Here are some of the most important events and dates of my life.
I hate being photographed (you can see why!), so there aren't many photos of me, but the few ones available (that are publishable) are here, along with the background story. What prompted this section was Radio Stockholm who wanted to see what the idiot they were chatting with every wednesday looked like. And since they have photos of themselves, I thought it only fair.
But when I started thinking about it, I realised how nice it would be to have a kinda "biography on-line", so here it is!
(note: I'm not going to get into my romantical life, since that's probably none of your business!)

And at their third attempt my parents finally gave birth to the ultimate guy - me :) Since I love breaking the mold, I've avoided going to Scotland in recent years (although I broke that tradition in 2001), and I sure as hell won't marry any Paul.

Other than that, my parent's have done their best trying to help less fortunate children by being a support family and taking on some foster kids. The three "regular" foster kids right now is Susanna, Linus and Linda. Then there is a whole line of kids who are just visiting odd-weekends and stuff, but I guess they deserve some mentioning - Jenny & Ulrika (sisters), Josefine & Jasmine (also sisters), Joakim & Christoffer (brothers). (I still call "Joakim" my brother... don't know why, we're not related, and he only lived with us for a couple of months, but if you ever hear me talking about "my brother", he's it)
You should see the reaction when I'm trying to explain this family to people, and I got some weird comments after Joakim had worked at MinDator and I didn't know his last name (at first) !

GENESIS (also the year ABBA won the Eurovision Song Contest with "Waterloo")
Sometime in late August, early September this year I was conceived. I haven't asked my parents (Lars-Åke & Jean) about it, since that's one of those things you don't wanna know about your parents!

Birth of a new... boy
This is the year I popped out. 2nd of June at about 5 am. to be more precise. The glorious event happened at Södertälje Hospital, which is the city where we lived in for five more years.
Only thing I remember of those five years is an accident I had with my bike that resulted in a trip to the previously named hospital, and I still blame Anne-Charlotte for it. But I've paid it back when I broke some bone in her hand 15 years later.

Fresh start #1 / Moving for the first time
This year, my parents decided an apartment wasn't big enough for the family (we were 3 kids so who can blame them), so we moved out to a small... I don't know if "village" is overstating it? Anyway, it was called Sorunda and it's about 4 metric miles south of Swedens capitol, Stockholm.
It was a very good move, except it was in the middle of nowhere, but as oppose to living in Södertälje, there we had a huge backyard, forrest and nice neighbours. Great place for a kid to grow up.
My parents became friends (and inevitably, so did I) with the Hultberg family, a friendship still going strong. This picture was taken in London -84 (I think) when they saw the legendary "Chess"-concert, a musical I've learned to appreciate thanx to my mother.
I found a friend in Richard Holén, a guy three years older living in the same street. If I had a dollar for every Star Wars action figure or piece of lego we went through, I'd be a rich man!
And had I known Star Wars would be back in 1998 I would have saved them! Anyway, his kid-sister, Marina, became a very good friend with my sister. You can see a photo of her later.

Operation Removal
Set the world on fire : This year I had an operation to remove... something. Because I was such a brave little guy (although I was unconcious) my parents bought me this huge (hey, give me a break, I was six years old, back then most things were huge!) LEGO set - a firestation.

Start of school
This year I began school in Sorunda. It was pretty uneventful.
Except when we tried doing some activity for the parents to come and see. Through democratic voting we decided to do a circus-like show. And when we decided on what events would make up this circus I came up with the brilliant idea of a super-mega-strong weight-lifter guy. So what was my reward for that brilliant thinking... I got to be the dude standing in shorts on stage in front of all the parents. Sure it's fun to talk about now, but it wasn't fun back then. And even worse, my mother had to take a picture of it!
I also did what most boys in this age and time did - joined the local soccer team. I was the goally, a very fierce one at that. There wasn't one shot I didn't try to block. I emphasize tried!

Christmas carol
As every year, we got a bunch of kids together and went around the block singing nice Christmas carols and stuff during S:t Lucia, a great traditional holiday with great food. Here is a picture of it. I'm the guy in red playing Santas little helper. The girl to the left is Helena Hultberg (who's now a professional dancer and babe-certified), in front of me is Lina Hultberg (and if it wasn't for the fact I basically grew up next door to her I could babe-certify her too) and to the right is my sister, Anne-Charlotte.

