Define friendship.

What is friendship? To have common interests? To laugh and have fun together? To know each others deepest secrets? To trust each other?

The reason I'm asking this is because there is still people who are narrowminded about friendship over the internet. To me friendship over the internet is no difference from friendship outside the internet, apart from one thing. You cant just call someone up and come over for a coffee all of a sudden, but thats it.

Some might argue that making friends over the internet is not safe, because you cant know what kind of person he or she is. But thats just the same in the real world too isnt it? Just because you meet a person in a bar, on a party or on the beach doesnt mean that you can tell exactly what kind of person he or she is, can you? The person you met on the beach that seems like a very nice guy can still be a serial killer for all you know, it's not like he gonna tell you this just because you met on the beach and not on the internet.

Some of the best friends I have, I have never met face to face. And maybe I never will get the chance to meet them. But still when I talk to them online we have fun and laugh together, we talk about our lifes and dreams. Are they less friends just because we cant have a sporadic BBQ evening together?

The world is no longer a big and scary place, its only limits are what you want it to be. Ten or so years ago if you wanted to speak to someone on the other side of the world you had to use a phone, and pay huge phone bills for it. Today its practically free. Even if I should choose to use the phone to call my friends on the other side of the world today, it actually cost me less per minute to call them than what it would cost me to call my friend who lives in the next house.

So why do people still make such a big deal out of it when you say you have good friends on the other side of the world? The distans in such friendship is nothing more than a small inconvenience. And technically I can have a coffee with either one of my friends, with the use of headset and webcam its no big difference really.

Welcome to the 21st century.

I'm broken.

Another day at work are finally over. I can't say that its particualry fun to leave home at 6 in the morning and not come home until between 7 and 8 in the evening. On top of that I'm spending my days making security doors and windows for prisons.

Oh, the irony.

Let's not even go there.

If any doctors happens to read this, here's something for you.

I can't drive my car anymore. It's horrible and annoying. It's not like I forgot how to drive a car or something, just something happen to me. When driving I feel like im losing my balance, feels like any minute im just gonna lose the control over my car and crash it somewhere. Its annoying as hell and I have no idea whats wrong with me, or how to fix it.

I mean how can you even lose your balance in a car?

But whenever I get this feeling I have to keep every ounce of my focus just to not crash somewhere, and its staring to get really scary. Especially now when I got my job and have to drive my car everyday. Sometimes I'm panicing when this happens, and all I can think about is how not to drive the car right off the road. Even if its a big straight road and no one else is around.

How long will it take til the day when I'm too tired from work to keep my focus and actually crash somewhere?

I know, I know "Go and see a doctor".

Just that im really bad at going to the doctor unless I have to bring an arm or a leg in a bag with me. Besides, from old experience doctors never have any answers anyway.

I bet a doctor could use your whole life just taking tests, and who got time for that shit? But yeah, I really need to do something about this, before something happens.

Hello, I'm from the internet.

Ok, I know I havent been very good at writing here lately. In my defence though I've been working about 12 hours per day the past week.

I've found out something.

Working is hard work.

I found that out myself. It's not that I didnt know this, this isnt my first job or something. It's just my first job in almost 2 years now. Granted I'll get more money from working that from not working, but its painful to get up every morning and just shower and go back to bed when you come home from work.

Where's the life in that?

Even though I dont particulary enjoy working, I believe that if im gonna do it im gonna do it right. And I dont like to waste my time. When at work I work.

Aparently all kinds of people are attracted to me, as if I'm some sort of magnet or something. People just wont leave me alone.

I would think that about 1.5 hour every day goes to waste because someone walks up to me and start talking about this and that, stuff that I'm not even remotely intrested in. Their car, their dog, their past, their life.

seriously.

I dont like to be rude though and tell them off. But its annoying as hell standing there listening to someone ranting about whatever stuff, when all you wanna do is to do your work.  When I'm working nonstop time actually goes by alot faster, which is the main reason I dont wanna be interupted by something else.

Bet you thought it was because I just love working so much huh?

But yeah, here I am trying to do my job and to get the time to pass as fast as possible, when someone insists on telling me all kinds of crap i dont wanna hear.

Which kind of makes me wondering. Most people seems to have some sort of intrests on their free time. And it also reminds me that I dont really have any intrests. Which makes me feel weird when people asks me what I do on my free time.

Sometimes I just make stuff up.

I guess I do have an intrest or two, but its not even remotely close to what most people have. If someone walks up to you and try to have a conversation about cars, sports and stuff like that, and I say I have no idea about those things because im not really intrested and they ask me what I'm intrested in.

My answer would most likely be "the internet".

If I were to actually say that to people who can barely even spell to internet and think that all you can do on the internet is to pay your bills online. I'd be looked at as if i was stupid or something.

I guess I'm just weird.

categorizing people

I have a tendency of categorizing people. Especially people I dont know. You can call it unfair if you want, but I'm usually very good at judging peoples character. And when coming to a new job its not really that easy to learn and remember 20 new names. So in my mind I refer to them by the petname I have given them that reflect their character. This is what I've got so far.

