I'll never understand.

I just read this from a link my friend had posted on his Facebook page.

Pretty cool, but one thing that I find absolutley retarded is in the first paragraph of the article.

"Enligt Ipredlagen kan operatörer bli tvungna att lämna ut användaruppgifter i syfte att spåra illegal fildelning." I totally remember being taught that illegal is a Svensk ord. And that the word ölagligt is just some random word I just made up and pülled out my ass.

I seriously hate it when people do this. Especially people who have been travelling for a mere 2-3 months, they actually forget words of their mother tongue. A language which they have been speaking for over 15 years and then you forget the most simple words.

R*E*T*A*R*D*E*D

A -> B ->F? OMG, WTF BBQ?!

I was browsing the Couch Surfing forum and read about this place where you can build a bike and walk (or bike) without paying a cent. For me, that's awesome! I look on the map, and well, let's say it's not exactly in the safest part of the city. Well, it borders with it at least, which got me doulbe thinking about how much I wanted my life over a cheap as chips bike. As the clock was ticking by, I got more and more restless, contemplating how bored I've been over the past few days. And so, I stopped my arguing with myself and went against my gut instinct. I walked over there, and biked out after about 3 hours work on a bike that was pretty much intact, but not in the condition I wanted it in. So, ended up taking off all of the shifting gear, fixing the handle bars, shortening the chain, cleaning and regreased the bottom bracket.

Now, I didn't get everything done to it I wanted (switch handle bars, brakes, getting the right gears). So what did I end up with? An awesome single speed bike that is more or less a death trap until I get it all fixed up to its greater potential glory.

Photos coming soon.

The Bitches...I mean Beaches!

The title of this entry doesn't relate to anything particular which I'm going to write about, I just thought it would make an interesting title. Anywho!

Both today and yesterday I went snorkeling in the local bay, which was really nice. It was an astounding 21 degrees Celcius in the water and clear skies, so there was actually some stuff to see. However, the bar is still being held by Tutukaka due to the wild life and how you can interact with it. In this bay there's not really a whole lot to see, but it just feels great being back in the water and doing some easy free-diving. At first I was pretty nervous of being out there due to sharks, but yeah, can't let that ruin my day now can I. And so far there's always been people there, so I don't feel as...insecure should I say, if something were to happen to me (sadly the life guard doesn't patrol the area, but meh, whatever). I'm going to have to explore the other side of the bay too, but there's heaps of fisherman there, so it's not as tempting as the one I've been going to, for obvious reasons of me not wanting to be caught on someones hook.

And I've also secured my job at Ericsson for the summer, sweetness, I just have to book my ticket now and get a freakin' job over here. I hate this fucking economic crisis. It's so BS. Stoopids yanks.

Anyway, went to a pretty cool party last night where I had quite a lot of fun considering that I didn't drink anything. Instead I drank two RockStar Energy drinks and boy, they hit me bad, REAL bad. I was up all freaking night! Hey, they did the job, but I didn't expect them to do that good of a job. Met heaps of people there, more longer termers to here in Sydney which is always a good thing, sadly not too many Ozzies. Something which is a bit bothersome, but nothing I'm going to get worked up about. What are you going to do, eh? To be a Sydnian is more a state of mind that actual...ethnicity I guess you could say. Sydney is a very diverse city, without a doubt, and you hear Ozzies talking around you in the ambiant noise, but you never actually meet them.

So guys, that's all I have to say for now, talk to you later, eh?

Three...Two...One - ACTION!!!

Here it is guys, the documentary that I was talking about! I think it's pretty well done. Some small flaws (like how they spelt my name).

So, what else is new? The pizza gig still is in the grey area. I don't know where I'm standing in it, which is weird since I worked both yesterday and today. Also going to make an appearance tomorrow for a few hours, and then we'll see what happens after that. I'll have to ask my boss and see if they want me. I must say I find it some what fun. But I also found driving a forklift fun - for the first week. After that...yeah, I'll try and stay positive in this blog. Anyway, at this point in time I just need money to start flowing in. I have been offered a good job working for my flatmate the second he opens his retail store, which should be soon. But as some of you guys can guess, it's not as easy as we (mainly me) were hoping for. So, if I score this job that would be just awesome. In all possible respects.

Besides that, there's not a whole going on. I just need to keep a float until I can get a solid job, which is proving harder than expected.

