He's home!

Have you ever had this irrational love for someone? I can't describe it in any other way. Real luv! And we're all so very proud of him. He knows what he is doing, he's good looking, he is SO cool, he is HENKE LARSSON!

FINALLY he is back in town! There's been lists signed by supporters to get him back to HIF, the team where he started (in Helsingborg, that's right, the birthtown of both me and Henke).

For those ignorant fools out there, here is a short briefing:

Henrik "Henke" Larsson born in 1971 in Helsingborg, Sweden. Started to play for HIF in 1992, and contributed to it's success in the swedish league (34 goals in 31 games). Moved on to Feyenoord and later Celtic. Larsson scored 242 goals for Celtic, in 315 matches, making him Celtic's third all-time record goal scorer (in all competitions). This is more remarkable in the fact that he missed almost a year having suffered a horrific injury, breaking his leg in two places, whilst playing against Olympique Lyonnais in a UEFA cup match in France. In 2001 he won the Golden Boot an award for being Europe's top goal scorer, with 35 league goals.

In 2004 The Swedish Football Association named him the "greatest Swedish football player of the last 50 years."

Moving on to spanish team Barcelona (which has the "right" team colours red and blue as has HIF:)), he was part in Barcelona winning the UEFA Champions League 2006. The same year Larsson announces his retirement from professional football, and that he will finish his career in his old "home"-team.

In May 2006 he was given the honor of Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) by the British Consulate in Barcelona, in name of Queen Elizabeth II for his contributions to British football during the years he spent playing at Glasgow. The supporters of Celtic nominated him.

I don't think you realise how much the guy means to Helsingborg. Henke is considered a hero, and rightfully so. He was brought up in a rough neighbourhood, where the kids more often end up in criminal gangs than anywhere else. But with the talent and (and this is essential in his success, according to me) a lot of hard work he finally made his dream come true.

The reason I have such profound respect for the man is that he knows his value but still manages to stay humble. Henke seems to live a quiet life, despite the millions he's making these days. He's married to his teen sweetheart. He's a worker, he's SO cool.

I want to be like Henke Larsson.

Henke, I love you.

Home, sweet home!

Alrighty.

I've been home for well over a month now. I thought (and prepared for) the transit would be more difficult, but has actually been quite easy.

There are two things that really helped with that process:
1) It was the most beautiful spring ever that greeted me! Since it's been a long winter this year, spring had just arrived when I also did, and I really enjoyed the trees blooming (some of them as beautiful as from a fairy tale!), the long evenings, the fresh clean air and the black birds singing so lovely at night as I took my walks.
2) It's been really nice to re-connect with friends and family! I've realised that I'm lucky to have so wonderful, caring and supporting friends. Only a phone-call away.

Having said that, I've survived my first movienights. The first one I slept through (of course!), but I've managed to see some nice movies ("Night watch" and "Saw", see them! See them NOW!). My projects, "Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain" and "Capote", will have to wait though. "Capote" is between cinema and DVD here, and for "Amelie" (or retarded girl as I teasingly like to call her) well, I have an argument with my friend F: I will watch "Amelie" when he's seen "Eternal sunshine of a spotless mind". Need I say the negotiations are stuck at the moment?

I've also "survived" the first nights out without the usual suspects (meaning the Hyd-gang). The first time, it felt a bit strange though (here I COULD say something obscene, but since my irish boys aren't here I won't). We went out for drinks in Malmö (the third largest city in Sweden, 20 minutes from Lund by train, and also Karen's hometown) and then went to a club to do a little bit of shaking that ass. The club turned out to be a hip hop one with age limit 20 years (meaning they're in reality 18). So, it was us and the high school kids.

And oh my god, friends, the FOOD! the WINE! Lovely cheese, proper coffee, wonderful muffins with "exotic" blueberry (as they called them on Barista coffe shop in Hyderabad, not so exotic I would say living in the Blueberry country). To comfort some of you meat-lovers out there: I haven't got sick at all. And I eat a LOT of meat!

Also, it was good coming back realising me and Lund (my home town) got a fresh start. The relationship was, to be honest, getting quite claustrophobic. Lund is a small city and sometimes (often!) I get the feeling that everybody knows everybody and that everyone knows your every move. Me don't like. I enjoy my privacy.

Speaking of privacy, not much of that at the moment. Living with sister dearest and my brother-in-law for another month. Then I FINALLY get my own place again! Finally living with MY stuff and having my sweet cats around me.

I've realised one thing that really scares me. It might sound weird. But as I've been travelling through my region I realise how much "home" it is to me. The landscape is breathtakingly beautiful, and my soul fills with peace while I'm looking at it. So, what's so scary about that, you might ask? Well, what can I say? Like Pinocchio sings "I've got no strings", meaning I don't like the feeling of being tied to one place. Bizarre? Indeed.

