{"id":352,"date":"2004-04-01T03:31:12","date_gmt":"2004-04-01T10:31:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stefangeens.com\/?p=352"},"modified":"2004-04-01T03:31:12","modified_gmt":"2004-04-01T10:31:12","slug":"top-ten-things-i-hate-about-stockholm-iii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/2004\/04\/top-ten-things-i-hate-about-stockholm-iii\/","title":{"rendered":"Top ten things I hate about Stockholm, III"},"content":{"rendered":"

The third in an occasional series.
 
Ten: Predatory seating<\/a>
Nine: Culinary relativism<\/a><\/span>Eight: Pre\u00ebmptive planning.<\/span><\/p>\n

In New York, planning a typical night’s entertainment went something like this: “Matthew, how about a game of Scrabble in St. Dymphnas<\/a> tonight?” “Okay.” If it wasn’t Matthew, it’d be Itay, or Zach, or a combination of the three.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Do not try this in Stockholm. In Stockholm, planning goes something like this:<\/p>\n

“Let’s go for dinner.”<\/p>\n

“Okay, how about two weeks from Friday?”<\/p>\n

“[WTF???] How about two weeks from when hell freezes over?”<\/p>\n

“I can’t, it’s West Wing on TV.”<\/p>\n

“How about the Wednesday after pigs fly?”<\/p>\n

“\u00c5, but I’ll have to see if we can get a babysitter.”<\/p>\n

“\u00c5, I’ll pencil you in then.“\u00c5,” 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 \u00e5 at your disposal. The reason is that, unknown to most linguists, Swedish is actually a tonal language<\/a>. “\u00c5!” is an entire passive-aggressive tirade reduced to a letter. “\u00c5?” is the Swedish equivalent of “WhatEVER.” And you thought Swedes just didn’t say much.<\/span>”<\/p>\n

The reason tonight is not feasible is because Stockholmers have all pre\u00ebmptively booked each other weeks in advance. And the only reason why is because everybody else is planning pre\u00ebmptively. It’s the temportal equivalent to the predatory seating problem, identified previously<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n

What Stockholm needs to adopt, en masse<\/em>, is a just-in-time approach<\/a> 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The third in an occasional series. Ten: Predatory seatingNine: Culinary relativismEight: Pre\u00ebmptive 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, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-sweden"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7eNhC-5G","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}