Rise of the Nerds

"Nerd" might not be famous of being the most attractive social status. Specially not in the US. But nerds are defined climbing the ladder of popularity. I was thinking of this because when hearing the mention of games someone at HEC Paris  imminently comented with some stereotyping of elf dressing people in the woods (Clearly "live action role playing" LARP). I remember when I relieved that I did a few of those games. This was followed by my friends great surprise at my nerdiness. For this was back in San Francisco where nerds are nerds but LARP nerds are much greater nerds. But nerds are not the same internationally. For example it's kind of cool to be a nerd in Sweden. Well as long as one embraces it and goes with it all out.

There are also some preconceived ideas of what Nerdery is. Here are two examples.

This first one is a tad more fantasy LARPing with magical powers a la America. I remember when I was first shown this. I have to admit I did laugh quite a bit about the marshmallow lightning bolts. After all what a waste. Marshmallows are for eating.

Here is another example of LARP but the European version, or German to be exact. It tends to seem a little more interesting. Given that the prodigy playing does help. But also the seriousness of the nerdiness. I remember my brother Patrik going to the Czech Republic partly to get a hold of some authentic plate mail gloves for his LARP gear. I figure if you go for something do it properly, at least it's way cooler if your the best at it..

Maybe this is why Nerdery and specially computer games are so well un-nerdy or main stream back home in Sweden. Cause we're good at it? or is it cause everyone kinda play's, making the minority situation defunct?

Here in France it's a tad different though. Nerds are still Nerds and the cool peeps need to wear that trendy shirt or whatever. But it's definitively going our way (yeah the nerdy way). As popular culture gets more and more inspired by movies and video games the experts on these are the nerds. Thus they rise in popularity as they are seen as the originals and early adopters.

But it seems as in cultures where it's less accepted to be nerdy the nerds are nerdier and more well nerdy and well less hard core.. Why might this be?

Anyway here in Paris I tend to connect more with the gamers just like everywhere else. Last night we visited movie maker and game enthusiast Robin to drink wine, watch one of his films and discuss games. I have to say I'm a bit jealous. Seriously where else can you at least drink good wine while you nerd away (also jealous of his radio controlled Wall-E unit). Ok true. back home it's beer but it's just not the same. Although I do love beer it just doesn't seem as refined.

One of Robint's many gadgets of multimedia art. A light saber or shower head, old hand grenade, ancient  handheld flash mount and shower nob. Either way really cool or really nerdy, or Both!

More on games after the weekend as I have a board gaming date with a bunch of French gamers.

No more bread? Why don't you eat cake?

After pondering on the hard and life changing question, whether we should get another baguette for breakfast or not my girlfriend quickly ended my philosophic contemplating.
- oh we don't need another one we have this.
Whereas I reply isn't that cake?
And get a yeah as a response.
It all suddenly became clear to me. In this country of Marie Antoinette, breakfause and other meals can be sweet. It was until now my misconception that her quote might have been a tad disconnected from relity. In fact it would have been a very natural response, from a french person. After all if one does not have bread. Cake will certainly do.
-"nom nom nom"
Yeah that was me munching away at my cake here. it's a "Marbre" cake or a "Tigerkaka" (literally tiger cake) in Swedish. I'm not sure what it's called in English but I'm sure it's familiar to you as it's one of the easiest cakes to make.

Although I'm quite familiar with this type of cake I rarely eat it other than as desert or as a complement to a cup of coffee. Here it's breakfast. Breakfast is usually small and sweet here. Quite the contrast to a more hardy Swedish breakfast of crisp bread, cheese, porridge and serial. Mind you now that we're not talking about some über sweet serial from some candy company what I'm talking about are the equivalent to All Brans or hardier. Maybe a bowl of Musli. Oh I miss my Musli now. I even miss the beloved porridge. Maybe it does need a bit of jam in there to make it go down nicely but still..

 Then again food is always what you miss from home. And when In Rome do as the Romans so I should stop complaining. After all I do enjoy my freshly baked baguettes, croissant or even cakes in the morning. Maybe I'm just becoming Frenchified, thus the complaining...

