So we have 16 more days to go before we move in to the new apartment and the wait is getting frustrating - I want to be in already. I think what is frustrating is that we have all these ideas of what we want to do, but we can’t really finalise them until we have a good idea what everything looks like and in typical Swedish house buying style we haven’t seen the apartment for weeks now.

I find the buying process rather strange: go and see a viewing of the apartment with lots of other couples and in a day or two later the bidding process starts. This can go very quickly - in our case just a day I think, and then you sign the papers and its more or less yours. After this you don’t really get to see the apartment until you move in. I guess that we could make a request to go and see it but that doesn’t seem like the done thing. So its been almost 3 months without seeing the place!

All that furniture we have/want - where is it going to fit? Is it going to fit? How big was that space again - the documents drawn up by the estate agents for the plan are not exactly accurate.

So now is the frustrating wait to the en vitiable pain of moving, and the fun of unpacking and deciding exactly where the forks are going to live in relation to the dish washer.

Longest 16 days of my life - spent looking at furniture and cat trees (probably the ugliest things you can put in an apartment).

So, lots of thing have been doing on lately and I have been rather remiss in updating this old blog, I suppose getting things done takes a precedence over writing about things that are happening at the moment..

So a couple of weeks ago my Mother came to visit me in Stockholm as I hadn’t seen her in ages, and it was a good way for her to see the town that I lived in, not having been to Sweden before. It also gave her an opportunity to meet Kristin which was good.

On the night that she came over it was her Birthday so we took her out to Sonja’s Greek, just around the corner from us in Södermalm. On the Friday we just relaxed a bit, as I had to work, then on Saturday after working we met up at Medborgarplatsen for a couple of drinks before going to Humlehof on Folkungagatan for a nice meal. Sunday we had booked Falstaff at the Royal Swedish Opera house which was really nice, I particularly enjoyed watching the music being played, and the hall itself is splendid.

Monday was mum return home, but for us the start of lots of things to do in preparation for the move in to our new apartment. Cleaning, packing, moving things is now the order of the day and whilst not on its own the most fun thing to do with our spare time - I think that its worth it.

Alessi Spring/Summer 2008: “

Alessi have just released their Spring/Summer 2008 range. I’m liking the look of the Orientales collection above.

”

(Via Made in ENGLAND by Gentlemen.)

Damn I wish this flu would go away, feel useless whilst me neck and head aches, my throat sore - enough to stop me from sleeping easily and this general muscle ache all over.

Damn it.

Interesting article from Scoble about Mark Zuckerberg. I can’t help but feel that Facebook has had its time unless some radical changes happen, much like how some have got bored with MySpace and left it to the kids as their playground.

The shy Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook: “breakfast”

(Via Scobleizer - Microsoft Geek Blogger.)

Ping Pong Door

What wonderfully playful idea this is - a door whose centre flips down to make a ping pong table in between the two rooms. Designed by Tobias Fraenzel, available soon.

I would love to get one of these for the door inbetween my living room and dining room.

(Via Made in ENGLAND by Gentlemen.)

I have finally got around to upgrading my HTC S620 phone to Windows Mobile 6 now that its a free upgrade from HTC.

Of course I didn’t bother to backup the old SMS that I had on it, but ActiveSync took care of the contacts, calender, email etc with no problem. Now I have to go through the painful business of installing software on it. So here are my picks at the moment:

• Skype
• Google Maps
• TCPMP

Now I just have to get some other applications together that I like.

Now 2008 is upon us I have noticed that I really haven’t been giving this site the attention it deserves, particularly in the amount of updates, so hopefully I will get much more on top of things here than I did in 2007 but it does feel that I have been quite busy at work and in my personal life so here is a list of what I have been up to:

Moved from Norway to Sweden
Transferred over from Vizrt to Ardendo’s offices in Sweden.
Visited England, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden (I think I can get away with both of those because I wasn’t living in them at the time), Denmark, Australia, Singapore, China, Netherlands, America and Japan - some of them more than once.
Moved from Vasastan to Södermalm in Stockholm.
Met Kristin.
Was the best man at my Cousin’s wedding.
Met lots of people from all over the world.
Took lots of photos and got more into my Photography.

So what’s in store for 2008?

Build or create something.
Keep up the blogging a bit more.
Make someone happy.
Work harder.

So they are reasonably realistic, but I can imagine that every guide out there to getting things done would say be more specific but I understand what they mean to me and I can’t imagine them being anymore uninteresting to anyone else if I went into depths..

Whilst I am on lists I might as well make one more:

Favourite music of 2007: Booka Shade, Plaid and Justice
Favourite film of 2007: Bourne Supremacy
Favourite food of 2007: Sushi in Japan.
Favourite place of 2007: Tokyo, Japan.
Favourite TV show of 2007: Dexter

I will stop now…

Stephen Fry posted this on his blog the other day, and well its a perfectly good tale of smoking. Really liking his blog.

I Give Up
A short blessay on addiction.

Have I an ‘addictive personality?’ Am I an addiction addict? Is there some gene in me that predisposes me to dependency? Did I inherit a demonstrable physical tendency or was it a character flaw? Am I simply weak? Weak-willed, self-indulgent, lacking in character, moral fibre, decency, strength of mind, honesty and courage?

Is that even a fair array of choices? Maybe there’s an admixture of weakness, genetic propensity and hedonistic degradation in me. Perhaps I should calm down and let myself off the hook in some areas while justly castigating myself in others.

Let’s lay out the history first. Incidentally, I know there is nothing quite so yawn-worthy as a ‘my drugs hell’ confessional, so I’ll try and get it out of the way as swiftly as I can.

(Via Stephen Fry.)

I am going to have to take a closer look at this sometime, but these offices look really nice.

http://www.thecoolhunter.net/design/CREATIVE-WORK-ENVIRONMENTS—Do-you-work-in-one-/

Off to Amsterdam this afternoon. Expect more pictures ;-)