Springy

You are fortunate that I have nothing to do, am early for class and have brought my laptop with me. All of that adds up to another post. I’m sitting outside and its lovely. I even wore shorts yesterday! Spring has finally arrived and I plan to enjoy as much of it as possible, especially because I have a feeling that within a week it could quickly revert back to winter – the trees have yet to blossom so I have a feeling they know something I don’t. For those of you from McGill, I’m sure you’re aware of our version of the beach, the sloping hill outside of the Redpath Museum (an excellent museum by the way). Well Sandy and I have found the Stockholm School of Economics version of it – a set of 5 stairs in their buildings courtyard that only receives sun from 10 till 3. Everyone crowds on these little pieces of concrete, hardly a substitute for the beach but it will have to do. Its funny though because everyone is still either bundled up or dressed in their power suits. The sun still feels good though and you can often see people with their eyes closed and their face tilted up towards to the sun to try and capture as much of its warmth as possible to make up for the long winter.

Went to see my first official concert in Sweden last Friday. I had been to a music award show thing that had some performances but I don’t really count it. Anyhow, one of the first things Sandy and I did once we got to Stockholm was buy tickets to the Arcade Fire and finally we saw the show. And boy did it disappoint. Yes, I said disappoint. The AF had previously been one of the best shows I have ever seen (Vancouver, 2004) but tonight everything seemed against us. The doors for the show were at 7:30, with an opening band playing. Sandy and I figured we could arrive around 9 and catch the end of the opener before AF came on. We showed up at 9:15 only to find the AF already on stage. What we heard was good but by 10:00 the show was over. They only performed one song for an encore (Wake Up) and by 10:10 the house lights were up. We paid a fair bit of money for those tickets (like anything else is Sweden, tickets are expensive too) so we were definitely disappointed – especially considering most shows in Canada go till around midnight or later. Only later did we find out that Win, the lead singer of AF and a McGill alumni, had to cancel the rest of the tour due to his sinus infection and that he was getting sinus surgery. Hard to hold a poor showing against someone getting sinus surgery, so hopefully he gets better and we can catch them again in the new year. Cool venue though, looked just like a big top tent from the circus – lame crowd though.