Oh, I just finished reading The Beach, and I highly recommend it! The movie completely screwed it up (just like other novel to movie translations), and now I've started reading Nineteen Eighty Four, which is a very promising book, if not pretty morbid in my opinion. A very violent society where children want to go and watch hangings, and at the start of the Ministries day, there's the Two Minutes of Hate. Really screwed up. Looking forward to the read.

Anyway, talk to you later!

blah blah

From Oz - Sydney Return

New photos

Oz - I love Terrible Tate

Links

For US tax laws and kidnappings, click here. (brought to my attention by Ruffus)

For my amazing 3 on 1, click here. (you can't see me until the end, but you can hear me...swearing)

To play Where's Chris in The Video click here.


The Simpsonzu by *spacecoyote on deviantART
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Tomorrow I'm going to an outdoor festival - in the rain. Should be fun.

And on Thursday I went to probably one of the coolest venues EVER! Carriage Works which is an old railway work station. They built, repaired, and prepaired old railway carriages there. They had it rebuild to what it is today about 2 years ago and all I can say is - wow. It's in one of the most dangerous suburbs in Sydney (the person I was with and I believe we saw some suspicous activity, but nothing is for sure. Most likely just the local crazies.) They use this place for Australia's Can You Dance competion and also art expo. And there was this one exhibit which was truly beyond me in every possible way. Seriously. I lose hope in art when I see that kind of stuff. Random brass objects welded together. How much crack do have to smoke to come up with this crap. I just don't get it.

Speaking of art though, went to a photography expo the other day and it was really cool! Saw so many amazing photos it was just rediculous. Inspired? Hmm...yes and no. I really fell in love with real-life shots (ie, not staged). Capturing that one moment in time that inspires others and brings out emotions is really amazing. It basically involves living with your camera next to you and just taking heaps of photos.

Hmm...phood for thought.

Unreal

This Sunday, more unreal events happened in my life. Ok, unreal is probably the wrong word since it's happened a few times to me during the trip so far. Can't think of a word to describe it, so I'll just tell you what happened.

I met up with some old family friends of mine, and when I say old, I don't use it very loosely in this case. I've "known" these people since my time in England, which is just about a life time ago. Whom am I refering to you ask? The Timmings family.

As per usual with the previous encounters, this would not of happened if Facebook hadn't been invented. I got in touch with two of the daughters when I was back in Sweden and I was going to be heading over to New Zealand. And I held some loose form of contact while I was in NZ, but then I gave them the heads up when I came to Australia. We were meant to catch up when I first landed in Sydney, but we never had the time due to our schedules were clashing. However, since I don't have a schedule at the moment, I had all the time in the world to adjust to theirs.

After some texting, one of the sisters and I decided to meet at North Strathfield where we would then head up north to meet up with everybody else. Upon seeing her, there was no crazy feeling. Why? I guess cause I saw photos of her on Facebook, texted with her, and even talked to her on the phone, so it was more of a "why wouldn't I see you again" kind of moments. Random. After 2hours driving north, we arrived to her parents house on the Central Coast, and of the two parents I met first was the father. Now that was a surreal experience. I had this image of him in my head, a image from when I was probably 9 years old, a image from my time in the States. The man in front of me was a ghost of that image. You could see all the familiarities in the face, but you could tell that it had been a very long time since we last saw one another. I was no longer looking up at him, I was now looking eye-to-eye with him; I no longer saw a man of who I had small recollection of, I now saw a man from my past in the flesh (who would later share embarressing stories of me). The face was an old face, not the same one that I remember. His clothes were hanging off him, he didn't have the same strength that I remembered. He truely reminded me of my grandfather in a lot of ways. Very interesting experience.

When I met the mother on the other hand, nothing had changed. Same energetic woman, full of life. And with her, this time she had to look up if she wanted to say something. All of the girls in the family are a lot shorter than I remembered, but this is years ago since I last saw them.

We end up having an excellent dinner with snapper, prawns, squid, mushrooms, and salad. Old stories were told around the table, what everybody has been up to, and just having a very nice evening. Everyone there who knew me from before told me that I was the trouble maker and my brother was the sweet one. I beg to differ on this matter - no, wait, there's a lot of truth to it now. Hopefully I showed them that I've changed a bit since then...I think I did....hmmm....

All in all it was a very good evening meeting and catching up with some old friends. Here's a group photo of us...good times.

From Oz - Sydney Return

PS. Since there isn't all to much happening in my life, my blogging activity will decrease significantly.

