Ibiza Sunday

Damn,

Posting this from the dive center on Ibiza i have been working at for the last 4 months. I did go to Thailand, and i ended up staying there for six months instead of the planned 3. Ended up doing my divemaster course there and start working as a dive guide.

So in the last year i finally managed to leave Europe for the first time ever. Was a great trip, with highlights being Pai in the north of Thailand, Don Det in the south of Laos and of course Koh Tao - island of divers.

And having started working in diving i decided to spend the summer in Europe, which i did here on Ibiza. Been here since middle of May and leave again in a few days from now (mid september). Has been a good summer, i learnt a lot about diving and got used to wet suits. The island is very beautiful and calm. However it has also been quite boring at times, with the part of the island im on being completely devoid of a party scene.

But considering i got to dive with sunfish, wild dolphins, sea horses and a lot of other cool stuff im not complaining.

In a few days i head of back to Barcelona. This time just to chill and to try and reconnect to a great girl. Christmas will be spent in Austria. Other then that no clue. Next year could see me getting back into IT just as well as continueing diving all over the world or starting a sound studio. I guess ill post something again once i have some sort of idea :)

British Friday

Well, finally my travels have started.

I wanted to go to Thailand and backpack for many years now. Since i started working i figured it would never happen, i mean, who has 3-4 months to spend away from work?

Well, providence (in the form of crisis and bancruptcy) has provided me with the very unexpected oportunity to actually make this old dream reality.

The plan is to spend around three months travelling around in Thailand, and possibly one or several out of Laos, Kambodia and Vietnam. Indonesia and other destinations have also been considered and while not impossible seem quite unlikely at this point.

Friends told me that i could find cheaper flights going out from London than from Barcelona. Which proved to be true. So im currently in stage one of my plan. Namely staying at friends in London and finally getting to know this city a little bit.

So far i visited some of the most famous tourist sites like Buckingham Palace, Big Ben etc and spent some time in the quite impressive national gallery.

Today im taking it a bit easy, as i purchased some excellent books and havent really read much at all the last year or more. Also England is bloody expensive and just the trip into the city (im staying out in Bromley) costs me a fair bit. So i try only to go if i really feel motivated to spend the whole day wandering around.

I leave again on Tuesday, by then i want to have visited British Museum, Tates, Camden Market and eat at a decent chinese restaurant as well as have some spicy indian food (almost impossible to get in Spain).

So, while i would much rather have had a decent job at this point, i figure my contigency plan is shaping up nicely and should hopefully help me avoid going crazy. Which was happening sitting still in Barcelona playing the stereotypical unemployed bum.

Ill try to keep updating this blog once in a while so that anyone who might care about my whereabouts and how i fare in Asia can read about any important happenings here.

Trainwreck tuesday

Took a look at this blog the other day - realised its been almost two years since i posted. Been a couple of things happening in that time.

I will probably start updating here again - mostly because it looks like i might have a period of travelling ahead of me. But we will see.

Today i went to visit my parents in France. As always it was a rather strange trip. Cerbere was just was weird as it always is (today we also discovered a really funky tunnel there) and this time also i had silly amounts of memories to accompany the Catalan landscapes. As usual it ended up taking more than 8 hours (4,5 by car) and actually cost more than to take the car including gasoline and road tolls.

Ah well...

Anyway, this was just a short update to let people know my travels over the next six months or so will probably be documented here as i wont have reliable internet access or phone.

Tumultuous Wednesday (and screw spelling)

Ok, lots and lots of things have happened since last time. After four months with HP i have already changed jobs. Had my second day today and so far so good... Im now local admin for a company in Barcelona. I save about an hour a day in travelling times while working in a smaller company, which for me is a positive thing at this time.

Im also looking for a new place to live, while having a cold and giving up smoking again. This while trying to convince my body to work at normal office hours instead of the night shift i had for the last four months.

Its quite intense...

On other news my dear sister will start sailing over "the pond" soon. The plan calls for almost three weeks of no land. I wish her all the best and really really hope they dont get any serious issues on the way.

I got a short talk with her today. Unfortunately i was a bit stressed out at work but if i understood her correctly Mr Richard Wright likes my mix cd's. Something that made me really happy :) If i misunderstood it was the crew that liked them, which would also be good :P

Anyway, gotta get up for work again in a few hours, so cant really expand on all this. Its interesting times for sure. And to me that is not a curse no matter what Terry Pratchett might think or say.

