Caroline and Henrik

Went to a great wedding on Saturday. Caroline and Henrik got hitched in Bosjökloster, just a few kilometers away form the summer cottage. Henrik is a tennis player from Ystad and is as charming as they come. Caroline is more charming than they usually come.

Martin produced a quote about her at the reception from som old fool who once said that Caroline (like Monica Zetterlund) like a fig of lingon in a cocktail glass.

I went up earlier to cut the grass at the summer place and am just glad we made it to the wedding on time.

For more videos of Caroline see her: Caroline in Widex Passion commercial

Pik street and drinks like cousins

Last weekend I subbed in on a trip for a pregnant colleague to Estonia. I must report that it is rather bleak over there (sorry Will).

We did manage to find a humorous street sign (see below Danish speakers), and later on Saturday night we had a talk to a little drink that has an unpronounceable name, but the descriptor is memorable: it's like kissing your cousin; it tastes good, but you know it's wrong.

Otherwise I've got a stomach bug and therefore have had my face down the toilet for the last 24 hours. I must clean the toilets in our apartment. . .

Cheap Vodka and Kitty

On Saturday night I was part of a scientific experiment. I wanted to see if a technique that I had read about in an article on Dave Arnold (a moleular gastronomy prime mover) had legs. The hypothesis was that cheap vodka would taste better if poured a few times through a coal filter.

I bought a coal filter at Clas Ohlssons, some cheap vodka in Denmark and invited Renzo over (as a guinea pig). We poured the vodka through the filter and noticed a faint discolouration that became more pronounced with the next filtering. I made a martini out of it. I took a careful sip, but when Renzo refused to drink the grey martini, I also backed out. . . afterall he is a chemist.

Although we might not have drunken much of the carbon filtered vodka martini, we did notice some subtle behavioural changes and the evening wound up in a late morning in the corner bar of KB with Kitty Jutbring djing (at least I think it was her).

Kitty has really good taste in music, and I really don't know why she is involved in that crap-ahh-I-think-my-sisters-friends-cat-is-gay-but-what-should-I-do-about-it-television.

Galatasaray 1 Fenerbahçe 0

Take a mega city and divide it into a European side and an Asian side by a narrow strait.  Cast an historical hotch pot of religions in there and you wind up with Istanbul.  Give the European side one football team (Galatasaray) and the Asian side another (Fenerbahçe, and let's leave Besiktas out of the picture) and let them go at it on the football pitch.  The local derby that results can only evoke some rather strong reactions.

I was watching the match in a pub in Ismir.  Hang on, I hear you say.  An Australian watching football - or 'soccer' as we use the new world diminution  What is wrong with that picture. . . ?!?

Well, nothing.  When I landed in London they told me to never trust a man who didn't like football, so I quickly joined the Arsenal fanclub.

Anyway, and more to the point, who does an Australian cheer for in such an alien match - the underdog of course.

Go Fenerbahçe!

Cate the creator, we love you

This speech leaves me absolutely speechless.  She is the bees knees (read reems of the usual Blanchette psychofantic/hormonal babble).  She is also an amazing orator, and all this after giving birth two days previously. . . see here.

(it's worth watching just for the Bill Clinton anecdote)

El nino busca su voz (or some quote to that effect)

I was in Valhalla, Hell's Kitchen last weekend and was trying to explain to a girlfriend of Uncle's the nature of the mutually exclusive yet symbiotic relationship that I had with Pat Rafter all through the 90's (whenever he won his game, something always went right in my life).  She was a tennis fan and never missed the US open, so she understood.  I was pouring out my heart but was forced to retire early as my voice gave out.

Then one of the girls Baz was with started asking questions about the incident of the untrouserly Francophone in the toilets in Camden.  On a regular night 
this is my party trick and my third drink vignette rolled together with my Magnum Opus. Once again, I found myself looking on from the sidelines as Baz stole my thunder. . .  

I am by nature a scribe but it is also hard when I lose my voice.  My plight in Valhalla and later on at Down the hatch, reminded me of Lorca's Mute Boy:

The little boy was looking for his voice.

