OaB #32 g: Visit the Countryside

I was invited to visit my friend Katarina and her family in Undersvik, Hälsingland in Sweden for four days (July 25-28), and since my vacation had just started I gladly accepted. It was great! It truly was the countryside, and it was beautiful.

Me, Katarina and her sister Rebecka had a lot of fun. Instead of writing it all down I'll just post a bunch of pictures, because I'm lazy and I have loads of other things I've done to write about as well!

A horse! A horse! My blog for a horse!



The view from their home.



Of course we had to bathe in the warm water!



The Parish of Undersvik.



Me and Katarina as Sea Monsters! Arghh!!



Uhm, a picture of a train...



Rebecka, me and Katarina had to wait in Bollnäs for their mom to pick us up!



A beautiful sunset in the river Ljusnan.



Two of the creatures to touch - a mice or rat, and a butterfly or moth.



We also had time to visit the fishingvillage Skärså.
Here we went to a restaurant called Albertina where I had a delicious salmon dish!

HStP #88: Unshaven and Without Make-Up.

The mission was not to wear make-up or shave for a week. Surprisingly, I don't wear make-up, but I do shave. However, as my facial hair doesn't grow very fast, I actually let it grow for 2-3 weeks before I counted this one as completed.

I don't know if I need to say much more - but here is a picture.

It was very tough not shaving, just look at the reds in my eyes!

HStP #79: Hug a Tree.

After I had been to Liverpool for three days, me and my uncle went to Riga, Latvia, for two days, July 8-9. The 9th was my birthday, and it was the first time I didn't wake up in Sweden on my birthday!

Anyway, while in Riga, I decided to complete another thing from one of the books, and the easiest one was number 79 in the HStP book, to hug a tree.

And of course I did it in Riga just to get to tell you I was in Riga, haha!

OaB #32 f: Visit an Aquarium.

This Monday, I went to Liverpool for three days with my uncle and my brother. We had a lot of fun, doing things we normally don't do: Go to museums. I'm actually kind of surprised visiting a museum is not on the list. One of the museums we visited on Tuesday, July 1, was World Museum Liverpool, a museum with everything from insects, iron ore and ancient board games to meteors, gems and a Holocaust spectacle collection.

And they also had an aquarium. Although it was quite small, it was still quite fun and interesting to see weird fish and anemones, and it gave me a reason to pick up the book when we got back to the hotel!

As usual, here are some pictures:

HStP #20: Get an Environmentally Friendly Haircut.

HStP? What on earth is this?

At the Midsummer's Eve Celebration, Mirre, one of the attendees, gave me an early birthday gift. She gave me a book called "Uppdraget Rädda Världen" which means something like "Mission Save the World". It's a fun book with 105 things to do, pretty much like these two books, just that every thing in the book is something that (supposedly) helps save the planet!

One of the things in Old and Boring happens to be just that - OaB #26: Help Save the Planet! So I decided that I have to complete the lovely planet saving book to cross off number 26. Another good thing is that many things in the planet book are things also in the OaB book, so I can cross off two at once. Yey!

The first item I completed was number 20, get an environmentally friendly haircut. I usually have a lot of hair wax in my hair, so last Saturday, I gave myself an e-friendly haircut by shaving off my hair at my friend Malin's birthday party!

Here are some pictures:

In a few days I'll add a list with all the 105 things to the left column, under the current two lists.

OaB #73: Have a Sleepover.

I rarely have people over at my place, and I've pretty much never had a sleepover. That's why it might seem weird that I, as early as in January, decided to invite people to a Midsummer's Eve celebration at my house. Of course I've had people over before, like last New Year's Eve, but now I decided to let people stay over the night.

Even though it wasn't even close to the 40-50ish people I had invited, 15 brave souls still attended the celebration, and out of those 15 friends, 8 of them stayed the night, allowing me to cross off yet another item in my book - have a sleepover! Nice, huh?

It wasn't a very traditional celebration as we had planned (I guess because people couldn't bother creating a maypole and dancing around it), but it was still a very nice evening. The attendees were, apart from me; Erica, Per, Caroline, Lisa, Sara, Mirre, Björn, Henrik, who all stayed the night, and Malin, Sabina, Isabelle, Sandra, Ronny, Maria and Jonas who left as darkness approached (and the last commuter rail departed).

To honor them all, I decided to upload some pictures from the day!

OaB #72: See Your Music Idol Perform Live.

This is one of the coolest things that I've completed. I've been a fan of Jason Mraz ever since I heard his song You and I Both for the first time. This was about four years ago, and I had just found out about Pandora, which together with the iPod I bought has been the best thing ever for my "relationship" with music. Too bad Pandora no longer works for non-Americans.

So anyway. I put in artists I liked, and it found artists that had a similar style. And there it was. You and I Both, by Jason Mraz. It quickly became one of my favorite songs, a song I played all the time, again and again. Then I downloaded some more of his songs. I loved them. So I bought his CDs as well.

