Lets talk about Scandinavia: Ok I don't have time to tell you all I know about Scandinavia, its a lot. And I certainly don't have space to tell you all that is good with Scandinavia, its a lot. But I can tell you this; The new Swedish embassy opened in DC over this weekend I went down to have a look at it, plus the Ark (very big Swedish band) was playing so I got some music as a reward for dragging myself out of bed at 4 in the afternoon (hey, its Sunday). It is beautifully located on the waterfront by the Pontomac river, and is an excellent symbolization of Swedish design and values. Its mainly glass to show transparency, I think its a thing Sweden is trying to do with most newly built embassies because I saw some Discovery Channel documentary on it. The only thing Im not sure I liked was how they have painted parts of the glass wooden, Im not sure if I thought that came off as good as it could have done, maybe better to have actually just kept those parts in actual wood since that is again pretty Scandinavian. But hey I guess its postmodern or something, like anti-wood maybe. Anyway, as Ola Salo (singer of the Ark) said; "Finally we have built a house to once and for all learn you guys the difference between Sweden and Switzerland". He also stopped mid-between-song speech to watch a big passenger plane fly by, to then say "Well you know we got to keep an eye on those things over here, you just never know where they are going to hit", . Auouch, There were definitely more laughs for the first joke, I really don't think America is ready for 9/11 jokes just quite yet.
Second thing about Scandinavia: I mean could go on aall day about it but I just want to share one quick thing that has hit me recently too. It goes a little something like this; Scandinavia is pretty big; there isn't a lot of ppl living in Scandinavia; this gives the ppl living there a lot of space to move around in; from this we have become pretty aware of space, personal space; I have become aware of personal space; I hate sharing a room. Yepp, I blame my Scandinavian-ness for my inability to get on with my housemates and that is fine, it is simply unnatural to expect me to be happy about waking up in the morning with two near-strangers asleep in my bedroom. Its got to stop, Im trying to move out, hey what can I do, Im Scandinavian.