Hanami in Stockholm - 6 years since last time!

Every year since I got back from Japan (can't believe it's been 6 years!) I've missed hanami. It's not a big deal in Sweden so it's possible to miss it. But every year I've wanted to go. This year for the season, I have a job in the centre of Stockholm and the office is very close to the Royal Gardens. So this time I decided to take a trip there after work last week.

I was sort of disappointed tbh. There are one-day festivals of cherry blossom viewing at different places in Sweden too, and particularly at the Royal Gardens they tend to make a fuss as soon as the flowers bloom. But it was so small. I thought the whole place would be pink, instead it was just one corner of the area. Also it was Spring showers that day so it rained every five minutes.

Here are some pictures from the day:

 The last picture is a shot of the whole area. Not very impressive, is it? Still, it was nostalgic to walk around the sakura again :3

For nostalgic purposes I'll also throw in one picture from each time we went hanami in Japan. There was more than one occasion!

 First time (10-03-20) in Kyoto. Second time (10-03-30) at Meguro-gawa, Tokyo.

 Third time (10-04-01) at the Imperial Palace, Tokyo. Fourth time (10-04-06) in Ueno, Tokyo.

 Fifth time (10-04-25) just outside the metro station in Sakura shimmachi, Tokyo where I lived. Sixth time (10-05-03) at Namsan outside Seoul, Korea.

 And also two songs that inevitably makes me think of those times we went hanami:

miwa - "Megurogawa"

Morning Musume Sakura Gumi - "Sakura Mankai"

The world stops when you enter an MMO

It really doesn't, but I wish it would. For the past 2-3 weeks I've been living and breathing ESO, which is also why my weekly posts died out.

I started playing a Skyrim quest mod called Falskaar at the end of last month, and while I was exploring I started to feel the need for ESO. I picked it up and continued on the character I created some weeks earlier. I had a lot of fun with it and decided to stick around, so I asked for any casual guilds in the chat. I got two hits very quickly. One was a very small guild with a very enthusiastic guildmaster, and as soon as he realised that I was a veteran in this game he made me second in command. I have a lot of fun with those guys :) The other was a big bustling trading guild with over 200 members. They are very active in the chat and we're always engaged in odd conversations (most recently I promised to tickle Molag Bal's belly when I took him down. Another night we learned that pizza is a vegetable, but also that it kills your soul). Chatting with those guys is now half of the fun I'm having. And I love not having to look in the zone chat for random people to do dungeons with - I just ask my guildies and 99% of the time someone is willing to team up. I used to avoid the group dungeons because I dreaded LFGing in the zone chat, now I volunteer every time someone mentions dungeons. For the first time in the two years I've played this game I've found guilds who are casual and fun. I don't like serious guilds who analyse everything, it takes the fun out of it imho.

And now I'm back to trying to talk my IRL friends into playing the game. I can't believe it's been two years and I still don't have any IRL friends who play. I can't believe I'm still trying to convince people two years later -_-

But hey, I'm having fun and I don't even mind that they keep calling me "he". I haven't been very obvious with me not being a guy. I've mentioned the boyfriend a few times now though, so I guess most of them have figured out I'm a girl, or they just think I'm gay. I don't mind either. And tbf I also assume that everyone I talk to is a guy before he says otherwise. They just tend to be mostly guys :P

March favourites 2016

Books: I managed to complete 7 books in March. Tbf four of them were manga volumes and thus didn't take too long to read although they were in Japanese. My favourite book from this month is easily the last book in the Hunger Games series: Mockingjay. Impossible to put down, I finished it very quickly.

Music:
• Tommy february6 - "Little Red Forest"

• The Pretty Reckless - "Burn"

• Simple Plan - "In"

• Three Days Grace - "Fallen Angel"

• Morning Musume - "One and Only"


Games: Half this month consisted of Fallout 4, the other half was Portal, ESO and Skyrim. I must still say that Fallout 4 was the best game of the month. None of the others made me feel withdrawal symptoms for being away from the game :P

TV shows: I've watched a lot of shows this month as per usual. But the best one is X-Files. Can't stop watching that show!

