First off, i know! Crazy, 3 blogs in a week! Secondly, this is a pretty worthless post, but here goes.

I think my parents will probably get the most kick out of this because they know me well, and my sisters as well. Being the rebel that i am, i've never been one much for fashion or such, i just wore whatever was comfortable, while trying to look decent. Some magical transformation took place about a yaer ago when i grew my hair out a little bit, and i actually started using products. This potent toxin immediately infected me with metrosexualism and hence i've been slightly more fashion conscious lately. This is however heavily curbed by my even stronger urge of being broke and extremely cheap.

So why am i making this post? Because yesterday i did the unthinkable, i not only bought my first pair of jeans ever, they were littered with all sorts of little fashion trends that i had no intent on falling pray to.

To start off with, this is remarkable for the mere fact that this is the first pair of jeans i've ever bought. The first pair of jeans i've ever owned (since before i was 10) came into my posession this summer, since my sister bought a pair of new Levis jeans at a flea market for 5$ and gave them to me. They were surprisingly comfortable so i started wearing them, and now i wanted more!

But that's not all, i've always made fun of the weird things they do to jeans now a days, not only do they seem to be messed up on purpose, they have all kinds of weird random seems that serve no purpose added to them. My new pair has everything. My only saving grace was that i kept true to my cheap genes and went out to a store called TJMaxx (basicly an outlet store that sells surplus items) and got them for 15$.

Here is pictoral evidence of my shenanigans:

Exhibit A, you'll notice how someone took a sander to the sides to make them worn:


Exhibit B: A pointless rectangle of seams with no seeming purpose (on the knee btw, so i guess this simulates me being a rough guy and having ruined my pants, but then going home and sewing them together). T
his reminds me of a circuit diagram of a resistor, so it was appealing to my nerdy side.


Exhibit C: The pants in all their glory, you'll notice that the front of the thighs have been worn down, or acid washed or whatever it's called. Also notice the pre-made tear lines on the pockets


The hair that started it all

Alright, a bit of an unorthadox post for me, so feel free to skip it if you want.

A curious little development has happened with me in the past few months. It is something that i have never really paid any attention to at home because it was never necessary, but this is the subject of religion.

Now i was never really that religious, i remember when i was younger i did pray to god often, but it was mostly out of fear. For some reason i was very paranoid about fire at a point, and always doublechecked that everything was turned off before going to sleep and said a prayer for my relatives that i was afraid would also experience a fire. It gave me some comfort and a sense of control over things that i could help someone like that. As i grew out of my fear, so did i grow out of my habbit of praying.

My parents never taught me any religion, they didn't even baptize me and gave me the option of baptism when i was at the age of 10 i believe (it was when my oldest sister was getting confirmized, so she needed to get baptized as well if she wanted to do that, so we all did it together). I took the option, it was mostly a "why not" thing, plus getting confirmized involves quite a bit of money which isn't a bad motivator when you're young (or old for that matter). At the time of my baptism i was pretty indifferent, i didn't really care if i believed in god or not and just went with the flow. As i grew older, i became more and more of an agnostic/atheist, but at the same time, i never really thought about it, and didn't really care what i was.

That was before i came to the states. I don't know why, but i somehow felt compelled to take on some sort of religious identity when i came here. Maybe it was the fact that pretty much everyone here i've met are religious to some extent (and many very much so, which is quite foreign to me), maybe it was the fact that at the first day of school, about 60% of all the booths on campus were some kind of religious group trying to grab my attention. Whatever you call it, USA is abnormally religious compared to the rest of the developed world, especially the parts that i call home. For example, only 12% of America believes in evolution without any interference of a god. 31% believes in evolution, but thinks that god is the one controling evolution, while a staggering 53% are straight up creationists. That is they believe the world was created exactly as it says in the bible (which makes it about 6000 years old). 45% of Americans also believes that Jesus will return within the next 50 years to judge the living and dead. These are quite staggering numbers.

