Working Girl part 1

So I got the job!

At the organisation which works for Equality in Education.

Here’s the deal: There is a Ministry of Education in this country. And there is a curriculum (sv. Läroplan). But the ministry is apparently a bunch of people waiting for their retirement and the curriculum is sort of followed - sometimes.

There are no inspectors who check the quality of education in schools or make sure that the budget allocated for education is actually used for education. There is no one who makes sure that the curriculum is followed.

Which leads to…

Kids from lower “socio-economic” areas (poor neighbourhoods) do not have schools to attend in their neighbourhood, so they are sent to boarding schools (sv. internat) far from home and families. Also they might not receive the necessary schooling to do further education in universities.

There are a lot more strange and terrible things happening to children whose parents don’t know what rights they have.
For instance, kids are recommended to go to vocational schools (sv. yrkesorienterade skolor), forced to use Retalin (to make them calm and more focused) to be allowed into classrooms, or are classified as mentally disabled and are put in special education. All of this because they might not have Hebrew as a first language or maybe can’t read or write because the teachers they’ve had before were not licensed to teach.

The groups who mostly benefit from the organisation I am working for now, are Arabs in Israel, Bedouins and Ethiopian Jewish new immigrants.

The organisation I am working for, is teaching parents about what rights their children have and getting parents organised in groups so that they can fight authorities and demand to be treated fairly.

My job will be fundraising. Writing to different foundations all over the world and asking them to fund our organisation or donate computers to schools or something like it.

Most of my work will be writing letters in English, meeting with officials from Embassies and presidents of foundations. There might be a possibility of travelling. But the organisation I work for is very small and I suppose it will be up to me if I manage to raise money so that I can travel.

So if anyone has any ideas on foundations or companies with a policy of donating money to different causes, tell me.

I am really nervous about the job by the way but I know it is all about being new and all. When I know the organisation inside out I will be very good at selling. Hey, if I could sell service to corporations, I am sure I can sell a good cause to foundations. Right?

Just life

I have been thoroughly bad at keeping in touch with everybody so I guess no one knows what is up with me and what’s the point with a blog if I don’t give u some information about my life, other than my paranoia about invading robot aliens and such.

So we had a couple of rough months, as would be expected from any relationship. We had our honeymoon period and then came the storm. It was tough, hard, what ever, but we are over it and now life is wonderful again.

So. More?

I am still looking for work.

Have three options at the moment.

1. Had a job interview with an NGO (Non Governmental Organisation) last week. They want a “fundraiser”, in other words a person who writes letters and calls rich people and foundations to beg for money for a good cause. Very well paid, sort of boring job but nice cause and part time. (I will tell you more about it if I get the job)
   
   Background:Since beginning of August I have been a trainee for another organisation, it’s cause is “workers rights”. Mainly immigrants, Arabs and low wage populations in the Israeli society. Well, anyway, this trainee job gave me the opportunity to apply to this other organisation. And I really hope I get it even though I have very little experience. So hold your thumbs, fingers and toes for me…
   
   
2. Archaeology – a job close to the Old City of Jerusalem. Have been guaranteed a job as soon as I get my Israeli ID. (I need it so that I can be insured). This job, well… WOW… it was always my dream to be a female Indiana Jones. So even though it is hard work and minimum wage I really hope I will be able to start within a week or two.
   
   
3. Nanny. Next door to us (right next door unfortunately) there is a day care centre for babies. My neighbour, a very nice girl who has just had a baby wants me to start working there so that I can keep an extra eye open for her baby. It would be easy, since babies don’t speak English and it is so close - I wake up at eight in the morning anyway from all the crying.

So that is the job situation.

Other than that, we are walking in the wonderful nature every day.
We had visitors from Sweden during the summer. My gorgeous sister for three weeks. And a favourite friend from University with his new girlfriend.
AND the first rain came!!! Amazing! Of course, I ran out in the middle of the night and danced with it.

The loved one is composing wonderful music, I am cooking delicious food, and fixing the house, painting and hammering and stuff.

