● 16 Speaking of.... nicer ways in Swenglish?!

The answer is sadly no. Herding cats is what I have been doing the last months, but noone would understand my point if i said I was busy "valla katter"!


My latest cat to herd is definitely a bossy one... My boss. She's the kind that makes a point of always working late, looking ash-grey and stressed, while putting her energy on all the wrong details instead of actually doing her own job instead of ours.
The other day, as I was preparing to leave, she showed up, hair-on-end, and asked me "how do you write mobile phone numbers?!!" and when I asked why (tired) she explained, we have to agree on how we type in the dialling code when we register customers in the new business system. Again, I asked why...!??
"Why, in case we someday want to sort the customers by phone numbers, we have to decide if we write the dialling code with 3 or 4 digits before the dash!!"



Why, of course. Silly me!

☼ 15 Speaking of ... Finding a nice way to say it

“I'm sorry, I've just been so busy.”

Yawnsville! Who needs that to be said more often? Not me. I draw blanks when I hear it.



On the other hand, when I tell people that I'm sorry but things are up in the air this month...



Or that I'm herding cats right now and can we push it back to spring, well then ...



Do you have even nicer ways to say this in Swedish? The english ones seem especially nice for those situations where you do have time, but it's just difficult to tell where it will be in advance.

☼ ...

I actually picked up a book last night! It was just a rather old cookbook but I'm hoping it means I'm on the way to posting something here soon. Phobia of words, it's been strange! Sorry for the long intermission.

● 14 Speaking of.... a pedagogical tone

My 2-year old nephew O, lately got into the age of "bang-bang".
His mother corrected him, and explained that it doesn't sound nice.
His older sister, age 4, assisted by very pedagogically telling him
- No, O, it's not nice. Just imagine if someone wanted to kill you. That wouldn't be nice, now would it?

☼ 13 Speaking of ... I'm Where??!!

I was pretty worried when she told me how I could get a cup of tea. I'd been to one of the two or three kitchens on this floor, one of many floors in this big company's huge building, but I'd found only bare cupboards. And then she told me that if I wanted a cup of tea then I needed to bring my own cup and my own tea bags. The thing that worried me was that she didn't even laugh when she told me.
I needed a cup of tea because I'd been sitting for 7 hours each day, ears open, learning to listen as a sound engineer added 'texture' to this project I was working on. The amount of detail that went into building an atmosphere and leaving one place to enter another, wow!
It was a wild, wild ride. And then she started describing what she was hearing, using words that were really something else. 'Heavy' and 'light' I got, but then she started calling sounds 'strident' and 'insipid.' It totally blew my mind away (that's why I'm so late, aiya! And sorry!)
There was so much pressure, so much to take in. So on the weekend I found a tiny bit of time to head to the second-hand store to unwind. I once told someone that I practically meditate when I'm wandering around these stores. But this time I really found out how much I can empty my mind. I'd looked on every shelf and basket in the shop and on my way heading out I stopped at the counter. I started thumbing through some old papers there. And then suddenly I went 'Woah!' I looked up and (damn) the young girl minding the store was watching me. I laughed a bit, and tried making some excuses about my mind being elsewhere. But she just looked at me, leaned forward and pointing at the papers I'd just been looking through, she said slowly, 'We use this to wrap up some of the fragile things we sell, like crockery.'
'This.' She said carefully trying to make sure I understood. 'This is just old newspaper.'
I didn't try to freak her out any more by trying to buy some :-) It seemed like a good time to head home, and quickly!

● 12 Speaking of... a positive attitude

For the last few weeks, I've been on a study trip to ^^^ together with a group within a group. After a few days of introduction, we set out on our field trips in groups of 3-4.

Our travel group is set of four very different persons, of varying background, age and personalities.
Forcefully getting to know eachother, spending both days and nights together for 3 weeks, I think we all got some of our expectations smashed, both for better and worse.

K, this shy little flower at first sight, who didn't utter a full sentence until we actually went abroad, totally blossomed as this witty, ironic and charming character as she got more comfortable around us day by day.

On the other hand, T, whom I already on the first weekend of classes togheter back home got a really positive feeling about, turned out to be a pretty negative little soul. Everthing about this trip is dirty, smelly, scary, loud, obnoxious, horrible, dusty, bad-tasting... Even if not uttered out loud, the dismay is still rather noticeable in various eye rolls, smirks, half-faints and gasps. As soon as I realized that in most aspects, she mainly reminds me of "Poor Charlotte" in "A Room with a View", it became a tiny little bit easier to see the comedy of the whole act, but it's rather straining on the perky group mood as the days of travels go by. It's hard to stay positive when the superlatives are only used for the negative.
Yes is "yes.", no is "God No!!!".

