TGP Panic Buys

I don’t know if you’ve noticed but there is a global pandemic going on in the world around us. This is, indisputably, terrible. And, in no uncertain terms, The Global Pandemic (TGP) is considerably more terrible for a great many more people than it is for me. A fact. However, this blog is, and always has been, egocentric and all about me. Therefore, it shall continue to be. As such, I would like to tell you how TGP has affected me.

 

One of the first signs that TGP was going to affect our day-to-day lives was the supermarkets running out of toilet paper. The second sign was the supermarkets running out of white flour. The third sign was the supermarkets making everyone line up for a mandatory 20 minutes before entering. The fourth sign was the supermarkets running out of wholemeal flour. {lorem ipsum}. Everyone was feeling panicked. And everyone wanted to buy something to make them feel more secure. I was no exception. I was feeling panicked and I wanted to buy something comforting. So I panicked. And I bought a puppy. I panic-bought a puppy.

 

I panic-bought this puppy

This puppy

One of the best things about buying a puppy is naming it. You can name it whatever you want. I wanted to name my puppy something unique. Something creative. Something original. So after an embarrassingly short search, I settled on Zephyr. It’s a Greek word meaning a little west wind. It was fitting. Unique, creative, original. And then I made a tragic mistake. I told someone. And they looked at me and said, ‘oh that’s so sweet! Zeph and Steph!’ And I thought, ‘huh, I really did just change the ‘S’ of Steph to a Z and remove the ‘t’.’ I basically just called my new puppy, with her unique, creative and original name, Steph. It probably says something very concerning about me as a person and my narcissistic nature, but that analysis is beyond the scope of this document and therefore, for the sake of brevity, we shan’t be exploring this particular idea here.

Who wouldn't want to name her after oneself?

 

So Zeph moved into my life. She is, for the most part, a delight. She certainly isn’t always a delight however. The times that she wasn’t a delight were highlighted exceptionally harshly, however, because during lockdown I was living with another dog, Ernie (Erd the Turd, as he is affectionately known – I’m not even joking about that). Erd is an inner-city designer dog. He is perfectly trained. 

Perfectly-Trained Erd

He never barks. He never chews holes in anything. 

Never-Chewed-A-Hole-in-Anything Erd

He never pees inside (in fact, I have it on good authority that he arrived, as a 10 week old puppy, fully house trained). He never vomits. 

Never-Vomits Erd

Zephy, by comparison, seemed to be doing all of these things at a rate of knots. At a rate of twice the knots, in fact. Despite Zeph certainly not being responsible for everything for which she was blamed, the house training certainly did take more time than I wanted it to. There were days that she would pee inside, so I would take her outside. Then bring her inside, where she would pee again. So out we would go again. Where she would look at me confused. And in again, where she would pee. And out again where she would look perplexed. And in again where she would empty her bowels all over the floor. All in the space of a very busy 20 minutes. 

It's all very confusing

On one particular day, she topped off her impressive indoor pee-record by relieving herself on my bed, which of course resulted in the duvet needing to be put in the wash. Which, of course, resulted in the washing machine flooding. This led to me thinking that perhaps I didn’t really want a puppy after all, but actually just a stuffed toy to play with occasionally.

She slowly wised up to the ways of the world, with the help of Google.

 

Fortunately, our relationship has progressed past this now. She no longer pees inside (unless we go back to visit Erd the Turd, where she likes to relive the Glory Days).

Glory(ous) Days

 And despite being TGP panic-buy for me, unlike the 10 kg of rice you panic bought, she really is a fantastic addition to my life.

Happy dogs, happy life #1

Happy dogs, happy life #2

It's hard to get a good family photo.

 

I should really just leave me out of it... She's much more photogenic

A night in the life...

