What is your family like?

My family, well, I've always secretly been vaguely ashamed that my family is so wholesome, so happy with each other, so lacking in neuroses. Of course, when I started therapy after I split with my ex, I found myself talking not about him or my relationship, but about my family. They definitely have their faults. But on the whole, they could be described as Waltonian. Although my ex's own therapist, who had never met me nor my family, described us as ''having an agenda of narcissistic entitlement,'' which my ex dutifully reported back to me. I responded with annoyance by writing a rather bad poem. I'm at a loss as to what that says about my relationship with my ex. And his own family was a frightening combination of New York City Aggressive-Aggression (as opposed to passive aggression) married to honest-to-goodness Southern Gothic Nuttiness straight out of Flannery O'Connor. They were not a healthy set of people.

But, getting back to the subject of families, the family in which I grew up - as opposed to my post-nuclear family, the one that includes my husband and myself - consists of six persons, including me.

There is my father the engineer, a stoical man of 67, who I remember as being infinitely patient when I was a boy. In later life, he has unfortunately developed a severe case of Attention Deficit Disorder and, like a shark, dies if he stops moving. Or rather, falls asleep. He is now Mr. Hyper Project Guy, and it's very hard to get him to focus on anything outside of his current projects. These are rather substantial, to give him credit, such as being in charge of building a house for Habitat for Humanity. He is most lovable.

Then there is my mother, who married my father when both of them were 21. They started dating when they were 15. They still seem to be happily married, for the most part. This is probably a key part of the whole Waltonian element to the family. My mother is a nurse. She has calmed down considerably from the Mom I remember as a boy, who was a touch on the, er, angry side sometimes. Like my father, she believes that action is very important. My parents were not too keen on the whole gay thing when they found out about me when I was 18 (I'm not going to tell you that story). But, over the years, they've changed a bit, and they happened to be living in Colorado when that whole nasty Proposition 2 thing was going down, which politicized the both of them. So my mother is big into gay rights. She is currently organizing a P-FLAG organization in Oak Park, Illinois (I was rather surprised to hear that there was none in existance).

Then there is my older sister, who is a saint in all the best senses of that word. Just one examle of this would be that when I was five, I wanted a Barbie Doll for Christmas (yeah, yeah, no comment, I had to work hard to shed my girly-boy image as time went on) and my mother, who found this a threat to her masculinity, was not pleased. My sister, who was only eight at the time, defied my mother and got me one. And that is why I am the person I am today. Right. Well, actually, there is a great deal of truth to that statement.

Next is me, the oldest of The Boys.

Then comes my younger brother (as opposed to my little brother). My younger brother is only a year and a half younger than me, and was always a year behind me in school. We never fought much, not really. He's an engineer like my father, only he's much smarter. Not wiser, but smarter. And he was wild when we were teenagers. He always did his homework, but he most definitely was wild. For instance, the school newspaper did a survey on drugtaking in our school - this would have been 1979 or so - and one of the classes they surveyed was the Calculus class. The results of that test went something like this:

• Percentage of people who have tried marijuana: 15% (which included my brother)
  
• Percentage of people who have tried hallucinigenic drugs: 3.2% (which included only my brother)
  
• Percentage of people who have tried cocaine: 3.2% (my brother)
  
• Percentage of people who have tried amphetimines: 3.2% (my brother)
  
• Percentage of people who have tried barbiturates: 3.2% (uh, guess who?)

Of course now he's married and has three kids and lives across the street, but directly across the street from my parents, is a VP at some big consulting firm, and plays golf with his 10-year-old daughter and my dad every Saturday, weather permitting.

Finally, there is my little brother. He is not littler than me. He is five years younger, but he has been bigger than me since he was about 13. Then again, I was a scrawny guy for years. Those were the good old days. He was always the most handsome, the most popular, the nicest guy who had one steady girlfriend after another from the time he was 10. We weren't particularly close. Strangely enough, we are quite close now. And he's changed a lot from when he was 13. He's a lot more shy these days, even if he does dress up as Hedwig for halloween, he's had his ups and downs. He's getting married to a friend of mine that he met when he was here in Sweden for my wedding. He's moved to Washington to be with her - it's funny to think that he's now living where I lived for so long. I wish he lived here, though. It would be awfully nice to just see him whenever I wanted.

So that is my family. And we mostly get along, although we do drive our various spouses crazy when they are unlucky enough to be with us when we are all together. We basically like to sit around and laugh at each others' stupid jokes, tell stupid stories, teach the next generation how to tell stupid jokes and stories, and generally just loaf about.

I suppose part of why we do get along is that we don't, mostly, live near each other. We take each other in infrequent overdoses.

And now I'm wondering if I just haven't given support to Tolstoy's comment about all happy families being alike, i.e. not worth writing about.

The Swedish word for the day is tråkigt. It means boring.

- by Francis S.

Fall has descended so rapidly, all wet leaves on the ground and dark by 4:30. It happens quickly this far north, I suppose. For some reason, it made me pull out a CD of Britten's Ceremony of Carols. Probably because it would have been about this time of year that the choir I sang in as a boy would have begun our preparations for Christmas in earnest.

I had a nice clear soprano when I was 10. It has deteriorated into a gravelly bass that gets even deeper if I smoke too much. No more (nearly) effortless high Cs for for me anymore, no more solos ("Dark midnight was my cry, dark midnight was my cry, dark midnight was my cra-a-ahy... give me Jesus. Give me Jesus, give me Je-e-sus! You may have all this world." - it sounds dreadfully like melodramatic and bad religion, but it was such a bittersweet and moving spiritual.) I can still more than hold my part in a group, though.

This choir that I sang in as a boy was undoubtedly the high point of my life for a good five years. It was small - 15 or so voices - but choice. And the director, oh, the director, he was my favorite adult in all the world and I loved him. Joe Brewer was his name.

He called us all "young man" and "young lady." A black man, he was rather an anomaly in the presbyterian church I grew up in. The church itself was an anomaly, situated in what was then a mostly Jewish suburb of Chicago.

He was a consummate musician and taught me how to love music, what to love about it, what good music was. We sang everything from Orlando di Lasso and Heinrich Schutz to Michael Haydn to Zoltan Kodaly.

And he also taught us spirituals wherein instead of learning the music by reading it, we listened to him sing our parts and we then sang it back to him until we got it right, and he would accompany us with a rip-roaring gospel piano.

He was my great boyhood role model - he died nearly 15 years ago or so, when he was only 50. They said it was a heart attack, but I sometimes wonder if it was AIDS, because though I never knew it when I was a boy, he was gay. He lived with his boyfriend, a trumpet player, in Lincoln Park in Chicago. The whole choir visited him there once. I'm sure my parents must have known. He came over to our house for dinner several times, including one time where my father was renovating the dining room and we had written with magic markers all over the walls. He signed his name, ''Giovanni Brewer.''

He was so interested in us, so firm and kind, so vivacious and tough, small but muscular and athletic, wearing the red sweater we gave him one year for Christmas.

Thinking of him gives me a great sense of longing and loss - the loss of my once beautiful voice, of my childhood, of him. But thinking of Joe Brewer mostly makes me smile.

- by Francis S.

Aw, shit. I realized I was whining on and on about Daylight Savings' Time and I got it all wrong. We are now back on regular time, so in fact Daylight Savings' Time does actually give you more evening light, but just in the summer.

My question now is, why don't we just shift the time altogether? It's not like there is some kind of supreme clock that we need to abide by or God will punish us with famine, pestilence and bad television.

The Swedish phrase for the day is dum i huvudet. A slightly loose translation would be dumbhead.

- by Francis S.

Where exactly did the phrase ''Daylight Savings' Time'' come from? I vaguely recall that the concept was instituted during the War (WWI or WWII, take your pick) to help farmers by giving them more time to work in the fields. Although the only extra time it would seem to give is to the poor farm children who need daylight to do chores before going to school. I don't see how it saves daylight at all. And while it was nice to get that extra hour of sleep yesterday, it's so dark now. Daylight Savings' Time seems, at this point, mainly to benefit people who for some strange reason like to be up early in the morning.

I don't understand.

The Swedish phrase for the day is klockan 6.59, which is the time the sun rose this morning in Stockholm. This particular time could be expressed in several ways, one of them being en i sju - one before seven - or sex-femtio-nio - six fifty-nine. The pronunciation is even more interesting, but I'm not so good on proper phonetic spelling, and the proper pronunciation of the word sju here in Stockholm is nearly impossible to describe: the sj is sort of like an sh spoken through slightly more clenched teeth and with the tongue low in the mouth and almost touching the lower teeth as opposed to more raised, rounded and touching the sides of the upper teeth. It also requires blowing more, and making almost a wh sound as well. It's probably the most difficult Swedish sound for an English speaker.

- by Francis S.

I adore my little brother.

Halloween is no big thing here, it exists, but they tend to celebrate it on the wrong day, and people are a bit confused by it. For instance, my friends J. and R. had little kids in masks ring their doorbell last year. ''Did you want something?'' J. asked them. They merely shrugged. She gave them some cornflakes.

So, I have to get a halloween fix vicariously (not that I ever went all out with a crazy costume when I lived in the States, but I did usually go to a party or two).

This is where my little brother comes in. He went to a party last night, dressed as Hedwig. And his girlfriend went as Tommy Gnosis.

You must understand, of course, that my little brother would make a great football player. He's one big barrel-chested muscular guy.

''My friends said I was scaring them,'' he said. ''Maybe it was the bad glitter makeup. And the players from the women's soccer game that I was the ref at earlier in the day kept on coming up to me and wanting to have their pictures taken with me.''

