midnight

Here I sit, at my desk with a bottle of cola which I just grabbed from the balcony. Its around midnight and we got our first snow today so the cola is perfectly cooled.
Im feeling damn good at the moment, just finished putting Toni to sleep after a couple of episodes of Gilmore Girls. For some reason I really felt inspired to write something now so I decided to go for it and isnt it weird that it is exactly a month after my last entry? No, actually its not at all weird when I think about it. Its just a coincidence. Anyway, I've got plenty to tell so I'll just get right too it.

the job

In my last entry I wrote that I've got a job. Well guess what? This job blows! It is so incredulously boring! On paper its quite nice I have to admit, its only two days a week I have to work and I earn over 10euro/h. The job is about going up to people and inform them about the situation in Zimbabwe and try to convince them to transfer some money (monthly) to them. Sounds like a pretty neat job, dont you think? Well, its horrible. Not only does it hurt in your legs/feet when you get home after running around like a maniac chasing people, but its also extremely frustrating to hear NO (ALL THE TIME!) and a million of different excuses. Its such a stupid job, they (our stupid (literally) bosses) expect us to reqruit four people a day. Thats just insane considering we are always at the same street at the same hours, EVERY TIME! We already asked every single person in this city and who the hell would want to send money to an organization they've never heard of in the first place? There are plenty of somewhat famous organizations (Amnesty, Greenpeace, Rädda Barnen, Läkare utan gränser, etc) that people can support if they feel like it, but who in their right mind would just agree to sign a paper to some idiot (yes, if you took this job, your an idiot) on the street that allows them to withdraw money from their bank account every month?
As if it wasnt difficult enough already, we were (I'm using the past tense here because five of us were smart enough to quit) nine people, all standing on the same street. We were basically told to go up to everyone and can you imagine how annoying it would be to be asked 9-18 times in a span of ten minutes? It happend all the time, people walked accross the street to run some errands, then they came back the same way.
Needless to say, it feels somewhat pointless to try to reqruit people, especially now when its starting to get really cold outside, people doesnt seem to enjoy stopping to listen to us as their legs and feet are transforming into icicles and icecubes.
Ah well, enough ranting for now. I must admit that this job has some really nice sides too it aswell. Not do I only have alot of free time, but I also have quite a good time at work sometimes (read: durng the lunchbreak). Everyone loves to complain, thats in our nature, and to be able to do so infront of a group of people who couldnt agree more with you is just a luxury that this job brings.

A couple of days ago four new people were hired to join us, I havent really gotten to know them yet but the other three girls are really pleasant to be around. We laugh alot. We complain alot. We do however work pretty damn hard whenever we decide to do so (which might not be every single day) and we work well together. If it wasnt for them and their relaxed kind of attitude, I dont think I could do this anymore. Anyway, I've been working with it for a month now and I have one month left, unfortunately its just getting colder and colder but what the fuck, like Tim Gunn says; Make it work!

the script (incase someone is interested)

So, this is how I try to convince people to give us their money.

I open with "Hi, what do you know about the situation in Zimbabwe?", most of the time they say "I dont have time", "No thanks", "Screw you", "Get the fuck away from me", "Couldnt care less" or something like that. But sometimes they just say "Nothing", then I follow it up with, "Well well! How great then that I ran into you, do you have a minute?", now they say something of the above 99% of the time, but sometimes they say "Sure", then I continue like this...

Hello, my name is Joakim Engfors and I represent Individuell Människohjälp. We are one of the oldest aid-organizations in Sweden and we are working alot with help to selfhelp.
Today 20% of the population in Zimbabwe are suffering from HIV or Aids, which evolves to that the life expectancy age is only 41 years old. Because of this there is over a million of orphans in Zimbabwe. The kids has to move into the big cities to look for work but are very often forced to work under extremely bad conditions or forced into crime or sexual abuse, isnt that horrible?
So what do we at IM do to prevent this? Well, we do for example support seven local womengroups who are working with profitgenerating projects such as chicken breeding, vegetable gardens and manufacturing of school uniforms. With the money the women earn they can not only take care of themselves, but also help the children in the villages. Aint that great?