Other things: Easter was fun. I also saw the first butterfly of the year which was nice.

My last 5 books: Japanese & YA

The Almost Nearly Perfect People should've been at the top here, but I felt that book deserved its own space.

1. Drug & Drop, vol 1, by CLAMP.

The first volume of manga in Japanese this time around. This is a remake of an old series by CLAMP that I read in English way back. Back then it was called Legal Drug and as far as I know it was put on hiatus after only three volumes. Maybe it's because the manga contains a lot of difficult, different, and odd words that you don't really learn unless you travel in the correct circles, and because of that I maye not have understood everything correctly, but was it always this jumpy? I'm missing the context, the connections between scenes are subtle to non-existant. The best part of the whole thing was when Watanuki from xxxHolic showed up (and what I hope is a regenerated Yuko). I used to love CLAMP to bits, I collected everything written by them that I could get my hands on, but this is not very good. Too stereotypical characters for one. Did they lose their touch or did I grow up?

2. Watashi no Suki na Hito, by CLAMP.

This is a short story collection in manga format and also in Japanese. This book has 12 short stories, all about different girls experiencing love in different ways. If I had read this when I was 14, and if it had been available in Swedish or English back then I would probably have loved it. As it is now, I found the stories too sugary sweet, too girly, and mainly too kawaii. Most horrible realisation of my reading life - Have I grown out of shojo manga? O_o I finally start to read CLAMP again after 7-8 years, only to discover that I don't like them anymore? This is awful :(

3. Code Geass, vol 1, by Ichirou Ohokouchi, Goro Taniguichi & Majiko!.

This volume of manga (in Japanese) is based on the anime of the same name. I haven't seen the anime, but I'm really excited to after reading this! Damn this was good! Some sort of post-apocalyptic world war setting, in a Japan that has been converted into a part of the world spanning empire known as Britannia. Lelouch is originally indifferent to both the empire officials' deeds as well as the rebels' loud opinions, but after finding a girl hooked up to a machine and locked inside a see-through tank, and also watching his childhood friend get shot by the empire, he decides to destroy Britannia. When freeing the girl in the machine he recieves some mystic power that enables him to influence people to do his will. As the story unfolds, he becomes a sort of avenger, while facing doubts when discovering that friends and classmates are on the side of the empire.

4. Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins.

Last part of The Hunger Games! I can't believe I've waited this long to finish this series! The first two books were amazing and this one was no different. To be fair I did figure out some of the plot before that part came around, but thanks to the amazing writing my realisations didn't make the book boring, far from it. It was exciting all the way. Emotional ups and downs. Before I started reading I saw that several of the reviews on Goodreads began with; "What kind of an ending is that?!?!?! ahsghs D:" But I didn't mind the ending, I thought it was kind of fitting. Best goddamn series in a while! (I have only seen the movie based on the first book.)

5. Maze Runner, by James Dashner.

No.

That could be my whole review. Just a no. I read this in Swedish, so it could be the translator, but the language was boring, even the trying-to-be-inventive-slang was boring. There was not even the slightest shade of character development in anyone. For being the smartest kids in their post-apocalyptic world they were incredibly stupid. I figured out what they needed to do in the maze about 100 pages before the characters even get to it. And - because there was no language to hold on to, because the storytelling was flat, and because the characters never grew - from that point on it basically became just waiting for them to catch up. The telepathy thing was stupid (I sincerely hope that will be explained more in detail in the other two books, because here it was mostly 'oh this is a thing we can do, let's roll with it'), the Grievers seemed like something a five-year-old would paint if asked to imagine a monster: a big blob with arms and needles, and the sins of the main character were in no way left to mystery when very early on the girl starts ranting about what they did and how this is all their fault.

Actually, throughout most of this book I had the same feeling I have when I read through my own manuscripts from a few years back: cringe.

This book was too predictable and too flat. (I haven't seen the movie.)

Mostly disappointments this time around. Hopefully that will get better by my next batch!

