Tag Archives: Game of Thrones

Stung by a bee

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This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my two years in California. This full post can be found here.

I can’t remember the last time I got stung by a bee. It must have been the summer before 5th grade when we were out with the boat and we all got stung. Except my brother who jumped in the water if I remember correctly. That was many many years ago. I was just sitting at the beach, I felt something on my neck, by my collarbone, and moved my hand there and felt something sting. It didn’t even occur to me that it could be a bee until I looked down in my lap a little later and saw the bee. It hurt a lot and got worse and worse. I removed the stinger and ever since then I’ve been very sore and as soon as I move my head it strains the sore skin. It is not swollen, and the big red mark is pretty much gone. But it still hurts. Stupid bee! Why would you disturb me while enjoying my book and the beach??

The weather today wasn’t very nice. So I decided to sleep for as long as I could, and at 10am, after 12 hours of sleep, I decided that it was time to get up. Or at least wake up and finish watching last night’s Game of Thrones. I watched ten minutes before falling asleep. After I was done by noon with the episode, which by the way ended crazily, the sun was out, not a single cloud on the sky anymore. But of course that was only here, inland. Out by the water it was cloudy. But it was still warm so it was no problem laying there in a bikini for a few hours. I read some, kept looking out in the water for dolphins, and booked a scuba tour on Wednesday morning. It was a chill day, except for the bee sting. I saw some dolphins, didn’t finish my book which was the goal for today. But I get distracted by the water, I can’t stop looking at it.

I left the beach at five, repainted my nails (which was kinda stupid since I am going scuba diving on Wednesday and maybe playing some more bvball tomorrow and Thursday. Eh. Dinner with the family and now I am ready to go to bed again. I don’t know what I will do tomorrow yet. I will most likely go to the beach again, I don’t think it will be worth spending a day at the pool even if it means sun. I am pretty tan, and my face is still pretty red from yesterday, maybe one more day of staying out of direct sun.

Pictures from the tournament yesterday:

Andrew Sellers, Dieu Ngu, Meg Powers, Rene Richey, Alexandra Bemm

Andrew Sellers, Dieu Ngu, Meg Powers, Rene Richey, and me.

Alexandra Bemm

Bvball, surfing, Fair, Cinépolis

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This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my two years in California. This full post can be found here.

Wow, what a weekend. I am exhausted out of my mind, but what a fun and eventful weekend. Yesterday was a long day and it started with 3 hours of beach volleyball at South Mission Beach. I didn’t play well at all in the beginning, but I got better and I had a great time. Next up was surfing at La Jolla Shores, we were in the water for 2 hours. I have definitely surfed better, but I blame the waves this time, they were really bad. But I caught some and stood up for at least a few seconds every now and then. I thought it was fun.

IMG_20150613_131319 IMG_20150613_132633 IMG_20150613_131409 IMG_20150613_131603 IMG_20150613_131647 IMG_20150613_131728 IMG_20150613_132006 IMG_20150613_132110 IMG_20150613_132230 IMG_20150613_132237 IMG_20150613_132302 IMG_20150613_132311 IMG_20150613_132411 IMG_20150613_132429 IMG_20150613_132419 IMG_20150613_132437 IMG_20150613_132459 IMG_20150613_132553 IMG_20150613_132411-PANO My phone (Google Nexus 5) did this automatically. Google Photos is really cool! It puts pictures from the same geographical place in an album, it creates photo sequences if there are a lot of similar pictures. Or adds effects o pictures, or does this. Pretty cool!IMG_20150613_131918-PANOIMG_20150613_180415 IMG_20150613_182230 IMG_20150613_182819

Third stop of the day was La Jolla Cove. I was hoping to see lots of sea lions like almost exactly two years ago. But we saw just a few. The whole cliff area was changed, and maybe that’s why they left? I hope they were just playing underwater instead, I would be so happy if I could see some while scuba diving this week.

Back to the hotel to shower, then off to San Diego County Fair where we walked around for a couple of hours. It was pretty much exactly the same as two years ago, but it was fun. There were many animals, both small and big, endless with food stands and everything else that has to do with a fair.

IMG_20150613_205258 IMG_20150613_211511 IMG_20150613_213116

Worth mentioning is that yesterday was my big day of luck when it comes to parking. Four times in a day we were extremely lucky and got one of the best spots on four very busy locations. Fist in Mission Beach, then La Jolla Shores, then La Jolla Cove, and at the Fair. I definitely used all my parking luck in one day, so that won’t ever happen again.

