, and I've only read one review on the Particle 13, which was in Italian, and then translated by Google, which was like reading a book report by an ESL (English as a Second Language) student. So, it didn't really help all that much.

I'm also worried about my curse. Some of you may or may not know of this curse, but when ever I spend more than 1000 SEK on anything new, it tends to be broken or another problem straight out the box. Some people say coincidence, I say curse. Check it out: broken display on my Canon A530 camera (fixed), broken pixel on iPod (fixed), graphics card missing blue gamma (fixed), PSU and motherboard not compatible (fixed), Nokia phone keypad came off after about a month (fixed), went through 3 boards in my paintball gun until it started working properly, LCD display had a broken pixel (not fixed, no pixel guarantee), and finally my Nikon D40, it had a hot pixel (Nikon is waiting for their reference housing, so that'll be fixed in a couple of weeks). All of this occurred within the time frame of approximately 2 years. How lame isn't that, eh? But they've all been fixed (except for the D40 and my LCD), so yeah, it's bearable, but I do have some problems buying electronics (as you may of have noticed, all of the articles where electronic) over 1000 SEK either which way.

Aight, gonna go back to work now.

*B-L-A-M-O*