I’m supposed to be studying. I have three exams next week. Granted, one of them will take a whole 7 minutes, but it’s an exam nonetheless. But I don’t feel like studying. So I have spent my day cleaning, baking, pottering around and doing some first class (and I mean first class) facebook stalking. And now that I have fully run out of things to do, I thought I might just write a quick blog before I head out into the depths of winter (and despair) to go and catch up with some friends. As it happens, I am getting exceptionally good at doing not a lot, with today being a prime example of this.

It snowed

My delightful, and slightly concerned mother, called me the other day. I do love my mother. She asked how I was doing, as mother bears do. And I told her, well. She seems to have a 6^th sense about some things though… Perhaps it is her psychiatric training, perhaps it is her maternal instinct, perhaps she heard some whispers on the wind, or maybe she was just genuinely concerned but her next question was, ‘Steph, are you drinking too much?’

It snowed

Now, there are many things in life that I can’t really do. Or really can’t do. Or whatever. And right at the top of this list is lying. I am literally the world’s worst liar. What I did manage though, was a slightly strangled noise, no real words and a kind ‘eeeehhhhh’ side to side motion with my head.  You see, she happened to ask me this question last Sunday.

It snowed

I would just like to clarify, before I go any further, however, that Mum, if you had asked me today if I was drinking too much, my answer could have unequivocally been, ‘no.’ Having not touched alcohol since this incident…

It snowed

But she didn’t ask me today. She asked me last Sunday. When I had somehow managed to get outrageously drunk. I remember there a bottle of vodka appearing in front of me about half way through the night and not a great deal after that. That is, until I heard the very final, very sobering click of the corridor door and the thought, ‘FUCK. How did I manage to get here?’ I had successfully managed to lock myself out of my corridor with no phone, no keys, no shoes and no way of getting back in (which, I feel, actually requires a bit of planning). I was most fortunate however, for I still had socks and my duvet.  After ringing the door bell of my very asleep corridor mates and getting no response, I did what every normal, while really rather impaired person would do… I went in search of a couch to sleep on. It was raining outside. But out I ventured, in true explorer mode, with my comforter and in my socks (no, I didn’t take them off).  While in full stealth mode, I managed to break in to a friend’s apartment, wake up all the residents, giving them all a rather large fright, before putting myself to sleep on the couch. And living to die another day. Although, I feel it was slightly touch and go there for a minute or two…

It snowed

I don’t tell you this story because I am proud of it (I’m actually quite mortified by my drunken-self). Nor do I tell it to you because I think you’ll find it funny (although you might). I tell you this story because no good story ever started with, this one time, I was sober and… 

And I really don't want to study... 

The Bike (Pt II)

If my goldfish memory serves me at all, I believe that last time I updated you all on my general life status I was busy complaining about the relationship I have with my bicycle. What I really didn’t factor in was that fact that my bike has ears (and that the hills have eyes). And, correspondingly, my bike got it’s own back on me the week after I wrote that last blog…

I told you that my bicycle and I had a complicated relationship. And that, I found riding my bicycle sober difficult enough. But what I conveniently left out (because my parents read my blog too) was that riding my bicycle drunk is an activity nigh unto death. I really don’t know why they make the bike paths in this country so narrow. They’re only like 2 m wide, in some places. That’s just asking for trouble; don’t you think? So anyway, I missed the bike path and was busy biking along in the gutter on the road, when I got all tangled up in the curb and fell (ever so elegantly, as only I could) across the bike path presenting myself as a kind of road block. Which was fine. It’s not like I haven’t fallen off my bike before (sober or otherwise…). Except my babysitter was biking along behind me, making sure that no harm would come to me.

You get the general idea...

It's harder than it looks, I promise.

