thailand

sarah & me







❊ i'm getting so excited about our thailand holiday that every time i imagine it, butterflies fill my stomach and i feel like squeezing someone...

this will be my fourth holiday in thailand and although its not quite my favourite country, (nothing ever beats italy) i think it's the closest thing to paradise....

seven years ago (shit, it was that long ago!)... i went on the funniest holiday to koh samui and koh phangan with my good friend sarah.
i'd come from the winter in melbourne, so was a pale shade of white, and sarah had been working as a model in hong kong where white is beautiful...
of course the first thing we did was hit the beach, where i announced that i wouldn't be wearing sunscreen since i'd recently heard how bad it is for you, and instead i'd be eating fresh fruit before laying in the sun, as fruit acts as a natural sunscreen because of the antioxidant content... sarah was totally convinced by my well-informed lecture and went along with it, leaving her sunscreen packed away in her rucksack....

we proceeded to lay on blow-up lilos, floating on the crystal clear ocean in our bikinis for the next five hours, soaking in the glorious sun while sipping on fresh mango shakes.
we didn't notice anything was wrong until later that night as we were getting into bed. the skin over our entire bodies and faces had become so red raw that i'm quite sure it would've been classified by a doctor as third degree burns. neither of us could wear pyjamas or even underwear to bed because the fabric scratched so badly against our skin. even the clean sheets rubbed like sandpaper and both of us awoke crying in agony throughout that long night...

sarah was so traumatised by the burning that she hid in the shade for the next week, wearing a long-sleeved white linen top and pants, that made her look exactly like mahatma gandhi, which we renamed her for the rest of the holiday.. our skin peeled off like thick plastic cling-wrap to reveal a new layer of white skin underneath...
luckily we could laugh about it... in fact, i don't remember ever laughing as much as i did on that holiday...

jerry and i will be hitting the beach with sunscreen this time....;o)
i can't wait to feel that sand between my toes, the ocean spray on my face, to eat the carved pineapple on sticks, drink the delicious mango shakes, hear the waves at night by the beachside bungalow....oh thailand i love you!

the seasons

❀ the ski season has come to an end here in åre... the snow's melting and the scarves, beanies and gloves are abandoned in the closet.
all the tourists have gone back home, as have the seasonal workers, including most of my colleagues at beefalo steak and sushi.. the village is deserted, quiet, dusty.....
jerry and i still have two weeks left of work before the restaurant closes down for the summer and we head off on our thailand holiday. its so dull at work and in our lives in general, that time is dragging worse than the countdown to christmas when you're a kid.. i'm so busting to get out of here that i've started getting niggley with jerry, picking fights over sign posts and dish washers.

you can smell the changing of the season in the air, feel the excitement of new beginnings and adventures as everyone packs up and leaves to start a fresh in a new city, a new job, a new house...
it feels like change is everywhere; my friends scattered around the world are all of a sudden falling in love, starting to date after years of singledom, leaving destructive relationships, having breaks from their husbands, moving into new houses and falling pregnant...
although we're about to turn over a new leaf ourselves, with london around the corner, it feels like we're lagging a little bit behind...spring hasn't quite picked us up yet...
jerry is as itchy to move on as i am, and although the winds of change are blowing all around us, i'm so happy that i'm stuck with my sweetheart who loves me through all seasons....

coyote ugly grand finale

❉ the coyote ugly grand finale was brilliant! we wanted to go out with a bang and we did!!!

we started off the night in complete ski outfits and even danced on the bar in them until 'black velvet' came on and then we stripped them off to the roaring crowd. we went a bit skimpier than usual this week, since it was the final show and the crowd loved it! pia and i were full of energy and spent most of the night up on the bar, jumping around, pouring ice over each other and playing air guitar on our knees... jerry jumped up on the bar to do a speech before the final song of the night, which we put everything into and the crowd even cheered for an encore afterwards. we closed the night with our tip bucket overflowing with money and us on excited highs at how much of a success the night was!

its been so much fun doing coyote ugly this season, especially with pia who's fabulous! one of my colleagues reminded me of the first coyote show when i didn't even want to get up on the bar, compared with last night when they couldn't get me off.. each week i've let my hair down and enjoyed myself a little bit more, and in some silly way, it's been a liberating experience!