Friends I didn't know I had
This year something great happened to me.
Up 'till this point in my life I didn't have many friends, except Richard, and I wasn't the most popular guy in school (or even class).
Anyway, it was in fourth grade when we decided yet again to do a show for our parents. This time we decided to do a stage/musical performance. And through random chance (i.e lottery) I got the male lead in this play, the Mayor of a city taken over by mice. I took the assignment seriously and memorized the script in 2 days.
Unfortunately I got sick alot during the preparations for the show, so my teacher called me up and said I was fired. Instead, I got to play a non-speaking role (Mouse # 6)
Naturally it hurt, but when I came for the next rehersal he had a change of heart. It seemed my classmates didn't wanna do the play unless I got to play the lead! I know, it doesn't sound like much, but it felt really good having that support. It also added to the preassure of doing a good performance (and if I remeber correctly, I sucked, but atleast I have "stage experience"), and I also got my name printed in the local newspaper, Nynäsposten.

Where we any good ? : This year, our soccerteam did... something, 'cause we got diplomas and an award.

Moving for the second time
My parents along with the Hultberg family decided to buy some land and build two new houses. And so we did.
After alot of delays and electrical problems we moved into this huge house, which was nicely located right next to a lake.
Unfortunately, it was even more in the middle of nowhere than Sorunda (this place is called Lyngsta).
I think it was about here I dumped the soccer and picked up tennis instead. And I came second in the local championship. Naturally, there is a story to that too, but I'll save that for later. I also started 7th grade this year, but that's something I'd rather forget.

Booring birthday
My 14th birthday Sucked, with a capitol S. The focus wasn't on me, but the democracy movement seiging the Tian Nan Men square in Beijing. As everyone recalls, this attempt at a revolution was squashed with brute force. That's a nice memory of one's birthday.
Since it was around my birthday, this triggered my interest in human rights. Some of my E-mail buddies have noticed this interest when I sometimes have one of the UN Decleration of Human Rights as a tagline in my E-mails. And naturally I'm a member of Amnesty International.

I went religious
This year I did another thing most kids did, I did the Confirmation thingy (I don't know what it's called in English) in the Swedish Church. It was an attempt to see what all the noise was about.
Unfortunately, the only good thing to come out of this (except that I met lots of nice girls) was a very nice relationship with Sorundas priest, Knut Fischer, the coolest religiously envolved person ever!
Here is a picture of us. (don't ask me how, but they got me holding the cross).
Also in this picture is Jan Mattsson, Joakim Hägvall, Henrik Andersson and Johan Forsman who was at the time my best friends. Come to think of it, I guess they still are (not counting friends from work). You'll see more of them later.

First graduation & first job.
And so we graduated from ninth grade. Some on the people in this picture I'd been going to school with for nine years, but now it was time to go our separate ways.
This photo was taken outdoors, in the blazing sun in the middle of May. But we were so cool back then we had to have a T-shirt, sweater AND leather jackets. By the way, I still have the silly hat.
A tradition was to have stripes of cloth for people to write small messages on. I also have those, and the messages are still intact!
It was bitter-sweet, my 3 years in this school was the worst of my life, but as I've said, I had gone to school with some of these people for 9 years and unfortunately I lost contact with most of them.
I'm not gonna go into details about everyone, but three of the people in this picture I consider true and great friends that I spent alot of time with. First it's the cool dude standing up in the far left, Henrik Andersson. Also the guy lying down in the far left, Stefan Nilsson, who I spent most recess' with. Then it's the tall guy standing third (left obviously, since third right is me!), Johan Forsman. I still don't know what he's actually doing with his life.
Nostalgic note - two of the girls in this picture I had a slight crush on. In second grade it was Mia Flodén (she's the one sitting between our two teachers lying down), but at the time this picture was taken it was Anna Danielsson. Kind of coincidene I'm standing right behind her. Or not :)

My sister Anne-Marie got me my first job this summer. It was in a fastfood restaurant (Clock in Årsta). Ok, so it wasn't the best job, but it helped me finance all my computer purchases. And if I do say so, I turned out to be the meaniest chef in the restaurant. Unfortunately, burgers are just about the only thing I can do in the kitchen.
(this picture of my sister Amy was taken in winter -98, and the guy behind her is her husband Paul Murray)

