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!

A crazy week!

What the title says... This week has been pretty insane in terms of personal pressure to perform and the overall mass of things to do.

Monday and tuesday held nothing special besides an artist showcase performance on tuesday afternoon (between 4 and 6). The biggest anticipation was for thursday which had a stagecraft final AND the final rehearsal of a monologue for Art of Preparation class (in simple terms: acting class). My monologue is very personal and I will not reveal any details here since I want to keep that information from reaching the people it affects.

Monologue comments info in short: My teacher, Katie thought that my performance was fantastic and asked if I was into acting. I did say that I had contemplated taking classes but hadn't made a big deal of it. Maybe I will look into it in the future. I know that her own teacher has a class going close to where I live.

The second class I had was one of my electives, stagecraft. Where we had a final test. This test consisted of four songs. Two of them being popular songs of old, one being a blues melody where we had to write our own vocal melody and lyric, and one being ourselves accompanying on piano.

My setlist was as follows:

1. Do You Know The Way To San Jose
2. Route 66
3. Own blues song
4. I'm Sorry (piano, Evergrey cover of Dilba's hit song)

All in all, the performances went pretty well. I am still bummed out that my bottom end (my lower register) decided to not support me well, the only time it didn't work out of dozens of practice trials. It was such a relief to have performed this set, since my brain was pretty overwhelmed by having this burden on my shoulders, on top of preparing for final exams next week.

Examples of the songs listed above:

Route 66:



Do You Know The Way To San Jose:



I'm Sorry (this version is transposed down, I played it in a higher pitch than this):



Random great video from Lady Gaga:





Closing statement:

Last weeks have been hectic, but life has at the same time never felt better. I am constantly stimulated by all the great friends I've made and all the challenges I face here. I highly enjoy it!

The Midnight Sun

I find myself telling people over here in Los Angeles about the midnight sun and how it is only visible to the northernmost countries of the world. Alaska, Canada, Norway, Finland, Russia, Iceland, Greenland (Denmark that is) and Sweden can all see it if the location is in the northern regions of said countries. People down in Stockholm can not view the midnight sun since they are south of the arctic circle.

Some fast facts:

Midnight sun is a phenomenon that occurs for the northernmost regions of the world because of earths tilted axis. Because of this, all northern regions are subject to long sun exposure during summertime. The farther north you are, the more days of uninterrupted sunlight. The most extreme being The Arctic and Antarctic poles where the sun does not set for 6 months.

Some examples of midnight sun:


Kiruna, Sweden



Nordkapp, Norway

That concludes this post. Hope this illuminated the minds of some people out there!

Thanksgiving

So this past week, USA celebrated Thanksgiving. This meant that on thursday, there was food in store.

Said and done, me and Scott packed our stuff and went to Valencia for Thanksgiving dinner. In short, I can say that American food is interesting. Not all of it was tasty, but it was enlightening to have tried alot of what they had to offer. The courtesy of our hosts (which was not A and C, Scott's family) was remarkable though, I'm grateful to have been invited into their home and being part of their Thanksgiving.


Since Thanksgiving is a national holiday, I've been off school from thursday until monday. The weekend held nothing but rest and easy living pretty much.

Now for a week of hard work! I can feel that I've lost a bit of steam, but hopefully it'll be back soon.

This week I'll be doing Alien Ant Farm - Smooth Criminal



And that's about it for this time. Stay tuned!

Old pictures of a Yonie in Australia

Found some lovely old pictures of when I used to have this fantastically norse facial hair. I look like a fricking walrus. Enjoy!

Tired after a day of surfing.



Happy and tired face!


Same day as the first picture. This was in Noosa Heads, one of the best places I have ever visited.


The swimming hole in Emmagen Creek. The most beautiful and serene place I have ever seen and felt.


Those were a snippet of old pictures I found. I may upload some more in the future.

A Crying Blogger

Some say guys shouldn't cry. That it's unmanly and a complete turn-off. Luckily, I don't care. Whenever I hear a certain type of song or image that makes me think of certain things, I bawl like a baby. I know that I'm not alone!

Just now I listened to this song and opened up like a waterfall. Not because I'm sad about anything, I've dealt with that part of my life already. It's also not because I miss home, because I speak to my family regularly and feel content with that. I just find it so beautiful along with the imagery and the song's simplicity.

I'll also point out that I'm not a religious man, even though this band is.



