Thursday, May 29, 2008

Rooster stories from Malmo (1 of X)

There are way too many stories from last month that needs to get on to the blog that I have no idea where to start. Chronological order. No, too proper for me. Reverse maybe. Or maybe I should do the London ones first. In some order, I got to do posts on the following: Chotu Motu in Adrspach, Plzen (Cat: you are not a beer drinker, are you?), Budapest, Eger, Copenhagen, TR in London[1], Rooster stories in Malmo - the list is never-ending. I should just pick one? Okey, I shall do Malmo just to make the birthday boy happy.

So the story is that the Rooster boy (aka Emil who makes regular appearances on this blog under the Sweden, Bamse labels) turned 30 a week ago and decided that he wanted a party to celebrate the occasion. In the interests of diversity not to mention illegal immigrant labor to clean up after the party, Bill, moi and an Egyptian-American friend (M) were duly invited. When I mentioned that I won't be able to take off work as I was already taking most of May off, our man threatened the small island that if they did not give me days off, the Vikings (with horns) would come flying on SAS and pillage whatever's around. So it was all settled and Bill and I were to fly to Copenhagen and take the train across the Oresund to Malmo, the most continental of all Swedish cities.

The whole trip, needless to say, was entertaining from beginning to end as it is with most things the Rooster is involved in, and since I am not good at copious trip accounts, I am just going to do conversation snippets. The first one here:

The Present

Ten minutes before we were to leave for the airport.

Bill: Shoot. I forgot something.

Moi: What now?

Bill: His sister asked to write something for the scrapbook they are making. I haven't sent anything.

Moi: Write now

Bill: Ya ok. Can you pack my stuff?

Moi: Beg your pardon?

Bill: How will I write and pack my stuff in 10 minutes?

Moi: If you don't, you can come on the next flight

Bill: Yeah? Whose money will be lost then?

Moi: Okay write. I will pack. Hey.

Bill: What?

Moi: We haven't bought anything for him

Bill: Oh no. I forgot about that

Moi: What are we going to do now? What shall we get him?

Bill: Some Bamse stuff?

Moi: Yeah I thought about that. We could get him a Skallman time machine or something. But you can't get it here.

Bill: Yeah.

Moi: What else can you think of?

Bill: Let me think. What do you get a geek who is obsessed with graphs, trees, Bamse, saving the world and well, penises?

Moi: Do NOT go there. We are not getting any of the stuff that's swirling around in your head right now. I know what to get. Book.

Bill: Well, what book?

Moi: Geek. Double major CS and music. Likes graphs, trees and well, design. What book will you get him?

Bill: When you put it that way, yeah. Why didn't I think of it before?

Moi: Because you are useless. Lets go. Finish writing now.

Obviously it all worked out fine and the Rooster boy was in love with the Gödel, Escher, Bach. Except that he was a little too excited that he began to treat it like a picture book. He walked around with it showing everyone pages of theorems, and graphs and notes and claiming how its all too cool. Bill's pretentiousness rubbing off. Not a good thing.

Coming up next:
1. The Swedish obession with God's (or as they like to call it, Bamse's) own country
2. Real Swedish men wear Bjorn Borg underwear

[1] Yeah, a very entertaining time was had. Details when I get around to it. Man does people watching like no one else I know. And the only thing that I am certain of now is that tpb does not exist in real life. First, she wasn't coming, then she had to go to Oxford, and no, she is not going to Scotland with him, I mean, how many excuses can one come up with? He is most definitely making her up so that people would think he has this cool and interesting wife and since he has an interesting wife, he must have an interesting life etc. etc.

15 comments:

??! said...

If TPB does not exist, whose shadow was in the snaps he took while on the camel-ride in China sojourn? Or was that all faked too?

Unknown said...

??!: Dude, come on now. How difficult is it to con random unsuspecting traveller to let him take picture of her shadow?

??! said...

This is also true. But this means the man not only flies around the world giving gyaan, he has enough energy left over to create a whole person and situations and conversations with her. Wowza.

Unknown said...

Yeah, I'd like to believe that TR has decided to spend some of that zillions of units of energy that the Bong population of the world had conserved all these years by doing absolutely nothing but I doubt it. It doesn't require much energy to make up a new person when you have nothing much to do. It comes naturally, i'd think.

As for flying around the world, that's only so that he can see how happy and gay people in other parts of the world are, and thus gather courage to come out of the closet.

Actually you know what? This ain't fair. As we speak, the man is trying to find his way out of a roundabout somewhere in the Highlands. We should wait a couple of days so that he can come back and speak for himself.

Anonymous said...

the man is trying to find his way out of a roundabout somewhere in the Highlands
You mean he's trying to find the next distillery and sample some more 15-year old single malts :)

Cheshire Cat said...

Adrspach? Plzen? Eger? Are these even real places? Out with the truth: you've exhausted Europe and are now journeying in some dreamscape (*glares green-eyed*)

Veena said...

??!: Ya. I think we should have conned him and told him that the best distilleries all are on top on Ben Nevis or equivalent Munros. That would have been interesting.

Cat: Fixed.

Actually, if I had the imagination to dream up these places, I wouldn't have to go see them at all.

Space Bar said...

I thought this was going to be a Twelve Days of Christmas kind of post.

Come on, woman.

Falstaff said...

Completely independent of the question of tpb's existence I'm not sure I follow the "he has an interesting wife, he must have an interesting life" argument. If anything, I would argue the opposite - everyone knows single people are, on average, much more interesting.

Veena said...

SB: Some other commitments to finish up first. Such as making flat look slightly better than a pig sty. And some stuff I got to send people. Wait.

Falstaff: Two things:

1. On average, yes. In TR's case, We all know what kind of life he leads. He teaches, he takes pictures of snow, he lives in Michigan. All extremely boring stuff. Only things that are interesting about his life are the trips he makes out to other places (such as Hopkirk country supposedly with cool long-distance wife)

2. I think this single person being more interesting doesn't work beyond a certain age. By the time one gets to TR's age, everyone who is interesting is taken and anyone who's left was boring to start with.

Tabula Rasa said...

step aside children, the professional is back. and the diagnoses - gratis (as they say on the fjords) - are as follows.

veena and falsie:
you're almost at tr's merry olde age yerselves. therefore by implication one of you will soon stop being interesting, and the other one will have to face the fact that her spouse is interesting.

??!:
the single malts were bonnie indeed. but were you among those causing the disruptions on the underground on saturday night? *glare*

Bill said...

Darling, I told you that one day you will come to see how staring at ceiling is the most interesting thing on earth. Listen to Prof-da now, even he thinks so.

Unknown said...

Billster, weren't you supposed to do the laundry while I was out? What are you doing commenting on blog?

TR: No, that makes Bill's spouse interesting, not mine

And I like how you completely sidestepped question at hand. Bill exhibits exact same behaviour when asked about thesis, job and other such useful things.

Falstaff said...

TR: No, no. All this stuff about married people being more interesting after a certain age is just Veena being in denial. Single people are always more interesting. Just drive to your friendly neighborhood suburb and see the married people there if you don't believe me.

??! said...

TR:
No, I was one of those glaring at the idiots making a ruckus. And laying bets on which ones were the most likely to keel over, start flashing people, or start throwing bottles.

You had trouble?