money in the bank

last thursday me and david went up to karlstad to arrange a table hockey tournament for an it company and some of their clients. we've done it a couple of times before so it's fairly run-of-the-mill by this point, a lot of pleasant and very little nervous. everything went smooth and the people there seemed to have lots of fun and were very appreciative of us. included in the deal for us were hotel room, free food, free travel to and from karlstad, a bit of money and free tickets to the hockey game that evening, färjestad-mora. it's a fair bit of travel for me for the money i get, but i still really like the fact that i'm earning money just by being good at table hockey. and every year, we talk about designing a package for companies for kick-off events and company promotion events and the like, how much money we could earn and how much everybody would like it, and then nothing happens. of course we've realized this, so now we also talk about how nothing happens. perhaps this is the year it all will happen, but i seriously doubt it. i suppose we get one step closer to saying "this is ridiculous! let's just put this package together, it'll take an hour!" every year, but it might still be a few years away from happening. then we'll be millionaires.

millionaires!

(sorry, black adder III moment there)

moving on, i had the trip back to lund all planned out in my head: leave karlstad early, spend the day in gothenburg sauntering around, have some coffee and possibly buy myself something nice because it was my birthday. alas, it was not to be. on the morning in karlstad, i felt nauseous, but thought it would pass once i had some breakfast. alas, it did not. instead experienced increased nausea and threw up several times on the train down. the gag reflex is one mighty reflex, that breakfast came back up at a remarkable velocity. i can't help but be a little bit impressed. needless to say, of my chillaxin' day in gothenburg became naught, instead replaced by a vomitin' day at a bookshop, where i alternated between a wooden bench and the toilet. a supremely badly timed case of getting sick, although i supposed it would have been even worse if it had happened on the train up. still, getting sick far away from home when you have two three-hour train trips ahead of you, with a six-hour sauntering stop in the middle, has got to count as bad timing. also, on my birthday! hand over the martyr points! i'm still not feeling great, but a lot better. i might get my ass to school tomorrow and continue the data structuring and graph generating.

rachel told me yesterday that there is a studio ghibli museum. a quick web search later and i located it to mitaka, a tokyo suburb that i haven't heard of before (hey - we can't all be harajuku and get our name printed on hoodies from a swedish clothing chain). i believe this might be the ULTIMATE museum. if you don't believe me just look at some of the pictures on this page. a totoro dvd player! totoro in the ticket booth! a cat bus that you can play with! a damn sweet entrance! and more! it just seems to capture the spirit and feeling of the ghibli movies so well. and since pretty much all of the movies are really, really good, by extension the museum is as well. if you are not familiar with hayao miyazaki or studio ghibli, i suggest you watch the following movies: princess mononoke, my neighbor totoro and spirited away. actually, you could go with any movie they have released, i can't think of a single one that i don't like. they are japanese anime movies and very different from 'conventional' animated movies like the ones from disney, but that doesn't mean they're difficult, pretentious or inaccessible. just that they tell very different stories and sometimes in a different way. they're not crammed with stereotypes, the only funny character is not the weird sidekick and the main character is often a young girl. i could go on, but really, you should watch a movie or two. they're extremely likable.