We have friends over at least once a week. Lovely. And they all fall in love with our home. I must agree with them, it is the most lovable flat I’ve been in.

The only thing I am not doing is sewing.
Hmm… it breaks my heart. I really want to, but have a thousand excuses not to. I do crochet (Sv: ‘virka’) a lot though, in preparation for winter. Lots of hats and fingerless mittens. I hope the loved one will sell some at the Music Academy this winter.

I miss all of you and think about you every day:

My funky friends in San Fran; Treehouse friends where ever you may be (Germany, England, Scotland, Oz); my sweet soul in Germany (I miss you very much); the two wonderful artists who influenced and changed my life the most (New Zealand and Oz); my sister and best friends in Sweden; all my little friends; my sweetie darling whose heart is behind bars; all the fun people that I worked with; travelling friends; Uni mates; Ozzy family; Circus friends and all others.

As I've said before I wish I could all collect you on an island and live happily ever after.

Work in No Progress

So I’ve written about how I live here, but I don’t think you really know WHAT I do here? How do I spend my days? What WILL I do?

They are very good questions and I better answer them shortly cause to be honest with you, I’ve run out of money. Ok, I won’t starve to death or have to run around without clothes in the street. But I might have to walk a bit more instead of taking a bus and not buy a coffee-to-go or a sandwich in the café (and they have such delicious sandwiches in this country!).

So I need a job, my wish was to do more creative things when I got here, you know, like sew or knit or crochet stuff and sell. And in the first few weeks I did crochet hats and fingerless gloves and actually sold a few.

The hats look like this for instance:

And the gloves:

Just simple stuff.

The gloves are pretty popular in the music school where the loved one studies, they are good for musicians, since they can keep their hands warm and still play piano or a guitar.

What I make has to be simple and quick or else I won’t be able to sell them, more time spent on something means means a higher price.

But even before the winter here ended I stopped making the hats and gloves.

I don’t know why, a friend of mine who has a clothes store in the most popular street in Tel Aviv even said that I should give him some samples of the gloves and he would try to sell them. But I didn’t give him any, partly because I didn’t have enough hours in a day to make the samples but probably mostly because I didn’t really believe it would be possible to sell them.

That’s my biggest problem. I don’t believe they will sell or that things I make look nice or that people will want to have them.

So when winter ended I tried to figure out what to do next and then one of my favourite friends back in Sweden gave me an idea:

Recently in Sweden a popular thing to sell is handmade crocheted jewellery which has been dipped in lacquer so it is stiff and shiny like plastic.

I tried to find pictures of this on the internet which was impossible so I just started to invent stuff and it didn’t turn out so well.

First of all it takes for ever to make them since the needle and thread are so thin which also make my hands and neck hurt. But most importantly they are ugly! Who’d want to wear them as earrings or pendants? Aren’t they ugly?

(These are not lacquered yet)

So what then? What can I do, which is creatively stimulating for me and quick and easy and will sell.

Another idea I had was to make little purses or bags like this:

It is not finished yet, only in a developing stage, I stuck a piece of paper inside, but the inside should be made of fabric with a little zipper. But to make these I need a sewing machine.
And oh dear, did I mention that I don’t have any money left?

So, Catch 307 - I can’t make stuff to sell so I will earn money which will mean that I can buy a sewing machine to make the stuff I want to sell so that I will earn money…

And yes, I could borrow some money I suppose, but I am really scared that I will get a machine and then not proceed to make things because I give up for lack of confidence and motivation.

“I don’t know if these will sell either and I don’t know if they are nice etc etc”.

I have other ideas as well. Baby clothes are easy and quick to sew and I think there might be a market for more “trendy” baby clothes here, since it is such a backward country.

But then again …sewing machine…

And will I really do it? Will the things I make be nice? Will they sell?

Prickly business

We have a restaurant in our office building, my company a service management company is in charge of this restaurant. We are also in charge of information regarding the building and events within the company. That is my job amongst other things. I manage a few television screens on which I put important or interesting pieces of information which will then go in a loop.

