Where is my home???

When I was a teenager my mother and father bought a house. The former owners still came to visit their old neighbours next to our house. So one Saturday night/morning my parents woke up as they heard someone trying to unlock our main door. They peaked out from a window and saw that it was the former house owner who was very drunk and tried with a pair of keys to open our door. She talked to him from the inside, without opening the door, telling him that he did not live here anymore. After a while he disappeared.

First impression counts!

At work we were going to get a new General Manager and he was sitting in my manager´s room and they could see me and the other colleagues from the room. I was very thirsty and I had bought a coke in a can and I could see that it had a dent/buckla on it. I opened it up and then it exploded on me. Bang! Oh no! Almost all its content ran down my clothes and down onto the carpet. So, the new manager saw me with coke all over and on my knees scrubbing the carpet....what a great first impression!!!NOT!!!

The wrong month!

I was going to visit a customer in a town 5 hours from mine. I arrived after the long journey and I was standing outside the company´s entrance which was locked. I phoned the customer and said: - Hi, I am here now! He responded: - Today? Wasn´t it the same date next month? I replied: Eh, next month? The customer let me in and fortunately he had time for me. I later checked our email correspondence and he was right. I had written the wrong month! Ups....embarrassing...well better than one month too late..right!?

 

Double trouble

An acquaintance from the suburb I live in travels to work the same route as I am. One morning we were on the same bus and we started to talk. We talked and talked...We changed from the bus to the underground and changed from the underground to another train in the underground. We talked and talked. Then suddenly I noticed that we had taken the wrong train as we had not paid attention as we talked so much. So, we had to jump off the train and take another train back. We came back to the train station from which we could start all over again so we were on the right track....we saw the train and we had to run so we could catch it as we both were late to work by now.  Luckily we catched the train....just to realise it was the wrong train again.............So, when I came in late to work I had to confess that I was late due to that I made the same mistake twice!! Really embarrassing!

   

It is really tough to be a mum....

I was in a store and my daughter wanted some candy but I said no. She got upset and I said it is time to leave the store but she refused. She lay down on the shop floor and screamed. I thought OK I will get out of the store and leave her and she will soon get out and try to find me. The shop owner looked really confused and watched her and watched at me outside the shop but my daughter did not stop crying and screaming and was still laying on the floor. I knew this was not going to work so I entered the store again and grabbed her leg and pulled her out in the the mall screaming and crying. She is still not walking so I am dragging her so she cleans the floor with her whole body. We passed other shoppers who were staring at us and I guess laughing at this surrealistic scene. When we came out of the mall she stopped crying and started to walk. It is REALLY tough to be a mum!

Against all odds!

My mother died of a very unusual disease (CJD) - one in a million is the likely hood of you to get it. As it is so unusual I wanted to get connected with other families who lost loved ones but there are no one to be found and the hospital of course cannot give me their names. I have only found CJD Families in the US and the UK but not here in Sweden.
As I am emptying my mothers apartment I am selling her things to people in the neighbourhood where I live. A very nice woman came over to my house 3 times to buy things and she saw on Facebook that I wrote about the disease CJD. So she wrote to me and asked if I had a relative who passed away from CJD. So it turns out that I found a relative in my own hallway!!! What is the odds for that!? She lives only 1000 meters from me!

Fisherman´s Friend in Swedish

I worked a a post office/bank and worked with an elderly lady. She was going to phone another bank to see if the cheque with for 20.000 SEK was valid and if there was money on the company´s account. She did not know English very well and when she was going to say Fisherman´s friend she said: Fis Herman which is the same as Fart Herman. Herman being a male name. I laughed my head off! Have you heard of a company called Fart Herman!?

The first bra

It was that time when a girl is going slowly into the adult life. It was time to by the first bra. My daughter was nervous and thougt this was embarrassing.
Me and my daughter visited a department store and we looked for the staff but we saw no one. So, we took a couple of bras and went into the fitting room. She tested some bras when suddenly a very dark and male voice said: - Is it two people inside the fitting room? My daughter hid behind my back inside the fitting room and got really upset as she did not want a man to put his head inside the fitting room and check on us. Also, she was kind of embarrassed as it was bra fitting of course. I peeped out behind the curtain and said yes we are two people. It was a guard who explained that it was not allowed. I replied that there were no staff around and that there were no signs telling us about this. Also, my daughter needs help so she cannot be alone. Then the missing staff appeared, a lady, who said that it was OK so finally after this shock we bought the first bra.