* The bullshitter - This is the guy that you know as soon as he is opening his mouth bullshit will come out of it. Everything he says should be taken with a mountain of salt. Even though he's not rude or anything, its just in his nature to exaggerating stuff, usually stuff about himself to make him seem more important than he really is.

* The "I'm living in the past" - A nice guy in his mid 40's that is stuck in his youth. He got long hair and listening to heavy metal extremely loud all day. When talking to him he always talks about the stuff he did 20 years ago, and seem to miss those days dearly. Never say a word about his thought of his future.

* Mr. Nice guy - Also a very nice guy. But afraid of conflicts, most of the time just agree with what others say. He dont have any opinions about anything, or he keeps his opinions to himself. It would take alot of effort to get his personal opinion about anything.

* The grumpy boss - I dont know much about him, I do know his name though, but I'm still thinking of him as the grumpy boss. He really look grumpy every time I've talked to him. But who knows, maybe its just that he dont like me, or maybe he just looks like that.

* The old man - Dont know much about him, and I probably wont get the chance to get to know him either. Since he is old enough to retire next week.

* Uncle speed - He is a man in his mid 50's I think. Very nice man, I think he is some sort of foreman at my work. I think of him as uncle speed, because he is always on his way somewhere else. I've never once caught him beeing still for more than a millisecond, sometimes I wonder if he is on something illegal.

* Party dude - 25 year old guy, the youngest at the company. Always planning for the next party. Half the time when he goes to work, he hasnt slept in his own bed. Funny guy to talk to though.

Well, this is just some of the people I'm working with. And they are all actually good and nice people, despite their flaws. And its funny to listen to them, it makes a boring job more bearable. So far so good, I'm a bit curious though about what they think of me! hehe.

Mother's Day.

Today is mothersday, atleast in some countries. Actually most countries that celebrates mothersday do it today, other countries, such as Sweden celebrates it may 30th (last sunday in may). We always have to be so damn special, whats wrong with celebrating the same day as everyone else?

Mothersday never really made sense to me though. I never had a mother really, I had some woman giving birth to me 30 something years ago, but thats it.

Aside from that, it still doesnt make sense to me. Has it gone that far that we need to dedicate a specific day for us to be nice to our mothers, and the mothers of our children? Aren't we supposed to be nice to them every day? Or is this some pathetic way for us to make up for all the bad stuff we've done the past year, and now we think it will all be forgotten because we bring them flowers today?

It really dont make sense at all.

"I know I have been a jerk to you the past year or so, and to make it up to you I bought these flowers for you. They costed me like 5 bucks. We good now?"

Do we really think that women are that stupid? That all it takes is to buy flowers once per year and everything will be forgotten and forgiven?

If I were a woman I would be insulted to have a day dedicated to me because I'm a mother.

Not long ago though we also had the international womens day. So women have this:

* Mother's day
* Birthday
* International womens day
* Anniversary (although I'm not really sure why this day is considered to be the womens, I'm pretty sure they didnt get married alone)

And thats it? We only have to be nice to our women 4 days per year? Who the hell came up with this anyway?

On the other hand, what do we men have?

* Father's day
* Birthday

Not only does men only have 2 days, opposed to womens 4 days. But all women knows how to make their man happy, we're not that complicated. Hint: It has to do with happy endings, and I'm not talking about movies now.

Making a woman happy is alot worse. You wanna give her something, but if its too cheap you have shown her that she isnt worth that much to you. But if its too expensive, she'll think that you did something bad and trying to make up for it.

I think we should just all vote to remove these womens/mens days. And just be nice to each other everyday.

I think most men would think of it as a fair trade off to get a happy ending every night in exchange for buying flowers everyday.

I'm exhausted.

I forgot what working does to you. Getting up at 5 in the morning and come home at 5 in the evening. Thats pretty lame. I guess it will feel a bit better when I get my paycheck though, but I'm not getting a cent until june 25th, which is like 1.5 month away. Its my understanding that some people enjoy working, they must be crazy. What is there to enjoy? I can honestly say that if I won enough money on the lottery, I would not work. Ever. And I wouldnt feel bad about it.

I'm the first one to admit that I'm lazy, and that I dont like doing stuff unless I absolutely have to.

I've heard people say that they would work even if they had enough money so they wouldnt have to. Just so they have something to do. Whats up with that? You gotta have really bad imagination if you cant figure out stuff to do with unlimited resources, unless you go to a job in the morning.

What would I do if I won 300 millions?

I would travel. Easy as that. I'd go to one place and stay there til I got bored, then I would move on to next place. Ofcourse I dont have any children that would keep me at home. But even if I had, you can bring kids with you all over the place cant you? Maybe hire a nanny and bring her to take care of the kids. I dont know.

I know one thing though, there's no way in hell I would get up at 5 in the morning and go to work if I had that money. Maybe, just maybe once I get older I might open up a business of my own, doing something I like to do. But even then I would probably have people working for me anyway.

