All year I dream about it

And when it's here I never want it to end. I love summer, warm weather, sunshine, being outdoors.

We chose our house because of the garden, we felt like it had so much possibility. A roofed deck, a lot of planting space, a lawn, another deck! Space to have bbq's, space to hang out with friends, long summer evenings looking out over the Sheffield hills... but unfortunately a representative from the council came by and looked at the decking and told us it's too rotten to even stand on. It needs to be switched before we can walk or sit or stand on it.

And our landlord doesn't feel like it. So now we have a lawn and a shitload of woodlouse. And our garden is nothing but a reminder of disappointment. A symbol of how much goes wrong with this house. And when it gets colder those woodlouse are going to start finding their way indoors again.

home, boys, home

So in twenty minutes - at eleven - I leave work and take a cab to the airport, where I will be flying home to Sweden! Woop!

Also I'm in love. In love with a house.

Saint Elsewhere

So yeah, anyways, I don’t know if I’m lost or free, or maybe both. Gone maybe. Gone and lost forever.

A twister came along and took me away from my old life, there’s no place like home? What is home? Me and the french guys found a simple and beautiful truth; home is where the mother is. But mine is moving away. If home is where the heart is my home has to be right here, because a little bit of my heart I still have, and spread all around the world as well, with all the people I love, and all the places. This sounds true. But can home be somewhere where you've never been? Or somewhere where you don't know anyone?

My house doesn't feel like a home. Cork isn't my home. And I don't think it will be. But I call it home. Will that make it home?

Home. Safety. I prefer freedom over safety, over control, over anything else in the world.

Exept maybe love, but I don't know for sure.

Is anything as lovely to me
as the truth in love?
I'll take it over freedom
any day
-David Eugene Edwards

I don't know much at all. There is one truth, one that I know and believe, and that is that control is a trap. Control is a good way of fooling yourself, nothing else. You cannot truly control anything at all.

Beauty and creativity and love can only come from chaos, never from control. Freedom lies in chaos, captivity in control and safety. Of everything I beleive, wich is a lot, this is the one thing I beleive in the most. This is what I know.

Parts of this text has also been published in my other blogthing/webdiary at Helgon.

Montage

Training montage: a group of young, confused foreigners, scattered in a room filled with combuters. As the days pass they learn about techsupport. About telephones. Cordlesss telephones. They become good friends.

Okay, its a boring montage, but training is finally finished. Tomorrow we start working for real. I think. (Or we might be sitting by another agent, listening in to calls.)

The talk of the town (okay, the company) is the big christmas party saturday. I'm looking forward to it. So is eveyone else.

Today we move - I hope. The people, the company or whatever they are, are driving us mad. They have given number ten to someone else. The builders did it obviously for some reason. So we could have number nine or number eleven, wich one did we prefer? And could we please send in more info? (Phone numbers, pps numbers and such.) Well, number eleven then. And we will send it later this afternoon. Ok?
No. Number eleven is not available. Will number nine be okay? And can we come into the office by four?
No, its not, but we don't have much choise, do we? And no, we cant, we work untill five.
So now I'm waiting for her reply. And I'm irritated. But we really have to move today, so what can I do?

Good news anyhow; I don't have to unlock my phone for Irish sim cards. It works anyways. Joy! So today I'm getting an Irish number.

Thanks Dad for your support. (& Mom for informing me that I actually have been to San Fransisco.)

Home is where the house is

Sunday evening. The weekend has been very strange. Friday was crazy. We went to the office of the people who we are renting the house from to give them papers and stuff, and to tell them we wanted house number ten. The guy told us to meet him in fifteen minutes to look at number nine, and we all walked over there. After half an hour in the rain we called him and asked where he was, and he apologized and told us that he was on his way but we could go over to the pub and have a beer for a while and he would hurry, ok? Sure. One beer later we went back and found some builders who let us in to the yard. We waited outside the door for a while, and our future neighbours came out to greet us. They gave us some beer. It started raining so we went into their livingroom to wait for the guy, who actually showed up a while later, only about one and a half hour late. He made up for it by offering us house number ten. That (and maybe the two beers) made us happy.

So to celebrate; more beer at one of our favourite pubs, Sin-e. There we met Axelle, who took us to the next place, Fred Zepelin. Then An Brog. Then hamburgers I think. It's a bit unclear.

Saturday I spent sleeping, mostly, and not feeling to well. We went out again but I went home early. Sunday I have been chilling and soon I am going to grab a bite to eat, and tonight I am thinking about watching I Robot an tv.

We are going to have a white chistmas tree! With pink and blue ornaments.

Next weekend will probably even more crazy, on friday kareoke at the place where Siemen's staff gets a discount on fridays... So yeah, that might be fun, and on saturday is the big christmas party! Big dinner and two free drinks! Highly anticipated. And the weekend after that we are planning on having a housewarming party for all our friends... All four of them. No, honestly, I have made friends here quicker than I could imagine. The atmosphere is great. People are kind and happy.

And we are all looking forward to christmas! None of us will be going home, so it could be great.

Photos from London are up on Facebook.

Je ne travaille pas... Je blog.

I am learning french just by hearing it all the time. We are three in the group who does not speak french. We are eight in the group. (The group is actually split now but the Oronzo from Italy and Axelle from France speak french.) It's nice though, many people come here to learn english, I know english so I learn something else. I think I will learn lots of french since I will live with Gael and Louis.

So yesterday I was invited to dinner with some of the girls from the swedish desk, Sara, Ida and Hannah, and Sara's roomie Harriet, hwo actually happened to be the first person I talked to upon arriving in Cork almost a week ago (my god, it feels like so much more). It was Sara's birthday and she had made pie and for dessert a wonderful chocolate cake with white chocolate icing. It was sooooo good. And it felt nice but strange to speak swedish all night. I've gotten it out of my system. A funny thing was that they had to, so the switched over to english sometimes without noticing. (One of the highlights of the evening was when Sara played The Kristet Utseende.)

Today's big thing is that the guy who promised us the house actually promised us number ten, but his mother slash co-worker promised the same house to someone else and now it looks like we are going to get number nine even though we signed the contract earlier. This needs investigation. Investigation will happen. The houses are identical though, exept for the tiling in the kitchen, wich was the main reason for us to choose number ten.

In either case I will live, from wednesday, in a three-floor house with two bathrooms with jacuzzis. That's jacuzzis people. Jacuzzis. Two of them. The french (Gael and Louis) have also promised to do all the cooking. The only requirement is that no one tries to help them out (that would be annoying). Jacuzzi and private french chef. And yeah, queensize bed. And a backyard (okay, it's concrete, but you can put a table and some chairs there in the spring and theres a big mutual "deck" in the middle of the yard as well). So I'm pretty happy either way.

Now I'm going back to the swedish desk to sit silently beside Sara and listen to her as she explains to people in Sweden, England and Ireland how to open the menu on their telephone. Exitement!