During the last couple of months the restaurant (a self serve place) have been getting a tray back into the “dish area” on which lies a needle from an insulin pen.

A needle that someone pricks themselves with at lunch time and then they leave it on the tray.

After a while the restaurant asked me if there was anything we could do information wise. First we put up notices in the restaurant in various place. Asking people not to leave sharp objects on the tray on which the restaurant staff could hurt themselves.

It has now been three months and the needle on the tray business has not stopped. Last week one of the staff actually pricked herself on the needle. I was asked if I could put some more information out onto the television screen.

So I wrote a short piece in and we put it on the screen today.

My boss was standing behind me whilst I was writing, he read it and didn’t say anything.

An hour after it goes up on the screen my boss comes in and says to me in front of everybody “I used my VETO and shut it down!”

“Shut what down?” I asked cause I hadn’t got the faintest idea of what he was talking about.

“The television screens with your message” he said “I don’t think it is appropriate with our role here, the screens are supposed to be used for information regarding the workplace!”

“Well first of all, the message does regard our workplace and also it wasn’t MY personal message, people have been hurt from a needle and no one knows what the needle contains, it is not safe” I replied. “And besides, you read the message before I put it on the screen so why didn’t you say anything then?”

“Erm I didn’t think of it then but anyway I think the message you wrote was bad, it had a testy/nasty tone” he then told me and marched off.

I was not a little hurt and embarrassed and angry, my work mates were also slightly embarrassed.

So tell me is this message so nasty or testy or inappropriate?

“During the last few months a needle, the tip of an insulin pen, has been left with the dishes on a tray. Although it may seem that the needle is protected there has been an incident were an employee of the restaurant was pricked by the needle.

Please discard you insulin needle elsewhere.”

Do You Really Want to Know How Insane I am?

Some days one wakes up feeling like shit or rather that the world is shit and since you are a part of it, you yourself is entirely made of shit too.

Today was one of those days.
I do not know if it had to do with falling asleep with a splitting head ache or if it had to do with the fact that the sun forgot to rise today.

But I woke up and the first thought in my head was “I am not good enough for him!”

Why this should be true I do not know. Since I am better looking than him, much smarter and overall nicer than the loved one. But even so, I woke up thinking “Nah, there must be someone better for him!”.

And from there on it starts, the stories I build up in my head.
I mean all of my free time and some of my un-free time goes to making stories or movies in my head. Many times I am actually "writing" in my head as the story progresses. I will go back and erase words or changes phrases. (Nuts!)

Every since I was a kid I would play the “worst case scenario” scenes over and over again like a mantra in my head. If we were in a car I would make movies about for instance the breaks failing on a downward hill and what would happen in the short span of time before impact into the deep ravine.
Every movie is different. Sometimes we would survive and other times we wouldn’t.
I would try to figure out in what way could we survive. Pulling the hand break? Swerving in a zig zag way till the car slowed down and came to a stop? What if there was a lot of meeting traffic? Maybe doing a sharp turn so that the car would point up wards or sideways over the road?

And then if this didn’t work, what happens after impact? Do I survive and nobody else? And in what way would I be hurt? What would the pain be like? When and how would I be rescued? How would it feel to lose the person sitting next to me?

But maybe I die and the others in the car would survive? Hmm? In this case I would probably find bliss in my heart, cause after death there is serenity. No more worries. Nothing to wonder or make movies about. If my movie ended with death for myself it would be good.

But the main movie of today was “He Met Someone Better!”. It was quite a good film.

First scene: How do I find out.

Do I catch them in the act? Maybe he tells me or maybe worse, a friend of his tells me?
And then what, what do I feel?
What is my first reaction, throw up? Getting that “ice cold pail of water falling on top of you”-feeling?

Second scene: What so I do next.

Do I coolly pack my stuff and leave?
Throw a tantrum and break a few glasses and plates over his head?