Scary indeed. I can only imagine, what with the blonde wig and a star-spangled outfit with a leather cape reading ''Yankee go home with me.''

He said he was very hungover this morning, but managed to get to his soccer game at nine a.m. and even score a goal before the end of the game.

''I'll tell you more later,'' he said.

The Swedish word for the day is lillebror. It means little brother.

- by Francis S.

We're about to toddle on off to have a glass of birthday wine with a friend, H. It'll be me and the husband and a bunch of Swedish music industry people. One of the nicest things about Sweden is that is has such a different attitude about famous people. No one goes up to famous film actors and asks for an autograph, rock stars don't get mobbed by crazed fans. People who are famous in Sweden pretty much get to go about their lives undisturbed, buying their groceries at the local grocery store, having a beer at a neighborhood pub. And if you do ever meet them, they tend to be pretty normal down-to-earth people. (I guess to be fair to stars in the U.S., it's hard to be down-to-earth when you're constantly surrounded by over-the-top adulation.)

The Swedish word for the day is ödmjuk. It means humble.

- by Francis S.

A new store (it's cooler than it looks from the Web site) has opened at last in our apartment building on the Farmer Street. They make nice things out of wood for one thing. It had been under construction for more than half a year.

Now, if only they'd hurry up and finish the renovation of the rest of the building. It keeps getting dragged out longer and longer. They already messed up in our bathroom and have to redo things, and they haven't even laid the tile yet. And the new radiators, which they also had to redo because they somehow managed to hang them unevenly, are sort of working - they're warm on the sides. But, it sounds like something between a bubbling brook and a leaky faucet in the bedroom, a constant and somehow unpleasant sound of water running haphazardly through copper pipes.

The Swedish word for the day is att gnälla. It means to whine.

- by Francis S.

Well, Melinda. This post is for you.

Are you sure you want to be an editor for a magazine? It definitely has its good points. One of them being the satisfaction of getting the finished magazine. Of course, I'm too much of a coward to actually read the magazine once it comes back from the printer (maybe sick of it, too.) I only leaf through it, barely glancing at the pages, waiting for somebody else to find the typos and mistakes.

Not that I'm above torturing those people who are brave enough to do it.

When my friend Å. had the first issue of a new magazine she was doing come out, my friend G. and I decided to play a little joke. Å. had just been at the printer in Finland and came back regaling us with stories about the stacks and stacks of porn next to the presses at the factory in Tampere. So, we cut out near-pornographic photos from fashion magazines (a sleazy guy in a bed; a naked ass bisected by the string of a string bikini) and carefully pasted them over the actual pictures. When the receptionist, who had been in on the conspiracy, delivered the doctored magazine to Å., she about had a heart attack.

Å. tells us that revenge is a bitch, and it comes unexpectedly.

And now you're probably saying to yourself, ''That Francis guy sounds like a jerk.'' But I'm not, I'm not! I just like a good joke now and then. Just ask Å. (The whole thing was G.'s idea, I was merely an accomplice.)

This is what adults do when they work at magazines.

The Swedish word for the day is skratta.. It means laugh.

- by Francis S.

Done.

I guess I'm conservative when it comes to, uh, design. Minimalist, too. And I seem to not like change all that much. Although I'd like to put in a vertical rule between the journal part and the links and about-the-author section, I just can't figure out how to easily do it, my HTML skills being extremely pathetic (please don't look at the frightening HTML behind this site, I beg of you.)

- by Francis S.

Please bear with me as I mess around with a new layout.

The Swedish word for the day is hopplös. It means hopeless.

-by Francis S.

I guess I need to do a little renovation around here, a bit of site consolidation - reduce, reduce, reduce.

The Swedish word for the day is banta. It means diet.

- by Francis S.

Riding horses seems to be a fun thing. Not that I really rode any horses this weekend. Oh, I sat on top of one, and was led around by the 17-year-old girl who owned the horse. I even wore one of those black velvet hats. But I wouldn't exactly call it riding. I felt like a little kid taking a pony ride as I was walked around the grounds of Steninge Palace in the far reaches of Stockholm. In fact, I couldn't quite meet the eyes of all the people wandering around the gardens. That stupid black hat didn't help. And then as I was walked on country roads outside the grounds and we met people who were really riding horses - by people, I mostly mean 15-year-old girls - horses that were moving fast because no one was leading them by a rope, I felt even more silly.

At least I didn't have to ride a pony, as crazy E. did.

Of course, we got to do some other fun things for our 500 kronor (each). For instance, we got to clean out the horses' stalls (you don't have to get every last little clump of shit out, apparently. Or maybe I just decided that myself about the time I started wondering why I had paid 500 kronor to clean up horseshit instead of someone paying me). We brushed the horses. We cleaned the dirt out from under their hooves. I even got to clean the shit out of one of the horse's tail with shampoo, water and a plastic brush.

And yet, it was completely satisfying and only made me feel that it could be fun to learn how to ride a horse. They seem to be high-strung, horses, but it sure looks like it's a thrill to ride them. I don't want to own one, no, but I wouldn't mind really knowing how to ride a horse.

(And of course it helped that the weather was perfect fall weather on Saturday, and Steninge Palace - which I seem to recall was built by some Swedish nobleman who was having an affair with Marie Antoinette and wanted a nice place to bring her for a little of the old in-out in-out, although the style seems a little old for that so maybe I'm wrong - is a charming spot with lovely lawns leading down to the water and typical Swedish baroque buildings, all painted yellow.)

The Swedish phrase for the day is jävla idioter, which means damn fools.

- by Francis S.

The Swedish phrase for the day is tack så hemskt mycket, which means thanks awfully much to Choire, co-proprieter of eastwest.nu and son of Jackie. The thank you is for paying to get rid of that annoying advertisement at the top of the page. You could say he's one of those men who go around all day doing nothing but good deeds that we call... good deed doers. But then again, if you read his blog, you would know this to be untrue. In fact, he seems to be a date goer.

Tonight we're off to the hinterlands of Stockholm to go spend a weekend together with crazy E. and her boyfriend. We'll be riding horses, which is something I've never done before, but I've been assured will give me aching muscles. No doubt there will be something to be said about this at a later date.

- by Francis S., thankful

I'm sitting here with a piggelin - a pale green pear-flavored popsicle, a real Swedish classic - trying to write with some logistical difficulty. I'm eating this traditional summer treat for children because it's soothing to my throat, which is bit raw from coughing all day. And, of course, because it's very tasty and satisfying. And because I need a little comfort.

For some reason it reminds me of the time I was stung by a bee when I was five. My mother kissed me and sat me in one of those round plastic wading pools, giving me a peeled cucumber to eat. So I sat in the pool, cried a little, ate my cucumber and felt better after awhile. It really did the trick.

The Swedish word for the day is tröst, which is a false cognate. It means solace and not trust. Förtroende is trust.

- by Francis S.

It's remarkable the long shadow the attacks in the U.S. have cast.

We now have a pilot in Sweden refusing to fly unless Middle-Eastern-looking men are removed from the plane. (Sorry, the story is only in Swedish.)

And Sweden always seemed so tolerant to me.

- by Francis S.

Just call me Lars.

At A.'s parents last night, we partook in a Swedish tradition that calls for a strong will, a strong stomach but a weak sense of smell: Surströmming. Which translates to something like rotten fish that smells like babyshit. Er, at least that's how I would translate it.

I should preface this all with the observation that to an American, Swedes have rather odd palates when it comes to comfort foods and important feast days such as Christmas and Midsummer. These holidays are connected with the eating of lots of cold preserved fish, herring mostly, in various sauces, served with plain boiled potatoes, knäckebröd - crisp bread - and cheese. At Christmas they generously add plain boiled ham and something called Janssons frestelse (which translates rather grandly into Jansson's temptation, rather a misnomer I would say considering it is sliced potatoes baked with cream and anchovies). No matter the holiday, however, it is important to include lots and lots of snaps, of which the most popular flavor would be caraway, I'd say.

There's also another lesser food holiday not universally celebrated and with no fixed date, a kräftskiva, or crayfish party, which is crayfish boiled with dill, served with knäckebröd and strong prästost (priest cheese), and of course snaps. This is usually held in mid-August when the crayfish are first in season.

The thing about these feasts is that there is nothing comforting about them to me. They are, um, okay I suppose, but a meal centered around cold fish just doesn't shout ''indulgence'' to me. My favorite is the kräftskiva... it's a lot of work and your fingers end up covered in small painful cuts, but while you're partaking, it's fun and tasty (as compared to eating herring).

But surströmming is rather another thing.

It is legendary in Sweden, coming from the north. The fish are kept in tin cans that tend to expand as if they were harboring enough botulism bacteria to poison the earth. When I saw them last night, the bulging cans were shouting ''danger'' and ''get out while you can''to me, but the Swedes just snickered and tried to make me open the can myself, warning me that it can actually explode and essentially ruin someone's kitchen. Because, of course, as soon as some air escapes from the can, there is an overpowering stench that smells remarkably like, well, shit from a killer baby.

So, I was fumbling with the can opener (they don't have can openers with handles that you twist, for some reason - everyone has these primitive things that require you to stab the can with a powerful blow, and then just keep gashing until you get the damn thing open somehow), a plastic bag over the can to prevent the foul liquid from spraying all over the kitchen, and of course I couldn't manage it. Finally, they took it away and opened it up themselves, giggling at the horrendous smell and everyone looking at me, their hands over their mouths.

