The third in an occasional series.
Ten: Predatory seating
Nine: Culinary relativismEight: Preëmptive planning.
In New York, planning a typical night’s entertainment went something like this: “Matthew, how about a game of Scrabble in St. Dymphnas tonight?” “Okay.” If it wasn’t Matthew, it’d be Itay, or Zach, or a combination of the three.
I could handle that. My event horizon rarely extended 24 hours into the future. It didn’t need to — there’d always be something popping up, and people’s schedules were as fluid as mine. I was free to pursue the simple life of task-based socializing: Find something to do and then find somebody to do it with.
Do not try this in Stockholm. In Stockholm, planning goes something like this:
“Let’s go for dinner.”
“Okay, how about two weeks from Friday?”
“[WTF???] How about two weeks from when hell freezes over?”
“I can’t, it’s West Wing on TV.”
“How about the Wednesday after pigs fly?”
“Å, but I’ll have to see if we can get a babysitter.”
“Å, I’ll pencil you in then.“Å,” pronounced “har” as the pirates do but with the h and r silent, is a passive yes in Swedish. As in, “I have no objections to the proposed course of events, do you?” You’d be surprised how much conversation is superfluous once you have the letter å at your disposal. The reason is that, unknown to most linguists, Swedish is actually a tonal language. “Å!” is an entire passive-aggressive tirade reduced to a letter. “Å?” is the Swedish equivalent of “WhatEVER.” And you thought Swedes just didn’t say much.”
The reason tonight is not feasible is because Stockholmers have all preëmptively booked each other weeks in advance. And the only reason why is because everybody else is planning preëmptively. It’s the temportal equivalent to the predatory seating problem, identified previously. There is no shortage of things to do in Stockholm, nor people to do them with, but try to be spontaneous and you will be doing so at home with the remote control, and the Finnish channel as your nemesis.
What Stockholm needs to adopt, en masse, is a just-in-time approach to managing social obligations. As things stand, there is a non-negligible risk your date gets run over by a bus in the interval between planning and consummation. The solution is obvious, Stockholm: For better living, reduce your time-to-meatmarket.
Could you try setting appointments for random entertainment with everyone you know over the next several weeks? Fill your diary with dates but don’t tell anyone what will happen…if they insist, explain it’s a “surprise” or just make something up like visiting the zoo. Go crazy, book an entire afternoon. And then, as the annointed hour looms, run with it.
The trick is to build in as much scheduled time in advance as possible and then throw convention to the wind, break out the Scrabble board and a bottle of red, and watch the facial twinges as your friendly Swedes realize they’ve been conned into doing something spontaneous.
Right now i think im in love with you Stefan! im looking greatly forward to no IV or 6 or whatever.
OK, now I feel really guilty… But I also feel I have to throw in an objection. There is some room for spontaneity in the schedules, no matter how tight they are, because we Stockholmers don’t always decide what we are going to do. We just decide to meet, and if someone wants to join in that is usually not a problem. But nevertheless, your entry was hilarious – as always.
Scrapple tonight? Seriously.
Lovely, to the point and crisp. I•look at my own schedule and note that the first free weekend is at the end of april. (That is, if I can get a baby sitter)
What is wrong with the Finnish channel?
Scrapple? That’s that meat by-product, isn’t it?
BTW, I don’t think the letter “å” is really the appropriate one for the sound you’ve so tellingly captured there. “Å” is pronounced at the very front of the mouth, while the inhalation-yes starts middle-mouth with the tongue in a j-position and moves to an “o”, but at the back of the mouth. Or…maybe that’s not the one you mean.
Hell, I don’t know. All I know is that “Å” reads as an impressed exclamation to me.
Yeah, I was wondering if it was the right letter, actually, but I looked it up in Lexin and it seemed to be the letter I was looking for. I guess you are lucky in that you mostly translate from English to Swedish. What would you do if you had to translate this sound from Swedish into English?
Depends on context. Very, very few spoken lines can be said to have a translation that is 100% correct, 100% of the time.
I actually do some work in the other direction, BTW. In fact, that’s what I’ll be doing this weekend.
Stefan
I just read this and wondered. Do I need to book times with you and Joachim for that weekend of the 24th?
This is true. But it’s a part of evolution, at first there was only chaos, and then came the swedes.
However, it’s got nothing to do with disliking spontaneity. I have several friends that are utterly incapable of planning ahead, and it frustrates me when trying to gather a certain group of friends that I never know until the very day of the event whether any one of them will be showing up or not.