This business of actually calling my friends' friends and making dates is really good for me. I got and accepted an invitation to the birthday party of a lovely lady named Malin. I was a little worried about feeling awkward going to a party by myself.
But Malin and her Finnish boyfriend Tomas were top notch hosts, and their friends were as gracious as they are. The crowd reminded me of Northern California -- fewer Stockholm sailor stripes, more sleeve tattoos, heavy gauge piercings, and blunt cut bangs. The table by the entrance had a Peter Beste photo book of Norwegian black metal bands.
I was totally civilized for the first three hours -- drinking wine spritzers, eating tiny canapes of chanterelle cream on croutons, button-sized Welsh rarebit, lox and cream cheese, and Finnish liverwurst with cornichons, all while discussing content management systems and iPhone apps with a developer.
But at some point, I broke out my party Swedish (at least, I think I did). I probably repeated myself a lot, as I am wont to do after knocking a few back. And I even sang along to the Swedish födelsdag (birthday) song, which I don't actually know.
Towards the end of the evening, Tomas poured me some Minttu. Minttu is a Finnish clear liquor, probably a kind of peppermint schnapps. It tastes like a liquid Breath Saver. I may have drained my glass in two gulps. I may have invited myself over to someone else's party in two weeks. I may have put my sunglasses on.
I woke up at 6:45am today with cotton mouth. I was surprised to discover that I had left myself a pitcher of water and a glass on the side table (how thoughtful of me!). I had also managed to take off my clothes before getting in bed, except for my ring, which was squeezing the life out of my swollen finger. I found my door knocker earrings under my pillow.
Besides having a kick ass time at the party, it was also a productive night, because I dreamt up a Drunk Guard iPhone app like the Google mail goggles:
If your typing is getting atrocious, or if at any time you type in the phrases "fucked up" or "crunk" or "I love you so much" or "why did we break up", the Drunk Guard pops up and asks you to do some dexterity tests. If you fail, Drunk Guard gets activated automatically. It prevents tweets, e-mails, chats, status updates on Facebook, as well as SMS, MMS and calls to certain pre-specified numbers.
It also has one big button for calling the taxi number of your choice, which will use GPS to scout your location and trigger an automated voice recording to the taxi operator. Message says: "Hi, this is the iPhone Drunk Guard for Glenda Sleuthipakarom. She needs to be picked up at 10 Main Street. She lives at 1432 Skid Row." And then if the iPhone could somehow pay for the cab ride automatically, that would be awesome, too.
Oh, and if you try and use any of the forbidden functions like Twitter and Facebook, you get a set of rotating messages that could include:
Drink a glass of water
Take your contacts out
Do you have your keys and wallet?
Wait to see if you still feel like calling tomorrow.
Doesn't that sound awesome? Show me the venture capital!
Um, also, apologies to anyone whose personal space I invaded last night, online and offline.
From this experience, I have surmised three things:
1. No tweeting after drinking.
2. Be careful with the Minttu.
3. Finland is going to be awesome.
But Malin and her Finnish boyfriend Tomas were top notch hosts, and their friends were as gracious as they are. The crowd reminded me of Northern California -- fewer Stockholm sailor stripes, more sleeve tattoos, heavy gauge piercings, and blunt cut bangs. The table by the entrance had a Peter Beste photo book of Norwegian black metal bands.
I was totally civilized for the first three hours -- drinking wine spritzers, eating tiny canapes of chanterelle cream on croutons, button-sized Welsh rarebit, lox and cream cheese, and Finnish liverwurst with cornichons, all while discussing content management systems and iPhone apps with a developer.
But at some point, I broke out my party Swedish (at least, I think I did). I probably repeated myself a lot, as I am wont to do after knocking a few back. And I even sang along to the Swedish födelsdag (birthday) song, which I don't actually know.
Towards the end of the evening, Tomas poured me some Minttu. Minttu is a Finnish clear liquor, probably a kind of peppermint schnapps. It tastes like a liquid Breath Saver. I may have drained my glass in two gulps. I may have invited myself over to someone else's party in two weeks. I may have put my sunglasses on.
I woke up at 6:45am today with cotton mouth. I was surprised to discover that I had left myself a pitcher of water and a glass on the side table (how thoughtful of me!). I had also managed to take off my clothes before getting in bed, except for my ring, which was squeezing the life out of my swollen finger. I found my door knocker earrings under my pillow.
Besides having a kick ass time at the party, it was also a productive night, because I dreamt up a Drunk Guard iPhone app like the Google mail goggles:
If your typing is getting atrocious, or if at any time you type in the phrases "fucked up" or "crunk" or "I love you so much" or "why did we break up", the Drunk Guard pops up and asks you to do some dexterity tests. If you fail, Drunk Guard gets activated automatically. It prevents tweets, e-mails, chats, status updates on Facebook, as well as SMS, MMS and calls to certain pre-specified numbers.
It also has one big button for calling the taxi number of your choice, which will use GPS to scout your location and trigger an automated voice recording to the taxi operator. Message says: "Hi, this is the iPhone Drunk Guard for Glenda Sleuthipakarom. She needs to be picked up at 10 Main Street. She lives at 1432 Skid Row." And then if the iPhone could somehow pay for the cab ride automatically, that would be awesome, too.
Oh, and if you try and use any of the forbidden functions like Twitter and Facebook, you get a set of rotating messages that could include:
Drink a glass of water
Take your contacts out
Do you have your keys and wallet?
Wait to see if you still feel like calling tomorrow.
Doesn't that sound awesome? Show me the venture capital!
Um, also, apologies to anyone whose personal space I invaded last night, online and offline.
From this experience, I have surmised three things:
1. No tweeting after drinking.
2. Be careful with the Minttu.
3. Finland is going to be awesome.
Genius. Sheer genius.
I am laughing so hard I am crying.
This is the most amazing idea I have ever heard.
I might add, "Take off your tights" to that list of rotating messages.
It is NO FUN to sleep in tights!
Finland WILL be awesome! I live in Estonia and have a Finnish boyfriend, and those Finns sure do know how to party. Minttu is delicious in hot chocolate, but I guess it might be getting a little warm for that already. When you go to Finland you may also have the pleasure of trying "salmiakki kossu", which has a very unique flavor... hope you like licorice :-).
speaking of norwegian black metal, i remember a story about two black metal band members who got into some kind of argument about who was the better singer. in order to sort the whole thing out, one of them challenged the other one to a duel (um, naturally). well, one of them killed the other and ended up in jail for a very long time which sort of made the whole argument moot seeing as neither of them would be singing again for a very long time.
i tried to find some kind of digitized proof of this story, but all i ended up with is this (also rather interesting): "Many recall a strong rivalry between Norwegian black metal and Swedish death metal scenes. Fenriz and Tchort have noted that Norwegian black metal musicians were "fed up with the whole death metal scene" and that "death metal was very uncool in Oslo" at the time. On a number of occasions, Euronymous sent death threats to the more commercialized death metal groups in Europe. Allegedly, a group of Norwegian black metal fans even plotted to kidnap and murder certain Swedish death metal musicians." - Wikipedia (my source for most information, unsubstantiated or not).
Hi Ganda,
A friend of mine turned me onto your blog (she sent me the link to your entry about your Dad which was very touching) and I'm so glad because this post was absolutely HILARIOUS! Looking forward to reading more about your Stockholm adventures!
Colleen