Just a sketch I did whilst on the plane to London.

And just discovered new electronic music by Bonobo. Veeery good. *boogies*

The trip back and from the UK is always interesting. I always bump into- or observe interesting characters/situations. Even though I know the route home so very well by now, there is still always something new around the corner. Airports and airplanes tend to have the ability to materialize new and surprising things.

I would like to blame what happened on the fact that I had been on painkillers with codeine in them for the past two days (codeine makes you drowsy), but I know very well that it was all down to me just being good ol’ me.

I had been in Sweden for a whole month. That is the longest stay I have had there ever since I moved 3 years ago. Needless to say, I was very Swedishi-fied by the time I was scheduled to leave.

This particular trip home was going to be a bit more rushed than usual. I knew that very well. Normally I tend to try to get around 3 hours or more to wait at airports, simply because I LOVE waiting at airports! Now though, all my connections were about an hour or less in between, so it was all about just getting into the Travel Trance (as I call it) and follow the signs like a sheep to the next flight/coach in order not to be stranded.

It started at Kallax Airport. My local airport in Lulea, Sweden. My bag was caught with sharp objects. I had forgotten to remove my pencil case from the hand luggage. A normal pencil case has nothing in it that makes airport staff drag you to the side, but mine happens to contain scalpels, needles and sharp scissors. You should have seen the first time I flew after the new security measures had been put in place. :D

I appear armed to the teeth!

Luckily for me, the Kallax staff is always incredibly friendly. She let me take the sharp stuff out and go to the back room where they keep the checked in bags, to put it in my bagage. At other airports, they would make me throw it away.

So that was the first little incident. Then I arrived at Stockholm Arlanda where I basically just walked on to my next flight without a break. I was seated next to a Londoner who kept silent most of the ride, but glanced at me from time to time when I was sketching. Out seats were in the beginning economy rows, so very far up the aircraft. After takeoff, the plane was still ascending when the seatbelt sign switched off, as it usually does for a few minutes before reaching maximum height. I was sketching at this point, but suddenly dropped my eraser which started rolling down the isle of the craft, turning heads as it went down past the stewardesses who lifted their feet, looking surprised.  A kid a few rows down giggled at me and I couldn’t help but blush and smile back helplessly. I got up and walked very quickly after my escaping eraser, but I didn’t manage to catch it until it had reached the very end of the aircraft and stopped against the back door.

The stewardesses snickered and said something like: “Ah, so it was yours!”

I returned to my seat and hid my face in my sketchpad. Embarrassed.

By this time, the turbulence had almost made my bought coffee spill over my sketch twice and the Londoner was giving me more glances than usual. I think I saw a hint of a smile once as well. He nodded at my sketchpad.

“Your drawings are very good, and quick too.”

“I try my best.” I smiled at him while trying to keep my coffee cup steady in the turbulence.

“How is it going for you?”

“Well, I do most stuff for free at the moment…”

“One day your drawings will be on the walls of rich people.” He nodded at me assuringly.

I chuckled. “They already are, IN MY MIND.” I pointed a finger at my own head and nodded back at him.

We both seemed to agree on this and returned to what we previously were doing. A man on the same row but the seat opposite me coughed and glanced at my sketch, but didn’t say anything. He ordered a whisky.

The rest of the trip was pretty harmonious. The steward who served my coffee commented on my drawings and chatted with me now and then. We then arrived at Heathrow and I was assisted by the Londoner with my bag before leaving the plane. Funny how Brits are so polite and friendly to strangers. I already felt at home and couldn’t help but mumble: “Home sweet home” to myself. As I followed the stream towards the passport control, the man who had previously ordered whisky opposite me approached and began talking to me. We walked together and on the way I found out that he had apparently donated all his archives on the Kurds and the situation with them to UWE. He seemed like a really respectable man and I would’ve wanted to chat a bit more, but it was time to attempt to get my second connection.

The passport control officer was a man in his late 20s early 30s who took my passport and smiled.

