And a few lines about me

At Home.
A small update from the fields. I have been spending some time looking into planning my next adventure that's going to take place in the beginning of April, I'm looking into the first part which is going to be a New Zealand round trip, if everything goes as planned it might include, exotic beaches, glaciers, 30 million year old glow worm caves, active volcanoes, boiling mud pools and looking for gold.

At Work.
Last week at work was a sieris of wrong time estimations from all of us in our team, I realy hope
We are going to catch up with the lost time soon. Yesterday was Natasha's last day at work. We all went out for Chinese Yam Cha at lunch and I tried Chicken feet for the first time. I must admit I have had better food. I cant say it was bad, but have no urge to eat it again. In the evening we went out for drinks, far to many if you ask me. We all ended up at Tom's (another colegue) place in the end. I left at some point and I slept for a few extra hours this morning. I'm about to go out and soak up some sunshine while its still there.

These pictures are from last night, please don't ask me to explain them, because I cant.

Dinner with a stranger

I rarely brows blogs my self, and not even a hand full I check regularly. its only if I'm sent one
I have a look. During the past few days I have been sent quite interesting ones, as you can see on my previous posts. This will be the last one for today. I couldnt let it go past without sharing this peculiar story with you. Click on the picture below to see how it all turned out.

At work

The is the photo blog I was initially looking for. Worth having a look and a read.
At Work

Meanwhile somewhere in Congo

While searching for another blog article I saw last week, I came across this photo blog about Congo. It feels very remote and they probably couldn't care less about the economic downturn as their problems lies elsewhere and I'm very happy I don't need to struggle in a society with as much corruption. Click on the photo to see the rest of the photo series.

Economic downturn

Where are we heading? A series of wrong estimations and events of large magnitude that was not accounted for. My parents sent me this excellent link a while ago "finanskrisen forklarat till en tolvaring" Its only in Swedish though, but translates to the financial crisis explained to a 12 year old. The explanation is pretty good and breaks it down to the bare bone. It's exactly the explanation I needed, even though it seems very obvious, I think it gives a good overview, or maybe its just me who have a mind of a 12 year old?. Never the less, even though we now understand the reason, its still very hard to grasp the result, how far its stretching and its effects and magnitude.

Here is a few pictures from a photo article in The Guardian about stock of unsold cars becoming a problem.

Unsold cars at Avonmouth Docks near Bristol


















New cars jam the dockside in the port of Valencia in Spain












With many manufacturers on extended Christmas shutdown, the number of cars rolling off production lines in December fell 47.5% to just 53,823












The build-up of imported cars at the port of Newark, New Jersey












Imported cars stored at Sheerness open storage area awaiting delivery to dealers












Nissan has announced plans to cut its Sunderland workforce by 1,200. Thousands of unsold cars are stored around the factory's test track

Thursday night out

After working late a few of us at work decided to go out for a meal and a couple of beers afterwards. It was a great evening. The best dish we ordered was probabbly the Banana leaf salad. It was realy nize, And then we where off to the Cricketers arms. Might be my favorite pub in Sydney.

Half Christofer Martin, Tom, Kriss.














Kriss & Nikki

The weekend is over

Finally a weekend to catch up propperly without doing any work. Friday was a quiet one as we went out on Thursday. I only had a couple of drinks with some friends at the pub around the corner from where I live. On Saturday me and Mikkel decided to explore Sydney's libraries. We managed to spot 3 of them. It where all fairly small and had odd selections of books. The one I liked best also situated a café with a big selection of magazines and news papers, and even "Dagens Nyheter". I will go there for a breakfast next weekend for sure.

One if the libraries had this green formation in it, it was apparently slowly moving and changing shape over time. But I guess we didnt stay for long enough to notice any drastic changes.


















Slowly moving dots where projected inside of the green thing.












Mikkels feet on the glass floor covering a miniature of Sydney's City Centre












The ceiling in the old library












The old library












The old library













Later in the afternoon we headed off to Manly to Celebrate Martins 25th birthday. The party was going to be Hawaii themed and we where going to do BBQ on the beach, in true Aussie manner.
The Weather has been unusually bad for the last 2 weeks, and Saturday was no exception. We where luck not to being drenched while we where BBQing. We stayed on the beach long after sunset, then we headed back to Martins. I didn't stay to late though. Some of us stayed till 11

Many of the beaches have these kind of BBQs set up for free public use.
You see Martins german flat mate on the Photo, sorry I cant remember his name.


