Of course, she doesn't see this pattern her self, and gets quite upset if she is pointed out as negative. However, after more than two weeks here, she told us her own background theory to why she feels her expectations for this trip and this country constantly leaves her disappointed:
- She has never ever wanted to go to Asia. She wants this to be in Africa.

I guess I'd be disappointed too.

● flies to find some stories in the mountains, it may take a month or so!

☼11 speaking of ... overhearing

I went to a basket-weaving class a little while ago, though the teacher suggested we call it a 'fibre art' class if we thought we were talking to people old enough to remember when basket-weaving was used as therapy in mental institutions.

Hours passed, we wove, it was all new and about experimenting so no one really knew what they were making. We were using the coiling technique, which is exactly what it sounds like. You start off with a group of long strips of anything really and coil them, stitching as you go, as the strips run out you just add more to the bunch.

The shape depends on what you're using, how you hold it, how tight you make it, really it seems to come from your hands. At a certain point a few people tried to make decisions about what they were making. But in the end most just nodded and pretended to put their ear to the 'basket' to listen as it told us what it wanted to be or trusted that it would talk to our hands.

And then after hours hunched over we sort of all looked up fuzzy-eyed and the class was over.

Someone had a camera so we brought out our baskets to a table for a class photo. As we put our baskets down, the table turned into a miniature alien landscape of odd, organic shapes, wildly coloured from the recycled materials we'd used. I hadn't really looked closely at mine, I'd just really wanted to finish it so just went stitch-by-stitch-by-stitch. And when I did finally look at it properly on the table, I was sort of laughing and thinking, shit I can't believe I spent hours on that. But then I overheard one lady as she added her basket to the table, it was just as odd-shaped as mine, but she just nudged hers a little more upright, leaned close and said to it encouragingly, 'Do your best.'

Speaking of…●10

… morning routines:

I live in a building constructed in maybe the 1930-40s, as many of the houses in my part of town. I love my apartment, with it’s roomy feel and big kitchen.
It has one big flaw though. The door. It’s thin, which makes it sort of a sounding-board out into the stairwell, and many sounds grow loud and resounding, which gives you a more private relationship with your neighbours than you might wish for.

My next door neighbour is an interesting existence. Looks sort of scary, but is very giving and considerate in a way. He was hospitalised this summer for double-sided pneumonia and came home rather worried. He’s a heavy smoker, and the doctor had given him some sort of verdict that he wouldn’t share, he just told me that it’s serious.

Since then, his smokers’ morning coughs have transformed into vomit. With screams. He knows we can hear him, and he apologised with “I assume you’ve heard me in the mornings”… I asked him what the doctors say about it, and he tells me they say its psychological.

My only guess then is that its fear of death that makes him howl in the bathroom on the other side of my bedroom wall, every morning at 06:15.

It can never be a good way to start a day.

ps ...

...we blogged into the new year!

Cheers to the new year!

The new year view in Sydney, 1 Jan '09

Speaking of … ☼9

... pulling out good surprises

The other morning in the bathroom, I surprised myself! :-) I suddenly remembered bathing in Calcutta. And then I remembered that I'd kept it in my back pocket for a time like right now - when I've woken up tired almost every morning from the end of last year and so far into this one. I've had nightmares almost every night, one after the other, I'm sort of impressed with the variety and sheer numbers, but also just very tired. So this morning, I got out a small bucket, made a note to buy a large cup with a handle, stepped into the shower and remembered waking up in Calcutta...

Last year in our hotel in Calcutta, we called for a bucket of hot water once but it never came. So we looked out the window. Four floors down on the roadside is a popular public tap. It was winter but still from maybe 5 in the morning people gathered outside and it becomes a bathing and car-washing pitstop. Men of all sizes, wearing either just undershorts or longhis (like a sarong) bathe. People squat or stand, there are many techniques.

S adopted the soap all over then sharp, quick, cold rinse under running water. I went for the soap one bit then splash, pour and rub vigorously with both hands until shiny and slightly warmed. At home I leave the shower feeling warm and relaxed. Here I jumped out ready to scrub down a taxi.

...and it worked! I don't know if it was the squatting, the scrubbing piece-by-piece, the shiny skin or the weight of a full bucket of water crashing on my head at the end – but a quick holiday in my bathroom one morning worked wonders.