After the summer break (mostly spent working in Clock) I started 10th grade, which in Swedish is "Gymnasiet". I chose the second hardest course, technical. Very theoretical, I don't think alot of people (including myself) thought I'd do all 3 years. But oh how I love to surprise people.
The school was Nynäshamns Gymnasium, pretty decent school and as far as teachers go, they were OK. As you'll see, I ended up in the same class as Henrik Andersson, Jan Mattsson and Joakim Hägvall. That triad can be very fun to party with, which I did and you can see the result under the year 2000.
And although most of the people from the photo described above went to the same school, I lost touch with most of them :(

My other dear sister, Anne-Charlotte, had just made my mother happy by giving birth to Nicholas.
This picture was taken right before X-mas. There's also a really, REALLY, bad homevideo clip on the topic "How bad can a guy be with kids".

Booring year
This year was pretty booring. Except for one major event, but I'll leave that to your imagination.

New interest ?
My parents thought I was spending way too much time sitting around with my computer or watching TV that they told me to get some interest that required some actual work.
So I did - PAINTBALL! And since it was their idea, they bought me this nice protection mask. Doesn't look like much, but it was the best mask available. And by the way, this is not a fashion statement.

Second Graduation and Second fresh start.
I did it. Three years of trying to learn spanish, chemistry, math and stuff I graduated!
So this is the graduation photo. In the photo is, again, Jan Mattsson (above me) and Henrik Andersson (beside Jan).
Here's a graduation photo featuring only me.
The person not many people thought would have finished these 3 years (except for me), is the boored guy sitting in far left, Nicklas Sandman. He used to be somewhat of a bully and wasn't at all famous for academic achievments, but he too managed to graduate.
Way to go!
So what do I do after this? I apply for one more year! This time it was at a school in Stockholm (Thorildsplans Gymnasium).
Not one single person at this school knew me, which resulted in me sporting the "mysterious transfer student noone knows"-attitude.

Third graduation
I don't know if it was that new attitude or the topics we studied (computers, what else?), but I aced this one year which earned my a nice engineering degree (of the lowest form, but atleast I got one!). So what do I do after doing a total of 13 years in school? I apply for 2 more!
So after yet another summer at the Clock restaurant, I moved down to Alvesta (a pretty booring town) to live in a dormitory along with some 20 other students and studied Computer Science at Högskolan in Växjö (the school was later updated to a University).
This time it proved too much for me. After four months and flunking every test I got the message that this wasn't for me, and spent my time and money having fun, but after X-mas I decided to start looking for a job instead. Some of the few good things about this failed attempt at becoming well-educated was a short but oh so intense romance with a girl in the same dormitory, and later a platonic friendship with Anna M. Lundgren. This picture was taken in summer -98. And Yes, that's me sitting behind her. Unfortunately, we grew apart getting too de-similar interests and priorities. As you can see, I'm laughing in that picture. But I'm covering my mouth. There's a story to that too! I've had braces for four years during my teens so I spent four years trying to cover my mouth. And now it just comes naturally :(

And after X-mas came New Years Eve. I don't know how much I had to drink, and I don't remember the joke, but I do remember I had a blast, which this picture shows.

My first real job

After X-mas I went down to Alvesta. Not to continue my academics, but to have a little college-fun, and I also started sending out job applications. It took me two attempts before I got an interview, and fortunately for me the guy interviewing me, Jan-Olof Röstlund, gave me a break (I had no experience and not that good education) and hired me.
So I started working at a computer company called MinDator. I started off in the Configuration Department, which turned out to be more fun than I thought. Mostly because of the guy I was working with, Chribba, who is too cool to even care about being cool.
I also quit the Clock-job, because that restaurant was torn down and replaced by a McDonalds.

New friends
The biggest event this year was when "Star Trek - First Contact" was released in May this year, and lots of Trekkers showed up for the premiere. One of those was Eva. My first impression was that she was just a nice friendly woman. Then I realised it wasn't first impression because we had already corresponded through E-mail for some time, but never actually met.
And now, more than four years later, we're great friends, even doing the Beer festival together :)
Also, this is the year when we recruited another guy for our department at work, Jonas Westin. He turned out to be quite the party animal, and if it wasn't for him or Eva I really wouldn't "get out much".

Year of happenings
This started out as a slow year, but turned out to be one of the most eventful ever.
First I was so impressed with the new DVD standard, I started working up a real home cinema system.