Well, the smell is nasty, but it's bearable in fact. I mean, it certainly doesn't smell like anything edible, but it doesn't make you cough. Well, maybe just a little. But I felt like everyone was expecting me to react quite negatively somehow, confirm the horribleness, and so I said ''It smells like shit.''

Which seemed to be the appropriate response.

''He says it smells like shit,'' they laughed.

Well then the next step was to eat it. The fish was put on the table, next to the husband, who looked rather pale, and we were to make sandwiches of it with tunnbröd - a flat soft bread - or knäckebröd, and tomatoes, chopped onion, gräddfil (a thin sour cream) and tiny little pieces of the fish, which we deboned and cut up ourselves on our plates.

In fact, it tastes a bit like it smells, pungent and overripe, but it's not horrible by any means.

And of course, after five minutes your brain refuses to acknowledge that it's smelling something bad, provided the smell is continuous, so you kind of get over the stench and just eat.

''Oh, is it too bad?'' A.'s mother asked me.

''No, it's not too bad,'' I said.

''He says it's not too bad!'' they all said, and they laughed some more, but they were secretly proud of me, and proud of themselves, that they had fed me this rather peculiar but very traditional meal, that I had said it smelled as bad as they told me it would but I had eaten it readily. Everyone had played their proper roles, and played them well.

''Next time you'll eat two sandwiches!'' they said. ''You're a real Swede now!''

- by Francis S.

''The bells of hell go ting-aling-aling, for you but not for me.
And the little devils how they sing-aling-aling, for you but not for me.
O, death where is thy sting-a-ling-a-ling? O, grave thy victor-ee?''

(WWI trench song.)

It's invariably wonderful to have dinner with the priest and her boyfriend the policeman. You sometimes learn some interesting facts, too. For instance, among many topics for the evening, death was discussed by these two people whose jobs require them to deal with death on a regular basis. A difficult client, death is. But sometimes more bizarre than frightening.

For instance, the priest told us very briefly about speaking at the annual conference of Sveriges kyrkogård- och krematorieförbund, which roughly translates to Sweden's Cemetery and Crematorium Association, which is apparently a society of funeral directors.

The priest gets asked to speak all the time by various organizations, to be interviewed by television or newspapers, gets called on to sit on community panels, etc. because they're always looking for a priest who's not an old white guy. Of course, she happens to be a personable, thoughtful and natural speaker, which is why she keeps getting asked over and over.

Anyway, the funeral directors wanted her to speak about the church's current thinking on funerals or something along those lines. Instead she talked about what it takes for people to work with death all the time.

''They seemed to like what I said even though it wasn't what they asked for,'' she said. ''But the scary thing was, they all looked so waxy and pale. They looked like corpses themselves.''

And, though there were various, uh, ancillary products at the conference, such as pencils with ''Sveriges kyrkogård och-krematorieförbund'' printed on the side (she took one, of course), those attending the conference were, er, dead serious.

''I don't think they ever joke about death,'' she said.

Her boyfriend, the policeman, who had had to spend a day at the morgue as part of his training, said that the atmosphere is rather different there.

''Yeah, they joke around all right,'' he said. ''It's the only way to handle it. But the worst thing is the smell, and it stays in your clothes.''

The Swedish phrase for the day is begravningsentreprenör. It means mortician.

- by Francis S.

The letter that I'd been expecting from the ex has arrived.

It was mostly what I thought it would be: full of apology and regret, an unspoken request for some kind of absolution, all underpinned by the fact that five and a half years after our breakup, he hasn't yet let go of it. Of us.

A reply is necessary, but it will be difficult to balance giving him what he wants, accepting responsibility for my own role in the whole thing, and telling him to get on with his life already, which in part means leaving me alone.

If we'd been in touch all along, things might be different. But it hasn't been that way at all. He was pretty nasty the last contact we had, and that was three years ago.

I can tell I'm going to proscrastinate on writing this letter.

- by Francis S.

Ouch ouchity ouch ouch ouch. What a week of negotiating contracts, dealing with, er, personnel issues, making sales presentations, rewriting articles, assigning last- minute photos, setting up yearly budgets, and constantly putting out countless fires of one sort or another. Which all seems a bit pointless if something big and nasty is going to happen, as the FBI assures us is certain.

But at least the main magazine I edit got a great review in a big Swedish trade weekly - they said it was hip, mouth-watering (!), tough, American (which was a compliment, I guess), thorough. Happiness, indeed.

Now we're off to dinner with the priest and her boyfriend, the policeman. In true Swedish fashion, it should be a most cozy end to the week, complete with candles, lots of cigarettes and lots of red wine.

The Swedish word for the day is full. It means drunk, among other things. It should not be confused with ful, which means ugly.

- by Francis S.

I have just read the funniest thing I have ever read on a blog: a riff on moms and blogs, which I got to via an equally funny riff on, well, just plain moms. The gist of the first one was a sort of nightmare fantasy about one man's mom's blog.

Unfortunately, my own mother could not possibly compete. Her blog would no doubt look something like this:

posted by sylvia at 10:04:15 AM

posted by sylvia at 10:04:31 AM

posted by sylvia at 10:04:48 AM

posted by sylvia at 10:05:01 AM

posted by sylvia at 10:05:23 AM

The behind the scenes one-sided dialog accompanying this would sound something like this:

''I keep writing but it keeps disappearing!''

''Shit!'' (said in such a voice that you know the speaker isn't comfortable using such language)

''I know I'm doing it right, but this computer is so stupid...''

(gutteral and explosive sounds of disgust)

''These things don't make any sense! How can people use these things?''

''You couldn't make me touch this thing with a ten-foot pole! I'm never doing this again, never!''

(loud knocking around and shoving of the chair roughly into its place under the desk)


The Swedish word for the day is hysterisk. You could probably guess that this means hysterical.

- by Francis S., who loves his mother

I've never been nervous about flying, although for awhile there I was a little superstitious in my own peculiar way: Whenever I was in a plane during takeoff, I convinced myself that the only reason this huge hunk of steel was rising into the air was because I was willing it to rise by sheer force of my personal belief that, yes, it could fly. I knew this wasn't true, rationally, but I had to tell myself this. That is the definition of a superstition, I suppose.

I don't do this anymore, and I don't think I'm going to start again. And, as I said, I'm not nervous about flying. I used to have a sort of morbid fascination with plane crashes, however, nothing more than most people have. But now I just feel sad when I hear about crashes like this (an English-language article is here). And of course, living in a little country such as Sweden, I know someone who knows someone who was on the plane. Then again, I knew someone who knew someone who was on one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center, not to mention knowing someones who knew someones who were in the buildings themselves. Which gets at the real reason, I suspect, that this makes me feel sadder than usual. It's disaster happening on top of disaster. It's all wearying.

The Swedish word for the day is olycka. It means accident.

- by Francis S.

I've noticed in the past few days an extraordinary number of people with an .edu extension visiting here. Which is odd. Is the name of the site misleadingly educational sounding (uh, probably)? Did this site mistakenly end up in some kind of Swedish-language resource list for university students? What is it? Not that I'm complaining... just curious is all.

- by Francis S.

It's creeping up again, the smoking. After the usual New Year's quit-smoking resolution I managed to really cut down the smoking so that it was merely an accompaniment to alcohol, basically to ensure when I'd actually consumed too much alcohol that my hangover would be really nasty - there's nothing like a hangover from red wine and cognac augmented by about 15 cigarettes and, as a special touch, a cigar.

But during the trip to Greece I suddenly found myself smoking just any old time. I vowed to stop when I got back, but I didn't really and I've starting having one after lunch on a regular basis, not to mention one in the afternoon, one before dinner and several after dinner... the road from after-lunch smoking to before-breakfast smoking is frighteningly short. And once you've reached the point of before breakfast, you're going to have to start from the beginning again.

The first Swedish word for the day is suck. It means sigh. The second Swedish word for the day is suga. It means suck.

- by Francis S.

One day when I was 13, my eighth-grade social studies teacher, Miss Eytalis, drew on the blackboard a long line with a large dot marking each of the ends. She then said, "One solution to the world's hunger problem would be for America to get rid of all its pets and to send all their food to the countries who need it." I remember she was just barely smiling, it was a dark, hooded smile. "I'd like you to go up to the board and put a mark on the line as to how much you agree or disagree that this would be a good idea to help the world," she said. "The point on the left is for completely disagree, and the point on the right is if you completely agree."

This would have been 1974, a time when children were posed these kinds of questions in the eight grade, when you could take a class called ''Emerging Nations'' in your freshman year of high school, a time when no self-respecting person even knew when the senior prom was supposed to take place, a time when I was learning about the system of checks and balances, and who the cabinet secretaries were (Earl Butz was Secretary of Agriculture!) as the president of the U.S. was resigning because of a break-in at the Democratic Headquarters at the Watergate hotel.

Well, as we each took our turns putting a mark on the blackboard, it rather quickly became apparent that every last damned one of my classmates had put their marks on the far left - completely disagree - and I was the sole person to put my mark elsewhere, which was exactly in the middle of the line. And Miss Eytalis was no help either, I don't remember her saying much of anything.

I do remember my disbelief at this, and my inability to get anyone to see my point of view at all, and how they all thought I was some kind of barbarian.

Of course, my parents grew up on farms where the philosophy was that animals belonged outside. Perhaps this colored my opinion. But I was incredulous that they thought animals were more important than people.

What this has to do with anything, I don't know. I just suddenly remembered it.

- by Francis S.