Boredom

From Oz - AXL Round 1

Trailer

Here's a trailer for a documentary that I might be in.

I'm in the trailer, I'm the guy in the start, and I'm wearing a black and white mask and black t-shirt. And bald head.

Out and About

The weekend which has just passed was an awesome one, in several different ways.

Let's start off with where I went and what I did there: I drove down to Moama with Manny to play a 3 man paintball tournament in the Open Division (which means and sort of skill can be playing in it).

The drive took us first 8 hours, but it's actually a 10 hour drive...I'm sure you can figure out how we did that one. It wasn't me driving though.

The drive there was a very boring one, ie. not a whole lot of scenery. But upon arrival I was thrown into the cabin we were staying in, because it was booked out for 3 people, and not 4. Free accomodation is always best :D Eat some crappy pizza and then go back and just hang out in the cabin getting to know the two unknown players who I was going to be playing with during the weekend. Both of them are from Adelaide, South Australia, and both really cool dudes. The younger of the two has only been playing for 6 months and reminded me of myself a bit when you got into the sport. It was all about looking hot and having matching everything. The only thing I want now is a gun that works and clothes that will handle my thrashing and help me with bounce balls. Simple. Anyway, we go to bed since we didn't really know what time zone we were in and we had to wake up early no matter which time zone your in. That's paintball for you.

Wake up early as hell and make our way over to the field having only munch down a museli bar and a cup of tea. Get to the field and start harrassing people there to borrow some tools to do some maintance on one of our guns that was royally f-ed up. We get settled in and wait for the game schedule to be released with much anticipation. The tournament was very interesting, because there was no real pre-organization as to how many teams were going to show up and in which division. The waiting game began - shortly afterwards, the games did too.

We thought we played adequetly, but in actuality, we were number in the preliminaries. Which came as a big shock to all of us. When the semi-finals came around, that's when the real games began. We played the team that came 4th in the prelims which was Melbourne Mayhem. It was a best out of three format, and we lost the first point. 2nd point around we beat them and then it was the game point which made things interesting. Very interesting. All of us only had our hoppers filled with balls, and not even completely filled at that too. So our tactic was just to dig ourselves in and let them come to us, because we thought they had heaps more paint than what we did so they would play a bit more aggressively. After getting G1 (first kill), it was a 3 on 2 in our favour, but they locked themselves up pretty tight. Manny asks what we should do and no body had any ideas. Our front center player moves up the field and gets G2, Manny then screams "G2! LET'S HURT THEM!!!" Which means we would shoot the shit out of the last guy. We win the semi-finals and are now fighting for 1st or 2nd.

First point in the finals we won, and then lost the 2nd one. Game point. It's all going pretty good, we get G1 and lose one of our players, so it's now a 2 on 2. It's only Manny and I on the field. Manny then gets shot out, so now it's a 2 on 1. It's pretty stressfull now. I whip out all of my skill and game and successfully shoot them both out. I ruled - or so I thought. I went and grabbed the flag and hung on the base. I'm on the top of the world, I'm being checked by the refs and feeling f-ing awesome. All of a sudden some body removes the world from under my feet and I fall into oblivion. I had an "obvious hit" underneath my tank which then made it a 2-4-1 and a reverse point. We came 2nd.

I've never had such a big let down in my entire life. I just wanted to pack up my gear and go home. It was a real drag. Sure you can say better than not being in the finals at all. But when a player of any skill level pulls off a 2 on 1, you fell like a real bad ass. And it was all taken away from me. It was a fair call, can't deny them that. Bah...

Anyway, we got 150 AUD in prize money, and a trophey. Nothing too special.

On our way home Manny was telling me how great a player I was during the whole tournament, and that I was probably the best of the 4 of us on that day. Also, an even better compliment was that if he's sees me in a 2 on 1, he doesn't usually worry too much about it. That one really touched me.

On our way back, we had a massive D'n M (deep and meaninful) chat about heaps of stuff ranging from X-Fighters to his business to our futures and what not. We left Moama around 17.00 and got back around 02.15, a long drive back home, but a good one nontheless.

In conclusion, the weekend was really awesome. Made some more paintball friends in South Australia, who actually want to kick one of theirs players to make room for me! Freaking awesome! But need to get some cash flow going before I can commit, and they can't kick the guy until next season. We'll see what happens.

See'ya later.