Another week!

Another week has come to pass!

Quite uneventful in terms of spectacular things really. Coreen seemed to highly enjoy the song I performed during Artist Showcase, I received a 98/100 for it. Happy face!

This coming week holds some more exciting things:

1. Two LPW songs on tuesday and wednesday. Tuesday has Journey - Any Way You Want It. Wednesday sports Alice In Chains - Check My Brain.

2. Wednesday also holds an acting workshop between 7pm - 11pm. I even convinced my teacher, Katie, to attend. I asked her about carpooling today and sure enough, I could hitch a ride with her to the workshop. I insisted on paying gas money of course!

3. Friday to sunday, I'll be busy with a voice-over class. Am excited for that as well since it focuses on narration and commercial voice-over, as opposed to the pure acting aspects.

In the near future, I am going to be procuring a condenser microphone and some other tidbits to work from home with.

Videos:

Journey



Alice In Chains



Some students have dropped out, which is a shame. All the best to you guys.

First week of school

Was lovely! It was great to see and talk with everyone again.



It's funny to note that as soon as a large congregation of people from all over the world collected themselves in one place, diseases started spreading. I've been feeling less than perfect this past week, waking up with a sore throat and feeling a sense of malaise during the days. No big worries on my end though, some others have had a proper outbreak of flu.

This coming quarter seems interesting and more challenging than the first in many ways. This means that going to open counselings* is becoming even more important.

* Open Counseling: "The OC" is a scheduled time (usually an hour) for a teacher where any student of their respective program can come in and work on whatever they want, whether it be vocal range, pronounciation, vocal interpretation, discussing hair loss or anything of the sort. I am apparently known as "The OC Guy" since I attend as many of these as I can, while many students don't bother about them.

In other news:

During Art of Preparation, I've been nudged and encouraged by my teacher, Katie Campbell (amazing jazz singer) to think about taking an acting class. Said and done, I spoke with her about it during an OC and we looked up her old teacher, Tony Sears. After pitching a mail his way, I got the response that I should come and audit one of his workshops on wednesday the 20th.

This workshop sounds like alot of fun and an informative experience. Acting is a very satisfactory thing for me to pour energy and thoughts into.

I will also attend a voiceover master class running from January 22nd - 25th.

Back in LA.

Soooo.. I am officially back in Los Angeles. Here's a quick recap on how the trip went. Please note that I am not colouring this with any kind of whining or negative emotion. This is just fairly objectively what happened during the trip:

Itinerary: Örnsköldsvik - Sundsvall - Arlanda Airport - Helsinki - JFK Airport, New York - LAX Los Angeles.

Jan 1st, 1555 CET:

Bus was supposed to arrive at 1540 but arrived 15 minutes late. Apparently it was also full and was not going to make it to the connecting train, which was leaving at 1810 from another location. We decided to take he car down south in order to maybe make it. Sis had met an old friend of hers as well and we also told another woman that she could hitch a ride with us if she wanted (she was amongst those that were left behind). We were assaulted by a blizzard while on the way south and due to this, missed the train by minutes. The bus arrived later and so, around 40-50 people were stranded there. We were helped out by a very lovely lady from SJ (Statens Järnvägar [State's Railroads]). Eventually we all made it on another train. This only went halfway and the remainder of the trip was covered by an extra bus. I eventually arrived at Arlanda Airport around 1am.

Jan 2nd, 0600 CET:

Flight to Helsinki. It went off without a hitch.

Apparently, Helsinki airport always announces in Swedish in addition to English and Suomi. This means that whenever there's the slightest announcement, non-scandinavians have to sit through a few minutes of jibberish before actually getting the message.

Had a layover of a few hours and spent that time watching scottish comedian/musician/actor Billy Connolly on my laptop. That man is hilarious!

Come an hour before flight departure, we were informed that there was an extra security check at the gate. This is the first time where I have actually been properly frisked (patdown, visiterad) by someone. The problem with this security check was that it took a very long time. Thus, the flight was delayed by roughly two hours. A disconcerting thing to hear when your connecting flight is leaving 1½ hours after the originally planned arrival in NY.

On the flight: Happened upon a family consisting of mother, father and their three(!) sons, ranging from young to adolescent age. Sitting on the left aisle side of the middle four-seats, I was subject to listening and observing a young child being extraordinarily spoiled by his father. The child was what must be a nightmare for a parent. Whining, rude, jittery, jumpy and altogether fairly annoying to his family. The only time he actually listened to someone was when I asked him something (usually if he wanted help with the belt, blanket, getting out in the aisle for a lavvy visit, etc). He also kept sneezing on me.

JFK Airport (Which has parts that look exactly like LAX):

Missed first connecting flight at 5:15pm. Was mentally fatigued at this point and unnecessarily grumpy, did not behave rudely to any employees though. Being a pain in the neck, just because you've had a less than perfect day, does not help your own situation and ruins the moment for others.