This weekend, I was in London (again), and when I came back home to Sweden this Monday, I grabbed a Metro (you know, the free morning paper they have in most big cities). I turned the pages, not really reading, just browsing through, when all of a sudden I have to go back a few pages. "Was that Jason Mraz on that picture!?" I thought to myself. And there he was! The notice said "Win a date with Jason Mraz after his performance in Stockholm!"

This was a sign from above! My idol is going to perform in Sweden and I have a chance to meet him (BYD #21: Meet Your Idol). I never did win, so that sign from above wasn't a sign, just fate playing with me, I guess. Oh well. But the thing is, he was performing at Rix FM Festival, a FREE concert at Kungsträdgården in Stockholm, Sweden. I had to go!

And of course I did go. Me and my friend Mary went there this Thursday (17th of May) and we got a very good view of the stage. And it was just awesome seeing him perform. He a cover of Fly Me to the Moon, his song The Remedy (but with some Oasis theme in it, I think), some song I did not recognize and last but not least his hit song I'm Yours. We also saw Kate Ryan and Swedish singer Patrik Isaksson perform live. We had a great evening!

What's sad is that I would have loved to have met Jason and get his autograph, but for some reason, I was not meant to meet him this time. He had this live performance and CD signing yesterday (Saturday), but I had to work, so I missed that as well. But I have my whole life in front of me to meet him, and one day, I will meet my idol - Mr. A-Z.

I have a video clip of the performance, but the quality is so poor that I don't think it's worth uploading. Some pictures could be fun though! So here is Patrik Isaksson, Kate Ryan and Jason Mraz.

OaB #21: Sleep All Day.

This could be considered cheating... But then again, I make up the rules, so I decide what's cheating and what's not.

When I was in Canterbury, I got a cold. A cold from hell! I guess it was some kind of English cold that my immune system was not used to, because it really knocked me out. I had fever (even woke up in the middle of the night, crawling on the floor for water), a runny nose, a cough, and swollen tonsils, but worst of all - I had a migraine for three days. I did not feel well.

I ended up lying in bed for 40 hours. Once or twice I managed to go to the bathroom, and I also managed to join my homestay in the dining room, when she was kind enough to offer some food. But apart from that, I spent the whole day sleeping.

Me in my room, aka sickbay

But what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right? And I did get to cross something of my list. :)

OaB #90: Get from A to B Using a Map.

Sorry about the lack of updates lately. As some of you know, I've been in England for almost the whole of April together with my classmates, and ever since I got home I've been in the middle of a move. But I figured I should update the blog with some of the things I've been doing.

We started our time in England by spending three days in London, which was very nice! It's the home of Richard Horne. People keep saying these books are almost my bible. If that's the case, that'd make Mr. Horne my God. A scary thought, isn't it?

London is a very big city, especially if you compare it to Stockholm. This of course means a map is necessary when you want to go somewhere. And when in London, you really want to go to as many places as possible, right? So we ended up using our map quite a lot.

We then spent three weeks in Canterbury, which is very much smaller compared to London. However, if you're a lost Swede like us, you still needed a map, even if you started finding your way after a while. My point is, there was a lot of getting from point A's to point B's using maps during our England visit!

Here we are; Victoria, Erika, Camilla and I, finding our way in London.

OaB #22: Invent a Secret Code.

I want to start this by saying my blog is over one year old! I meant to make a post about it but never got to it. It was the 7th of March that I started this blog! Yey! But now to the main reason for this post - my secret code!

The reason I chose this item, is that I recently bought a CD; Bright Eyes - Cassadaga. It was one of those digipack CDs where the cover is made out of paper. I removed the plastic wrap, and saw that the CD was completely gray. At first I thought it to be a disappointment, but then I opened the cover, and saw that it included a decipherer; a "spectral-decoder." Using the decoder, the artwork on the CD could be viewed, including hidden messages in Russian, Greek, Portuguese, French and English.

Go to Wikipedia to read more about the album! I am the one who wrote about the hidden Greek message. I saw it, searched for the translation, found out the meaning, and when I had done that, I was really inspired to make my own coded message. So one week later, on my spare Wednesday, here it is!

I wanted my secret code to be sort of tricky, to make it a challenge for anyone who decides he or she wants to break it. But first I need to explain how this works. The image below, holds a secret message/clue that you should make into a word or phrase. That word or phrase is the key for deciphering the code.

The cypher works like this: The key word or phrase becomes the first letters in the cypher, followed by the rest of the letters in the alphabet in alphabetical order. The first 13 letters are on line one, and the last 13 letters on line two. You then change the letter in my message into the one above/under the corresponding letter in the key/cypher.

Here's an example. If the key word is Horne, the cypher would look like this:

H

O

R

N

E

A

B

C

D

F

G

I

J

K

L

M

P

Q

S

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z