staff party

❉ to celebrate the end of the season here in åre and to thank us for our hard work, the owners of beefalo sponsored a staff party for us. the workers at beefalo have a shocking reputation in åre (a girl working at a popular nightclub in town was asked what she thought of beefalo staff and she responded 'they spend a lot, they tip well, but they're disgusting drunks').. some security guards won't even let you in if they find out you work at beefalo. ..previous years' beefalo staff parties have gone down in history as ridiculous crazy nights... unfortunately i just wasn't feeling up to partying tonight, but i went along anyway and watched with sober eyes...

we started at nova with rosé and shots, then headed down to 'wallman's' to see the dinner cabaret show, which i'd seen before on my birthday in january but was more than happy to see again. by the third act, our table was putting on their own show. someone had started a food fight with the desserts. the table was a huge mess of broken glass and spilt wine and while cakes flew back and forth from one end to the other, pia and i hung our heads in shame. tobbe had a cream pie smeared all over his face, hank was standing on his chair making a speech about nothing and toto was wobbling around spilling red wine everywhere (including a full glass down my back). jesper and gustav had huge wine stains down their shirt fronts and had to go home to change, and everyone else was generally dancing around being drunken nuisances and blocking other guests view of the stage.

since everyone was too shit-faced to appreciate the show, we decided to leave. on the way out we discovered toto, who'd been kicked out by a security guard, was missing his four front teeth and accusing the guard of knocking them out. the girls were all fussing around but couldn't get a straight story out of him, then jerry got angry and began threatening the guard, jesper tried to calm jerry down, starting a whole new argument and then all of a sudden toto pulled out a set of false teeth from his pocket and shoved them in his mouth!

renaissance

❃ today over lunch at åre bakery, jerry and i played around with a new iphone application called 'hipstamatic' which is a cool camera application where you can choose your lens, your film and your flash and create really funky little photos that look really artsy.

i've decided that when we move to london i'm gonna study photojournalism, since i love photography and writing. i found a really nice sounding course which starts next january and to get in you need a kick-arse folio, so that gives me 9 months to get one together... one could feel pressured and stressed by that idea, but i just feel excited by it!

in my mind, london is gonna be like turning over a new leaf.. i'm gonna pursue all my hobbies and interests that have been stuffed away and forgotten about, i'm gonna put effort into decorating my home so that it's cosy and has personality, i'm gonna become more creative with my outfits and accessories so that i actually express a personal style, and most importantly i'm gonna begin my way down a rewarding career path instead of just piss-farting around doing shit-kicking jobs to pay the bills... it's gonna be like a huge personal renaissance!

toughen up princess!

'toughen up princess!' my friend's husband told me in response to my sick whingeing on facebook... jerry agreed with a hallelujah...
i know, i know, i don't do illnesses very well. but this flu really did feel like the plague.... but, ive been sooking for 5 days now and i'm finally willing to build a bridge and get over it.
i felt especially bad for pia who had to do coyote ugly by herself! apparently she brought glen (the blow up sex-doll) up on the bar to dance with instead of me!

today i'm in stockholm, having caught the overnight train for a visa appointment at the UK embassy. its been such a mission impossible to get all the documentation together for this working visa application! who would've thought! and it seems like such a scam anyway. all my ancestors were british, i come from a commonwealth country, the english queen is our queen and i'm pretty sure we pay some sort of tax to her, yet i still need to go through this big visa wank just to go on a working holiday to london.... and jerry doesn't!
anyway it'll be worth it! i can't wait to live in a big city again! i'm sure we're gonna both fall in love with london.

so i'm sitting at 'coffee by george' in stockholm train station at some ridiculously early hour of morning, waiting for my embassy appointment and then i'm gonna meet my lovely and much missed girlfriend elin!

the flu

my best feel-sorry-for-me face














❉ bah humbug, boo hoo, vaffanculo a tutti. i hate being sick!.... i'm sure everyone does, it just feels like i hate it more than anyone else ;o)
...partly because of the unfairness of it. i eat a healthy vegetarian diet, exercise daily, pop vitamins, am a non-smoker, only a binge drinker (;o)) and get enough sleep. i should be immune to these cursed viruses!
in fact i've just been lecturing jerry (combined with looking after him) when he had the flu, that he wouldn't get sick if he took his vitamins and ate healthily like me.....then bang. serves me right for getting so high and mighty. perhaps i need to do as julius caesar did and employ a slave to follow me around reminding me in whispers that i'm only human.