The Almost Nearly Perfect People - Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia

As soon as I saw this book I knew I had to buy it. I've seen plenty of posts, especially on Tumblr, where Americans and otherwise make out the Nordic countries as some sort of haven for education, health care and social liberty. The author, Michael Booth, is a Brit who's married to a Dane and lives in Denmark. He has travelled a lot in the Nordic countries, both for pleasure and for research, and so I decided to try to find out why this legend about the Nordic utopia exists. The author ventured to do the same and so this book was made. I love the quotes on the back of the book:

"The Danes are the happiest people in the world, and pay the highest taxes.
'Neutral' Sweden is one of the biggest arms manufacturers in the world.
Finns have the highest per capita gun ownership after the US and Yemen.
54 per cent of Icelanders believe in elves.
Norway is the richest country on earth."

The book paints a pretty dark picture, actually. What he finds out about all of us is that we're all basically balancing a very thin thread each and it could go either way - either total collapse or continued welfare. The country that takes up the most space in the book is understandably Denmark, and the smallest part is Iceland, and while reading I realised how little I actually know about my neighbours. I knew some of it, but far from everything. I can't say how accurate any of the other countries' depictions are, but when it comes to Sweden he paints a pretty correct picture.

He starts with the crayfish party season, and also touches upon graduation celebrations and Midsummer, which are some of the days when Swedes actually allow themselves to let loose and become crazy. We are partying Vikings just like the Danes, but we usually keep it under tight wraps. He describes Swedes as being shy (because we honestly don't talk to people we meet on public transport or on the streets), reserved, boring, and a little rigid. I recognise that picture. He also talks about the fact that Swedes love conformity (which we do) and if you don't fit in to the pattern you're going to have a hard time. I find it funny that he realised the conformity problem for non-conformed people when he basically only visited the major cities. I wonder what he would've made of the small villages. Because for myself who never fit into the rigid conformity of my home village, Malmö and Stockholm are areas of liberty. Because the way I percieve it no one looks twice at me or thinks I'm weird in the cities, while that's the impression I get all the time when I go "home".

The most interesting chapter in the Sweden part was the discussion upon immigration. This book is written and published before the immigration crisis of last year, and it seems like he gathered his information on Sweden before the last election (2014), so some of his information isn't correct anymore, but even he realises that the media is blowing the issues way out of proportion. He visits the immigrant neighbourhood of Rosengård in Malmö (well-known for violence throughout Sweden) and talks to the people he meet there as well as the people in charge of the area, and an imam. And you know what he realises after all this? That they are the same as "native" Swedes, same hopes and dreams and worries. He walks across the big road to the area next to Rosengård and talks to the people living there - mostly well-to-do "native" Swedes and their responses to his questions about immigration problems and violence and what they want and hope for are mostly the same.

Some things irk me, though. He complains a lot about the weather. You're British! You hardly have exceptionally good weather in your own country. And he also complains about the monarchies of Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Again: You're British! If any country is known for loving their royalty, it's you. In Sweden the attitude is mostly: we don't mind having them there. They don't really do anything and they don't have any say in anything anyway. And having them there sort of blocks the way for any crazy dictators :P Heirs to wealthy conglomerates have more power than our royal families. Keep that in mind. I'm not a royalist, but I'm not really a republican either. I just don't mind having them there.

But the overall feeling I get from this is something I've known for a long while to be true: we are family; Denmark, Norway, and Sweden are brothers, Iceland is the cousin, and Finland is the adopted brother (Faroe Islands and Greenland are foster children). Since we are family we've had our squabbles (wars, culture oppression etc), but nowadays when we're all grown up we've reduced our squabbles to joking about each member's stereotypes, and we're all ok with that (as far as I know).

The rest of this post will be quotes from the epilogue:

"Of course there are downsides even in almost nearly perfect societies: there are historical skeletons in every closet, and yes, countries with homogenous, monocultural tendencies do tend to be a little too safe and dull, and insular. Looking to the future, the Nordic countries are also facing some serious challenges - aging population, creaking welfare states, the ongoing integration of immigrant populations, and rising inequality. But it's still Scandinavia. It is still the enivably rich, peaceful, harmonious and progressive place it has long been."

