The fun begins now

In recent years, I've become a pretentious prick going on and on about how Tom Cruise really can't act (Sorry Cruise fans). Not only that, but I can smell a plot hole a mile away. All of this is ruining the fun of watching movies. The fact is, I really like Cruise and his work. But this isn't a post about him, neither is it about horror movies even though I will talk about it in the next few paragraphs.

You see, my big sister just loves horror movies and she used to scare me when I was little and forced me to watch them with her. Not so much forcing, but still. I remember I was hiding behind the pillows for the really scary stuff, but I was so fascinated by all these 80s horror movies, the demons and all this imagination. I secretly became a fan and names like Carpenter, Craven and King kept popping up during my childhood and beyond.

Now Freddie Kruger, there's a character. When I watch the movies now they are really fun to watch, but not really scary anymore. That's ok, because as I grow older, there are other things that scare me more, like white Japanese girls with long black hair. Michael Myers, Jason, those characters are all flawed, and the movies they were in didn't have the greatest stories or the best actors, but it was just pure popcorn fun.

I realized on Saturday that I have forgotten to watch movies for fun. All I want these days are content and great stories with great actors. I want something to think about. Nothing wrong with that, but it makes me a boring person. I haven't really watched many horror movies in recent years and I decided to do something about it so I watched Hostel, The Hills Have Eyes, When A Stranger Calls and Pulse.

I started with Hostel which really blew. I was so disappointed, but mostly in myself who kept killing it with my brain. I think too much. But then I watched The Hills Have Eyes and the fun slowly started coming back again. I really enjoyed it. When A Stranger Calls was great. None of these were really scary, but I had fun. I just watched Pulse and it is better than the reviews it has gotten. I didn't like the ending, but still a good movie. I have made a list of movies I am going to see: Dominon (Sequel to the exorcist), Hide and Seek, The Descent, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Bug, Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, The Covenant, The Grudge 2, 1408, 28 Days Later, Captivity, Grindhouse, The Hills Have Eyes 2, The Messengers, The Reaping, White Noise 2. Any others I should add to that list?

All I wanna do is enjoy myself now and then. Not be Mr. Serious all of the time. Life should be entertaining, so have fun while living it!

Question me... please!

Questions. Annoying repeating questions. I know you all have gotten those. When you get a question like "Are you sure you can do it?" every week, and you always answer "Yes, of course" because you know you can do it. It can hurt and irritate, because you feel like you are not really trusted. Well I got one of those annoying repeating questions again this week and I felt that loss of trust and it hurt me. Well to be honest, it was my ego that got hurt. But during the conversation I discovered something. I didn't want to argue, so instead I observed myself saying and doing these things. Not really participating, just letting it play out.

Now I saw what an effect it had on me of someone asks the wrong question. What is the wrong question anyway? What this person asked me wasn't wrong at all, but it felt like that at the time. What the question did was challenge my ego, and I loved that. Isn't that the way we learn? If you are never questioned or challenged in any way, do you really move at all? I am eternally thankful to this person because once again my ego was driven out from it's hiding place. If I don't get questions like this, I will never really learn.

I think this person misunderstood that, and was confused by my thankfulness. It wasn't sarcastic at all when I thanked you. You opened my eyes as you have done before. How can I not be thankful for that? This person might be afraid to ask me anything in the future. Please continue to ask me and challenge me, I really need that. I know you are afraid to hurt me, but you can never really hurt me, only my ego, and if the ego never gets hurt, it will continue to bother me.

Terima kasih.

Lifehouse

As I listen to the new album of Lifehouse (Who we are) I think about what I have been doing with my life. I could have been anything I wanted, but I chose this, and it feels pretty good. "Feeling the life all over again" they sing as I think about the feeling of life and love. It's great to be in love again. It flows the right way. bringing me forward to a brighter future.

Track 3 is a really good one. It's called "Whatever it takes", and they continue "to turn it around", which just reminds me that it's what I can do. Whatever stops me from creating the future I want, I can always turn it around because I have great determination. "Keep us together, whatever it takes". It is what I want.

