A friend sent me this quote today: "Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming—WOW—What a Ride!" ~Anonymous

Words to live by, for sure.

We had such a nice day yesterday, but not what most people would consider a true Valentine's Day. I guess when you get older, nice is enough, huh? Lars-Göran is very much opposed to the Americanisation of Swedish culture. Apparently, this All Heart's Day has only been going on here for about the last decade, and is really pushed by the chocolate-makers and florists, of course. I have to agree with him really too. First of all, pushing a new holiday to sell stuff makes me sick. Secondly, I never did care for having one day a year when you're supposed to buy over-priced red roses ($50 and up a dozen, let's get real), for the most part pretty bad chocolates (a box of Red Roses Chocolates is NOT good chocolate in my book) and completely over-priced cards with somebody else's expressions of what passes for love and passion. If you can't show the person(s) you love that you love them in a lot of ways throughout the year, then screw doing it on the 14th of February.

We had a nice lay-in yesterday, surrounded by books and good coffee. The sun was shining and temperatures about 3 degrees above freezing, so we walked down to the bay to check out the ice skating.



This is the same bay where our boat is moored. As you can see, the ice is at least several centimeters thick. It's always funny to see the sea frozen over. You would think that the sea would freeze in ripples or be uneven, but it's quite clean and smooth.



I don't think these were locals as this is not a very long bay. If they were locals, they'd know to head further along Strandvägen to the bay we were in the other day, where you could skate for several kilometres. I'm far too chicken to stand on the ice, but Lars-Göran does it and in fact he has used the ice to his advantage, by standing on it to easily wash the hull of the boat.



Now there's a sight you'd never see at an Australian yacht club! There's something rather god-like about "walking on water".

While spring is certainly on the way, there is still a lot of snow lying around in places. For example, if you wanted to sit for a bit and enjoy the sunshine on a park bench, then you'd be out of luck!

I love the way the snow piles up like that. It is quite soft snow as the temperatures have risen and it's about to melt, but it still looks so wintery and pretty.

Here's a link that a found a while back and which is rather interesting: the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, which allows you to view old versions of a website.

I wonder how they do it though, do they keep a cache of every single available website?? They do have 11 billion pages in their archive...

And while browsing I came across this website. I swear I have nothing to do with it...

On a more serious note I saw a program on tv called Billiga människor. If anyone in Sweden wants to see a repeat of it, watch SVT2 on Sunday, February 29th at 2pm. It is a program worth seeing. It's about the many people living here in Sweden illegally and the plight they face as people without rights, without the possibility of improving their lives - and in the face of the Swedish authorities denial that they even exist. Sometimes I get cynical about this claim that Sweden makes about being "the world's conscience" when they can be so blind to what is going on in their own country.

Sweden has the least humane treatment of illegal immigrants in all of the EU. It is one of the few countries that denies school to the children of these people--who had no control over the forces that have put them where they are, and offer no health care.

I was saddened by the program. I long to feel totally at home somewhere and often find myself thinking of some other place or time wherever I am. Perhaps it's a curse of being an expat that I just have to learn to live with. But, I have citizenship of one of the richest and most democratic countries in the world and have a permit to live and work and receive health care and education and most benefits in another free and safe country. But these people aren't wanted anywhere. At best they get shuffled from a lengthy fruitless asylum-seeking in one country to asylum-seeking in another, at worst they get sent back to the nightmare they left back home. So they hide, do their best to be invisible.

At the end of the program they showed what has become of the people they interviewed. In one case of a man who was being deported the next day, the UN stepped in and saved him from being sent back to where he had overwhelming evidence that he had been tortured and could be tortured to death upon return. Swedish authorities are now retrying that case.

I get the feeling that one thing Swedes really pride themselves on is their humanity and focus on human rights. I don't want to belittle that, Swedes have been a strong force even for a small country. But I can't help but wonder if that humanity is extended only if humanity doesn't get too close?