"To achieve authentic, sustained happiness, above all else you need to be in charge of your life, to be in control of who you want to be, and be able to make the appropriate changes if you are not. This cannot merely be a perception, an empty slogan like the American Dream (the Us came way down on the LSE's social mobility scale, incidentally). In Scandinavia it is a reality. These are the real lands of opportunity. There is far greater social mobility in the Nordic countries than in the US or Britain and, for all the collectivism and state interference in the lives of the people who live here, there is far greater freedom to be the person you want to be, and do the things you want to do, up here in the North. In a recent poll by Gallup, only 5 per cent of Danes said they could not change their lives if they wanted to. In contrast, I can think of many American states where it would probably be quite an uncomfortable experience to declare yourself atheist, for example, or gay, or to be married yet choose not to have children, or to be unmarried and have children, or to have an abortion, or raise your children as Muslims. I don't imagine it would be easy being vegetarian in Texas, for instance, or a wine buff in Salt Lake City come to that. And don't even think of coming out as socialist in any of the fifty states. In Scandinavia you can be all of these things and no one will bat an eye."

"I didn't mention it but the day after the Malmö crayfish orgy, the city's annual festival continued with more al fresco feasting - mainly of Turkish, Indian, Arabic and Chinese food - but this time the streets of the city were packed with the most multiethnic crowd I have ever seen on the streets of a Scandinavian city. The atmosphere was terrific that day; it felt to me like there was a genuine sense of community and that, contrary to much of what I had heard about Malmö in the Danish media, this was a city at peace with itself."

"Though there has been increasing discussion about this in the Scandinavian media in recent years - with some suggesting a Federal States of Scandinavia as a northern alternative to the faltering EU - it is still unlikely. Just in case, though, my plea to the Nordic people is this: please don't. For if you ever really did band together in such a way then, truly, the rest of us would not stand a chance." 

One of the most interesting reads I've had in a while. Be sure to pick it up!

Game completed: Fallout 4

Man, I loved this game. It was amazing. I imagine this is what Fallout 3 would've been like if the game wasn't fucked-up and broken and forced me to rush through it if I wanted to play at all. Fallout 4 was perfection.

I had stayed away from hints and spoilers and trailers completely before I picked up the game. I was extremely confused when the game started and I found myself in 2077, before the bombs fell. But the rush to the Vault to get there in time before the bombs fell was exhilarating, and then realising that the pod I entered was cryo... Fuck, shit, fuck. And then waking up and watching my son get stolen from my husband's arms and him getting shot... Fuck, shit, fuck. Finally waking up, and realising that I'm the only one left in the entire Vault was extremely creepy. Then I got out of the Vault, picked up my old robot butler Codsworth and went on my way to Concord. Found Dogmeat on the way :3 Met the Minutemen at Concord and helped them out of their pickle. The new design of Power armor was badass (though I had to google how to get out of it, because I missed that info bubble). But why was there a Deathclaw in my first ever battle in the game?! That's not fair!

After I got the Minutemen to Sanctuary and joined them, I started to slowly travel down to Diamond City and by slowly I mean exploring every location I happened upon on the way. It took a while xD Joined the Brotherhood of Steel on the way. When I got to Diamond City I heard about the Freedom Trail and followed it all the way to the Railroad. And then I joined the Railroad.

Having joined every faction available to me at that time, I began my personal mission to complete every single side quest, misc quest and unmarked quest, as well as discover every location. It went really well :) I picked up every companion on the way and gotta say that my favourites are Nick, Hancock, Deacon, Cait, and Piper. Codsworth is cool too, but I dumped him as soon as I got Dogmeat, and then I dumped Dogmeat as soon as I got Hancock. My lovely Hancock ♥♥♥ I romanced Hancock :3

Out of all the side quests and misc objectives my favourites were: The One with the Chinese Submarine, The One with the Ship Stuck in a Building, The Silver Shroud, The One with a Kid in a Fridge, The One with Cabot House, The One with Pickman's Gallery, The One with the Museum of Witchcraft, The One with the Treasures of Jamaica Plain, and The One with Nick Valentine's Past.

