Yesterday was the last day at work for Erik, a 17-year-old lad who has been practicing "the IT-biz" at my work-place for the last week. He's been quite diligent, constantly airing his views and thoughts on loads of matters, done what he should have and has basically been good. His mother made a surprise visit yesterday. While Erik stood next to his mom, my boss, Kalle and I told them that Erik has behaved very well while at our work-place, and showed good qualities for becoming an IT-guy, should he ever get the bad idea to really become one. I also said it'd be good to let him practice this stuff for a couple of months, to get the jist of it all, and not just see "the cool parts". I tried to let him have the drab, boring stuff as well, e.g. creating user-identities, documenting everything you do, planning, and so forth, but I think the cool parts, e.g. setting up a switch, configuring a firewall, working a wireless device [...] are what got him.

So yesterday, after our usual Friday meeting, Erik told us all that he wanted to tell us something. Oh really? He said he wanted to draw us a few points on our white-board, to show us "what we need". Erik's a person who likes to use long pauses between sentences. This, together with his passion for staying in front of his computer screen (even when his mom forbids him to) playing World of Warcraft for aeons at a time, can probably give you a picture of him as a little asberger nerd, but take a look at this picture, and you'll see a little different side of him. I'll translate.

The head-line reads "What the hell have you been doing all bloody week?!". He wrote all of this while keeping us all quite silent. As I noted, he apparently loves (what he thinks is) the drama and suspense of pauses. As you can tell, Erik's a little special. In a good way, from what I've seen! Anyway, he continued by writing a list of three things he wanted to tell us.

The first thing was an arrow, pointing to an old saying that's been sitting on the top of our white-board for ages: "Do it now! If you don't, it won't be done! Collective responsibility is pap!". The second of Erik's points was: "If you are tired have a coffee." The third one was actually "sytax error" until I pointed out he'd probably forgotten an "n"; it was a miss, not intended. I burst into laughter. Had he written it on purpose I would have shrieked myself out of this world.

There's actually a video of his entire presentation, available here [MP4, 2MB].

After work the entire department (sans one person off on vacation) went to Söderhof, where we all drank until we either went home, went to another place to drink more, or were Erik, who sipped his sodas and told stories of his wylde times in Australia and then went home. At times I felt his stories were a little embarrassing, but not because of their content, but solely because I felt I have been through them myself, circa 10-15 years ago.

Having stayed at that shitty place, Kalle, Mattias and I ventured on like brave soldiers, to another shitty place. During that time I kept in touch with Anos and Rade, who were also about to start partying at separate locations. I always try to consolidate friends when partying. Anyway, we went to Bullwinkle's, where we met up with Louise, Kalle's girlfriend, and Henrik, her work-mate. They were obviously not one fifth as happily intoxicated as we were, so we ordered food. Well, I didn't. I couldn't. I eyed the menu and knew, from watching what the people around us were eating, that the food served at this restaurant isn't very good at all, so I didn't order. When Mattias' food came in I tasted a single chip of his, and felt that awful ooh-this-is-pre-made-crap-fries-feeling you get at bad restaurants. Anyway, the company was ace and it was nice to finally meet Louise.

We went on, high in spirits, to Kalle's apartment, smack in the heart of the south of Stockholm city, where we drank Kalle's home-made ale (which he's actually going to be competing with, at some home-brewers' association contest come Saturday, at Lux) and sang SingStar, where I actually won a few times at the start but later perished. I'll blame Kalle's dog; the last time we partied at his place, together with the rest of our work-mates, my allergy nearly made me visit a local hospital, and this time I thought that first time could have been all bad luck. Too bad! I had difficulties breathing half an hour after coming there, but before we left, I'd drunk a couple of Kalle's fine ales, eaten a lot of olives that the hosting couple proffered. In turn, I gave them the miracle...of song. The best SingStar-moment came when Kalle and I battled over Motörhead's "Ace of Spades", where Kalle lead until the very last line, which I tackled better than Kalle; due to which I won. Haha! Kalle was ready to throw his mic through a window. Mattias did me over in the very same way during the last lines of Franz Ferdinand's "Take Me Out", but then again I think I beat him over Spandau Ballet's "Gold".

Anyway, we went out to go to Akkurat, a very nice place where hundreds of ales and a lot of whiskies are always available, but I had to go get my asthma machine from work, so Kalle and Mattias headed off to Akkurat in advance. On the way to work my breathing just got worse, so I tried to calm down, used the trusty asthma machine, packed my stuff and went home without calling anybody! Well, I've since then spoken with the guys (except for Mattias, who didn't answer my MSN Messenger calls today) and they all had a good time out. Rade went to a Yugoslavian party, which is something I wanted to attend to, but couldn't.

This morning was very nice, waking up with Mikaela, taking things very easy. We went out and got my packages I've been expecting from Amazon and Netbokhandeln. I got the complete Invisibles series, written by Grant Morrison, "V For Vendetta" by Moore/Lloyd (as my first copy is stolen), the complete "Maus" set by Art Spiegelman and the second Boy George autobiography. I tell you, go get the first part. It's probably the best autobiography I've ever read, and I've read a lot of those. The only two other contenders are Mohammed Ali's and Bez's (all written by said people and, of course, somebody to help them - celebrity autobiographies that are written without anybody else's help are mostly shit; just imagine what Gordon Ramsay's would look like) and I say look them up to. You don't have to know a lot about the persons or even like their ways (I loathe boxing, I dislike druggists (depending on the drugs)) but their stories say a lot more than who they are. I'm telling you, check those three books out. I first found out about the Boy George book from Morrissey, who recommended it in some magazine and said his very own autobiography will be much like it, in terms of honesty and revealing all. If it's ever going to be released.

Anyway, I snapped a few pictures of the newly received books, which you will find here with a few quasi-old pictures of Mikaela's wonderful sour-dough bread. The texture, crispiness and chewing-resistance that bread offered was sheer bliss. To eat it with butter is yonder; today Mikaela made a new dough that's actually rising as I write this. Tomorrow, by breakfast, it'll be ready to throw in the oven. Leeervly.

Frederic came by today. We visited a new local place in fruängen, where they serve Greek foods made using a char-coal grill. The food was very nice. We had souvlaki lamb and chicken, with grilled vegetables, sauce and bulgur. The vegetables were very nicely seasoned, and the bulgur contained small strands of pasta, which Mikaela and Frederic had come across before, but couldn't remember the name of. We ate a lot of food and then went home to us, stranded on the couch and watched scenes from "Pingu Forever". I love Pingu. Who doesn't? That penguin is something of the most psychedelic (bar "Professor Balthazar") and apart from the drab sexist values, it's a series quite high in ethics.

Now it's time to go to bed...aah, so tired.