Then in April, our boss (Gilbert Wolf) thought the company was doing so great that everyone went on vacation to Greece for 5 days.
That trip was memorable to say the least, although I had a slight accident - I fell asleep in the sun on the boat, and I could hardly walk afterwards 'cause my legs were so burnt it made any serious partying that night impossible. During this trip I set an all time record for "cheapest vacation ever". 60 SEK ($8.50) ! 5 days in Greece and partying atleast 4 of those, and all for just $8.50 !!
Unfortunately, at the same time my father celebrated his 50th birthday. Here you can see him relaxing with my mother (how serene do they look!!). It was a really tough choice between going on this "all expenses paid" vacation or celebrating my father. Hope he forgives me.

And during the summer, Stockholm Trekkers, had a DS9 Festival in Stockholm.
As a PR stunt, I was interviewed on Radio Stockholm by Alexander Norén. The guys at work thought it would be real funny to MP3-encode it, so here it is. As you can hear, I'm very nervous at first, but after the break I was a little more relaxed. Ok, it's not much, but atleast I did it!

So after the summer ended, the guy (Chribba) in charge of our department got a promotion - Network administrator.
So, I got his job as boss over the Configuration Department. As part of the promotion, I got a one week paid trip to Kenya.
"Kenya? Who would wanna go to Kenya?". I didn't, but what tha hell, it was paid and a chance to get away. And man am I happy I went, the trip was unbelievable. If you have a chance to go - "Just do it!"
Their capital, Nairobi, wasn't that much too see and we only stayed there for one night. And that night I was introduced to their very nice (and cheap!) beer called Tusker. Highly recommended.
After that we spent 4 days out in the Masai Mara safari, touring around seeing elephants and lions. Sure I've seen elephants and lions before, but not in the wild. And believe me, you're not so tough standing 2 meters away from a lion!
When that was over we went out to the coast, Mombasa. There we just laid in the sun, drinking tusker and enjoying doing nothing whilst getting paid. And guess how much I spent on this trip? 700 SEK (about $95), and that includes a whiskey for my father!

"It was the day before Mothers Day, and all through the house not a creature was stirring", except for the daughter and son trying to fix a surprise cake for our dear mother. But to make sure not to wake her in the middle of the night, I had to mix the dough in the laundry room. But I couldn't even do that without atleast trying to look cool in the picture.

During fall of this year, I got interested in Formula 1. I remember it well, it was the race at Spa, the one with the HUGE crash, and the one when Schumacher wanted to kick Coulthard's ass so bad that the mechanics had to hold him back! And that interest grew with time.

This year we also managed to do something very, very unusual. We almost managed to put the whole family together in one photo. That's quite an achievment, believe me!
Here goes, from top left - My father Lars-Åke, holding Anne-Charlotte+Paul's youngest son Alexander, my mother Jean, foster kid Jenny, another foster kid Josefin, Paul Murray holding their (at the time) youngest daughter Rebecka, the man beside him requires no intro then there's Anne-Marie holding her eldest daughter Stephanie.
Sitting (or crouching) from left - Foster kid Sanna, foster kid Jasmine, foster kid Ulrika, foster kid Linus and Anne-Charlotte holding their eldest son Nicholas.

Moving for the third time
That was it, I couldn't take it anymore. Living in Lyngsta and cummuting to work took a total of 4 hours every day.
So I just had to get a place closer to Stockholm. Also, I couldn't live with my parents when I celebrated my 24th birthday, so in February this year, I got an apartment in Visättra (about 1.5 metric miles from Stockholm).
And by autumn, our big boss at work realised I must be tired of doing the same job for over 3 years that I got another promotion. And that promotion was "Info- and Webmaster" of our E-commerce site.

Another funny thing that happened this year was when my sister convinced me to go with her to the annual Beer festival in Stockholm.
Don't know why she desperately wanted to bring me along, but I realized that between her, her husband (Paul, the guy in beige), her best friend Kay (the woman in black) and Kay's brother (the guy in white pants and blue shirt), I might be the odd man out. So I brought my friend, Eva (the woman in jeans (the story with her not being dressed up is a long one, but it was partially my fault. Ok, more than partially).
The before picture : This is how we looked when the night began. And we have no idea who the guy behind us was.
Having fun yet : By now we had done one round of the complex and was getting very cheerful. (Haha)
Where's Stoff : A good advice when going out with me is if you loose me, go to the Blackjack table! This was one of my luckiest evenings over there, made some 1800 SEK. And I felt bad about it - firstly 'cause the croupier was really, REALLY, hot. So hot we weren't allowed to take her photo. Or number. Secondly, I neglected my company. but she's forgiven me.
Too many drinks : By now we had found our favorite places and drinks and was going very fast with two glasses at the same time.
The after picture : Ok, now we where way too happy and cheerfull so we went home.

