Apparently, I only get job interviews for job positions that are perfect for me in regards of my education. That is of course very logical. Also, apparently my written presentation and CV are awesome (in an application quality aspect, that is) and my interview appearance is great and inspiring. (At least that's what they say, and however weird it may sound, I actually believe they mean it when they say it.) BUT - and this is the big, capital but - when it comes to getting a job that requires a qualified education like mine, it is always great to have earlier relevant experience... Which there's always someone else that has, but not I. Since I can't find an employer in the field that are prepared to take on someone without relevant experience. Which I can only get by getting a relevant job...

In other words, everything I do is apparently great and awesome, so I do nothing wrong that I need to change. And the only thing that stops me is the one thing I CAN'T do anything about myself. I would call it irritating, but that's too mild of a word by now.

Being bored again, there was this ad brochure in the mail yesterday about our - apparently awesome - neighbouring country to the south. So now I on a whim decided to do a quick and dirty translation of the interesting parts of it just for spreading the fun.

( Only of interest for the two Poles around, I'd say. And 'interest' may be too much to say in any case. )

Courtesy of my sister, I somehow ended up spending the Saturday in Stockholm watching Inca gold and musical theater. I admit I had my doubts about the idea to go to the capital in January, but it turned out quite good. I got a free day out, and my sister got someone to entertain her son while she and her daughter got shopping time. Less suffering for all involved in that way.

( The obligatory snapshot spam, just because I can )

Since dzioo for some unfathomable reason wanted to see my family's Christmas gingerbread constructions efforts. (A.k.a. niece and nephew came up with the ideas and then it was up to my mom and me to try to assist in the realization.)

( Christmas cookies time )

"Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition." - Steve Jobs
But what if my heart says one thing and my intuition another? Which one should I follow then?

( And being random as usual, with no connection to that thought my Apple non-story follows here )

All in all when it comes to my personal life Steve Jobs has most likely played a bigger part due to his involvement in Pixar.

It's ten years on the day today and media is totally steeped in their self-obsession with it. Personally, I must shamefully admit that my main feeling is mostly a "it's been ten years already?" Time goes WAY too fast!

Since it's apparently a fad to tell what you did when the news broke, I give my two cents. Back then I was trying to tie up the last loose ends of my uni education and go on to the next step of life (hah, how sadly wrong I was...) by writing my minor thesis in political science and turned on the radio just in time to stumble into what I at first believed to be some kind of parody show (since those very well could be like that back then) about planes crashing into skyscrapers. I think it was only when the reporter started talking about the Pentagon crash that I started listening for real. And then my writing was discarded for real-time political crisis studies on net and TV instead. Because however cynical it may sound that's how my mind works - it's into cold structural things much more than anything else. I'm a sucker for contingency plans and national crisis management. (I blame it on being an educational side-effect. You try study international politics, history and natural disasters and don't get affected by it.) And actually being able to see the USA enact parts of the Cold War attack plans, close down the airspace and whisk the president away to the Strategic Air Command in Nebraska was in that aspect highly interesting and something I never thought I'd be able to see in reality.

Ironically enough, the main impact of the 11th September 2001 for me was that it went on to finally end my childhood views of USA as the "good democracy" and realize exactly how deep the cultural divide between Europe and the USA is. It didn't happen over a night of course, for a while after the terrorist attacks I even got a little more sympathetic to USA again, no matter how muddled and strange their voting system had turned out to be a year before. But a couple of years later things had changed profoundly. I still can't believe how a country could squander their immense goodwill in the world so effectively in just some short years. I mean, for all my lifetime up until the millennium they had been the "good guys" in our children (and young adult) minds. The defenders of democracy. Not the oil-hungry, over-spending, economy-crashing warmongers with bad respect for human rights and with high-profile candidates for political offices who in this part of the world would be described as right-wing extremists had they been locals. Whatever happened to the world?

All in all I prefer to keep more positively charged "do you remember"-dates on top of my personal days-that-changed-the-world list. Days like the 9 November 1989 and Christmas Day 1991. Those - and the time around and inbetween them - were events that meant a lot more to me, for many reasons. I was about to say that I miss that decade of freedom and happiness, but then I realized that would be in bad taste too, since it happened ugly things in Europe and the world during that time too. The world is a complicated, complex place in the end.

(I think I somewhere derailed my original train of thought during the writing of this. Sorry for the longwinded introspective rant or whatever it seems to have become.)

It's funny. It's late spring, nice weather and all that, and even so I still wish I were somewhere else. Somewhere with a job, with friends, with a healthier hip, with less obnoxious hopeless people... Somewhere less... Sweden.

So according to some sources it's basically Putin's United Russia that's keeping me from using LJ in a normal way. Can't my country's traditional arch-enemy (No, not you Denmark. The other one.) ever stop being annoying in our everyday life?

(Or could they at least go try and out-spam our Swedish social commenters instead. That would at least be a good deed.)

So time for one of my rare postings of fanfic writing again. Really ought to get better at it. Writing that is, not posting. Anyway, the usual pointless fluff warning is applicable.

( Forging bonds [Fullmetal Alchemist; Spoilers for the ending of the series. Rated for All ages (G)] )

It's the spring equinox on Monday, dzioo told me yesterday...

( No, these photos are in the right order. Unfortunately. )

This is why I, like all the good scientists, favour the term "climate change" over "global warming".

In other news I have just celebrated three months of not going outside for anything else than medical appointments, and I seriously can't say I miss that ability to go out all that much. Yet. I did however always expect that it would be bare ground and early spring weather before I was able to support myself on two legs again. Looks like I'm about to be wrong on that.