Exiled

Soon I'm exiling myself from the civilized world to go back home for a week to celebrate the high-point of summer with the midsummer celebration, that is celebrating that it actually gets darker from now on. Probably no updates during the time. I will try to spend it on finishing the essay correction, apply for a job (that's unfortunately is in Nyköping which is close to home, but I would prefer to stay in Karlstad) and play some Spirit Tracks and Golden Sun. Hmm? Spirit Tracks sounds familiar, when did I play it last? Yeah, I didn't finished it for some reason. It's about time now don't you think?

Movin' On

I might not have a very a very communicative skills with my family. We don't speak that much, at the most one phone call for an hour a week (or less as my mom usually forget and I just let it slip so it could be another week in between or such). Anyway, I haven't spoken with them since before I finished my essay, and that was 2 weeks ago. So my mom probably thought it was time to call to ask when I arrive home at Thursday. That's quickly over and we just update each others, and we begin speaking about how they are renovating some of the rooms in the house. Suddenly we talk about the summer place. I didn't get the connection so I asked and apparently they have decided to sell the house and build a new one on the newly acquired land area around the summer place. Kinda shocking.

Just like that. And the only thing mom say is "oh sorry, I thought we already told you". No, they didn't. It's not even the first time they do this, they forgot to tell me about my half sister getting a baby again and other stuff. They probably still be living at the current family home we have lived in for around 20 years 1-2 years more, but still. I don´'t like be outside the news loop.

Stargazer

It's the solstice, thank god, so that means tomorrow it gets darker. That means I can sleep better by going to bed earlier and not be bothered with the final rays of light. As you probably understand, I don't have much to write at the moment. My lesson got cancelled today as well, due to continued illness. Began my training for this summer by walking for 45 minutes instead, I don't stand more than that as my feet kills me. A funny thing about that is my astrology sign, Capricornus. Apparently we Capricorns are destined to have troubles with our feet and other stuff due to some universal constellation. Glad I can blame someone on it. Even more funny is that it feels like it actually are a very good description of me, maybe not the ambitious leader style but the other things fit perfectly. Seeker for wisdom, planing ahead, care about the collective etc. etc. You get the point. Of course, it might just be me reading my personality into this just because I want it to be true.

Suffocating Boredom

Woke up in the Kingdom of Sweden, no coup d'état by the damned Republicans... I mean the Swedish socialist and liberals against the monarchy, not the American republicans. Although I probably don't agree with them either but that's another story. Watching the rerun of the wedding at the public channels now, isn't that great what taxpayers money will get you? The exact same thing I saw yesterday if I had forgotten that one day they had spoken about for a whole year. Even more ridicules was the discussion that when the date announced, Aftonbladet (one of the worst newspapers, if you could call it that, ever) pointed out that if Sweden made it to the 2010 FIFA World Cup (which we didn't) we had a 50/50 chance on getting to play the same day as the wedding. Maybe that's why we didn't win against, what was it? Malta, Denmark, Albania, Hungary and Portugal. The players just wanted to watch the wedding, that's it. Swedish school system must really be failing at the journalist education. Why do I even care, I don't like sport?

Beside just have nothing to do, while playing video games is kinda impossible with the damn TV screwing up, I try to polish my d-essay so I can hand it in for a VG in political science overall but a G on the essay. That's not funny, you shall as long as possible avoid changing in already written texts as the result usually don't get better (of course here it is more correcting obvious spelling mistakes and sentence structures). Maybe should go on a walk, but I don't feel like it. I'm just bored. Have a bit of a retro feeling for some video games like Life Force and Faxanadu, but no, Nintendo hasn't released those here on the Virtual Console. Pity as they are pretty good, especially the music. Damn Americans can at least enjoy Life Force, but the Europeans? No, at least Nintendo is a lot better then Sony at this cause they just stopped caring about Europe. No wonder they are losing the Console war this time. Really, all I want is to get my hands on Symphony of the Night, America and Japan got it on their PlayStation Store, why not us? On the other hand it wouldn't help as the damn TV bugged out, I really need to get it fixed.