I've always loved Lifehouse. The vocalist has a great voice, it feels so good just listening to their easy going modern rock tracks. "We discover who we are" he sings on track 4, and it is what their new album are about. And isn't that what life is all about? Finding out who we really are. We think that we know everything, but we only know a very small percentage, if that. Go out, find yourself, you might be surprised.

I still remember when I discovered Lifehouse. It was in October of 2001. I was watching the pilot episode of Smallville and I heard my all time favorite song called "Everything" at the end of the episode. Ah, the memories. I think that song helped me change, because it was then I decided to leave the life I knew, my safe life. I went on to new things, and ever since then I have felt it all, the pain, the love, it all started back then. Thank you Lifehouse.

The EGO

What the ego wants, the ego gets. Isn't that right? But isn't that a good thing? I think ego is something we all have and will always have, but egocentric is the real culprit. What happens in our brain whenever we want something and something gets in the way, like a person? It could be very bad. I know people who have lost their best friends and lovers because of that. We learn best from our own mistakes, right? I have always thought that, but I keep on repeating them.

I have never paid much attention to the ego, pretty much letting it run wild whenever it wants. Today my eyes opened a little and I see the ramifications of my own actions. I can be so stubborn and selfish sometimes, and I thought it was just part of my past. Thought I had grown as a person, but the old me still comes back like he owns the place. Don't worry, I don't have a split personality I think. It's just that in hindsight it feels like it's not me doing it, like it's a person I don't want to be. Loving yourself is a good thing, but it is not a free pass to be egoistic. It’s more like taking good care of yourself spiritually, emotionally and physically so you can be in a better situation to take care and to love your significant other, family and friends.

You know, seeing what it can do scares me. If I let it, I can easily lose everyone I love. That's when my biggest fear comes in. To lose someone I love. So that fear can be a good thing, because the enemy of my enemy is my friend. I don't want to lose people I love, I will fight hard for that to happen, and to do that I have to battle my egocentric side. Spider-Man had it easy with his dark side Venom. I am ready to face it now, because someone I love very much has opened my eyes. Thank you! I will study it, I will learn it, I will be the master of the ego, not the other way around.

20.62% mainstream

That pretty much sums up my life really. Does that mean I'm 20.62% normal? Maybe... So how did I come up with this number? Well I went to this site and typed in my username at last.fm. It takes my 30 most listened artists and calulates mainstream based on popularity. So for example my nr.1 artist is Linkin Park. It has a mainstreamness of 63.04% and has the most impact on my final result. Brian Tyler my nr.2 artist has only 0.62% mainstreamness and so on. Quite interesting.

I think my life is actually 20.62% normal. I am not an A4 type of guy, I know that and my music seems to reflect that overall. I'm sure I'm considered strange by anyone who's ever met me. What's wrong with strange? Nothing really. In fact I love to be strange, different. The people who has achieved something in life has dared to be different. I still think people love me even though I'm not your average Joe.

Will I get weirder in time? I think I can. It's not a goal to be as weird as possible, but it doesn't hurt. I should find a site that checks my movies as well, that would be cool. I think I am more mainstream when it comes to movies, but you never know. I think I'll make a t-shirt for me that say: 20.62% mainstream.

How mainstream are you?

Southport

Yesterday I went traveling to the west coast of England to a place called Southport. I just wanted to smell the sea again and I heard nice things about the beaches there. I went to the train station and took a train there. The travel time was about 1h30m. I think it's romantic, the whole traveling by train thing. I want to take Kei traveling with me all over the UK.

Southport the city was actually really nice. It was great to just walk on the promenade and just look into the windows of all those shops. Bought a couple of souvenirs as well. I thought the beach was far away from the city centre, so I took a taxi there. Turns out it was just a couple of minutes away, oh well. It was a beautiful sunny day and the beach there was huge. I could hardly see the sea from the beginning of the beach. Unfortunately the beach wasn't very nice. It wasn't really sand, more mud. Still I didn't come there to relax on the beach so I went walking out to the sea. I loved to smell the sea again. Most of my life I've lived near the sea.