So, do I miss beautiful India? In the past few days I've started to miss places. Hampi, and the way to Mango tree restaurant for one. And of course, Palolem beach. But as always, it's mostly the people and what we did together I miss, not the places. I miss serious talks in the dark, movienights, crazy discussions on the balcony, movie making day (my GOD that was a lot of fun), dinner at Sheraton (the bread, Ebba, the bread!!!), dolphin trip in Goa, "watching" the stars at St Patriks day, Freudian discussions, coffes that didn't happen. BUT it's good to know that my beautiful Hyd-gang is only an email or messenger chat away.

Well, that's all for now. Over and out.

On second thought...

Ok, I know that my comment on that has defrosted a bit is weird. I was in an excited mood and shit happens and all that.

And, I just watched Armenias video and it's HIDEOUS! I take back what I said about pretty boy. Unibrow may have worked for Frida Kahlo, it does not work for most of the rest of us. The performance live at the show I liked though. My sister claims that I did because of it's bondage theme. Have no comment on that one.

I forgot to say that Romania had a nice euro-techno song "Tornero",Turkey a funky girl and the song disco-inspired quite alright, Germany a sort of country theme that did not do it for me, the Netherlands (who didn't make it to the final) a weird congo-based song (which I should like, but it just didn't fly this time).

Thank you for listening.

Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) 2006:

As you all know ESC is HUGE in Sweden. We love it, love it, LOVE it! And this year it was amazing.

All bets are off! The laws of nature are not valid anymore! Hell has, if not frozen over, at least defrosted slightly. The unbelieviable winner of Eurovision Song Contest 2006 is.... FINLAND!!! They've entered the contest 40 times and not won once. At best they've been 6th and that was way back in 1973. Often they've been the laughing stock. (Hey! Let's face it, they usually suck...)

Even more bizarre (or perhaps equally bizarre) is that it's a rock song that wins. They were dressed as hard rock monsters, described on eurovisions homepage as:

"It’s the turn of Lordi, the monstrous hard rockers from Finland. The eponymous lead singer Mr. Lordi has miniature skulls on his kneecaps whose eyes light up red, his microphone is attached to the handle of a battleaxe and he has devil horns protruding from his head. It’s not exactly Abba. Despite their frightening appearance, there’s something really likeable about the group and the crowd really warm to them… and are warmed by them! There’s so much fire on stage, the temperature in the arena rises several degrees."

You GO, Finland! :)

Other reflections:
My favourites were (that is, who I voted for and YES I actually pay money to vote): Russia, Dima Bilan with "Never let you go" (ah! pretty pretty boy, and a nice pop song), Lattiva, Cosmos with "I hear your heart" (an accapella group, so I simply HAD to vote on a group that is actually musical, which isn't always the case embarassly enough), Armenia, Andre "Without your love" (nice rythm and another pretty boy, can it get any better?) and of course Finland, Lordi with "Hard Rock Halleluja" (what can I say? We all know his number and it's 666!)

Sweden was represented by Carola, who has entered the contest twice before. 1983 with "Främling" (which means "Stranger"), which was her big break through, and in 1991 with "Fångad av en stormvind" (which sort of means "captured by a storm"). In 1991 she won the whole thing. She is NOT a favourite of mine, she is quite controversial in Sweden. Carola is famous not only for her very strong voice, but also for her deeply (sometimes) fanatic religiousness. She has, for example, said that gays can be cured if we only pray hard enough for them. This she eventually took back, probably since someone wise had pointed out how HUGE ESC is in the gay community.

The hosts were, usual, not so interesting. The female co-host, Maria Menounos, was (I'm sure) a bit tipsy at the end of the show. She acted totally flimsy-wimsy while her male colleague, Sakis Rouvas, sort tried to cover up. A theme amongst the different representatives from the member countries (during the presentation of the voting) was that the color of the female hosts dresses were mostly red or black and that the male ones didn't dress up really. And of course they all complimented Greece on the spectacular show.

The female participants are, as usual, mostly tits and ass while the males are not. C'mon, you could've at least shown us some ass, man!

Some trivia for you ESC-ignorants out there:
The most used words by Eurovision fans in connection with the song contest are “Abba”, “Eurovision”, “Dana” and “Leandros” according to a study by the University of Leiden.

More women than men win the Eurovision Song Contest. On average, for every three or four women who win, only one man has won the contest.

Dialects and imaginary languages have surfaced again and again at Eurovision. In 1989 Switerzerland’s entry was sung in Romansch and Lithuania’s song “Strazdas" was sung in a west-Lithuanian dialect. In 1996 Austria attempted to win over voters with a song in another alpine dialect. France has also attempted to win with songs in Corsican and Breton and in 2003, Belgium came second with a song in an imaginary language.

Until now, the most covered Eurovision hit is “Volare”. Stars like Dean Martin, Al Martino, Marino Marini and David Bowie have all made cover versions of the song.

ESC ROCKS!