I'm happy to see you too.
It's so reinvigorating breathing the fresh air in Sweden. I certainly needed the short R & R before all hell breaks loose in June for a myriad of reasons. Stockholm is wonderful, the colours, the endless daylight during summer, the pristine lakes where everyone can skinny dip, the quiet but polite people, and the green vastness of it all.
After Cantabrigia in 2002 I actually wanted to move here, but I was depressed during that time and it was not a good idea to go to a place where the winter nights were 20 hours long. Swedes have two ways of coping with the dark winter, the first is to pretend it's not happening, hence bubblegum pop like Ace of Base, Roxette, or Abba and the second is to embrace the darkness hence vodka with death metal music. Both did not appeal to me at that time so I decided to go become a Green Archer for a year, the downside of which was commuting between two campuses with the utterly crap towns of Balibago (this is Dante's hell on earth) and Alabang in the middle. If only someone had told me that there was a normal way of coping with the long Scandanivian winter - sitting naked inside a steamy shed in the woods with equally naked but beautiful girls then rolling like crazy on the snow, I would have reconsidered. (Of course there is normal Swedish music like The Cardigans, Jose Gonzales, The Hives, Snow Patrol, etc. Wait, is Yngwe Malmsteen considered 'normal'? Swedish jazz is also very good. In fact I only learned recently that Sweden is the third largest exporter of music after the US and Britain).
It's a joy to be away from the prying cctv cameras of my adopted country. Despite being a socialist welfare state, Sverige does not have the big brother culture, cellphones still work underground, the trains have wireless internet, buses accept plastic (and run on bioethanol), and they have a royal family who look and act normal.
Scandanivia loves its cellphones dearly. In the 19th century a chap named Ericsson made Sweden the most telephone dense country on the face of the planet. Of course, little brother Finland caught up when a paper company named Nokia started making mobiles. (And then the Koreans came along and decided it's better to talk on the phone than face to face with kimchi-breath). Swedes always have their cellphones on and will answer it wherever they are and interrupt whatever they are doing. I actually find ringtones annoying but in Sweden everyone talks softly on their cellphones (none of the loud "Paaaaaare, bago ang cellllphoneeee ko pareeee, mainggit kayo. Heto paaareee, bagong sex video ni Mahal...") and they only ever have default ringtones on their mobiles. They don't download those silly crazy frog ringtones or forward utterly useless 'inspirational' text messages. As if their three phones per person were not enough, some Swede also co-developed Skype, incidentally the same guy who developed the file sharing program Kazaa, initially meant to share the latest Swedish porn clip and death metal release. (I must say for the record that Scandanivian death metal as a subgenre of heavy metal is actually very melodic and prog-rock like type instead of the incoherent growling 3-chord noise that comes out of my neighbour's garage in Baguio)
She had me at Hej (Hello).
"That was quick" was all I could say to her, my hand reaching out to hers, and we both smiled, proving that love at first sight does/can exist. The best part of it was that she was one of the prettiest faces I have ever laid eyes on. I was at the Modern Museum shop, buying a Danish photography magazine that had the great Igorot photographer Masferre's iconic image of an Igorot elder on the cover when I met her. I didn't even notice her approaching as I was flicking through the pages of the book showing some of Masferre's best photographs (It occurred to me that we Cordillerans, like the Svensk, were not prudish about nudity. Only the missionaries said the naked body was an evil thing while preaching that we were made in the image of God. As writer-slashie-chef-slashie filmmaker university pal Clinton says of prude Eta Mendez of MTRCB "How can one watch a holocaust movie, ie Schindler's List, and ban it because it showed tits?") Anyways, she said hello and fast forward later I became aware that Sweden gives 15 months of maternity/paternity leave at 80% of your maximum salary so that you could be a doting parent to your 13/4 offspring. Hmmm.......
Fortunately, I snapped out of it and realised that long distance relationships don't really work out, especially if you were really just getting to know each other. To cut a short story short, it was a sad and painful ending. It ended with Hej då. Why is it that we meet the most amazing people at all the wrong times (or it's just really me who is cursed). Maybe when I was baptised my parents forgot to invite someone who turned out to be a witch who was cross and who cast an evil spell on me.
The ochre (or is it burnt sienna?) sidestreets. Don't you just envy those classmates of yours in grade school who had a four-liner box of crayola while you only had the two-liner?
Man on a horse slaying a dragon again. Sweden actually has very few monuments because they put extreme preference for natural beauty. You won't see a huge Plaza Venezia-type monument and find yourself asking "What the fuck is this for?" or those megalomaniacal "Trapo Mayor of Third Class Philippine Municipality Welcomes you to his Shit town fiefdom" billboards.
If there is one thing in Scandanivia I love most (apart from the pretty girls) it's the crystal clear waters of the lakes and rivers.
