Monthly Archives: February 2016

Adventure, Learning, Life, Travel

Shit I Learned In Denmark

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So I decided to go to Denmark in search of a prince to marry like my fellow Tasmanian, Princess Mary. While I did not manage to find a prince, I did however manage to learn quite a lot of shit…..

We shall start with Shit That I Did Not Know Was Danish….

  • Lego – Now apparently the largest selling toy company in the world (they are ecstatic to be beating Barbie), Lego started right in Denmark in the 1920’s and still uses the same structure for their blocks. A block made 80 years ago will still fit a block today.
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    A whole display made of Lego! Glorious Lego!
  • Pandora Bracelets – I am so glad that I didn’t know this to tell my Mum before I left!!
  • The Little Mermaid – This is a fairytale written by the famous writer Hans Christian Anderson and yet I didn’t realize. There is a Little Mermaid statue in the harbour of Copenhagen and it is ridiculously underwhelming…. well until you take the boat tour and they inform you that the mermaid statue has had its’ head decapitated twice and it had to get recast.
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The most hyped-up and underwhelming statue in all of Europe, “The Little Mermaid”.
  • Aqua – Hooray! We can thank the Danes for that horrific song “Barbie Girl” that rang out in the 90’s and made everyone’s head hurt.

Awesome Danish People

  • Niels Bohr – For any fellow science nerds out there you shall also share my excitement! Known for his quantum model of the atom known as the Bohr atom, he postulated that electrons can move through energy levels of a set quantity in an atom. For those of you who are not science nerds, know that this is kick arse. When the German’s decided to create atrocities against the Jews in World War 2, it was Niels Bohr who negotiated with the Swedish government to immigrate 90 percent of Danish Jews in the city to Sweden in return for him agreeing to go to the United States and work with Albert Einstein on the Manhattan Project. This is basically the race to see who can make the atomic bomb the fastest. Anyway, not only is he a quantum physics and Nobel Prize winning genius, he is a pretty fucking awesome Danish guy!
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The canals of Copenhagen
  • Danish People in World War 2 – Speaking of World War 2 and the Jews, the Danes showed a lot of compassion towards their Jewish population. During the war, the Red Cross would send care packages to all of the Danish occupants of the concentration camps courtesy of the Danish Government worth up to 2 million dollars. These care packages, despite being raided by the camp control, managed to keep majority of the Danes alive.  At the end of the war, the government sent a whole bunch of white buses to collect their citizens and bring them home. Upon arrival home, most of the prisoners discovered that their fellow countrymen had kept all of their affairs in order for them and when they came home, they came home to lives that resembled what they had left behind. I was moved by how considerate these people are of each other.
  • Queen Margaret the Second – Tell me any other queen in the world that is cool enough to help provide the Danish translation of the Lord of the Rings and to provide all of the illustrations for it? Enough said!
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Amalienborg Palace – where the current Queen Margaret lives and where the future queen and my probable relative Crown Princess Mary lives.
  • Hans Christian Anderson – Once upon a time there was a small boy who moved to Copenhagen at the age of 14 and tried his hand at the national ballet. After being terrible and them ousting him, he then tried his hand at the choir. He was also terrible at that and kicked out of the choir too. He then tried his hand at the theatre and was absolutely fabulous… well for a while anyway. While he was working at the theatre he became renowned for his incredible stories. And so he wrote a few of them down and they became published and after many, many years, Disney decided to make movies about his stories like “The Little Mermaid”, “Frozen” and “The Emperor’s New Clothes”. He became very famous and lived happily ever after, the end.
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Just chillin’ with Hans 🙂

Other interesting facts

  • “Hygge” is a fabulous word, and while it has not direct translation to English, anything that can be thought of as being a good time can be ‘hygge’.
  • The Danish revolution happened in a pub…. apparently.
  • Buildings in some parts of the city don’t have square corners. They are cut at an angle to allow fire trucks to be able to adequately turn around corners and so that fire hoses didn’t kink and stop working after the God-knows how many-th fire they had in Denmark.
  • The Danish Government just passed a  be able to take any valuables off immigrants settling into Denmark to help pay for their stay in the welfare state….. shame on you Denmark!
  • Christiania is the only self contained community that regulates themselves with their rules. They consider themselves an entity outside of the EU. In the Green Light District (where a shit ton of marijuana is sold) they profit over a million dollars a year. Not bad for a place that was created by homeless people and junkies breaking in and settling in abandoned buildings of the army barracks.
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The gates of Christiania, where no photography and a shit load of weed is allowed.
  • Woden is the English name for the Norse god, Odin. It is his name that gives rise to the day of the week known as Wednesday. Thor’s name gave rise to Thursday. And the goddess of fertility Freya gave her name to Friday.