God Save The Monarchy

I guess my latest Golden Sun: Dark Dawn writings have tired some of the reader (how that is possible I don't know). Of course, it probably was seen as something different compared to weeks of updates with statistics of political changes. Nothing of that today. Today is the wedding between the Crown Princess Victoria and *sigh* the gym owner Daniel Westling. Maybe not the most royal of occupations for a prince, but who am I to judge? As long as they are happy. Unfortunately I'm stuck in Karlstad instead of being at the Capital watching the glorious union of these two. Lucky for the public television showing every detail. Maybe next time... in 30 years or something like that after we get an heir. I must be there at the coronation whenever that is.

And on a final note, yesterday I was supposed to be at the University for a lesson in European studies during the summer. I get over there around 10:00 standing just beside the door waiting, reading Metro. Another classmate shows up, waiting. After 10 minutes another shows up looking at the door. Apparently there was a note saying the class was cancelled due to illness so I could go home. None of us saw that melting into the background. If no one mentioned it we would probably have stood there for a bit longer waiting in vain until we had noticed the note. Feel a bit embarrassed though, but hey, mistakes can be made.

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn (2)

It's funny with summer actually. Most of the days you don't see anyone you know and suddenly you meet a couple of them for just no reason. I couldn't take 5 steps until a new friend showed up, I tell you, it's like an random battle encounter in an RPG. This of course takes us to more Golden Sun: Dark Dawn.

Almost 24 hours later the Internet has been busy working to find any scrap of information to enlighten the fans. So beside that we know 3 out of the 4 characters from yesterday, one of them, Terrell, has changed name too Tyrell and the fourth member is apparently someone named Crown. As far that goes, Matthew is a Venus adept, Karis a Jupiter adept and Tyrell a Mars adept, which leaves Crown as a Mercury adept. Not very special since Golden Sun started with a Venus and two Mars adepts, dumped one and replaced her with a Jupiter adept. The Lost Age started with a Venus, Mars and Jupiter adept. So the Mercury comes later, all the time. Why? I have no idea, they aren't stronger then the others, actually the opposite as they only are stronger then the Jupiter adepts. The only reason would be due too the main antagonists are Mars adepts and they get an advantage over that. Ironically it's an Mercury adept that pulled the strings on all events in the last games.

Talking about main antagonists, they haven't announced one, only some strange phenomena called Psynergy Vortex. This is a bit of a let down, cause all I can think of is the Void from Final Fantasy V. So someone's behind that, who could it be? Must be Alex and hope to God it's not a tree. So what am I doing at the moment? Playing thru the first game up to level 56 so I get all the psynergies for those characters and then get the optimal equipment. That's all potions, lucky medals, psy crystals and water of life I can carry together with equipment necessary to alter the speed of the characters as well as some other stuff. And then it's onward to the second game and a 99 level game to be fully prepared for the DS release... if I manage to keep up interest, which I doubt as there is nothing to gain after level 60 except higher stats. Boring.

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn

As you can guess by the title I've been watching the Nintendo Press Conference at E3 2010 and I'm in trance. There was a new Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, Metroid: Other M, Donkey Kong Country, GoldenEye (sadly not Rare), Kid Icarus: Uprising and the Nintendo 3DS (which I probably have to buy as my DS is breaking down). I really need a job now if I should be able to afford all those games and consoles, and this is just the Nintendo line up, I haven't even watched the Sony conference or others. What a wonderful christmas is before us.

But absolutely best was the Golden Sun: Dark Dawn announcement... and I still don't know what's going on. Only by searching different boards did I find out that the initial names for 3 of the main characters is Matthew, Karris and Terrell and then I found this showing me what I missed the first time:
So, what do we know now? Nothing, we have to wait 6 months until it is released (hopefully). But we can speculate a bit more. Matthew is probably the son of Isaac. Why? Because his name is the first one, he looks like Isaac and one of the few things the trailer says it's the next generation and here I assume it's just that short leap in generations. Also, as I noticed in the beginning of the video is that when Matthew stands on the cliff this robed blond guy walks toward him with a sword on his back. You know what I think? That must be Isaac. I can't wait, need to hibernate in 6 months.

