>You are who you befriend

>If that is true, I am a loud voice in the blogosphere, a many times published journalist and writer, a reseacher, a traveller and a radio host. Let’s start with Nadja, she is a lawyer and a writer, mostly commenting on foreign issues from a Swedish perspective or issues a pluralistic Sweden has to deal with immediately like religious schools.

My fair trade heroine Emilie is constructing Bombay as we write during an summer course at the univerity there. Peter I believe is writing a book on pension reforms in Sweden. Mattias is writing about the process of learning ICT at university level when he is not busy writing articles and media strategies as the head of PhD students in Sweden. Laila is in Paris writing her dissertation on the organizational culture of the OECD concerning development and gender.

My sister Freja is a radio host with the national radio channel P3. My friend Matthew is writing excellent stuff all the time, sometimes it gets published in the Dothan Cronicle.Katrine works with newspaper expressen , but also publish her sharp comments in other publications and on the web, Marta works, except for the Almighty also with magazine Efter Arbetet, Joel with Folkbladet in Norrkoping and Ida, last time I checked worked for Jamtlandstidningen.

Today, Anna a freelance writer together with Petra a poet and academic writer, are launching the first ever queer club in our hometown, Visby as “entertainment, business idea and political statement”.

I am so proud of you all and this is not even an exhaustive list!

In the picture me with some of the above mentioned friends.

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>Click!

> Those of you who know me well have maybe come to know I love taking pictures. I also love showing them to people…unfortunately everyone seems to be really tired after like 10 pictures. Why is that? Anyways, there are a few exceptions to the rule. The most prominent exeption being that when you are travelling people have more patience for watching my pics. That is also why I now have decided to again share with you (ungrateful) people.
The collage was made with picasa and the pictures are also presented – side by side – on my homepage. Click on “photos” and “Tema”.

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>Fever

>

Here we go! I’m opening up the shop again to share my life with you invisibles out there in the virtual world. Once again, the reason is travellning outside of Sweden. This time I go to West Africa and Ghana and the town of Tema, close to the capital Accra. I’ll be working and moving in with my boyfriend. To keep you all coming back here, I will tell you some interesting facts that form the background of my experience:

1. We will be living with my boyfriend’s mother
2. There is an energy crisis in Ghana with much limited power (hope the Internet cafés work!)
3.This is my first expericence of living in a developing country, and I am moving there indefinetely…

…and right now my traveler’s fever is haunting me. Did I remember to go to the bank? Send that form? Invite my friend Kerstin over? Did I pack my books? Send that email to Mr Rispoli?

I know what I did remember. Starting up my blog.

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>On books

>
I was challenged to answer to this survey by blogger/friend Marta. So here we go:

I. A book that changed my life.
My diary.

II. A book I read more than once.
Love in the time of cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. He is making it ALL UP, it is SO obvious that NO love story can EVER unfold like this. At the same time it’s touching and somehow believable.

III. A book I would like to bring to a deserted island.
Probably 100 love sonnets by Pablo Neruda, the pink edition with beautiful and sentimental love poetry in Spanish translated into English on the facing page. Then on my island, I’d learn the Spanish versions daytime by heart, later cry them out into the lonely and very black night and at the same time understand what I was screaming.

IV. A book that made me laugh.
A Rough Guide to Sweden. Jeez, it really gives a person some perspective to read travel books on her own country. This handy guide states that Sweden really just needs two days, one in Stockholm and one in Gothenburg…

V. A book that made me cry.
All the thick ones, ’cos I have separation anxiety (GWTW/Mitchell, Diva/Fagerholm, Anne of Green Gables/Montgomery, A little love song/Magorian)

VI. A book I wish had been written.
A coming of age story taking place in the echoing halls of Uppsala University, some romance at the student clubs called ”nations” and a strong heroine taking her own high road…

VII. A book I wish had not.
Little Birds by Anaïs Nin, a sequel to the wonderful and erotic Delta of Venus that has the quality of a, well, sequel.

VIII. A book I am reading now.
The American Girl by Monika Fagerholm, a Finnish-Swedish writer who makes up a new language for every book she writes, takes some getting used to, but I think the effects of when you just don’t read a persons story, but read their language is powerful (Ett Öga Rött by Hassan Khemiri had a similar effect).

IX. A book I plan to read.
Late in November by Tove Jansson. Aron said it was great and I trust his literary taste.

X. Pass the survey on to other bloggers…
I think that Mamma and Nadja should get it once they start their blogs.

AND SOME EXTRA FOR THE CHEAP SEATS IN THE BACK: A book I give to a friend any day.
The Daughters of Egalia by Gerd Brantenberg. This is how equal rights should be pursued; in a crazy-witty-fantastic literary description of what life would be like if everything was different. I’m just saying – the scene when Rut gives birth in the spotlight on a stage in the Birth Temple before she leaves to go out to celebrate with her friends! I believe in visualizing the absurd. So does Gerd.

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