I feel like I hardly ever update this blog anymore, which is probably a lie.. But still, I know I haven’t been as active as usual. But then, life has been keeping me pretty busy..

Wow, life.. Life suddenly just got very real for me. After struggling through five years of university and a MA thesis, I finally have a job interview tomorrow! As a community and customer service representative at a local expanding internet startup. I’m beyond excited as the job appears to involve large parts of web based communication and focus on Web 2.0 and various emerging and booming web technologies. Basically the exact same thing that the last two years of my life have revolved around.

I’m really proud that my application seems to have peaked their interested and am so stoked to hear more about it all tomorrow. As for right now, I’m really busy prepping for the interview and getting the relevant papers (and myself) all sorted out for the big day. It’s been a while since I’ve had a real job interview, so I’m also slightly nervous, but I have a good feeling about it and am ready to give it my best. Wish me luck!

Take this Friday, for example, where I traded a nice warm apartment, beers, good times and the company of two lovely blondes for a brisk walk through wind and rain all for the love of getting to work and spending four hours staring blankly at a computer monitor.. Wait, I probably should clarify that a little more.

See, like I said, I’ve started feeling a hell of a lot better after taking a day off on Thursday. So much better, in fact, that I quickly decided to go back to work on Friday. Not so much because I wanted to, but more because I needed the money and I wasn’t sure how much work we’d have laying around for the night. Anyways, I’d also promised Tina to pop by her place with a few things for her on my way to work and so when I finally pulled myself together and left for work at around 7 PM, it wasn’t before first making a brief stop at Tina’s to drop off some goods. As my general luck would have it, Tina and her friend Daphne were right in the middle of setting up for a party later that night once I arrived. So I was greeted by the sight of two lovely blondes sitting about, drinking a few beers and having a damn good time.. Which, in case you were wondering, is not really the first thing you want to see on your way to work on a Friday night.. It somehow makes you feel that your plans for the hours ahead are somehow.. Wrong..

The concept of sitting down for a minute, having a small sip of Tina’s beer and catching up ever so slightly.. and then getting right back up, donning your layers of insulating clothing and heading back out into the general mess of Danish fall weather in order to embark on a one hour walk to work.. Is just somehow wrong, and I will tell you right now that I, admittedly, in many ways felt like an idiot for doing it.. Especially after I finally did complete the journey through wind and rain and got into work and my co-worker, Torben, hears the story, takes one look at me and goes: “You did what? You chose what?! Are you fucking insane!!?!” – And this from the guy who I went through all this trouble and emotional pain to help out.. So much for trying to be a nice guy. I guess next time I’ll know better.

All things considered, work wasn’t too bad. Not only was it Friday, but I’d also told the others that the girls would be more than happy to see me back at their party after work, so in true “help a brother out” fashion, everything was being done by everybody to get us done and out the door as quickly as possible.. Gotta hand it to my colleagues in that aspect, you mention something about cute girl(s) waiting for you and they’ll have you out the door as quickly as possible.. Which is, of course, a fact I don’t take advantage off.. Too often.

But, anyways, so yes, after a quick effort, Torben and I were out the door by about 0:50 AM, and since I kinda wanted to go back and see what Tina and Daphne’s party was all about, I was even lucky enough to grab a ride with Torben who lived in the vicinity of Tina’s.. So it was not long after 1 AM (which is usually the earliest I can expect to be off on any given night) that I snuck in the main door at the apartment complex Tina lives in and got ready to crash the party in style. Or as much style as I could possibly muster after a long work week, a late night at work and the remainder of various bugs and viruses still escaping my system.

There’s always a certain bit of weirdness and entertainment value involved with crashing a party that’s been going for a good four or five hours. Simply on account of you being sober and others being, well, not so sober. The crowd that we hang with is usually a pretty happy and friendly one. And apparently even more so when drunk. So once I forced through Tina’s door and stumbled over a bit of garbage and some empty beer cans, I was met by yells from the boys, squeals from the ladies, high fives, hugs and what have you. Before I knew of it.. Or had even sat down or taken my several lays of protective clothing off, I’d even had a shot thrust into both hands and was commanded to drink.. In such a situation, there was really only one thing to do, so I down the two shots before moving on to give a very enthusiastic Katrine a big hug, thinking that my plan of having only two drinks that evening was certainly working well so far.

