You have some time today, I see.
Your teacher’s canceled Chemistry.
My class won’t start till three-thirty.
And would it okay with me,
Since there’s some place you’d rather be,
You ask, I hope, facetiously,
Whether I would mind terribly,
If you skipped my class and left early.
I try not to take it personally,
But it’s very plain for me to see,
You don’t care about the class or me,

But I know you want me to agree,
And so I do, but quite sadly.

Tomorrow I’ll have to go and see my neurologist and it will be cost me a bloody fortune: about $40. My medication runs a ridiculous $30 for a four-month supply. I just don’t know how I manage this nightmare. However, this is not just happening to me. My friend Mark recently had his very own hellish experience with the Swedish health care system, and he barely got through it alive and financially intact.

If only I were back in the US where I’d be paying thousands of dollars for the same treatment. The fact that no American insurance company will offer me coverage due to my pre-existing medical condition is just better all around. Those companies need to make money and someone like me is a huge liability. In fact, it would be much more convenient for them if I just died. What the hell is Obama thinking trying to pass a health care reform bill? Doesn’t he know that Americans care more about money than they do about peoples’ lives?

What an un-American freak.

Anyhow, during the last two weeks of 2009 my boyfriend and I were in California visiting my family for the holidays, an experience that was stressful but mostly relaxing and fun. The main contributor to the stress factor was the fact that my suitcase was delayed for almost a week. Actually both of our suitcases didn’t show up when we arrived at LAX. I’ve traveled a great deal and my bags have been lost many times, so one might think I’d be used to it, but it’s always a sinking feeling with the carousel stops turning and your bags aren’t there, “Oh crap.” This means that the fate of your bags is now totally out of your control. After filing a report with the extremely slow-moving and unsympathetic baggage services clerk, we went straight to an In n Out Burger where two Animal Style Double Doubles helped us temporarily forget our baggage woes.

Previously, whenever my bags failed to show up on the carousel, they’d always arrive first thing in the morning or sometimes that same evening on the very next flight. Not this time, however. They couldn’t even locate our bags, let alone tell us when they’d be arriving. They could be in Siberia for all they knew (and probably were).

After checking the lost baggage website several times a day and talking to about a dozen different people on the phone, they located my boyfriend’s suitcase and delivered it on Christmas morning three days after we arrived. As momentous as this was, my bag still hadn’t been located. Just when I was beginning to think I’d never see it again, it was located and summarily delivered on Monday the 28th, six days after we first arrived.

Now that was a super-sized relief. When I handed my suitcase over to be checked onto our flight heading back to Sweden, I momentary thought, “hmm…will I ever see this bag again?” However, both our bags made with us when we arrived. Hooray for baggage claim.

“We at the Church of Scientology believe that giving all of our money the church will save our souls from being scooped up and thrown into a giant volcano by the evil alien overlord Xenu.”

Hmm…perhaps that’s a little too crackpot…

While reading up about Carter, I found this great photo of all five living presidents taken in early January of 2009 before Obama’s inauguration. It reminds me of a school club photo:

The first thing I noticed is that Obama, Clinton, and Carter all look genuinely happy, while the Bushes are barely able to contain their disappointment. The photographer seems to have positioned everyone oddly. Carter is standing off to one side and looks like a dwarf compared to the rest of them. Not only does Bush the Younger have that “take the goddamn picture” look on his face, he seems to be physically repelled by Clinton. He’s also doing an “aw shucks” school boy gesture with his feet, as well as slightly upstaging Obama.

The awkwardness is definitely palpable here.

The Power of Cute is especially irresistible in the Land of the Rising Sun. The cat is undoubtedly aware of this and its behavior (however humiliating) is a reflection of it.

Chlamydia helps young men feel more ‘manly’: Swedish study

Young men who contract sexually transmitted diseases often view their afflictions as an affirmation of their manhood, a new Swedish study shows.

Upon learning they’ve been infected with a sexually transmitted disease, some young people simply see themselves as unlucky, while others undergo a maturation process which leads them to be more careful in their sexual habits, according to midwife and University of Skövde researcher Kina Hammarlund.

But members of a third group – consisting entirely of young men – succeed in transforming their diseases into a sign of their manhood.

With other male friends slapping on the shoulders and offering encouraging comments about “success with the ladies”, young men who contract diseases such as chlamydia or genital warts can come to view their infection as a badge of honour, rather than a serious health problem.

Read the rest of the article here.

If catching something as mild and easily treatable as the clap makes these idiots feel more like real men, then one can only imagine how contracting something lifelong and incurable (i.e.: herpes) would make them feel…

After nearly four years of living in Sweden, I’ve got that Golden Ticket: a permanent (fast lön) full-time job.  I’ve heard countless times that the key to getting a permanent job in Sweden is networking and Swedish. This I can definitely confirm. Don’t even bother applying for full-time work if you can’t speak a word of Swedish and know no one. I’ve had plenty of part-time jobs since I’ve been living in Sweden, but it took me this long to learn enough Swedish and build up my network of contacts in order to be considered for permanent full-time work.

The school that hired me was one at which I’d previously applied and interviewed. This was back in ‘07, and they were a bit wary about my foreign qualifications. They weren’t sure whether I could teach anything else besides English, so that meant a full-time position was out of the question. In the end they did offer me couple of English classes – basically a 30% teaching position – so I ended up turning it down and taking a position with E4K. This time however, I was much more attractive to them as a potential employee. In the two years since I’d previously applied, I’d had my American university education evaluated by Sweden’s Higher Education Authority (Högskoleverket). This took about five months to be processed, but it was well worth it because it definitively proved that I was fully-qualified to teach not only English, but a number of other subjects as well.

Monday was my first day at the International IT College of Sweden, (called INIT College for short). I can tell right away that this is going to be challenging and interesting. It’s called a “college” but it’s not a college in the American sense of the word. It’s an upper-secondary school, which is sort of a high school and junior college combined. The Swedish word for this level of study is “gymnasium,” but it has nothing to do with working out. To add to the confusion there is something in Sweden called “högskola” (high school) but that is the Swedish word for university.

So (to recap) in Sweden:

Gymnasium = high school
High School = college/university

INIT college is a small private international school that emphasizes IT and English, but they offer the standard gymnasium curriculum. There are about 200 students and about a dozen teachers.  They have most of the course syllabi already written, so that should save me a lot of work, but next week’s going to be really busy. On Monday and Tuesday is the first planning conference of the year.  We have to be there bright-eyed and ready to go at 8:00 in the morning. I have no idea how I’m going to stay awake. Conferences aren’t the most stimulating events and Miss Kitten is not a morning person.

And the adventure continues…

Here’s a video of the original unedited rambling version:

And here are the editorial suggestions from the good folks at Vanity Fair. I only posted the first three pages here. The rest may be viewed at their website:

The editorial and proofreading departments at Vanity Fair are to be commended for their achievement. It’s a thing of beauty. I probably would have given up after the first two pages…