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.