Yeap, you read that right – I officially regret buying our house. It’s not due to any problems with the house or the building of it. Or the worth versus cost. Because it’s a good house and definitely worth what we paid for it. No, the reason I regret it is that I gave this guy our money!
To summarize – it’s our version of “CBS 60 Minutes” who try to nail “the powers that be” and this time they were after “Älvsbyhus” which is the company building the most houses in sweden per year. And they had 3 families who had their dreams turned into nightmares because of leaky roofs and heavy rain on the day of the assembly but most of all because of “Älvsbyhus” poor post-building customer service. Or lack thereof. When we got into this whole thing we quickly realised one key factor was if it was gonna rain on the day they’d be putting the house together, then we’d be in for a nightmare trip. And we also knew that you get what you pay for and “Älvsbyhus” is the cheapest option out there. But we also figured if they build 1.000 houses per year they kinda must know what they are doing. And we haven’t had any major problems (although we still have four outstanding issues after our inspection but they have promised to take care of it).
But then when you see the segment in “Kalla Fakta” and when they interview Donald Johansson, the CEO of “Älvsbyhus” and the entire thing gave me a terrible feeling of being ripped off. I actually gave my money to this guy!? They make some 150 million swedish crowns per year but his ego and “we are never wrong” mentality stops them from the goodwill factor of fixing these three families nightmares that would’ve cost them a maximum of 1.2 million swedish crowns and saved them from being blacklisted and that PR nightmare that was shown on the TV?! The arrogance, the condescending “you don’t know what you are talking about little girl” towards the journalist.. That f*cking old fart made Göran Persson look like a big care-bear!!
If I had seen this before we signed on I’d never have bought it and I sincerly hope they get alot of “we changed our minds” calls today ’cause a company that has a CEO like that deserves to go out of business. In my opinion.
Then again, if we hadn’t bought that house we wouldn’t be friends with Hanna, Micke and the Westbergs 🙂
You know what job has really gotta suck? Being a politician in the opposition! Because no matter what the other person says, you have to disagree and make them look bad. And women do it really bad and to make it worse, in swedish it doesn’t even just sound lame when the do head-to-head!
Last week there was a debate in swedish TV about the integration of immigrants into swedish society and the oddities that we swedes think are normal. There were two chicks, on being the minister in charge of integration politics in our current government, and one from the opposition. And even though what the first chick said made total sense and was calmly stating facts and figures and stuff the other was doing her best to discredit her and ranting on about the high unemployment that the current government has caused doing the most damage to immigrants and so on and so forth. I don’t know which of them was right and wrong and I’m not sure I care about politics that much to even bother. But I know it’s gotta suck having a job that requires you to disagree what the other person no matter what and to do it in public no less!
Had a very slow, relaxed weekend with alot of movies. Ended with a Christmassy market, overall a very good weekend!
Saw “District 9”. Not sure what to say about it or how I feel… it was an ok story, but a bit even and very graphical and very greasy and dirty. “My Life in Ruins” was the complete opposite, nice, sweet clean fun movie without any major thinking required to understand and appreciate. Then “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past”. Had no idea what kinda movie it was, except it was kinda obvious it would be a version of “A Christmas Carol” and it was. Some funny moments and sweet but oh so predictable and cliche. Had it not been for Michael Douglas and his Hefner-clone character it’d been a waste of time.
And to finish it off we saw “The Hangover”. Best movie of all weekend. Hilarious as hell. No major thinking here either but that’s not a requirement 🙂
Did you see the new “V” series that just got started in the states? I was a big fan of the original when I was a kid because “look at the lasers man!” but even later when I grew up and saw it on DVD and when I got it! I got the reference to nazi germany complete with jugend, the resistance and collaborators and everything. I totally loved it and understood what Kenneth Johnsson was trying to do. And I even saw how it was turned commercial and why he bailed out on the show when it got serialized.
– ANYWAY – he’s back for another attempt! It’s only been one 44 minute episode but so far I don’t like it. I like it as a sci-fi show, definitely, but it has lost the historical references and all of that stuff. Instead we are told (and skip this part if you don’t wanna know, but this is said in the first episode!) that the aliens have always been here and they are the ones to blame for the state of the planet. The idea is that the aliens come here incognito and ruin the planet so when the real spaceships come people see them as saviors because “it can’t get much worse”. Isn’t that a huge let down, blaming aliens for the state of the world today? I thought that was a bit too easy, especially for the americans that again refuse to go along with the eco-treaties with the rest of the western world!! I way prefered the historical references and reminders like that…
Saw “My Sister’s Keeper” yesterday. I know, it’s a “chick-flic” but it’s Helenas birthday so spending two hours in the movies is the least I could do. I mean, she sat through the latest “Star Trek”-movie and “Tron” for me 🙂
Anyway, the movie is about a all american couple who just wants a normal life with a house and happy kids. All goes well until the daughter get’s leukemia. And with lack of donors they create a tailor made daughter that’s completely compatible in every way and use her to make the sister well. Now she’s grown a bit and at 11 the older sister get’s sick again and they need to transplant the younger sister’s kidney and she says “No, no more” and “lawyers up”. There’s a few sidestories (like the neglected son who goes off to do whatever without anyone caring, or the older sister’s lovestory) but it’s mainly about the family and the parents just trying to do what’s right. I though it was gonna be just an emotional piece of garbage that only chicks could like and one year ago I would probably still feel that afterwards. But instead, now that I’m about 4 months away from becoming a father myself, it was difficult not to get emotional and imagine the pain and the struggle of everyone. Because one of this things it did good was to show the story from everyone’s point of view. Although they did their best to make the mother look like the villain at the same time you knew she wasn’t, she was just doing what she thinks is right. And one thing they also did was to go to the extremes – extreme happiness, extreme sorrow, extreme this and that, they really pushed that. And it was hard not to cry at certain things, like the beach-scene! Only one thing I found off was Thomas Dekker and Sofia Vassilieva as a couple knowing age difference (which was only 5, thought it was more)
If you think you can take an emotional roller coaster ride like that and drop a tear or two then go and see it!