Midnight in Paris

Some game at the Chiquito bar

And so it turns out. I go at it, the nightlife of Paris. An leisurely adventure filled with clubs and electronic beats? Well not quite this time. As I have my humble but not unappreciated place to recooperate a bit outside of Paris, it's not easy to get in and out just without further adue. Just a few stops away from Versilles is a whole bunch of stops too many to make it back after hitting up the bars. But the bars are bars, French bars. Bars packed with soul and character. In fact as the clock strickes 04 I get to see quite a few of these characters in and outside the bar I'm chilling out in. Although a coffee isen't available on the meny a plate of fries and a beer are. Not the worst of companions for writing a bit in the night. One of the worst for staying in shape though

=(

Mr.Goodseed (Bongrain) A very french young man in so many ways

After my coffee with Charles Bongrain (goodseed if you choose to translate names) so close to fountain st. Michael that we could almost have been sitting in it it was time for me to head on to the party. The locale of the party was conveniently located at the beginning of rue du Menilmontant, a cozy little place called "Chiquito" would hold most of my night. Beers for 2.50 Mojito for 5 and "Monaco" for 2 are not a bad deal going out. Well at least not coming from Sweden. For those of you that are wondering why I'm even mentioning a "Monaco" it's because this drink is new to me. So from what I heard from my friendly bar-counter neighbour is that it's a sweet beer for girls, her words not mine. In it is fruity sweet syrup, carbonated water or tonic and beer. I could be mistaken on the tonic water. It could have been soda of some sort as well. I'll just have to try it next time I have a bar at my disposal. I'm a bit too afraid to order one at a random bar.

Sabrina the birthday kid and fille extraordinaire (on the left) and Métte also a fille extraordinaire (on the right) two dear Parsisian friends of mine =) 

The Party was in tribute to my friend Sabrina who's 31^st birthday is was. One year wiser and maybe one year closer to death, of age as much as of the unlimited alcohol that was at her disposal tonight. Seriously though, It was a good gathering with plenty of open-minded and social people. And to my delight with varying English ability. Varying as it present to me the opportunity to try out some french. A gift gently wrapped with the boxing glove of unpreparedness my face made out with tonight. It was still fun though and the crowd was a bit from everywhere to even a few Spanish words came to use =)

Tour du France, the intoxicated night version

Walking from no26 rue du Melimontant to place du République is an interesting experience on a Saturday night. Not only because my newly acquired friend tried to talk me into sleeping at a random girls place as a over night solution with the argument that I don't have to sleep with them. After all girls do it all the time(this reminded me about one of those episodes from "how I met your mom"). But rather the social interaction that takes place on the streets in between. Streets like Oberkampf definitively shows a different french society than the touristy one. If you've ever head of french kickers and hudlums, this is one place they might hang out. But it's not that it's shady, only shady. It's also busseling with life and people from clubs and bars. As we three musketeers walked our way onward I received the general explanation of the places and I do have to say that a slightly drunken tour of the quarters of the night is way more entertaining than most tours I've ever been on. And I've been on a few (Yes I have Asian family, but this is not why).

the bar of destiny where all stragglers show up in the dead of night

Reaching my bar of destiny a hounded meeters from the place du République I get to witness a range of interesting characters. Each one most certainly having a untold story of adventure, rise and decline. Well for some mostly decline I guess. One of the more noteworthy "dudes" grabbing my attention is this man in his mid 40's slightly drunk and trying to talk to women walking up and down the street. With slightly drunk I mean the type of drunk where hard balancing acts like walking all the way on a big rode which one has to all himself would be considered a pass. So stumbling up and down the road then. The maybe best part might be that he could't really utter any coherent words. Although it be so that my french is preposterously inadequate to determine this. Either way the shower of saliva would with no doubt plug the targeted ear and effectively block all attempted communication. After a second though the funniest part was probably when the repeatedly pretended to talk to someone on his phone after a failed attempt. And believe you me, they all failed.