It's so odd to read that Iran's government is working behind the scenes to somehow alleviate the current situation, despite its public rhetoric condemning the latest bombing in Afghanistan (not that I, uh, condemn them for condemning...). It makes me want to cry, somehow, reading this. Of course I'm anthropomorphizing a country, turning it into a bad little boy who really wants to be good underneath but has been pushed too far, yet suddenly manages to do something constructive. Still, it gives me a sudden rush of hope, deep but fleeting.

- by Francis S.

Okay, so now there's been a retaliatory act of war. Tit for tat, although it's not entirely clear to me that this, uh, tit is being dropped on the same people who committed the tat. Or what good exactly this is supposed to do. Especially considering that the U.S. seems totally unprepared to protect itself on its own turf, the Office of Homeland Security (why ever did they pick such an Orwellian name?) being such a new agency and all.

There is no Swedish word for today.

- by Francis S.

It's peculiar how different cultures handle words, feel about them, and even stranger, how they incorporate words from other cultures.

For instance, we just watched ''Tillsammens'' (Together), a movie that came out last year and was probably the most popular Swedish-made movie over the past 12 months. In short, it's about people living in a group house in Stockholm in 1975. The movie goes to great pains to accurately recreate the past (the husband was extremely impressed that they found the proper beer cans, for instance). We hadn't seen it because I really wanted to see it with English subtitles, but we could only find DVDs with the usual Nordic subtitles - I finally said let's get it, I'll use the Swedish subtitles (which did work just fine). I liked it, it was even somewhat evocative for me, reminding me of when I used to visit my sister in Ann Arbor when I was 14 and she lived in a group house.

Of course, it wasn't nearly as evocative of that time for me as ''The Ice Storm'' - Cristina Ricci wearing a knit poncho and riding her bicycle with its banana seat, all those huge wooded lots with cold glass houses, the built-in furniture with uncomfortable coire carpeting, that is exactly what it was like where I grew up in suburban Chicago.

But I'm straying from the original topic. ''Tillsammens'' was directed by Lucas Moodysson, who also directed a movie that was released in the States as ''Show me love.''

Interestingly enough, the movie had a different title here: ''Fucking Åmal.''

Which brings me to the question of language. Swedes do have their own swear words - some of the expressions are rather endearing as they like to say things such as ''fan också'' or ''skit också, which translate respectively into ''damn, too!'' and ''shit, too!. People seem to find these somewhat effective and don't find them, well, sort of cute as I do. But, they are much more impressed with words like ''fuck.'' And ''knulla,'' the Swedish translation, just doesn't seem to cut it for them.

But what is most interesting is that Swedish swear words are used all the time on television. So are English swear words, for that matter. Swedes just don't seem to find this kind of language improper for television. They don't find nudity improper either - but then, they seem to separate nudity from sex here, not that they find sex necessarily improper for television either (well, not graphic sex of course).

In fact, the main thing they find improper for television is violence.

All in all, a rather healthy attitude if you ask me.

If you feel you need further lessons in swearing in Swedish, try this site.

- by Francis S.

The city shines right now, lovely with that soft sideways golden light of the late afternoon, the buildings making showy reflections in the Baltic, the cobblestones and the castle muted, all of it soft perfect imperfection as seen through the ancient watery glass of the windows of the office.

It's strange, glass. It seems so solid but it actually isn't, it's slowly being pulled by gravity as if it were liquid, and the top parts of the glass in old windows is much thinner than the bottom parts, a fact I just learned in the past six months. And I've already forgotten who told me.

The Swedish word for the day is skönhet. It means beauty.

-by Francis S.

I'm home sick with a nasty cold, trolling the Net and perusing old blog entries. I realize I've hardly written about the husband, except in passing and to note that he is a true arbiter of fashion here in Sweden.

Of course, there's nothing ickier than reading about requited love or happy marriages - or happy families, for that matter; as Tolstoy said, all happy families are alike, although I'd be willing to take that one on sometime.

No one wants to hear that I still marvel over my husband after three years (I admit, that isn't very long - I was 13 years with the ex), I marvel at his beauty, all his handsome Mediterranean features, those perfect lips and striking green eyes, the dark hair on his arms and his small hands. I love that he is wise and kind and thoughtful and yet a perfectionist, that he loves things of beauty himself - he has to in his business - and yet he's never taken in merely by the surface of things.

Otherwise he wouldn't be with me, an extremely average-looking person who is eight years older, who can't buy clothes unless he's with me, who is sloppier (but our apartment is spic and span, if you ignore the hall which is filthy from workmen, and the fine coating of dust in the kitchen, also courtesy of the workmen - it's mostly my desk at work that's a mess), who is a good 10 kilos more than when we met at a club in Barcelona when he was on vacation and I was living there (well, I was too skinny then anyway, but not 10 kilos too skinny).

And thank god he looks beyond the surface because I am wildly in love with him.

The Swedish word for the day is kärlek. It means, of course, love.

-by Francis S., hopeless sentimental

I don't want to go home. Mainly because our apartment is still being worked on. We have no heat (and it's somewhere around 10 degrees farenheit outside), no shower and no toilet in the apartment. (The shower and toilet are on the ground floor, actually, and we share it with the rest of the building. You'd think it would be great exercise, going up and down those cold, hard, stone steps all the time, but I don't seem to have lost an ounce.)

Of course the contractor says that they are running late. But are they allowed to leave us without heat when it's this cold? Surely there is some Draconian Swedish law that prevents this from happening - maybe one that puts bad contracters into work-release jail sentences wherein they have to fix the cobblestones in the old town, Gamla Stan, using rusting and ancient equipment that sounds like a thousand claws on a chalkboard.

The Swedish phrase for the day is att frysa ihjäl. It means to freeze to death.

- by Francis S.

I keep forgetting to write about my stalker story, which goes something like this:

A couple of weeks ago, my mobile phone rang and on the other end was a voice speaking in low tones, and about all I could understand were the words ''Daniel'' and ''hetalinjen.''

I said, jag tror att du har ringt fel* and the voice went on and I soon had to switch to English, I just couldn't understand the whispering voice.

It turned out that this Daniel seemed to think that we had talked on the previous Friday and I had given him my phone number. I said that I would not likely have been talking on any, er, hotline given that I was on my way from Athens to Stockholm then.

But, he asked me, you are gay aren't you?

And I said, well, yes I am gay, but that has nothing to do with this. (Did my voice give it away or what? O, the shame... and then the shame at being ashamed because that is surely internalized homophobia, dammit!)

On the other end there was a silence, laden with disbelief that I was denying that I had talked to the insistent Daniel.

Nonetheless, he did finally get off the line.

The husband was not amused. Neither was I, actually, it was rather unnerving. My first thought was that it was a prank played by M. But the husband found this very unlikely. And actually, it seems a bit too nasty and not funny enough for him. So, we went to bed.

Then, to my horror, the next morning there was an SMS on my phone: CALL ME I,AM GAY YOU ARE GAY LET,S METT.CALL 55 55 55 DANIEL.

I had a stalker. Yikes!

I immediately sent an SMS back saying that I was happily married, that I wasn't interested, to leave me alone.

He has. But he's still out there, somewhere. The weird thing is how did he get my number? I see three possibilities: first, someone else could have pulled my number out of thin air, a mere coincidence; second, it could still be a joke, though no one's admitted to that as of yet; third, it could be someone actually trying to get between me and the husband. (I do think it's probably the first, he sounded awfully young and scared.) But I've got his number, literally, so if he calls again it's straight to the police (that's what my friend Å. said, ''straight to the police'' were her very words).

The Swedish word for the day is läskigt, which means creepy.

-by Francis S.
*I believe you have the wrong number.

Oh, and here is a much more useful lesson in Swedish than you will ever find at this site, courtesy of Emma at Miramis, sister domain of Not My Muse, which also hosts Tread Softly. (There, that covers all the bases I hope for Anja, Lexi, et al.)

-by Francis S.

This blog twin thing seems kind of clique-y and, well, not being a member of any of the cliques that seem to exist in the blog world, adding my URL isn't likely to get me anything, and I'm not sure what the purpose of it is anyway except to get some extra attention. But, I shamelessly added my name anyway - I guess I still in my (assuredly pathetic when it comes to this kind of thing) soul want to be famous to 15 people, or famous to however many it takes to be declared a twin, although I can't for the life of me imagine who I could possibly be twinned with.

- by Francis S.

The regular fixed-line phone - as they say in the business - (as opposed to the mobile phone or cell phone, if you're reading this in the U.S.) is not working for some reason. Not that we're good about using this phone... I finally put a message on it saying that the caller should ring us on our mobile phones because we never listen to the message on the regular phone. (There will be an entire lesson later on Swedes and the use of mobile phones sometime in the near future.)

Anyway, when I woke up from my wool-tortured slumber at A.'s apartment last night, I noticed there was a message on my phone, which turned out to be my beloved little brother (who is, well, considerably bigger than I am, just littler in age, I guess) who had run into my ex on the street in D.C. They'd had lunch and now the ex wants my address in order to send me a letter. Which I suppose I will allow, since I'm curious as to what the hell he has to say to me. Our last communication was a letter from him that consisted of one sentence, - ''This is it.'' - and a check in payment for the grand piano that I'd sold with great difficulty because he wouldn't let me in the house in Dupont Circle, where the piano stood in the bay window, nor would he cooperate to be there at any specific time so possible buyers could stop in and see it. The whole thing was supposed to be negotiated through the next-door-neighbors, although I put my foot down on that and he finally relented. That particular letter seemed to succintly denote that, well, I shouldn't expect any more letters or send any of my own. Which was fine with me, if a little harsh in tone.