At 11pm we left the fair and drove to Del Mar where we spent two hours watching Jurassic World. A great movie, and a great experience watching it at a luxury cinema. The movie started at midnight and was about two hours long. Got back to the hotel at 2:30am and the alarm went off at 6:30 today. You could say that I was tired. And all I did today was play a beach volleyball tournament in Mission Beach. It was a draw 4 vs 4 tournament and I had so much fun all day with some of the people from bvball at South Mission Beach yesterday. You had a partner throughout the first four games and played with a different coed couple in each game. I played with a guy named Bart, and the first game we lost really bad, but we won the last three. I was the setter and everyone loved my sets, and I have to say that they were pretty damn good today! And very many people I’ve never met before acknowledged that, it made me happy.

I was apparently one of the better players with most points in the whole tournament, so after the group plays, the best players in the epic division (the better one) got a buy (was that how it was called?) which means that I automatically won the first game in the playoff. Then there was the awesome division (the not as good division) and the best people in that one won there too. Unfortunately I had to wait for at least two hours before playing the semifinal with a new bunch of people. I had lost it, we were rotating (instead of me setting the whole game), and we lost with 25-17 (we were playing one set to 25). But I am not too sad about it, I was very tired at the end. Michael drove me up to Carlsbad where he helped me in with my suitcases. We said goodbye and I took a shower. I am embarrassed to say that I very much forgot about sunscreen today. It was so cloudy today (June Gloom) and not very warm. It was fine to play in shorts and a tank top. But anyway, I got so burned! My shoulders and especially my face. That sunglass tan is never going away now. It looks horrible…

I have lots of aloe vera on it, so I hope it will at least be better tomorrow. I don’t know what I will do yet tomorrow, I might go to Victoria’s Secret to buy some underwear, I will definitely sleep in first though. I will need a lot of sleep now. And now, I am in bed, and will watch the season finale of Game of Thrones!

US Embassy in Stockholm

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My Saturday was spent in Stockholm after four hours of sleep. I tried sleeping on the 6am train this morning but just couldn’t. I read a lot instead. The train was almost 30 minutes late which meant I got to the centralstation in Stockholm at 9:10. My interview began at 9:30 and I had no idea from where the bus went. I asked around and finally found the right bus stop. It came almost directly and I actually were at the Embassy 9:35. It’s not extremely important to be on time because a lot of people have the same time and then there’s a line inside. What was frustrating though was that I was the last one to leave the Embassy even if other people had showed up after me. Not fair! I think it might be because I already had a visa for last year or something. I was done by 11am and took the bus back to the train station. My train back home didn’t leave until 4pm so I decided to have lunch at Hard Rock Cafe. I googled the location and walked there to kill time. I could have taken a bus, but I had five hours all alone in the capital. What to do? So I had lunch by myself in the summer sun. I didn’t take a burger, they were expensive, so I ordered a chicken/goatcheese/dried cranberries sandwhich on the lunch menu. It was really good! The staff there spoke English too me, it was weird, but HRC is an international restaurant chain so people from all over work there. My waitress was from Australia and the guy who sold me the pint glass was from California, but he spoke Swedish. It was cool.

After lunch I went to a park nearby and sat down for like two or three hours and read. After a couple of hours I was so tired I could barely sit straight up, I almost fell asleep right there and then. But fortunately an old and grumpy lady woke me up by screaming at me to take down my feet from the bench. It was a wooden bench and it was extremely uncomfortable with short shorts so I moved around a lot and decided that it was comfortable to have my feet up somehow on the bench. She yelled at me really loud but I just pretended I didn’t understand Swedish and she walked away continuing being pissed off. What is it with old ladies?? It’s a wooden bench out in the open, it will get dirty even if I don’t have my clean shoe on it. And it will get off when it rains. It’s another thing on buses to put your feet up on the cushioned seat in front of you, but a bench made out of wood in a park under a bunch of trees that drop tons of seeds? Stupid lady! But, she woke me up so I could stay awake for like thirty more minutes before my butt got a little bit too much wood flavor. So I slowly walked back to the train station where I waited for 40 minutes until the train came and took me home.