As many of you might remember, this New Year Eve was something special for most people, me included. I had the most wonderful evening (the kind when you put your phone off-hook, which annoyed my family) with the most wonderful woman. No more comment about that.

Another promotion and radio appearence
Ok, so 2000 came along, without the much feared computer havocs. But Chribba, my previosuly mentioned computer master, quit his job at MinDator. As usual I was asked to take over his work as Network Administrator, and ofcourse I accepted.

This is also the year I became friends with the people at Radio Stockholm. "People" being Tomas and Malin who hosted the best radioshow ever - "Städdagen". And this year's edition of the swedish show "Villa Medusa" featured a guy, Johan a.k.a 'Godzilla', that was just too hilarious to be true. So when he was scheduled to be interviewed in Radio Stockholm I got a VIP invitation to sit in the panel. For about 22 minutes or so we were on the air talking about everything from the LoveLetter virus to youth anarchists, and that guy had some very laughable comments about life. The first minutes were pretty funny, but then this truck driver came in and almost took over. But it was still fun meeting the guy, a true original!
It took sometime to get it down on MP3, but here it is. Only in swedish though. To get it down in size I sampled it in Mono and only 64 kbps but it's still 10 MB, hope you can stand it.

This year I also celebrated my 25th birthday. (Shit! This means I actually gotta grow up!) To celebrate this, everyone from work, my sister + husband and some of my friends (Henrik, Janne & Jocke that I went to school with, Steve who's a loud american friend of mine and my sister, and Marina, another friend of my sister) went on a 24 hour cruise to Finland. On trips like these, about 15% are there to actually go to Finland, the rest are just there to party. And man did we party! We partied so much that the camera reel with all photos was rendered unusable. If it was accidentally or if someone wanted it destroyed, I leave that up to you!
Anyway, the reel for "the day after" came out just fine. And here they are, with a small description. All of them are in 800*600 (or less) JPG format.
Morningstars : Marina, Steve and Paul didn't suffer any day-after syndromes so they look all kinds of shiny, happy people. Not me though, I was sleeping.
Gang : After I did wake up, we went straight to the bar and got it going again. Please note how many glasses there are on the table ! Our first order was 2 Vodka + Redbull, EACH ! From left going clockwise it's Steve, Jocke, Sleepy Stoff and Henrik. Janne was still sleeping now I think.
Gang again : We continued sitting in that bar for one very good reason. Women! There were lots and lots of women going past us (there was a stairway right behind me). And we were not descrete in showing our appreciation for good looking women, because we applauded at most of them.
Non alchohol please : After a while, Jocke decided it might be better to switch to normal Coca-Cola, so he did. And he looks happy about it.
What did I do the night before? : One of the great mysteries of this entire cruise is "where did stoff go?". Actually, it's a common problem when I'm our partying - I tend to disappear. This time I have the best excuse possible - I hooked up ! Since I don't like talking about my adventures in the sack (especially if I was drunk) I tried not telling anyone. But after getting the third degree and cross-examination I had to tell 'em what happened.
What's happening : I don't know what Henke tried looking like in this picture, but it's funny anyhow !
The women arrive : The two women we brought couldn't let us be alone and had to ruin it. When we ignored them they had to take pictures of themselves. Here's a better picture of Marina after she'd changed for afternoon clothes.
Lunch : When Janne finally did wake up it was time for lunch. Unfortunately for him, his stomach didn't think it was time to eat so he just sat there looking at the food. I guess I was the only one who really took advantage of the buffé !
Second bar : After that lunch we went to the other bar which was more like a pub. Paul felt right at home and started smoking. I think it was Marina who put up her feet in this shot.
Who, me ? : This is Kenneth, one of the few guys from work who got 'caught on camera. Sitting in the left is Jonas, also from work and with his back against the camera is Daniel, a guy who's engagement I almost broke up the day before - I answered his mobile and thought it was his mother in-law and started ... missbehaving. In fact it was Daniels step-mother. She had a sense of humor and just laughed about it, but Daniel was pretty scared.
Time to go home : This summons up the entire cruise pretty good - Me looking very, VERY happy. This is what you get after a couple of beers, Redbull-Vodkas, shots of Jägermeister and after having a great time doing my best not growing up.