But in essence, what happened was that i was asked quite often if i was religious and if i believed in god. Questions that i was never asked at home, because frankly, noone believed in god at home as far as i know. At best they were agnostic. This kind of forced me to take a stand and the answer that naturally came out was "no". This has kind of let me to research things a bit more and read more about atheism, and not surprisingly, i've found it to match my beliefs pretty much perfectly. Basicly it is a case of thinking critically.

So far i've only read one and a half book. The first one by Richard Dawkins, called "The devils chaplain", which is not on atheism alone, but it touches on holistic medicine and intellectual imposters as well (it's a collection of his papers). Right now i'm in the process of reading "Letter to a christian nation" by Sam Harris. This one i'm really enjoying, mostly because i'm not a big fan of reading and it's under 100 pages (100 A6 pages with big lettering i might add), and it's basicly a pocketbook to give atheists some ammunition if they were to come under fire by religious people. A quick, easy and enjoyable read i'd recommend (and probably cheap as well given it's size).

Anyway, weird little blog but felt like writing something about it, the most profound thing in this post is probably the fact that i read my first non-school related book since i was about 14 (i believe it was a Stephen King book).

I actually wrote a blog last thursday, and thought i posted it, but i guess Myspace showed me, and because you not only have to push "post" but also "Confirm post" on the next page (which i did not, just closed it). So all was lost!

Not too bad, i was being a crybaby in that post, since i wrote it on Friday, which was the day i was cutting weight for the first time. I went down to about 162 pounds, (around 74kg's), and didn't eat or drink for 24 hours, plus 3 workouts in that time so that i would sweat out a lot of water to lose weight. It was my first time cutting and made many mistakes, most notably eating too much sodium the day before (i didn't read about not doing this until after i did this).

Anyway, i was miserable but made weight, losing about 9 pounds of water in a day (around 4kg's or so). It all turned out to be rather pointless though, since i lost in my first match in overtime (on a takedown). On the bright side the guy who beat me ended up winning gold, so i automaticly got bronze (without winning a match).

Right now i'm sick, i somehow managed to catch a cold in California, i think my body got homesick and decided to make me feel more like home. Either that or not eating and drinking for 24 hours is bad for your immune system.

Aside from losing in the competition i'm really starting to enjoy the practices here, it's hard to notice yourself getting better, but i'm starting to go for new stuff in practice and making new things work for me, which is usually a good sign that your game is moving forwards. I'm starting to train a lot more now in the new year and prioritizing that in front of everything, i should be heading to LA this sunday as well to train with some good nogi guys, Andre from the BJJ forum on MMA.tv invited me to a nogi openmat they have every week, and i guess Mac Danzig should be there as well, who just signed with pride. So suffice to say, me and my little frail body and blue belt will get killed, but good times will be had, Andre was even kind enough to offer to pick me up. Only bad thing, this will probably mean that i won't drink this weekend either, which brings my non-drinking weekends to over a month (last day being new years eve). I decided to take a break off drinking after the winter break since i kind of went overboard, then the tournament and weightcutting came, so i couldn't drink, and now this. I guess not drinking isn't horrible though, i'm getting older and binge drinking is not nice on your body after 20.

School is going pretty good, having a weird quarter this time around. I have a grand total of ONE lecture a week, and everything else is either lab-time or self-work. I have undergraduate research, which will be my bachelor project. As it looks now, i'll be making an Argon plasma using a heated filament to emit electrons and ionizing it, then taking some spectroscopy measurements on it. This is basicly 10 hours in the lab each week. Then i have Advanced Lab, where i will pick 3 pretty advanced laboratory experiments to make and do a report on (i just finished a low-temp one where we supercooled a tin sample we made). And then i have field experience in physics education, which should be a blast. Basicly i'll go to elementry schools and play with fire and airtracks to teach kids about science. So no normal classes this quarter.

Socially things are going pretty good as well, i've now become an active member of the fraternity, and try to spend most of the free time i have from school/training at the fraternity house. It was deifnately a good move to join a fraternity, since i have a feeling that i would've had very few friends at school if i hadn't done it, walking around campus now i greet people every few minutes and it's a nice feeling, feels a lot more like home when you know so many people. Not to mention it's about the most American thing i could've done.

