The husband is attending a meeting about telephone services at this very moment. One of his clients got him all hot and bothered about a new telephone operator in Sweden with really cheap rates. The hitch is that you're supposed to sign up for the service and then try to sell it to your friends, who should sell it to their friends and the more you sell the more you make and the cheaper the rates will be.



"My friend isn't even working anymore, all she does is sell telephone services!" the client exclaimed.



Apparently they've never heard of Amway in Sweden. And Swedes are so addicted to mobile phones - not to mention regular phones - and rates are so expensive that they're willing to try anything to lower their payments. My poor innocent husband. I wonder how long it will take for the government to shut the thing down.



I told the husband that under no circumstances is he to agree to or sign anything.



The Swedish word for the day is blåögd. It literally translates to blue-eyed, but it means naive.



- by Francis S.

Yes, Peter, it is very, very cool to smoke. And it is especially cool in America because people are so smugly self-righteous about not smoking. I remember visiting my sister in Minneapolis right after I moved back from Barcelona (you can smoke even in department stores there!) and before I moved to Stockholm (you can't smoke in department stores, but at least no one seems to think that smokers make Jesus weep). I was sitting on a 15-foot-long bench in a park and at the other end was a woman who gave me a sour look.



"Can you please move, the smoke is really irritating me," she said.



Uh-huh. The smoke was bothering her outside, 15 feet away.



I repeat, smoking cigarettes is way cool.



The Swedish word for the day is lögnare. It means liar.



- by Francis S.

When I was in the third grade, my teacher, Mrs. Provus, read Pippi Longstocking aloud to us in her whisky-and-cigarette tenor voice, a couple pages every day until we finished. I liked the book well enough, and I even read it myself when I was in the fourth grade. But it was never one of my favorites. And in Sweden, the Pippi Longstocking books are not the favorite Astrid Lindgren books either. The husband, for instance, prefers Bröderna Lejonhjärta, a story which has been described to me as the tale of a boy who sacrifices his life for his younger brother. It apparently makes children weep uncontrollably. No wonder it's so popular here, but nearly unknown elsewhere. I guess I should try and read it.



Sweden's most beloved author died today. Her death is above-the-fold front-page news. I take that back, a huge picture of her is the onlything above the fold. In every newspaper in Sweden.



So, remember that awful Pippi Longstocking song from the movie? Or maybe you're too young to remember. Anyway, it sounds a lot better in Swedish:



Här kommer Pippi Långstrump,

tjolahopp tjolahej tjolahoppsan-sa

Här kommer Pippi Långstrump,

ja här kommer faktisk jag.



Har du sett min apa,

min söta fina lilla apa.

Har du sett Herr Nilson,

ja han  heter faktisk så.

Har du sett min villa,

min Villa Villekullavilla

Vill å vill du veta,

varför villan heter så ?



Jo, för där bor ju Pippi Långstrump

tjolahopp tjolahej tjolahoppsan-sa

där bor ju Pippi Långstrump,

ja, där bor faktisk jag.



Det är inta illa,

Jag har apa häst och villa,

En kappsäck full med pengar

Är det också bra att ha.

Kom nu, alle vänner,

Varenda kotte som jag känner,

Nu skal vi leva loppan,

Tjolahej tjolahoppsan-sa



Här kommer Pippi Långstrump,

tjolahopp tjolahej tjolahoppsan-sa

Här kommer Pippi Långstrump,

ja här kommer faktisk jag.



- by Francis S.

I've been paranoid about writing about food ever since I read a nasty diatribe from a prominent member of the Ex-Ex-Weblogger Ministeries, complaining about how blogging has become too precious and full of breakfast, lunch and dinner menus. It's sometimes difficult to hold back on talking gastronomy, since preparing a suitable meal is my chief therapy these days. It's hard not to mention last night's chicken fricasseed in a classic vinegar, onion and cream sauce, and the lime mousse for dessert - oh so buttery and tart.



The friends from London are in town again. Dinner was a success. We ended up talking about Egypt and how Sharm al-Sheikh was a sleepy one-road village ten years ago and now there are 90 huge resorts being built there.