Fitting room

On my lunch I was going to try to find some new clothes so I went to the shops fitting room to try some clothes on. Then my mobile phone rang and I saw that it was a manager at my work so I thought I was funny answering: - Hello, it is Siv (my name) in the fitting room. The manager said that he had wondered where I was as I was supposed to be in a meeting with him......ups....embarrassing....I ran back to work as fast as I could without any new clothes.

 

Feeding sharks could get really exciting....

In Gothenburg, Sweden we have an indoor sea park called Universeum with lots of fishes and Sharks. You can walk inside the water in a Plexiglas tunnel so you feel like you are walking together with the animals. We arrived paid our tickets and realised that at our arrival it was time to feed the Sharks. We sat down to Watch it but before it started and just 5min from our arrival the fire alarm went off. A high annoying noise. The staff told us that we need to use the fire exits. Fortunately it was in the summer as we walked out there were just a little space on top of a mountain and no stairs or anything to get away from the building just high dry grass. We stood there with a lot of people and could not move. Then some people had enough and started to try to get down from the mountain and so did we. When a lot of people had walked on the grass it became very slippery and suddenly an elderly man slipped and fell. Fortunately he fell down on a younger man who stopped the fall. We walked down very very carefully. The fire fighters came and left and it was OK for us to go in again through the main entrance as it was false alarm. So, back to watching sharks eat but it is so typical that it had to be when we were there...

Why me!? Really!?

I was soon going to give birth and my husband had agreed with a colleague at his work that if we needed to go to the hospital he would drive us to the hospital as we did not have a car. So, I was calm as I knew he lived close to us and that it was OK to phone whenever we needed. So at 05:00 the water broke and we phoned him. He arrived in a Mini Morris and we drove quickly away. It was very uncomfortable as I had pains every minute and in this small car I felt every bump on the road. The driver was nervous and drove as fast as he could. We arrived and he said very relieved: Here we are! I looked at the hospital and to my horror I realised that it was not the correct hospital. He had taken me to the wrong hospital! Really!? How could this happen!? I am going to strangle my husband!

                                                        Queen Charlotte´s Hospital

Mitsubishi they said and laughed

My father-in-law is a bit obsessed with mobile phones. He lives in Athens and he flew to us in Sweden for 4 weeks. Then horror struck! He forgot his charger in Greece. So, what to do!? I surfed the net and found his charger in France and nowhere else. I asked my father-in-law: - Do you want me to order it from France? He responded: - No, the shops here in Sweden must have it. So, we visited all mobile phone shops and they just laughed and said no we do not have it. You wonder why they laughed? Well, they laughed and said Mitsubishi isn´t that a car!? So, I can tell you that Sweden has no Mitsubishi mobile phones and no chargers for them and my father-in-law had to learn how to live without a mobile phone.

Crawling in a ditch - check!

I have had the pleasure to find new relatives as I am searching my roots. I had talked to my new relative over the phone and chatted but never met her in real life. She was going to drive me around and show me the houses where my family had lived over 100 years ago as she knows the area. We drove around and we met another car on a narrow road and she screams: Oh, no! We found ourselves suddenly in the ditch. The car lying on its side and I had my head just by the ground and the door could not be opened as it was lying on the ground. We had just missed a lamppost! She climbed out on her side and I had to climbed over the gear stick and over her seat and out. She said we must phone a farmer who can pull the car out of the ditch with a tractor. Then two cars stopped and asked us if we needed help. They were on their way to a wedding and they pushed the car out of the ditch and saved us. It was scary when I thought of what could have happened if we didn´t miss the lamppost....well we had some guardian angels for sure. Really lucky!

 

ps the real photo will be added....at a later date

Can I change nurse please!?

