The Trip Home

My three months in Sweden have come to an end. It does not feel as if the time has passed quickly or so because I have been both working and experienced many great moments. It was hard to say goodbye to my mother and family and I already miss the old and new friends I met. One major reason for leaving home was to make some important decisions about my future, so I am quite exited to return and implement my new plans.
For me, it is basically a matter of focusing on one profession only, settling for max one hobby or project at the time and being free after office hours and during weekends, what we call a “normal life” I guess. In some ways, it is a matter of being strong enough to say no.
One reason for my need to make a change is mainly that almost half of my time spent on video productions and equestrian services has earlier been unpaid and left me almost without a social life. Nothing wrong with that since I had chosen it but in the long run I can't afford it and. It was time to get a life.

Two very dear friends dropped me off at Arlanda airport outside Stockholm. We passed the unique Jumbo Stay Hostel before arriving.


Then I spent one hour negotiating with the beautiful check in supervisor Anette about 6 Kg luggage overweight. This was the final confirmation that I have finally lost my looks completely. After running through my entire repertoire of charming jokes and compliments, the suitcase still ended up weighing the expected 20 Kg here I had 13 kg of things with me in the cabin instead. The fact that my bodyweight is half of any of the other passengers' had no effect at all on Anette (I bet she likes obese men). The bottom line is that they didn´t want to hear my jokes at the check in counter, still, the compliments went down well (trust women). I was supposed to have contacted the airline beforehand instead about bringing extra luggage. I left behind a lot of clothes and things in Sweden, so it won´t be a problem next time.
During my Sweden visit three of my friends and family members decided to come and visit me in January. The flight is minimum 20 hours in the air and normally it is impossible for me to sleep on planes. For anybody who is planning to make such a long flight, here are the aviators' advice on how to handle it:
-Exercise before going to the airport.("crew fitness level")
-Bring a warm sweater or jacket ("budget cabin air con. systems")
-Drink extra water ("check cooling system")
-Eat a bit less amount of food than normal during the flight ("avoid excess fuel")
-Bring a blow up collar pillow ("secondary life jacket")
-Take shoes off at the start (“Take Off”)
-If needed, take a sleeping pill for the night.(de-pressurise)
-Drink water instead of alcohol (depress-urise)
-Visit the toilet before meals (empty the fuel tanks)
-Exercise on board ("suspicious cabin activity")
Off course, the most effective way to manage such a trip is to follow the advice of a highly qualified nurse that I was seeing once. I had told her that I can´t sleep on planes and her advice was to follow the same routines as normal before bedtime as well as in bed when getting ready to sleep. -Brush the teeth, go to the toilet, watch a movie on TV or read a book etc. I thanked her and asked if she had practiced this often on her overseas trips.
She said “Not quite, I have been to France once and I got drunk from wine and took morphine and slept for 18 hours until the attendants got me back to life in Paris”. The warning bells should have rung already then and I should have known that I was wasting time dating her. As expected, she dumped me later with another lecture. This time she praised my personal potential and great personality for 20 minutes, and then she gave me the flick.
Apart from that, she was really nice [the picture is of another nurse]
The first leg took 6 hours to Qatar and went very well. Again, the Qatar Air service and food was better than on any other airline I have travelled with before. The food quality must have something to do with the Islamic preparations that they advertise before each meal. I have never seen Qantas or SAS mention anything about their Christian cooking or point out the direction to Jerusalem or Graceland or some place for those who want to pray. Probably because that kind of information is not really needed.
Next to me was a very young and very Christian woman on her way to Tanzania to do missionary work. In front of us was the most unreal couple I have ever seen. One 5 foot 1" (155 cm) native South American medicine-man and his 6 foot 7" (2 m) tall female model. I tried to get a good photo of them for this blog at the airport but it was a bit dangerous, so it did not come out very well, but you get the idea I think. Love is blind...though, in this case the woman did not even need to be blind since she could not see her boyfriend unless she looked straight down. Off course, being not much taller myself, than the medicine-man, I was a bit jealous.
The second leg from Qatar to Melbourne took 13 hours and was OK because I managed to do a short workout, take one sleeping tablet and get five hours sleep.
Melbourne was cold and humid and the spring will come later than I expected.