“How are you today then miss?”

I had a short conversation with him before I got my documents back and went on to reclaim my bagage. So far, everyone I’d met had been brilliant. I was feeling a little bit unreal.

My luggage took more than half an hour to arrive, so by the time I got it I had to run with everything to the central bus station. The lift was playing up and a queue was forming outside it. Without the lift, I couldn’t get to my coach. It was all getting a tad stressful. I was sweating and balancing my heavy bags. Father called, but I had to tell him to call back. Finally the lift started working again and I got to the station in time to actually have a coffee.

I went to caffee nero, feeling very flushed, sweaty and greasy. I was really in need of something cold and ordered a chilled coffee. All went well up until the moment I was going to pay with my card.

I found myself standing there, staring at the card machine with a completely empty head. I couldn’t for the life of me remember my pin. I had been in Sweden for a month, and hadn’t used the card once. Now I couldn’t remember the pin, and I had no English money on me. I was so tired I didn’t really feel like panicking, but I must’ve looked lost. A beautiful asian lady came up to the counter.

“I’ll pay for it.”

“Oh, no nonono. I can’t let you do that. Nono”

She looked at my bag and then at me. (I had the day before bought a keyring with the swedish flag on)

“Ar du Svensk?” (Are you Swedish?)

I nodded. She told me she lived in Gothenburg and would happily pay for my drink. I didn’t know what to do. Before I could protest even further, she put the money on the table and the slightly confused barista took it.

“Tack sa mycket. Du ar en angel.” (Thank you very much, you’re an angel)

I wanted to hug her, but I was a bit slimy and somehow I think that hugging a stranger isn’t the best idea.

But I went over to my bags and quickly began searching through my sketchbook for a drawing that I could give her, but by the time I had one in my hands, she was gone. I was left standing there with a cold coffee and a drawing, looking around for the lady that made my day. She was definitely gone. I have no idea who you were lady! But you were awesome. Bless you :D

So, after that, I almost missed my coach home, but managed to get on in the last minute. I also had to get Tom to call me because I couldn’t get any money out for the taxi that would take me from the bristol busstation to my home…

It was all a bit of a mess, but I was so tired and enjoying my cold coffee too much to really worry.

In the end, I managed to get a taxi home and had Tom pay the driver by our doorstep. It all worked out, but I was exhausted.

I love traveling.

Will be flying from one home to the other today. :)

Hopefully everything goes well and I can have my long awaited cocktails with Nik and Nadia before they leave for Costa Rica.

The time spent in Sweden has been lovely and I managed to accomplish a lot. Met just about all of my friends and family and got to help out with some cottage building.

I must admit it is going to be nice to come back to the UK, so I can get back into my daily routine. Have a lot of things to do, many of them boring grown up tasks like paying the rent, sorting out my student finance and looking for flats (yes we are planning on future moves already). But I have also missed my friends back in the land of Brits and can’t wait to return to my lovely cafe with the yummy coffee.

And the fresh produce on my doorstep. Oooh salad, how I miss theee.

Anyway!

See ya later!

Been spending the last days in Sweden with my family and relatives, and have thus been chatting a lot about various things. One of them being our ways of dealing with work. It is an ongoing theme in our family to be work-a-holics, to always be on the move and always up to something. For example. My cousin is 8 months pregnant with a tummy as big as a house (no offence cousin! It just means it’s a healthy boy!), and while most pregnant women would probably take it a bit easy at this time, she is up and going, renovating their cottage(!) and working full-time in town. It has come to the point where her doctor tells her to eat lots of icecream and chocolate to actually gain more weight!

Another example is my own mother who keeps our house absolutely spotless. She is up and going all the time. She even gets down on her knees to scrub the floor until it gives her bruises on her feet (don’t ask me how).