"Isn't it great?" the Egyptians said to my husband and C., the photographer, when they were there last year on a photo shoot.



No, C. and the husband thought, it is not great. But for the Egyptians, it's the surest way to protect their territory in the Sinai against their worries about Israeli agression: If they build it up, it will be a lot harder to destroy. And no doubt, it brings in cash to the country as well.



"It's like Thailand," said N., the Wallpaper* editor. "It's horrible now, all built up. Did you know Ao Nang is just awful now?"



Which was a little sad to hear. The husband and I became engaged on a beach near Ao Nang. I would hardly have called it unspoiled - there was a huge new resort being built on one of the beaches - but it certainly felt removed a bit from civilization. It was easy to find a beach where one could feel alone, visited only by a woman arriving in an afternoon boat laden with bottled water and freshly cut pineapple, carefully prepared in such a way it could be eaten by hand without getting all sticky. And the funky little hotel we stayed at - cheap but full of charm, with small bougainvillea-covered courtyards with odd sets of steps going here and there, a cafe overlooking the beach - is no longer about the only thing on the road, according to N. (or little, from looking at the website.)



Yet, despite it sounding much less attractive to go there, I would think that places like Thailand or Egypt mostly benefit from tourism, despite the obvious problems caused by hordes of pasty-white garbage-strewing, mai-tai swilling, suntan lotion-slathered Europeans and Americans. So, complaining about these countries becoming spoiled is, well, the opinion of the spoiled and privileged.



The Swedish word for the day is stranden. It means the beach.



- by Francis S.

Isn't it odd that the queer contingent is the only minority group with its own category in the Bloggies, that is, unless you consider Europeans as a minority group. It seems that the gay ghetto is the only segregated neighborhood on the Web. (I know, I know - I hate the term "gay ghetto" too, it's so very Tales of the City; but it worked really well for my little metaphor so I just bit the bullet and used it anyway.)



Is this a good or a bad thing?



- by Francis S.

Last night's party was, as expected, a combination of the two. That is, with some awful tedious and/or embarrassing parts, and with some awfully fun parts. There were the usual endless speeches, the usual singing routine by five of the birthday girl's best friends singing along with their own words to some bad Swedish pop song, the usual guests raucously drunk and insulting the hired help before the main course had been served. There were games intended to humiliate the honoree (everyone had a green "yes" card and a red "no" card at their place, and were asked at one point to vote on whether a series of things were true about the birthday girl - everything from whether she'd lived in Australia, to whether she owned a dildo.)



Did I have a good time? Better than I expected.



Was I glad that we were the first to leave, about 45 minutes after the dancing started? Oh, yes.



The Swedish phrase for the day is vi ses. It means see you later or we'll be in touch, more or less.



- by Francis S.

Damnation. The husband and I have another Swedish 30th birthday party extravaganza to attend. At least we don't have to pay 500 crowns just to attend, which is the usual arrangement for these things. And, it's only a sit-down dinner for 80 people somewhere out in Lidingö, in the near suburbs.



The last 30th birthday party we went to was 500 kilometers away and we had to stay at an expensive hotel with a hundred other partygoers. Worse, after I had gone up to bed - I can't keep up with the Swedes when it comes to vodka tonics and bottomless bottles of red wine and I hate the way that once you're married, Swedish etiquette dictates that you can't sit together and I always end up next to some 75-year-old widow who lived in New Jersey sometime in the '60s and has all sorts of frightening anecdotes about America - the husband had gotten into a big row at 4 a.m. with one of the birthday boy's friends who had made a drunken speech that included a phrase along the lines of "we used to be tough when we were young but now we go out and eat shrimp and act all gay." The husband was very displeased at the implication that there is something wrong with eating shrimp and with being gay. Apparently, when he pointed this out to the inebriated speechgiver, things heated up a bit followed by a calamitous chill that stopped the festivities cold.



The next morning, there was an air of discomfort everywhere, stinking up the place. But I was happy, and very proud of the husband.



The Swedish word for the day is hård. It means tough.



- by Francis S.