Friends in America

America is fun. Here are two of my pals performing a traditional greeting in the United States. I think this is called Tribal Symbolism in the 21st century, but perhaps not even the president would be able to define this articulately.

Back in the saddle again

Well... I'm back in the saddle again, long time no write - been slack.


Mmm, a few interesting events since the last post... namely... we had a nice holiday for nearly a week in a summerhouse in Sweden (thanks a million to Kath and Jens for that) Swedes are different to Danes. Not everything has to be perfectly neat, in fact, it's ok if your front garden looks like a skip, as long as your house is painted red and white, or yellow on the rare occassion, then you are Swedish.

We went to Kosta Glassblowing factory (http://www.kostaboda.se/) where we saw them doing their thing with lumps of molten glass, quite fascinating, really. Quite expensive too, I might add... probably about £200 for a glass blown set of 6 place settings (main plate, side plate and bowl)

We also drove past the IKEA head offices and store in the town of Almhült. We didn't have the time to visit the store, but my theory is that once you have been into one IKEA, you have seen them all.

I found some time to rekindle my skills at small bore air rifle practice, although it's been 20 years since I last tried this. Jens has a Diana 26 and it's deadly accurate. Pure good German craftsmanship.



Katya scored 75% at 10m, a pretty good achievement since she had never held a rifle before. I came in at 92%, but I'd need to get up to 95%+ to be of any use to a shooting club, which is exactly what I will do once I have some sort of gainful employment.

We collected about 6 or 7 kg of mushrooms, and Katya fried the lot of them. One has to be careful picking muchrooms, some are poisonous, others are pretty good.

This is a poisonous one. It will eat your liver and kidneys in 3 days. It's called "Angel of Death"













This is a good one.


















Last weekend was Vera's birthday, so we visited Larisa's summer house to spend a weekend with them all. Here is Vera, Nikolay and the latest addition to the extended family Masha (Maria), daughter of Dasha (Katya's sister) and Sergey, Dasha's husband and CV specialist ;)













And of course, there's a lot to be said for Japanese Cars!














So... not much luck on the job market yet, but the major obstacle is language, so I begin the sprogskolen this week. I guess once I am conversational, then I have a fighting chance at employment. I think I have sent off my 101st job application.



People keep telling me to change the photo on my CV, but I think it's ok.
















On the home front, the builders are still very much entrenched in our kitchen and bathroom. Here's the apparent progress over a 2 week period.



...still using the portable ablution block outside. Good thing it's not minus 10. Things could be worse.

Katya is in Intern Medicine in Kolding Hospital. Not the easiest of tasks, as she has everything thrown at her that could possibly go wrong with a person, and from young to old. Quite stressful because she's hardly time to finish dealing with one case when another presents itself and since each case requires research through the medical files, it takes quite some time to attend to each person.

I prefer working with computers and networking gear... there's that little reset button... if only people had it... wars could be stopped, and boy bands may never exist, but that is for another day...