Raiders of Political Science

I remembered one thing from last week I didn't mention and that was the dinner with the faculty of political science. The dinner itself was nice with me and 4 others from my class and 7 C-students and then 3 teachers and the administrative head of it. Really good, but the funny stuff is the things that occurred before the dinner. We thought we had it planned in my class, no presents, we've been busy trying to finish the essay and then read 250 pages of academic text. Sad, but we have been pushed very hard the last days. So we had that consensus among us, but the same day one of us get a phone call from the C-students that had decided on flowers (we were told). That wouldn't do for us then as we can't be worse then the C-students. So we counter with 4 chocolate boxes that I had to buy and then wrap in silver paper.

Is it just me our didn't that feel like a metaphor for an arms race? We thought we had them by the hooks with chocolate (honestly, who could beat that?), but they didn't stop there, no. They had to get them a white painting with there signatures on. Those tricky bastards! Didn't expect that did we? No, they took us unprepared for that and we weren't able to counter that,so hopefully the more personal and quick rush of chocolate made a better impression. At least on the teachers as it happened that during our "graduation" party this saturday we raided the administrators chocolate box (her daughter studied with us and we were at their apartment). Really good chocolate I tell you. Together with the snack and birthday cake we had. And we didn't break the apartment although a glass was shattered but it wasn't me

Final point of today was that it seems like my talk about chocolate, cakes and whatnot has garnished me the reputation as a distributor of quality seals of approval on such things by my friends as she who made the cake specially asked me what I thought of it. And I loved it.

Summary

One thing I came to think about after I'm almost done with the essay is that it took me a long time to formulate what I have been up to in 10 weeks time. What was I writing? Yes, I had an explanation to give, but it was way to long to explain. And not until the "seminar president" said what I've done I could find that quick answer (or relatively quick). So here is what it was in a better version:

The essay was a look on the IMF and World Bank and their Washington Consensus to see if it diminished the state's abilities to uphold the social contract between itself and its citizens.

Short and easy. A bit sad that it had to be pointed out to me. And a bit worrying that I couldn't see that connection until then. Anyway, tomorrow the summer course begins and I'm ones again caught up in the world of academics, who knows when I will be able to flee the clutches of this wonderful world, but not pays your hobbies or "addictions"... or a new apartment, would really like a bit more space to clutter up with games, books or anything else. And a iMac... and an iPhone... and iPad looks really nice... My friend has brainwashed me for 10 weeks.

Back In Black II

It's been a while, but that's due to me finishing of the last things in school. So yeah, this is an actually political scientist with a degree that's writing this. So the blog has been on a hiatus during the week as I had to read thru a little more then 250 pages of scientific material to the final seminars, that is 5 essays. 1 of them I had to read extra carefully as that was my primary "opponent". Not speaking about rereading my own essay again so that I could defend it. Most of this I did on Thursday as all most of my friends had their essays on that day and it ended with my defense speech. Went pretty well and it passed so all I need to do is polish it to get rid of certain spelling errors and clarify some passages. Nothing to worry about, unfortunately I had to do one essay the next day, the final essay of Friday. So I was last man out.

Wasn't that bad, lucky enough I had all morning to prepare and my major points the supervisor of the seminar agreed on them so that was a relief. Then it was party time. Celebrating our coronations to D-level Political scientist together with our friends that left us last year and other (okay, one) close friends. All in all 12 political scientist discussing everything from the global level down toward the daily life around us under the influence of some "artificial enhancers" (yes, alcohol). From 7 p.m. to 3 a.m. and you can say I'm kinda beat and tired today, sleeping to 10 messing up my day rhythm.

Waking up to a very boring saturday, with a grey sky filled with rain clouds ready to unleash its content on us and nothing on TV, doesn't help that I don't feel to put in a movie or game as the picture is totally screwed up. Really need to fix that. At least school is over for now... until Monday when the summer course starts, yes, I must be really ill. If it is any comfort E3 starts on Tuesday and hopefully something will come out about Golden Sun DS (aha, I got you there).