So, what the hell is he going to say now, more than five years after we split up?

And what the hell did he talk about at lunch with my poor little brother, who lived with us on several occasions and has, at best, rather ambivalent feelings about the ex, I'd suspect?

- by Francis S.

The weekend tastes so sweet after a long week - one of our two main English-language copyeditors was over here so I spent the week running meetings with her and every last damned editor at the office, first here in Stockholm and then down in Lund. This on top of the regular work that then has to be crammed in around the edges, including a session with a fellow invandrare - immigrant/ foreignerwho's only lived in Sweden six months and seems to be in a state of shock for a host of reasons, one of these being the deceptive similarity of Stockholm and its inhabitants to Anglo - U.K., U.S., Australian, Canadian, New Zealand - cultures: they are not the same at all, though they do appear quite similar on the surface, what with the excellent English-speaking skills, the t.v. programs from the U.S. (''The Sopranos'' and ''The West Wing'' and countless others), the music. That he doesn't need to prove himself in the way he's trying to prove himself, that he needs to tone it down in fact because in Sweden it's quite important not to seem to make yourself seem better than anyone else, and in fact its not at all the goal of people to become boss. I also had to make sure he realized that I'm not going to fire him because he's going through some kind of personal crisis and it's affecting his work.

Anyway, that was the week, in small part.

Then, when I arrived back from Lund at Arlanda airport, whisked the copyeditor and her husband into the train, got them checked back into the hotel, went back to the office at 5:30 and sent out some emergency e-mails because I hadn't had time to call a few people while I was down in Lund... after all this, we rushed off to A.'s apartment for dinner, which included S. and her new husband I., the son of Kurdish rebels (though he grew up in Sweden). I, quite rudely, zonked out on the couch shortly after the meal was finished (I blame the red wine), though I did manage to have some chocolate cake and dip into the huge bowl of godis that was put out (and I blame these very same godis and all their little cousins for the fact that S. commented that I seemed to have, ahem, gained a little weight in the general stomach area. I guess I need to get my sad ass to the gym).

Apparently, after I fell asleep, there ensued a huge argument about Israel, complete with namecalling (''you zionist, you'') and threats of making people read Noam Chomsky, all carried on in unfriendly tones and breaking all Swedish etiquette rules that forbid the discussion of politics (I blame this rule for my utter lack of comprehension when it comes to Swedish politics and the seven political parties represented in the Riksdag).

When I woke up, those damned wool trousers I was wearing making me feel extremely itchy and hot, A. said ''Did the shouting wake you up?'' She was very amused when I said no, it was, er, those damned wool trousers.

- by Francis S.

It's time for another lesson in Swedish culture. The subject is food (inspired by yami, proprieter of green/gabbro, a blog that is some kind of fifth cousin twice removed to this one). Sweets, to be precise.

2. Goodies. Swedes have an endearingly childish love of candy. Having a sweet tooth myself, I find this a very attractive trait. The word for candy is godis and it is pronounced just like the word goodies except that the final -s- really does sound like a soft, unvoiced -s- and not like the harder, voiced -z- sound (i.e. in English, it sounds like goodeze, but in Swedish it sounds like go-diece). There are candy stores all over the place and in fact, two of them within a half block of my apartment, including one that has been there since the husband was a little boy. These candy stores have bins of candy of many different types, sometimes a hundred or more, and everyone helps themselves using large plastic spoons, pouring the candy into paper bags which are then weighed at the checkout. (You can also find these candy bins at seven-eleven, at the grocery store, the movie theater, the video rental store, and I'm sure other places I'm forgetting). It's a common sight to see adults walking around with yellow-and-red-clown-patterned or pink-and-white-striped bags of candy.

The candy falls into several categories.

There's chocolate, of course, although most of that is not of a very good quality. My favorite chocolates are in fact the Finnish chocolates made by Fazer - little bite-sized pieces wrapped in paper; Geisha is the best, it has a hazelnut cream filling.

There are also a lot of wine gum/ gummi bear/ gumdrop types of candy. They come in all the usual flavors such as lemon and orange, as well as favorite Swedish flavors such as pear. They are shaped like a child's pacifier, or pieces of fruit, or frogs, or simply little discs or lozenges.

My favorites are the sours. Most of these are a variety of the wine gum/ gummi bear/ gumdrop type, and they are shaped like fish, or soda bottles, or keys. They also have sour chestnuts, which are fruit- flavored hard- on- the- outside- soft- on-t he- inside lozenges, sort of a cross between an overgrown skittle and a sourball.

Then there is the licorice. There is sweet licorice - most notable are the licorice rats - and there is salt licorice.

Since I first arrived in Sweden and tried turkisk pebar, I've wondered who first decided that this was a palatable combination, and how did they in fact convince a whole nation that salt (and not just regular salt, I think I could handle regular salt, this seems to have some horrible ammoniac quality to it) and licorice go together like, uh, the pope and a shit in the woods. Or something like that.

So, the final point of this lesson is, unless you know what you are doing, do not be convinced by some laughing Swede to sample any candy that looks suspicious (i.e. nasty little hard greyish-brown dusty disks, grey nubbly gum-droppy things, grey discs with a salty peace sign on them, you get the picture).

- by Francis S.

When I was in Greece, I was reading Down There on a Visit by Christopher Isherwood. He's an excellent memoirist, most of the books of his that I've read are very autobiographical, and he's written much about Berlin in the early thirties. But as I read this book, lying on a beach next to the husband and who knows how many others reading their own books or sleeping or talking, I thought to myself how the world today is so much a smaller place, people are so much closer together that the kind of war - and build up to it - that he writes about wouldn't happen now. I thought how different those times were, and wondered if he lived with a sense of foreboding as to what might happen, and thought how I live absolutely in a time where I have no sense of foreboding about anything other than the next week's work, that life these days is so sure. And now, of course, the surety is gone, at least in part. Just how much, that is the question.

The Swedish word for the day is kriget. It means the war.

- by Francis S.

I've started a novel here. It has no real title yet.

- by Francis S.

It's kind of heartening to read that at least some people in the States seem to be more than just ambivalent about starting a war, of bombing Afghanistan or any other country, that people are so skeptical about anything so brashly called ''operation infinite justice.''

It would be hard to tell that this is true, reading the news or watching it on television here, be it Swedish television or CNN, listening to George Bush. It's so hard to guage from here, when I really talk only with my parents (who seem to move further and further left with age; they are decidedly more active on the whole gay-rights issue than I am, for instance. To think that my father voted for Barry Goldwater in the 60s. Jesus...), siblings and friends, all so decidedly dovish.

The Swedish word for the day is överhuvudtaget, which literally translated means something like a grab of the head, but is an idiom that would mean on the whole.

- by Francis S.

You'd think that being a model in Paris for Christian Dior would be, well, fun. Living in the city of light just off the Champs Elyseé. Travelling to all kinds of great places like the Seychelles, Buenos Aires, Capetown, Bali. Being able to wear anything and look like it was made for you (because, in fact, it was). Having stalkers send you CDs they've made themselves, CDs filled with songs about how great you are: "A.'s so beautiful, I wish she were mine. Mine, mine, mine, mine, all miiiiiiiiinnnnnnneeeeee..."

Uh, stalkers aside, it's hard to convince me, no matter how hard I imagine the long days of photo shoots, the dieting, the pressure to look beautiful, that this is not some kind of ideal life.

Then again, A. is really sick of it. And at last, it looks like she's going to be able to move back to Sweden permanently. It looks like she's got a job working in television production and she is ecstatic. She certainly deserves all of it, no matter how beautiful or smart she is. After all, I love her - not like I love the husband, but she's been a great friend ever since the day I met her, when I first visited Stockholm.

(They're not going to give up the apartment in Paris, thank god.)

The Swedish word for the day is äntligen. It means finally.

- by Francis S.

What makes all university towns seem somehow alike?

I just got back from a night and a day at a meeting in a village outside of Lund, in Skåne, the southernmost province of Sweden where the dialect is particularly strong and, to me at least, difficult to understand (it sounds gargly in a very Danish way, not surprising considering Skåne was part of Denmark for centuries). Lund is where Sweden's second university is situated (Uppsala, just north of Stockholm and founded in 1477, is first).

And while it has an interesting and old cathedral (built on top of an old pagan temple), and the charming half-timbered and brick buildings characteristic of southern Sweden, it is the intense feeling of being a university town that strikes me most.

Is it that youth of a certain age (at least in the west) confer a certain energy to the air? I suppose it's more likely that the place just dredges up memories of my own college days, the liberating feeling of first independence, of smoking cigarettes and drinking endless cups of coffee, of having a crush on life and all its possibilities, the feelings of intense love and intense loathing that anything and everything inspires.

Cheap nostalgia, no doubt, is at the bottom of all of this.

The Swedish word for the day is längtan. It means longing.

- by Francis S.

Those wacky CIA operatives! What will they do next? (Credit goes to David, one of the editors working for me who showed me the article in the Guardian by Julian Borger from which this excerpt is taken).

In another snapshot of folly offered by the new files, a memo dated 1967 on "Views of Trained Cats" looks into the possibility of surgically inserting microphones and transmitters into cats and using them as walking bugs. The operation was codenamed "Acoustic Kitty" and was a resounding failure. Having wired their first trained cat for sound, they released it near a park with strict orders to eavesdrop on two men on a bench, but the poor animal was run over by a taxi before it had taken more than a few steps towards its target. The CIA researchers came to the conclusion that they could train cats to move short distances, but that "the environmental and security factors in using this technique in a real foreign situation force us to conclude that for our (intelligence) purposes, it would not be practical."

