Tribal connection
Let’s face it, I’m special. I can have serious trouble showing enthusiasm for things, even when I am very excited about them somewhere deep down. I also tend to stay far away from things that I like to classify as tribal behaviour. These include things like watching sports (although that one football game between England and Portugal in the European championships 2004 will always stay with me, mostly as one of very few times that I’ve sworn in public, trying to express how exciting the game was,) following any kind of religion, computer related or otherwise, clapping along with music, or getting drunk and singing bad karaoke with friends.
This behaviour of mine was why I was caught out on Covent Garden as the only person in the audience who wasn’t clapping when the performer asked for it. It is also why you will at most see me nod my head along with the music when I am at a concert. Which turns out to be precisely the normal behaviour at a Porcupine Tree concert, but usually not at others.
There is one exception, however, which has tonight proven to be repeatable. At Gogol Bordello concerts, two years in a row, it hasn’t take more than a minute before I’ve been right there in the middle of it all, jumping along with everyone else, shouting myself hoarse and clapping along with the music, and enjoying every moment of it. Right now I’m sitting in the sofa with ringing ears, feet that feel like they are still moving and a big grin on my face when my mouth isn’t busy whistling out the tunes of their songs.
That said, I still have a few mental blocks, even at a Gogol Bordello concert. I can for some reason never get myself to lift my hands over my head. Clapping takes place at eye level at the highest. Anything higher seems totally inappropriate and is impossible for me to even consider. Also, I can never quite stop worrying about the people who are standing around me, wondering if I will step on their toes or jump into them. The fact that they keep jumping into me without showing any remorse doesn’t change this.
Anyway, the important conclusion here is that if you haven’t yet seen Gogol Bordello in concert, you need to do something about this as soon as possible.
The bizarre Residence Kristinelund
I was going to leave it at a few tweets, but this hotel just upgraded itself to a full blog post. Staying at Residence Kristinelund in Oslo has really been a bizarre experience from the start. When I arrived, the front door was locked, and I discovered after some looking around that there is no door bell to ring. So I tried knocking. There was no answer. After going around the house to see that there was no other door that might be the entrance, I discovered a small piece of paper with a phone number on the door. So I called it, and was told that they were very busy at that moment and that I was put in a queue. I looked around once more to see if there was anyone else trying to get in who might have called before me and caused the business. I eventually got through to someone and found out that I was supposed to have received a code for the door. I hadn’t, but now I had the means to go inside and find the reception.
It turned out that there was no one at the reception, despite the fact that it was not yet past the time when the sign said that the reception would close. Instead, there was a note on the door with my name on it saying that the key to my room was inside the room and that they hoped I would enjoy my stay. In any hotel room, the first thing I do is to look around and see where everything is. This time was no different. When I opened what I thought was the door to my bathroom, I entered a room that looked very much like the one I had come from. It turned out that room 103 and room 104 were connected, and there was no way to lock that door. However, the key to room 104 was hanging on a hook in that room, and the only other note at the reception door was for someone staying in room 106, so I decided to lock the door to room 104 from the inside and treat it as if it too was mine. I went on to look through all the drawers of that room too, and discovered that while there were DVDs and an instruction book for a DVD player in my room, but no actual player, there was a DVD player and a remote control for the TV in that room, and no DVDs. There was also a trouser press in that room, but otherwise they were very similar.
Since the door to the bathroom didn’t lead to a bathroom, the conclusion had to be that there is no bathroom connected to the room. And there isn’t. But there was a bathroom in the next corridor, so I could manage. The important word, though, being “was”. When I went to brush my teeth tonight, all the tiles on the floor and walls of that bathroom had been taken off and replaced with a thick layer of dirt.
Luckily, both the bed and the wifi are still where they are supposed to be.
Update: At 00:32, room 104 got two guests who were equally as interested in the door between the rooms as I.
Update 2: On the evening of my third day in the hotel, the corridor that used to lead to the backup bathroom I had found on the second floor was locked (not the door to the bathroom itself, but the whole corridor), so I had to find yet another bathroom that is even further away from my room.
Mutant time
There’s an ad close to where I live for a watch by the company REM REM with the title Mutant Time. The model showing the watch is himself a mutant. Now, I don’t particularly have anything against mutants. In fact, I’ve spent a lot of time reading comic books and watching films, and daydreaming that I myself was a mutant. But I would never really dream of being this kind of mutant. And I don’t think the comic books or films would have been a big hit with the kids. At least not when I grew up. I don’t really know what the kids of today think, but it would surprise me if they dream of having fish heads.
What would a suitable super power be?
Sample
We were playing around in Photoshop and were going to write some text, so we had to pick a font. I got a popup menu with a list of fonts and Michaela went I quite like the Sample one.
