So they promised us snow

I went to sleep, hoping to wake up into a snowy Jerusalem which resembles Stockholm in early January. In reality, all we've got was a sunny morning with fragments of ice on some parts of the ground, as an evidence for something that might have happened at night. They, too, melted within few minutes. 

Today there's a Melodifestivalen deltävling again, but I won't be watching it at all. I don't know how on earth I happened to forget about it, and managed to get an evening shift at work precisely today. But the songs tonight suck anyway. Molly has an okay song, but it's not in Swedish, which sucks. That Maria (I have no idea who she is) has a song in Swedish, but it's quite boring,over-schlagerish and repetitive. All the other songs are nothing special. So I ain't missing a thing. Probably.

Anyway, as a sort of compensation to myself, I made this...what do they call it? I heard several names, like "meme" and "what I think I do", but a formal name is yet to be discovered. So...I made a Melodifestivalen-themed thing for this...thing which is so popular now, which explains how various kinds of proffessions, people, etc are seen by you Vs. by others.

So Here it is, dedicated to all Melodifestivalen fans, who happened to be born in the wrong (middle-eastern?) country:

As it appeared to be a creative weekend, I also made this one about my work at H&M. But I guess it applies for all the workers of other big fashion brands too:

So that's it for today. Now I'm off to get ready for work. Happy MF for all the lucky people who can stay at home and watch that Swedish delight!

A little movie about loneliness

That's the English translation of the name of the movie I was watching last valentine's day. It's a kind of a black humor comedy in Swedish, called Torsk på Tallinn - En liten film om ensamhet in the original version. The movie is a fake documentary about a group of single men, all of whom are loosers, good-for-nothings or just weirdos.

They all go on an organized trip to Estonia, in order to find a bride in the baltics, a foreigner who'd not recognize their unattractiveness immidiately. The most weird and the most hopeless of all is Ronald (played by the divine Robert Gusstavsson which i totally admire), who lacks all social skills, lives alone and listens to dansband music in his free time. 

I have ambivalent feelings toward this movie. On the one hand, it's really funny and witty in a sarcastic way and I could understand most of the humor in it even though I'm far from being Swedish. On the other hand, I assume that cultural differences prevented from me from understanding one crucial thing. And that thing is: What was so bad about all of these men?

They didn't seem so repeling and terrible to me. In fact, some of them seemed quite handsome and cute. I wouldn't have minded marrying some of them. Even a little shy and clumsy Ronald doesn't seem so bad to me. But I guess that was the point of the movie. A foreigner would never be able to identify the outcasts of a different culture. In addition, let's just say that in my country, the typical looser who's unattractive for the opposite sex is defined somewhat differently than what they probably define it in Sweden, and respectively, in that movie.

Now let's talk valentine's day in general. In general, I hate valentine's day. I had a chance to celebrate it only once in my life, on 2009, when I was lucky enough to have a boyfriend around February. Celebrating valentine's was nice but kind of meaningless, since that relationship was not so deep and meaningful (or at least now I see that).

In addition, valentine's day always reminds me of all the guys that hurted me in the past. Not that there were so many who did that. But the experience of being rejected is so unpleasant that it's multiplied.

But enough with the negative bulshit. These last days were really great days for me. I feel like I've got endless enegry inside me, and many planes for the upcoming future. If only I had the courage to carry out to the latter all of them, and be ready to face an adventure...I love adventures, and I love challanges - the bigger the better. I even started loving them more and more during the last year.

And still, I didn't reach that stage yet, when you feel that you're ready to take the risk, maybe leave everything you have and worked for behind you, and gamble your whole life for the chance of winning something bigger than life. But maybe soon.

Another Melodifestivalen night!

Again, I'm off to the store down the street to buy some snacks before MF. I think I'm gonna go for something with chocolate this time. Oh, stores which are open 24 hours a day are my favorite! They were just made for people like me, who work 24/7 and have no daily schedule with time for organized shopping. People like me are also always hungry for something sweet. I guess it has to do with spending a lot of energy...

Anyway, today I won't be watching full-screen because I have a lot of work to do (and work means money, and money means ability to buy flying tickets to Sweden this summer. That's what I'm telling myself in order to be motivated and productive). So I'm gonna half-watch and half-work. But don't be sorry for me, since listening to the music is what matters, or so I assume. 

I think that overall, last week's deltävling was better, but personally I like this one more. Last week I only had one song which I liked at first hearing, and that was Loreen's. But I liked it more because of her, and not because the song was so good. I mean, it was good and she performed great, but when I listened to it on my Blackberry on my way to work, only to the music, without the show and her stage charizma, the magic wore off.