Oh, yes. The Central ''Intelligence'' Agency is always on the cutting edge of, uh, intelligence. (The full article is here.)

The Swedish word for the day is märklig. It means funny peculiar (not funny ha ha).

- by Francis S.

My parents are good farm stock, raised in the Iowa countryside. Thank god, they got out before we, my brothers and sister, were born. When we were children and took the car trip from Chicago to my grandparents' homes in Sully and Pella, we used to refer to it as a visit to the planet Iowa.

Of course, it's charming if you're not from there and related to no one from there.

If you are, well, too bad for you. Everyone knows everything about everyone else, like for instance that you weren't in church on Sunday, or maybe that you went to the ''liberal'' (yeah, maybe liberal in comparison to Attila the Hun) Fourth Reformed Church instead of the all-powerful and always-packed-to-the-gills Second Christian Reformed church where you're supposed to go.

My sister recently pointed out to me that Gourmet magazine has discovered the subtleties of Iowa cooking, something I never really grew to appreciate much: my grandmother's secret-recipe grape juice - add grape kool-aid and sugar to give the grandkids a real kick; the stack of plain white wonder bread served with every meal; tough little porkchops that, with a simple shoelace and a little gumption, could easily be converted into nunchuks. Although to be fair, my grandmother did make a mean coconut cream pie.

A recent article lead off with a story on the Coffee Cup Cafe, a place where my grandmother who didn't make coconut cream pie worked after my grandparents had retired and moved into town (Sully, Home of the White Marigold, pop. 331 at that time, now it's grown to something like 900), and after my grandfather died.

You can also read about the Olde Town Eatery in Pella, a restaurant I must admit I've never heard of in all my visits there, (I guess they forgot to add the -e- that's supposed to go on the end of -town)-.

The Swedish phrase for the day is dålig mage. It means weak stomach.

- by Francis S.

I guess I better mention Athens and the wedding, before I forget the small details, such as the two men - handsome, sunbaked, lean as cats, matching grey trousers several sizes too large for them, a sad craziness about them, looking for all the world like some double Greek version of Hazel Motes without the intensity - walking back and forth and playing accordians on the median on one of the main roads leading out of Athens. Or the startling newness of Athens - most buildings look to have been built in the 60s or 70s - as dirty and choked with traffic as I'd been told, a sort of European version of Bangkok.

As usual when traveling with Swedes, it was important to find the watering holes of the beautiful people and then stay out, night after night, drinking too much and laughing and dancing until dawn, then sleeping late and getting up just in time to go to the beach/go shopping/eat a very late lunch/have a drink for a few hours.

So we went to these clubs in Piraeus (''all the good clubs are in Piraeus'') on the sea, everything was white, white, white, including the clothes of all the beautiful people inside (except us, we tended toward fashionista black). And in the day we went to the beach (Scinia)/went shopping/ate a very late lunch/had a drink for a few hours, depending on the day, followed by going back to our various hotels and apartments to nap and bathe and dress and preen in preparation for another evening.

The day at last arrived for the wedding, which was held in a new Greek Orthodox church up in the hills somewhere. The service itself was barely understandable, being in (probably old) Greek, a mix of chanting and recitation involving three priests, the bride and groom, a best man (who was, er, a woman) and a second witness, along with the two families and various still and video cameramen, including press who were there because the groom is a well-known sportscaster in a country where sports is the No. 1 topic of conversation among males (followed by politics, family and sex, so it was said).

We had been warned to stand throughout the service, but after about five minutes we noticed that most of the Greeks had taken their seats, so we followed suit, although there were intervals in which everyone stood. But mostly, they sat and kept up a non-stop chatter that rather shocked the Swedes, who found it a bit disrespectful. (We were told later that in fact the chatter had been less than usual, in fact normally the priests have to shush the congregation several times throughout any given wedding. The bride said people talk because they're bored, but someone sitting at our table at the reception said that in fact it is a very deliberate sign of disrespect, or rather an assertion that the very powerful Greek Orthodox Church is not going to run their lives).

At about three-quarters of the way through, 13-year-old girls walked slowly past the pews, passing around baskets filled with rice for everyone to take a handful. A short time later, after the best woman passed over the heads of the bride and groom two diadems tied together by a ribbon, everyone stood up and threw their rice as hard as they could at the bridal couple. The service seemed to continue, but the Greeks lost interest after this and the chatter grew to a low roar and everyone started making their way to the back of the church until finally, some five to ten minutes later, the service was finished and the bride and groom walked out.

The reception itself was on another hill somewhere not too far away, at the Jockey Club, with some 200 Greeks and 25 Swedes (or pseudo Swedes such as myself) eating dinner and making constant speeches.

The bane of any Swedish wedding or birthday is the long list of mostly formal speeches which usually take up a good hour and a half's worth of time, of which nearly a full hour is actual speech. And you're not supposed to eat while someone is speaking - it always seems as if you've just managed to spear a small potato on your fork but before you can get it up to your mouth, another long and tedious speech has begun, starting with the details of a rarely humorous childhood incident and ending with a toast, all of it in careful doggerel. Which means it's rare to actually eat a hot meal at such an event in Sweden.

The toastmaster (another important feature of formal Swedish parties), poor man, was in rather a difficult position because the Greeks had a dual reaction as the speeches went on and on - some began to leave while at the same time others, realizing what this whole speech thing was about, were determined not to be outdone by the Swedes and all of a sudden wanted to make their own spontaneous speeches, which is a breach of Swedish etiquette: all speeches must be made via a request made to the toastmaster before the wedding.

Then the Swedes pulled out a couple of Swedish flags and got up (me included) and sang the Swedish national anthem, ''Du Gamla, Du Fria.''

It's odd, Swedes and their flag. Hanging a flag in your window in Sweden is a sign of nationalism to most, and just about everyone I know finds it more than distasteful. But this is the second time I've seen the Swedish flag hauled out at a foreign wedding like this. (Is it the same in the U.S.? I have such ambivalent feelings about the U.S. flag as well. Well, maybe not so ambivalent. The fight about the flag-burning amendment - an amendment which would, in effect, take away people's right to show respect for the flag because it would be illegal to show disrespect to it - has turned it into an unfit symbol of what I think is worth being patriotic about the U.S.)

The national-anthem singing was not my favorite part of the wedding, it felt quite odd to me. And, of course, afterwards the Greeks had to sing their national anthem. It felt a bit tense to me, especially with one of the best friends of the bride complaining loudly about how most of the speeches from the Greeks were in Greek and not English, the language the Swedes had chosen as a lingua franca. When she got up to make her speech, which was to be the final speech of the evening, I found to my great relief that rather than a speech, she made the bride and groom play a game wherein they were blindfolded and had to choose which was their spouse among various legs and/or noses presented to them. All of this to the great amusement of the Greeks.

At long last, the dancing began - including a period where the bride and groom danced rather suggestively on top of a table during which the groom's friends tried unsuccessfully to rip his shirt off - and lasted nearly until dawn, at about which time the Swedes were quite drunk and the father of the groom, perhaps drunk himself, threw a glass onto the dancefloor, smashing the glass into a thousand pieces in celebration (his two young nephews, gleefully following their uncle's example, threw their glasses as well). And the Swedes (and the few Greeks left) continued to dance on top of the shards of glass, laughing, the long skirt of the dress of the bride ruined by the dirt and glass.

- by Francis S.

Good god, I'm glad I'm not in America. Not because Americans seem to be a greater target for, uh, terrorists than do Swedes. At least at the moment. (Not that Sweden hasn't had its moments, such as the murder of Prime Minister Olof Palme).

No, I'm glad that I'm not there to have to look for the voices of reason amongst the overwhelming nationalistic bombast and bellicose rhetoric that is surely inescapable throughout all fifty states, in every city, in every suburb, in every small town and country village. I think I would probably be dead from a stroke on account of my blood pressure going through the roof. It's exhausting enough being here and reading about it or watching it on Swedish television.

Thinking back, I'm awfully glad that when the attack happened, the hotel in Mykonos we were at had BBC World and notCNN. Moments ago, the husband had left the t.v. here on CNN and I overheard voices calling in from New Jersey or Texas or Alabama or somewhere and I realized I couldn't stand to hear what these people might be saying.

The thing is, I greatly fear that people here are misunderstanding what I assume the U.S. leaders are thinking, not to mention the public.

Last night at dinner, the television producer, M., stayed until the wee hours after a vaguely unsettling meal with him and the priest and her sister - their father is in Uzbekistan for the next couple of weeks, refuses to come home and the family is, well, nervous, Uzbekistan being one of those countries immediately adjacent to Afghanistan - as well as the priest's boyfriend, the policeman, who is on call this weekend to protect embassies or the mosque or what have you. We talked mostly about this mess, things such as Sweden's observing a minute of silence on Friday - people had some mixed feelings about this, mostly that many, many more minutes of silence should be observed for events that are far more cataclysmic in terms of death than the recent U.S. attacks and that the motivation for it was as much economic as it was about it being some sort of attack on the so-called ''democratic way of life.'' We talked about what this war on terrorism might or should mean in places like Northern Ireland, Spain and the Basque country, Chechnya, whether these things then will possibly be resolved and by what means and by whom. Then the priest said that she thought the appropriate punishment for Osama bin Laden would be to force him to be a permanent fixture at Disney World for the rest of his life.

After everyone had left and the husband had gone to bed, M. sat and he drank his white tequila while I smoked cigarettes, and he told me that the positive thing about all this is that this has made the U.S. see that it is part of the rest of the world, that things like the Kyoto Treaty are small potatoes and the U.S. wouldn't be so petty any more about signing such a thing. He was, as he said, ultimately optimistic.

