Things and stuff

I always make sure I e-mail Tamsin first before doing this; because I don't want to put all my writing energy into blogging, then just e-mail her saying "Yeah, did some stuff, was cool, chat 2 u l8rz". That's just not what you do. But it makes me worry that this blog will just be the cast-offs of things I don't consider interesting enough to tell Tamsin.

Still reading? Good. I don't think I've even said where I'm living; I'm gonna need to read back over my past blogs at one point. Well, I'm living in a sort of halls of residence; en-suite shower+toilet, but sharing a kitchen with about 10 people. I haven't seen them that often though; I'm not even sure I've seen everyone who lives on my floor. Anyway, one thing I found strange upon my arrival, was the lifts - I live on the 8th floor, so it's best to use one. And with these lifts, the doors don't open automatically. They're like normal room doors, with handles, that you push/pull open. Don't worry, they're locked shut while the lift is moving. The doors also have little windows on, which is a bit surreal when you go down, and you see the floor you were standing on disappear above you.

Did I mention that there's a TV in the kitchen here? Swedish TV is pretty crap; we have 7 channels, the last one being MTV. Pretty much any time of day, you can guarantee there'll be some American programming on (and that's not including MTV). But like, some things are so rubbish - they have adverts on ALL the time. Literally, every 5 minutes with some shows. It's so annoying to watch. I was watching football last night - Northern Ireland beating Sweden. And seriously, every few minutes, they'd have betting odds at the bottom of the screen, from different bookmakers, of what the final score might be, or who might score the next goal. Although, from watching the football, I've now learnt how to pronounce Frederik Ljungberg's name properly; we're getting it fairly wrong. Anyway, what else is crap about Swedish TV... yeah, I saw the test card on one channel this morning. The test card? Wait Tim, that can't be right, you mean the thing that stopped being used in Britain about 10 years ago? Yeah, that's the one. And Home & Away! Home & Away is on here, but not Neighbours. Oh yeah, and they've started showing old episodes of The Simpsons now, which is annoying; they also show Will & Grace, Friends, Cops, and other American shows like that. It's because of this sort of TV, that all the Swedish people my age talk with American accents.

And talking of crap - Mr Bean. Mr Bean's new film is out here soon, called 'Mr Beans SEMESTER!'. I talked to some people, and apparently he's really popular. I was speaking to an Austrian girl, and she loves him. One Swedish girl said she hates him, but it seemed to be more because he's on so often, rather than because it's a terrible piece of programming. Also, on the subject of Mr Bean (yes, that's right, there is more to say on this matter) I saw the cartoon a few weeks ago, and Rowan Atkinson is still credited as doing the voice. Like, they actually pay him to come into the studio and go "mm, mm, hmm" at the right places. Although, I could be wrong - he might be the producer or something, and he just thinks to himself "Yeah, might as well do the little noises myself." I don't know; despite my heartfelt views on the matter, I'm not all that knowledgeable about the details of the production of the Mr Bean franchise.

OK then, one final thing - they have glow in the dark lightswitches in the bedrooms here, which is one of those ideas that's great on paper, but doesn't even begin to work in real life. Because anyone who has ever seen anything glow in the dark, will know that after about 5 minutes, it stops glowing. So unless you need the switch to glow as soon as you've turned off the lights (and surely you don't - you just had your hand there, put it back where it was, it's not like the switch has moved), it's an utterly useless contraption, because it doesn't work when you need it - e.g. when you wake up in the middle of the night, or are coming back from somewhere late.

Also, here is a picture of the Underground. It's not very good, I'll take another one soon. But you can kinda see what I mean about the walls being like a cave; there are splatters of colour as well, which is just for decoration. And also, Madonna is there because she's releasing her new desgins for H&M, which seems to be a big deal here at the moment. I've put more pictures up on my myspace (www.myspace.com/ilovelol).