Cutest thing ever!

Oslo Terrorist Attack

One of the most peaceful countries in the world was attacked today. A bomb was detonated in Oslo and the Norwegian people had their first true encounter with evil since the Second World War. While chaos ripped through the center of Oslo, a mad man pointed a gun at children and young adults at a political party's youth camp. The two incidents are believed to be linked. It is most definitely a terrorist attack, but it is unclear if it is an international terrorist organization behind it or if it was a domestic terrorist.

In the end of the day, it makes little difference, especially for those who lost loved ones. To them the challenge is to understand and come to terms with the fact that lives where lost for no reason at all. I feel the deepest sympathy for them and I also count my blessings that I'm not one of them.

Regardless of the motives and people behind this act of madness, I ask you to judge them for the individuals they are and for their actions, and not to judge them for their nationality, color of their skin or their religious beliefs.

I have an unsettling feeling that many hope and wishes for the perpetrator to be a muslim. It would "fit" better. It is always easier to be afraid of someone foreign and unknown than to be afraid of your own. I really don't care. If you take an innocent life I don't need to know your reasons, I just need to know you've taken an innocent life.

Google makes me cry

I bet you think I'm going to write about Google+. I'm not. But if I was I would have written a rave review. Maybe I'll do that later. Instead, I'm letting you now how Google makes me cry.

A few months ago my husband showed me an ad for Google Chrome. I've seen it and showed it countless times since. There is no explanation to why I haven't blogged about it until now. Well, better late than never. Here is how Google makes me cry:

Glorious predictability

It's 4:37 am and I'm wide awake. I wish I was sleeping, not because I'm tired, but because I should be and could be. It's the never ending battle between me and jet-lag.

I came back from Sweden two days ago. I was gone about three weeks. I spent my days doing the usual stuff, chatting and eating with my favorite people. I also managed to squeeze in a weekend in Birmingham, to attend a re-union with my former university flatmates.

Usually I'm all about experiencing and discovering new things. But sometimes nothing beats the tried and tested. This becomes blatantly clear every time I'm back in Sweden. I always stay with my parents, in my childhood room. I enjoy my mum's cooking like there is no tomorrow. At every dinner we sit and talk for hours, just like we've always done.

I've also spent countless of hours with my BFF and I knew we'd do what we do best. Talk. We talk each other's ears off, and it has always been that way. We've been on countless trips together and never found the time to open a book or a magazine. We live continents apart, but she still knows every intricate details about my everyday life, as I know hers. We are so predictable that we literally know the next word out of each other's mouths. Not only can we finish each other's sentences, on multiple occasions we say the exact same sentence at the exact same time.

I also got to catch up with a childhood friend. She became a mother about 6 months ago and I hadn't had the opportunity to meet her since. It was great! But I would've been surprised if it wasn't. We've known each other since we were six and she's one of my closest friends. Since 1994, when I moved to another part of town, we've had, periodically, a very sporadic relationship. We haven't lived in the same country since 2002 and we usually meet up once a year. But I know we'll just pick up where we left off and our friendship is completely effortless.

The trip to England was another fine example of familiarity. The city of Birmingham has barely changed in 6 years. Maybe that's no surprise. However, my old flatmates and I live very different lives today compared to 2005. This had some interesting consequences. The amount to taxis we used this weekend by far exceeded the amount of taxis we used during our three years at uni. One of us owned a house where we stayed. We could't and didn't want to drink like we used to. But despite all these new changes, we were all pretty much the same people. We shared a home for a year and when we prepared dinner together, it felt amazingly familiar.

My theory is that you will appreciate predictability in a whole other way, when you live a fairly unpredictable life. Cause when you do, predictability and familiarity is not just about security and control, it's about having a harbor to return to. So, after three amazing weeks, I returned to the familiar arms of my husband and the feeling of coming home was great, just as predicted.