Me, I am ultimately pessimistic on this point. I cannot remember reading anything or hearing anything about the U.S. being part of the rest of the world - in the way M. means - from the parade of politicians, former politicians, security or Middle East or disaster relief analysts who have spoken or written words over the past five days. I may be mistaken, I hope I am terribly mistaken, but it seems to me that the U.S. doesn't really have any concept that the rest of the world wants this. That they want the U.S. to stop being a bully who runs away and won't play if he can't get his way. They want the U.S. to be a co-leader working hand-in-hand with its allies, and that here in Sweden at least, most people seem to want this group to function as policemen of sorts but only in so far as this means working to ensure people around the world everywhere are allowed to live their lives without fear and with fairness and justice. (Not that there aren't people here in Sweden physically attacking Muslims just as in the U.S. - the government does have an armed guard posted outside the mosque here in Stockholm. Despite this, the general sentiments seem to be as I said a sentence ago.)

My fear is that Western Europe has just said it will stand by the U.S. come hell or high water and the U.S. leadership can only take this as carte blanche to do whatever it decides is best, and current leadership is, well, not one that I really trust to do the proper thing, to act in what I think are the best interests of the world, but rather to work in the best interests of the Republican Party (I couldn't stand to watch Congress ''spontaneously'' singing the Republican National Anthem, ''God Bless America.'' On a nearly completely different tangent, for some strange reason the only time I cried was when I heard the guards outside Buckingham Palace playing the ''Star Spangled Banner,'' although perhaps that's not so strange, given that I'm living outside the U.S. so it's perhaps closer to my life somehow).

I hope I am very wrong on this, either on what the best interests of the Republican Party are (after all, Rudy Guiliani was quite amazing during all of this, surely people have already begun talking about a brilliant political future for him, code words for presidential material) or on how this will be handled by all these leaders who happen to be republicans. The president himself just seems in a daze, wondering why he ever ran for president and if there's any way he can take it back. Poor man. Poor in most senses of that word except in its meaning of lacking lucre.

I think those in the U.S. don't understand, when a taxi driver in Athens tells me that he thinks this is a CIA plot, that what this at heart means is that people in a lot of places outside of Palestine or Iraq just do not trust the United States.

And frankly, I don't blame them. I sure as hell don't trust the CIA either. Not of course that I believe this would ever be committed by them. I just don't trust them.

The Swedish word for the day is rädd. It means afraid. Strangely enough, the verb rädda means to save.

- by Francis S.

We're back, tanned but exhausted and dazed, overdosed on the bad news. And I seem to have lost all sense of proportion and place. Everything feels too emphatic or too subtle, the colors a shade or two off.

I'm not altogether sure that trading the blue and white and dust-colored summery dry islands of the Aegean for the grey and green autumn-sodden islands of the Baltic will make it seem any less that people are going about their daily business a little too tidily, given the circumstances.

It was so strange, eating dinner rather mechanically in a taverna on the beach on Wednesday evening, surrounded by Europe enjoying itself - Germans and French and English and Greeks - and me feeling as if everyone else is ignoring the uneasy feeling they surely must have in their stomachs. Then feeling as if I'm just being melodramatic, feeding into all the hyperbole I've been hearing all day. Then making mental notes for a magazine review of the taverna. Then chastising myself for making the mental notes, then chastising myself all over again for being melodramatic. Stupid, that.

And now we're back, and I still don't know what to think, or even how to sort out all my strange emotions about these airplanes, these hijackers, this rubble, these dead people, these politicians, this teetering economy, these countries whose citizens have an intense distrust and hatred of the United States.

- by Francis S.

Fifteen-hour work days can really do a guy in. I hate how it seems to take two-days worth of work in one day to actually go on vacation in order to not set yourself up for disaster on your return.

Off to Greece, and not nearly soon enough. (It's Mykonos after the wedding in Athens. Apparently that's where some of the husband's friends are going to hang out. O, the glamor.)

We'll be back in 10 days.

The Swedish word for the day is jättetrött. It means tired as all get out. - by Francis S.

Well, we're soon off on yet another jaunt. This time to Greece, for the fourth wedding of the year. (This is why everyone should live in Europe, because you can just jaunt off like that on account of it's inexpensive to fly, you have six weeks of vacation, and it doesn't take too long to get there.)

It's funny, all these marriages all of a sudden. First it was the editor marrying his voluptuous girlfriend, now wife, in the south in Ramlösa, the place where they get the water that comes in the light blue glass bottle. A relatively small celebration, but choice.

Then it was the wedding out in the country somewhere, and we were supposed to dress formally but we didn't although I did wear a dark blue frilly tuxedo shirt made out of some kind of synthetic fabric or other. And we hung out with our friend the priest, who married us and was now marrying this other couple. She left right after the dinner, after smoking a pack or so of cigarettes with us. And then the husband's ex was there all the way from Shanghai, with his American boyfriend (strange coincidence, that). And we all got really plastered.

Then it was the wedding in the mosque where I couldn't get comfortable, sitting cross-legged on the carpet. I guess I'm getting too old. And the bride had to have her hair and arms covered despite the fact that her dress had huge see-through panels in it and the cloth she used to cover her arms and legs was completely sheer. She actually looked pretty damned fabulous. Unfortunately, most of the rest of the women covered themselves with these white scarves that are, to be generous, unflattering. That is, unless you want to look like someone poking their head painfully through a tent flap. Or maybe more like one of those people in old photographs sticking their heads through a cardboard painting of a crescent moon to become the face of the man- (or more likely woman, in this case) in- the- moon.

So now, time for the wedding in Athens that ought to be quite the thing. We leave on Wednesday morning. It will be too many people no doubt, but a reunion of sorts among the group that made the trek to the wedding in Malaysia of the friends from London - the Wallpaper editor and her husband the photographer. And then afterwards we'll go by ourselves off to one or another of the islands for some chalky- white- village- perched- above- the- water- and- maybe- a- beach time alone. Oh, yes.

And it's two-for-one day today, with a second Swedish word of the day: bröllopet. It means the wedding.

- by Francis S.

I was trying to find a picture of a dog harness on the net just like the one I keep seeing on this pug-type critter that is always out being walked when I'm on my way to work, or today, on my way home. The harness has a sort of handle on it, so you can pick the pug up and use it as a kind of hairy featherduster, for instance. Or maybe you could put things in its mouth and use it as a purse.

The thing is, I couldn't find any pictures at all. But I did run across plenty of interesting philosophical questions, such as ''Is the prong collar an instrument of torture or a universal trainingdevice?'' and interesting facts such as that while the Gun Dog Supply Company still sells collar replacements for the ''bark eliminator,'' the ''bark eliminator'' is no longer available. However, you can still purchase the ''bark limiter.'' The copy doesn't really spell out what exactly the ''bark limiter'' does, except to note that the ''low level'extended momentary' stimulation eliminates unwanted barking'' and that the ''small, inconspicious collar fits dogs of all sizes except toy/miniature breeds.''

Which makes me very curious about what ''extended momentary'' could possibly mean, not to mention ''low level [sic] stimulation.''

The Swedish word for the day is aj!. It means ouch. - by Francis S.

Hmmm. It sounds like, according to the New York Times, one of my most-trusted authorities when it comes to all the news that's fit to print*, the figures for the percentage of the population that identifies itself as homosexual in the U.S. - 2.8 percent for men, 1.4 percent for women - are significantly lower than the numbers bandied about by all our favorite gay rights organizations. I suppose the old Kinsey figures are pretty suspect. And I think those gay rights organizations would have a bit more credibility by using better numbers, maybe less political and social clout, maybe not, but at least more credibility.

The question is, why do nearly twice as many men identify themselves as gay as women identify themselves as lesbian? Odd, that. Seems to point to a fairly profound difference in male and female sexuality, regardless of the orientation. - by Francis S.

*One of the few complaints I have about the NYT is that they have no sense of humor. None. My ex once helped a friend write a letter to the editor suggesting the Olympics™ revert back to the practice of athletes competing buck naked. The whole purpose of the letter was to include a pun on the newspaper's slogan - the punchline of the letter was ''all the nudes fit to sprint.'' So they printed the letter - which was a feat in and of itself, not an easy thing to achieve - but without the punchline, for chrissakes. Talk about stuffy and self-important.

And yet, despite the pole- up- the- ass routine, the NYT is tops, I gotta admit there's no doubt about that.

Last night we had dinner with H., the husband's aunt of sorts - she's known him since he was 10 or so. It was a farewell dinner for her daughter, who's moving to Manhattan to work for the Swedish delegation to the U.N. in New York.

At the dinner was Sweden's version of Barbara Walters. Well, she's maybe a bit more sophisticated than old Barbara, but she does interview all kinds of bigwig types, from the maudlin - Elton John - to the vilified - Qaddafi. And, while I could follow the conversation, mostly, and throw in a few comments here and there, and answer questions put to me - ''Är dina fördäldrar religiösa?''* - still I was unable to take full advantage of the situation, what with my fumbling Swedish.

I couldn't ask the Swedish Barbara Walters about, well, I don't know, what is it like interviewing all these people, for instance. Who is most interesting? Who is a boor and who is a bore? Is it hard to maintain some semblance of subjectivity all the time? Who has infuriated or disgusted you? Who has charmed you against your will?

I suppose even if I could ask them, I still would have felt as if I was imposing, asking such questions. Swedes hate to appear nosey, it's very bad form. Plus, the Swedish Barbara Walters is a reporter after all, and most reporters get really uncomfortable when someone else starts asking the questions.