The craziness spawned by my arrival eventually died down only to be replaced by more insanity and rowdiness most of which I didn’t quite understand due to my late arrival and soberness. So while the room erupted, I snuck off, grabbed a beer from the fridge and headed out into the hallway to chat a bit with Jesper, Katrine and one of her friends. It was all pretty good times and after having nursed my beer for a while, I actually felt up for facing the party and as such made my way back inside to size it all up. I happened to have plans for the morning – namely going to visit my dad and his family in Nyborg, so I had a pretty well-laid out plan for the night to only have a few drinks and go home early. As a result, I was a bit behind everybody else that evening, but that was okay seeing as I was for once really keen on keeping this promise to myself.. And if I weren’t, Tina was keen on keeping the promise for me.. I gotta hand it to her, even when she’s drunk, she’s a sweetie, walking up to me every twenty minutes or so, putting an arm on my shoulder and demanding to know my status and whether or not I knew what time it was and if I was aware how much I’d been drinking. She even threatened to kick me out a few times, but we eventually reached an agreement which stated that I could stay as long as I liked, as long as I drank with strong moderation which was cool with me. So I ended up staying for about three hours, watching the craziness, taking part in the craziness, carrying out strange conversations and breaking a chair or two.. Or, well, I didn’t exactly break anything. All I know is suddenly I had a couple of girls on my lap and there was a broken chair on the floor beside me. I didn’t really stop to ask questions, nor did I care to.

All in all, it was a good old time, and I wish I could’ve taken part all night, but such is the way of the working class and I did have several big plans for the day ahead, so I stuck to my three hours or so of fun before I eventually headed off along with Katrine and her friend at about 4 AM, walking them back through town and then heading home myself to eat a late night snack, drink one last drink and then turning in at about 5 AM for what turned out to be exactly three hours of sleep before being woken by a barrage of text messages at 8 AM the next morning.. But that’s another story..

Wow, I never would have thought, but apparently complaining over the internet does pay off every now and then. No sooner did I star complaining about being sick but not sick enough to take the day off and start feeling better before I got hit in the face with a full on frontal attack of the sickies which knocked me off the feet and kept me entirely incapacitated for an entire day..

Which isn’t really half as bad as it sounds because while I do hate being sick, at least it forced me to take some time off. So, in a completely unprecedented move, I called in sick Thursday evening – on my own account and without facing any kind of external pressure or threats. Granted, Tina did let me know in no uncertain terms what she thought I should do, but I think even she knew I was gonna make my own mind about what to do. Luckily, though, and much to her approval. I ended up making my mind up in favor of her recommendations and calling in sick.

It wasn’t pretty, I wasn’t enjoying it and, to be entirely honest, there was quite a lot of whining and bitching involved on my part. Especially when I started really feeling better at around 9 PM Thursday and was more or less just lying around, feeling bored and thinking that I should be putting my time to better use. But for once, I fought through it, stayed in bed a full 24 hours and got over my spell of.. Well, whatever was bringing me down.

As a result, I got up Friday morning feeling better than I have in quite a while and actually felt ready to face the day. Even more so when I checked my email and found a reply to an application I recently had sent out. A very favorable reply, that is, asking me to call and schedule a time for a job interview which I did. And as a result I now have a job interview next Thursday at 11:30 AM for a really interesting sounding job for a local web company.. Yay! Needless to say, Friday soon became the best day in a long while..

But more on that later. I’ve had, and am still having a crazy busy weekend full of work and good times with both family and friends, good food, good wine, a few good beers and some DIY projects.. More on all of these crazy adventures later. For now I’m off to enjoy the rest of the day with my dad and his family in Nyborg. I haven’t seen them in ages, after all, just thought I’d let the world know I was doing a hell of a lot better and having one hell of a weekend

Not even get sick properly.. Huh? What?

