Wild Card in Sight, Wild Card in Sight

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The ubiquitous and equally mysterious authority that we commonly refer to as “they” claim everything bad brings something good with it, and generally I'm with them. But then there are times when the positive effects of a situation are so hard to spot that one almost loses faith in the adage, and not surprisingly my deportation - still fresh in my memory - springs to mind as the perfect example of such occasion. It was pretty damn hard to grasp just how that particular personal catastrophe would turn out to be beneficial to me. However, even during that now famous border control debacle, I managed to find positive elements in my new position just minutes after I had been handed the dismal verdict from Anna the Interviewer. Once I had established what solid advantages were to be expected from this ordeal, I simply tried to focus on them to the point where they eclipsed everything else, and life regained its luster. There was more to life than Sydney, I told myself. Life was a fancy buffet, and it would be foolish to only eat the sweet potato pie, no matter how yummy. One needs a diverse diet, and here was a superb chance to see what the other dishes tasted like. If anything I should be grateful for this opportunity.
Ahem.

I tend to think of Life as a force of its own; her will governs my existence and although she's ultimately in charge, she's also someone I can sweet-talk and cajole to get what I want out of. Sort of like God, minus the churchgoing and abstinence. Point is, she's on my side, and although she doesn't hesitate to teach me a lesson or two when I'm out of line, in the end she wants what's best for me.
This is why I carried the expectation that if I only dealt with the crucible of being kicked out of Australia in a graceful and dignified manner, Life would reward me by giving me a bit of a break, by cutting me some of that much wanted slack.
Boy, was I wrong!
There was no encouraging pat on the back for not succumbing to despair when bereft of the most ideal existence I have ever led, nor was there a financially comfortable seat to land in for a breather. Instead the bitch threw me yet another curve ball, perhaps to ensure I fully mastered the ability to handle setbacks, and this time the lemon she shoved in my face was particularly acidic: she arranged for my laptop to be stolen.

It was my first day at work, and while I was dutifully frothing milk and grilling halloumi sandwiches for customers upstairs, someone snuck into the personnel area in the basement, ignored the laptop that stood there in plain view, and instead dug around to find my tiny computer in the bottom of my closed up backpack. Walking home with a stolen laptop can be dull, and to circumvent boredom during that promenade, the thief also grabbed my 8GB mp3-player.
Double-whammy!
So while the aforementioned proverb still rings true in theory, I am yet to see in what way my most recent misfortune will appear positive. Unless the cognitive trophy from this hardship is the valuable lesson of Mind Over Matter, which, in that case, I can fully appreciate.
Admittedly, I would’ve thought losing my laptop would pretty much equal losing the will to live, at least for a little while, and I will confess that in the very first instant of realizing that my computer was gone, the loss absolutely floored me. The empty, hot churning of worry and anxiety that sets in when we implode with panic flooded my body. It was the same feeling as when I got word that I was going to be sent back “home”. Now too, my knees became perplexed about their function in my physical structure and they couldn’t quite remember how to keep me standing. Unlike the moment in the interrogation room at the Sydney Airport, though, I didn’t feel like I deserved this. I hadn’t brought it on myself with a complete disregard for the law this time. Why me?

Luckily, there's a hero and a heroine in this Story of A Close Call, and without them and their consideration for yours truly it would've been a Story of Disastrous Misfortune.
As you may have gathered by now, my mother's offspring is not singular; besides the opprobrious daughter that I have the honor of representing, there's also the responsible, reliable and pragmatic brother, gallantly saving my mother from looking like a completely incapable parent, merely by being his proper self. When standing next to him my sheepish blackness looks even blacker, and most of the time the two of us really are each others diametrical opposites, but Mom claims to love us equally and I've chosen to believe her. The woman must dig diversity.

One day when we were kicking back at his place in Oslo, my brother suggested we back up all my pictures and music on his external harddrive. After all, he had 2TB that he was not about to fill any time soon, and after having thrown around my poor laptop on trips to Africa, Central America, the States, Australia and New Zeeland, there was a very realistic threat of it not lasting that much longer. But me, I simply could not be arsed. “Naw, I'm gonna buy a new laptop when I get back to Sweden anyway, it's just a waste of time to fiddle with that crap now. Let's play Guitar Hero instead!”. Despite my lazy disregard for the impending risk of all my data to be lost, or maybe because of it, my foresighted sibling decided to take it upon himself to secure my files. While I was busy nailing “Cliffs of Dover” with my eyes glued to the flat screen that fed me a conveyer belt of multicolored chords, Christian was meticulously uploading all my pictures and music to his harddrive.
Heeeere he comes to save the daaaay!