I have never had surgery before but I had to remove my gallbladder as it was filled with stones and it was painful and bothered me almost everyday. So I came to the hospital and and I met my nurse. An elderly lady who looked very kind. She started to ask me some questions like if I had some liquid Before the operation and I had to fill in a form. She informed me about what was going to happen and that I should get some pills which was normal procedure to calm the patients down. OK so she forwarded me 3 different pills and I said please could you mix it with a little bit of liquid. She disappeared and I started to take the other pills with some water. She came back and said oh have you taken those pills you should not have them with a lot of water. She forwarded me the cup with my medicine and she dropped it on me by mistake. So the medicine poured down my trousers. OK. She walked away and made me some new medicine. When I had all the pills in my body she started:
Did I tell you this?
Did we do that?
Oh, did I forget to say that....?
And did I tell you that...?
I started to get nervous even with the calming effect of the pills....I even thought to myself maybe I should ask to have her replaced????? As she obviously forgot important things.
Anyway the operation went well and here is the result of the operation:

Here are my 21 stones!!!

Telenor does not want to talk to their complaining customers

Telenor is a phone company in Sweden. I had just bought a simple phone to my young daughter without subscription only paying for a cash card so she will not phone to Hawaii for hours and we will have to sell the house to pay the phonebill. So, I walked in their store in Stockholm´s city together with my daughter. I said to the young man I would like to add some money on her cash card/account. He then throwed us a pink girlie new phone on the counter saying you can get this new one for free if...I stopped him saying I have just bought her one and I just want to have the cash card. Then another young member of the staff came over and leaned forward and said:
- Why do you want cash cards it is only people who cannot pay their bills who have them.
I was very angry and fumes came out of my nostrils and my ears....I said:
- No, I only want a cash card.
I got my cash card and when I left I said to myself that this is not right to be humiliated like this.
I phoned their customer service to complain. The answer I got from their customer service was that they could not received complaints like this over the phone and that I needed to send a letter to their head office. It was really clear that they did not want to talk to their customers. So, I will never have anything to do with them.

When I lost it with Tele2!

Today I received I guess the 15th invoice from a Telephone Company called Tele2 and I phoned them for at least the 25th time saying the same thing over and over again. You have promised to cancel the telephone subscription and you always say that I will not get anymore invoices but you always send me yet another invoice. So, I was not nice. I yelled and asked what do I need to do so you stop sending me invoices!? I have had this problem since May! It is 5 months now! You just promise me that there will be no more invoices by they keep on coming! I am so damn tired of this! Really tired!!!! I asked to speak to a manager as I could not take it anymore. The manager apologised and said that they will write me a letter confirming that no other invoices will appear....well you know me by now...I would not be surprised if Tele2 sends one again.

Where did she go!???

As a family we were going to a fast food restaurant in Athens and our daughter was 3-4 years old. We have a good meal but then suddenly my daughter rises up from her chair and goes to another family and takes an empty chair and sits at their table with them instead. We were as surprised as they were. She sat there like it was the most natural thing in the world. At least she did not eat their food! After some time and some conversation with the new table she returned to home base. Really odd kid!

What happens if I push this button???

I was attending a Tourism and Travel life one-year course and my class visited a cruise liner = Birka Cruise. We were shown around in the ship by a guide and when we came to the dance floor and saw all those crystal balls and curtains... I could not help myself. I disappeared behind the curtains as I was curious of what was hiding behind the curtains....I found some sort of music system and I could not help myself and I pushed some buttons and suddenly when all my class was on the dance floor with the the cruise ships guide. Suddenly lamps starts to flash and some romantic soothing music starts to play...ups....

The guide comes running behind the curtain and finds me and he gives me a funny look.
My classmates then gave me a nickname: Little Tinker = Lilla Pillan.

Antifreeze a 50/50 chance....and I blew it twice!

I bought a car for the first time in my life and I have not a clue really what happens inside this monster machine. So when the display said to me "It is time to change the antifreeze/cooling liquid" I walked into the gas station and asked them what antifreeze I should have and they responded blue as there is also a red. That was over a year ago and now we need to fill it up again so I thought maybe I should check with the mechanical firm just to be sure. They said it should be red not blue liquid. Ups...OK so now we had to surrender the car and get it emptied and refilled with RED antifreeze. The cost!? well, 1500 SEK around 150 Euros. That was an expensive antifreeze...Then I spoke to my car crazy brother-in-law and he claims that I was fooled again! That it does not matter which colour it is as it is just two different manufacturer and it is all the same. Lord Oh Mighty!!!