Oh and I also learned that Denmark is fucking cold and one needs to take thermals. Other than that, that is me for the week! Until the next!

Learning, Life, Medical Testing

Being A Stubborn Sick Person

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Those who know me personally will know that I am stubborn as a mule. We’ve already established in previous posts that I hate asking for help (and am still yet to do my help challenge six months on). This week’s stubbornness and argumentative battle is between me and multiple viruses, bacteria and fungi.  And believe me when I say I am seriously pissed.

The unexpected visitors arrived on Australia Day and sent me home from work to roll around in a pool of my own feverous sweat instead of drunkenly rolling around in the sweat of others with my friends at a club party. Despite how upset this made me, I was determined to not lose my income as well so I drugged myself to the eyeballs so I couldn’t feel my face and went to work only to have my colleagues force me to go home by lunch.

By Friday, and still in a state of extreme high from my marvelous concoction, I’d contracted a stomach virus on top of the cold and I was exhausted. I curled up in a ball on my yoga mat underneath my desk on the office floor and passed out for an hour and a half. Upon waking, I discover that kids have walked past the door, saw me on the floor and decided to raise the alarm. I am lucky that my boss found this funny and told them it was fine. Apparently “surviving” is an appropriate way to spend professional planning time. “Planning efficient use of the little energy one has in her expenditure”.

Anyway, I survived to the weekend. I had barely eaten in 4 days (apparently naming your stomach infection Billy Bob and celebrating the loss of 5 kg and getting skinny is not the appropriate thing to do in this case) and I figured that by the end of the weekend I could kick it. And let’s be honest, I was also bored as hell and couldn’t do any more movies. So I haul arsed out of bed and went down the road to buy 6 chicken Kievs and a couple of onions.

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Onion all be just chillin’ on the desk and shit.

According to the Internet onions in your sock help detox the body. And garlic in your ears acts as an anti inflammatory. And cut onions in your room absorb all the nasties. As a scientist I put all of this to the test and sat eating 3 of my Kievs upon return of appetite rolling around in onions with garlic in my ears watching Bridget Jones (I may or may not also have been high on cough syrup). And while all of this may have worked in my mind (or it could have been the drugs), it was one of the few entertaining days I had whilst I’ll on my own with nobody to entertain me.

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Hanging with some Bridget Jones with some garlic in my ears

Add to this whole thing that I have been having voiceless shouting matches with my moron landlord about the mould problem in my room and I was in fighting form. Imagine my response to ‘but the leak is from clean water so the mould should be clean mould’.

 

 

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Yep, that be some pretty clean looking mould right there.

Anyway come Sunday, I am worse again, and I have gotten fed up with this shit. I can’t afford the loss of income so I dragged arse to the walk in clinic. My friend Tim always says “by the time you make it to a doctor you are about 36 hours too late”. He ain’t wrong. Though in this case it’s about 4 days too late.

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Onion slices in the socks and ready to go!

 

So they will apparently see me in 2 hours after their massive waiting list wanes and sent me off to entertain myself for a while. So here I sit in Pret A Manger drinking hot chocolate, high again on cough syrup and drugs “finding Wally” (a man in a Wally hat as he goes up and down the street much to my humour) waiting to be reunited with my bestie after a 2 month hiatus of friendship ridiculousness. With a bit of luck that will be it for my 2 yearly visit to a doctor and I can go back to being a lucid, face-feeling human being instead of living life like that song by The Weekend. “I can’t feel my face when I’m with you…..”

TWO HOURS LATER…..

After passing the painful waiting room time with a bestie catch up, I managed to get in to see a doctor. She graciously gave me the most kick arse antibiotics she had in her cupboard. She also sent me off with what I like to refer to as “my ventolin bong” to open my airways. Between the pure sweet smell of oxygen and salbutamol, the tasty tastiness of cough syrup and antibiotics coursing through my veins, I am starting to feel somewhat normal.

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Me and my new ‘ventolin bong’ hanging about drinking tea with my bestie in the Costa Coffee.

Go home, roll around on the shower floor for a while because that is what you do when you are ill and high (or drunk), then step on scales…. wonder a) how high actually am I because scale gives ridiculously low number? b) after double checking said figure about four times wonder how I have managed to lose 12kg in 6 days…. and c) decided this was enough of a reason to eat 3 more chicken Kievs. Well done Billy Bob. You did good. High five! Shame about you immune system. You suck….