Have a good day and evening everyone! Finding a positive spark in every day is what makes life worth living!

Hey North, what happened last week?

Loads of things, that's what! Here's a snippet!

Remember I was doing that LPW on Journey? Well it was a raging success apparently! As usual when I feel comfortable with a song, I was having alot of fun.



During stagecraft, which is pretty much a very spontaneous and improvisation class, we were handed lyrics for different popular songs. I ended up with Green Day's "21 Guns". After this our resident pianist, John Rosenberg, laid down a very nice and mellow rhythm and we had to come up with a vocal melody but using the lyrics we were handed. Let's just say that 21 Guns sounded far from rocky and very much like some semi-soulful ballad.

The piano performance with the song "I'm Sorry" was also alot of fun to perform. Definitely a more serious and heavy feel. Got critiqued on not being expressive enough and I can definitely agree. Was pulling myself back since I had gotten comments about being VERY expressive in the past. Vocally I felt really good, and the piano playing was beautiful (Our resident pianist is named Karen, a fantastic lady with terrific skills).

Thursday:

This was the day with the different version of "21 Guns" was taking place. At the end of the day, we had Artist Showcase Performance, so the class where I had performed "I'm Sorry" prior. Afterwards, my classmate Dani (Daniel, South American from Honduras) suggested we go grab a drink at Snow White. Snow White is a local bar situated right opposite of MI. They have huge pitchers of beer at cheap prices and we had a small party of people up for a peaceful evening in the company of friends.



Turns out, Snow White had been closed down due to violations against the health and safety regulations in California. We had to improvise, and luckily there was a bar nearby named Pig'n Whistle. Let's just say that at the end of the night, people were getting properly hammered. I had a light buzz going and didn't have to buy a single drink myself, one of the guys in our party offered to buy us all drinks which we were really thankful for. I felt obliged to proclaim that the next time the group went to a pub, the man would get his free drinks and shots back.

In other news:

Still working hard on picking up different accents. Have found good resources for it as well. I hope everyone back home in lovely Sweden is ok and that you're all having a good time. Now I'm off to practice and also visit the gym.

Take care!

The past week, the following week and everything inbetween.

"Life is like a box of cigarettes, you enjoy it for awhile and eventually it kills you."

- Johan Westberg Laudahn



Ok, so maybe that's being very cynical. Admit that it was fun though!

The past week has held some rehearsal and as you know, midterms. The midterms have all gone well. Just today I got the test from my theoretical class "Vocal Technique" and had scored 97% correct, that was definitely one load off my chest. Tomorrow we'll probably see the results for harmony&theory and eartraining.

The past week I performed the song Second Chance. While my vocal performance wasn't flawless, I was still satisfied and got thumbs up from my peers. Vocally I am finally nearing 100% again, although I'm still suffering from alot of mucus in my throat.

I've been practicing alot with a couple of other swedes, preparing for tomorrow's LPW which will be Journey - Don't Stop Believin'




And here's a cover version I found which is pretty amazing. This is from a TV show called "Glee". I know my family will love this one:


I also experienced my first ever jamming session with these guys. That was a very educative hour indeed. Thanks for the immense amount of fun, D, D and C!

In other news:

I have been hard at work researching the New York accent (there are several, I am basing one of them on Denis Leary in the series Rescue Me) and also Scouse (broad term for the local accent of Liverpool inhabitants, very melodic and fast).

You might have noticed that there are a few more blog links here now. I am collecting them mainly from friends so that people can read something besides my lovely rambling about life in LA.

The mission I have set out for January is to procure some decent studio equipment (mic, preamp and that whole shebang) so that I can get to work on that bit at home as well.

This multi-faceted blog post was brought to you by: Jonie!

Have a great day/week/month/year/life everyone! Cherish those things that make life worth living!

Scott teaches, Johan does midterms

Ohai derr! Before you start, it's a microphone, guys! Not a sex toy.



Life is still hectic with alot of stuff going on. After new year's, there will be alot more!

Currently I am the busy bee at school with one performance after the other, along with learning as much as I can on voiceover stuff. Luckily I have a lovely teacher at school named Delbi Smart who is also an avid voiceover coach. Those who know me, know that I have a slight obsession with picking up and learning different accents. I have the scottish and australian accents pretty much nailed down and am currently hard at work on developing jamaican english, cockney english, "valley boy speech", irish and also attempting scouser (local accent of Liverpool). One positive thing is that Delbi consistently wants me to come back and keep working on them, which is a good sign. A teacher wanting you to come back may mean that you have things to work on, but that's what being at school is all about anyway! Having a teacher saying nothing is worse than them saying:

- Oh yeah, I really want you to come back for open counseling so we can keep working on this.

