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.

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.

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.

I Almost Forgot

Sometimes I forget. A lot of things in fact. I also remember, sometimes. Though it's usually the quirkier things like what a plate is called in french due to a obscure side note in a move 15 years ago or the likes of that. My junior high school teacher and supervisor ones told me that I would forget my pants one day for sure. He also said my provocative mouth and fists where too fast for my own good. So far my pants are still on.. I think. Although my dad sometimes walks around in his undies a little too much for my liking. If you've seen the series fringe, that's how I feel sometimes with my dad. Brilliance and folly all in one little package. Well not as much of course but still. The fists are tucked away along with the early teens, after all boys being boys..
Only troublesome thing being my tendency to real life troll, sometimes. (For those who did not get it, it has to do with sharp and manipulative comments). Almost forgot what I was supposed to write.
Sometimes I forget the progress this country (Malaysia) has made over the last 30 years. I tend to comment on the little things that I feel are strange and illogical but when you put it into perspective Malaysia has really come a long way in not such a long time. in the 80s they where sending over as much of their population as possible to Indonesia to get educated and now they have a far stronger economy and more importantly a far better infrastructure. What I should be feeling is the amazement of how we can sit and dine in clean safe places and enjoy the grandeur of which is Kuala Lumpur. After all it is a damn fun city with fairly working public transportation and what nots. We where even able to get around town fairly easily hunting some daylight shots today. I have to say that these shots are the ones I like the least. they are just not as fun as when the light gives that special feeling to it all. Also, the hot and humid weather makes walking around all day fairly sticky.

Infested: Firebat where are thou

There where always rumors. Rumors about strange creatures of the dark, spreading like wildfire and sucking ones life force. I had long dismissed these as something that exist but nothing that really happens to me. I did see a dead one long ago. Or at least I though it was one. Let me tell you. The real thing, the creature of much dismay is real, alive, kicking and fucking annoying.


Having spent three days in Malaka, a destination I partly made my way to because of rumors of a tattoo artist.  Yes in addition to Melaka the cultural and historically important tourist destination for many a KL inhabitants and Singaporeans it was also the alleged quarters for whom I was looking for. Two days earlier I had seen her work on a friendly travelers back and decided that she was good enough to ink my skin. To make a short story shorter, I found her. but too late. Ending up with not enough time to procure the right ingredients for my creation and allow for healing in time for my next dive I did what every other tourist did. Explored the food and got a bit drunk with the locals. Malaka being a small town, I left after 48hours for the bustle of KL. That and a dinner date with Charles my french musketeer. I'll get back to that meal, If I remember. The main point being it was big and ended late. Leaving me to the whims of my hastily picked accommodation, the reggae hostel at the reggae bar, in Chinatown. This was where I met "the swarm". Or Bedbugs as I call them.

I do believe my person did avoid being feasted on somehow. Or rather since they had already feasted on the early napper next to me. However my luggage was not so lucky. My old and trusted backpack, brother in arms and very well worn in back warmer was officially infested. outer pockets and exterior lining for the frame was full of empty and blood filled vermin in the range of sized they come in. Fleeing the light the brown little things burrowed deeper as I squished the ones I could reach. I knew however that this was the death jerks of old trusty..

Mostly I consider my time spent in the military to be superfluous to many challenges I face in ordinary life but one thing that it thought me was to pack things individually and close all hatches, doors, zippers and such properly. In this case it did save the entire contents of my pack since the swarm needed more time to penetrate my 4+ seals of vengeance. (dry-bag, plastic bag, knots and zippers). Besides they seem to prefer less plastic surfaces for the comfort of woven textured ones.
Being to emotionally gutted by the loss of old trusty I could not bring myself (that or me being lazy) to get a new good backpack. Instead I went with the wheeled alternative. I now resemble one of those many flash packers I so despise at every "normandy" style beach landing one does when traversing paradise islands. Either way done is done. Now to figure out a proper ritual for protecting my precious artifacts from future swarms.  After all there must be an efficient protocol for keeping things bug free while traveling.

My shopping addiction

I have to admit that I too enjoy shopping. Today I spent a bunch of cash on sports gear. I tend to spend my money or sports, travel, tech stuff, food and nerdy stuff. Can’t say it’s any different from anyone else I guess.
I am curious about my ability or lack of restrain in spending far too much of my available funds on a whim when it comes to these things. I think that if one made a graph of spending over time I’d be similar to a heartbeat. quite low for a long time and suddenly consumption rises enormously with some smaller variations in spending amount before and after.

This time I happened to spend it on a new Badminton racket. Last trip around the world I think I bought a couple too. Anyway it ended being a nanotech 200. It felt good so I hope it works well too. Stringed it with BG 66. tried to find BG 80 but I’m not sure if it doesn't exist any more due to my long time absent from the world of Badminton or if they just didn’t carry it.
Did learn that it is impossible for me to play with a traditional grip in this hot weather due to not being able to hold it sweating like crazy. I changed to a towel grip long ago but I never realized it was vital for me to even being able not to drop the racket.