CHAOS IN STOCKHOLM!!!

WHAT COULD IT BE?! Have the people taken to the streets to overthrow the government? Has the military staged a coup? Have anarchists burned the Riksdag to the ground? Have the Chinese invaded? Is it time to, say, crack each other's heads open and... feast on the GOO inside?!?! Why, yes it is Kent. Or not. The paper honestly had that HUGE FONTED! front-page headline Sunday. Why? The city bus drivers are on strike of course! Duh! HOW WILL SOCIETY FUNCTION?!?!
I was seriously scared that I wouldn't make it to work Monday solely based on this headline. And what happened on Monday? Pictures of mobs armed with torches and sickles beheading businessmen in the streets while golden calves are erected to Baal and wealthy merchants take small children as slaves to fulfill their wildest sexual desires faded into the reality of 33% more expressionless non-eyecontact making Swedes silently riding the subway to work. I mean, I'd hate to use the word "alarmist" here but...
Today it was noticeably (actually a lot) busier than usual though since no buses at all are running. Have you ever seen those youtube clips of the begloved asian subway workers whose sole job is to push the people hanging out of the subway car doors inside so that the doors can close? Well it was ALMOST like that. Everyone was packed in like sardines and worried about getting stuck in the doors. I haven't been here that long but it did seem out of the ordinary. Moving on...
Stuff at work is good. For the next month and a half or so most people will be taking vacations, meaning that for instance today I was alone in my little room where usually the three (male) contractors sit with me. I was lonely : ( No matter I filled the silence with Swedish radio off my cell phone. The reception unfortunately sucks and there seems to somehow (if it's even possible) be MORE talking and LESS music than US radio. When music actually IS being played the eclectimeter spirals out of control. Michael Jackson, Lil' Wayne, and Dolly Parton are bookended by Scorpions and some type of Swedish childrens song the only words of which I knew were "grandma" "car" "vacation" and the conjugated verb "I need" repeated ad nauseum. Ok so maybe this is partly due to the fact that I'm constantly surfing for music since 90% of the time all I can find is freakin' Sweden talk. But really even when I don't touch the dial I get some great mash-up style action going. I really appreciate the M.J. especially, I really think I have an unhealthy love for his music, and to a larger extent HIM. So piss off about it already. Oh, and if anyone knows the Dolly Parton album that hipsters like (and I don't think it's the one with "Jolene", but if you're POSITIVE then say so) let me know cause I want to download it for fr- er, um, from iTunes. Or something. But yeah, I really like the radio when it's playing music. Does anyone out there have Giselle Bundchen's number? I'd like to know that also. She's hot.
Hmm what else to tell... This post is relatively good, I'm happy about that.
Oh here:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Cars-Trucks___New-2009-Black-Nissan-GT-R-First-Allotment-in-the-U-S_W0QQitemZ250265466439QQddnZCarsQ20Q26Q20TrucksQQddiZ2282QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item250265466439&_trksid=p3756.m14.l1308
Copy, paste, and thank me later.
I finally got my paycheck cashed today, after getting dicked around by another bank which shall remain nameless (common theme). I guess this is a good example of life in Sweden: /Rant In many places (probably a majority I would say) if you want service you have to take a number from a machine that is conspicuously hidden somewhere inside the place you need service from. So today at the bank the ticket machine was broken, so I had to walk into the bank and stand in line while the machine was being fixed to take a ticket to be in a line to be helped. That was a tad weird, but what was weirder was the hippie-ish thirty-something bespectacled Swede with a ponytail and Birkenstocks who tried to ask me in Swedish what was going on and immediately walked away when I said I spoke English without giving me a second look and asking someone else only to return and start making the situation even weirder by trying to explain to me how weird the situation is that Swedes have to stand in line to stand in line, because they are so rigid about rules or something. If that's so then how come some dick with no ticket just walked right in and when someone was done with their transaction he just walked right up and proceeded to take 10 minutes of the tellers' and MY time by pretending to just ask a small question and then proceeding to structure an entire transaction in front of my eyes, while the teller did nothing more than appear ever so slightly annoyed, but continued to smile and be polite. Yeah, that pissed me off a little since I had to wait 35 minutes for my turn to do something that I've been trying unsuccessfully for over a week to do. /Rant.
Yeah, from my limited experience, banks here suck. I am reminded of the times I worked at a bank and turned people who were trying to cash their paychecks away. However, I was always NICE no matter how pissed they got and gave the people as many other suggestions for alternatives as I could think of, ESPECIALLY the hispanic immigrants who I always had respect for. UNLIKE the bitch at Swedbank who was just, well, a bitch. But today (after my 35 minute wait) all was forgiven when the old lady who I was praying not to get took over for the young (also bitchy) guy who I was praying to get and ended up cashing my check no fees and no questions asked. I really though she would be the bitchiest of all. How wrong I was.