When I changed my name to Sex

When I worked at a car rental booking/reservation call centre I was very busy and the phone rang all the time with customers who wanted to book cars. I was also the person who had worked there the longest so my colleagues asked me questions between the calls. A lady asked me how she was going to access something in the computer. I replied F6 which is a key on the keyboard and with the next breath I answered the phone - Good morning this is car rental company X my name is Sex how can I help you? As soon as this word had left my tongue I though oh my God what shall I do now. I heard that the customer was wondering if he had heard my name correctly...I continued to talk as nothing had happened. To explain this for you guys who are not Swedish speaking the number six (6) is called sex in Sweden but sex is also called sex. So, that is why I mixed it up and because my name Siv is also very short and similar to the number sex/six. Really embarrassing!!!

Laundrette hooligan that´s me!

I had never seen a laundrette (tvättomat) before and my first time to wash clothes did not end so well. I poured washing power in the washing machine and added my clothes and paid with a coin and the machine started to spin. I waited but no water...suddenly I understood what was wrong. I had put clothes and washing power in the dryer instead of the washing machine. I quickly stopped the machine and took my warm clothes filled with powder and sneaked out ...ups...I wonder what happened to the next customer´s clothes??? ups again....

Icecold relations with the neighbour

The 20-year old neighbour had parked his car where it did not belong on our driveway which we share with another family. The 20 year old man he did not live here so he should not park there. I had to try to hack ice on the driveway but it was difficult when he had parked his car there and I wanted to be careful with my back so I left the big and thick hacked ice chunks around his car. Later on in the evening I was going to check on the next door family´s cat. Outside our entrance stood the the young man and he was fuming of anger.
- Why have you left ice like this? When the family returns they will have it like this!
I responded that the ice will melt until they are back. 
I said: - You are not supposed to park there. 
He said: - I was given permission by the family.
- Yes, but not by me was my answer.
He said: -This side is not yours. 
I said it is our common drive way but yes I do not own that bit of the driveway.
He said - You are so annoying.
I replied - That is great so I can annoy you instead of the other way around.
He was very irritated and drove off really quick to show how angry he was.

He thinks he has the right to park on other people´s driveway and he obviously thinks he has the right to tell me what I should do with the pieces of ice on my driveway. If my daughter would have done this I would have spanked her bottom! 

 

Bullied by the upper class

When I was 6-16 years old I was bullied in the posh school I was attending classes in. Why? Because I did not belong to the upper class. My mother was an office clerk and my father a gardener. That was my mistake. So, I was hit, given nicknames and had almost no friends. On top of that I got better grades than the upper class. That was a thorn in their eyes. They also bullied me saying that I was ugly. So all my life I have thought that I am ugly. Brainwashed. These "nicer" schools are not especially nice if you are not one of them and even if you are one of them you can be bullied anyway as we have just seen in one school called Lundsberg here in Sweden. My school was Saltsjöbadens Samskola. A school I would never recommend to anyone. These years were awful but I never let this bring me down. Just one example of what could happen. We had sports at school and in the dressing room a girl had stolen my bra/underwear. She gave it back to me before next class. Girls like that I hope their karma comes back to get them!

Santa does not exist?!

OK I confess we did hire a Santa Claus one Christmas and it wasn´t cheap. He arrived and I told my husband you must keep our daughter in the living room sitting on the sofa. Just to be on the safe side so she would not see or hear anything. I went outside to talk to the Santa and we discussed what he was going to say and so on. Then I noticed that someone was in the bathroom just beside me and Santa. So whoever was there would easily overhear what we were saying. Well, Santa came in gave the gifts and went. It turned out that my daughter said I have to go to the toilet and all the relatives let her and not even thinking of telling her to go to the bathroom upstairs. So, this was the last time my daughter believed in Santa and the last time I believed in my husband! There you go that was expensive money to pay for revealing Santa!

A message from the other side?

Last night I received a message via facebook. A simple "Hello".
It was from Barış Akarsu a Turkish musician and actor. 
As I have not had the pleasure of meeting him I googled and found out that he died 2007 in a car accident. Weird or what!?