All characters here are not remarked by excessive drunkenness, but this one was.

Fellow commuters waiting for the first train out to the burbs

Shrooms

Mushrooms. Magic and delicious but preferably not at the same time. In fact the one and only time I had the magic version was by mistake at the young age of 17. The path there was paved by a many a flavorful meal of the non magic version. Fungi might not sound that tasty but mushrooms can definitively be. A fleshy fruit like body floating slightly above the ground it can truly gold a flora or rich flavor.

"flugsvamp" or Amanita muscaria, A Viking beserker pill

In Sweden we have a long tradition of eating mushrooms. And not only for taste and nourishment. It was a common practice to consume "flugsvamp" or Amanita muscaria a poisonous one that can put the consumer one step closer to a battle rage or a drunken state which was harnessed before and during battles for my Viking ancestry.
These days we pick mostly other mushrooms. One favorite and delicacy is the "kantarell" or chanterelle. quickly pan fried in butter and maybe cream is probably my favorite way of preparing it. It is truly a challenge not gobbling it down too fast as it's soo rich and tasty. The season for picking is throughout autumn and preferably after a wet summer and autumn. Picking it is itself a nice way of spending a Swedish autumn day. Walking along in the Forrest teeming with color with some friends or family has long been a  tradition of most real Swedish people.

Stockholm Afternoons

From the left: Anders my good friend and equally geeky boardgamer, Eva my mom trying out Dixit for the first time

As someone might have discovered reading about my Stockholm nights I'm quite the nerd coming back home. This is the cold truth of is. I am a nerd but not only a gaming nerd. My maybe bigger passion is board games and there are few more enjoyable things than enjoying an evening of board games with friends. Oh chess and monopoly might pop up for you right now but this is not the case. Nor is it "fia med knuff" for Swedish people. Board games are much more diverse and complicated than this. To check out a few good ones one can visit http://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgame . The games we played where Dixit and Power Grid. Two very nice games.

Although powergrid might be even more fun on 4 people instead of 3 as we played it. Dixit worked well on 4 people. this even despite the different gaming experience we had.
Autumn nights when the rain if coming down and the wet darkness is creeping in around the cute little Swedish houses board-games are a excellent pass time.

Stockholm Nights

After a short visit back home I'm now back to writing and traveling. Sort of. I realized that although Stockholm feels very much like my home town I'm  not really in touch with what others have seen and done in Stockholm. Sure the girls are nice and the city beautiful. There are so many other sides to my Stockholm though. Skipping the first fever ridden day of my home coming I'll share my second fever ridden night instead. Mind you that I'm not talking about some phenomenon like Stockholm feaver but an actual getting sick fever.
After being gone for a while the first thing that popes into ones mind is meeting up with friends and doing something really quaint. So we decided to do something we all had grown up with. Yup that's right a Gibb, a Haxx or a LAN gaming night as it is also called. This is when you chill out together and play computer games. A tradition starting early for me growing up in the suburbs of Stockholm. Growing up we used to haul our old stationary gaming machines of differing caliber over to each others houses or some communal building we had access too. A couple of times I think we even got some locale sponsored by our municipality.
Growing older and as laptops got more powerful an office or a lecture hall where the new spots of gaming and fiddling around with computers. Now although we could most likely scramble a few gaming machines we go old school and visited a gaming cafe to do our gaming. Being a bit older it's nice not to have to deal with the hassle of distributing all the games and such and making sure every machine works and all.

Although the more typical clientele of an internet cafe like inferno online are considerably younger than us we figured we'd have a great time anyway. Besides we'd probably kick ass with these kids anyway. Yup that's right we probably would. We're not your ordinary bunch of old school gamers. Having an previously no1 ladder ranked FFA WC3 player, a old national team captain in dota, ladder ranked no1 in 2v2 at SC2, previous QA lead at DICE, game designers and game development entrepreneurs and with more random remarks within the gaming world our bunch of peeps still managed to keep it civilized and all just for fun. I do guess we are getting older though since people started to drop off around 2am instead of the 8am customary retreat time.  Despite this and a few technical issues we still managed to play a list or recommended games.

