Jon Åslund

I mentioned on irc today that I liked Canadians because they gave me Lexx and Charlie Jade. Then I had to explain who Charlie Jade was. I didn’t think of him as a nerd, but now I know.

<Jooon> I love canada. canadians gave me lexx and charlie jade
<boblet> I don’t know who charlie jade is
<boblet> is she both hot and single?
<Jooon> well, he is a bit steamy when it rains, so yeah, he is hot
<Jooon> he has a girlfriend though, in a parallell universe
<boblet> oh, like most nerds jooon

Here is a picture of him by the way.

Brushing his teeth, while on the videophone (yep, geek).

I have now been awake for roughly 34 hours. My body is tired, but I am not really sleepy. I was sleepy this morning, but it went away after a few hours, after taking that bath, and eating a bit, maybe around 14, just as it normally does, when I have slept the night before. I am not sure why I have been awake this long today, although it’s hard to call it today, when you cross over days like this.

The longest I have been awake was some years ago, when me and my friend Kalle planned a nightly stay at school to finish a lab assignments. I woke up quite late that Thursday, came to school, worked during the night. We had our presentation during the next day. Was about to go home, but instead ended up at a party, where I stayed up the entire night. Then for some reason, I had entered some kind of phase, so I wasn’t that sleepy either when I came home, and I stayed awake during much of Saturday. About 48 hours. I don’t plan to beat it.

I was about to enter my bath, waiting for the water to fill up, when I began thinking on how to take a bath while surfing the net. That’s when I realized that I might be a bit too attached to the computer…. Got to hurry. Water is filling up. Had to write this first though.

I have been complaining that there is no place in Stockholm that serves good noodles. I was wrong. One of my favorite sushi restaurants, Izumi Gai, has great udon.

morfeusz mentioned the problem of taking pictures of people you don’t know.

I see people almost every day that I want to take a picture of. Most of the time, I don’t have the camera with me, so I can’t do anything about it. Other times, I can’t get my camera unpacked and up in shooting mode fast enough, before they leave. There also the times when the light is so bad that I couldn’t a good picture anyway, which would ruin the whole thing.

The most annoying moments are however, when you have all the time in the world, the subject is being very still, in perfect light, and all you would have to do is snap the picture. I don’t want to just take a picture, because they are likely to notice me and would perhaps be bothered. Sometimes I do, but mostly it’s when I am taking a picture of something and they are in the line of fire. In Greece I found it pretty easy to really point at people, making a tourist excuse to myself, especially if I was quick about it, just walking by and also taking lots of pictures of everything else. I also usually don’t dare to ask people if I can their picture. When I do, they all ask if I work as a photographer and if the photo is going to be in a paper. It is most likely because my camera looks very professional.

Late last Saturday I was at the airport in Chania, going home. All the flights were late, I was getting tired and people started to sink down in their chairs, those that had chairs, others were sitting/lying on the floor leaned against a wall. I wanted to take pictures of people being tired and sleeping, but I was worried they might get annoyed easily. They were probably already plenty of being annoyed by the late flights.

After walking around a bit, the terminal wasn’t big, I had found a chair. Opposite of me sat a girl, maybe 16-18 years old, long curly hair, white shoes with green shoelaces (don’t know why I remember that). She was very cute as she was resting/sleeping with her head in her hand. My first thought was to take a picture. I was already having my camera up and ready, so it wouldn’t have been a problem. I didn’t want to take her picture before asking if it was ok. Mostly because of the people around me giving me “what a perv” stares, but perhaps mainly because of her parents, giving me the “if you so much as point that camera at my daughter, I will make you burst into flames” glare. She was also sleeping, and I didn’t want to wake her up. I don’t know if it’s a Swedish thing, but it’s custom to not wake sleeping people.

After a while she woke up, and I had no more Swedish excuses. I think I sat their 30 minutes, trying not to stare at her, trying to get the courage to ask her “hello, can I take your picture? oh, by the way, can you pretend to sleep?”, in Swedish. I think she was from Norway, so the conversation would have been pretty smooth. I stand up and decide to walk over to her, exactly when my dad says the plane is leaving and we have to hurry. We really had to hurry, I was the last person on the bus, but it annoyed me the entire flight back. I am over it now though. Or perhaps not. Why else did I write this entry?