  

My husband´s compliment...NOT!?

My husband was going to give me a nice compliment about my hair.
He said: - Your hair looks great with that 1960:s style!
- Say what!? My husband says that my hair looks like the sixties!? That cannot be a compliment!!!??
I mean a hairstyle which is 50-years old!!

Raise en eyebrow to what I did...

My 12-year old daughter came running to me with a friend saying: - Mummy mummy a boy I know stared into our window and into our house. - Oh no really!? - Yes, yes really. - OK, we need to do something hm but what. I thought OK I know this boy and maybe we should have a fun revenge. He has really big eyebrows so I thought I would phone him in a crank phone call pretending I was a lady from a beauty saloon. So, I did. He answered and I said: -Hello, this is Anna from Anna's beauty salon. You have booked an appointment for waxing your eyebrows....after that I just could not take it anymore. I laughed and laughed so I cried. My daughter and her friend also laughed. Later on they explained to him that it was I who phoned and why. I thought now he will hate me for the rest of his life BUT to my BIG surprise he loved it. It turned out that we became friends instead. Well life is not predictable even if I did a bad thing it turned out to be good...I even raise an eyebrow to what I did....I mean I am not twelve years old anymore even if I acted like it.

The one who laughs first will be the one who laughs last

When my husband was a kid his younger brother was going to pass by a man who spits on purpose on people. He told is younger brother: - Do not go close to that man he spits on people. The younger brother ignored him and he got wet by spit. My husband sometimes still jokes about this incident with his brother but I think he will stop now...3-4 years ago he and I and our 10- year old daughter  were walking along and then from nowhere the same man spitted towards my daughter and my husband tried to protect her so he leaned forward and got wet by spit. So the one who laughs first will pay eventually...

BUTT WAR!!!

We are surrounded by neighbours and sometimes they behave badly. One neighbour smokes and smokes outside and always throw the cigarette butts in our garden. The sewer for the rainwater is just beside our garden and the neighbour tries to throw the butts into the sewer but misses from time to time. So I have lots of butts outside my house. Not a nice sight! One day I had enough. I walked out and I threw the butts back from where they belong into my neighbour´s garden. I phoned the neighbour ..no answer... I sent an SMS and said that I had to pick up their butts and that it does not look nice. Since that day I have no more butts in my garden and neither has my neighbour...mohahaha!

Grandad turning grandaughter into a thief

In Greece you can taste for example fruits before you buy them. In Sweden you cannot. If you pick up something and eat it and did not pay for it you could be prosecuted and the store will call the police. My daughter´s Greek grandad  was at the Swedish supermarket with his grand daughter and they passed the boxes filled with different candy. Grandad took some candy and ate it without paying. I saw it and told him off. The next day my daughter was at the same supermarket and she disappeared and I found her standing by the candy boxes eating candy. She was about 5-6 years old so I could not be angry except with grandad.

Your money is not welcome here....

My Greek mother-in-law visited us in Sweden for the Christmas/New year holidays and all the family, with my mother-in-law as the first victim, got the flu. Except me. So, when all were tucked in bed and I was at work she thought that the refrigerator was empty. So she went to the store to buy some food. She does not speak English and no Swedish so that was a rather brave move. She took some food to the cashier and the staff started to say something to her and refused her money. My mother-in-law got scared and thought that they were going to contact the police as the money must be fake. She had exchanged the money in Greece in their local bank office. The supermarket staff started to choose some money from her hand and she could pay with those notes the others they did not accept. She returned with the food but was very upset. I have forged/fake money! When I came home from work I checked the money. It turned out that the money were not fake but some notes were not valid anymore. So her bank had given her money which were not valid anymore.....

Did your dentist warn you for bananas???

One day when I came home from work I was greeted by my young daughter. She threw herself on me, hugged me and said: - Mummy mummy, did you know that grandpa he lost 3 teeth eating a banana!? I thought that must be wrong, that cannot have happened. It turned out that her grandfather actually had eaten a banana and suddenly he lost three teeth. So, now you know it is dangerous to eat bananas.

What is it a Bank holiday!?

Woke up by the alarm clock and started to work and after a couple of hours discovered that it is a Bank holiday and we are not supposed to work today...