Someone once told me, "There's a reason why the area of yuor back is bigger than the area of your feet, you're supposed to spend more time on your back."

I couldnt agree with him more.

System works after all?

Awhile ago  I wrote about how the system seems to be a big failure. About how I'm running out of unemployment insurance and didnt have a job. How it seems that whoever make those calls seems to believe that jobs pop up out of nowhere just because the insurance runs out.

Well, tomorrow is my last insurance day.

Today I got a job.

I'm only gonna say this once, and you will never hear it from me again.

I was wrong...

Well, I'm not a person that easily admits to beeing wrong. So I'm not going to really say I'm wrong this time either. Its not that people just called me up every day and begged me to work for them out of nowhere. I've actually been working alot on this myself lately, and been on i dont know how many inteviews and such. And finally this morning I signed a contract for 6 months of work to begin with. Which can be extended, but even if it dont get extended, its fine with me. Because after working for 6 months I'm once again entitled to a new unemployment insurance. Either way things seems to have worked out for me.

Another funny thing though. Not really funny if im going to be honest. I've got alot of debts, who doesnt in this day and age? And where I live they have authorities that takes care of those debts, kind of. The moment I got a job offer, they called me up and asked me if I have a job so they can take my money. Whats up with that? Are they spying on me? It really seems that they knew I was gonna get a job before I even knew that.

Ofcourse I told them I dont have a job. As if I willingly would just give away my pay check the first thing I do when I start working. Anyone who would do that is just stupid.

All that is left now is to figure out a way for me to live until I get my first paycheck. And I'm going to have to work for 1.5 months before I get my first paycheck. That kind of sucks really. But yeah, atleast I got a job now. Which means I wont be able to sit here and write my blog as often as I have been.

But I really dont think there's alot of people who actually reads what I write anyway, so I dont really think anyone will miss me anyway.

Language barrier.

As I've said before, potentional employers always always calls early in the morning. And today was no exception. The only difference today was that this potential employer called from Norway. I'm having a hard time understanding my own language in the morning, and understanding some other language when I just woke up is nearly impossible.

Now if for some reason you dont know this, I live in Sweden. Sweden, Norway and to some extent Denmark pretty much have the same language. The only way for me to try and compare it is like this.

An american (swede) can understand a brittish (norweigan) person, and danish would be about the same as an american trying to understand a drunk irishman.

Now when we got that cleared up.

A potentional employer from norway called and woke me up this morning. I can only assume that we understood each other somewhat, since she said at the end of the conversation that she will call me back with more information in a few days. I think the job had something to do with pipes. But I cant say for sure. I know that she asked me if I had any experience in whatever she asked me about, and I said that ofcourse I do. I got years of experiences of just that. But then again, whatever she had asked, I would still have years and years of experience. Thats how you get a job isnt it? By saying you can do anyting and then cross your fingers that they'll take your word for it?

And hoping you wont be working alone so you can watch how others do and do whatever they are doing.

Anywas, languages have always fascinated me. The way you can put random letters together and all of a sudden they mean something. Pretty cool. Although some stuff dont make sense. I'm all for stuff making sense, I like sense. And some stuff would be so much easier if words related to each other were more similar. Two words that means the opposite, but are almost spelled and pronounced the same way can cause confusion and missunderstandings.

I will give an example, keep in mind that this is from a point of view from someone who doesnt have english as their native language.

* Humiliation

* Humility

Look at those two words, dont they seem related to you? Now I dont mean that the meaning of the two words are the same, ofcourse not. The whole point is that to someone who is learning english as a secondary language, they can easily be confused to mean almost the same thing.
While in fact they are quite different. This is how the dictionary describe these words.

Humiliation:

Humiliation (also called stultification) is the abasement of pride, which creates mortification or leads to a state of being humbled  or reduced to lowliness or submission. It can be brought about through bullying, intimidation, physical or mental mistreatment or trickery, or by embarrassment  if a person is revealed to have committed a socially or legally unacceptable act. Whereas humility  can be sought alone as a means to de-emphasise the ego, humiliation must involve other person(s), though not necessarily directly or willingly. Acting to humiliate yourself may be linked to a personal belief (as with mortification  of the flesh, with some religions).

Humility:

Humility is the quality of being humble: modest, not proud, doing something out of the goodness of your heart, not for yourself, self-abasing. Humility, in various interpretations, is widely seen as a virtue in many religious and philosophical traditions, being connected with notions of transcendent unity with the universe or the divine, and of egolessness; by contrast, some schools of thought are sharply critical of humility.

Now maybe you have to have another language than english in order to see how these words can be confused with each other. Or maybe its just me. But to me I can see how someone who doesnt speak enlgish fluently to say something like this:

"You really need to learn some humiliation"

Which wouldnt really make sense. Did I mention that I like things that makes sense?

Granted the misuse of those two words can be funny, I can only imagine what trouble it can cause if said to the wrong person in the wrong situation.

And I can see that I'm just ranting right now, so I'm going to stop right here and just go back to bed.