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)

Life at The Farm

I will be working for a company called "The Farm", till the end of March. It's a great bunch of people. And here is where I'm spending my time during the weekdays.

One of the things I dont understand.

Last week on Thursday at the end of the day, Anthony, one of my new colleagues at "the Farm" was doing a presentation. I'm not sure how often they do it, but it seems all the employees takes turns where they get to talk about what makes them "tick" for about 15-20 minutes. Talk about what amuses and intrigues them so to speak.
Antony decided to talk about psychology as he studied it for many years at collage before he started his career as computer programmer and computer server expert. He was going through how Animals can be taught things using different techniques, and how humans use different parts of their brain for controlling different abilities. Studies have shown that the part of the brain controlling sense of location is substantially bigger by taxi drivers than most other people. There is probably not just one IQ, there fore intelligence must be measured on different criteria, such as math, emotions, sense of location, music etc. Anyhow... the presentation was very interesting but I had to skive off half way through.
I was hoping I would get some sort of clue to one of my mysteries. Why do some people have the urge to experience and learn something new all the time, when most people rather consume the things they already know. Around lunchtime the next day I got the opportunity to ask Anthony about this. Off course there is no either / or, The spectrum is infinite in between how curious or how safe you are. I still felt I didn't get a good enough answer. He said it inherits from ancient times, when you only went out hunting when you needed to, otherwise you tried to be safe by doing the things you knew worked. Yes, necessity is the mother of invention. But as there is living proof out there that some people don't play by that rule. And I'm sure humans wouldn't be where they are today without any curious minds continuously pushing boundaries, finding alternative solutions or brand new concepts. Where do these minds hide? By working in such a creative industry as I am I thought there would be plenty of them. I couldn't be more wrong. Well yes, compared to other kinds of jobs I have had these people are not to close to the edge of the spectrum. But I would not call many of them curious inventors or entrepreneurs. I don't think the type of work and lifestyle is the key. So what makes you a curious mind? I believe that with knowledge comes appreciation, and if this is true, the answer might be that everyone has got this skill but it needs a trigger to unlock it. We know that necessity is such a trigger. But why doesn't more people see the excitement in learning something new and evolving apart from when they don't have a choice?
I guess this will remain a mystery for quite sometime. But if I could do something to make at least a few starting finding new unexplored paths rather than treading in each others footsteps. There are so many areas that have become stale because of lack of invention, for expample, whats stopping us from comming up with a new type of cuisine?
Meow

Manly beach

Saturday, and the temperature hitting the 35 degree mark, we decided to retreat to the beach.
Manly was our destination, located 30 minutes by boat in the northern areas of Sydney.

After enjoying a grilled Barramundi filet (a fish tasting similar to cod) we headed towards the northern part of the beach. It was not to busy which was good. Sun soaked and not a cloud as far as the eye could see.

To our disappointment we couldn't swim, well you could but I didnt want to. Kamil did it anyway and got to suffer afterward.
The warning signs where scatted along the beach. Tiny little jelly fish know as blue bottle in Australia and The Portuguese Man O' War elsewhere in the world. They are actually not an animal. They are a combination of several animals contributing to become this nasty creature.
I strongly recommend not to touch them.

















































Malin, Jamie, Kamil & Gustav