• WC3 TFT dota
• Q2
• L4D2
• CS 1.6
• SC1

I guess reading this list does reflect on the fact that we are a bit old school. Still we had a good time and I recommend you to have a go at it while in Stockholm Sweden. After all we do host the largest LAN parties in the world and have a very very strong gaming culture.

On your back or on the ground

There is the never ending topic of what luggage to travel with and what type is better. Having mainly used a backpack for personal travel for over ten years now I finally decided to give the other side a go, the flash-packer side. Reequipping myself in Kuala Lumpur with a Mont blanc wheelie of the smaller kind I've now hit two continents so far during this last month and a half and that was how far it lasted. So far the leather on one corner has broken after a flight, the extendable handle partly broke after a careless airline shuttle buss slave handled it, The zipper seems to be ready to break soon as well and finally the extendable handle came off during a walk in Paris.

So far in the evaluation of Backpack versus little chic wheelie this is how the scores are.

Lifespan

Backpack: 10years +

Wheeler: less than 2 months

Expandability

Backpack: great

Wheeler: very little

Look

Backpack: outdoorsy

Wheeler: classy and chic

Convenience

Backpack: Portable and hands free

Wheeler: Roll-able in a few places

Price

Backpack: a bit more expensive

Wheeler: a little cheaper

All in all the backpack win with a devastating score of 4-1

One could argue that since the wheelie was bought in Kuala Lumpur the default quality drop made the comparison unfair. I say fuck it, they are all made in china these days anyway.

Overdose

While the french love of pleasure is quite a bit more obvious than the Asian or american one (at least if you exclude the love for fatty food), When does it become too much? In the US there is a expression PDA or public display of affection. Here in Paris, France there is no such term. It's completely natural to display such feeling openly. Also it's not against the law to drink in public like many other western countries. heck in many a western country a brown hobo lock alike paper bag is required to carry your preferred liquid poison pleasure. But does this poster intrude on the over the top?
Would it be OK in your country to Do a commercial like this? I know the heroin chic style of fashion was quite in for a while. is this pointing towards a come back?
In my opinion quite a few narcotics laws are outdated and misplaced. I mean weed is way more healthy than both alcohol and tobacco. An overdose still indicates an unhealthy over-usage, an dependency issue. Has the french love of pleasure become so blatantly routine that only an overdose would give rise to interest?

Flying Sick

A few of my friends go: Oh that's totally like my second home, when they arrive in a country they've spent some time in. I go just like that when I arrive at airports. It's a strange homey feeling oozing out of these air harbors  After all, the similarities are much bigger at airports than in society in general. Saying this I am not trying to cover up the many annoying experiences of the many crappy airports out there. Yes there are a whole bunch of them. The Swedish ones that I rank as these are Skavsta and Nykopings Ryan air airports. But I won't get started with my carrier bashing in this post, too.

The thing I wanted to highlight that I so often forget is the importance of being comfortable in a flight. Pillows, blankets and candy is not what I'm talking a bout here. It's the importance of staying warm and rested. Why? Well your health.

Feeling like I'm getting down with a little something the only place that I can think of with abundant sneezing and sniveling in a confined space was my flight to Paris. So If you are ever planning to fly with a low cost carrier or any carrier that likes recycles the air a godzillion times and puts the air conditioning on freezing to save glod. Bring warm clothing. And maybe also one of those Japanese moth guards surgeons and Japanese subway commuters weir.

Culture Shock Cure

As a visit to my home country of Sweden approaches I face a small boggle of mine. After spending most of my time speaking other languages than Swedish my language has become, well non default. When meeting Swedish people or Nordic people while traveling I tend to automatically switch away from Swedish. So what to do. Well as I aim not to alienate people nor lose friends when I come back to my beloved "svedala" I have a remedy to fix this. Inspired by my friend Abinash in Kuala Lumpur I have a diet packed with Swedish online tv shows. Yes everything from Linda Rosing (Swedish crap C-celebrity) to humor shows like breaking new. Having less than 24h until deadline I feel it's going my way. This despite the problems of watching Swedish tv online. For some reason they like to make it annoying by restricting access to Swedish IP numbers. Anyway last batch of Swedish before departure will be breaking news tonight at 22:00. Je vais l'empoter!