so i'm lying in bed feeling sorry for myself, whilst having a coughing competition with daffy, who's also sick in his bed. jerry's such a sweetheart that he not only took my shift at work, but popped home for an hour to bring me lunch, give me cuddles and tell me i'm beautiful even when i know that right now i look like the ugliest pig-dog. sickness is made so much more bearable when accompanied with love!

operation dream dress

✥ i had my second deep tissue massage yesterday from the sports masseuse at the gym, 'maxim kalma'.... the name seems way too good to be real doesn't it?! he's an awesome masseuse and has nearly dug out the mass of knots that have taken over my entire back, a side-effect of waitressing and sitting in aeroplanes for long periods.
jerry's obsessively jealous of maxim and brings him up in every random situation along with some derogatory jibe. i made the mistake of recommending maxim to a colleague in front of jerry and copped the dirtiest accusatory sidewards glare.
i actually thinks its really cute that he's so jealous.

we're going to thailand in exactly one month and im SO excited! i've been considering getting my wedding dress made while we're there, so ive re-opened the 'wedding dress inspiration' folder on my desktop and gone back to gathering ideas from thousands of bridal websites. the problem is, the more dresses i see, the more unsure i become of what is my 'Dream Dress'... short or long, straight or puffy, stiff or flowy, white or coloured, strappy or strapless?? jerry says im obsessive and that it doesn't matter that much, its 'only a dress'. he reassures me that he hasn't even started thinking about his suit yet. come on!! that's not the same thing! the dress is probably the most important thing in the whole wedding! does anyone disagree? ..of course it has to be perfect!

you're not from australia

✶ a customer in the restaurant last night accused me, in front of his whole family and the tables around his, of lying about being from australia. ' i can hear from your accent that you're not from australia' he said to me.... what does he think, that i'm walking around speaking english for fun when my job would be 100 times easier if i was swedish and didn't have to deal with language barriers and the exact same boring questions one thousand times a day: 'where are you from?' and 'what are you doing here in åre?'. i was so annoyed that i made jerry take over serving his table and jerry was begging me to give him my drivers licence to shove in the guy's face but i didn't feel like making a scene.

instead i let my hair down for coyote ugly! it was great fun last night, even though it was quieter than usual, with two other big parties in town stealing our customers.
our two favourite regulars came in, martin and jack, and when jack went out to have a cigarette, martin asked me to make the worst shot i could possibly think of for jack. i mixed together tequila, sambuca, blue curacao, lemon juice, milk and tabasco sauce, but snazzed up the glass with a cocktail umbrella and a lemon wedge so it looked deceivingly fresh and fruity. jack was so happy that id made him such a special looking surprise shot that he downed it with a big smile on his face. pia and i watched him in excited anticipation. his smile quickly turned to a frightened grimace and he sat in startled silence, i think waiting to see if he would vomit it straight back up again. although i had tears of laughter pouring down my face, i started to feel bad that maybe i'd made him very sick, until all of a sudden he shouted out 'give me another one!'

we had girls from the crowd dancing up on the bar with us and a group of old gray-haired men with beards dancing on the tables with air-guitars. two cute young guys came up to us and offered us 20,000 crowns to dance the next song naked and although i instantly declined, pia was considering it... or at least a boob flash, since it would pay for her to get her licence back after losing it for drink driving and crashing into a flower shop...

hummelstugan

❅ today jerry and i had lunch at hummelstugan, perched at the top of the slopes, with the most amazing view of the whole valley. we caught the ski-lifts up the mountain without skis. since i'd borrowed a lift card from a colleague, jerry instructed me to dress myself inconspicuously as a skier, but with my clumsy amateur snow walking and camera dangling around my neck, i looked exactly like a tourist. luckily i didn't get caught out...

the outdoor deck at the restaurant was packed, with the beautiful sunny weather that's hit åre, but with that spectacular view, it was totally worth the wait for a table.

to get back down the mountain where there were no lifts, we had to run down the snowy slopes, sliding down in our boots or on our bums, trying to stay out of the skiers and snowboarders way, soaking wet but having so much fun!

happy easter!