Yeah Delbi, stroke that ego!!

In other news:

Scott has been giving voice coaching for people and is becoming increasingly busy with it. Today he went to see his own vocal coach, Roger Love, and came back saying that Roger will probably employ him in the near future. One of the reasons for this being that Roger himself is a very popular vocal coach and is very busy. GOOD FOR YOU, SCOTT!!



Currently I have had two midterms. One in piano accompaniment and one in my vocal technique theory class. Tomorrow holds two more midterms in the form of harmony&theory and eartraining tests. Am fairly confident on both, we'll see how it plays out.

Seeing as I'm not a piano player, I decided to take on what I will say is probably one of my most daunting tasks ever, next to having to learn how to walk again. The task I have set before me, is to learn how to play the piano and sing the following song:




The following weeks will be even more hectic. For week 10 I have to perform a set of four songs. One song accompanying myself on a piano and singing (see the video), two blues songs (Route 66 and San Josè) and one song where we have the instrumental track, but have to figure out a melody and lyrics of our own. It's a monumental challenge, but I'm motivated and fricking psyched to beat this challenge and put on a good performance as well.

PS: I've also managed to get two nicknames while being here. The first being "Number 2" since there are two Johan in most classes and I am always the second one to be called. The second nickname being "Yoni" or "Joni" coming from a classmate of mine. I thought it sounded cute enough to actually not protest their choice of nickname.

Live well, guys! Life is meant to be enjoyed! /Joni

Steel Panther, coughing and life

Still alive, don't worry. (You did worry, didn't you?)

I was sick through the weekend and only started feeling good enough to meet people on monday. Sky called me up and said that some friends of hers were playing before Steel Panther at The Key Club. For those who do not know Steel Panther, they are a parody on 80's glam metal bands. They're known for their energetic, hilarious and very 'dirty' shows. Being on the guest list for one of the opening bands meant we got in for free. The band we were there to see, Assemble The Skyline were playing at 9 and Steel Panther went on at 12.



I love watching Steel Panther, this being the second time I saw them. The only problem for me was that I was still feeling the effects of having been sick. Thus, I was tired as all hell.

Here are some videos of Steel Panther with random celebrities (a common occurrence during these shows).






During the week, I've been feeling abit tired and worn out. Haven't been able to sing as well due to coughing and wreaking havoc on my vocal chords that way. Next week is midterm week, which means it is a week of having a few exams.

Short story on one of my favourite subjects:

On fridays I have voiceover workshop, a class that focuses on the recording of voices for commercials, animated characters etc. I am a complete sucker for this and am enjoying that class like nothing else. Currently I am heavy at work on a jamaican accent, cockney and a heavy New York accent (think italian gangster type in a movie). I have so far gotten alot of praise for my irish, scottish and australian. Stroke my ego, teacher! STROKE IT!!

On monday I will be performing Shinedown - Second Chance at the modern rock LPW



That'll be all for this time, hope life treats you well

H1N1 and being knocked out.

Remember, just because I haven't written does not mean that I'm not going to! I'm just waiting for interesting stuff to accumulate so I can fit it into a fairly long post.

Now then!



Wednesday:

Hard rock LPW which was Rebel Yell this week. Had ALOT of fun with this one, naturally going bonkers on stage as I prefer to do. Brian gave me a 98/100 so it was a near flawless performance. To quote (not word for word but the context):

"All right, now what the hell am I going to criticize?"

Rest of the week has been filled with school stuff. Shawna (teacher that I see the most since I have at least one of her classes every day) made me promise to do a modern rock LPW so she could hear me sing. She continued by mentioning that "Pink - Please Don't Leave Me" was up next week. I promptly said no, my personal motivation was that I want a really serious song this time and Pink has made alot of songs with either goofy themes or goofy videos. I opted for doing "Shinedown - Second Chance" instead. This'll be happening on monday, week 6.