On the way back I tried to sleep and did that most of the three hour ride. There was a guy two rows behind me though that just couldn’t keep his mouth. He had some mental disability, but when you only had four hours of sleep and need to sleep it doesn’t matter if he is really happy and only says nice and happy things. It was irritating. I read some though, and I finished Throne of Glass and started on the 6th and last Mortal Instruments book City of Heavenly Fire. Throne of Glass was really good. It is about a young and world famous assassin whogets caught and ends up in a slave camp for a year. One day the Crown Prince comes along and wants here to participate in a competition to become the kings Champion. Really exciting and I really wanted to start the second book right away, but I have so many books that I really want to read so it’s hard to decide…

I got home, started doing laundry right away and I am almost done with it. I watched the latest Game of Throne episode during and the whole episode was just on the Wall! I thought I knew what was gonna happen at the end, but I guess that will be the next episode which also happens to be the season finale!
I also edited the thesis report and sent in it again. The second final version. I hope this gets approved! If it doesn’t very soon I won’t be able to get any CSN next year because of lack of study results. I got a letter from CSN yesterday that told me that I needed to fix my grades from this semester if I want a study grant next year. I can’t help that my thesis has been dragged out for this long! Cross your fingers for us that it will get approved this time!!
As soon as the laundry is done I will go to bed, read a couple of pages and sleep until I wake up tomorrow!

Oh, right, might be worth to mention that my visa got approved and I will get it back along with my passport within a week. Yay! 🙂

Liseberg at nightThis is a photo I took of the backside of Liseberg one evening when I walked home. Hard Rock Cafe StockholmMy 12th Hard Rock Cafe visit. Next will be Gothenburg!

Friday on a Monday

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This is a really weird feeling. Today is my Friday, my last day of work before two days off. This will be a very unusual summer. But I am not complaining, not at all. I love my job and it gets better and better every day. I didn’t get a new attraction today and could work on my own the whole day. I was mostly at AtmosFear but also a couple of hours at Höjdskräcken and Lisebergshjulet. A Monday on Lisebergis the nices thing ever (until all the kids get out of school in a week or two). So few people the park was practically dead. The weather was amazing and I so wished I was there in my freetime. It was the perfect Liseberg day! Sunny, with some clouds, lagom warm and no people. Not even Helix had a particuarly long line (I was told, I still haven’t gone on it. I could go on it on a break if I wanted to, but I want to wait).

I decided today that I want to go to Liseberg in my freetime pretty soon. So I got my employee tickets and asked Chad if he wanted to join me on Wednesday after our presentation at Veidekke. I’m not gonna have time to go on Helix by myself before so he will have to deal with me freaking out. I think I should buy motion sickness pills before that. Just in case. It will be so weird going on the attractions that I work on normally, and where my friends will be working. I am really excited about it. It will be my reward for almost being done with the thesis!

When I got home I sat down and watched the latest Game of Thrones episode while eating candy. I really felt like I deserved that after 6 long days of work. I was actually very grossed out at the end of the episode and had to look away. I didn’t remember that happen in the book, not exactly like that anyway. Ew, it was gross! I am sad that it is only two more episodes of the season… It would have been okay if George R.R. Martin would release the sixth book in the series. But that will most likely take many more years…

This morning was spent in school, first working a bit on the thesis presentation we are gonna hold tomorrow, and then we listened to a couple of other thesis presentations. We didn’t have time for more, I needed to go to work. It seriously only takes 20 minutes to walk from Chalmers to the backside of Liseberg.

The presentation isn’t until 2pm tomorrow so we will have the whole morning to prepare. That’s why I don’t do anything tonight. I am not nervous about tomorrow, we know what we have done and it can’t be a disaster unless it comes from someone else. I am confident.

Kent

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Ever since their latest album was released last week I haven’t listened to anything else. That whole album is amazing!! I kinda decided that I wanted to go to the concert on June 1st. But it looks like I am on a four-day training for Liseberg then. But I am not complaining.

Since I am not completely sure that I have the job at Liseberg I went to a job interview for home service today. It took more than an hour and it sounded really interesting. I think it could be a fun job for the summer. But Liseberg has always been a dream, so that’s my priority. The only thing home services wanted was a couple of references, so I need to get that first before they will offer me the job. The interviewer told me several times during that I seemed very nice and interesting and would do well there. That’s always fun to hear.

This morning I was in school with my partner writing on the report. I don’t like this part of the thesis. I love to write, but about stuff I like and with a “talking language”. Writing technical is so hard!!

 

The last thing I will write before I go to bed is that I am seriously thinking about a Master’s degree. Chalmers offers a program called Leadership and Learning which would make me a “civilingenjör” in Swedish (in English I think it is just called a Master of Science degree) and a high school teacher at the same time. The more I think about it the more I want to do it! And that also means that I can keep my apartment for two more years, which will give me a total of three years extra  queue time on boplats.se. With more than six years of queueing I will have to get a nice apartment in an area I want to live in! With three, like I have now, it is impossible to get anything. The housing situation in Gothenburg is the worst ever!!

I had a way too big dinner, and my 57kg is a lot more now. But my spaghetti with meatsauce was delicious, so it was worth it. But I have to remember to make smaller lunch boxes. I watched Game of Thrones while I ate and I was surprised there was no nudity at all in this episode. Weird!

