S.O.A

The finale of the sixth season of Sons of anarchy was a chocker. I won't mention any details in case someone is about to watch it, but what I can say is it left me in tears. And yes I know it is just a fictional story and fictional characters but SOA must be the most gripping show on TV. I don't think I have cared or attached myself like this to something fictional before (I guess that is a sign of brilliant writing). I am happy it is not real though since that would be even more heart breaking and horrific, especially if I knew these people myself. The end scene was what got me sobbing, not least because of the song that was played (again, the people who are in charge of what songs to play are some kind of geniuses). P.E.R.F.E.C.T. (but, oh, so sad). Can't wait until the next and last ever season next year.

"They just don't have no respect for us, and they wonder why we don't have respect for them"

Upworthy is my new favorite website. Inspiring people and videos that talk about things that matter is served to you on a silver platter. One of the videos that I came across was about a guy who recorded some audio when he was stopped and frisked by the police for no apparent reason, only (as one of the police officers honestly confess) because he is a "mutt" (a derogative racial slur for people who are of a mixed ethnicity). We have all heard of this stop-and-frisk activity that the police can carry out if they, very subjectively, think that someone looks suspicious. The problem is the bias of these police officers since their judgment is clouded by stereotypes and peer pressure. The most worrying fact is that the head of the police department encourage these behaviors. If these policemen really blame their actions on their chief of police and their fear of being punished I don’t see the difference from what occurred in Germany during WW2. The so called “obedience to authority” phenomenon was first recognized after the famous Milgram experiment and the Stanford prison experiment by Zimbardo. I am convinced this is an ongoing and global problem (in Sweden there is a famous case called “Baseballigan” or “Norrmalmsligan”) that is hiding under the safety net of people in power.

What does this police activity do to the people who have to endure this stop-and-frisk experience more than once a day? Well, decreased respect for authority for one, which is the exact opposite of what the police are trying to achieve. Along with that come anger and hate as well as the feeling of always being the bad guy. This is another psychological phenomenon that I think is very important in this situation - “Internalized oppression”. In short it means that eventually we start to think and behave in a way according to how other people see us (which is also worth thinking about if you work with children). This can also be seen in the Stanford prison experiment where the prisoners started to feel and act like, you got it, helpless prisoners.

I think it’s time this problem is brought forward so that we can all understand the consequences of this type of experience on a human being.

"We came all this way to explore the moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the earth."

Let's make this video compulsory for every human being! New found perspectives and self-awareness of all man kind. The big picture. The Overview effect:

Oh darling, darling, what have I done? Now I do my talking with a gun.

More question marks regarding English culture

In Tuesday's blog post about English culture I left out a couple of things that definitely should have been included. I guess I'm getting used to some of the things that normally would raise my eyebrows if I wasn't faced with them everyday. A friend of mine from Sweden reminded me of these things and I couldn't believe I actually left them out in the first place. Here goes:

"Why is there two separate taps in the bathroom, and not just one mixer?" This one's easy: one is for when you need scolding hot water and the other one is for when you need freezing cold water. As simple as that! "Yeah... okaaay?".

"You didn't feel like putting in carpet in all the rooms of the house, including the bathroom, was taking it a bit too far?" Hum, noooo?! Your feet can get cold wherever you are in the house you know. "Heh, well... have you heard of socks?"


This will be the last post taking the mick out of the English since I don't think this will do me any good if my boyfriend finds out I wrote this. Hehe. Next time I'll make fun of Americans instead...

Hot Hot Hot

It's been really cold here the last week or so, and I just wanna sit inside and hide from the world under a blanket with a hot cuppa. Yesterday was one of those days, especially, so instead of going out drinking pints of cold beer I had a hot chocolate and some tea with my friend Aline. Much needed and as usual we had great conversations and laughed a ton. Today the sun is out and it feels good again, so I'm gonna put my running shoes on and just go for it! Hope you have a great Sunday!

Don't call it a fight when you know it's a war

This week has been slow since I still haven't heard from any job applications yet. I really hope they start rolling soon though, otherwise I'm gonna have to start my own business. Which, I guess, sounds very tempting. Why wait for someone to figure out that you're good enough when you might as well work for yourself? Say NO to the man! I actually have an idea that I have been giving some thought but I need help from someone who can create websites. If that's YOU, let me know!