Thursday:

Started feeling abit of joint pain during the day, a sign that I'm catching a cold normally. By 2pm I was starting to feel pretty bad and had random single coughs. At 4pm I was feeling horrendous with intense joint pain, rough headache, fever and fatigue. I went to my last class but had to leave halfway through, it felt pointless to be there since I was just sitting around. The asians in one of my classes suspected that I had contracted H1N1, which may or may not be true. By the evening I was completely knocked out and could barely move due to fatigue and bodily pain. I kept waking up every few hours during the night.

Friday:

Completely knocked out during the entire day. Joint pains intensified even more and I was constantly squirming in bed since all positions were hurting. I managed to get two sandwiches and a bowl of yoghurt into my system, but that was it. Drinking water was hard. I spent the entire day in bed and come evening time, things were starting to look brighter.

Saturday:

Feeling alot better today. Joint pains are still there but I managed to stifle my dehydration and with it, some of my headaches. I can at least walk straight now. Hopefully the worst of these symptoms will be gone by monday.

Stay safe people! Don't catch this bug whatever you do!

K-1 World Max Final 2009

(Picture is from Final 8 which is an older event, this post is regarding the Final which was decided on October 26th)


I am a huge fan of kickboxing and especially the K-1 World MAX series. K-1 is a kickboxing organization that is active around the world, mostly in Europe and Japan. The fighters in this affiliation are usually around the 100kg mark (220 lbs) or heavier. The World MAX series is for fighters weighing 70kg and below, this is to allow shorter fighters a good stab at world competition.

This evening on Monday the 26th, the finals for 2009 were held in Japan. The match card for the actual competition fights were:

Yuya Yamamoto vs. Giorgio Petrosyan (Petrosyan being my top contender for claiming the title this year)



Buakaw Por. Pramuk vs. Andy Souwer (This fight could go either way as I saw it. Was surprised by the final decision.)

Buakaw vs. Souwer

For those that have yet to see the fights, I will not spoil anything but just to say that all fights were entertaining and had good performances. The final fight will not be posted here so as not to spoil anything. You can find it on youtube or via a google search.

Have a great day/night!

Being abducted to a movie shoot

This monday was an interesting endeavour. I ended up being an extra in a short movie production. The location would be Columbia College of Film Production.



Day started off as normal, a couple of classes and hanging out with people inbetween. Sky had told me about this short movie that she and an acquiantaince were going to be part of, so she abducted me and her friend Chris to join in on the set. We picked up Jacob (other guy participating in the movie, I think he is studying for a bachelor's degree at MI). We got out at around 6pm and met up with the crew. Matt, the camera man (silent and professional), Chris, the director (now known as DirChris since there are two in this journal), Emily the make-up artist, Justin the assistant director (AD for short), Peter who was playing a security guard, and Heather, who was assisting DirChris since he was both producing and directing this short movie. There were others on set as well, but I never caught their names unfortunately.

Me and Chris ended up as silent extras on the movie set, being customers at a bank (however plausible I am as a customer at a bank, what with my vast array of bracelets and my scarf). Our job was done within an hour, but the shoot continued until just before 11pm. We may have had quite some downtime, but I was enjoying myself since the people were pleasant enough to hang around with, and they apparently enjoyed my wacky behaviour.

Tuesday:



Tuesday held no interesting news really. I went to watch a fellow named Rob perform Led Zeppelins "Black Dog" at the classic rock LPW. Being from Florida, he shall now be known as FloRob. Because it sounds hilarious. Rob is a really good singer, but had blown his voice during the first performance (this was his second time performing the song) so he was abit strained. He solved it in excellent fashion using different note patterns, making his own version of the song in the progress.

Well done, Rob!

Wednesday:

Boring day today. Not much to report really. Made a tasty beef sauce and spaghetti.

I am a sucker for Oreos! They are the "Ballerina" of the US.


As always, stay safe and enjoy life! Make every day a great day, for yourself and others!

Internet and LPW

Had a few performances yesterday, the biggest being the "Classic Rock LPW". This week was the week of Van Halen, bringing on the song "Panama".

Let me sum it up like this: I did two more performances just because I was completely exhilerated and found it incredibly satisfying and fun to be on stage again. Afterwards I was drained and pretty tired, but happy. I'll definitely be attempting more classic rock LPWs in the future.

In other news: WE HAVE INTERNET! FINALLY!!

Orange County randomness

Yesterday was a strange but very fun day.