Thats about it, after that they start making other excuses, such as "I'm already supporting so many other organizations", "Or, just shoot Mugabe instead" or "I dont really trust that the money get there". Oh well, sorry if I'm boring you all, next subject!

högskoleprov

Högskoleprovet is the Swedish equivalence to USA's SAT. I took the test alittle over a week ago and now in the aftermath it was pretty nice, almost even fun. During the test however I was freaking out! It started 8.30AM and was scheduled till 4PM, so it was pretty much an all-dayer (Lol it sounds real bad but I wanted the opposite of all-nighter). The first part of the test was a reading comprehension test and I have absolutely no problems at all understanding texts, I do however not read so fast and I wasnt exactly expecting the timeframe to be so short, so I just read it in my own normal pace. After I was about halfway through the booklet the professor shouted out that there were five minutes left for the assignment. Panic-stricken, I browse my way through to the questions part and started filling in as much as I could. Needless to say, I felt that it pretty much sucked.



During the 30 minute break I called Toni and told her how it went and even though she was trying to calm me down it didnt really feel any good at all. Well, next round was again reading stuff and some word-knowledge, it didnt go so well either but atleast much better than the first time, and I knew that the things I would score most on (logics & ability to read tables/diagrams/maps) were yet to come so it felt pretty OK.
To my surprise there were even more reading stuff later, in English! For some reason I found the english texts way way easier than the swedish ones (which were often about lawyers and laws and shit like that), it went well.
During the lunchbreak, Toni came down to the university so we could eat something together. It was really nice to see her, it kind of made all my worries go away for a moment, she has that effect on me :) While we were eating some journalist came up to me and wanted to interview me, click here to read it.
In the last two parts I managed to score some major points, and it felt really good. After we were done with all parts of the test we were informed that the correct results would be posted online at 5PM that day. So I went home and waited eagerly to correct my test and be able to calculate my score.. I ended up on 66/122, which is not at all bad in my book. What does suck though is that 1300 people applied for the same program at the same school as I did and only a few will get in.

job offer

Oh I forgot to say, while I was working one day (one of those days when we actually really tried), a guy came up to me and talked to me about my job. I was clueless what his intentions were, I was like "Dude are you nuts? You gona ask me if you can send us some money or what?", its very rare that people come up to us, most people do their very best to avoid us (I've seen some really impressive evasion skills practised infront of me). Anyway, turns out he wants to offer me a job. I was like W00T? WIEO WEHO YAY! For some magical reason, that day was not at all exhausting anymore after the good news. However, when I got back to him later on over the phone, he could only offer work in very sporadic occasions and he said he would get back to me if something came up. He still havent called so I guess its not really a pressing issue. Fun nevertheless.

toni update

Since Toni is asleep and I am too impatient to wait for her to give you guys her update, I'll just hand it to you myself! Toni is ROCKING those SFI courses. She keeps getting promoted to the more advanced groups all the time and she is apparently gona be done at SFI in just a week or two. She just started ffs! Way to go sweetie! Your so imba. So she is learning like crazy, all the time studying and asking me stuff and scribbling down notes and looking things up. I am so proud of her and I'm also very VERY impressed! She has to wait now to get into Komvux to study swedish on upper secondary school level. But since shes such a freak of nature (read: responsible and smart), she will keep going to SFI while waiting to get in there. She is really really really doing well.
toni wants a duck

angel, cat, car, kid, cup (dont ask me where the cup came from, I just thought it sounded cute)



Antonia and I went to Kid, my sister, to celebrate and hang out for a while. When we got there they offered some coffee and Tonis reply totally caught them offguard "I want OBOY!", fun fun. We were sitting there for a couple of hours, talking and playing with Elias and his cat. It was alot of fun and I really enjoyed it.
After watching the cat jump after Elias necklace a few hundred times and seen him laughing hysterically about it, we went out to have a look at their new car and then headed home.
I have a tendency to really enjoy driving in the dark. And I really mean REALLY ENJOY. Sitting in the passenger seat and lean back and relax while listening to the radio and see all the lights fly by, I love it, its magical. I guess my fondness to this particular situation is quite weird, but so be it. I really really enjoy it.