More positive things are happening now. It's like whenever there might be a crisis happening, something good always happen to fix it. I was a bit worried a few days ago because my money was running really low. I calculated I could live about a week before I had to live on the streets. It has to be karma. First the money from my Irish bank account finally found it's way to my Norwegian bank account and then on Friday I got my first pay slip. Yeah… things are really sweet in all areas of my life right now.

Bali

Well, it's been a couple of exciting days for me. I've started taking calls at work, which means I'm officially working, yeay! It's been quite busy actually, but I like it. Whenever i work I change. I never really thought about it, but when I work I get in focus mode. It's my perfectionist side showing.

I like Friday! Not that I don't enjoy work, but it's weekend, my time! As usual I have no plans, but that's not the point is it? I can spend all my focus on Kei instead of working.

I've applied for a 3 week vacation from work in October because I'm going to Indonesia to see my girl! Talked to my team coach and he said it should be ok, just need to verify with my team leader who is currently in Moscow but will be back on Monday. Yeah, I can hardly believe it. It will be me and her for 3 weeks. The first 4-5 days we will spend in Jakarta with her family and friends then we will spend 7 days in beautiful Bali, then 5 days in spectacular Lombok. Can you tell I'm excited? Woooooooo!

Have a great weekend!

Dark Room

I was looking on the net to find some inspiration, because I wanted to write a new blog. I read a lot of inspiring articles, but I still didn't feel like writing anything. But on one of these articles I came across a list of things to help with productive writing. One of those points were no distractions. It's a fair point. If you had no distractions whatsoever, then writing would be much easier. But how do you do that? Well you can close off all IM windows, internet access, anything that might prove to be a distraction. For some people, like myself, that is just not enough. There are still a lot of things I can do instead of writing. I am the master of procrastination after all.

Then I saw a point called Dark Room. That was unusual, I thought. Isn't that some kind of photography lab? It turns out it is a small piece of software which you can get here that simply removes all distractions from your screen. It just opens a black screen in full screen mode and all you can do is write. It's simple and brilliant. It's also free, which is just great. It's configurable too so you can choose background color and font color. Right now I am using the standard one which is black background and a green font. It feels like typing on old computer terminals with 4 colors. I find it relaxing and nice. So now all I have to do is find something to write about, like the letter "J".

I am talking about the "J" button on my keyboard. I've noticed that I have to press it a little harder than all the other keys (yes I've tested them all). Does that mean I've used the letter "J" more than any other letter? Sounds a bit strange unless I sit all day enjoying writing my name: Jorn, jorn, jOrn, joRn, jorN. Ok I'll stop now, but you get my point. Maybe I should change my name to Orn or something like that since I can't write my name as easily as before? Then again maybe not.

Chester

Yesterday started really great. Kei called me just to tell me that she missed me. She’s so good to me. Then we chatted online for a bit and then she called again. At around 11am I was going to go for a walk and I got this crazy idea. The weather was really beautiful and I just wanted to travel somewhere. I took the bus to the train station and went to Chester, just like that. I’ve never done anything like that before, just go somewhere on impulse. It was exhilarating and I felt so free. I had a great day there and me and Kei texted each other throughout the day, like she was with me to Chester :).

Chester is a great city. It used to be a roman city, which the architecture really shows. It was once a great wall around the city which is still there now. I walked on it and soaked up the history. I spent all day there and came home around 7.30pm. My feet really hurt after all that walking, but it was really amazing. I am going to take Kei there someday. It’s a very romantic place and I saw a lot of couples there and I thought about me and Kei. It’s a magic place and I met some great people. I went into a little bookstore that was on top of the wall and I met this Canadian woman who had lived in the UK for 28 years and still sounded like a Canadian. It’s amazing that she hadn’t adopted a UK accent by now.

When I got home I got some bad news. My dad had been taken to the hospital due to a small stroke. But he’s a strong man, and he’s ok. The doctor’s say everything is fine with him and they will keep him for observation for a few days. Kei called me this morning to hear if I was ok, and to tell me she will always stand beside me no matter what happens.

Hope everyone is having a great weekend!