Yea, in case you’re wondering, I’m apparently sick again.. But not like really sick.. Just.. The average Johan kind of sickness. Which involves being sick enough to feel generally crappy, fatigued and miserable.. But not really sick enough to be properly knocked out and just ride off the storm for a few days.

As a result, I keep telling myself that I can keep up at least some of my daily chores including going to work.. And I do manage to get things done. Just in a much harder and slower way than usually.  Well, I manage to get SOME things done, mainly work. The days, in turn are spent sprawled out on the couch, recovering and resting, not really getting anything done around the house.

Strange as it sounds, I wish I’d just get really sick for a few days, be completely floored and get it out of the system in a matter of days. It somehow seems better than the deal I’m currently getting where I’ve been feeling slightly queasy for almost a week now.. Blah, careful what you wish for, I guess.

I apologize for the short post, but I’m off to make some more chicken noodle soup with borderline insane amounts of chili and garlic as garnish. It seems to be my best weapon against whatever it is that ails me at the time being.

This is just a small test. Apparently WordPress offers a feature to let you connect your blog to your Twitter account and automatically tweet updates about new posts. Since I don’t update quite as often as I used to, I thought this would be a good way of letting people know whenever new posts are available.

Nothing much to see here, please disregard. More real updates shortly.

Something utterly weird happened last week. I received a large stash of cash from Tina, and a pretty significant bank transfer from my ex-girlfriend Louise.. Which means that I not only gained DKK 1600 in an afternoon but was also in a strange, unfamiliar situation in which, for the first time in years, no one owed me any money what-so-ever.. Well, none that I know of anyways.

You may think this is a good thing, and indeed it was. But to me, it was also a very unfamiliar situation because we have, literally for the past couple of years, been in a situation where Tina constantly owed me at least some amount of money and where I’d be able to cash in on her debt with me whenever we were going somewhere or doing something.. And then, all of a sudden, this nice, familiar comfortable situation came to an end with her paying off her debt and changing everything.. Clearly something had to be done, because the prospect of her not being financially dependent on my just wasn’t very appealing.

So I did what any reasonable person in my situation would do and lend her some more money! A much smaller amount this time, granted, but it served the purpose of not only bringing things back to normal, but also allowing for us to have more than one concert to look forward to in this year. Long story short, I bought two tickets for us to go see the Five Finger Death Punch + Shadows Fall show @ Voxhall in Aarhus on November 13. Which is cool for a myriad of reasons, the first being that Five Finger Death Punch is one of my absolute favorite bands right now, another being that it’s been a while since we saw any live acts, and yet another is.. Well.. Just the plain awesomeness of it all!

I mean, look.. Most guys my age have female best friends whose idea of quality time together on a Friday night is probably something along the lines of sipping tea together while watching Dancing With The Stars or America’s Next Top Model. Me, I’m blessed with Tina who’d take a beer with a Jägermesiter chaser over a cuppa tea any day and would all but love to spend a Friday night leading the charge with me in the front row at a thrash/metalcore show.. Hah! How awesome is that? I mean.. really!

But I digress, I guess, but you’ll have to forgive me on account of me being just a wee thrilled about the fact that I’m seeing one of my favorite bands live in a month in a small and intimate setting with good company. I really could think of worse ways to spend a Friday evening..

In closing, things are better now than they were just a few days ago. I have more concerts to look forward to, Tina once again owes me money, and rumor has it that Denmark beat Sweden in footie this past Saturday and is now heading to the World Cup in South Africa next summer

A lot of really monumental and life-changing events have happened over the course of very little time lately. Some of them expected and well-planned. Some of them less expected and not so well-planned. Into the latter category falls a sudden change of heart and a very brisk move away from Kolding by a certain young man known amongst friends simply as Dunkel.

“WHAT?” I hear one or two of you yelling. And incidentally that’s the exact same reaction I managed once I heard the news. See, it’s not like I was given any further notice than the rest of you lot.. So, over the course of a Wednesday night, I suddenly had to adjust to the fact that one of my best friends over the course of the last four or five years had picked up his things and left in a drunken panic, more or less over night.

