Social Interactions

When you live in a foreign country you start to notice not only the standard social behaviour in such country, but it also becomes clearer how the standard social behaviour is in your own country.

Here in Spain they have an expression, “Hacerse el sueco” (which roughly translates as “doing the Swedish”) for when someone pretends no to have understood or realized about something (like when you greet someone in the street just to see them blatantly look away). I have to admit that there is definitely some truth to this statement (hell! I do it myself sometimes to avoid being embarrassed).

There is no expression in Sweden about “Doing the Spanish”, but if there was it would probably mean putting your nose into anybody else’s business, specially when people haven’t asked for it, like when you are standing in the queue for the bus or the supermarket cashier.

Both these attitudes have good and bad points and it is usually when you start doing too much of one that it becomes a problem. I personally think it’s best to be “lagom” which is a Swedish word for the middle way, not too much, not too little. A little bit of both ends makes things perfect, but then again they say in Spain that perfect is enemy of good…

A bit of innocent role-playing

A few weeks ago my boyfriend bought a book called “The elfish gene” by Mark Barrowcliffe. The book is about a boy that loves playing role-playing games, since I had no experience or knowledge of the world of fantasy role-playing games my boyfriend thought it was a good idea for me to read it and it was.

It did explain a lot of things and it made me realize that I had missed out on something; a world full of organized wizards, warriors and evil priest’s, where you can be God for a day or dream up your perfect maid…

So I warmly recommend this book for any one who would like to get an insight into what their role-playing friends (or partners) where into in their teenage years.