Pre course registration

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It was so nice to sleep until 11am spend four hours in school before a good dinner on the couch in front of Game of Thrones.

We got a lot of feedback on our thesis report and some really big question marks on our Excel-file. That’s no fun when we only have 1,5 week until the first deadline. I have to admit that I am a little bit stressed. But because of this I want to work as much as possible now, which will probably mean that we are gonna have some days to relax.

When I came home from school I made dinner, falukorv with apple slices and ketchup in the oven served with mashed potatoes. It was surprisingly good! And enough for lunch tomorrow.

I’ve also started to look at courses I want to take in the fall semester. The list of all the courses became available yesterday so we students can prepare. But the real registration starts on May 9th at 1pm Pacific Time, 10pm Swedish time. One of the courses I put in my application wasn’t available this semester so I had to find another one and it took some time. But after a while I found one and got a very nice schedule altogether. If I can take those four courses I will be free on both Mondays and Fridays the whole fall semester! Awesome or what!

The classes I want to take is:

  • CE 321 – Fundamentals of Transportation Engineering, 3 credits
    The characteristics and functions of highway, air, rail, transit and other modes of urban and intercity transportation. Fundamentals of transportation design, operations, and planning.
  • CE 322 – Fundamentals of Transportation Engineering Laboratory, 2 credits
    Application of principles of transportation planning, operations, and design. Emphasis on urban transportation planning and operations, and the design of urban and intercity highway and rail facilities. Experimental determination of the physical and mechanical properties of pavement materials through laboratory and field testing. Analysis of data and preparation of testing reports.
  • EDES 406 – Sustainable Environments, 4 credits
    Collaboration of interdisciplinary faculty and guest speakers/panelists. Introduction, illustration and analysis of concepts and principles for sustainability to be used in all aspects of environmental design. Integration and application of knowledge of human and natural systems with environmental, social and economic concerns, from a global-to-local perspective
  • ARCH 217 – History of World Architecture: Prehistory – Middle Ages, 4 credits
    Architecture and urbanism in the ancient world, from prehistory to the Middle Ages. Social, cultural and physical conditions that influenced the built environment to the Mediterranean basis, plus Europe, Asia, Africa and Pre-Columbian America.

I am also thinking about taking a one credit course of volleyball. But that would mean classes on Mondays, and I think it could be worth having that day off if I ever want to go on long weekend trips. Or just be a lazy Cali girl and hang out on the beach.

It isn’t this easy to register for classes though. I wish! Two of them this semester have prerequisites which means I have to get a Course Permission Number from each teacher after probably sending them syllabi and transcripts from Chalmers. Or maybe just sucking up to them, I’ve heard American teachers love that. It’s not gonna be as hard as I thought though, I had imagined getting syllabi for ALL my courses, but the other two semesters are a later problem.
I have sent one email to the civil engineer department and asked them how to get those numbers, and I have a draft to the Sustainable Environments teacher. There are no prerequisites, but it says that I have to have the consent of the teacher.

I am still waiting for Cal Poly Housing to get back to me about how and when to apply for that room on campus. I hope they answer soon, I have a feeling that application needs to be handed in pretty very soon.

 

Tomorrow will be a fun day, except being in school at 8. And to do laundry at 11. But watching the Cortége and having dinner out with Dzejna and co will be plenty of fun :).

Easter BBQ

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The Swedish spring goes on! Today was as nice as yesterday, a few more clouds, and a breeze, but it was perfect. I’ve been sitting out in the sun in Sjövik all afternoon in shorts and a tank top. Super awesome!

My dad and Karin had a BBQ party today, so I borrowed mom’s car and drove out to them at 2pm. I got a comfortable chair and sat there until it was time to eat. As appetizer there were Swedish easter food, like pickled herring, salmon, Jansons frestelse, gubbröra. Really good!

And the main course was grilled pork and lamb. Really good that too! Chocolate cake for dessert.

It was a very nice afternoon!

 

Before I drove there I tried a trick mom told me she read about somewhere. All my frying pans and pots are black underneath. With sugar cubes that easily went away. Amazing.

Sugar cubes

I also found extremely cheap flight tickets to the US. I was told on Saturday that Norwegian Airlines has started with direct flights from Stockholm to Los Angeles. September 1st, 2500kr!! That is ridiculous! I was afraid that I was gonna have to pay 10 000 for a roundtrip. Now it seems like half that price. Awesome! I’m not gonna book anything though until I am certain of what I will do. Maybe I won’t even fly in to LA, but somewhere else for a short vacation before school starts?

 

Now, I will watch the latest Game of Thrones episode, eat some easter candy and drink påskmust!