Here.. I’ll try to explain: I pretty much knew that things hadn’t been going too well for Dunkel lately and that he was feeling less than happy about things and the way that they were working out for him.. Consequently. I actually got a little worried when suddenly I did not hear from the guy in like half a week or so.. Or well, I didn’t actually hear from him and he didn’t actually return any of my messages and calls. When I found out that people at work had not heard from him either and that he’d called in sick a few times, well.. I started to suspect that something might be up.. And something was indeed up, but not in quite the way I’d expected.

When I finally did hear from Dunkel, it was by way of a single message stating: “If I told you I was in the middle of a huge moving mess, would you be willing to trade shifts with me at work tonight?” Incidentally, this message arrived without warning right as I was in the middle of picking up an order at a local sushi place, so needless to say it left me more than a little confused. I gathered myself, grabbed my raw fish and set out the door, phone in hand, as my finger pushed the dial button on Dunkel’s number.

The resulting phone conversation didn’t leave me much the wiser. I got a hold of a grinning Dunkel who very matter of factly proclaimed that he’d spent the last couple of days moving half way across the country to move in with his girlfriend of a couple of years now. When pressed for details and reasoning, he stated very little and was only willing to offer an apology for not informing me based on the fact that he was drunk when it happened. As improbable as this may sound, it’s actually pretty standard logic on Dunkel’s behalf in some situations, so I didn’t really press him further on the matter as I could hear that I wasn’t really going to get more info out of him. Thus, I concluded that at least he sounded happy and I’d probably get a more detailed explanation at some other time. I then hung up and subsequently called Tina to tell her our friend had moved, offering her all the facts that I knew, knowing that this way I at least wasn’t going to be the only one to spent the rest of the day in a boggled state of confusion about the matter.

It’s been two weeks or so now since the move and I’m not sure how much wiser I am on the whole issue. I’ve gotten so far as to understand that Dunkel wasn’t feeling well and needed a change of climate and perspective. In his relatively impulsive mind, that apparently translates to picking up his tent and moving half way across country to live with his girlfriend. Whatever his reasoning, I can tell that he’s sounding and looking a lot happier now so it probably was all for the better.. Even if I’ll miss having the weirdo around.

I took some time out of the calendar today to go down to his old apartment and help him move some of his last items, including his grotesquely large fish tank, and to see with my own eyes that he was actually doing well which seemed to be the case. I don’t know about you guys, but to me there’s always a sort of somber feeling involved with helping friends move away. Especially when it’s people you’ve know well and have spent a lot of time with. In my case, I’ve probably split my time pretty evenly between my own apartment and those of Tina and Dunkel.. Which is to say that we were clearing out a place where I’ve spent like 1/3 of the last four years and now won’t be spending any more time at on account of it being all empty-like and Dunkel not living there anymore.. I dunno, it just gives me a weird feeling. Thinking about the good times had, the silly things done, and I’m starting to sound more and more like a sensitive old sod.

So, anyways, somber times, but still good times, Dunkel looks well, and I’m still not sure what the hell is going on, but we did get most of his stuff out save a bed and another few items and he now seems ready to move on and make a new life for himself and his girlfriend. An endeavor in which I wish him well. And I hope I can still visit and crash on the couch over there or something coz I do believe we still have a few beers to be had and a few laughs to share.

I’ll miss you, my brother in fuld! \m/

And it’s that of “Candidatus Informationis Technologiae (cand.it.)” !

At least, that’s what the letter I just received says.. In other words, I just received my official diploma for the completion of my Master degree. I’m sitting here with it in left hand, looking at it, feeling all sorts of weird sensations. Mainly good ones. Strange how the culmination of 21 years in the educational system can be forged into such a relatively small document and yet weigh so heavily.

