I think that we can all agree on that buying gifts is a pain, giving them might be nice but buying is usually trouble, at least if you want to give your friend or relative something that's not only a nice gesture but actually useful, at least I rarely manage with that. Well, today was great. My parents bought some useful stuff of course but then they usually spend more money on it. I got new earphones, my old ones were in really bad shape and I'm going to get my old blog leofreiburg.weebly.com as a real life book, something I'm really looking forward to as I'll be able to remember everything awesome about my 6 months there. Or well, hardly everything but at least some. My visitors, unlike what I expected to be honest, also brought some really useful gifts. Family 1: a fitness tool for stomach training, which is also really small so it's very handy and I'll be using it a lot. Family 2: A mic/recorder, as I aim to be a journalist I think you all realise how useful that will be. Now I really have to go to bed, my birthday being over in 1 minute. This post was pretty short so count on two next week. Cya folks!
Had a great day! As you might have guessed from the title it's my birthday today, I have celebrated it a bit. Yesterday dining with two of my best friends at a restaurant and today some friends of our family came to our house for a small party, not the alcohol kind of, just being social, had a great day. I also got to do an interview, one of the tasks I had in my course. This time it was to make a serious interview about some real news, and we shouldn't record it, nor write down much, eye contact was important. Of course I have problems remembering it all but I do believe I remember enough, given that it was my first serious interview I'm quite happy with how it turned out. The rest of the day was great as well, and I actually got gifts that were really useful.
I think that we can all agree on that buying gifts is a pain, giving them might be nice but buying is usually trouble, at least if you want to give your friend or relative something that's not only a nice gesture but actually useful, at least I rarely manage with that. Well, today was great. My parents bought some useful stuff of course but then they usually spend more money on it. I got new earphones, my old ones were in really bad shape and I'm going to get my old blog leofreiburg.weebly.com as a real life book, something I'm really looking forward to as I'll be able to remember everything awesome about my 6 months there. Or well, hardly everything but at least some. My visitors, unlike what I expected to be honest, also brought some really useful gifts. Family 1: a fitness tool for stomach training, which is also really small so it's very handy and I'll be using it a lot. Family 2: A mic/recorder, as I aim to be a journalist I think you all realise how useful that will be. Now I really have to go to bed, my birthday being over in 1 minute. This post was pretty short so count on two next week. Cya folks!
4 Comments
Yesterday I didn't know what to do during the day, I did a bit of work but felt like I wanted to get out and do something. I decided to check the page http://www.stockholmsschack.se/ to see if there was any short time chess going on, I'm not a fan of long games, and what do you know, in three hours there would be a 5 min tournament, just 15 min with the subway from where I live, cheers for luck! I went there full with anticipation, it was my first competition in one or two years so I didn't expect much but I was determined to do my best. It started horribly. I lost twice in a row, followed by a draw against a player much below my level, a game which I without question should have won. For those who know chess: I had six pawns and rook vs 3 pawns and rook. For some reason my brain saw it as a good idea to give my rook away, without any kind of time pressure. Oh well, I managed to get a draw somehow. Next round I finally won, after falling for a trap in the start I played well and saved it. Next one, clear win versus player below my level, as should be. Then I met a quite good opponent, it looked bad for a long while but after a careless move from his side I managed to get a clear advantage. Sadly I didn't have enough time to mate him and he refused a draw, leading to my time running out. Some players consider accepting a draw the right thing to do if you are going to win on time but would lose the game on the board, my opponent didn't. Oh well, not a big loss and I did actually play well. The next game was a draw, I had the advantage but a dangerous position and my opponent played well, when we both had little time I offered draw and he accepted. Then the game I had hoped for came, I got to meet my friend who also participated. According to rating he should beat me quite easily but in five minute games rating isn't everything. We had en even game, which would probably be a tie but having a slight advantage I played on, we were both almost out of time but he didn't offer draw and with half a second left on my clock I won on time. Next game, win and then I had a very entertaining last game. I found myself at table one, where the leader plays. Against me I had the best woman in Swedish history, winner of the european championship for