Third scene: Does he regret

Does he come begging for my return? And how do I react to that?

Usually I watch the movie over and over again, each time changing a setting or a phrase or an action and trying the different emotions out.

Its like testing to see how I feel about something that might happen but hasn’t yet. Like an emergency plan made up beforehand so that when the thing actually does happen I will know how to deal with it because I’ve done it or a version of it a hundred times before.

Now don’t get me wrong, this isn’t about my love or any love for that matter. This is what I do with every single event in my life. If I am to have dinner with a friend, I will beforehand make a movie about how the dinner will be. Tasty, disgusting, friendly, argumentative…

Every day will have at least ten different movies in various genres, today was a day full of negative energies so it is not a good day to give as an example, but here is todays repetoire:

Matinees:
“He Has Met Someone Better”
“My Friend will Overdose and Die”
“The Gas Station is Leaking and all the Neighbourhood will Explode”
“My Best Friend Committed Suicide Last Night”
“My Mum and Aunt were in a Car Crash”
“He Has Met Someone Better”
“My Dad is Sick”

Evening shows:
“He Has Met Someone Better”
“My Friend will Turn into Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde from all the Drugs”
“Telling the Boss’s Boss that the Boss is Shit”
“New Work Site up North”
“He Has Met Someone Better”
“My Dad is Sick”
“Death in a Car Crash”
“Headaches from a Brain Tumour”
“Wisdom Tooth – Goodbye!”
“He Has Met Someone Better”

and the last movie of the night will be “Arrgh! I hate the Soppy Comments to this Post”.

Now off to bed with head still splitting.

Facebook Frustration

It is dieing down a bit now, the Facebook mania that ravaged my life for a bit. Thank you God!

All kinds of stuff has been in the media about it, the amount of time and money all companies are losing now that their employees are Facebooking all day.

That all the pictures and texts that are published in the community can be sold i.e. we have signed over the rights for Facebook to do what ever they want with the pics.

There is also a huge conspiracy thing connected with Facebook which is quite fun: http://www.albumoftheday.com/facebook/

But I can’t be bothered anymore. I was sort of excited about Facebook for a while, as long as I was finding long lost friends with whom I hadn’t seen in 5, 10, 15 and even 20(!) years. That was great. But after the initial “WOW! How are you?! What are you doing?” things die down a bit.

Then I started to realise that people at work could actually see everything I wrote and did. Writing stuff like “Caroline is pretending to work” or “Caroline is trying to figure out an excuse so she can leave work early” in the status field might not be so smart of me, especially when I am already being completely shunned by my work mates and boss.

But then the hatred of Facebook started to seep into my heart. All the zombie, vampire, Super wall, X me, Aquarium, Film quizzes and other bullshit applications! What the fuck? Go away! Throw sheep and world wide travelling teddy bears at yourselves - if you think its so fun! Just leave me alone!

Just a few days ago I met a girl who told me she got weird guys wanting to add her just because she had big boobs. Now this has not happen to me yet (I can’t figure out why?!) but yesterday the first stranger tried to add me as his friend.

I got the request from a guy I didn’t know or had ever met. I was confused, thought for a moment that my memory was even worse than expected and that I actually had met him. He did know two other people I knew. So I had to ask “Do I know you?”.

The answer was: “No, but I saw that you knew two of my best friends so I thought I would add you too :)”

I had a look at this guys profile.

His profile picture was of him gobbling down whiskey or something like it directly from a bottle. Some other pictures of him depicted him posing in a police (?) uniform with a huge automatic weapon of some sort.

ARRGHH! (Sound effect of allergic reaction)

Ok, I know a lot of girls get turned on by uniforms and maybe I am strange cause it disgusts me. Police and military uniforms make me feel sick to the stomach and an urge to run as far away as possible hits my legs.

So I politely answered him:

“What's with the gun and drinking straight out of a bottle? Is it a description of the size of your dick and brain? In other words – tiny.