1). The captain of the Chinese submarine. 2). The ship in the building

1). The Silver Shroud! 2). The kid in the fridge

1). Pickman. 2) The treasure room at Jamaica Plain

Out of all the locations in the game my favourites (mostly due to the back stories) were: Dunwich Borers, Boston mayoral shelter, Cambridge Polymer Labs, Jamaica Plain, Libertalia, Parsons State Insane Asylum, HalluciGen Inc, Hubris Comics, Swan's Pond, Vault 81, Diamond City, Goodneighbor, and The Slog.

1). Flashback scene at Dunwich Borers (yes, this is Lovecraft). 2). Libertalia

1). Entrance to Vault 81. This became my home. 2). Diamond City

When I had completed my personal mission I started doing the main quest. After meeting everyone and doing all their side quests I had decided on beforehand that I was going to side with the Railroad. So I followed their story and got inside the Institute, and that's when all the figurative bombs started to drop and I became seriously conflicted on whether I should go through with the Railroad's plan or dump their asses and join the Institute. But the more I went back and forth between them, the more I realised that I liked the Railroad's goal more. I had to ignore the feelings that being at the Institute stirred and focus on the quest. And holy shit the main quest got epic! Epic ending :3

1). One quest with my boys all together :3 Hancock, Deacon and Tinker Tom ^^ 2). The Nuclear Option

I played for all four factions (Minutemen, Brotherhood of Steel, Railroad, Institute) for as long as possible and I have created separate save files at the specific moments when I had to make a choice. All to make it possible for me to go back and experience the main quest another way but not having to play through the entire game again. I may do that at some point or other.

I'm also happy that I did take the time to play the two previous Fallout games, while New Vegas was hardly mentioned, Fallout 3 references popped up often enough. Everything from a certain little Lamplighter and a certain Rivet City doctor, to Liberty Prime and aliens. Then there's also the fact that Bethesda likes to re-utilise voices. The voice for Nick Valentine is also the voice for Belethor/Mercer/Enthir in Skyrim. The voice for Desdemona is also the voice for Legate Rikke in Skyrim. And then there's the fact that more than half of random unnamed NPCs in this game have the same voice actor as Garrus from Mass Effect.

This has been an amazing ride :3 I loved some of the new weapons available (like the Broadsider and the Junk Jet), and I loved how I could customize my armour. I hardly ever got out of my vault suit, I just modded the suit and the put armour parts on top of it. I never used a helmet, only different kinds of hats and by the end I really loved the look of my bowler hat :3

I'm really looking forward to the DLCs, first of which will arrive next week! :D

February favourites 2016

February was a very busy month. I'm almost glad it's over.

Books: My reading suffered a bit in February, and I basically only read two books. My excuse is that the first one was over 700 pages long and written in 1920s English, and the other one was in French, so they both took time. But I also hardly had any time to read during the first week of February. Out of the two I managed Night Terrors has to be my favourite!

Music: I've had so much Fallout 4 music on my head this month. But I'm gonna list the other songs that I've liked specifically in February.
• All That Remains - "A Reason For Me to Fight"

• Black Veil Brides - "Drag Me to the Grave"

• Breaking Benjamin - "The Great Divide"

• In This Moment - "Adrenalize"

• Nickelback  - "Figured You Out"

• Seether - "Blister"

• Simple Plan - "The Rest of Us"

• Morning Musume - "TIKI BUN"

• "Jag är en astronaut"


Games: Once again it's been Fallout all month. I finished Fallout: New Vegas around Valentine's Day, and at the same day I started up Fallout 4. It's been Fallout 4 since then. And some Fallout Shelter, and a little side trip to play Left 4 Dead 2 with friends. Gotta say that Fallout 4 is the best game of the month!

TV shows: This month I've watched The Big Bang Theory, Call the Midwife, Grey's Anatomy, The Vampire Diaries, The Originals, The Walking Dead, The IT Crowd, and The X-Files. My favourite this month has to be Call the Midwife. Waiting a week for each episode is terrible! And soon the season will be over! What do?!

Other things: We saw Deadpool on the 13th! It was amazeballs! There was also the fact that I was in Germany the first week of the month, and several other small things that rarely happen.

