What is Sweden most famous for?.

Except for IKEA, Victoria Silvstedt, the love for queuing and the obsessive coffee drinking? 

Swedish Meatballs of course! And this is what's on the menu, and on the schedule for the cooking class tonight! There will most likely be some wine on the menu as well, as we have something that calls for some celebration; Little Nema got the job! Yaay!

Triceps like Linda Hamilton...

...that's what they use to write in the magazines in the 90's as motivation for women to weight train, that you would get triceps like Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2.

And if you ask me, I'd very much like to have those triceps. The very 90's hair do I'd skip tho :)

But I have worked on my own triceps today, me and Nema did a nice and exhausting work out in the park, and one of the exericeses in the round was tricep push ups. Haven't done them in a looong time, and I could really feel it, I suspect some muscle pain tomorrow as well. Good pain, I like it.

And of course for my arms to look like below:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!

Best lyrics ever written?Maybe not, but it is hilarious. And, the song is certainly not written about our turtles, they don't 'do machines', nor are they party dudes. They just are, sometimes they eat too. But I think they are 'Heros in a hard shell'!

-Turtle power!

Rain! Yippie!!

Finally some rain! And we were out jogging in it, then workin out at the play ground, it was awesome, and it feels like autumn might actually be coming now. It's getting a bit cooler, and I can start wearing my cardigans that I love so much :)

Another work week has started, after another very succesful weekend in Malta, and again I am the lucky one to work from the company apartment! I am actually not sarcastic when I say that, I think it's quite nice to work from there, it's quiet and have a lot of room, and the trainees have time to ask as many questions they like. I can't complain.

Now I'm off to cook some beef steak with broad beans and peas in butter for me and my man. And I think I'm getting paid tomorrow. And I have new running shoes. I love my life!

Tired on the bus back from Notte Bianca in Valletta on Saturday.

I want more!!

I want more weekend, I think they pass by way to fast. Here are some pictures from this weekend! We've been shopping, having wine lunch, been to the Notte Bianca festival in Valletta, more lunching, running and powerwalking -all in all, a great weekend!!

The WC 2010

That would be the Wine Cup of 2010 -or the quest to find a new Gnarley. The first group of four wines was tested last night. Two have now qualified to the next round. We will have for groups like this, and in each group two wines qualify to the next round. We will then have two more groups á 4 wines that we will challenge to each other to find two qualifiers from those two groups.

Then, we will have a Grande Finale where we will pick the winner of the Wine Cup 2010, and possibly crown a replacement for Gnarley Head!

The contestants

Judge no 1

The two qualifiers from the first round: Yellow Tail Purple and Kumala

.

Yellow Tail was my favourite, and Kumala was Seamus' one.

And the qualifying scheme along with notes :)

Will there ever be a new Gnarly?

When we lived in Stockholm, we used to always buy this wine in Systembolaget. When we had a chance to be there between 10-19 weekdays and 10-14 Saturdays that is :) Yeah, I don't miss the old Systembolaget, I can tell you that.

Anyways, we both really love this wine: Gnarly Head, but I haven't been able to find it here in Malta, so now we have embarked on a quest to find our new Gnarley!! It started yesterday...

As many of you might be suspecting..I did buy it the first time because of the cool tag, it had nice colours :) But what a great buy it was.

They are ok!

And cute as usual! This is Buster by the way.

Freckles The Stoplight!

This is what I look like right now! Yes, I just came back from a run, I don't normally look like this. Good run today, managed to go a little bit longer than yesterday, and did some exercises on the rocky beach, push ups and stuff.

 

Now, while aftersweating, I'm gonna check how our Mutant Ninja Turtles are doing, and then take a shower. 

The weekend can begin!!

The aftersweats..

..is out of control in Malta. Me and Nema went for a run, and did some circuit training in the park, I came home about 45 minutes ago, have showered and been sitting very still, but I'm still sweating!!

