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Published: December 5th 2008
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No exciting trips abroad this time, unless you count the daily cross country tour to get to work. The trains here have an interesting game they like to play with me, its called, go, go, stop. Canceled, delayed, move you confidently forward one stop, then canceled. Its all a head game and one has to outsmart them to survive. Find a job which is awesome, and doesn't mind when you come in and lets you work evenings when you need to, and weekends, or one that feeds you after you've spent two hours commuting, or one that regularly has great events for its employees. Well yes, I found that. And subsequently watched as it slipped through my fingers. Thank you global recession. Our company has done everything right, and yet here I am, unemployed. I do have the small comfort of knowing that for a brief time, I was "Demo and Marketing Communications Manager" of a design company. Hurra! Fortunately, as I do like to look at the bright side of things, this means I will have an excess of time to work on my thesis which is getting more and more under my skin and going no where fast. So
I suppose for that reason its good. Should be fun and entertaining to see if I can make this work. I know I can, I'm a fighter but still its a bit annoying.
And, as I just wrote that, the train stopped, we were all chauffeured off, and put on a bus to go the rest of the way to Denmark, dropped off at the airport and put on the metro to continue our trips. Typical.
Some interesting developments have transpired. I do love to embrace my social butterfly practices and this has paid off, or will hopefully. Firstly, we've started a fun little collection of thoughts called GeekPhysical (geeking with a focus on physical interaction) there's a Facebook group (go join it!) and a blog, geekphysical.blogspot.com. We're doing a lot of cool projects and have held some Arduino workshops, both basic and advanced. So that's cool and hopefully will be some source of income, not much but enough to feed us at least.
In Malmo, I met someone very much like myself, fingers in everything, doing nine million things at once. We have talked, and decided to start up an initiative called Creative Clash, bringing together
the creative classes of designers and artists to initiate conversation between the two and create opportunities for interaction. These opportunities manifest themselves in the form of "Champagne Mondays" where we just held a successful event at a club in Malmo, and had all sorts of industry types talking, sipping champagne and playing with the GeekPhysical biometric social interaction system. So at least on the art front, things are okay. I need to apply to "Interactivos" a festival in Madrid celebrating exactly what we're working on, bio-everything and "Garage Science" - ie: doing stuff out of your own house....(GeekPhysical)
Malmo and Copenhagen are fun in the winter. First, we got completely unexpected freezing weather and snow for a few days which has now tapered off to 3 degrees and rain. Next, Christmas appears out of nowhere. There's no "Thanksgiving" here to remind you that time is slipping past and if you haven't started Christmas shopping yet, you're screwed; no, there is instead a sudden influx of "Jul Øl" non alcoholic (1.9%) flavored beer. (Amusingly, their non alcoholic is Canada's Safeway Cider levels; Canada's non alcoholic is like 0.3%). Accompanying this is the makings of grotesque, yet beautiful marzipan creations. All
the stores are stocked with super cheap Christmas baking accessories for making these treats, where either you prove yourself as an artist (As Dzl did) or as a useless cookie-eater (me). (See photos). Finally, much like Germany there are Christmas markets, popping up out of nowhere and taking over entire city blocks. In Malmo, this covers the street running from Gustafs Adolfs Torg, little huts selling goods, and my favorite, the mini-donuts. Normally only found at the Richmond Night Market, I have found a little piece of home amid the Jul-chaos and happily munched on the sugar drenched donuts for 10kr as I wandered the endless rows of knitted hats and mittens.
I'm going to visit one such Christmas Market tomorrow, at the Mecca of Christmassness, Tivoli at Christmas. http://www.tivoli.dk/composite-5417.htm Jul i Tivoli is the stuff you want to see, though I have never seen it before and am determined to see it this year, so I can't wait to see what all the fuss is about. Following this will be ice skating at the city centre on Sunday with a bunch of Canadians and Americans who live in Denmark. Besides that, in my 'spare' time (laid off bumness)
I have been baking horrible things, I tried to make rum balls and they turned into turd-like objects with frosting. I tried to make a Martha Stewart Pie, and it had a 1inch gooey crust, (remember, crust is supposed to be light and flaky) and insides that turned to gelatin. Dzl has been ever the perfect boyfriend and has pretended to like it all so bonus points for him and a ban on baking for me.
Now I am going to go window shopping, pretend I have money, and try on things I could never afford, because tis the season to be ridiculous.
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