I also went to the Stockholm Beerfestival. I was accompanied by Eden (the man in black), my father (the dude with mustache), my sister (who was driving so she didn't drink anything with alcohol), her husband Paul, Per (a friend from work) and his megababe girlfriend, Elisabeth.
Pic 1 : This is just when we started out after finding eachother in the gigantic place with the huge crowd.
Pic 2 : This is my father having a conversation with Per, probably work related so I made sure to stay out of it. Don't like talking work during these events.
Pic 3 : This is eden looking very... weird. Don't know what he was doing when my sister took this pic, looks like he wasn't.
Pic 4 : Now we got the party started after doing atleast one round around the building, so now we went back to the places we liked.
Pic 5 : After constantly drinking you just have to take a break and eat, so we did. If you can call this eating.
Pic 6 : My father, me and my sober sister. It's her can of Pepsi, not mine! I don't drink Pepsi, especially not when I'm surrounded by beer!

Year of fun
This year I decided to just have fun! I always try to have fun, but this year I wanted to do more than usual.
I started the year off pretty great! My sister (Amy, the one i Scotland) celebrated her 30th birthday in mid - January. She expected something major from her husband or family, and she was kinda depressed when it came and passed, and nothing.
And so two days afterwards me and my other sister (AC) just popped up in her livingroom. Just like that, out of the blue, we popped in!
She was extremely surprised, but none the less, happy to see us! We spent 4 days over there with her and her family and we had fun every one of them!
Here are some pics :
AC + Lauryn , the youngest daughter in the Murray family.
AC trying to entertain both Jack (the only son) and Rebecka.
Assault on uncle Kristoffer !
AC trying to dance with the kids, but failing so...
Amy has to pitch in to make it work.
Lauryn had a "bad hair day"
Me and Jack being surprised by a photographer.
Me and Lauryn trying to read a book. But failing miserably.
Me trying to play dead. But what can one do when Rebecka forces your eyelids open?
Me and Stephanie trying to solve puzzles and crosswords and stuff.
Rebecka being very happy and cute.
Stephanie also being very happy and cute.
They were very cute and well behaved, all of them!

Back in Sweden - I had to fix a little computer problem with the Strachans computer. And Paul knew exactly how to make me feel right at home - serving beer after beer. This is the "pre-drinking" picture, and here is the "post-drinking" picture.

This summer the company, Min Dator, was doing poorly. So we merged with another computer company, Pulsen Integration. Most people got to keep their jobs, but there was no need for another webmaster or network administrator. But with my experience they thought I'd be a good PC technician / consultant. Only problem was a drivers license. As part of my plan not to grow up I haven't bothered to get one. Now I had to! Took three months (two of which was just waiting), but I did it. My first assignment was as a consultant at SAS, sweden's largest airliner. The work itself was kinda booring, but it was really funny working there so it was ok.

The work was kinda slow, so I started writing a Natalie Portman fansite. And it turned out so nice that we adapted it and re-wrote the entire NataliePortman.com site! So now I'm apparently in charge of all HTML programming on that site. But I'm not complaining.

Then it happened. My year of fun came to an abrupt end. I didn't feel so good one tuesday morning so I called in sick. I sat home alone in my apartment playing Grand Tourismo 3 all day long. I'm the kind of person who tries to stay up to date with the news and events, either through the web or radio, but not today. This day I was completely isolated. Until I turned on to the 6 o'clock news and saw the World Trade Centers collapse. During the next 9 hours I couldn't stop watching the TV, it just seemed so totally unbelievable!!
A couple of weeks later a SAS plane crashed in Italy. And that caused some major financial problems for SAS, and they had to cut back on everything, including consultants. So it was back to HQ for me. For a month anyway, then I was sent to the next project - huge installation project at the biggest law firm in Sweden. The work itself was pretty standard, but the biggest plus was the women. I'm not only talking hot chicks - I'm talking classy, beatiful women. Me like!

In early December, the Technical Museum here in Stockholm started an exhibition about "Trek-tech". As a part of that, we (as in Stockholm Trekkers) were asked to have some sort of activity. So on December 8th we had a day of showing a couple of tech-trek episodes and then a panel of experts commenting and answering questions. And guess which two were the experts of Star Trek? Me and Eden of course. And some people came in uniforms, so did we. Guess which uniform? Here's a picture that may give you a clue.