My auntie is basically the same and told me that it is because of our low blood pressure. Apparently it makes us feel much better when our pulse is raised slightly by constant activity. This also might explain my need to have regulated eating times and sleeping times. I asked my other aunt (who is a nurse) to bring her blood pressure machine thing, which she did and I got to measure my own blood pressure. Not to my surprise, it was a bit low.

I don’t know how accurate all that talk about blood pressure affecting the way you behave is , but really, it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s true, seeing how I actually feel physically bad if I don’t keep up with things. Now that I’ve started getting back into my work and things, I can sleep again. I think the two days I couldn’t sleep was because I hadn’t actually done anything properly productive, so my brain was going overboard with ideas,stories,layouts,images,writings etc etc that it hadn’t been able to express.

That’s my theory at least. Dunno how it stacks up with scientific facts. :)

… I am having a bit of trouble editing my php files for this blog to give me a customized header.

I am rubbish with php, so if anyone knows how to get a custom header on a blog by writing stuff in a php file, please let me know.

Until then, I’m going to bed with a headache.

Agh.

This is the drawing I was actually working on at the hospital. Suggestive perhaps. Depends on how you look at it I guess. :)

Just some sketches I’ve done during my time here in Sweden. Some good, some rubbish.

Markers. Done in a cafe.

Rubbish sketch done while watching Fahrenheit. Need to learn proper anatomy. Especially arms.

Main character from Fahrenheit. I love him to bits. Shame he doesn’t look much like the sketch. :P

Cop character for the roleplaying game called KULT.

Random sketches of comic characters.

*sigh*

Well, it’s 4am, I’m at Sami’s place and I can’t sleep.

This is a new one. Normally I always brag on my blog about being able to sleep like a baby and having a stable diurnal rhythm (if that is the word for it). But for some reason, I just can’t sleep tonight. I tried for 2 hours, grew tired, got up and read some of Sami’s comics, went to bed again, tossed and turned a bit and ended up thinking the entire process was, as I put it, ‘laaaame’.

I politely asked Sami (who by the way was sleeping very soundly), if he wanted to play some videogames or something, but I think he politely declined that offer by mumbling something at me. :P

Don’t know why I can’t sleep. I haven’t had lots of coffee or anything unusual today.

Maybe I just miss Tom.

Well well!

I thought I would only be going to the hospital to have my first smear test (to check for lady cancer).

I was a bit early (one hour to be precise), so I killed some time by sketching in the waiting room. Passing nurses gave me curious looks now and then and soon I was asked if I was the computer engineer they had been waiting for.

Do I look like a computer engineer? Well, apparently I did. I told them I wasn’t. She said that I looked like one and I replied: “That doesn’t surprise me :D” (Seeing as I am a computer geek afterall).

Anyway. Waited some more and was finally asked to come in to have my test. But as I sat in the office with the nurse and her trainee, they asked me what I had been drawing outside. They also found out that I am studying Illustration in England, and so they were very curious to see what I had been up to. I had really been sketching some rather raunchy Burlesque coffee ladies in the waiting room, but I made sure they did not see them. Hrm.

Showed them some other sketches and was suddenly asked if I could do a little cover illustration for one of their information pamphlets.

I was there to have a smear test, and I ended up getting a job! :P

Anyway. I finished the little illustration and here it is:

The pamphlet is directed at mothers who need to train their babies to go over to solid food.

:P

First time (I think) I’ve drawn a baby. I generally keep 371893728 miles away from them.

Oh well! Now it is time to go paint my cousins cottage!

Relaxation is for the weak!

Fit Capoeira Woman.

That pretty much describes what I want to become physically, but I’m just wondering if I’m gonna suck since I put down martial arts for so long now. A little bit scared I guess. :)

Especially since Capoeira is SO HARD.

I’ve been missing it ever since I moved from Lulea, but never really took it up in the UK. It’s time to change that. Lets hope I’m this fired up about it when I get back. If not, I hope Tom will whip me out of the sofa and to find out about clubs.

So sick of not being fit!

Oh. And THIS is just HOT.