This time, however, I've got two songs which I really really like: Andreas' and Timoteij's, both in Swedish! I've already been listening to them 10-12 times since they were available for downloading, and I'm totally addicted and excited! Eventually, I don't think they're going to win. Timoteij might qualify, but they would never win Melodifestivalen. How do I know? Oh, because songs that I like never win. But anyway, it would be great to support them!

I'm also hoping for some interesting outfits tonight! After the up-to-date outfits of the three presenters last week, I'm curious to see what they're going to wear this time and how they're gonna match each other.

I'm also still waiting for the ultimate outfit that would make me search the stores like crazy with the hope to find something similar - just like Linda Bengtzing's yellow dress last year made me crave for yellow dresses. That perfect outfit hasn't turned up yet, but who knows, we have 3 more deltävlings to go (yeah, I insist on using the Swedish word and I also dare Englishize it).

SO, happy MF everyone! May this nice perioud of the year would never end!  

The Swedish obesession corner

I think I've mentioned before my "project" of watching at least one Swedish movie / series episode / TV show / etc every day. Well, it's been going on very well for the last two years, and thanks to that, my understanding of spoken Swedish became very good. On the begining I could only watch movies with English subtitles. After few months I became able to watch movies with only Swedish subtitles.

Now I can watch with no subtitles at all. That progress actually opened a whole new world of TV shows and movies for me, because now I am not...wait, what's the English word for the Swedish word "begränsad"? Oh yeah, limited*. Anyway, now that I'm not limited to well-known successful movies that often come with available English subs, I can watch just whatever Swedish movies / series I want.

Nowadays, for example, I'm watching the Johan Falk movies - A series of movies about the "adventures" of a (very hot) police officer with the same name. I became curious about these movies after I happened to watch one of them (which was called "Den tredje vågen - The third wave) and was surprised at how good and thrilling and exciting it was!

Okay, I must admit I was a *little bit* suspicious because of all these horrible crimes that were committed in the movie...they seemed to be very American in nature, and not at all so common in the everyday lives of a peaceful country like Sweden. But movies are movies, I guess. And you've got to make them interesting, even if it involves turning your heavenly peaceful country into a terror-stricken one.

Anyway, while I was watching at these movies, I suddenly noticed that unlike usually, I didn't understand 99% of what was said, but only 80%. Maybe it's because of police and crime vocabulary which I lack, but nevertheless - it made me understand that I still need to work harder on my Swedish.

That's why I decided to revive an old habbit of mine, which is writing down new words I hear in Swedish, in order to memorise them. I decided that I'm gonna do it here, on this blog, because then it would mean bigger commitment. It would happen from time to time, and it would include around 5 words each time. 

So here are the words I'm gonna memorize for the time being (taken from Håkan Hellström's lyrics)

1. Stråke - Bow

2. Kass - Useless, worthless

3. Rämna - split, crack

4. Misär - Misery

5. Bedrövlig - Misrable

Yeah, yeah, a lot of misery in Håkan's songs.  Now I'm off to watch another Johan Falk movie while eating Reese's peanut butter chocolate cups. If there's anyone who's reading this, have a great & peaceful weekend! 

* This was supposed to be an example of what often happens to me after I'm working too much on my Swedish - it starts to devour my poor English.

Keep on doing what you're good at

It's been quite an interesting day. First, I got to work with our store's visual merchandiser for the whole day. The girl who's a visual merchandising trainee was taking a day off or something like that, so I was asked to come and help him instead. That's why I woke up at 05:00, took a taxi to the mall and worked with him non-stop, especially in the Divided department which is my personal favorite.

It turned out to be quite a busy day, because we got about 10 clothes racks, all full of new clothes that should be placed in four different departments. So it all was a little messy and stressed, and we took a lunch break only at 14:00, but for me it was all fun and exciting. That's how it feels when you do something you like - time flies and you don't even notice it. You don't even notice that you're hungry, and as the case is with me - I'm usually hungry.

At the afternoon, after I took care of a huge clothes rack with 4 new jeans models to place at the Denim department, I was allowed to go home. And when I got home, started the amazing race of me trying to change clothes, fix make up and hair and pack my bag as quick as possible - because I had to make it to the Eurovision show in Tel Aviv that was about to take place in 3 hours!

I made it on time, eventually. Unfortunately, I didn't sing so well at the show. It's been a while since I sang in front of people, and I might have forgotten that I shouldn't choose upbeat songs - it confuses me. That's why I always used to stick to ballads.