Another this I noticed is that Iron Maiden is releasing their new album in August, 4 years since the last. Funny about that is that I started my University studies that year and bought that album during the first weeks. So now it feel like a circle is completed. Oh, and I changed the blog a bit, the other gave such an unprofessional impression... and black is always cool!

Face The Heat

God I hate the heat. We need some more snow to cool the weather down. I must be delusional as I have taken two walks for 45 minutes each this weekend. It must be heatstrokes. Nothing else can explain this out of character behavior from my side. Actually it's kinda nice, if I could get my hand on some shorts and some sandals. It's like a damn oven around my feet's. Don't know when as I must print out some essays tomorrow and read them for the seminar on Thursday and Friday, but after that I'm a Political Scientist with a four-year degree. Life's awesome... at least to I get myself a job, fix the TV and get a drivers license, not talking about the European studies I will take during the summers and if I don't get a job, the Economics II course during the fall... Feels like I wont escape the University, don't it?

What else has happened during this very nice, essay free weekend? Only running thru a Castle containing the Dark Lords remains in an attempt to stop his resurrection at the hands of a friends corrupted spirit, while at the same time saving the friend and another friend who has been kidnaped and prepared for the ritual of resurrection. Tried to make a 100 % game, but after 4 hours killing the same enemies over and over again to get their secret items, I grew kinda bored so I run forward in a game that last time took around 9 hours total, so pretty easy. Maybe a bit to easy and it would have been nice if you could start the game over but keep all the monster info so I don't have to the last living snot out of them for an extra potion to get the question marks away from the list.

Roll With The Changes

This is a really good day. The essay has been given to the institution so I got free time until monday, when the schedule for the seminars are given out and it's time to read all the others essays. Freedom after so long time and Wednesdays all night writing. It ended on 50 pages thank god, 12 more pages then last year. I guess thats the smallest of them all as usual, but it took time and I feel satisfied with the result... for now.

Other fun news is that it was time for yet another poll. Now cementing the lead of the Alliance with over a 6 % lead, putting the total above 50 %. My party of choice end up around 7 % which is better then the last election, but falling from the last in that poll. Even more interesting is that the biggest party would be M who ends up at 34 % while S falls below 30 %... for the first time ever in the poll. That is so monumental for a party that saw itself as to be at home above 40 % and only recently began sliding down to 30 % and now even slips on that step. It will be such a shock for them if this turn out to be the result. Not only does the Alliance keep them away from the seat of power the longest time ever (the record was 6 year between 76-82 and it hardly counts as the government collapsed in 78 and the Liberal party took the power backed up by S and S even made a deal 82 for some tax reforms), they even pushed them away from the throne of Sweden's biggest party. A title they have had since the 30's. It is part of the party and their foundation of powers. It has now eroded away and left them crumbling away like a party like everyone else. It's awesome *ahem* from a swedish political scientist way of seeing things of course.

It's Over

Tomorrow its over, the last essay I will ever write shall be handed in to the professors. My magnum opus of writing, the link between everything I studied for 16 years. Well, maybe not 16 years, but at least 5 years. Combining my history interest with my political philosophy studies from last year and adding a economic point of view on international organization. A huge web of ideas created by me as a way to snare as much as possible. And it's done after 10 weeks studies. And I never want to do it again, and hopefully I shall never do that. A +50 page long dissertation is enough to last a lifetime.

What is it about you might ask? Just listen to the title and awe:

Societies in Crisis: When Washington takes over

Isn't that an awesome title? It feels like it's taken from a trailer and just when the words in an old raspy voice are uttered the whole screen explodes. Or at least in the minds of political scientists. I've actually had it in mind since this fall and were able to incorporate it, without knowing what I was gonna write about then. What have I written about then? Mostly about the IMF and World Bank in the spirit of the Washington Consensus. It became kinda interesting with the whole Greece-crisis, or the economic crisis overall. And now I need to get a job... actually, is there anymore essays I can write?