Ohh and also, my friend Daði from Iceland came to California a few weeks ago, he came here with his buddy for a week, staying up in Santa Barbara (about 2 hours away), and i met up with him one night and went to see a basketball game (Clippers VS Cavaliers) at the staples center in LA, it was a great night and was nice meeting someone from home (although Daði actually lives in Sweden now).

Anyway, pictures show more then my words so here goes. The ones from the lab are from the low temperature one i did in the advanced lab, it shows us putting liquid nitrogen into our storage device, which cools it down to 77 Kelvin (approx -200°C). Later we'd put liquid helium on it to cool it down to 2 Kelvin (2 degrees above absolute zero), which made it superconducting (no resistance to flow of electricity). Pretty cool stuff if i do say so myself!

Some pictures from the basketball game as well, and then finally a bunch of pictures from the fraternity house, one where we're just chilling, playing video games and having a BBQ, and one where we're having a few beers in one of the rooms (playing a drinking game called beerpong).

I was debating if i should add the last video or not, since i do know my parents read this blog lol (hi mom!), but why not! I made the last video as a demonstration for my friend Sabbi, who had asked me to find out how one does the all American technique of "shotgunning" a beer, so that's my little tutorial for him at the end.

Ahh yes Christmas has arrived, propably my favorite holiday, and so far i've spent every single one of them the exact same way. At home with my family, that is my two sisters, parents and a varying degree of relatives (usually my grandmother and uncle).

So this was the first time spending christmas outside of that and needless to say it was a bit weird. First off, like mentioned earlier it's like 22 degrees and clear skies here still in California, so for someone who grew up in Iceland, it's kind of hard to get into the christmas spirit in this weather, to back up my case, here are pictures taken at around noon today (this is btw the view from my balcony, taken on the new digital camera i got as a present from my parents).


About 22-23 degrees centigrade i believe. But anyway, my friend Justin Kolacinski has been nice enough to host me for both thanksgiving and now for Christmas. I came over and ate the delicious food his family had made and enjoyed the festivities there, they even gave me a bunch of presents, which was slightly embaressing since i had not bought any, but another one of my (and Justins) friends was also there and he was on the same boat, so it wasn't too bad. Really nice family and i enjoyed myself a lot.

Apart from this, i did go to the tournament that saturday, but popped my elbow again just warming up hah, so i didn't compete (but it's not serious and i'm back in training already). Me and two of my friends (Justin and Eloy) went up to Berkeley last week for a day, to visit the fraternity chapter up there, was good times although me and Justin went a bit overboard in the drinking, but nothing bad happened (aside from the fact that i'm never drinking the evil concoction known as "Jungle juice"). Checked out San Francisco too the day after, really cool city.

Anywho, not much else to say, here are a few more pictures taken today, of the great christmas day dinner (both turkey and pork roast, plus REALLY good maccaroni and cheese), their christmas setup and a nighttime view from my balcony.

    Ahh the holidays! This will be a weird one, the first time ever that i will be spending christmsa away from home, it is definately my favorite holiday of the year so it won't be easy, but luckily California is helping me by keeping the weather around a cool 20°C, making it impossible to get into any kind of christmas spirit anyway, so it's not too bad. That plus i got a carepackage from my parents which hooked me up with Icelandic candy! Ahh how well my parents know me.

First off! I'm not a pledge anymore, which basicly means, that i am no longer a probationary member of the fraternity, but i am now an active member. Good times. The saddest part about not going home is the fact that we get a whole month off here! It which would be nice if i was going home, but i'm just kinda sitting around twiddling my thumbs as it is. Luckily though, my fraterntiy bro's are coming through and i'm spending most of my time with them.