Due to lack of other interesting things I give you 3 minutes and 37 seconds of The 1975.

Guy Fawke's night

We went to see the fireworks in Southwark Park on Tuesday since it was Guy Fawke's night. Some of the fireworks were really impressive but unfortunately I didn't manage to catch that many. People started setting off fireworks a week ago and some are still doing it. The worrying part is that it's mostly kids randomly setting them off in the streets. It feels like it's just a matter of time before someone gets a firework rocket through their window. Discipline your kids people!

Just like every other fool I'll keep marching on

One of the reasons Sons of Anarchy is my all time favourite TV-series is how well they manage to invoke specific feelings by perfect pairing of visuals and sound. The music is so well thought out that it more often than not gives you chills. Whoever hired their music director made a good call. One of the songs that got me completely obsessed is this one (I think it was played in season 5):

A Swede's ponder upon English culture

As a Swede moving to England there are a number of things that will take some getting used to and some things that makes you be like “Put that Dave Cameron on the phone now! He needs to sort out some things!” While this list might not be the to-do-list of a Prime minister, it sure is something a Swede would react to:

Climate:

“Why do I need my winter jacket when it’s not even close to zero outside?” That’s the humidity for ya, it crawls into your bones. Welcome to England!

“Why do I need my winter jacket INSIDE?” Oi! You fork out some more cash and maybe we can afford to heat this place!

“What are those black stains around my window frame that keep growing bigger every day?” oh THAT? That’s just mold my love, just wipe it down every now and then and you’ll keep it from covering your stuff.

“I’m gonna pop out to the store now before it starts raining again” Oh, may God be with you!

In the supermarket:

“Where’s the rest of your cheese selection?” What do you mean?! There’s LOTS to choose from: Mild cheddar, mature cheddar, extra mature…

“Where’s the rest of your bread selection?” What do you mean?! There’s a whole aisle full of different choices: white toast, brown toast, extra thick toast…

Double bag it or learn the hard way. I’m talking about shopping bags here people!

Food:

“This candy just tastes like sugar”. That’s why it’s called SWEETS!!! Not candy, you American wannabe.

“You’re having chips for LUNCH!?” No I’m having CRISPS!

“I must be coming down with a cold because I can’t taste anything of this Shepperd's pie” Don’t worry, your tastebuds should be getting used to bland food any day now.

Things you say:

Aright? (Meaning “Are you alright?”). “Yeah, I’m good thanks! Got a wonderful phone call from an old friend this morni…” NO! It wasn’t a question you moron!

“How are you?” Not too bad. “Oh, somebody call the optimist police cause it’s getting out of control over here!”

That’s rubbish! This is rubbish! Everything is rubbish!

In the underground:

“Did you see that guy? He tried to steal my phone!” No he didn’t.

“That’s weird, earlier today everyone seemed to want a lot of personal space, but now when I finished work people where pushing me on to the tube. I had to stand with my face in someone’s armpit!” Don’t slow me down at rush hour! I’ve had a long day and just want to get home as quickly as possible! Just hold your breath and be quiet!

Life is easy. Or at least it could be.

An article in a Swedish newspaper by Fredrik Virtanen talks about our pointless, modern lives, in a similar fashion to my previous blogpost. It especially appeals to me because I'm unemployed at the moment, so I'm familiar with the frustration. Why do we make it so difficult for ourselves? Does life have to be this hard? There is definitely something stupid in the way we have built society. I happened to come across this TED talk by Jon Jandai called "Life is easy. Why do we make it so complicated?". At first I was a bit sceptical, but once I overcame his accent I agreed with every word that came out of his mouth. He talks about our inability to be happy with the small things in life and our unreasonable tendency to struggle for years and still come out the other end with nothing (or worse, with huge debts), even though we don't have to. We always have a choice.

"How does somebody know what they want if they haven’t even seen it?"

With the recent release of the iPad Air we thought it would be a good idea to watch the film based on the Apple founder's life. No, of course this was not what we were thinking, I just assumed it would be a great introduction to my blog post. The film "Jobs" left me inspired, not just because of the storyline but because of Job's life philosphy that very often defined my own.