Some have asked what my diploma looks like and what title I’ve been awarded. Well, I don’t have a scan, at least just yet, but the wording is pretty simple:

Johan Christian Bruhn Johansen

Cpr Nr: 290781-XXXX

has on the 25 September 2009 passed

cand.it i Webkommunikation (Danish title)

Web Communication (English Title)

and has thus been awarded the title of

Candidatus informationis technologiae (cand.it.) med linie i IT, Kommunikation og Organisation (Danish title)

Master of Science in Information Technology (English title)

It’s still quite an unreal feeling. It is all really over. It’s a good feeling, though, a somewhat uncertain one, but a good one. It’s a feeling of completion and one of a new beginning. All at once. A sort of personal rebirth and a chance to show that I can make it in the real world, come whatever may.. In the immortal words of Tommy and Dee Dee Ramone: “Hey, Ho, Let’s Go!”

No? Nothing? Well, I’ll tell you just what I did!

In a rather drastic move, I went from looking a little something like this:

To looking a little something like this:

“Wow, Johan,” you might be thinking, “isn’t that a little drastic?” .. And yes, dear reader, you’d be right in thinking so.. But, really, there’s some degree of reasoning behind the madness.. Or, there’s a hint of an explanation at least.

You see, some three years ago, about a month after my last haircut at that time, my friend Emelie started complaining that my hair was getting a little long and asking if I wouldn’t be needing a haircut any time soon. “In due time,” I answered the dear girl, “and I promise you then when I will in fact be needing a haircut, you’ll get to cut it whichever way you like!”

Well, as you may have been able to figure out by now. The day of my, in Emelie’s mind, much needed haircut did not, in fact, arrive any time soon.. In fact, it took me a couple of years to muster the courage to let her have a go at me with her scissors. Eventually, I decided that the day of my earning my Master’s degree would be the day that the hair would finally go.. Or a day close to that anyways.

Which is why I grabbed the chance last weekend when the entire gang – Tina, Zascha, Emelie and I plus others – were gathered at Zascha’s parents’ house for an extended fun-filled weekend. I told Emelie to bring her scissors and have a go at the untamable mange my hair had become. She gladly accepted the offer and set to work according to the rules: “Do what thou willt shall be the whole of the haircut” … Err.. I mean.. “Do whatever you want with the hair..”

The result is visible above and I’m actually pretty well chuffed with it. And also having one hell of a time enjoying the reactions to my recently amputated head of hair.

The fact aside that getting a haircut has actually been a pretty traumatic positive experience, the best thing about the whole ordeal has been me actually managing to keep the whole cutting of my hair a secret and subsequently returning to Kolding, not saying a word to anyone, and just watching the reactions on the faces of others as they discovered that I had lost about a foot of hair over the course of a weekend. Reactions have ranged from absolute indifference to very posiitve indeed. From joy over shock to sheer appalled horror.

I’ve received compliments, rude remarks, jokes, begging questions and just plain weird looks. I may even have been left out of my father’s will. Here’s a short list of some of the more entertaining reactions I’ve received over the course of the last few days:

“But.. But.. YOUR HAIR!!!” – Poor, shocked, middle-aged lady at the checkout register at my local supermarket as she nearly fainted in shock.

“No.. No.. No.. No.. No longer heavy metal!!” – Said in a thick accent by a Polish worker at GLS.

“Looks great! – Miss Pakistan 2003.

“HOLY SHIT!!” – Niels, Nis, Christian and others at work.

“Oh wow.. Looks amazing.. So, your girl..thing.. Tina made you do this? Good girl!” – Lene, my former supervisor at work. (notice, by the way, Tina being referred to as a girl..thing.. It would appear that people still aren’t quite getting it )

“Eh.. Heh.. Heh.. Hehehe.. Heh?” – Tom, my former foreman at work.

“Wait, where’d it go?” – Tanja at work in reference to my signature ponytail.

“I thought you’d gone a little bald over the weekend” – Zascha’s grandmother.

After a wonderful weekend with the gang at Zascha’s parents’ place and some talks with Zascha, this song is absolutely stuck in my head.. I may have found a new favorite song of the month.

Bruce Springsteen – The River

All hail the Boss!