Eternity

The second wave of unpleasant surprises after Halloween hit us. When everybody left, things where taken or misplaced, especially important things like chargers. I had to send Lovebud's computer cable to Berkeley, and T sent a phone charger to her friend, who accidentally had taken my phone charger instead. I still haven't found my camera charger, but T has a Canon too, so I hope to borrow hers until I've located mine.

Running around as an iPod might be really exciting on Halloween, but the days after when I caught a cold was not so fun. I stayed at home Thursday and Friday, sleeping and drinking lots of tea.

I ordered Eternity II from Amazon in UK, which was only 20% of the price on the US Amazon. Today it arrived. Eternity II is a puzzle, there exists a solution, but no one has found it yet (not officially at least). The first one to solve it gets a £2 million price. The problem is that it's really hard to solve by just trying to fit pieces together, it would take longer than the life of the universe. So you need either be 1) autistic, 2) fu*?ing lucky or 3) write a really good computer program that solves it. Now I have something to do in the enormous amounts of spare time I have...

Rolling

"I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life."
-Henry David Thoreau

Now the midterms are over, they went OK I think, considering the fact that I didn't study for any of them. There was no time, there was Halloween. In the middle of my midterm yesterday I got a text from T. I had to finish my test before I could read it, but when I did I felt pure joy: "Hurry home, there's a package waiting for you!". OK, guys, I know you imagine a delivery boy with a package waiting to teach me... the definition of the pumping lemma, erase that picture! It was my longboard (shortboard) that had arrived. It's so pretty and small. My neighbor and a friend of my roomies, Bomber (who once won a skateboard with the motivation: What I like the most is to see the boys faces when I bomb the hills) helped me to adjust the wheels and remove the spacers, so now I can turn easily. Bomber's a really good skating teacher and she tells me what I should think about, for example that you pick up a lot of speed in the hills. I went skating all afternoon. The first thing I did was making a new acquaintance: Mr Asphalt. I bombed a hill with myself as kamikaze pilot and scratched my knees and hands when I flew off the board. Well, a little war injury has never hurt anybody.

During the last weeks I've expanded the Venn diagram of friends with new circles. Many fellow exchange students, say hello to my dear Mr Carrot and Double-O-Seven (aka Jean Connery) and a very extraordinary person, Flamingo (pink dreadlocks) who can make any sleepy afternoon way more interesting. He taught me to swallow fire the other night: "Breathe out, if you breathe in, your lungs will collapse and you'll die. Are you ready?"

Halloween

Friday night.
The road blocks went up around five o'clock in the afternoon just outside our house. There were police officers everywhere. People were arriving all day. T had friends coming over from San Diego. Lovebud came from San Francisco and Nightingale and two friends visited from Santa Monica.

The first night The Expressos dressed up as smurfs. I used blue stockings for my legs and arms and we had painted our faces blue with tint. Girls are "supposed" to have small slutty costumes during Halloween so many girls just wear underwear and put on some wings to be a fairy. Being blue in your face is not sexy, but it's fun. We were walking along Del Playa and people pointed and yelled "Smurfs!" after us. Pokerface later told me that smurfs are invited to all parties, they just went to a house asking for a "Brian" or a "Phil" and got in. Del Playa was crowded with people dressed as pirates, flintstones and super marios. And I have a lot of compromising pictures of my friends making out with clowns and cavemen (actually it was the same caveman every time).

Lovebud had a midterm this morning and arrived late, she was supposed to call me when she got here, but my cell phone battery died. I had to hurry from a great party to get home and charge my batteries and be able to call her. Then she had already waited for almost half an hour! I felt so ashamed. On our way home we run into Flamingo, and invited him along. We had been five minutes at myspace before the door opened and people welled in. The invading army dried up all alcohol in the house and broke the sofa. One of the party people was my plastered TA and when he realized that he was at one of his student's place he told everyone that he could get fired for socializing with students. "Don't tell anyone and you'll get an A" he said, I laughed and told him that I would write it on my blog. He will not remember anything of it though, so wasted as he was.

Unfortunately there were so many people running in and out from our apartment so two iPods got stolen, which make my sad and angry.

Saturday Night Fever.
There were people sleeping on the floor and in every corner of our apartment, and everything was so messy. I went with the girls to get coffee in the morning and checked out the beach. Of course the girls from Santa Monica have a way better beach, but we still saw some dolphins!

Then we went downtown Santa Barbara. We didn't really have time for sightseeing before we got back. After dressing up, this time I was an iPod (isn't it ironic?). I got a lot of compliments for the costume...and a lot of pressing on my wheel too, making me sing in high and low volumes, skipping tracks and fast forwarding in songs.

Sunday, bloody Sunday.
And now it's Sunday. Lovebud had to return really early to Berkeley and Nightingale and her friend went back to LA. I have a midterm tomorrow and two on Tuesday, so it's time to study now...


Halloween

Take off your jeans and Abercombie,
dress up like a butterfly or zombie.
See the girls in teeny tiny tops,
Zig-zag between the CSOs and cops.

Join the hubbub on DP,
but careful so you don't get a public intoxication fee.
Filter the SKYY through your liver,
and we're rolling, rolling down the river.

High Highlander and stoned Flintstone,
you never have to be alone:
Make out with Captain Jack Sparrow,
let an Apache pierce you with his arrow.

It's a night to be crazy, be insane,
nothing will pass the roadblocks on Memory Lane.

God with an iPod

It's Hell's week with assignments and midterms, but still I managed to have some fun. The program board arranged a free screening of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince and it was really fun to go and see it. Two of my roomies, Sho and Accio are engaged in the program board, they were the ones doing the The Sounds' concert last Monday too.

I was supposed to have a midterm this morning, but the professor never showed up. No one knew what happened but it has been rescheduled til Tuesday, which is awful since I have another in the afternoon.

I have planned both of my costumes, I can't party more than two days because of my exams. Tomorrow I will go as a smurf together with the other Expressos and on Saturday I will be an iPod. I painted a wheel on a white top that was ruined by make up and created head phones of cardboard and paper. It's not slutty at all, but rather creative. And I even have portable speakers that I can connect to my real iPod and have music. The best thing is that I didn't spend a cent on it, even the speakers I got for free!

Photograph

I've added photos to my blog, the editing goes back all the way to when I got here in the beginning of September. If you want to see faces you have to log in to Facebook though, no point using nicknames if everyone can be identified. Enjoy!

Crossing the Rubicon

How can you do this to me?! What have I done to deserve this? OK, that was a rhetorical question and you can put away the list of all the sins I've committed, bad karma points are supposed to strike back in next life, not now! Fate is an evil bitch named midterms on Halloween. Halloween is Saturday, I have midterms Thursday, Friday, Monday and Tuesday! Is this UCSB's strategy to keep Halloween a "calm and local" event?

Halloween is a big deal. We have received letters from UCSB and from our landlord regarding measures taken to keep the partying under control. Road blocks, no guest-policies (yeah, right!) and UC officials and police forces from all over California will patrol the streets (so much for keeping it local). They declare war on Halloween! But I've already passed the point of no return, I'm here to learn for life and this is a once in a lifetime experience, if I wanted to sit imprisoned in the library with my books I would've stayed in Lund - and if someone back home wrinkle their nose in disapproval, trust me, you'll say the same during the upcoming carnival this spring (vilken jävla vår?)

Swine Flew

It doesn't matter that we live in a warm place, it's still flu season. My roomies have been ill and Eddie too. There has been cases of swine flu on campus and we will probably get a shot soon since people under 24 is a high risk group. I'm fine though, my immune system runs AVG.