I tried going back to training this week, since i popped my elbow getting keylocked about 3 weeks ago. To add insult to injury i fell on my scooter. Don't worry, it was slow as hell and not even worth mentioning (it was partly due to a too heavily strung back-break that i have now had fixed, took it in for a tuneup 2 days ago), except for the fact that i was stupid and wearing a t-shirt, so i got some nasty bruises on my elbows that are taking a while to heal. I tried going back to training yesterday and had fun, but during my first roll i posted on the elbow hard, and it hurt like hell but i kept going. Then as i was about to start the next roll it was pointed out to me that my rashguard looked like a murderscene, and blood was dripping everywhere. But it's only a scab reopening, so hopefully back in training by monday. I'm actually contemplating competing this Saturday, i'll just wrap the elbow up and hope it doesn't bleed. The downside is of course that i haven't trained in 3 weeks and i'm in horrible shape (not to mention don't have time to cut weight to 170 so i'll compete at 185, but i only weight around 174). Only reason i'm considdering it is because it's a free tournament, and i can't really afford the 70$ pricetag on most tournaments around here. I'll let you know how i did (unless i do badly).

Academicly it went mixed, i did well in two but horribly in the third. Sadly, that one test was the one i wanted to do well on, since the professor i will be doing undergrad research with next quarter was teaching it, i literally felt ashamed to turn in that piece of paper that i called answers. It was propably my worst performance on an exam since taking German in highschool (actually this was worse since i actually tried to do well in this and put in an effort).

Anyway, that's about it. I might be getting a digital camera for Christmas so you may be expecting some shots of  my wonderful life in California.

Since my last post was on one American holiday that us Europeans don't have, i thought it was only fitting that i make a new post now that another one has come around.

I just experienced my first thanksgiving, and i must say that i agree with the premise of this holiday, basicly the family meets up and eats a lot of really good food. Everyone here in the states is really hospitable, i've gotten like 6 different invitations to thanksgiving dinners, and pretty much everyone has asked me where i'm going for Thanksgiving. I ended up going to my friends Justin Kolacinski's house, along with the other Justin (Lin) in our pledgeclass. Better known as white Justin, and asian Justin. The food was awesome, two huge turkeys with mashed potatoes and gravey, i also tried some maccaronis and cheese for the first time, was really good but felt a bit weird as a holiday dinner, and then for desert there was blueberry pie with icecream on top, DELICIOUS! So apart from the flatulance i am now experiencing due to extreme stuffing of my stomach, it was good times all around. I think a big part of the holiday is lost on me though because i didn't grow up with it, i remember being there (and i had the same feeling during my first 4th of july here in the states a few years back), and thinking "they are not really making a big deal of this" and kinda feeling like it was just any other dinner. Then i started thinking back on what WE do on our holidays, and it's the exact same thing. It's pretty much always a dinner with friends and family, and if an outsider were to come in, it would just be any other night (only better food), but because we associate it with good times and childhood memories, it's more to us.

Anyway! Enough of that. I'm still pledging for the fraternity, hopefully that will come to an end soon and i can have some more free time (although i do enjoy having a full schedual). In other big news i have gotten my scooter! Although i do not yet have my license so i can not (legally) ride at night, that will hopefully change next week, have the test set up for next Thursday. It's pretty fast, gets like 45-50mph (70-80km/h) and around 60miles per gallon. Thanks to the scooter, and carpools from my friend Daryl, who also trains at Apex, i've been going to class pretty consistently the past 2 weeks, making it out to almost every class, although sadly my wrestling training has suffered as a result. I have jits from 7:30-9+, so i'm not very motivated to go straight to wrestling at 10. But yeah, life is good. Not partying as much anymore, i've made a rule that i'll only drink on Saturdays, mostly so i can make it to practice on Saturday mornings (which is a hard task if i'm hungover from Friday).

To try and infuse at least a tiny bit of humor into this post, i'd like to share with you a little story of my scooter! As you may or may not know, i bought the scooter from a girl, and scooters are not the manliest thing in the world to start with, so being seen riding around in one is not exactly the epitome of macho, i am however European, so i can pull it off. Anyway, here in America, they tend to have something called license plate holders, which is basicly a chrome frame around your license plate that has some kind of slogan on it (think advanced bumper sticker). Now me not being used to these things, i didn't even notice that i had one, let alone what it said, but my friend sees the scooter and exlaims "what the hell does your holder say man", i am surprised by his enquiry and go to take a look, and lo' and behold, it says black on shiny chrome: "Eat my fairy dust". Not exactly making the scooter any manlier.