Blossoms. I suddenly have this craving for balut.
Ericsson's simple monument. The man who brought to the world the bakelite microtelephone allowing us all the chance to say "Hilo, pwidi makipag-phoon pal?" (Admit it, you did too.)
Flashback scene: It's a mortal sin not to answer your phone in Sweden. (Wait, do Lutherans have mortal sin?) Thus, you could be making passionate love with your Swedish girlfriend and be about to reach the Everest of pent-up, I-saved-up-for-this-moment ecstacy when her Sony Ericsson phone starts ringing. She will stop, hence you will stop, for her to answer the phone and you are left humming an Ace of Base song that you just can't erase from your head. She will talk softly of course and you won't overhear a thing. After ten minutes on the phone, you humming a Roxette song from their second album, your balls turning blue, Swedish girlfriend will also answer call-waiting (it's her friend using Skype) which goes on for another ten minutes, by this time you are humming Abba's greatest hits album (why is it always 'Dancing Queen' that comes first?) and your about to erupt a moment ago Krakatoa has returned to its flaccid crater lake calmness. And you think to yourself, bloody hell the Swedes do make some bad music that you can't get out of your head. Finally, her phone rings call-waiting again, it's you on your mobile calling her, nevermind that you are both sharing the same Ikea single bed and your balls have fallen off from the coitus interruptus. "Hi, sweetie I'm hungry do you want salmon or kipper tonight?" you ask....End flasback.
I once saw some of my rare nice photographs (it's hard to get nice aberration free images on a cheap point and shoot camera) on a different website, uncredited and unacknowledged. But I think like the other famous Scandanivian, Linus Torvalds - beauty must always be shared. I thought this shot I took in the early morning really summed up how relaxing a weekend in Stockholm is. (If Linus Torvalds was North American instead of Swede/Finnish, he would have charged an exhorbitant amount for Linux licenses. It's also a sad fact that North Americans now want a two-tiered internet where you have to pay to get information across further widening the digital divide, something its inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who developed the internet as freeshare, and as should anyone, opposes strongly)
The Swedes ruled the Baltic for centuries. This 70-metre warship, the Vasa, with 64 cannons would have struck fear into the hearts of anyone on the opposing side. Sadly it sunk before King Gustavus Adolphus could even crack a barrel of vodka on her bow, heeling over on its maiden voyage because its ballast did not provide enough counterweight. It was the smell of old wood that arrested me and reminded me of my grandmother's house as I explored this beautiful wreck. One of the museum guides was very very very cute that I joined her guided tour, even if her tour was entirely done in Swedish, nodding along the way, pretending I could understand. I must have looked odd as I was the only oriental in a group of Nordics.
Skeppsholmen.
Lunch. Sadly, they don't have fishball and kikiam for smorgasbord.
An underground prison converted into a restaurant. The food is so-so but you come here more for the ambience. Having said that, prison food is actually meant to be so-so.
Afternoon siesta. Actually, this was taken at 8pm.
Paradiset/Le Paradise Fantastique by Phalle and Tinguely.
The Architecture Museum. I love this place. You have to visit the design schools to figure out what was going through the minds of the people who invented the tetrapak (hence, you can smuggle Japanese sake into high school campus. Ok, what's up with the Japanese for putting wine into milk cartons?) and developed the zipper (Swedish porn though prefers velcro). And if the design stinks, you could always blow it up with dynamite, another Swedish invention.
Another uncessary and gratuitous self-portrait of The Nashman. I am art, says Romanian artist Dan Perjovschi. One of the most refreshing exhibits I've been lucky enough to catch this year.
Evil part of me says "Make tulak the girl to the tubig" but I didn't. I think if you live in a polite society, it starts to rub off on everyone. Today, I helped an old lady by carrying her bags.
It's 8pm, does that sun look like it's going to set any time soon? The vampires are pissed. I had to stop my Vampire research for the meantime.
I should have brought my fishing gear.
Red is the colour of my heart that bleeds.
The Opera House and King Gustav Adolfs.
Gone are the days of Viking rape and pillage. (Although I wouldn't mind a pretty viking girl raping and pillaging me) Roman propaganda depicted the Vikings as savages. Well, look who is laughing now. The Vikings eventually brought Rome to its knees.
The mandatory butt picture for Akbayan and Babaylan sister Lourdes.
Don't let the sun go down on me.....Spectacular sunsets are rare in Scandanivia because of the low pollution levels in the atmosphere. When I was a young lad, teachers always reminded us of how beautiful the sun sets on Manila Bay. They never really told us the truth that this is so because of the pollution in Manila. The dust and smog bent light and so you are literally held breathless as you watch the Manila Bay sunset. However, I do miss the sunsets of the Northern Luzon coastline.