women and semi-final participant in the world championship where she lost against the one who also won the final. As you might understands, my odds were not that good. As expected I lost but I did play well and held her back for quite long, actually surprising her and having a slight lead after ten moves. With 22 seconds left on her clock she won, that is not as close as it might sound, 22 seconds is a lot if you're about to win and don't need to think anymore. I ended at 5/10 points, in a tournament where only 4 out of 22 should be behind me according to rating and I did get a price of 200kr. I'd say it was a pretty good comeback, even if I got more wins than I deserved if you look at my performance. If I will keep on going? Partly. I will play 5 min tournaments for sure but I'm not going to start with 2h games or so again, I simply don't find it any fun. I'm not sure how entertaining this text was for those who aint chess players but part of my work in one of my courses was to post a story of an event that happened not long ago in my life in my blog. Mission accomplished so have a nice day people! If any of you play chess and care for a game, please do write below. There are internet sites where it takes minutes or less to register an account, completely free of course. First of all, my apologies for forgetting to write yesterday. I'll make up for it with a double today. Unlucky morning It's been a nice week, doing my homework in my courses and meeting friends. I also, to my surprise, went to a concert on Saturday. It wasn't a good day from the start really, I had a quite tough headache in the morning, despite that I decided to go to a concert with a friend, another friend of ours would play in it. I take a train to the city and sadly the friend I was going with gets sick. I decide to go to the concert anyway but first I play some chess at a place where you can do it, the so called culture house. I managed to end my winning streak by playing very bad. Didn't bother me too much and the pill I took against headache felt like it started having an effect. I felt slightly better and still in a decent mood I went to take the bus to the concert. There an unlikely serie of events passed. I took out my bus card and got onto the bus but as I put my card back a lot of coins escaped from my wallet and started rolling around on the floor. I quickly sat down and started picking up the cash, trying to avoid the queue making acrobatic numbers to get past my hands on the floor. Oh well, I did get the cash up and right after picking the last coin up and giving the very amused old lady sitting on the seat in front of me an awkward smile I hear a load "ehhrrrm". I look at the source of the sound and see another, not equally nice old lady pointing at a sign next to my seat saying that it was for handicapped people. A lot of people seems to give me annoyed looks and I'm quick to move away of course. I didn't even intend to sit there from the start, just momentarily while picking my cash up. As I walk further in the bus I'm about to take a seat, just as a dog emerges from the clothes of the woman next to me and seems to want to befriend me, I wish people could learn their animals to behave, at least if they are going to bring their animals with to such a crowded place as a bus. As I change seat she gives me an annoyed look, now in a bad mood I couldn't care less. As icing on the cake all seats are now occupied and I have to stand up. Fifteen minutes later I get to the concert hall, still with a headache and annoyed but deciding to try to be in a neutral mood and succeeding fairly well. During the 1 hour concert I see to my surprise that an old friend of mine - We were trainers at a sports camp for kids together two or three years ago. - is also playing there. After the concert I meet the friend I intended to watch playing and I notice that my headache is gone as well. Then we went home and I was in a better mood than before, the day ended ok. Sunday was also great, meeting two friends from my old german class. I guess I'm just going to forget the bad parts of Saturday. Tolerance Just something I think a lot of people need to be reminded of, at least in Sweden. We have a nationalistic party in the government that's growing. The main thing this party is associated with is that they want to reduce the immigration by 90%. No other party wants to reduce immigration. They also want to strengthen Swedens army and invest in better circumstances for old people but few care about that, that goes for both their voters and those who vote for other parties. Obviously this party, The Sweden democrats, gets accused of being racists and obviously there are a lot of racists in the party. - If you're a racist, which other party can you vote for? There are much more extreme parties but they don't have enough support to have any influence at all. As a politician from SD, Sweden democrats, said: If media says that SD constists of racists and idiots that kind of people might think that they belong here. And yes, media does do that to some extent. Another thing for those of you who consider SD racists, do you consider everyone who wants a more limited immigration a racist? If you don't, stop saying it. What should a non racist do if he wants to