Anyway, after the show was mostly over and I was heading out in order to make it to the last bus back to Jerusalem, a guy stopped me and told me: "Your Swedish was perfect in that song!" I asked him how could he know that, and then he told me what I could guess myself - he was Swedish.

Wow, that really made my day! To hear that my Swedish sounded perfect to a Swedish person is worth so much more to me than performing well on stage! When I walked in the streets of TLV on my way to the bus, I just couldn't stop smiling. "Perfect" is a strong word indeed.

That made me reach this final conclusion - I wanna keep on doing those things which I'm good at. I want to go on with visual merchandising, and I'll try and work with the store designers at every possible opportunity and then have lots of experience.

I also wanna go on with studying Swedish - watching a Swedish movie every night in the last two years turned out to work well for me. I want to sign up to a Swedish course in Sweden this summer again, and reach the highest level of C2, according to European languages standard.

And I want to fullfill all of my dreams and have more opportunities to hear things which make me smile with no ability to stop.   

Songs and dresses

On wednesday I'm gonna take a part in a small Eurovision karaoke show of OGAE Israel. It's gonna be a contest, and the whole thing is gonna be held in a club, with a real stage and stuff. Exciting! Especially because that means...that I have an opportunity to create a new outfit.

Well, as a self-diagnosed shopaholic, I constantly look for opportunities to buy new clothes. Usually it sounds like "I had a really bad day and need to feel better by buying a new mini skirt" or "I need a vacation and can't afford it, so maybe I'll buy a nice dress and plan to wear it while I'll walk in the streets of the country where my future vacation is gonna take part" and so on. As I said, my shopping is characterised by pure rationality and actual needs. Or not.

So...buying a dress. Since I'm gonna sing 'Det gör ont", I was looking for something which is in the Lena Philipsson's year 2004 style, and by this I mean - very feminine and bright-coloured. I was looking all around the mall and couldn't find something like that. All I found was colourful-but-too-casual dresses, or elegant-and-sexy-but-dull-coloured dresses, mostly in black or gray.

But at the end I found the perfect dress - in my own closet! I almost forgot that a month ago, I went to see the first-ever Forerver 21 store in TLV and saw there a marvelous fancy dress, which I fell in love with, and bought it even though I didn't have any special occasion (I usualy don't have special occasions) in which I would be able to wear it. And now...the perfect occasion! 

The dress is royal blue, which is a more Invincible-Carola colour than Lena Ph, but who cares. It's a pleated dress made of chiffon and its skirt moves when one turns around...perfect! In addition, my friend lended me a pair of extremely high black heels which I'm gonna wear with it. All is left to do is...buy some accessorize tommorow. And that's gonna be the real fun!

Euphooooooo-ria!

Some things are just meant to happen, and are just bound to be sensed by everybody before they happen. Loreen's success this night is one of there things. After being a favorite last year, with her song becoming a hit even after she didn't have such a success in MF, it was just clear that if she takes part this year, it's gonna be a victory. She just took everyone's breath away with her great performance tonight! I'm still breathless!

And now to the show. Well, one of the things which always interests me is to see how current fashion is reflected in the outfits of the presenters and participate in ESC and its related contests. Well, the three woman-presenters did follow current main trends:

All three of them beared a mixture of three trends which are really strong now: Lace, sequins and gold. I need to buy a dress soon, for a Eurovision singing show I'm taking part in, and the three of them really gave me some ideas (I think I'm gonna go for the Sara Dawn-Finer style).

And a few words about the songs, before I must go to sleep (morning shift tomorrow, which means I must wake up at 06:00). When I first listened to the songs, I thought it was a very weak week for MF. I thought Loreen was going to take the show by a storm because she had the only good song. Well, after watching the show and listening to the songs attached to their performances, I've changed my mind. It wasa great collection of songs!

I loved The Moniker, even though I used to hate him after last years upbeat sleeping pill called "Oh my god". I adored Torsten-something with his mature charisma (marry me Torsten!). I was charmed by Dead by april even though I usually don't fancy those metal songs. I liked everything, even the ridiculous Banan who sang a rather funny song about Swedish "culture". The songs which I least liked were Afrodite's (boring) and Marie's (catchy but nothing special. The song didn't suit her, I think). But Loreen is above all, ofcourse. She and her georgeous hair style with bangs covering her whole face. Adorable.

Let's only hope that next week's gonna be just as fabulous. Oh, next week! I just can't wait for next week!