Longest Wednesday

Ok, time for a short recap of what has been going on lately.

I was visited by my parents, my sister has been in town for two weeks now and last weekend Dennis came to visit.

Lots of going out, drinking beers and mohitos etc. (really, almost every day for weeks. Its getting damn expensive and probably not to good for my health. Will roll with it for a little while longer before starting to restrict myself)

Went to Montserrat; which was really beautiful even though we had to cancel the planned hike and just look at the monastery before going home again. The place itself is quite impressive and I got to light a candle for my loved ones (something I always liked doing even though im not a religious man at all) and of course I also drank out of the fount of life (or some such).

Things are quite good at the moment - have some pressing stuff to attend to; im still not properly registered in the country etc. Hope to get it sorted this week or I will end up paying higher taxes for a while.

Other then that its a bit disapointing that I havent really had the chance to hang out with my sister more then I have. Always liked spending time with her and probably wont have the chance to do so again for quite some time starting next week (when she skips town for some sailing ship bound for god knows where).

In other news the temperatures are dropping a lot here as well. Today i actually brought my grey jacket to work. To hot to wear it over the shirt on my way here around noon; but at 10 at night you need it if you are going to stand still (it drops down to like 16 degrees at night now).

Well, thats it for now. Slowly slowly getting some kind of rythm here. Its always changing a little bit as i get to know more people and new places but it is getting sort of stable by now.

Role models

I guess it started with "Sommar i P1", the radio show I have written about earlier. Several of the people that hosted the show this year have impressed me and in some ways affected me in ways i never expected from a radio show. It really has inspired me more than it probably should have.

Some of those hosts made me think, and once I got thinking I also remembered more of the people that have inspired me in the past (and continue to do so).

Bill Tillmann comes to mind, a great explorer and adventurer who not only lived an extraordinary life but also wrote some excellent books about it.

Alma Karlin was one of the first famous female travelers and journalists, some of her writings about her adventures are also quite amazing (she spent 1928-38 traveling alone).

It would impossible for me to write about these kinds of people without also mentioning Harry Martinson - probably my favourite Swede of all times. His writings and theories about the "world nomad" have had an profound effect upon me.

There are of course many others, adventurers, politicians, religious leaders etc.

What has been occupying me lately is trying to figure out what they all have in common.

I came up with a lot of things like: empathy, compassion, sense of adventure, lack of fear, integrity, command of their language(s) etc...

In the end I had to realise it was all summed up quite neatly in the previously mentioned theory about the "world nomad". Since it is pointless for me to try and outdo old Harry I will just ask that anyone interested enough read some of his stuff on the subject.

Anyway - a big thank you to all those people that have and keep on inspiring me. I am quite a pathetic excuse for an adventurer; but without you I would not have been able to overcome my fear even for this first little step of my adventures (I think of it as adventuring with a safety belt).

(and an extra big thank you to the people I actually know that keep inspiring me - Andreas who is now moving to Cuba before continuing to Costa Rica, my sister who keeps doing stuff I only dream about doing, my parents who have found adventure in their retirement, Göran with his wonderful stories of Tibet and incomparable talent for finding adventure in everyday life... Thank you for showing me that things are not as hard or complicated as they sometimes seem.)

Guidelines or rules?

In Sweden people generally respect the rules.

Actually a lot of people think Swedes are so square you could use them as a mold if you ever need something really square.

Add to this a huge state machinery to fill us with propaganda about what to eat, how to sleep, how to talk etc and you get a people that drive very safely...

During 29 years in Sweden I think I saw people blatantly running red lights maybe 10 times. Most of my friends would never drive if they had a drink. Actually a lot of people won’t drive the day after a decent party.

Because people follow the rules.


Now in Barcelona things are a little bit different. Every day in traffic I feel compelled to paraphrase from the movie "Pirates of the Caribbean" where they say "its not rules, it’s more like guidelines".

I don’t know how many times I have seen people running red lights in my two months here. It is however often enough to make me instinctively look if the cars are actually going to stop before walking.

The strange thing is it still seems to work. I don’t see a lot of accidents.

There probably are more than in Sweden. But everyone is always keeping an eye out to see what all the other people might do next (because you really never know what they might do) - This results in drivers and pedestrians that seem much more aware of their actual surroundings than the ones in Sweden.


Now if they could only get people to drink a bit less before driving home during the weekends traffic here wouldn’t be worse than in Sweden.