reduce immigration? He doesn't really have much of a choice, does he? Acceptance and tolerance people, go for that. Personally I have no plans of voting for SD but I think that we all benefit from having an open mind and not listen too much to media. There are racists in SD, most likely more than in any other big party, it's got a dark past and there are still a lot of scandals within the party but that hardly means that everyone in SD is a racist. For some perspective I recommend you people who still consider SD racist to look up SvP, that is a different story. Cya folks! It's been a great first week in Stockholm, I´ve met a lot of old friends as well as one new, reunions are always nice. Also had time to play some chess at the so called Culure house, went surprisingly well. It's always nice to play some chess while waiting for the set time to meet your friend or so. It gets boring only playing on the computer and Freiburg in Germany where I spent my last six months didn't have a chess club, at least I couldn´t find one while searching. Yesterday all my troubles seemed so far away - Not really but I just came to think of this line while writing the word yesterday, you easily get lost in sidetracks when writing this late. - Oh well, here we go with the sentence I intended to write: Yesterday I watched the swedish eurovision song contest. This year had the most forgettable songs I've ever heard. Of the ten songs I remember a few seconds of three of them, the rest are already gone. One thing was good about the result tho, the winner was the one Sweden wanted to win. We have this terribly stupid system in Sweden that gives the Swedish people 50% of the votes and an international jury consisting of random people from 10 european countries 50%. What's the point of having a swedish song contest if the swedes can't decide who wins? Last year the person who won according to the people got a second place due to judges from other countries.This time the "right one" won at least. I can't say that I really care who we send but I do think that the people are the ones to make the choice. Wow, I really sound dedicated about this. I'm not really that interested, the main entertainment during the show was counting the amount of crotch-grips, too many. It was also fun trying to see the difference between two of the contestants, thankfully one of them had slightly more shiny clothes than the other one. I think you who saw the contest has already understood that I'm talking about Oscar Zia and Anton Ewald. The most annoying thing? The middle act performed while the votes are being counted. An Abba medley is good but how did they manage to leave the most famous songs as well as the songs Abba participated in the contest with out of the medley? The pictures below are of the two copies, they have slightly different hairstyles here but they had the same in the contest. Good night folks! I'm back in Sweden after 6 wonderful months in Germany, now quite fluent in german. - No worries, I will keep on writing in english. - I came home 1/3, last Saturday that is and since then I've been taking it easy. Been training in my old sports arena, it felt really weird running on a real indoor track again after 6 months with mainly treadmill. I admit that it hurts a bit now tho, running on the track material is always tough the first time and inspired as I was a did a really fast lap, not too smart if you want your legs to feel fine the next day. Oh well, there is much more good than bad to being back home again, so far. I can't say I've missed Sweden and its cold weather but I sure have missed my friends. It's really good to get to meet everyone again. Just like I'm going to meet some of the people from Freiburg again, I don't know when but I will. Today will be a good day, as I wrote in my last blog my distance course in writing, focus blogging, Facebook and Twitter started yesterday. Actually I've learned a lot of new things already, before even starting with what I gotta do. Except for the task at hand I also got a 15 min introduction video that told me quite a lot of things to think about while blogging. How to write, what to think about and such. I am really looking forward to this course, as well as the other one that begins next Wednesday. The other one is a writing course with a slightly different focus, you'll get more info when I get more, probably next Tuesday or so. Oh well, I've done a bit of my work while writing this post at least, making a blog and writing a post or two was part of what we got to do til 19/3, the deadline. The rest is finding three blogs about different themes that I find good and analyse what makes them good, + getting a twitter account but that shouldn't take very long. If you got a tip for me, a blog I might like or so, please do tell in the comments section below. Except for fashion and football I'm open for most things. Now I'm off to take the sub to the city and play some chess before meeting a good friend for a fika. See you! Back at my place. |
AuthorName's Leo, 26 years old journalist. Previous Global Trendwatching Student at Hogeschool van Amsterdam in Amsterdam and Journalism student att Mittuniversitetet in Sundsvall. Also actor, chess player, runner and e-sportsman. Archives
March 2021
Categories |