A couple of weeks later I was back in Sweden, happily typing away when my computer suddenly yelled out a high-pitched BEEP. No, it did not want to scroll through my document while playing music and downloading files and holding nine internet-pages open for me to swiftly hop between. I found it a bit disconcerting that it was agitated enough to scream at me like that, and without knowing that it was only four days until my plastic baby and I would part forever, I had the sense to compress the most important documents of writing and email them to myself as attachments.
For the first time ever.
Just in case.
Maybe it was my brother's common sense that had rubbed off on me a teeny tiny bit. Maybe the stars were aligned in a way that inspired me to act sensibly for just one brief instant. Interstellar intervention or a lapse in my usual pledge to negligence? Either way that one moment of impromptu rational saved me a lot of pain. A LOT. During the sinister night of my loss, as I was sleeplessly tossing in bed, the realization that most of my writing probably was alright provided a colossal relief, and the stone that had filled my chest to the point where breathing posed quite the problem dissolved almost completely when I remembered my brother's precautions. As all this slowly dawned on me the the feeling of anxiousness switched place with perplexity. If I hadn't lost my writing, music or pictures, what then, if anything, had been lost? Other than the work of those four last days, which I deemed absolutely negligible considering all that could've been lost, I really couldn't think of much.
That night my Mighty Mouse-brother received a late text message from his little sister, attempting to express her boundless gratitude with something as limited as mute words on a tiny cell phone screen.
A hug would've done the trick but you were too far away, bro.

The next day I called Mom to tell her the news, and if I ever needed proof that I've been blessed with the mostest parent of them all, here it was: Mom's immediate response was simple and calm; "OK, let's get you a new laptop as soon as possible". Music to my ears. I didn't need to explain to her how imperative a computer is in my life, nor was I forced to ask her to lend me (even more) money.
While I worked extra shifts to speed up the reduction of the quickly escalating debt, Mom handled everything for me. In a few days she had looked up what laptops were available and to what price. She used her contacts to get a good deal, and then she bought and shipped a brand new machine to me.
I pity all you other kids with your second-rate moms and superfluous dads. Me and my bro scored the Mother Supreme. Suckers!

Now God's ringing the bell for Round Two. I'm back in Malmö and back in my apartment after a 5 year-long absence. I'm working another few shitty jobs and struggling financially once more. Or still, rather.
Except.
This time there's a plan for change, and hear this: it doesn't involve escaping Sweden. I have something other than instant gratification in sight, almost like a real grown-up. I'm not looking for the way out of my geographical locus, my focus is no longer on a one-way ticket to somewhere more interesting. This time I'm aspiring an upgrade on a personal level.
For the first time in my life, I'm making choices that accommodate my dream to become a writer, and man, I better have the talent needed for this, because now all my little frail eggs are in this one basket. I can't afford to be wrong about this. Pressure's ON!

I could brag endlessly about my remarkable ability to live very well off very little, but I would be hollering at the wrong crowd; you've already been thoroughly introduced to this one skill of mine. Some of my methods are less than kosher, so to speak, but my primary way to get by is no petty scheme. It simply consists of trying to work at the cafe every day, which results in two very important things; good, healthy food for me to eat (ricotta and spinach ravioli!), and an increase in the amount on my next paycheck. Plus, working every day is the cats pajamas! Or so I tell myself with nine consecutive days ahead of me.
Freebies are all over the place, one need merely look for them. For instance, my computer only came with a trial version of Microsoft Word, and seeing how someone pursuing a writing career definitely needs a word processing program, I was looking into the cheapest place to purchase a legal copy of it. When asking my brother if he knew of a good site to buy the Office Package, he mentioned that he uses a free software called OpenOffice. I checked it out and was pleased to find that it worked just as well as MS, if not better. I also stumbled upon EverNote, another free program which has quickly become damn near indispensable as a writing-tool.
But wait, there's more! My friend Maciej helped me get the free version of Spotify (holler at me if you want it), and I enjoy free stuff here and there through a Swedish guide to free stuff online. For example, a tip from this site is how I was able to take my friend Samira to the movies to see “500 Days of Summer” for free the other night. She insisted on buying treats and only rolled her eyes at me when I argued we needed no additional sweets with eye-candy like Mr Joseph Gordon-Levitt on the screen. No no no, movies and snacks go together like biscuits and gravy, claimed Samira, and consequently we sat in a sea of treats like a couple of 14 year-olds. But the important thing here is, as always, that it was free for me.
I buy minimal amounts of food, I bake my own bread and I try to eat as much as possible at work. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, and the same goes for your favorite Swedish hedonist, so I've also permitted a minor but essential investment of alcohol in addition to above mentioned necessities. This is why you sometimes find nothing but an onion, sweet chilli sauce and half a bottle of cheap vodka staring back at you when you open my fridge door. Classy as all hell, and don't I know it.
Whatever other money I do allow myself to spend on non-essentials goes to dance club cover charges and random social events, like the Sunday waffle brunch with movie, and I refuse to compromise on the food I buy when everything else in my life is acquired for free or dirt cheap. Therefore my home diet consists of lots of fresh herbs, pesto, avocado, nuts and cheeses of different kinds, and I choose organic as often as possible, with the exception of nuts which for some reason quadruple in price. You gotta draw the line somewhere.

