“I’m Edumacated” or “Sprechen de Frommage, MoFo?”

20 January 2003

Hello journal. How are you today? I am feeling like I am cloud nine…that is the nickname for my bed by the way. But actually, I am at work. But I am still in a happy mood so far. This weekend was quite a nice weekend in many ways. eXciting if you know what I mean. There was sex, drugs, and rock and roll (metaphorically speaking)…shiny disco balls…all of that good stuff.

So anyway, the reason to write to you today is that I am signed up for Swedish language lessons, and I am so excited at the opportunity to learn swedish. I really feel like I am going to be able to communicate so much more effectively once I become confident in Swedish. I am anticipating that I will be far along in the Swedish langauge by June 2003. At the end of the summer (which will be the one year mark in Sweden), I want to have a good understanding of the language at least the way a 7 year old would communicate. This would be the same level I currently use in English. I am going to get edumacated and I am so excited. Now repeat after me…”spechen de Frommage, MoFo?” Don’t know what that means? It means “do you speak cheese, motherfucker?” Yeah, I’ve got that secretary of state job all wrapped up…

In other news, I have decided to have another after-party. I have to warn the neighbors…or better yet invite them. However, I think that even if I invite them over…once it goes past 6am, my neighbors are going to hate the fact that I am having an after party. I am going to have to buy their silence. Either that or whore around the apartment building and sleep with them all. Including that geriatric carpet-bagger at the end of the hall. If I so much as sneeze loudly, she laments openly about how kids sneezed more quietly when she was young. Only I don’t think she can remember that far back.

Well, that’s enough for the moment…promise to write more later. Ciao for now journal…love you!

–Rodney

“Dog Day Afternoon” or “Age Before Beauty”

12 January 2003

Hello journal and everyone. Perhaps you felt the earth shake today. You wanna know why? No, it is not because I was walking around (I am not fat, I am big-boned). It actually is because today I left my dignity at the store entrance and went to buy a CD single from the A*Teens. Yeah, the A*Teens. You know, the group who got their start by performing covers of ABBA songs (the “A” in A*Teens stands for “ABBA”), but now have used their relative success to make their own records? Well anyway, I have hosted so many after-parties in which the song has been requested, that I decided that it was just time to bite the bullet and purchase the single. Sigh. And for my next trick, I will make my dignity disappear…poof.

Anyway, this afternoon was just kinda of a blah day. I didn’t really have much to do, so I decided that I would go shopping. You know, because since I have no sense of real self-worth, I will buy my happiness and then come down with a case of “Shoppers Remorse”. So anyway, today I went to buy new music, some creams and potions, and a house-warming present for a friend. In terms of music, I bought a awesome artist named “Peaches”…her signature song is “Fuck the Pain Away”…she’s just kick ass. And there was that A*Teens thing, but let us never mention that again. I also had to buy more CK Crave, Tommy Body Wash, and a couple of items from Nickel, since I am not scheduled to fly to Paris anytime soon. In the fragrance section of Åhlens, I ran into Joachim, whose name I always forget…I feel like an ass when that happens, but I was honest and just said that I forgot his name. Nothing personal. I tend to remember names of people I meet only when I am in the condition I originally met them. For example, if I meet you while I am drunk, I remember when I drunk again (usually within 24-36 hours), but not when I am sober. So everyone in theory has to introduce themselves to me twice….unless I think you are so hot that I wanna shag, then I ask everyone around who that is so that I can seem like that creepy bunny-boiling type that wins people over so easily. My, that was random, eh? At any rate, Joachim was a real doll…he gave me a free samples and a carry case. All of the cool kids work in fragrance. All of the smelly kids work in the music department. If you work in a music store or department and are reading this, yes, you smell. yes you do. Stop arguing. La la la la…I’m not listening Senior/Senora/Senorita Smelly…

Last night I went out drinking. Went to the local club (it’s downstairs from me) and it was Cottonhead Night, meaning that I was one of four people under the century mark. Not that it’s not fun to go to the club during Century Night, but lets face it, you can only watch the gums fall out of a grandma’s mouth so many times before it just becomes plain old unattractive. So after gambling away about US$50, I decided that it was time to go and party some place else. We went to Stureacompagnient (I spelled that wrong), and had a great time. Some of my UK mates had never been, so it was good that they saw some of the non-touristy places in Stockholm. Someone said at the club that I was dressed like a discount hooker, but I swear my boss tells me the same thing, so I took it in stride and took his business card because he supposedly has great after-parties.