This crazy sister of mine is soon turning... (How old is she getting? I honestly dont know, but I know that she is three years younger than me.. And how old am I? Shit I keep forgetting, but I'm born 85 atleast.. ah fuck it, you do the math).. Its soon her birthday! I dont really know what to get her but Antonia and I have an idea, ofcourse I cant spoil it here though since she might be reading it, but I think she will like it.
Either way, suggestions are always helpfull! What do you think a crazy young woman would want for her birthday?

Oh by the way, Angel and some of his friends are organizing some crazy shit so if your into motocross check this out: www.Fukkit.se. If you are too lazy to click the link, heres some quick info taken directly from their homepage.

Fukkit, created by a group of bored people of ages between 18 and 26 years old. The purpose of the association is that as many people as possible will be able to run together without being rated as better or worse than any other member.
Fukkit is a club which is for those who want to meet and run motocross. Unlike other associations, we rent different tracks with FMX ramps, MX tracks, enduro tracks etc.. Full days of free riding, you may be an experienced racer or a rookie, as long as you have fun you are very welcome.

gaming - heroes of newerth

I guess its not a big surprise that Im still playing plenty of HoN. Lately I've been starting to play more and more with my cousin trocaa (aka B4loo). He has learned incredibly much in a very short period of time and he really know how to play a certain role so its very fun to play with him. We have also managed to lure Dreamrage into playing some HoN with us and he seem to like it alot (even though we aaalways lose) so I hope that we can have some very nice games together in the future :) I also met a guy at the HoN forum, Alex, whos really nice and fun to play with. Then there is ofcourse the good old gang, we are all playing pretty much and we have some epic games.
I posted a suggestion on the HoN board this morning and Alex has already found out so much about the server DB so tomorrow we will try to get in contact with some of the S2 Staff and ask whether they have plans on implementing the suggested idea. If not we might try to make it ourselves (Alex = pro h4xxor). Very interesting.

During the weekends when we have enough people online, we usually try out some funny strategies.. Those games are always hilarious and surprisingly effective. We go MASSHEAL with Accursed/Nymph/Jera/Reaper/Shaman and buy astrolabe, 2x ring of sorcery, nomes wisdom and a barrier idol then we push, usually we are lvl 6-7, nothing can stop us lol.
Another fun strategy is mass-codex or mass-puzzlebox. Sometimes we do lvl1-kongor or regular early-push strats. Lots of fun! Sometimes we fail really hard though.

gaming - tibia



GOOD NEWS! I'm starting to pick up Tibia again, after having a long time of being annoyed over delay, lag and stupid deaths. Dennis (aka Basaboom) and his brothers Ture & Mattias have decided to start playing again! And not only that, Mixii is finally being able to transfer his character to Celesta and that means that I finally have a bunch of people to play with again (most of the other people I play with live in the states so the time differences fucks us up abit now when I'm having a decent sleeping pattern).
Macko has started to play too and now I just need Ias, fyrk0, Frex & Snap and I'm all set :)

rant about todays youth

If there is something I really hate about todays society, its how kids grow up way too fast... See my excellent illustration below!


When I was young it was completely different. When I was around ten years old, I was playing with marbles in the sandbox, playing hide and seek with the class or jumping rope with the girls. The thought of smoking or drinking never even crossed my mind, damnit it still havent! We were all so innocent back then compared to now, we dressed warm and appropriate. Nowadays girls dress like Bratz dolls and cover themselves up with makeup and whatnot. They are so damn obsessed about their looks and what people around them might thing of them! WHAT THE FUCK, THEY ARE KIDS, THEY SHOULD PLAY AND ENJOY THEMSELVES!!
They are also rude and using really foul language, back in my days the kids hardly ever said anything worse than "shit" or "hell". Now they are screaming "Gay ass cocksucker motherfucking bitch" between classes in pre-school! Yeah well, perhaps that was abit exaggerated but you get my point.
I just really hope that my kids will be able to actually be kids, not fastforward from newborn to adult. And whats with all the expensive shit kids walk around with? They have cellphones more expensive than my PC and their outfits costs the same as one month rent for me.. Parents discourage them to get dirty and advice them not to play if they might get stains on their clothes. To hell with it, the kids should be out in the snow building caves or jumping around in the mud pretending to be something they have seen on tv. What happened to the good old ways of having fun? Play in the sand or just get on a swing? Do people still do sport at all? I dont know but it sucks. It really does.