Punished for pleasure

One of the things one is punished for in the Islamic region of South East Asia is alcohol. Quite natural as there are abominations in the face of Islam. Hence they are taxed with a vengeance. Flying from Kuala Lumpur to Paris I now get to enjoy the satisfaction of good wine for a small buck. My first taste was a Beaujolais. I bought it mainly based on the visual presentation but it is kind of a special wine. Every year there is a new version and on the first day of the release major gatherings around the stores are common. It's trying the new Beaujolais day! The 2009 edition by Jean-Paul Brun which I bought in a small supermarket was balanced and sweet to my satisfaction.
In comparison to my experience in food (mainly eating it) I know noting about wine. This should be changed. But how to I go about getting to know wine?

Urban Survivor

One of the last things I did before I left Kuala Lumpur was to watch Robinson (The Swedish precursor  to Survivor). Here in Paris I'm overwhelmed with the changes that comes with the continent swap. The age of buildings, the blue sky and flaky weather, the clean streets and the good quality food. Yes yes, some might object and say that there is good quality food in Malaysia too. But they are wrong. When I'm talking about food I'm not talking about the extremes that one might find after large about of energy and/or money spent. I'm talking about the readily available options every day people choose and value. Here the food culture if much more focused on the simple, organic and quality of basic stuff. Although I have to say the Italians might be the best at this concept of complexity and simplicity in one. The french are definitively up there and has it's own angle to it.  But! this is not what I wanted to talk about. It seems that whatever I start thinking of it's an inevitability that the topic will change to food. There are other things with the same symptom of inevitability. On e is the fact that all free forums will eventually turn into a mating forum. Yes meeting people with the end result of pairing up or mating. This is especially true for online forums. That is also a side topic I'll deal with later. What hit me after the initial chock of coming over here was the homeless people in the streets. I'm not sure what I was expecting but there are a whole bunch of em here and many are surprisingly young. My awareness of this problem seem to have taken a dip as the surge of things dirty in Asia seemed to have washed away the shadier parts of my European memories.

Well that or that I've once again forgot how few homeless people we have in Stockholm.  But when I think back upon the number of encounters with people needing money in Asia the homeless seemed to make less of an impression on me way out east. True, the pure numbers I've seen over there easily triumph the ones here but these ones seem to stick out more. Over there it fitted in in the surroundings of dirty and ghetto rigged as a way of life. Here they stick out like sore thumbs in the midst of historical buildings and "bobo" cafés.

Hive of Entertainment Automation

Why the epic price difference in movies. Seeing as digital distribution and digital equipment for showing these movies are available at modern cinemas and heck, even back in my old student dorm. Well back then we just called it downloading HD movies. But still the technology is out there and it's being used. So what then warrants the monstrous price difference in movies across the globe. For example. Here in Malaysia I can watch a movie with student prices for something like 6 Malaysian ringgit, 12 SEK or 2$ US. Back home in Sweden it would cost something like 120 SEK or 13EUR. Since we could (at lest in theory) render almost all personnel redundant it's no longer a matter of wage differences. Still Cinemas back home are struggling economically whine the ones over here are doing just fine. Could it be that the prices are so high and the viewing experience so much worse that we just don't value watching movies in cinemas any more. Well I know it's not the experience. I've watched like 10 movies in a couple days. Given those days where spread out on the times I've dropped by KL but still.. Must have cost me a fortune now that I think about it. something like 100 Malaysian Ringgit in total. That would be something like 200 SEK or 20EUR, roughly.
So when will we see the first totally automated around the clock cinema in Sweden? Well most likely after it becomes a reality in japan. After all they love their vending machines. Why not a cinema vending machine with baby vending machines inside?
An Epic hive of automation!

