Day 9

Reasonably quiet day today. Got up around 8.30am, chatted on Facebook with mum and Jono. Had my usual breakfast then tried to get the tuner working on my PVR. Looked like it was going to work – seemed to be picking up channels – but then complained that there was ‘no signal’ when I tried to watch something. Crap. Whole reason for this was that the Superbowl is on tonight and I found out yesterday that I actually do get the channel it will be broadcast on, only problem is that it starts at midnight and goes until 4.30am. Oh well…

Went for another walk around Landskrona today. Walked 1.5kms to the nearest (and only) McDonalds where I had lunch. Read a bit of my book (‘Then we came to the end’, Joshua Ferris) after eating while listening to what sounded like exactly the same McDonalds radio we have in Australia.

Stopped in at City Gross while out walking and picked up supplies for dinner – tonight was my first attempt at Pasta e Fasoi. I realised, while walking up and down the same aisles, that I’ve probably spent more time wandering around supermarkets in Sweden than anywhere else (except the office and my apartment). Main reason for this is that what should be simple things to get take way longer because they either don’t have exactly what I’m looking for, or I don’t know what it’s called. Today’s example was flour – you’d think finding plain flour would be a piece of cake right? Wrong, they had like 5 different types of flour, and the 3 people I asked couldn’t tell me which one was plain flour (as opposed to self raising etc). I ended up picking the smallest packet and decided to hope for the best. Polish sausage was replaced with what looked to be smoked bacon (I think?), borlotti beans were from a can, had to use weird shaped pasta because they didn't have tubes and apparently they don’t have celery in Sweden – or they hide it where foreigners can’t find it!

In spite of all these obstacles, I managed to chef up a pretty tasty version of mum’s pasta e fasoi. Take that Sweden!

From Landskrona in Winter

It’s 8.30pm and I’m going to try and get some sleep. Made the decision to wake up at 1.30am and watch the game. Flying to Stockholm tomorrow night so perhaps this is not my smartest decision ever, but come on – it’s the Superbowl!