Your best friends are very nice people and maybe you are too, but so far I don't know. I have a thing about adding people I don't know so maybe you shall try your luck somewhere else. And if we happen to be introduced and you turn out to be a misunderstood nice guy, then I can add you later.

Sorry.”

Maybe a bit harsh.
But fun.

The Culture Festival of Stockholm

Two weeks ago I worked for a big festival in town. I had got the job from an acquaintance of mine who lives in the same neighbourhood.

At the festival I was in charge of organising the dressing room areas for the artists who numbered to between 50 and 300 artists per day. We had 2 very large auditoriums to our disposal and I arranged them like little rooms, only without walls. Instead of walls I taped the outline of walls and doors on the floor, so it would look like a blueprint of a house. I thought it was quite fun.

Everything went splendidly or so I thought, my acquaintance who was now my boss wasn’t very thrilled by anything I did or said. She constantly checked up on me “Have you missed this?” “Have you forgotten that?” “Maybe it is better if you do it this way” “Maybe you can do that instead” But the worst was her tone of voice, she spoke to me (and to everybody else) as if she was talking to a five year old, with her head leaning a bit to the side and a patronising smile on her lips.

But since we are still on speaking terms and she wants me to work at the festival next year I must have done something right or maybe I just didn’t do too much wrong…

The best part of the festival was working with the unpaid volunteers. We had about 20 of them, all different sizes, colours, shapes and ages.

There was the greying 50-ish German man who loved everything to do with electricity, if you asked him to move a table from one end of the room to the other he would find some electrical extension cords and start taping them to the floor instead.

Another elderly French speaking man from Burundi was very sweet and he said “Yes of course” to everything one asked of him, only then to disappear for an hour. On his return and questioned why he hadn’t done what he had been asked, he would just smile sweetly again and shrug. (At the end of the week we realised he could talk but didn’t understand any Swedish).

Then there was the little plump old lady who smiled so much her face shrivelled up in a thousand wrinkles. I asked her to fill ONE (1) thermos with coffee. This she did, the only problem was that when I came back from some other chores she had continued to brew coffee and filled every single thermos, jug and cup in the whole room with coffee (about 20 litres of coffee) and she just stood there completely lost and begged me for some more vessels to fill.

There were some young stars as well.

The funniest character must have been a young girl who tripped in on stilettos, tiny shorts and a minute bikini top late one afternoon. She clicked her way over to me and flashed a great big Miss Universe smile at me from behind her huge Chanel sunglasses.

Our job was to make coffee, fix catering and tidy up, her attire was more suited for sipping cool drinks by a pool. I didn’t say anything because I figured that she would come dressed more appropriately the next day – but alas the stilettos, the bikini top and tiny shorts were with us the rest of the week. This Little Miss Universe was more of a talker than a doer, a wide eyed naïve thing. Everything was amazing and fabulous and wonderful and brilliant and WOW! She questioned everything to pieces: why this and why not this and who are you? And why are you? And what are you? She actually prepared 100 questions for me to answer about my life...

But I also met a very nice girl from London, a writer who just moved to Sweden to be with her love. She was (thank you god!) one of those people who when given a task she would do it 150% and then do some more, intelligently as well, without complaining and always smiling.

Work

Today I was a good girl. Today I arrived at work not too late only about 30 minutes instead of 2 hours and I said “Good Morning!” to everybody. Not with a smile because my cheeks were paralysed from sleep deprivation, but at least I greeted everybody. I did some of that stuff they call small talk with my closest boss who sits about one meter away from me and I even managed to give her a compliment on her clothing.

All this time my brain felt as if it was recoiling and my spine was twisting. It is an odd feeling that of a recoiling brain, its as if my brain is trying to shrink and escape from the reality which it can see through the eyes.

At lunch today, which I for the first time in two months had with three colleagues I managed to chit chat and I think my mouth tried stretching into something that was supposed to mimic a smile. But after about twenty minutes of friendliness I started to feel nauseated by this fraternising. And when my colleagues started to warm up and say that I wasn’t myself I really had to sit on my hands to stop myself from throwing my plate in the air or screaming.

