gambling addiction

is one of the worst things i can imagine.



the sad sad character arch of David Scatino, aka the T-1000, in the sopranos is an extremely realistic and depressing portrayal of the all-too-real consequences of gambling addiction in conjunction with involvement with loan sharks/organised crime. attempted suicide, loss of his family, business, dignity and self respect just to start.
he is exiled out west most likely to escape debt collections after tony and his associates "busted out" his business. he lives in shame, knowing that he killed his sons dreams by gambling away his college fund. remember that if you gamble, quit while your ahead, because odds are that you're already behind. gambling and debt can ruin lives

I love music.

Listening to music can enrich any experience. The ipod/all quality mp3 players has got to be my favorite invention of this century so far. Some may argue that the mp3 age has killed the music industry, and others say that music dilutes life by blocking out reality, but i view it as the opposite. Music memory is awesome. i love listening to a song and being reminded of a good memory. and trips/vacations/all travel are the absolute best times to do this! Listening to my ipod in the city, on the trams in my room totally contributes to my happy mood and can remind me of home, people, beauty so on so forth.
Its upsetting that im too timid to download music over here. I think im going to have to pay for most of my music while abroad for fear of reprisal by the university/government. I live in campus associated apartments with a direct ethernet line to the wall, so tracing my ip to any suspicious activity would not be difficult for anyone to do. Oh well, luckily im in no shortage of music :)

As of now, here is some music that im trying to make associations with:
Owl city, mayday parade, bring me the horizon, circa survive, every time i die, pierce the veil, others..

day by day of Sweden. ill try to keep this up to date

A most brief account of what ive done in sweden so far, mostly for my own purposes.

Day 1- 1/17 arrival, check in, had to ride tram separately from everyone else, grocery shopping, bed at 7 pm, woke back up at 12 skyped til 3 then went back to sleep.

day 2- 1/18 quest for the towel, went grocery shopping first stupidly, went to central station and mall looking for towel finally found one, payed to much for it, went to BK for lunch, lol, went to pharmacy, went home to skype and prepare for pub crawl, didnt stay to long

day 3- 1/19 woke up real early to go talk to people in the front office and got some light bulbs, worked out hard, came back ate, skyped with rachel for a LONG time, which was cool except that it was like 4 am eastern time when we skyped, she was up doing homework, then i took an epic nap from about 1130 to 550, not the best idea, i went out to the mall again and bought a notebook for class and a water bottle, and dinner at mcdonalds. had a bad night, no doubt because of my nap, kept waking up in the middle of the night.

day 4- 1/20 woke up and did a little exercise in my room, watched an episode of lost, then went out to do errands before class. left super early to avoid getting lost, got my student number and login information and such, went to class, went to meeting for exchange peoples. went to building looking for bookstore/card to print with, was told to come back monday. shoudnlt be too hard. back to my place, for lots of skyping, computer errors, reading more skyping and sleep. :)

day 5- 1/21 went to an exchange student meeting, it was come and go and i didnt learn anything. came back worked out, talked to rachel and went to bed super early

day 6- 1/22 city challenge day, got lost, luckily found a group that would take me, haha. had a pretty good time and made some friends and took some pretty cool pictures. my computer keeps crashing, it could be caused by when im skyping or streaming video. i think its directly correlated with that. skyped some and went to sleep pretty late.

day 7- 1/23 church at st andrews church of england, ice skating, coffee and winnie the pooh at mcdonalds, lol

now that my life is less exciting i will only post when exciting things happen.

1/25 first paper assigned

2/2 finished 1st paper, 6 pages about the paradoxes of globalization. also went to archipelego last weekend and saw ice everywhere. it was money. went to the film festival earlier this week, saw an american movie, it was very interesting to consider how europeans see american culture.

Quest for the golden towel

Today was crazy. All i wanted was a towel. I looked all over and ended up in a mall paying more than i ever thought a towel would ever cost. I also fell on my knee when i slipped on ice. Ice: its everywhere. The temperature can be way above freezing in the afternoon, but it seriously has no effect on the literal coats of ice on all sidewalks. Sometimes it can be like 3 inches thick covering the whole sidewalk from more than 10 feet. It is especially difficult when its on a hill. I fell yesterday as well going up a hill with a suitcase, but that fall was not painful at all, fortunately. The ice is even on tops of the rivers. It is ridiculous. I wonder when its gonna melt.
Today was my first full day here in the city, and it still is pretty early to say preconceptions about anything in the city, i think i noticed something very interesting this morning. I have never been to a big city like new york or anything, but to me, it seems like this city has only one or maybe two differences from any city in America. One is that the buildings probably arent as tall as they are in America, and the other is that the writing displayed everywhere is not in english. I have yet to speak to someone who did not speak english, and although ive began to pick up bits and pieces of the written language, i would much rather prefer to talk to someone because im almost guaranteed an english speaker.
My classes start on thursday, so tomorrow will be another day of nothingness. I hope to run a few errands to fill time, and it sucks because one of the meetings i both wanted and needed to go to is on thursday during my class period. Its very disappointing, but hopefully its a long thing and not just like "come in and listen and then leave." i hope its a come and go thing so i may still have a chance to go over there and hear some good info. One other thing i dont like (as of now) is that i dont have class everyday. In sweden we only take one course at a time, and they take 4 classes over the course of the semester, but the classes do not meet everyday. They meet here and there, and i was checking out my schedule for my first class, and there isnt a full week of class throughout the entire semester. I hope that this grows on me or something because i want to be in class, and not sitting alone in my apartment with nothing to do. Maybe once i get out of my shell ill start traveling a bit more and be able to take advantage of my short work weeks. I hope that happens, but i also dont wanna blow a fortune on travel.
Goodbye.

Sweden?

I am in sweden right now, lol. It is tight, very dark and gloomy, but they have the right idea. I love the scenery of this city, but im too scared to whip out my camera on the street out of fear of judgement. Im just going to have to be quick about it so hopefully no one notices.
The time difference is getting at me, i woke up at midnight (6 pm in NC) and could not go back to sleep til three and now im up at 8 am typing this blog, how weird is that? And with my luck ill crash hard later today when ive got things to do, thats gonna suck!
i read a ton on the plane, east of eden is a good book, and now i know all the people who told me so arent lying. i forsee myself having a lot of free time to read while im here, unless i start meeting thousands of people who want to hang out with me, which is not very probable, lol.
When i started this blog, i had hoped to have an exclusively grammatically correct and eloquent blog to possibly attract attention from intellectuals etc. but for some reason right now i dont really care about capitalizing or apostrophizing and so on, so all the intellectuals out there reading this, im sorry if ive offended you in any way.

Wish me luck braving the streets of Gothenburg later today.

What is Lag?

Many of you may be asking yourselves this very question. What is lag? To me, lag is defined as the occurrence when you don't know what to say, or what to do, and something might have befuddled you in the past 30 seconds or so and you have no idea how to respond. The only sure cause for a situation like this is lag. Lagging is the number one cause of communication failure in humans ages 10-65. It is a widespread disease of communication but that doesn't stop it from being funny. lol.

This is my blog where i plan to write about whatever comes to my mind and hope that some people actually read it, despite its nonsensical manner. I hope who ever reads these posts are entertained by my writing, but if you find me dull, strange or foolish, there is an old time-tested scapegoat that many before me have used and gotten away with: it was just lag!

So as you continue to read my posts, if you choose to, keep in mind that lag is everywhere and if you don't understand something in the world, or maybe you just don't think it was funny, it was probably just LAG.