Now, I want you, just for a minute, to put your self in the shoes of Tom Cruise in an adrenaline filled high-speed car chase. You’re 145 minutes through your 150 minute chase and you’re trying to get rid of the guy on your tail. You pull on the hand brake and come to a skidding halt right across the road. The guy chasing you doesn’t have time to react. However, somehow, instead of crashing into the body of your car, he just skims the bonnet and does one of those amazing triple flips and sails over you (not without the necessary amount of damage, of course – a scratch or two). Also, at the same time, someone lights a match, throws it in the air. The match sets the second car on fire, there’s a big explosion (because the guy chasing you is conveniently carrying enough explosives to start WWIII). And just when you think everyone is dead, you see Tom Cruise climb out of the car ever so slowly, wincing in pain, with a few burn marks on his face. And then, because it’s only the first movie in the trilogy, you see the villain limping off into the darkness of night. Did I mention that all of this, despite happening at top speed, is proceeding in slow motion?

Exactly what happened

So that’s pretty much what happened to me. My friend biked over my arm. He went flying off into the darkness of night (he lived to tell the tale). And I sat up, not with burn marks on my face, but with a rather dislocated elbow. I’m sure it looked just as impressive in real life as it always does in the movies too. What they don’t show you in the movies though, is just how long the recovery takes. So, three weeks on, I can almost straighten my arm again. I blame The Bike, who, now, at the very least, deserves to be a proper noun.

In other news, I spent last weekend on Sweden’s west coast, at an art museum (which, if you know anything about me, tells you more than you need to know), drinking coffee, swimming in the North Sea and discovering my sprit vegetable.

Strömstad

Boat sheds?

Göteborg Domkyrka

Grey Göteborg

Rainy Göteborg

My spirit vegetable

And yes, I am still at university. 

The Struggles of Riding A Bicycle

A little over a month in now. Welcome to life in Sweden. Never mind that is 4.30 am and I can’t sleep. But that’s a sob story for another day. Well, what do you want to know? Class is class. Life is life. Friends are being made. I am slowly sorting out my shit, but that’s just a never ending mess and a constant work in progress (I feel like that Greek guy who forever has to push a boulder up a hill when it comes to sorting out my shit - Sisyphus). But, I have invested in a bicycle. It’s the little things, ya know. Although, I say that, but my bicycle isn’t actually that small (nor was it a small purchase).

Ooooh, a castle

The sun shines here too

Anyway, I have discovered that my bike riding skills really do leave a little to be desired. For starters, I can’t ride in a straight line. Just in general. Even if I am completely sober and at my most functional. Then there is the bike itself. Turns out that bikes here are set up differently to all the other ones I have ever ridden in NZ. Swedish bikes have one hand brake and one back (pedal) brake. The one hand brake is on the left hand side of the handle bars and is the front tyre brake. Completely throwing all of my ingrained childhood beliefs about how a bike is (and most definitely SHOULD) be set up out the window, having only ever ridden NZ bikes with two hand brakes of which the back brake was on the left of the handle bars and the front on the right. Figuring out the braking system has left me very close to (and yes, unfortunately sometimes completely) pitching over the handle bars. And then, yesterday, I discovered (after letting someone else ride my bicycle) that my front tyre and the handle bars aren’t aligned at all, so to ride in a straight line, I had to have sideways handle bars. Still haven’t gotten this one fixed, but I am ever hopeful that this might fix all of my bike riding problems…

Something European

Same thing from another angle (#perspective)

But it gets worse, because if the bicycle itself doesn’t kill me, there are plenty of other hazards out and about trying to ruin my life. Nobody ever talks about how the road rules are different when they talk about the charm of biking around a European city. And I can tell you that there is nothing charming about being tooted at and yelled at out the window in loud, aggressive Swedish for biking the wrong way around a round about, cutting a little too close to a car, and my personal favourite; not saying thanks when a car let’s you go. And then, there are these nasty little beasties in this part of the world, smaller than a sandfly, more conniving and just borderline dangerous in general. You’ll be puddling along, minding your own bloody business when out of nowhere, BAM, a little beastie decides it likes the look of your face, your eye, or your esophagus. This leads to minutes of trying to extract said beastie from whichever part of your body it has tried to invade.