Sadly, people like Steve Jobs only come around once in a while. While most of us just walk around like mindless robots doing things the way they've always been done without questioning the world around us, people like Steve try to do something different. They have figured out the way the world works, or doesn't work. We wake up early to go to work Monday to Friday with a lump in our throats, wishing this day won't be as horrible as the last, and we just do whatever someone tells us to do. When we get home in the evening we might have a couple of hours to do something we actually like to do but we’re too tired so we just end up in front of the TV. The weekend comes and we have to live life as much as possible within those two days (which we obviously never do because we don't have the energy or time).

Okay, this doesn't apply to everyone, there are a few lucky ones out there who actually do what they WANT to do (and probably have worked hard for it), not what they think they HAVE to do, and have the freedom to travel or wake up late or whatever. But most of us are never told that we can change the way the world works. We start school at a certain age, and finish at a certain age, and after that we try to find a job just to have enough money to survive and cash out when we’re 65. After that you’re free to do whatever you want, assuming you can afford to do something else but to watch TV and visit the local hospital. GREAT! Let’s just hope you have at least ten years left to make up for some of the lost time (sorry for the cynical tone of this blog post but it’s the truth. And you know it).

If we all realize that society is just a product of humans, and the way it is set up, the way we do things etc. can be changed, nothing is set in stone, something will happen. We will probably be happier too. Just because it’s been this way for hundreds of years doesn’t mean it is the only or best way. For example, why should we work as much as we do? Wouldn’t it be better if we divided the workload so that more people actually could work too? We would probably get better results and increased prosperity in many areas of society if this was the case. I don’t know about you but quite often I hear people say “you can’t do that” or “you have to do it this way” (unfortunately often from the mouth of bosses and managers) and I just feel like telling them to stop slowing down the world. There is no such thing as right or wrong. One of my favourite quotes from Steve Jobs (maybe my favourite of all) acknowledges this fact:

“When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life and try not to bash into the walls too much…that’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact—everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you…shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you’re just going to live in it versus make your mark upon it. Once you learn that, you will never be the same again.”

So what I want to say is that we should all stop being robots and start being inventors. Don’t adapt to your surroundings, make the surroundings adapt to you.

(Ashton Kutcher does a great Job, by the way. No pun intended.)

Brekkie

This is what I've eaten for breakfast the last three weeks and I don't think I will ever get sick of it. I was inspired by the Avo shake at Joe and The Juice and decided to make it myself. I blend one banana, half a big/medium sized avocado (or a whole small one) and about a deciliter of milk (depends on what consistency you want). It's healthy and delicious, try it!

Tennessee

If you haven't heard the soft southern sound of Drew Holcomb and The Neighbours you're in for a treat. Here's a song about my favourite U.S. state:

What's the issue?

Sigh. It happened again. And again. And again. I know this subject has been discussed an infinite number of times, but it doesn’t seem to make any difference. The shooting at LAX that took place this Friday is nothing new. In fact, it is so common to see things like this on the news that it almost becomes the norm, which happens when we experience something enough times in our lives (another well-known example is beauty image). There is no doubt that there is a gun issue in the U.S. but still politicians and ordinary citizens can’t for their lives begin to criticize it. 

When I was in the U.S. for three months I believe I didn’t go many days without hearing the words “gunman” and “shooting” on the news (this may come as a shock to many Europeans). These reports have become such an everyday occurrence that we effortlessly and casually brush it off, perhaps thinking about the victims for a second before we get back to whatever we were doing. But no one asks why or how it can be prevented. 

There seems to be a consensus among Americans that guns don’t kill people, but crazy people with guns do. And if we made the accessibility of guns more difficult, someone who’s out to kill will find their way around the law anyway. But this is the problem, you see, because most of these shootings have been carried out by people who happened upon guns, that is: guns that where found, most of the time in someone’s (e.g. parent’s) house. Most of these gunmen did not go out of their way to get their hands on a gun, it was there right in front of them when they snapped and felt like doing something drastic. The question is if there wasn’t a gun there, would their actions have been as brutal? Off course, this is also an issue of safe gun storage in people's homes. 