I am currently in Greece and I wanted to spend my expensive Internet minutes on writing about one of the coolest dreams, that I have ever had. It may not sound cool to you, but that is merely because I can’t describe with mere words how extraordinary it was. It was also very detailed. I have even drawn a map of the place where the events took place. I woke up, soaking wet (yes, you are curious, I know) and couldn’t go back to sleep. Decided to write it all down. That was around 5-7 in the morning. Now I am transcribing everything from the paper to the computer.

Like all good things, it begins in a school. I am standing in a dimly lit corridor. Smooth red brick floor, white painted brick walls, soft yellow light, no windows, so no natural light. Yeah, that was school. You should have been there. Behind me is one of those big swing doors, metal at the bottom, small viewing holes. Normally you would find these in a hospital, not in a school. I don’t remember walking through them, but for some reason they are behind me. To the left, some people are crouching, looking into a glass display. It displays various objects, nicely backlit, probably the pride of the school. Some stupid medal or a photo. On the lowest shelf are lots of balls. Some of the people I know from DDRSverige. They are much younger than me, but they fit the school role quite well. The ones I can remember though are Sai (can’t remember his real name) and Johanna.

Since I have been juggling quite a bit here on the beach, with some heavy rocks, I am delighted to see some nice balls. I find a bowl full of balls that looks just like clementines. That’s great. Just what I need. And they look so real too. I slide the glass door open, grab a blue (yep!), a yellow, an orange and a green one. When I grab the green one, I notice it is rotten. Just like a real one! Fantastic, so realistic. Something is dripping. It’s the green one. On the floor there is a puddle of green fluid. Before someone has time to react, an old friend slides in from the right, shuts the sliding door, and slides back out again.

Looking down on the floor again, the puddle has almost become a pool, in any case, much more than could exist inside one clementine. Everyone has begun to panick slightly and they wonder how we will get rid of this mess, my mess, although, nobody says it’s my fault. I look up again, and try to figure out where I can find stuff to clean this up. There should be papers and stuff at a toilet. Like the toilet to the right, exactly on the other side of the glass display, where it has been all the time. Yup, all the time.

I see Jenny entering the toilet. She looks worn out, wet, as if it was raining outside, grabbing her left arm, in pain, a bit sad, but it could be all the drops of water on her face. Our eyes meet, just before she enters. Long enough to recognize that I am a person and not a monkey, but perhaps not long enough to notice it is me. Her eyes look odd.

I look down on the floor again. The pool is now even bigger and Sai is sitting down and messing with a tap on the wall and some grate in the floor. Apparently, the plan is to flush the green goo down the drain. Nice idea. Except for the fact that water suddenly starts to flow both from the drain and the tap. Everybody laughs, but Sai quickly explains “It’s not my fault”. The water keeps coming. More and more. We hear water behind us. It’s coming down the corridor like a scene from an Indiana Jones movie. I scream:

“Jenny!”. I rush through the water that is now almost up to the waist and open the toilet door. I must save her. She sits on a sink, very still, just breathing. She looks straight at me, but still doesn’t see me. Her left is arm is clearly broken. I move towards her but she raises her right hand. She doesn’t want to be saved. She grabs some wires over her left shoulder. They look very electric. She is trying to kill herself. People are screaming. “We need to get out now!”

Nothing happens.

She falls off the sink. I grab her, lift her up and slowly run towards the exit. The water is moving away. I thought a wall broke, but when we get outside, we realize why. There are cracks on ground, where the water flows down.

While carrying Jenny out, she finally realizes it is me and says it is typical of me to save her, but that it is too late. “Why did you try to kill yourself? Why do you want to die?” She leans forward as if to kiss me. I kiss her… for about half a second before I begin spitting rocks and sand. She opens her mouth. Her tongue is split in half, just like that of a snake and it is full of stones. She coughs and out pours something that looks like blood and sand. Her eyes are also different. They glow in yellow and have much more narrow pupils than normal.

“The sect I was in did this to me. I did not know. I tried to run, but it is pointless.” I say “It’s not that bad. Could be worse.” which is actually true, but probably doesn’t cheer her up. “You don’t understand. We will all die.” I had been running slowly the whole time, and was now standing at the gate. Then I saw it.

People were running, screaming. The earth has opened up. Water bursts out of some cracks and goes down in others. It is very hot. “The ones who don’t die in the earthquakes and the floods will be killed, by people that look like me.” Someone came running with a cat. When the cat noticed us, it went wild, hissing and screaming at Jenny. This was the end. End of days as John Rhys Davies said in Revelations. Earthquakes, floods and old girlfriends turning into snake creatures.

How would you look as a South Park character? I would look something like this: