I have just come home from Stockholm, where I have spent the last weekend.
EFS, Evangeliska Fosterlandsstiftelsen has had its 150-year celebration during their yearly conference, and this year the conference was in Stockholm. The conference is still going on, and will not end before Tuseday.
Anyway, I and my friends from Bäckbykyrkan i Västerås were asked to play during the children’s conference (activities for the children while their parents are discussing formailities) because we have played a lot in our children meetings.
The conference takes place at the Stockholm Fair, and the Rica Talk hotel, where the children’s meeting takes place. We arrived late friday and unpacked our equipment and went to sleep at the Betel church at Mälarhöjden. The church was a small baptist church and was in a nice and calm environment. Early thursday we woke up and went to the fair by subway. We went into our room where we started to rehearse for the meeting that was going to start at 10.30.
First we had a gathering with children aged 7-12 years, thus it was the “older” group. In the programme was the magician Mr. Goran, who entertained the children with both magic tricks and talking about the christian message.
We played our usual songs that we play in our church, plus a new song I and a friend of mine have written. The whole meeting went well, even though the children seemed to be a bit unengaged. This is of course normal if you have been dragged to a boring meeting where all the adults discuss boring things.
The next gig was better. We played for the younger group, which consisted of 4-6 year-olds. Since they were younger they were more thrilled by the magician’s tricks and had easier to move to the music.
At sunday we went to Skansen, the large animal park in Stockholm, and also the place where many musicians come to when playing in Sweden. The long-time TV programme Allsång på Skansen (Sing-a-long at Skansen), where thousands of people gather to listen to music and sing with in the classic Swedish songs. This is where we were to play, at the Sunday’s children meeting there. The service at 11.00 was visited by 5000 people, after we walked in procession from the Nordic Museum, a walk of about 2 km.
The children’s meeting was listened to of about 200 people, most of them children. We had a great time, the music was flowing and the people on stage did well. I played at the grand piano located on stage, a large Bösendorfer. I have never played on such a piano before, and the sound immediately struck me as familiar from Esbjörn Svensson
Trio’s and Trio Töykeät’s music.
The weather was really great, the sun shone all day and there was a slight breeze that kept us from getting too warm. In the afternoon we visited the animals and packed our stuff before we went home again. I immediately fell into bed and slept when I came home, exhausted from the little sleep we had got during the weekend.
After 1,5 days with the pedometer, I had 11943 steps registered. It is a bit lower than the expected 10 000 steps/day, but I have not compensated for bicycling, as one is supposed to do. Since I do a lot of cycling, which is difficult to measure with the pedometer, I don’t have to compensate for the cycling I do.
Since ThePirateBay.org was raided by the Swedish Police on the 31st of May for alleged aid of copyright infrigment. The servers were taken as evidence material, and is now in police custody for investigation. After just a few days, the Pirate Bay was back online again, but then with servers located in the Netherlands.
To many people’s surprise, ThePirateBay.org now states that they have servers in Sweden again. “The big plan is to spread the site on different locations all over the world, so it will be faster and harder to take down”, writes ThePirateBay.
Prosecutor Håkan Roswell, is skeptical and says that it might be a “propaganda action” from the filesharers, writes Svenska Dagbladet
A leading newspaper covering technology in Sweden, Ny Teknik, interviewed many leading IT persons in Sweden, and 4 of 10 said that they supported filesharing.
Indeed, this increased the heat of the filesharing debate in Sweden, and the battle is long not won by any side.
The office I work at has a drive to make everyone walk more during the weeks, and they call it “Livslunken” (roughly translated to the walk for life). Everyone on the office wears pedometers, a small device that measures the aumont of steps you walk, and I recieved mine today.
During the half-hour I have had it, I have walked 195 steps, including the walk to and from the lunch room. I will wear this pedometer during the days, and I hope to average 10 000 steps a day. Unfortunately, bicycling doesn’t count anything, and since I mostly use my bike to get somewhere the values will be quite low.
I will keep you updated on the pedometer count on this blog.
I have been playing the piano and taking lessons for twelve years. Unfortunately, next year will be without these lessons, since I will work on Elida and the year after that I will study at the university. The piano lesson I had a few weeks ago might therefore be the last one I will ever have.
My teacher, Daniel Klanger, is a professional piano player and my teacher since 2001. He has given me insights into the beautiful world of classical piano and has helped me developing my technique and musical ear. He helped me get my first concerto in playing shape and has been mentoring my musical development in a very good way. Daniel is the best piano teacher I have ever had, and I wonder if I ever will have any teacher like him. I will miss our 40-minute Friday sessions.
I have started on my new job, programmer at ABB Motors&Drives here in Västerås. The company is one of the market leaders in electric motors, generators and drive/control systems. My task is to support the sales department with development tasks, and this is my second day at this place.
I really like the environment, people are nice and helpful, and I have good knowledge and understanding of what the company is doing. My time at the ABB Industrial Highschool gave me a good understanding of control systems and motors, and it is great to be able to use such a newfound knowledge.
Jag har tagit studenten! I have graduated!
Had an early morning and woke up at 0600 to shower and prepare myself. I took on my suit and travelled to Aros Congress Center for breakfeast and the ending ceremony. At 1030 we had the photography at the Ottar Stairs, where we were to run out an hour later. But first the speech by the Managing Director of Personell of ABB AB, Lena Eliasson, and the hand-out of examination diplomas. My friend got a scolarship of 10.000 SEK (1 100 €). The school’s headmaster thanked us for three years, and we all took farewell of the school.
The band started to play Studentsången at 1130 and all 56 graduating students ran out to meet their families. We sang Studentsången and greeted the crowd, which consisted of a few hundred people and then jumped on the big red truck that was to take us around the town as a part of the traditional celebrations.
Onboard the truck there was a great amount of noise, we had our own DJ on board playing Swedish summer classics and two really large loudspeakers were aimed forward onto the people on the street. All graduating classes travel around in birch-clad waggons or trucks the same time and at the same place, and since you try to convince everyone that you are the best graduating class you try to be as loud as possible and write texts all over the trucks. Our truck had the text “Vi är vad era föräldrar önskar att ni vore” written in large on the right side. In English it reads “We are what your parents wish you were”, which reflects a bit of what we think of the other schools in town.
After two hours of truckriding we returned back to Ottar for home transportation. The 9th of June was the hottest day so far in 2006, so there was no lack of heat in the sun.
I took goodbye from my friends and returned home to meet my relatives and friends. From 1430 to 1730 we had a lot of guests at home who congratulated me on my celebration, and we ate a lot of food. It was a joyful event.
I got a lot of presents, including an offshore sailing jacket for Elida, a knife set, a frying pan, an 1.0 GB USB memory, a USB fan, a lot of good books, some money, a teapot, a few mugs, and a lot of household items (which will be needed in 14 months when I move to my own apartment in Linköping)
So the graduation weekend has been great, I have met a lot of friends and relatives and it will be a weekend I will remember all life. Now only 5,5 years until university graduation 