My last 5 books: Horror, sci-fi, and French

The first five books of the year. My promise to myself to use every bit of commuting time to read has payed off somewhat. So here are the last 5 books I've read, starting with the oldest first:

1. Låt den rätte komma in, by John Ajvide Lindqvist.
Known abroad as Let the right one in. I'm generally sceptical towards Swedish writers, but this guy has proven me wrong. I couldn't put this book down. It was incredibly gripping. I didn't like that he made so many of the characters sexually or psychologically deviant, though, I guess that has something to do with him trying to make the characters more interesting. Sexual deviance is not necessary for a character to be interesting! I liked Eli a lot more than Oskar, and especially the flashbacks were interesting. The author's take on vampirism was inventive. I have not yet seen the movie, and I'm not sure I will. Movies have a tendency to be bad compared to the book.

2. Himmelstrand, by John Ajvide Lindqvist.
Same author. This book was a lot better than Låt den rätte komma in, and it's obvious that his writing has evolved during the years between his first novel (Låt den rätte komma in) and this one. Himmelstrand was haunting and scary in the cosy creepy way. Without actually saying much until the last 150 pages, there's this overwhelming feeling that something is incredibly, terribly wrong. But just as the characters have no idea what has happened, neither do you. I love how the characters span every single version of horror movie characters: The scared ones who completely break down, the ones who become violent in the face of screaming stress, the idiot ones who think they can solve the problem by hunting it, and the ones who just resign themselves to the end and don't really care. I particularly love that the most "evil" character (if you want to use that word) is a 6-year-old. Awesome book! If this is how good his writing has become, I can't wait to read more from him!

3. Andra vägar, by Karin Tidbeck (red).
This is something as rare as a modern-day Swedish anthology of sci-fi. Ten short stories by more or less known Swedish writers fill these pages. Some of them were outrageous and weird, some of them I really liked, and some were just boring - the way things normally are with anthologies. My personal favourites were numbers 5 and 8. Number 5 is Vomb by Jessica Schiefauer about a couple who decides to have a family, by using the new technology called a vomb. The vomb makes it possible for the parents to shift carrying the baby during the pregnancy. Number 8 is Dykplats Lund by Kristina Hård about an evolved human who works in diving beneath the surface of the ocean, which in this distant year of the future has covered much of the ground we live on today.

4. Night Terrors: The Ghost Stories of E.F. Benson.
This author was active during the same years as H.P. Lovecraft, both in the horror/supernatural genre. Unlike Lovecraft Benson didn't create his own mythology of Elder Gods, and his stories mostly concerned the supernatural we know: ghosts, spritis, demons, witches and magic. Another difference is that while Lovecraft was American and most of his stories took place in New England, Benson was British and most of his stories take place in Britain. I originally started reading this book in October 2014, but you have to be in a certain mood to read anthologies and I just wasn't. Now I can't imagine why, because this book was glorious. A few of my favourites were: Caterpillars, The Cat, The Other Bed, The Temple, The Wishing-Well, The Step, The Bath-Chair, and The Sanctuary.

5. Pas si fous, ces Français! by Jean-Benoît Nadeau & Julie Barlow
This book was part of the course literature when I studied French at the university, but we only read snippets from it. I thought it seemed interesting back then and I still do. So when I needed to get into French again to prepare for Cologne, I decided to pick it up again and read it from back to back. Unfortunately I hardly had time to read while in Cologne (20 pages in total during the whole week we were there). I was very relieved when I started reading it and realised I understood practically everything, despite the fact that I had hardly used French for 3 years! So this book is written by two French-Canadians who decide to understand France. They spend 2½ years in France and this book describes what they found. They write through the perspective of North Americans and some of the time I was gaping at the book for something they did in France that I found really weird,  and some of the time I was shrugging like what the hell that's not strange, for something the authors thought was strange, but that we do in Sweden too. It's been a ride, an although this book tried to disprove the notion that France is an elitist country/community I still think it is, but I have gained more of an understanding towards their system. Unfortunately, this book is getting on in years. It was published in 2003 and is thus now more than 10 years old. I'd like to know what the authors would say to everything that has happened in France since 2010.

And that's it for now! Five books, three languages, and three genres.