Recipes. A half dozen of them. I can't believe it. My father actually sat down to write a few recipes for me! Hm .. goulash .. potato dumplings .. meatballs. Simple. Hearty. Good. It feels a bit strange to look at these hand-written pages. His handwriting. His words. Swedish and German. Sometimes mixing languages within a single sentence.

These are the notes from a professional chef. There are hardly any measurements. Only suggestions to add a little of this or that. I remember watching him cook a few times almost 30 years ago. He never followed any recipes — everything was in his head. Sitting here in my apartment, thousands of miles away from him, I'm trying to picture him writing these recipes, perhaps sitting at his kitchen table in his apartment in Stockholm. I wonder what he was thinking? He must have thought that this was a rather strange request.

Other Lives

— Photo by ML

You could smell the stench as soon as you entered the house. Then, immediately, you saw the filth and chaos. People had lived here until recently, and some of the residents had had pets. A dog had even been left behind for several days until a neighbor was able to let him out.

We had been looking at properties in North Philadelphia when we came across this former boarding house. It was an ordinary 3-story brownstone in a fairly intact city block in a part of town where many buildings are boarded up, burnt out, or torn down often leaving weed strewn empty lots. I had seen a few boarding houses before, but they were all empty. For whatever reason, this house, however, still held some of the belongings of its former residents, and, while walking though the house, I got a glimpse of how life can be when you have little or nothing.

Two brothers on a nice summer day. Both so young. Their whole lives still in front of them — two completely different lives. Only a few years here and there will they even spend in the same country.

This picture is some 40 years old, and while I can't remember it being taken, I know where it was taken and therefore also roughly when. My brother and I are about 15 months apart, and this picture was taken when we lived with friends in Austria — a whole lifetime ago.

Over the years, I've been the one moving from city to city, and country to country, while he has lived pretty much his whole life in Sweden. I've lived maybe a total of 14 or so years in Sweden, and almost as many years in boarding school and with relatives in Austria. But even when we both lived in Sweden, most of the time we actually lived in different parts of town, or even in different cities. Then, 20 years ago, I moved to the States and we grew apart even more, both figuratively and literally.

Writing

— Photo by Olivander

Writing these blog posts is a bit of DIY therapy. It's similar to talking with a stranger in a bar over a few drinks — something that can be more liberating than talking with someone you know .. who may remind you later that you had that conversation, or worse, will try to "help" with a gazillion suggestions, when all you really want is to just talk and for them to shut up and at least pretend to listen.

I try to write as often as possible, and I get a bit itchy if I don't write for a while. Sometimes it even seems as if my mind can't move on to other topics until I've written about the ones in my head. The topics themselves can vary quite a bit, and I usually have several half-finished or unpolished posts lying around waiting for a bit of free time and for the writing bug to strike just right. Is there a general theme? I'm not sure; it's part venting (and admittedly some ranting), and part musings. It can be a short note posted from my phone, or an article written over several days. It can be whatever pops into my head.

Seeing It Differently

— Photo by ML

How strange life can be! The anniversary of my divorce is coming up and I'm making plans with my (ex-)in-laws for my girls to play with their cousins during an upcoming trip to Greensboro. Or maybe it's not so strange. After all, my (now technically ex-)brother-in-law and I have known each other for almost 20 years and we've always gotten along very well — even during the long divorce process. He is a stand-up guy and he has a very straight-forward point of view when it comes to our relationship: we've known each other forever and our kids will always be cousins. In short, we will, for better or worse, always be family.

During the divorce I had reached out to him, not to gain sympathy, but rather to see if he could help my ex — his sister. I knew that she wasn't speaking with many people, and also that the few she did talk to, would not necessarily always give her good advice. Her brother, on the other hand, would most definitely want to help (and also be able to help!). But more importantly, he is level-headed and you can always count on him.

The Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia

— Photo by ML

Philadelphia is a great city for foodies. Not only is there food everywhere, but there is also all kinds of food from pretty much every region and culture on this planet. More importantly, a lot of it is actually very good. There are top rated restaurants like Le Bec Fin and Parc, and (my personal favorites) Alma de Cuba and Buddakan, which are always safe (although rather expensive) choices. And at the other end of the price spectrum you'll find the ubiquitous food trucks. It's obviously a bit more hit-and-miss here, but many of them will surprise you with fast, simple, and really good food.

The Hallway

— Photo by ML

The proposal is finally done. Answers for some 220 questions have been researched, written, and reviewed. Add to that references to a dozen or so white papers and other documents, and, of course, the tedious tasks of converting, renaming, and indexing those documents. A final review of everything (for the umpteenth time!), and a few last-minute edits — all seemingly endless busy-work. But then the end is as sudden as the beginning: a hard deadline when the proposal must be submitted.

I've gone through these exercises many times and I know the drill. We all know the drill. We get a Request for Proposal (RFP) and the clock starts ticking. The deadline is usually something like 5pm EST Thursday, or Friday 2pm PST, or some other arbitrary (but very specific) point in time. Now the machine must be started and proposal writing must commence. Team members in different time zones, countries, even continents, are assigned to tasks and we all start to work like an army of ants towards the common goal of delivering a complete proposal no later than the specified deadline.

The Birthday That Wasn't

— Photos by ML

The day wasn't supposed to turn out this way. Not this day! It was the 6th birthday of my younger daughter, and it was supposed to be perfect. She had been looking forward to this day for so long, or, as she would put it, "foreeeeeever!" We all had. She couldn't wait to be another year older.

Like every "little" girl, my daughter wants to be a "big" girl, and every birthday gets her one step closer. Naturally, there are also many other reasons why she absolutely loves birthdays (what kid doesn't?). She gets presents and a big cake with lots of frosting (would be nothing but frosting if she had her way). But most importantly, it's her day! She dresses up in a party dress and gets to decide pretty much everything.