Many of these horrific shootings involve children (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/us/children-and-guns-the-hidden-toll.html). A three year old child finds his dad’s gun under the couch and starts playing with it, accidentally shooting himself in the head. Unfortunately a true story. There’s a false idea that the more people who own a gun for protection, the safer they will be. I hope I don’t have to spell out how ridiculously stupid this sounds. As a matter of fact, more guns mean decreased safety and higher firearm related deaths (http://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(13)00444-0/fulltext). And the award for most guns per capita goes to… the U.S.  You do the math.

You're meant to look scary on Halloween!

My costume for the night:

National Cat Day

Yesterday was National Cat Day (I'm guessing only in the UK?) so I think we should celebrate it with some cat pictures.

The End!

I am afraid this is it. The last blogpost about the trip. Then I need to bring you up to speed on my life since I got back. Which is not that exciting by the way. I suggest you listen to this song while reading. It is one of the many country songs that we heard on the radio during our trip and this one in particular is very suitable for this occasion. 

  

We had a few hours before we had to return the van and head to the airport so we decided to have our last BBQ meal. First we stopped at a car cleaner in order to make sure we didn’t get any extra charges at the rental place then we hit the road towards the closest BBQ we could find. It turned out though that the closest place was a bit of a shack so we decided to keep on looking.  We ended up in Long Beach which is pretty much the opposite to “closest” BBQ. It was about an hour drive but since we had time it didn’t really matter much. The place was called Beachwood Brewing and BBQ and looked pretty good from the outside, and since we were getting kind of hungry at this point, so we decided it had to do. I got pulled pork with coleslaw and hush puppies. Hush puppies, by the way, is something I wish we had in Europe (I’m sure I told you about the time back on the east coast when we confused Hush puppies with Slush puppies. Funny story.) They are awesome! And I was glad I got to have them one last time before heading back home. 

After the meal we took some pictures of the van so we would remember what it looked like and so that you guys could get an idea of how we lived during the past three months. At the Escape Campervan office we told the guy about some things that were missing that we had to buy ourselves so he gave us a very generous discount. Much appreciated! However, I would still recommend people to rent with Escape Campervans since it’s a pretty awesome deal and the guys who run it are really nice. 


Heading back to the hotel to pick up our bags and take the free shuttle bus to the airport it finally became real that this trip was coming to a close. We couldn’t believe how quickly it had all gone and how well it all had gone since nothing really major happened, except for our headlight being stolen and… hum… I crashed into a parked car. But other than that it had gone pretty smoothly. We were looking forward to getting home though, if not just to rest and not having to drive in crazy traffic every day. But, oh boy, would I do it all again. In a heartbeat! Next time we’ll fill in the rest of the map. This has been an unforgettable experience and I can tick the box. If you have a dream to go travel I say: DO IT! Before it’s too late and you have children or a career. But even then, you could probably still do it! “Life is too short” and “YOLO” and all that. Peace!

(Check out the route one the map further down)

L.A. day 3

We started the day at The Original Pancake House that I'd been longing for ever since New York. If you're going to the U.S. you really need to visit this place for breakfast or brunch. I first went here when I was visiting my cousin and her family two years ago and I've wanted to go back ever since. They have a couple of restaurants spread out over the U.S but most of them are in California. They serve all kinds of pancakes you can imagine, as well as omelettes if that's your thing. It is not like IHOP or Waffle house, which are disgusting, but more like an authentic old fashioned café. I had bacon pancakes with strawberries on the side. Yum! 

Satisfied with our bellies full of pancakes we headed towards Manhattan Beach for some serious chillaxing. Manhattan Beach is quite a long way south of L.A. and Santa Monica Beach but it is a great and beautiful beach and not as crowded as other beaches closer to the city. The highlight of the day was a guy who, anything but subtle, tried to flirt with a couple of girls. And, even though they were less than impressed by his attempts, I can admire his courage and confidence which is very visible overall in this country compared to Sweden or the UK. I wish we all could care less about what other’s think and just go for it! 

In the evening we went to one of our favourite restaurants in L.A. that we had been to three years ago. It is right on Sunset Boulevard and called Saddle Ranch Chop House. I had a Baseball Cut Sirloin and Josh had the Ultimate Cut Prime rib. I was a bit disappointed with the size of mine as I didn’t think it would actually be as small as a baseball (hence the name Baseball Sirloin) but the size of Josh’s Prime rib could feed ten people. It was huge!