Kamil & Malin












Kamil












Malin












The german cousin, the Melbourne girls and Martin












Malin & Gustav

























I guess I had more than one beer when this shot was taken


















Gustav


















Half Sunday I spent on Domestic activities such as cleaning and catching up with my laundry.
Another of Sydney's festivals was taking place that day as well. Tropfest, whch is the worlds biggest short film festival. It's a free event where you can enjoy your picnic in the par while watching independent short films. I looked into their website, and was not really tempted to be honest. It looked as crowded as new years eve, and it was going to go on from 3 - 23, It was realy hard to make out when the actual films where going to start. I kind of figured out it was going to be around 19.30 and it made sense as it would be better to show films as the daylight was about to disappear. I decided to go there and have a look around that time. After all, the nice weather had returned so I wanted to be outside anyway. I didn't have very hight hopes as I thought that the films would be very pretentious or amateurish. I couldn't be more wrong. Even though it was crowded it didn't feel cramped and we had a good view of the screens. We where quite a few people and we where enjoing a picnic with wine and grilled chicken. I'm quite glad I only stayed during the actual film sessions as staying the whole day would be a bit to much. On top of all that most of the films where really good, and very very funny. Thumbs up for Tropfest, it was quite unexpected that I enjoyed it.

Back of Rajdarn's head












Kat, Vani, Quan and Gustav












Minx, Maree & Mikkel












Jiggles, Kat, Vani, Quan and Gustav












Gustav












Rajdarn












Rajdarn, Jiggles and sJme other friends of Kat













I managed to catch the overview image from the helicopter while shown on the big screen. Even though it was around 70.000 people, we never felt crushed, and everyone stayed quiet during the films.












Mikkel

Bored politician caught on camera without knowing

Simon's leaving do

I'm not quite sure where to begin, well, Its been freakin' cold and rainy the whole week and it seems like its going to go on next week. Even had to wear a jacket on occations. It feels strange when I got used to the eternal sunshine, shorts t-shirt and blue sky. Well, we where to celebrate Friday the 13th at the office yesterday. Everyone had to wear black outfits. I was all black, even wearing a tie, the task was pretty easy as a majority of my clothes are all black.
After work we where going to meet up at one of Sydney's swedish pizza places ( I have heard of 2 ) but I have only been to this one. Its called Svens Viking Pizza, and I must admit its pretty good, but the ingredients are far to fresh and fancy to be the common swedish pizza place down on the corner in a swedish suburb. You won't find the standard swedish pizza names either. They have named all of the pizzas after Viking gods, and they use a woodfired clay oven to bake them. The places is decorated with Viking stuff, it looks tacky, but the food is good, and we had a great time. The reason why we where going there was because Simon was to leave the country and move to the UK. I got to know Simon when I was working at Frost*, apparently I met him allmost a year ago in Stockholm. It was Simon who told me, he went to see when I was playing records at Flim in April last year. We where both working for North Kingdom at the time without knowing. Simon is super talented, and I realy hope we get to collaborate on some projects in the future. I brought my camera and my flash. I love the flash, pictures turns out so nice. Im very happy with many of them. But its a shame the camera is so big. I would love to have a second one, a small that would fit into my pocket. So I can capture the moment when ever it comes rather than having to plan to take pictures. I have been looking into pocket size cameras passively for quite some time, and the battle seems to be between the Canon G10 and the Ricoh. I dont think I will get one any time soon. Anyhow I was glad I brought my camera last night. Here are a few of the results.

Simon in dark T-shirt and 2 of his friends who I dont know














Rajdarn


















Kat and Maree














Me practicing bedroom eyes














After the Pizza we all decided to go to a bar called the clock. The place is quite big, and not special in any way. It looks very anonymous and most people seem to be to, it could have been anywhere in any city of resonable size. A lot of people we know where there allready, and many pepole from my new job at the farm.


Kat still feeling a bit rough. It was great to see Kat again, after spending so long in hospital. This was the first time she went out in 3 weeks apart from short trips to the supermarket. She must rest for about 3 more weeks till fully recovered.














Gustav














Simon














Kat














Me in Friday the 13th outfit














Kamil, went to Hyper Island the year after me, met him in London the first time.














Anthony works at The Farm














The girl to the left works at the farm, she just got back from a holiday to new york, her name is Kris.














Shannon the Technical director at The Farm eating a burger I think?














Gustav














Me and Kat














Me and Kat again














Simon and Maree














Rajdarns booty shake


















Kat ( and Maree and Malin in the background)