I hate my job.

I have never felt this way before, I recognise the feeling of total despair and wishing that I rather was dead than being in a place but that feeling has never been apart of my job. At work I’ve always managed to hide behind a nice happy mask. People thought I was quirky and strange but I did a hell of a job. I was too honest and in the bosses faces but I tried to make peoples lives better. And they laughed with me.

I was an odd ball who could one day give a little show with fluffy hand puppets or sneak in one night and fill the aquarium with colourful fish to keep the lonely grey fish company and I’ve been known to make everybody a smoothie of their own choice on a Friday.

I might never have enjoyed working in an office but I always liked my colleagues. And now it is really killing me that I can hardly look at them and am behaving like a bitch towards them.

My Week

Fiction course 20 hours this week
Psychology course 40 hours this week
Work 40 hours this week
Sleep 42 hours this week
Travel 10 hours this week
Friends&Family 10 hours this week
­­­­
= the reason why I am not writing so much now

But I will be back soon

Dreamed Kaleidoscopic Reality

I have a fuzzy feeling that reality is not real anymore; or maybe it is that dreams no longer are dreams?
When I get a quiet moment with myself, images like short cuts of film show up in my head - pictures of me doing something, saying something or interacting with somebody. The problem is I don’t know if I really have done or said these things; or even met the people.
My mind has become haphazard.

At work my colleagues are beginning to whisper and tread softly around me, I’ve had too many “Little Miss Bitch episodes” - sudden outbursts of verbal abuse, just to 5 minutes later become the kindest “Chubby Cherub” and not know a thing about what just happened.
And the amount of times I’ve responded with “I don’t know, I don’t remember…” in a bug-eyed dazed kind of way has become ridiculous.

My friends whisper the names of people I’ve forgotten when at a party and I’ve started to introduce myself by saying: “Hey! I think you seem like a great person but I will not remember your name in 2 seconds even if I repeat it 10 times and please don’t take offence if I see you on the bus tomorrow and don’t say hello - because I won’t remember who you are even supposing we speak for 4 hours tonight”

Twice in the last few months I have not recognized very close friends of mine:
Once I told a friend that her seat in a bar was taken when she got back from the toilette – it took about one minute for the jigsaw piece with her face on it fit with the rest of the puzzle in my head and I recognized her!
Another time this stranger waved to me from across the room, I stared angrily back and thought: ”Who the fuck is he?!” Just moments after, when I looked back to see if the bastard was still waving, reality shifted around me and I saw that it was my best friend’s boyfriend, a person I meet everyday - a guy I actually had been speaking to just 10 minutes before!

A kaleidoscope - that’s what my mind feels like these days - you know one of those tubes with sparkling colourful pieces of glass inside. Each time you twist the tube the pieces reveal a different pattern. It’s a perfect description – time, place and colour shift constantly and there is no way of knowing which the correct pattern of perception is.

Anyway, my bosses have booked a doctors appointment for me now - they are concerned…

I was told it is a specialist in a nice hospital with rooms of pink cushioned walls and floors; and a trendy kind of white jacket for me to wear.

Or was that also a dream?

“So what?! You complain that your head is hurting but you keep hitting your head with a hammer? Why don’t you quit your job?"

My job - a thing I complain about constantly, something that I’ve blamed for not being fulfilling enough and running me down. I try not to talk about it but it is very hard in Sweden where it is of great importance to know what everybody is doing with their lives. Are you a fucking failure or are you not? That is the essential question.

I work for a company that provides other big companies with facility services, i.e. everything from janitors, receptionists, restaurants to property administration. I’m the only employee of 3000 who works as a sort of consultant on longer or shorter projects in different departments and companies. The projects are reorganising or changing work routines within groups making them more efficient and also teaching people about being more service minded.

