Peaches & Coconuts

Last week one of my co-workers, who was married with an American woman for ten years and lived stateside for a few years longer, told me one of these rather amusing generalizations about the difference between Americans and Swedes.

My co-worker said, "Americans are like peaches and Swedes are like coconuts, because Americans seem so warm, charming and sweet when you meet them but are hard as stone inside when you get to know them better while Swedes have a rough, hard and inaccessible exterior and are actually all soft and mushy they you come closer."

I hadn't heard this before and thought it was a rather amusing way of describing the differences, bearing in mind of course that these kinds of generalizations only hold some truth on the macro-level. When one get´s down to the micro-level with smaller groups and individuals they mean nothing at all.

I usually follow the news closely all the time but not so yesterday because I had been too preoccupied with other stuff. When I logged in to my SecondLife at noon (SLT) I was therefor not aware of the fact that there had been a earth quake on the east coast of the U.S. and that it had hit New York City as well.

You can imagine my surprise when my brother in-law Dejerrity Mycron sent me an IM telling me that he had waited for me to get in-world to let me know that he and his family were all doing well and that my other brother in-law Jeb Nicholls was also fine.

Dejerrity knows me quite well - and he knows from experience that I am a worrier - so he had stayed in-world to give me this news personally. That was so caring and thoughtful of him that it still warms me up inside and brings tears to my eyes thinking about it now.

"Actions speak louder than words", as my darling Ars always used to say so I will return the favor to Dej and tell him "Yes Dej, I love you too you big muscular, hairy ball of mush!"

So now I only have the hurricane to worry about, but hopefully it will change it´s path enough or lose momentum not to cause any real harm to my loved ones.