Still, she talked some about herself - happy months spent in Cuba and Colombia studying Spanish where she didn't really learn a thing but loved the people, for instance, or that Leonard Cohen was very intelligent and charming when she interviewed him. Yet she was curiously unassuming but with a certain commanding presence.

In short, I liked her considerably.

These dinners with H. used to be my sole real practice in speaking Swedish because H. is my only friend here who doesn't really speak English, it was no doubt difficult enough for her to learn Swedish when she moved here 20 years ago from Chile. And she understands English reasonably well, she just doesn't quite speak it.

When I first met her, we spoke Spanish but somehow despite my clumsy grammar and lack of vocabulary, we soon switched to a peculiar mix of Swedish and Spanish, and then to Swedish alone as I've gotten to the point where while I can still understand quite a bit of Spanish but if I try to speak it, that pathetically inept part of my brain responsible for languages other than English will only allow Swedish out of my mouth.

Anyway, the dinners used to consist of my speaking English to everyone but H., and everyone speaking English to me. Then sometime over the past six months I finally made the switch over to speaking Swedish with everyone. And if I'm hopped up on enough red wine, I can get pretty chatty.

Last night was not one of those nights, however. - by Francis S.

* ''Are your parents religious?''

It's time for me to answer (for myself) the question: what the hell is this about, or rather, why am I writing this, why does anyone write these online diaries, why would anyone read them or want to read them, why do we (me and the other people who write these things) have such exhibitionist tendencies?

At the beginning, I told myself that I was writing this to keep a record of my painful struggle to learn Swedish, that I would be motivated to keep it up if I did it so publicly and with the attendant rewards of being read by people I don't even know. How that is supposed to be a reward, well, I guess anyone reading this would understand.

Anyway, I started this with a modicum of self-doubt. How could I be interesting without revealing too much? It seemed to me that the most interesting stuff to read is the most personal, provided it's not too pathetic, too repetitive, too banal. Plus, the husband is way too connected to the people who fill the gossip rags of Sweden for me to be too forthright, at least about a some things. I keep worrying that for the right person this could be a sort of journal á clef, so I don't put anything particularly juicy or maybe even interesting about anyone in here.

So, I thought briefly about writing the whole thing in the third person, but decided that was just not in the spirit of a journal. So I picked a tone, and dove in, knowing next to nothing about the psycho-sociological philosophical semiotics of this blogger stuff.

But now as I stumble about, I happened on a page from this guy who used to shepherd something called the Metalog Ratings at Beebo.org!, both apparently now defunct. And he wrote:

I lost interest in weblogs. They were never a great passion; over the last year or so they've become much less interesting, and much more, well, precious. Make me care about you and your weblog; don't assume that I do. Junk the "mystery" links, the cutesy lines, the breakfast, lunch and dinner menus.

And I realized, Jesus, I've been writing breakfast, lunch and dinner menus. I've been, well, maybe not precious exactly but definitely a tad on the arch side. Cutesy lines? I'm not sure exactly what he means by cutesy.

The only trap I seemed not to have fallen into is peppering my posts with mystery links. Well, maybe just accidentally touched it with my big toe without actually falling all the way into the trap.

Which brings me to the question, why would anyone want to read this? I honestly don't know. I don't know if I would read this. And, while I know I would like to have people read it, on some level it doesn't matter. So, maybe I can just skip to the next question.

Which is: why am I such an exhibitionist? I guess it's an American thing. Andy Warhol and the whole ''15 minutes of fame concept,'' which the Internet seems to have changed into ''famous to 15 people who would normally not know you.''

The Swedish word for the day is kändisar. It means famous people. - by Francis S.

Those Mufti people of Aden sure knew a good thing when they tasted it: ah, coffee. ''I love coffee, I love tea, I love the java jive and it loves me...''

Now, if only we weren't out of espresso, I could've just whipped up a cup in the machine in no time instead of having to empty the dishwasher in order to get the dirty dishes in the sink out of the way so I could actually get proper access to the water tap, water being an essential ingredient of coffee. But it was a good thing I did the dishes, it being takeout Indian food last night from Indira, the McDonald's of our block (Farmer Street), takeout because we're a couple of lazy slobs.

Er, I'm a lazy slob, the husband is just lazy. Well, actually he isn't, he worked one of those nasty 13-hour days yesterday, starting at 7:30 a.m. (And he's working again this morning. Ah, the painful life of being an arbiter of fashion). Me, I just didn't feel like cooking because, well, I didn't feel like cooking.

The thing about Indira food is that, like McDonald's, it has a rather insistent stink about it that is extraordinarily appealing as you remove the chicken pista korma and chicken butter masala and naan bread from the various containers and paper bags and heap it all on your plate. But once eaten, that stink loses its glamor. And especially if you consumed a bottle of really good 1995 Chateauneuf du Pape over the course of the evening as well, the combined odors of oil and stale wine the next morning are not pretty.

All of which is to reiterate that it was a noble thing doing those dishes. - by Francis S.

When I read that this guy, Jonno, was doing a survey on whether guys dress left or right (I'm a left-dresser myself), I was extremely entertained and naturally responded immediately. I don't know him, but I should give him credit for inspiring me to start this whole thing up a few weeks ago.

Anyway, all I want now is to see the results of the survey, and see if some scientist could come up with an explanation. I highly recommend my one or two readers to respond to ensure a broad sampling. >- by Francis S.

I realize I've been derelict in the whole Swedish bit and decided to mend my ways with a handy cultural lesson for all the millions of people who are surely interested in how exactly one lives in Sweden.

1. Lines, queues, knowing your place. Don't be disturbed if, as you trot merrily up the sidewalk smiling stupidly and minding your own business, you actually are butted in the shoulder by a person. Or maybe 10 people. And then not a one of them says a word, or even turns around, leaving you wondering why everyone is picking on you, and since when did you become such a pariah, and finally, how can you get back at them?

Two things are going on here.

First, for some strange reason, there's a lot of confusion about personal space. That's why Swedes always, always use the take-a-number system (Swedish word for the day: nummerlapp. It means the piece of paper with a number on it that you take at every ticket booth, meat counter, bank, tax office... you get the picture.) because then you don't have to actually stand in a line where you might accidentally touch someone because you have no sense of personal space. Or maybe they have no sense of personal space because they never have to stand in line. Who knows.

Alternatively, it's been explained to me that the switch from British-style left-side-of-the-road driving to American right-side-of-the-road driving in the late '60s (it was literally done in a day, apparently with no major mishaps) combined with a subway system with trains that don't consistently stick to one side or the other of a station from one subway station to the next, produce chaos when any single person is trying to decide where to walk on the sidewalk.

What is ironic is that it is very important in Swedish culture to, er, know your place, and that place is exactly the same as everyone else, in other words, don't think too highly of yourself - there's nothing worse than thinking you're better, or being better for that matter. Jämnt is the concept. Which I mostly like, Swedes are wonderfully egalitarian, maddeningly egalitarian and consensus-driven - everyone needs to come to a consensus on what they want/should/need to do as a people/company/family, for example. Swedes themselves seem to bemoan the fact that they are like this, and yet they're proud of it.

The second thing, the fact that no one apologizes, is something else altogether, I've decided. It's actually not rudeness, but a certain shyness and concern not to cause trouble. At least that's my generous take on it. By saying ''excuse me,'' you are causing even more of an imposition because the person you have accidentally butted on the shoulder then has to pause and respond. At least that's why I think people do it. Some Swedes have explained to me it's because Swedish culture is crude and boorish, but I like to think I'm right (who doesn't?).

- by Francis S. (who actually loves Sweden dearly.)

I bought a copy of Myra Breckinridge to take back with me, and I read it on the airplane, or at least most of it. I bought it because I saw it on as a forgotten classic on some list or other. I haven't read all that much Gore Vidal, but I did like Lincoln and his memoir, Palimpsest was sufficiently full of homosexualist gossip, as the man himself would say. I can't say I'd ever want to meet him - after all, what person in their right mind would divide their time between homes in those oddly parallel cities, Los Angeles and Rome (Kenneth Anger should have called his book Hollywood Roma, a much better metaphor than Babylon if we're talking ancient decadence).

I didn't much care for the perfumey prose, it's a little too precious for me, regardless of how much it mirrors the narrator's character. But I was constantly struck by the modern themes and obsessions of the book - copyright 1968 - what with the eponymous transsexual Miss Breckinridge, the worship of forties-era movies (which would be the equivalent of worshipping movies today such as, well, ''Kramer vs. Kramer''), the pansexuality of Miss Breckinridge's students at the Academy of Drama and Modeling (where she teaches Empathy and Posture), the appearance of the Chateau Marmont Hotel. I suppose it all fits into Susan Sontag's definition of ''low camp'' (or is that high camp? I can't remember whether self-aware camp is high or low...) which was itself published in the mid-60s.

The Swedish word for the day is busunge. It means naughty little boy. - by Francis S.

Going back to the fatherland is always a jolt.

The first thing I notice back in the old U.S. of A. is that everyone can understand what everyone else is saying. Which, of course, is true here in Sweden for just about everybody but me. Still, I can't help thinking to myself as I sit in a restaurant serving Sri Lankan food in Minneapolis with the husband, my sister and her family: ''Do these people at the next table realize that I can understand every single word they are saying?!?'' And, ''Aren't they, shouldn't they be deeply ashamed to be talking about their emergency gastro-intestinal surgery like that?'' - by Francis S.