This year ended on a high note! A friend of mine got sick of me being single so he fixed me up with a pretty nice woman. We had our first date the weekend just before New Years. That date went pretty well, and I was invited to spend new years with her at her place. Who can say no to that offer? Even if I knew then what I know now, I would have gone for it.

Year of loss
After a very pleasent New Years, we agreed next date would be at my place. Big mistake! After seing my collection of pics of beautiful women on my wall, and seing how much work I do for NataliePortman.com , she insinuated that I'd have to give all of that up if we were to be a couple. A woman demanding that after just a week is not one that I'm comfortable with, so we split up. No resentment or anything, just difference of opinion. That was the first, and easiest, loss.

Then came the loss of the most influential writer ever - Astrid Lindgren. She wrote so many beautiful stories, so many great books and got the imagination going for millions of kids! I loved her work, like "Mio min Mio". Even hearing songs from some of her books made me cry. And they were tears of joy. And now she's gone.

After that, it was time for the biggest loss I've ever suffered. On February 25th, my best friend Eden died. This guy meant more to me than I ever could give him credit for, and life will never be the same without him. Naturally, during those difficult times when you lose someone that close to you, it prompts all kinds of thoughts. Here's a page with all entries in my 'Diary' from those three difficult weeks, including the eulogy I gave at his beautiful funeral and some picture from it. The rest of the year was basically spent working as much as I could, mostly at the lawfirm (Vinge).

2003

Rocking all over the world
This year started out as boring as any year. Working as a computer techie at different firms but in april I found out I was gonna be one of the techies that was gonna travel all over the world visiting the swedish embassies and updating their computer systems! At first I didn't wanna sign up because I'm too much a habit-creature to even try something as big as that. But after getting my ass kicked by friends and family I signed up. So after a few days introduction at the state department they sent us on our way. The embassies were split by 6 teams and I was the computer geek for Team # 1 ofcourse. I started off with an introduction trip to Guatemala to learn the ropes by Micke (one of the few techies that actually worked for the government). Then I got home to sweden and slept a whole day until it was time to go to Singapore. After that it was Hungary and then Bulgaria. Then we were suppose to have a summer break but that didn't last long since the embassy in Buenos Aires (Argentina) wanted to be upgraded and I "had to" go there. Then it was time for Poland, Belgium and Nigeria. But when I came home after Nigeria we were off to scotland to celebrate my sister's 30th birthday. After 3 days of beering and just eating crap food we went back home. But I felt horrible, like food poisoning. And it didn't get any better so the day before I was to go off to Congo I checked into the hospital for the first time in a long, long time. They didn't find anything wrong me and sent me on my way. But when I got down there it got so bad I didn't think I was gonna make it back home so I had to go to a hospital there too. They gave me some pills and just hoped I'd make it back to sweden. Which I did and as it turned out I'd gotten salmonella. Not in any african country, but in Scotland! So I took 2 weeks sickleave (first time!) which meant I couldn't go to Jordan which I really, REALLY wanted to!

That is basically what 2003 was all about for me, travelling and learning to appreciate life!

2004

Keep on rocking!
January was like any other January, working a little bit here and there until I started travelling again in february. This time it was all the way over to Helsinki (Finland)! After that down to Ankara (Turkey), over to Denmark just as spring started and then down to the best one yet - Rome! When it was decided I was gonna go there my friend Ricki booked tickets for him and his wife to go there for that weekend and I spent all weekend getting a personal guided tour of Rome. It doesn't get better, does it? But then it was time for the last one - Hague (Holland). Only thing that made that one fun was the free drinks in the hotel bar! So by June it was all over. All 100 embassies had been done but I still have the memories and photos from all the trips and I would so have hated myself if I had turned it down! You'd think I'd get depressed over this? But I didn't really have time since in August we kicked off the first real Star Trek convention in swedish history! And guest of honor was Tim Russ! Since I had access to the biggest car and Tim brought his family with him I got to be his personal driver for all four days he was here. And the man was really funny and entertaining. After that it was back to work which turned out to be really slow because after this government job there wasn't that much to do at work. At all! So I spent the rest of the year just "getting by". The year ended on a downer however when I got a weird headache around Christmas time that last for a long long time and noone really knew where it came from or where it went...

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