(The king of the crickets had it.)

In a drop of water

the little boy was looking for his voice.

Swedish Documentary

I have been struck not once, but twice by the high level of documentary film making that is alive in this country.  These are haunting stories that pack a tremendous punch.

Exhibit 1
Hasse Wester's extremely poignant and empathetic portrayal of the decay of Goan village life in Den Gyllene Stranden.  When Hasse first came to this village twenty years ago it was a coastal pastoral idyll.  He learnt the language (local, not Hindi) and and learnt the ways of the people.  The documentation of his return visits seen from within Hasse's quintessential Swedish life provides is the material of this wonderful story.  The Goan sands, and the village become 'touristed.'   

Exhibit 2
Ett Stycke Sverige is the story of Eric, a north Swedish farm boy.  He worked for a general and through dilegence advanced through the agricultural ranks.  Then came the message that the farm he had worked his life on would be made into a golf course.

Eric could not bear to watch.  He went out the back and shot himself.  I'm partial to swinging a club now and then but will never tee off for a round at Vidbynäs Golf club.  

The two tales are of people and the erosion of their self worth.  The people are separated by continents and the documentaries only share the fact that they were aired last month on Swedish 
TV,  yet they strike a unison chord, and ask few questions but tell no lies.

Sheila

Quaint and slightly annoying, Sheila has stuck in my head, like the sound of the overland trains if you live near the northern line in London (and also because Sheila's what we call birds in Australia).   The samples are a bit overpowering. . . particularly the old pommy git going on about his walks around London 
and the vast surburban churches. 
Samples are there to refer to another time and place but the nth degree is always challenging.  More to the point, one must dig Jamie's lyrical sense:

Her lingo went from the cockney to the gringo
any time she sing a song, the other girls sing along
and tell all the fellas that that lady is single
a fickle way to tickle on my young mans ting

He relishes that London existence that I once did, but the highs come with the lows and Sheila meets her fate

i say giggidibigidiup just another day
another sad story, thats trajegdy,
paramedic anounced death at 10.30
rip it up kick it to spit up the views. . .
i guess the carpet weren't rolled

The New Face of Sweden

I interrupt this hibernation to take issue with Matthew Engel's article in the Financial Times with the same name as this blogpost: the new face of Sweden.

It is just another typical media much ado about nothing and is evidence to the truth that zeitgeist can never literally be captured in print.  I particularly take issue with the articles focus on Rosengård:

'The migrants are concentrated in one district, Rosengård, with the newest ones in the sub-district of Herrgarden, where the male unemployment rate is 82 per cent.'

Rosengård is no bed of roses; no Kensington or Beverly Hills, even though Zlatan grew up there.  However, there is a counterbalance to Rosengård called Möllevången.  The majority of inhabitants of this inner city suburb are also immigrants and live in a thriving community that serves also as the unofficial arts centre of town.  Möllevången, or 'Möllan' (mill) as it is affectionately known is also the place in Malmö to buy fresh produce.  There's a Saturday market in the square, and as all locals know it doesn't do to drive down Ystadsgatan on the Saturday morning.  At these times the safe and decorous Swedish rules of traffic engagement do not apply.  It's like Baghdad, but that's okay because right across the square is Baghdad Livs 
(Baghdad convenience store) one of the icons of the area .  Möllan also offers some of Malmös best bar life. A night at Skolegatans öl kaféet or Tempo is always a night well spent.

Drinking aside, multi-kulti, mixed racial community living along with the effect of immigration on the individual will never be without it's hard questions and even harder realities.  Sweden might one day move to an immigration policy aimed at attracting skilled labour as Canada and Australia have pioneered.  

I don't see this as a moral back pedal, the fall of the socialist state, or failure on the part of the 
Swedes. However, I think it is spurious to represent Rosengård as the only face of Sweden without at least visiting Möllevången, and the hope and goodwill that resides there.  Perhaps the Financial Times should focus their journalistic muscle on the Swedish economy which with its' strong output and budget surplus is in a leading position to weather this 'recession'.