First lesson was sightsinging. Business as usual except we had a hispanic substitute teacher. Word of the day was the fantastic version she had of "Any questions?" which ended up being "Any qvesteeans?". Being my usual self, I was doing my best to get some laughs off of people. Some wanted to learn some swedish words and one girl in particular was taught "Himmel och pannkaka". This somehow evolved into a group lunch and the promise of going to a Halloween thing. Long story short: Halloween thing turned out to be closing before we could get there.

Interlude: Girl's name is Skylar (Sky for short) and she is an old guitar student from M.I.

I had not spoken to her before this sightsinging class. Her origin is Orange County, which is where I'll take us next.

Sky had her birthday this day and she promptly decided that we go to Orange County (Which is more than an hour away from Hollywood). Said and done, we met up with Chris, a very good friend of Sky and also a GIT student at M.I.

On the road we were! (Except I had to pee really badly or I would have wet my willy inside my breechers).

Ending up in Orange County, we spent the evening at the house of Nicky, Sky's childhood friend. Joining us were the already mentioned Chris and also Louis (a welshman who was visiting Nicky), Armin and Cameron (both guitar students at M.I.). The evening was spent in the family jacuzzi and pool, with pizza for dinner and a vast array of snacks. I felt properly spoiled by this generous family. It was a fun and great evening.

Came back to NoHo at 1am and crashed in bed, only to wake up six hours later. Today holds a LPW (Van Halen - Panama) and another performance (Pain of Salvation - Pilgrim). Hopefully it'll go well.

Live safe! Enjoy every day!!

The Live Performance Workshop (LPW)

A quick explanation on what a live performance workshop (LPW) is (in very stern and robotic writing):

a LPW is a performance by students. There are various genres suck as modern rock, classic rock, blues, funk, etc. Every genre has their own time slot during the week. For example; classic rock has 430pm - 7pm every tuesday. During the weeks up to this tuesday, students can sign up to perform their respective instrument in a band performance.

Clarifying example:

I sign up for week 2, classic rock. The song is Panama by Van Halen, this is the only song I can perform during the classic rock time slot on week 2. I can only sign up for the vocals, whether it be lead vocals or backing vocals. A guitar student would sign up for the same time slot and the same song. Come performance time, him and I along with other students for other instruments would perform the song Panama by Van Halen. If there aren't enough students, a teacher would fill that spot during the performance.

Every student has to amass 10 performances by the end of the quarter. This means a student has to perform at least once per week on average.

Yesterday, I spent two hours doing backing vocals for Lady Gaga - Poker Face.

That's right, I was MUMUMUMUUUUUH.

School has started!

This last week, I have bled money into our new house. My room is almost done and it is awesome!

School has started. There are ALOT of things going on.

This has been your twitter post on a site not even remotely meant for that purpose.

Orientations, moving to NoHo

SO! The past week has seen ups and downs with eventful days.



Me, Scott, Corey, Soto and Corey's friend Sean visited the LA county fair, which was quite fun. Once again we stopped by the Sakura Ichi restaurant which was fairly close. Scott decided that he would set his sights on getting drunk, ordering a proper bottle of sake while doing so. When we finally ended up at the fair, Scott was properly drunk. I had a few drinks myself and was walking around being tipsy, which made the entire endeavour more interesting.

Musician's Institute has seen some action as well. Thursday had a general orientation for new students (there were MANY). Let's also say that I am a very small minority when it comes to the ratio females/males in the voice program. I guess I should be happy? HOORAY!



Orientation in itself was first of all delayed by about 15-20 minutes (these are musicians after all, delays are to be expected). When the show finally started, we were treated to a performance by one of the voice teachers, aptly named Mama-O (yes, she is a soul momma and yes she talks like one as well). I found her to be fairly awesome, partly because they performed "Killing In The Name Of" by "Rage Against The Machine".

The day was fairly long, mainly containing information, information and more information. This information was about everything, literally. I now know that a microphone is supposed to be plugged into an amplifier, it's true!

Friday had an orientation for international students. Mostly it was info I already knew about so it wasn't much new stuff. Afterwards though, we were treated to a free lunch and performance by some students at MI. I hooked up with some other swedes and generally mingled with people from all over. One of them is also an avid blogger, so therefore I am linking her blog for your viewing pleasure (Her blog is alot more fancy than mine, more pics as well).

Short note: We've also started to move our stuff to North Hollywood. The only major things left to get is my bed and desk. Naturally it will be fricking IKEA!!

Stay tuned! Hope you enjoy reading!