Well, it was a nice workout, tomorrow we run for a little bit longer. There has been a training break for about a month due to a lot of visits and just general lazyness, but now it is nice to take it up again.

As soon as I have stopped sweating I'm gonna get dressed and go down to Hugo's for dinner with Soffla. Nice food and great company -what's not to like? 

Nervous!!

Why do I feel nervous?! It's because Little Nema has an interview in like 15 minutes and I'd love for her to get that job, so I'm really nervous now! Fingers are being crossed (EN) and thumbs are being held (SE) :)

Cooking class!

Today we're cooking vegatable gratin and pork filet marinated in a lot of yummy, yummy things. Of course, since both me and the cooking students are Swedish, this is served with a creamy sauce! Must have sauce! Seamus think I ruin all food with sauce, but I have to disagree. The sauce is the icing on the cake! :)

Close, but no cigar....

To easen up the mood a little bit, I will give you a couple of pictures from Saturday. Taken while enjoying our one and only purchase this day; Les cigars! Don't ask me why, I do however blame a very strong Long Island Ice Tea that was indulged at Hard Rock Cafe at the Waterfront which may have contributed to the decision!

 I won't be smoking cigars again in a long time, everything smelt of smoke for the rest of the evening and I felt slightly naseaus.

Well, I won't smoke a cigar in a very long time again, unless:

1. I win the lottery

2. I start and manage to run a very successful company 

3. I get more than 1000 readers on this blog

So, let's just wait and see :)

Nazis in parliament

Yes, that is exactly what happened in the election in Sweden. A party that hide behind the term 'democrats' in their name, and have obvious rasist and almost nazi like opinions have actually won seats in the Riksdag now. It makes you wonder why, it makes you wonder what's wrong with Sweden as it is today that makes people want to vote for a party like that?

Well, it is very sad and this seems to be what is on everyones lips, blogs and facebookpages today, and probably will be for some time now, and it doesn't make me feel very proud to be Swedish. Quite the opposite actually...

Red or Blue?

It's election in Sweden today, I think they are counting the votes as I write this. Mum and dad brought all the brochures and ballots and everything needed for the voting with them last weekend, so we had the vote then.

I'm very confident in what I voted for, and I think it's the first time I actually thought about why I voted for a certain party and really considered it instead of just 'going with the flow', and I feel good about that choice.

No matter what the outcome will be I guess it will not affect me that much right now, since I'm not living there, but I still think it's important that people do their duty and vote, if you don't you have no right complaining about things being the way they are.

Other than that, I'm trying to fight the instict of napping again, something that is not easy to do after a whole day at the beach and with a cosy, snoring Irish man next to me :)

What's wrong with us?!

Saturday evening turned out the exact same way as Friday night, and I think this confirms it -we are getting old, or at least older. :)

With the same intentions as on Friday, of going to the pub for a drink, we had dinner at home first, then we were 'only gonna watch one episode of Arrested development' and then get ready to go out.

So, what happens? We wake up at 23.30, all cuddled up together, we decide that we're gonna continue watching that episode we fell asleep to..-and wake up at 2.30!

But on the bright side, it was very cosy and I feel extremely rested now, and ready to take on this day! Currently I'm cooking a soup for lunch, and after that I think we'll go for a swim!

Messing!

Of course we managed to squeeze in some messing about on the way back to the bus!

Adventures in Valletta!

A little picture summary of our adventure in Valletta today!

We arrive in Valletta Terminus safely

The hunt for Valletta Waterfront begins. I've been there before, but every time by car so I had no idea how to walk there.

 

 

 

 

 

The hunt continues.... some nice views and a lot of sweating on the way...

 

We might actually have hit the ghetto of Valletta at some point here...but we didn't give up, we were determined to find the waterfront...

 

And finally we did!

 

 

Great success! Nice view, good cocktails and nice food! What a great day!

What a great day!