Anyway, that's about it for my status update.

Sabbi timed his "No more blogging!?" comment perfectly, since i was just about to write a blog today. But yes i've been very lazy with that, i'm pretty damn busy here, but at the same time not much seems to happen. I have however had a pretty eventful week so hopefully i got something to tell about.

First off, last weekend was halloween, which is a pretty cool holiday. I did not get to experience trick or treating like i wanted to (since i've never seen that), because i had a meeting on the 31st :( But that's how it goes. I did manage to go to Halloween parties dressed as "Coors Knight" (a gladiator costume out of a coors light box). Quite a fun little holiday they have there, for grownups it's basicly an excuse for adults to dress up and be silly for one night of partying (or actually a full weekend. I'm kinda pissed i didn't realize sooner halloween was coming since i would've done more for my costume, insted i borrowed one of my bro's old costume. Good times nontheless! One of my other bro's was dressed as  a beerkeg and had a built'in beerbong, which made sure taht everyone at the party was VERY slushed, and good times were had by all.

Today however, was a really cool day. Contrary to popular belief fraternities do more then drinking, and they try their hardest at clocking as many hours doing charity work as possible, today we got in about 220 hours in total for our chapter. So today i did charity, but it was pretty damn fun. Basicly we were volunteers for the Tony Hawk foundations fundraiser. A HUGE estate in Beverly Hills is borrowed to the foundation and basicly all these rich people pay money to get in and mingle with other rich white people, and get free stuff from the sponsors. They need volunteers to run booths, clean up the area and just all that general stuff that is needed. So basicly i was hanging around rich/famous people for about 8 hours today. I had a pretty cushy job, making people sign waivers for their kids if they wanted them to use the rides. I was strategically placed in front of the UFC booth, which had a boxing ring with HUGE gloves for kids to play with. Chuck Liddell and Forrest Griffin were both there to sign autographs, didn't really get a chance to talk to Chuck, but i struck a conversation with Forrest and he's extremely cool, he come over a few times after that to chat and was generally a really nice guy. Aside from the UFC guys, Tony Hawk was of course there along with other skaters (most notably 19 year old olympic gold medalist in snowboarding Shaun White, who was AMAZING), they did crazy tricks for everyone. Jamie Lee Curtis was there, David Spade too. Aparently Michael Rappaport was there but i didn't see him. Best of all us volunteers got a bunch of cool swag fromt he place, i got a huge gymbag full of UFC t-shirts, some cool NIXON hats and other swag. All in all really cool day, aside from the 33 degrees and clear skies that was killing my pale scandinavian skin since i had to stand outside for 8 hours. Luckily i had the good sense to lather myself in 36sunblock before starting.

I'm however crazy busy. I'll now have to start studying for tomorrow, and wake up at 8am to continue that (it's crazy how much homework they give you here). I've also been selected to be in "Songfest", which is a fraternity/Sorority thing, basicly each fraternity gets matched with a sorority and they do a 10 minute version of a musical. I only tried out to be a good sport and do it along with the rest of my pledgebros, and even though i thought i did horribly, i was selected to be in there. Which is kinda weird since i'm a bad singer and a horrible dancer, but it should be interesting (albeit time consuming with practices twice a week).

On more general notes, i'll propably be buying a scooter tomorrow, or at least pay for it, i'll get ownership of it sometimes later in the week, i got the motorcycle learners permit right now, so all i have to do is take the riding test and i get a full motorcycle license (i can get it without ever touching a motorcycle, just riding the easy to ride scooter). This should give me more then a 10 meter radius of mobility, which is my current situation.

Yes i'm a lazy bastard when it comes to blogging, but my life has been relatively uneventful, albeit busy, the past few weeks.

