turn my head with talk of summertime

Numbers in Sweden are different.

I have strings of memorized four digit door codes floating about in my mind. (Almost every apartment/work building has a four digit code required to enter.)

Time is done in 24 hours. Really it's efficient because you never have to specify a.m. or p.m., or rack your brain trying to remember if 12 midnight is a.m. or p.m – it's 0.00. Of course, a.m./p.m. is rarely needed for context (no, school doesn't get out at 3 a.m.), but when it is needed, things can get confusing. I've known many people who have missed flights over these confusions.

Time is also different because Swedes are on it. They are always on time. They are never late, and if they are early, they drive an extra time around the block so that they arrive exactly on time. (The embassy's briefing words, not mine). You can see this obsession with time in the bus system – buses often hit arrival time to the minute, and if they're running late, they're libel to drive right by you to make up for time. (Haven't experienced this, but heard it happens). Not convinced? Perhaps the omnipresent giant outdoor clocks will help make my point.

Numbers are also different in the dating game. Well, perhaps not, but I thought I'd use the segway. Every Swedish girl who has met my 21-year-old brother has fallen immediately, madly, and aggressively in love with him. This includes quite an age range – high school (19) to well-established (late 30's). They call, text, invite him out, invite themselves in, cook him dinner, introduce him to rock legends, the list goes on. He seems almost bewildered by the attention, but, like any reasonable man, quickly attributed it to karma; "Girls didn't like me when I was young." Not quite true Christophe.

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It's 8° C here (46°F). To my Middle-East/Californian internal expectations, this is very cold. A glance at the weather forecast gives the joyful news of the degrees marching steadily down; by Thursday we're hitting 2°.

And I've handled it OK so far. No bad weather, only bad clothes. I get that. Problem is, if it gets much colder, I'm going to start thinking that there are a lot of bad clothes out there, because I'm barely getting by.

Of course, when I bring up my weather worries, people always remind me that the actual hard part of Swedish winters is that it is dark all the time. Oh yeah, and that winter lasts for about seven months. S.A.D. Fairly high suicide rates (#28 in the world).

They have "happy lamps" here which give off sunlight type rays and include possible side effects of "being wired."

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Funky Story:

The benign thief. This is thief we all aspire to be stolen from – he stole a laptop from a professor, and then returned the contents in a magic stick. (Yes, that's what I call them.)


All I ask of you:

Watched part of Phantom the other day. Emmy Rossum was 16 when she played this part. My ex-roomie was called Christine, and she looks quite a bit like Christine in the movie. I occasionally sang Phantom songs at her, but I don't think it had the same effect as Gerard Butler/Patrick Wilson.