Diaries of Oslo

One of the most precious possessions I have with me in Macau are my diaries.

brunost cheese - it will melt your face

The 2 books I have span from January 2010 when I was still in Portugal all the way to this present time. I really love to just flick through them now and then and roll my eyes across pages of lyrics and music ideas for uniform lounge, sketches for guitar bike racks and hobo stoves, random doodles, the way the ink is sometimes blue, sometimes black, sometimes red or sometimes a faded pencil line. The "to-do" lists of some stale winter sundays, the crooked paths of the text and the changing font size. Peculiar when the pages begin to run out. Writing such minuscule letters the pages become wonderfully flooded in fountains of words and punctuation.

I find it easy to start posts with location, position and when travelling: whether there's enough stock of water followed by enough food to last the next morning. As a city dweller I don't think so much about that, surprisingly. If I do "follow" the rules then when reading it back I get that one step closer to a flashback into the moment as the words were written. Like that feeling one gets when smelling a cologne worn in childhood, or when hearing that song of summer 2006.

In that spirit of providing my future-self said flashback (hello future-self!) let me begin by setting the time travel portal:

11:46am, Sunday 27/03/2011

Laying on my bed. Got back around an hour ago from the beginning of a stupid day. Having not checked my sailing schedule I thought I had a lesson today so I woke up at 9 and headed to the Macau marina, after sitting in the boat for a while I rang a friend who told me the lesson wasn't on the schedule for today. Great. So that's my day's plan totally effed up. And it's raining.

So I guess I'll take this chance to carry on from where I left off...

Scandinavia

3 days in Aarhus to prepare for the trip to Lithuania. Not sure if I've posted anything about this yet but whilst in Portugal a couchsurfer (Giedre) contacted me to show her around Porto for a day, it turned out to such a coincidence that she knew someone who had gone to the WWOOF farm I was intending to go at the time (which was so awesome I think you should check it out if you're ever looking for a unique, fun and free paradise in Portugal). Anyway, the cool part was that she invited the uniform lounge (distant teenager screams) to come and play in a festival they hosted in their hometown city of Kaunas, Lithuania. Unfortunately André and Hugo couldn't come so I ended up deciding to go and do a solo gig. When else was I going to have the chance to visit Lithuania and play in front of 600 people? Appart from when I'm super famous and comercial that you'll want to puke and shit at the same time, of course.

So there I was in Aarhus, spending most of my time sleeping and trying to fix my cold which had turned into somewhat of a gnarly chest/throat/abdomen infection. Trying all these different brews of cinnamon, lemon, ginger and what-not kinds of spices and herbs to fix it in record time. Meanwhile in order to get to Kaunas - stopover in Oslo. Whilst in Denmark I tried to find a couchsurfing host and it was really hard, but worked.

The experience in Oslo was pretty nasty, nothing wrong with the place I think it's beautiful, but it just happen that the clouds were destined to float above. While landing I thought my head was going to explode because my sinuses were blocked and the changing pressure really fucks you up - word of advice, NEVER FLY (or dive for that matter) WHEN YOUR SINUSES ARE SO BLOCKED - don't tell me I didn't warn you! My health had deteriorated to the point I was starting to lose my voice. At this point I just focused on detaching my mind and imagining the comfort of a home, so easily taken for granted and paralyzed in a non-appreciative 'normal' kind of life. My host didn't trust me. After sleeping under 5 hours that night I was already sleeping in the kitchen by 8. I thought to myself: "Well, at least there's a roof on my head". I really struggle to understand this comment on my diary. It takes me a while to put things into context. I was a bum in student halls. Yet having really pushed a limit to get to Aarhus, I was very much aware that I wasn't equipped for the encroaching wintery days, and any roof is a blessing in those conditions.

I decided to head out into town and see what Oslo had to offer.

The highlights of my day were:

- Sleeping in front of a memorial in the fort/castle and getting awoken by a guard looking like he just came from a really boring costume party.

- Sleeping further down the park.

- Taking the picture of some tourists.

- Sleeping on top of the opera house.

- Watching Portugal get its ass kicked by Norway in the wc qualifier.

- Going back to sleep in the kitchen for my final night.

oslo opera house

Now my next problem was I was meant to have another night in Oslo on my way back from the festival, my current pseudo-host was weirding out on the spirit of cs but luckily some of her flatmates offered as replacements. Those ended up being face-splat bails which left me in a bad-turns-to-good situation but I was only going to find this out a day before leaving Kaunas.

'cepelinai' - An awesome traditional Lithuanian dish

There's a funny quote in my diary from this part of the trip, it reads: "I'm quite hungry now but don't want to spend more money in this country, would rather wait to eat in Lithuania where I'm sure it will be more affordable and enjoyable". Damn right! When I arrived in Kaunas I was greeted by Darius and Giedre, and hence the start of the Lithuanian adventure!

2:38am, Monday 28/03/2011

For what started as a stupid day Sunday was actually quite an alright day. Saw some friends, got facebook raped and a cardboard box to make some designs for DIY porta-booth, something that looks something like this - nicknamed a portabooth. It's meant to solve most of my reverb issues when voice recording, not sure how much it will work though. One of the things I began to do here in Macau is to build a little home studio, like version 2 of what I used in Portugal for the Uniform Lounge stuff. But with some lessons learnt! Johnny came around with his electric guitar and we rigged up the place, it's sounding good! Still need to find some acoustic foam or suitable alternative around here. Studio night tomorrow!

but Sleep time now!

zzZZZzzzzz