Tidbits

The past few days have had small things happening. Let's list them up in chronological disorder:

We've visited IKEA for a quick look at beds. I grabbed a catalogue and spotted a neat one with drawers underneath (similar to the one above). Being storage effective is always good since I now have somewhere to hide my fantastic plans to conquer the US with. We also took a stroll into Barnes & Noble, which is a huge bookstore. For the swedes reading this; when I mean huge, I mean gigantrous. They stock pretty much anything (except educational books on finnish).



I opened up a bank account at Wells Fargo. Entering the bank, we (Me, Scott and Momscott) were greeted by a woman who had definitely seen a cosmetic and plastic surgeon recently. Those lips didn't retract like they should, and that jacket was a wee bit too distended up top. Apparently one of the must-dos was that I had to allow 75$ transfer between my checkings and savings account. She also wondered if I wanted to order a checkbook. I declined... politely. Opening an account took about thirty minutes. A problem I keep noticing is that when you have a swedish name and an even more swedish surname, is the fact that people look like question marks when you say it. Therefore, I have just started asking for a pen and paper. The Cosplast woman was professional and friendly though, kudos to her.


I signed up for something called a Voice-over Master Class which will be held in the middle of January. It'll cost me a pretty penny, but I reckon it will be worth it. Man in the picture is Don LaFontaine AKA "The movie trailer voice".

That's all for now!

Team Scott sampler

A fun video edited by Adam Ross. Includes Billy "Hez", Scott and Adam himself.

School registration and laser tagging

Thursday had some fun stuff in store. Registration at Musicians Institute to be exact.

As we're heading towards Hollywood, Scott's mother tells me about last time when Scott was registering for MI. That time, the freeway was blocked. A complete clusterf**k of cars because of some accident. Well, turns out a miniature version was going to happen on thursday. Luckily though, the carpool lane (need multiple passengers in the car to drive in this lane) was empty.

Arriving at MI, the first order of business was to find the auditorium (large concert hall). It took ten seconds. Second step was to get started on registration, that took ten minutes. I received this neat brown file with paperwork that I would bring with me to get registered on my classes and electives (Electives are individually chosen courses). I follow an escort up some winding corridors and stairs, until I end up in a small room with a man named Masta. First reaction was his awesome name, Masta. He was african-american and his name would literally be "Master" if spoken in african english.

Long story short: I registered into Musician's Institute without a hitch, got at least a couple of people working there to love me, and just wandered around with a big smile on my face. The reason for my smile was two-fold:

I am always happy in these situations.
The other people registering looked like they were being thrown into jail for the first time.

So that was basically my day on thursday.



On friday we went laser-tagging with Scott's friend Soto. The three of us played two games total, being all on one team once and then being accompanied by a couple of kids on the second go. We ended up dominating the other teams (who one time had some serious players, but mostly kids throwing tantrums). Winning by almost double the score of the runner-up team. Individually, we were also consistently in the top bracket with Scott placing consistently first and me second.

Come evening time, there was yet another visit to White Lotus on the schedule.


We ended up staying until midnight. Soto and I had some fun time on the trampoline.

Come saturday, I will be attending a voiceover workshop. Hopefully that'll be fun!

House renter!

Recap in story format:

In the beginning, back in 1955 (Spot the reference). Some god said let there be North Hollywood, and he saw that it was good.

One day, three fellows took a happy trip to NoHo (Is this suggestive that prostitution is bad business in North Hollywood?) and visited a house. Two of the fellows decided that renting this house was a good idea, one did not. The two fellows found a fourth fellow that also thought it was a good idea. This fourth fellow was friends of a friend to one of the two fellows. So the happy trio did not even have time to apply for renting the house before the owner went "TAKE IT, IT'S YOURS" (Spot the reference).

Short story made shorter: We are renting a house in NoHo!

In Flames, Zakk Wylde and random tidbits.

So a recap of the past two days is in order.
Tuesday was pretty uneventful during the day, I got myself a new cell phone with an included SIM-card for 30 bucks. The evening however, gave some other fun stuff.

Scott had set his eyes on an In Flames concert which was due at The Fox in Pomona, a decent sized venue that could probably take upwards of a thousand people. The drive was about an hour out from Valencia, with no rush hour traffic.