To start with, i've started training. It's nothing crazy since it's so far away (and the bus stops running at 8, wtf?!), but i try to make it 2-3 times a week, and then i do the wrestling classes twice a week here on campus, which is great since it's literally 2 minutes away, and wrestling is something i really need to work on. Sadly though, one of the classes i cna make at my BJJ school, is the wreslting class .... So although wrestling is great for me, i'd like to do BJJ more then once a week :( On this note though, the UCI wrestling club is going to a meet next week (not this saturday but the next) and i figured i'd show up, what the hell. They'll let me wrestle with some of the other teams B-guys (it's against USC and UCLA). I've only been training for 3 weeks, but i really feel i learned a lot from BJJ tournaments, so i figured even though i will get my ass kicked 10 different ways, i should learn a lot from it.

I'm now pledging for phi gamma delta, and i'm rather enjoying it, although i am very scarce on time, but i feel it is definately worth the effort since there are some great guys there.

In general things are going well, school is pretty good, i'm very happy with all my classes so far. Doing a basic programming class, which is kinda easy since i've glanced at stuff like that before but never really got into it, it's gonna get harder i guess as time passes, and tomorrow is my first midterm EVER, and its in that. Aparently it's a multiple choice test which seems kinda weird for a programming class (becuase the midterms are like 25-30 percent of the final grade,(there are two midterms in one quarter). Oh well. They also give a lot of homework here, which i'm not really used to, hopefully i can get decent grades and all, not really sure how they do grades here, at home it's 100% the finals usually, but here you got assignment, midterms homework, lab reports etc etc.

Oh well this has been a pretty boring status update blog, so i'll throw in a fun little tidbit of information, there is now a large portion of sorority girls that have seen me running around naked. I was challenged at a party last weekend by a female creature, to a game of foosball. I, seeing that she was female, assumed that this would be an easy win, especially since she told me that whoever lost would be streaking. What i forgot to take into account, is that i suck at foosball, and that i was quite drunk. I went up 6-0 and was quite confident, but ended up losing 10-7, and thus streaking for the whole party, i think she was just playing with me and let me get to 6 to evily snatch it away from me.

That's it for now! I wish i had a camera and could post a few pictures, but that's how it goes.

Yeah well, at least semi drunk. I've had one sixpack about now, sad thing is that there wasn't really a party, i thought it would develop into one and had planned to skip class tomorrow, (since class on fridyas sucks and is my easy course), but only a few were drinking and no party, so it was kinda sad.

But seriously, the police here was trying hard to catch me drinking out in the open, i was walking home on an empty path that goes through a big sportsfield that is empty obviously at this time of night (1 AM), so i figured i was safe to drink my beer slowly while walking there (while softly singing "Maístjarnan"). Suddenly i see a cop car hanging out right on the road, obviously watching me. They are kinda far away and they don't use their lightcaster since it would be too obvious. So i sneakily put the beer away (still singing Maístjarnan), and start drinking when they leave, they try 3 more times to drive by me and catch me in the act, but i am quite sneaky! I'm quite sure that tomorrow there will be a real party, some of the guys talked about hitting some LA bar/club up tomorrow, so who knows, otmorrow i might be partying with HOLLYWOOOD STARS, although i doubt my budget could live up to that.

In other news, i'm actually really happy with the classes i'm taking, they're very experimental. I have one electronics class which is 80% laboratory, and my other physics class (plasma physics) is kinda theoretical, but taught by a experimentalist, so he always tries to relate to that, very cool.

On a more general note, i'm hoping to get my bike tomorrow, which would facilitate me being able to go training at Apex Gym like my plan was. Although i have found that they have Wreslting here  at the school at mondays and wednesdays, so hopefully i can make that. I also just bought my first pair of football (soccer) cleats, and played a short game of pickup today, i'll propably do that whenever i have time, i love playing football even though i suck, i signed up as a free agent for the 7 on 7 tournament, but i'm hoping FIJI (the fraternity) can make a full team of 7, i'm going to ask around and see if they are game.

I talked to some people, and aparently drinking in public is not just a ticket, but you get thrown in prison overnight, so i should propably not do that again. Also found out that if i were to pee outside and get caught, that's pretty much a sexcrime. Crazy!

Guess i better shape up and develop new habits when drinking.