Well, other than that, things are going pretty well still. I have a clean apartment thanks to the Canadian cleaner, a fully stocked bar thanks to the local package store, and something to eat other than cheese and corn chips thanks to a trip to the supermarket.

Keep in touch everyone! Ciao for now and love you journal.

Ciao, Rodney

“Cool As Ice” or “The Art of Making Friends”

11 January 2003

Greetings readers. You know, I had 2 instant messenging conversations yesterday in which both people commented that since I wasn’t updating frequently in the journal, they weren’t too sure how I was doing, because that was one of the ways that they knew how I was doing. I found that touching. It was such a “waiting to Exhale” moment, that I was inspired to write a new journal entry again today.

Today’s topic is surprise…the Swedish and the process of making friends. Are you surprised at this? You shouldn’t be.

Most Swedes spend their days at work, tending to the kids, living predictable lives. Most of the population of Stockholm has not lived here all of their lives…they consider it “moving to the big city.” So they tend to have their friends back home and are very reserved when making new friends in the city, especially with foreigners. So as a foreigner in Stockholm who know almost no Swedish, can you imagine that the process of making friends is challenging at the best of times, difficult at the worst of time. There’s a bunch of Swedish “rules” that just don’t exist in the US. It makes them seems cold at times, but as I have come to learn, once you make a friend with a Swede, it is usually a pretty strong friendship that can stand the tests of time and distance. However warm and fuzzy this makes you feel, let’s break it down to some more of those rules, understanding that for me, the context is trying to shag most of the adult population of hot Swedes I see everyday. Ok, not really. Or maybe I am serious. Things will seem to contradict, so ask me again when the Tylenol PM wears off:

1. Swedes tend to be reserved (it is often mistaken for shyness) when they are meeting someone for the first time. To counter-act this, they drink alcohol. Loads. Now my US friends will say “Rodney, just buy them a drink and use your witty charm to think of a conversation-starter”. However, Swedes aren’t used to people buying them drinks. It is often looked on with the expectation that I want to sleep with them. Sometimes true, but more often than not, I am just being friendly. To the Swedes who read, understand that in the US, most people going out defer to the “round”concept…I’ll buy this round, you buy the next, etc, etc, etc.

2. Being a foreigner is sometimes bad. Sometimes you can feel isolated. However, being a foreigner is good. It starts conversations. And when you make a social mistake, it is easily dismissed as “oh, well he’s not from around here, otherwise, he wouldn’t have slept with your spouse because he would have know.” While this might bother most, I take pride in being different than anyone they have probably ever met.

3. After-parties and dinner parties are a good thing. Having never been invited to an after-party, I don’t really know what it is like to attend one. I have only hosted them. I guess I should be bitter at that, but in reality, I hosting them more. And the visitors like that the alcohol is free (because I pay for it). But in general, I am please to share my flat with others. Compared to the average Swedish flat for a single person, I live in a palace (my flat is over 100 square meters). I feel like it is small, at which point Swedes will tell me to shut my piehole. At this point, I am really just inviting a bunch of different people to my flat for after-parties, but towards the middle of the year, I will narrow that group down. Basically, there are already people who have come to one after-party, but will never be invited to the next one, especially when they see me on the street or at a club/bar and don’t even say anything to me. The dinner parties haven’t started yet, but they will…I can burn something for up to 12 people.

4. Swedes will admit to being cold towards others at first. Many of them accept that fact that they are viewed as cold people. Ask them then why not change, and you get a “hmmmmm….I dunno” as a response. But I suppose that it an unfair question.

5. Swedes are the Borg. In Sweden, conformity is key. Everyone is expected to have a volvo, a place to live, 2 kids, and generally be no more or less successful than their neighbors. If they are more successful, they are expected to almost hide it or be very modest about it. Different than the US, where the motto is “if you have it, flaunt it.” Modesty here is essential. Despite the fact that comparatively speaking, I am very wealthy here in Sweden (I was “reminded” recently that the monthly rent for my flat is about what some Swedes take home in a month), I do try and keep a level head about things here. Back to the Borg concept, I tend to be immediately marked a being different, but for some reason, I am comfortable with that.