Don't misbehave, people! Be courteous and make the effort to be at least neutral when addressing personnel that have had no contact with you prior to that moment. Got another flight at 7:10pm. This flight was delayed until roughly 8:30pm. About 20-30 minutes after taking off, we had to turn around due to the flight being overloaded. We were greeted by a posse of emergency vehicles, fire trucks and ambulances. "It's all procedure" said the pilot. After waiting to midnight, we finally boarded the flight and came back to Los Angeles at 3am local time on the 3rd of January. I was greeted by A & C (Mom and dad nr. 3) who were following my progress from NYC to LA. I am greatly appreciative for all the support and help I get from these lovely people.

So that's the trip back to Los Angeles. I am fairly weary and my body isn't fully recuperated yet. Happy New Year to everyone and I hope you're all having a good time!

Må väl!

It is beyond cold!

So yeah.. The mercury is creeping below -20 Celsius, which means we've gone below -4 Fahrenheit. It is cold, but it is also wonderful! There is ALOT of snow here (see picture in my previous entry) and it is not going anywhere.

Christmas celebrations have been pretty nice. The normal holiday clashes within the family have been about as usual. Don't act like you're surprised! I bet every family has some days where everyone is stressed out of their bones and just want to do something else.

I got to be Santa Claus for a family this year as well! They seemed to enjoy it quite nicely, even though the boy of the family said it was a different Santa this year. Quite an interesting observation, seeing as I did the exact same thing, looking the exact same way, last year. They seemed happy enough when I was finished, and I got a present of my own from them.

Christmas Day felt like one big giant party. Swerving back and forth between different places, visiting friends, acquiantances, relatives, not-so-much-acquiantances-but-I'll-take-it-because-I'm-not-sober, and so on. I did spend abit of ye olde monetary funding on that evening, but it was damn fun as well!

On the second of January, I'll be flying from Stockholm back to Los Angeles. Let's hope that the terrorists decide to bugger off for a good long time at that point. I miss all the friends over there!

See you guys soon!

Am Home

Am tired

Am happy.

God it's beautiful here.

Misery in Heathrow

American Airlines. You guys are a piece of work.

1:30pm: I ask Scott if he wants to go to Denny's and have a small celebratory and expensive lunch before I go home. We end up being there until around 1:30pm and then head off to LA Internation Airport (LAX).

2pm: Notice that plane has been delayed from 5:30pm to 7pm. This would screw up my itinerary royally. I kindly ask the guy handing me the ticket if there is anything I can do to better my chances of getting on my flight in London (Supposed to depart at 2:20, we would land around that time with our new departure time). The answer I got was an indifferent "No, you'll have to be on stand-by in London. Next!"

7:30pm: Finally in the air. Flight is fairly smooth and problem free. Flight attendants are nice and professional about the whole ordeal. Guy on the intercom really needs to vary his inflection abit, he sounds like the epitomy of a plastic flight attendant voice.

London, 3pm GMT: The descent into madness...

From this point on, me and Ludvig (another student from M.I. who happened to be on the same flight) would spend 5 hours in lines and additional time moving between lines. We end up having one of the most unlucky days in my life.

1. Lines move extremely slowly here. People are not cooperating with the staff members and this just prolongs the debacle that is missing a connecting flight. Me and Ludvig are laughing at the whole ordeal and keeping a level head so as to not sink into the cynical swamp that has engulfed the other passengers.

2. We received a stand-by ticket for a 8:10pm flight to Stockholm. We needed to be at the desk approximately 45 minutes before departure so that we could get our tickets (if there were any). Problem was, we were held up for roughly two hours at another desk, because the woman there was working in an extremely slow pace and even chatting away with her colleagues. I lost my head for five seconds and cursed angrily in Swedish. Then I remedied it by assuming my normal zen position of awkward happiness.

In short: We lost our stand-by tickets, which were available for just the two of us. All this due to sloppy staff members.

3. We missed a bus ride, there was foul tasting cider that I ordered and also bad quality food. We had received vouchers from American Airlines to use for a hotel room, dinner and breakfast as well as transport out to the hotel. We missed the first bus due to being misinformed by a bus driver, missed the second one because of misplaced tickets but got on the third one.

The hotel did not accept our voucher, saying it was invalid and that we had to pay 44£ for one night. I said "screw it" and we headed back to Heathrow.

12 midnight and onwards: So here we are, back in Heathrow. We got locked out of Terminal 5 eventually after trying to find some safe place to rest. The train that would take us to T5 was closed down after midnight and thus, We're stranded in T3. I'm typing this to keep myself awake since I don't trust some of the overnight passengers here.

In the future, I will look back on this and laugh about it. That puts a smile on my face right now. I've endured worse and I'll go through similar things in the future. This is a breeze!

We have a flight booked for 7:15 tomorrow. Hopefully these tickets are valid.

A sigh of relief

Yep, all the finals are done and that feels like a huge burden off of my shoulders.

I'd say that on average, I think that my worst grade this quarter is B+ (VG+ for the swedes) which is satisfying.

I'll have you know that all the swedes I hang around with at school seem to have done really well. Congrats to Charlie, Johan, Fredrika, David, Arvid, Adam, Mikael, Daniel, Josefine, Josephine, Linda etc.

Thank you everyone for keeping my Swedish lingo intact (albeit influenced by southern dialects now).

On saturday, I will be heading back to Sweden for christmas and new year vacation. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone back home!