Arriving in Pomona, we decided that the first two opening bands were not very attractive, so we wandered aimlessly for about half an hour, coming across a med school campus and an arts factory while doing so. Scott had set his sights on an asian restaurant named Sakura Ichi, betting that In Flames were eating there as we walked past. Eventually we came back and went in and as it turns out, we missed In Flames by about half an hour. Despair turned into acceptance as our waitress turned out to be both attractive, slightly witty and generous with her attention (Reminding me alot of my old classmate, Emma). I also spotted a crazy woman on a random drug, making very odd dance moves just outside our window.



The show in itself was good, In Flames looked in the groove of mid-tour shows. Anders Fridén is definitely a more entertaining guy when he gets to speak swedish. I ended up buying a bandana that I stick around my neck (Like all other bandanas). We also got a message from Mike The Pirate that he wouldn't be sharing a house/apartment with us. His reasoning was that he didn't feel it making sense for him to pay rent (he lives at home) and just come 15-20 minutes closer to his school, which is roughly 40 odd minutes away from Valencia.

I'll write up wednesday's escapades later. I can say that we spotted Zakk Wylde at our breakfast diner. Scott flashed him a rock on sign and got one back, we decided to not disturb his breakfast though. Enjoy this tidbit for now!

House Hunting

Yesterday was spent actively searching for an apartment or house. The plan is to have me, Scott and Scott's friend Mike (The Pirate) to live together.

We scoured across North Hollywood in search of rental places and came up with a nice looking newly renovated house on Hatteras St. The only real downsides were that there was no stove (downside for me, since I can enjoy cooking), and that it was a distance to Pasadena, which is where Mike goes to school.

Otherwise, the days have been spent drilling basic piano practice and theory as well as physical exercise. I also got a new pair of sunglasses for the fabulous price of 12,98$ at Sears. A new phone has also been purchased (came with a refill card and cost me 30$, so that was worth it). I would also like to point out that we have probably had at least ten close calls in traffic every day. People can't drive here it seems.

Right now we are preparing to visit White Lotus gym where Scott shall be doing some tricking and I will hopefully be doing some drills on the punching bag.

Catch ya later!

In Los Angeles!

After about... 20 odd hours of traveling? I finally arrived in Los Angeles and was greeted by a Scott with long puffy hair. The 20 hours could be summed up like this:

Flight from Stockholm. Guy at the check in counter looked nervous when he noticed I had an extra bag to check in.

"Uuuh sir.. Do you have two bags?"

"Yes I do"

"Well.. You do know that you have to pay for the extra one?"

"Oh yeah sure, I do get to take it free on the next flight though! You were afraid I was gonna get pissed off, weren't you?"

"Ehehehahahah..." Which was his nervous laughing.

Flight over to London was ok, screaming child for an hour though. I kid you not, they were conducting experiments on that body. The shrilling screams that were emanating from that general area were terrifying. It was almost "I'm sitting two seats from the spawn of Satan". Damien was definitely on that flight.

Heathrow Airport:

Got off the flight and had to grab my bags since I was switching over to Air New Zealand (Awesome airline, highly recommended). After grabbing my bags it was time to get over towards terminal 1. I was stuck at terminal 5. A trip down to the express train, a long walk down an eerie tunnel and I was there. Guy at check in counter here was very outgoing and friendly. He also helped me sort out the issue of a contact address in the US. If you do not know this, it essentially means you need to provide an address of the place where you are staying. In my case, we used the address for my school.

While on board the airplane I met the best two awesome ladies, Diane and Mel. They were heading to Palm Springs and we kept chatting on and socializing during pretty much the entire trip. We also had a small competition with an on-board game programmed into the monitors.

Los Angeles

Landed in L.A. and spent some time chatting with the asian customs agent I was assigned to. He was also very social and friendly (After I had cracked a few icebreaker jokes). Waved good bye to Diane and Mel, also promised to visit their home town someday (It sounded peaceful and fantastic for a few days recreation of the mind). Scott picked me up and I spent the rest of the evening being very very tired. Eventually I passed out when Scott hit the lights to my room.

So that was the actual trip to Los Mengeles! (Politically incorrect! This man must be hung to the carnivores of media)

Be back with more soon!

A New Life

And so starts a new chapter in life.

I decided to create a place where I can collect my thoughts, reflections and observations on life as I spend my days over in the USA. The reason I decided to write in english was simply to make it accessible for people back home in Sweden, as well as international guests that would decide to read it (or stumble upon it, you never know).

Number of updates will definitely vary. I'm not known for being consistent.