Something else that sucks alot is what the kids grow up with media wise, not that its their fault or anything but I just feel that the quality of children programs have sunken so deep its not even recognizable anymore. Back in the days we had "Bamse", "Skurt", "Fem myror är fler än fyra elefanter", "Björnes Magasin", "Disney Dags" and a whole lot of classic Disney and Astrid Lindgren movies. Now? Just junk.

meaning of life

Some days ago, I figured out a question that has been bugging alot of people over the years, the meaning of life. It all started one night when Antonia and I went to bed. She asked me to turn the tap shut extra tight after brushing my teeth, because it sometimes drip. Since she has been living in germany for the most part of her life its in her nature to always want to save on water because its very expensive there. Since I'm trying to adjust her to our way of living I said "why?" just to provoce her and make her get used to the fact that we dont have to pay for water.
It started a discussion about how people in other countries didnt have clean water and therefor we shouldnt waste it, my argument that "Its not like they are gona get the water because we dont use it" wasnt really sufficient because apparently the earth is slowly running out of clean and drinkable water.
This was actually news to me, I am living in my own little world and I'm pretty ignorant and to be honest I dont really care about anyone I dont know. I have a pretty extreme opinion about how to end alot of the trouble in the world, we all know that we are way too many on the planet, its not healthy for earth so my idea is to simply get rid of everyone whos not happy with how things are now. This would reduce the gloal population with maybe 70% and then alot of the problems would already be solved (poverty, oppression, hunger etc). Sure, its cruel. But everyone who suffers from this (e.g. losing relatives or friends), get rid of them too. In the end, if noone is left, so what? If everyone is dead, noone is unhappy. Sounds pretty good to me. Except that noone could eat cake.



Anyway. We are soon out of drinkable water, give it a few hundred years. We can make saltwater drinkable, but by doing so, we create deserts of salt, which also sucks. So what do we do when we run out of water? I belive that if we get that far into the future, we are too late. Lets see, whats the purpose of everything on earth? There is probably something for every species (food for another or whatnot). So what could be ours? Since we are the most developed and the species with most control, we are also somewhat responsible for the planet. If anyone can save it, its us. How can we save it though? It seems like whatever we do, greed takes over and we make everything even shittier. I do belive that if there were no more factories running, no cars & no human interaction at all, the planet could start to regenerate itself slowly. Perhaps after hundreds of thousands of years, Earth would be amazing again. So the purpose of our lives (as humans), is basically to prevent the earth from going under. How? Get rid of all humans! Its for the greater good! We can perhaps first send some sort of team to the moon and have them engrave information about everything we know in the stone for whatever the future brings.

random outbursts

Its starting to get really late and even though what I have been writing so far might seem somewhat depressing, I'm in a really good mood but I miss Toni alot so I want to crawl into bed with her now so I'll just end this quickly.

- Gilmore Girls OWNS! We only have three more episodes left then we have seen it all.
- Going to celebrate Jaydens birthday soon, looking forward to that!
- Zacker and Ray's birtday was recently and soon its Mixii's! Happy birthday guys!
- I've bought some sexy shirts.
- We are finished with the Harry Potter series now and we have started The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
- I wrote a letter to the kindergarten in Germany.
- One month left till I get to know if I get into university or not.
- I am so much looking forward to Lucia!
- Started to cut my hair, but the razor thingy broke so I walked around with a half-shaved head for some days!