In real life this means:
I tell people they need to be on time for work (and I can’t wake up in the morning);
I tell they need to dress “appropriately” (I HATE dressing “appropriately”);
I tell people to look nice and neat (oh, dear I haven’t brushed my hair in a month or worn make-up in three);
I talk about the importance of sometimes acting a part to be able to always smile and be professional (but I LOVE telling people off and being rudely honest?!);
I also teach people how to make their days more efficient and fill them maximally (and I can’t even make my personal life tick, spending most weekends in bed, staring at the dust balls in the corners of my room);
I draw plans on creating ergonomic workspaces and solve logistic problems by having practical things built. (But solving my own logistical problems - not having a driving license - is practically impossible);
I tell the staff it’s important to exercise, have a healthy lunch and real breaks. (And here I am getting an ulcer from not eating lunch and working overtime);

It is a surprise to me that I am as good at my job as I am - somehow I am a success, I seduce them, I impress people and the bosses lick my toes; and I couldn’t figure out how or why I coped with it - until just now.

What I just realised was that it is all a play for me - an act at the theatre.
I grew up in the theatre - backstage working with props, as a stage technician and later a stage manager. Its 8 years since I did a play and I miss it terribly - there is a special smell of burnt dust backstage that I dream about and the tense silence the second before curtain goes up is magic… (Can you hear the violins?)

So what I’ve done instead, is make my own little theatre in the office environment I hate so much. The office has become my stage; the staff is the stage crew and the audience is the customer.

And theatre reality is:
One needs to be on time for the opening curtain;
It is easier to tell the audience you are a dog - if your make-up and dress is that of a dog;
You need good routines to keep the show going;
One needs to build a good set and be efficient for the best and safest possible stage environment;
And if you are a success the audience will lick your toes or at least applaud.

So back to the question a friend put to me last night, after I complained of the worst head ache in ten years - which was “Why don’t you quit?!” He is entirely right of course - I am bludgeoning myself with a sledgehammer - but at the moment, the job I have, is the closest thing to doing what was my dream.

And I am great at it - so I am not a fucking failure.

Monster in Malmö

My company has sent me to Malmö to work on a “special” project - just for a month or two.

The Prison

I was taken to my company flat by a plump ditzy lady. ‘The flat’, she told me, ‘is in the “posh” part of town and close to the beach’. Oh la la! We stopped outside a very flash cake-like building with a nice lawn – but of course - this was not where I was staying. Opposite this palace of flats there was a dirty yellow brick block. It looked like a mix between a prison and a high school – shudder. A tiny slow lift took me up to the fifth floor. The plump stressed lady had left me maybe she knew what was waiting and didn’t want to be made responsible.

The Cell

The flat has a hallway with cupboards that haven’t been dusted since the sixties, leading into a small square room with a pocket-sized kitchenette. At first I thought they’d forgotten to put a bed in the room but then I found it - behind the door. A microscopic thing! Could a midget have lived there before? Or maybe people in Malmö are smaller than the rest of the world?

All the furniture is from Ikea (of course), a mish-mash of styles and eras, but the one common factor is – extremely bad taste. There’s a HUGE television and a microwave, neither of which I use! And the worst of all - NO internet! Life suddenly became so lonely, without my virtual life.

The Monster Lair

The bathroom… oh dear the bathroom has (if you can get into it cause the door gets stuck) dirty yellow walls, brown floor, a leaking toilet, a shower curtain which is greenish black from furry mould and impossible to use because it has ‘glued’ itself together.

But the worst is the sewer in the floor; which b.t.w. must be the largest in Sweden. Usually a drain or sewer will have a metal sieve-like thing to prevent stuff from clogging it up. But this sewer has something more like a net with large holes, the only thing it prevents from going in, is the person standing on top of it!
It also gives you the best ever view of the dirty black-brownish sewer. Every time I go into the bathroom my eyes are involuntarily drawn to this dark abyss and I wonder what kind of monster will come out of there in the night when I am sleeping sweetly. My biggest fear is that the door will get stuck for real whilst I’m in there with the Sewer Monster!