6. Stockholm is small. They think it’s big because they’ve never been to New York. But Stockholm is small enough so that generally speaking, there is a sense that someone is always aware of what I am doing. This has been proven to me several times. So nothing is ever really “secret”. Perhaps it’s the social circles I operate in, perhaps it is just the way that it is, but I don’t spend time thinking about it really. Except every moment of every day. I kidding…I think… =0)

Well, there are other rules as well, but I am not sure that this is the forum to express them in. After all, you need only to refer to my previous postings to understand that while I share virtually everything here, I don’t share “everything everything”.

Seeing that’s it’s saturday and the only thing I really have to show for food in my flat is a box of pasta, old cheese, and some yogurt, perhaps it is time to hit the supermarket.

Tune in next time for another edition of “The World According to Rodney”. Love you journal.

Ciao, Rodney

“Where’s Waldo?” or “Why the Fuck Haven’t You Been Posting?”

10 January 2003

Hello friends and others who have stumbled upon this by accident. I know that I have to soooo apologise for not updating for like a month. It certainly is NOT that I have not meant to update, it has just been that I have been so busy and out and about that I simply have not made updating my online journal the priority that it should be. So let me take this opportunity to update you on what has been happening with me:

Basically, one mid-December hit, Sweden went into festive holiday mode. There were things such as “Christmas Tables”, in which the Swedish get together and eat a ton of food and stay remarkably thin through each bite. I was invited to one Christmas Table, which was remarkable in and of itself because I am totally still trying to find my base of friends here in Sweden (at that point). In terms of the love life, I wasn’t formally dating, but I was seeing someone with a sense of regularity. Drinking increases to the same level of my days at university. People worthy of note that I have met in this period are Chris and Anders….both very cool people…the former is Canadian (so it’s cool to have a North American friend here so that we can talk about the Swedes) and the latter is Swedish (an entirely cool guy).

Christmas came and went without much fan fare. It must be said that in Sweden, Christmas is actually celebrated on Christmas Eve, and every year at 3pm, Sweden stops completely to watch old Donald Duck and Disney cartoons. I am serious. They do this because back in the days when they were more socialist than they are now, they only had 2 TV channels, and cartoons were rare. They are so passionate about this cartoon that I suspect if the government ever cancelled the cartoon, there would be mass rioting in the streets. People worthy of note in this period is Sven von Essen (he’s a TV star, has a public relations firm, and is just the craziest and friendliest Swede I have met. Yes, I said a Swede. Really. Stop laughing.), as well as Tomas (if you have never heard a Swede speak with a cockney british accent, it is quite interesting, but he’s become on my favourite people in Sweden).

For New Years, I had planned a New Year’s Eve party, but since I am such a bad planner, it turned out to be Anders and I hanging out and having dinner, and then we went out to a club. I had to come up with a New Year’s resolutions, and they are as follows:

* Drink more. Eat less.

* No more serious resolutions, because your life should be evaluated as the need arises, not just once a year.

* Shag more. Maybe even call them back the next day and see them more than once.

* Realise that I am at such a good point in my life, that I can focus on what it takes to make others happy.

Honestly, I just made these up on the fly. I don’t believe in any of them other than the first one. And maybe the third one. OK, so now that I think about it, they are all good resolutions. I’ll keep them all.

So after New Year’s, I’ve had a couple of after parties. The first started on a Friday at 1am and went to 6am. The second one started on a Sunday and went from 6am to Monday past midnight. I had so much fun at both of them, despite a few moments where I perhaps did and said things unexpectedly. Awesome people during this period were Mikel (another awesome guy), Jimmy (cool bloke who came to an after-party), his friends Linda and Lisa (they were sooooo nice), Gladys (from a Swedish pop group named Afro-Dite…she’s such a sweet person), Koao (I fucked up the spelling on her name, but she’s also in the group Afro-Dite…you’ll be seeing her more in the US since she’s now singing with the group “La Bouche”), Caroline (love her love her lover her), Shåmon (he’ll be a great R&B pop star…he’s signed with a record company and will have a CD soon) and some others as well whose names I can’t remember because I am hung over with a cold.

So there you are. The complete update on my life – minus the naughty bits, but I think my mom is reading this, so I better keep it cleaner than it has been.

Perhaps the remaining resolution I have is to update this at least weekly. I used to believe that I would update this every day, but that hasn’t really panned out, has it? So now I think that weekly is a good goal, as well as if a significant life event happens.