Just got back from adventures in Valletta! We went there with the ambition to have lunch at Valletta waterfront, but being two almost retared people when it comes to finding our way to places, it obviously took a while to find the famous waterfront.

Anyways, we finally found it, and we have had an amazing day there, pics to come later. Now, we're off to enjoy the only shopping we did today, in the garden -two cigars!! I don't even know how to smoke cigards, and neither does he, but we thought we had to try anyways :)

Laters!

Wild rover!!

This yummy stew was cooking here on Thursday for hours... Packed with good stuff like meat, cauliflower, baby corn on the cob, wine, cream, carrots, herbs and more..

It turned our very good! While cooking it was accompanied by myself and this:

I welcomed Seamus home playing and singing his favourite song in the world...

" And it's no, nay, never,
no, nay, never, no moooore
will I play the wild rover
no, never, no more"

He truly hates it, which makes it funny :) But, that's what he has to take for being Irish, not much to do:)

An old turtle couple?

So, yesterday after work I was in a great mood, felt awake and happy. The weather was great, so we decided to go for a drink along The Strand in Sliema.

But first... We couldn't resist buying two of these little fellows:

We bought two, named them Tobias and Buster, and bought a bowl and food as well. Then we went for a drink, with our new pets. Put the bowl on the table, and immediately got tagged as the crazy turtle couple by the rest of the guests. I think that they tought that we had them for a while, and just bring them from home whenever we go out, not that we just bought them :)

Anyways, we strolled back to St Julians and saw that Cat was working, in the restaurant, in a lovely new job uniform involving a pink(!) tie!! So we laughed a little bit and then we sat down and ordered some wine and food.

Nema, who recently quit her job at the same restaurant came by, laughed even more at the tie, and also had some food and wine.

After this, I estimate that the time was about 21.30 tops, and we wanted to go home and leave the turtles to maybe go for a drink somewhere.

So we went home, put the turtles in more water, lie down on the couch and cuddled a bit, and woke up hours later...ok, so we missed the evening, let's watch a movie then. So we turn on the TV in the bedroom and decide to watch a movie instead, and woke up..now!!

Are we getting old? 12 hours sleep?! The crazy, serial napping turtle couple - that's us! But we're fine with it! :)

Let's call it a day!

Another successful day at the office...no wait, apartment, has come to an end. Good training, now off to meet my lovely FIANCÈE for a drink and maybe some turtle shopping! :)

Should I change carrer?

Maybe I should start taking pictures for advertisement instead? I think this one would sell, at least.

Taken last week when we were at St Peter's pool with the family.

Company apartment

So, where I work we are currently waiting for our new office to be finished, and so we have been basically since I started working there in the end of June.

We are expanding a lot, and we need to hire more people, and my job is to train all new staff so that they are ready  and prepared to start working. The problem is that the office we are in now is meant for maybe half the number of people that we are now, and there's more coming.

This has lead to that I am training two new support members not in the office, but from the company apartment! We have set up a temporary training facility in the living room, with laptops and projector etc, and I have to say it's working out very well. It's kind of nice to be where it's quite and spacious for a change, so I'm not complaining :)

I was sooo close to buying a pair of min turtles today after work. My colleague bought some yesterday and they are so cute you could die, and I can stop thinking about them. We'll see if I can resist the temptation of the pet store next to the 'office' tomorrow as well or if I'll bring home little Buster and Tobias. If you have ever watched Arrested Development you will agree with me that those names are pretty funny.

Chicken soup and spring rolls

So, this is what we cooked tonight... For a starter we made thai chicken soup with carrots, sugarsnaps, bamboo shots and water chestnuts, and for main course spring rolls filled with quorn, spring onions, carrots, red cabbage, coconut cream and green curry.

And the spring rolls....

Tasty two-course thai dinner!

Another successful cooking class has come to an end. My two cooking trainees Nema and Kat look content and tired too....

 

Great success I say!