Tropical island paradise

Trees...

If you manage to ride your bike in a straight enough line as to avoid the traffic, remembered not to touch that hand brake, kept your mouth shut and been the most courteous and (falsely) pleasant person thanking all the passers by then you’re doing well. And I don’t want to belittle my achievement of not having died yet, but there is one more thing that requires some work. You see, to truly appear European, you have to arrive at university looking your best. Except I, without fail arrive at university dripping with sweat. It doesn’t matter if I bike as slowly as I possibly can (which is an entirely different challenge altogether). It usually takes me about 30 minutes to stop sweating, chill the fuck out and calm the fuck down. Which is actually pretty traumatic, especially while sitting next to all these Europeans who look like they’ve just walked off a Vogue runway. I’m going for feral New Zealander look. I think I’ve got it down pretty well.

Not my house

Such are the real and unadulterated struggles of living in a European city that you never hear about. If you want to talk to me about your own similar struggles, just flick me a message. I hear that there is strength in numbers and we people who are tormented by these bloody bicycles need to stick together; it’s a big ol’ world out there.

And that's a big ol' wall. 

Settling

It’s been a while since I last blogged about the intricate details of my inner workings, which usually means that nothing interesting has been happening. But in this case, that is not the case.  After I left the mighty US (USA!!! USA!!! USA!!!), I spent a week in Iceland visiting all the old haunts (except the one that had turned into a gentlemen’s club) with the Ghosts of Exchanges’ Passed before heading to Sweden to begin my masters degree.

Harpa

But let’s backtrack, to Iceland, the Land Of Fond Memories. If you have been reading my blog for long enough, you might remember one trip to Turkey with one Australian companion. Said companion was also present as one of the three in Iceland on this Mini Reunion. You may also remember, from the time we tripped around Turkey together that Said Companion turned up without his luggage. And had lost and found his passport (after a trip to the embassy). And then left his phone somewhere forgettable, and the phone was then held ransom by a taxi driver. And I mean, for all intents and purposes, he’s a trust worthy person, who manages to get himself into Masters programs on the other side of the world and to get himself there. He was in charge of accommodation and had been talking about it for a solid 2 months before we arrived in Iceland. And the other group members (myself and another Australian) trusted him to do the job. Except, he hadn’t. And Iceland isn’t the best place for trying to find beds at short notice over the weekend of The Reykjavik Marathon and Reykjavik Culture Night. It was musical beds every night of the week. And I am never trusting him to organize my life again. But, as dire chance and fateful cock-up would have it, he lost his bag with his laptop in it on the last day. As they say, karma’s a bitch.

Oh, hey Reykjavik!

The pond

Now, it was purely co-incidence that we were there for Reykjavik Culture Day (and Night), but a happier co-incidence has never occurred. The give out free waffles. They have music all through the. They had people dressed up as Vikings, including babies with swords (friendlier Vikings, you will never meet). AND they had the perfect cure to any hangover; dancing in the streets. Complete with a disco ball, DJ and grass dance floor so you could really get your bohemian dancing shoes on (bare feet).

Free waffles

Baby Vikings ft. sword

People for Africa

Dancing in the streets

And then I arrived in Sweden. And now I am in Sweden. Settling into life here. Slowly. After a very serious conversation with myself asking the hard questions, for example; what the fuck did you do?

But I took solace in the fact that the sun was shining

Actually, that’s the only real question that I asked myself, but it was a hard one. It took some getting used to; the fact that the only shadow that I had was my own once more. But I am settling into life here in Sweden well. And the friend making process hasn’t been hindered by the fact that my most fluent sentence of Swedish translates to, ‘what’s wrong with you?’ Such is the generous nature of the Swedes. But seriously, the town is gorgeous. The people are great. And the thought of spending two years here is infinitely less intimidating than it was on Day Dot. 

Välkommen till Sveriges!