I'm still not sure whether it was a diabolical hangover or the result of some sort of food poisoning that made me sick a few weekends ago, but like I've already stated in the very beginning of this post, everything bad brings something good with it. Thanks to that Sunday morning from Hell, I can now proudly report that my apartment fills the main criteria to be considered a Bachelorette Pad; the layout of the bathroom is such that one can do number two in the commode while spewing into the sink, which I regretfully know first-hand.
Let's just call it a standard functionality test.

It's night. I'm in my bed sleeping when I suddenly wake up and open my eyes. I look towards the door, which for some reason is ajar, and after a few moments I realize that there's a head peering in through the crack. Still not quite awake I half sit up and say “what?”. The head belongs to Carlos, the couchsurfer I've been hosting for the past few days, and he mumbles something about his phone dying just as his mom was trying to tell him about a possible theft at his house back in Peru.
I'm really trying to grasp exactly what this has to do with me, but in my muddled condition I can't connect the dots. What possessed him to come into my bedroom and wake me up?
“Can I borrow your laptop to chat with my mother?” Carlos finally asks, and I say “sure” and reach over to my bedside table to reach for it. So far this conversation has been allowed to take place in darkness, but now Carlos decides to switch on the ceiling lamp, and the bright light pierces through my squinting eyes. I do my best to not sound annoyed when I ask him to please turn it off. “Sure, sure, I understand, you look terrible and don't want me to see”, he says and hurries over to the switch.
Hold on. I look what now? Terrible? I think not. I am stunning and gorgeous all 24 hours of the day. Who the hell are you?
I gave him the computer, now quite reluctantly, and tried to go back to sleep but I was too annoyed. I mean, who does that? Who walks in and wakes up his host (who by the way has taken precious time out of her hard-pressed schedule to show him around, lent him both SIM-card and cell phone and lets him use her laptop whenever he needs to check his mail), and then tells her she looks terrible?
I was unable to sleep for a good while that night, but now I'm trying to see if maybe my reaction was exacerbated by the fact that this guy is a bit annoying in general, and when I think about it, maybe that's it. I mean, had it been a handsome man like, say, Joseph Gordon-Levitt entering my bedroom in the middle of the night, instead of this Peruvian pygmy, I would probably not have minded it at all, lights on or off. But then I would never have placed Joseph on the couch in the first place, now would I? And surely he's not annoying. Benicio del Toro wouldn't meet any resistance upon coming into my room either, nor would the good ol' Brad Pitt would be denied entrance, providing he brings rubber of course, 'cause God knows the man doesn't need any additional kids.
(Wait, did this nocturnal fiasco just conjure images in my brain of Brad Pitt wearing nothing but a Hello Kitty condom? If that's not a sure sign I need to get laid I don't know what is.)

And on that note.
A handsome man came into the coffee shop the other week, early in the morning when the maniac rush was yet to begin, and we chatted for a while. He asked for my name and upon leaving he said "see you soon again", as one sometimes does without really meaning it.
Today he came in again. He remembered my name, asked for my number and wondered if we could hang out some time.
HE'S TALL AND DARK, OF COURSE I SAID YES.
It's a date.

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Comments

[Andrea]

weeeee!
What a fun read!!! Missing you in NZ!

[kalesco]

Hey there!
Despite all your bad luck I still enjoy reading about your adventures a lot! And, as it goes, especially with this post I thought that you should persue becoming a writer. Beautifully written! And there you go and really plan to do this! Good on you! I would definitely buy something written by you - unless it is in Swedish ;) Maybe a travelogue about your adventures (maybe cut the boozy nights a bit ;) ) will do the trick. Anyways, all the best! And keep posting!

[Dave....r]

That was beautifully written....and read to the soundtrack of broken perfection......Fog.