The lens surface of my Carl Bildt partnerlook glasses has crackled up to the point that it disturbs my vision. It's probably because of my bad habit of wiping them with a normal dish cloth (clean), and not a microfibre cloth. It happened to my old glasses, too, but only after about 6 years and many rough rides. To my cheap Carl Bildt glasses it happened already after 1,5 years.

I remembered that I still had the other pair of glasses that I got in the "two for one" deal with my old glasses. Back then I thought they didn't suit me at all, and I never wore them. But now, they suddenly look pretty good on me ...

Today it has been one year since my little princess Mitsu died. Since then, within this one year, also my little baby Sergei and my grandma Liisa have died.

Mitsu died of cancer, but at an old age, and I think she had led a full life, and that it was a good time for her to die. Sergei, on the other hand, died before he got all that old. He got ill with kidney stones, and as there was no way he could ever be operated, we had to put him down. But I couldn't be there when he died. I couldn't get there fast enough.

Since Sergei's death I've been kind of numb. When mum told me the day before yesterday that grandma had died, my reaction was pretty much "oh, okay". I wasn't sad at all and I didn't miss her. She had a very quick and peaceful death through a heart attack, after having been in bed for about ten years since she got cerebral haemorrhage that left half of her body paralysed.

I was much more sad ten years ago. Because after that, her personality changed completely, and as I didn't have much contact with her anyway, I felt like I didn't know her anymore. She always made my mother cry because she kept saying cruel things that mum took too seriously.
I don't miss that "version" of her at all. I had never felt like there was anything I could give her, or get from her, anyway, even if we had kept up some sort of contact.

Today I saw some old photos of grandma that Ainur posted on Flickr. They made me remember how she used to be. For instance, once when we were little, I ate too much sweets and puked on her bed. I couldn't stop crying because I was so sorry and embarrassed, but she wasn't angry at all.

And that, finally, made me cry again. So, I guess I'm still human, after all ...

Today I went to take new photos of the Rosenstrasse street signs, because my editor is not satisfied with my book cover proposals after all.

At the monument, there was a small Israeli tourist group, and the guide was telling the story about the protests and the general history of Jews in Berlin (in the space of the park and the monument, an old synagogue used to stand).
After taking some pictures, I sat down on a bench nearby and looked through my photos while listening to the guide. It was nice to hear some Hebrew again, and surprising how much I still understood (probably because I knew what he was talking about, so I could fill in the blanks).

Also, during my walk there and back, some hot guys checked me out, so the day didn't feel completely meaningless, after all. :oD

Anyway, I realised that the old dairy on Choriner Strasse has been thoroughly renovated, but not quite as ruthlessly as I had feared:



The following picture, the view from my window towards Zionskirche, is from a couple of weeks ago, after yet another thunderstorm:



(Completely irrelevant information: As I was retouching the photo above a bit in PhotoShop, I felt a sneeze coming. As I pulled in air, I felt one of the buttons of my top pop open. For some reason, that distracted me to the point that I didn't feel like sneezing anymore ...)

Link: The Battle Royale Strategy Test written by red_ashes on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

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However, when I took the test again, and changed a couple of answers (actually, I was trying to manipulate it to become more like Shogo Kawada, while still being as honest as possible), I got ...

Link: The Battle Royale Strategy Test written by red_ashes on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

Well, maybe the way Kiriyama was in the film version, but not really the comic version (with his Incredible Levitating Jacket) ... :oD

Today is the first anniversary of my freedom and independence since I got out of one hell of a fucked up relationship.

I haven't made any attempts at any new serious relationships since then, either because I haven't been "ready" yet, or because my threshold has gotten considerably higher after I learned the hard way that it's nowhere near enough when someone just says he loves you.

I guess it takes a very special kind of person to be in a relationship with me and not treat me like shit, and I just havent' met anyone like that yet.

One of the main themes at the G8 summit in Heiligendamm is climate change. According to a study made for Der Spiegel, the summit itself will have a negative impact on the climate:
The transport and accomodation of everyone involved (delegates, demonstrators, police officers, journalists etc), as well as the construction and transport of the 12 km long safety barrier will produce about 30,000 tons of carbon dioxide - a third of what thefootball  World championship caused. "And these are still conservative estimates", says study administrator Moritz Lehmkuhl.

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More environment-friendly alternatives for conferences include video conferences over the Internet.
Anyway, these people must know, on some level, that they are doing something wrong, if they are so afraid that they have to hide behind a massive safety barrier.

As for poverty, another topic that will be touched at the summit, the delegates could easily start fighting poverty in their own respective countries if they would cut down their own astronomical wages and channel that money into social welfare (child and housing allowance, higher state subventions for healthcare, etc.).

The Manual Project - the personalities of hands by Bill Westheimer.