Middle Aged Teen Angst

I'm not sure if you remember the days when girls and boys around you where filled with angst and emotion swelling over and well annoying the shit out of at least me. Those days where junior high school and high school I guess. But not everywhere. In these lands on the south east it's still flowing well in the late twenties. And it's mostly girls. After traveling around here for a while I've befriended quite a few people, on Facebook..
Let me tell you the Facebook life here is something else. Not sure if it's because it's the only outlet of emotion in communication that is allowed or if it's just such a convenient way of saying what you think in a alone against the world fashion that was never available before online social networks.
Either way. Every day I face the horror of emotional outreach towards the world and sadly towards my notifications and mailbox too. Is it just me? Is it just me that think filtering out all a persons messages and post is the only solution left to avoid tidal flows of teen angst from scorns of Asian girls in their "way to old to be writing this"
Ok you might be arguing that it's a bit late since they are all kept at home by overprotecting parents until they are married off and then the parents live with their kids anyway..
Well it's not a uncommon fact that women well in their middle years still fret over uncommented posts, messages and Facebook statuses here. Yes many a time at my office and others have there been intrigue in the air and bewilderment over unjustified neglect in Facebook response... And then comes the teen angst flowing out on the digital tides we all surf on. Personally I think it's one wave to big and too not concerning me to handle but who knows. Maybe it is everyone's duty to listen to this, or filter this shit out.

Cheap flights

I have this problem. I'm flying to pairs and not this is not the problem. The problem is that I'm flying from south east Asia equipped with only flip-flops and beach wear. As I'm not made out of money or have a income at all in fact It's time to figure out how to not spend to much changing a wardrobe. Shopping! Well in that case I should do it here. Or a quick flight back and forth from Sweden. That would surly cost me at least 1500 SEK or 150 EUR plus another 500 SEK or 50 EUR for small expenses in Sweden. Question is. What can I get for that amount of cash circa 1000 Malay Ringgit. And what do I need?

Well long pants would be nice. Shirts, a suit, some shoes and a jacket would definitively not be out of line. Also it would be nice to get some of my little gifts for people back home to a more convenient location. Specially after loosing a bag of stuff including paintings for my mum in Bali.

So "Pros" and "Cons" of shopping versus flying. 

Flying

Pros

• I know exactly what I have at home. No energy lost on finding stuff.
• Swedish food
• Friends and family
• Board-game time with brother and friends
• Leave the stuff I currently have
• A renewal of insurance periods

Cons

• Wasting time where I could be working or looking for work in Paris
• Time consuming
• Having to search through the jungle of cheap flights
• minimum cost of circa 200EUR 2000SEK or 300 USD

Shopping

Pros

• It's fun
• New stuff

Cons

• It's tedious
• costly
• I'm not sure what's out there
• time consuming
• Cost circa circa 200EUR 2000SEK or 300 USD

Sometime the pure thought of filtering through budget airlines if a horror or joy in itself. I'd say it depends on the mood one is in. Maybe the worst part if doing it right now as the Starbucks I'm currently using as my little office is occupied by babies and their guardians. Oh screaming little parasites how I loath you near me. The second most annoying thing must be all the hidden fares of budget airlines. Knowing that one must add 20EURx2 if one flies with Ryan Air just for bus transport to and from Stockholm. Adding another 15 EUR x2 if one flies to Paris with the same company. I have to give Norwegian airlines a pat on the shoulder here for sparing us this waste of time and money. Anyway then there are the cost of paying with a card when it's the only option and another bunch of hidden fees. Basically add 80-100EUR to any flight in sheer non optional additional cost.

Yes hello back SAS, suddenly your prices and services don't seem so bad after all. At least Airasia haven't come down with the hustling of Ryan air, yet..

Oh yeah and it looks like Flying will be my preferred option. Well at least of yesterdays dip in the Swedish Krona didn't bring prices up even further for flying.