✴ happy easter!!!

i just devoured an entire chocolate bunny in less than 5 minutes and feel very sickly but that's what easter is all about isn't it!?

easter was so much more fun as a kid! when we were very young and my parents were super health freaks, the 'easter bunny' was also a health freak and used to only give us eggs made of carob, a healthy alternative to chocolate, instead of the real thing. our friends used to try it and spit it out but we thought it was great, not knowing any better... the easter bunny eventually got over that phase and gave us cadbury's like everyone else..

mum and dad used to go to a lot of effort at easter time, planning an easter egg hunt, having planted different types of eggs and bunnies all around the garden for us to race to find on easter sunday morning.

i once went to our italian next door neighbour's house, having looked up in the dictionary how to say some sort of 'happy easter' greeting in italian and was rewarded with a big 'humpty dumpty' egg full of smarties. as a 10 year old, that was the absolute jackpot and my brothers were so jealous that they considered going over and saying something too.

my dad (who is the biggest chocolate lover in the world) used to sit on the couch easter sunday afternoon and eat his chocolate in a continuous hand-to-mouth action until he was sick and all his chocolates were gone and then he would steal mums and start on ours. we learnt to count and guard over our egg collection with our lives.
the best thing was to make my chocolate last until after both brothers had eaten all theirs and then use it to tease and bribe...

that trick works equally well on jerry who loves chocolate as much as i do. chocolate has caused serious arguments between us in the past, and is always used as a make-up present..
happy easter and happy chocolate feasting!

hello sunshine!!

✺ hello sunshine!
this is what spring is supposed to feel like!!! the sun is shining so warmly that this morning i could even take off my jacket as i walked down to the old church to take photos. back at home jerry pulled out the chesterfield armchair onto our balcony (which i have never been out onto in 4 months!) and i sat in the glorious sun reading my book. its amazing what a bit of sunlight can do for you! must be the vitamin D. i feel like my mood has been totally lifted; the world is my oyster, the sky is the limit, anything is possible, life is beautiful etc etc..... yippee!

back to real life

❆ it's been a big few days!

tuesday: jerry and i arranged a day off together so we could hang out with our friends from stockholm. after a fantastic thai dinner at bubblan, we went out partying in åre. the plan was to take it easy so we'd be fresh for the next morning's activity.....hmmm.... arriving home smashed at 3am, in a desperate last minute attempt to avoid a hangover, i scoffed down the entire thai doggy-bag contents along with a half litre of water.... (what a fantastic tight-arse invention the doggy-bag was!) ... unfortunately im so old now that even one light beer would probably give me a hangover.

wednesday: adventure sports day. wow! snow scootering is one of those things... you know there's a few things (or more than a few if you're lucky) that you do in your life that you remember forever because they're such breath-taking experiences. ATV driving through the desert in egypt was one for me and now i discovered snow scootering is the winter equivalent!
pumping it as fast as i dared over vast fields of white.... valleys of white.....up and over huge white hills, just pure white panoramas, then along a narrow winding track through a snowy pine forest that looked exactly like Narnia... i was so awes-struck and delighted that i had a huge cartoon smile on my gob the whole two hours and on several occasions caught myself laughing to myself in glee!

wednesday night: coyote ugly just keeps getting better! pia is a riot and i love working with her! each week we become more relaxed dancing on the bar and have more fun with it! the tips were super good, and found later all through our clothes and boots! a jealous girl in the crowd slapped us both on the legs as we were dancing and we had all the staff down below chasing after her to kick her out but she disappeared like the white rabbit.

thursday:
the guys all went back to stockholm (sad face) and it's back to real life. i cleaned the house (2 days later than regular cleaning day) and what a rat-hole! i think i removed 15 bags of rubbish!

friday: aaaaahhhh... day off. and i'm now officially going to get healthy. i began the day with a professional deep tissue massage down at the gym and found out my back is a mass of knots and screwed up muscles. after one hour of fantastic pain, i came home to a hearty breakfast taken with 5 different vitamin tablets. yes i'm really serious about this health thing. you watch, ill soon be a new woman!