Last night, I first had a weird dream that involved an elephant and her handler who worked in the forest, digging up old bones. I accompanied them, and they found a site with many skulls, but no other bones. All of them had holes from a gunshot or a sharp object on the top of them. Some of them were fully intact. Others had only their lower half intact, while the upper half had somehow "melted" into transparent, glass-like substance and filled up the lower half. The handler said, "It's the ice", and pointed at the chunks of permafrost that the elephant had just broken up.

In the second, less interesting, dream, I was still living in Kävlinge, and came back from university to find my apartment door broken up. Burglars had stolen my stereo and most of my CD's and also my cassettes (!). Not my computers, though. They'd also taken my couple of DVD's and the CD's where I've stored photographs and scanlated comics.

I figured I'd call the police, and didn't touch anything, in case there would happen to be fingerprints or something. I locked the door as well as I could and closed the kitchen windows, but everytime I checked they were open again ... Then I remembered that I had a storage room (only in the dream, not for real), accessible from the living room, and checked it. It was completely empty, although I couldn't remember having anything but boxes of clothes in there. Well, it wasn't so much the loss of material possessions that bothered me (none of my comics or notebooks were missing, thank dog), but that someone had been in my home and dug through my things.

In my area there was a local hobo (also only in this dream), whom I'd made friends with a bit. I saw him outside my window and chatted a bit with him, and he said he might know who it was - a guy who wanted to impress his many girlfriends (perhaps a bit influenced by the manga Ciguatera I read yesterday night?). In the dream, it somehow made sense to me, as all my pretty clothes and "girly" CD's (I don't have any "girly" CD's, actually!) had been stolen ... And I could somehow understand the motives of the burglar and thought I shouldn't feel any resentment towards him anymore.

But the atmosphere was still bad. I felt frustrated anger at the fact that someone had done me wrong, but I was "supposed to" understand and forgive. I knew I'd never get my things back, even if the police arrested him, and he would never ask for forgiveness, because to him, his actions were fully justified. And I couldn't do anything about it, because I could understand him.

I woke up at half past six, and was extremely relieved when I realised that I wasn't living in Kävlinge anymore, and that no one had broken into my apartment. It had been the kind of dream where you don't know that it's a dream.

The dream was a bit inspired, I think, by the situation that occurred when the guy who rented my Kävlinge apartment while I was doing my internship last year stopped paying the rent and apparently disappeared. I went to check my apartment, and there really wasn't anyone there, and a neighbour who had taken care of the plants didn't know anything about when he might return, either.
I stayed in the apartment, cleaned up (the place was filthier than it had ever been before, even when I had been deeply depressed and didn't clean for months), and stowed his things in boxes, after sending him E-mails, asking him to come get them or send me money so I could send them to him. Since he still had the keys, I felt a bit insecure there. Following my intuition, I mounted metal loops on the door and the doorframe, and tied them firmly with a piece of string.
Then, one night, around midnight, as I was already in bed, I woke up when I heard someone opening the lock of my front door. This someone tried to pull the door open, but with my additional "string lock", it wasn't possible. I was still half asleep, so I wasn't thinking very clearly - I just listened intently with my heart beating fast, and didn't move. Then I heard steps walking away, and went to check the lock. It had really been opened. I soon had my landlord change my lock, and then, I could finally feel at ease again ...
Packing up his things, I found out that my former tenant had serious money problems, so I wasn't that angry with him about the rent or anything - I just wished he'd been able to be honest about it. Then everything would have been okay, and stupid situations like this nightly visit would never have happened.

Anyway, this morning, after waking up at 6:30, I couldn't sleep anymore. Instead, I kept involuntarily thinking about all the things I've ever done wrong - not in the sense of doing someone else wrong (either I'm ignorant of the situations where I've done that, or I've really been able to avoid it), but in the sense of not having handled a situation right.

Quite many of those have been situations where someone has done me wrong or hurt me, but I've ignored it or just not said anything, because I could, in a way, understand why they were doing it (although it was certainly petty and stupid), and thought it was somehow "below me" to care about it. (In the sense of "if you get angry/start crying/kill her, you lose".) I guess I wasn't always that strong - I still cared, and they managed to hurt me.

I've been thinking a bit lately about whether you should speak up and give lip when total strangers behave in a rude way. People do that quite often here, but it's unusual in Sweden (there, people just ignore it, or stare but don't say anything).

Should people just feel sorry for others, that they are so petty and stupid and don't know how to behave?
Or is it the duty of fellow citizens to "help" each other "improve"?

There should be a way to do it in an encouraging and constructive way ... Maybe to laugh a bit, and ask in friendly disbelief, "But what are you doing?", as if it wasn't actually understandable why they would behave like that.

Damn, I wish I was still young and naïve, not able to understand why people often behave in "bad" ways.