Monday 4th October

Got my computer back from Gothenburg on Thursday, and it still doesn't work. In fact, the company told me what they'd done to it and it amounted to turning it on and leaving it alone for 3 days. For this they wanted 625kronor (about £50). On Friday morning I rang up the computer workshop, swallowed my pride and spoke to them in English, for the sake of clarity. They agreed they'd done precisely nothing and dropped the bill. In passing they also mentioned there was another service centre in Malmo that Compaq hadn't told me about. Gothenburg is 3hours from me. Malmo is 10minutes from me. I intend to ring up Compaq and to ask them to refund the 1000kronor I spent getting up there. The guy that works in Malmo is about twice as old as the guys in Gothenburg and seemed a lot more competent. Things are looking up.

This week my social life took a step forward when I discovered a whole host of good bands playing in the local area and it turns out one of my Italian friends, Francesco, and I are into similar music, so I have a companion too. On Wednesday night, International Noise Conspiracy played at one of the student unions here in Lund. They were really rather good- a Swedish rock band in the vein of The Hives, dressed a bit more like The White Stripes meet the Manic Street Preachers with the political rantings of Rage Against the Machine. You don't understand: you weren't there. I think I relaxed quite a lot seeing a good band, though, which is good.

On Saturday, Francesco and I went to see Le Tigre- a lesbian electronica rock band is probably my best definition. Pretty good and fun to watch, but I dunno if I'd buy the CD... I'll have to find some to listen to sometime and then decide.

Met a guy from Kenya by the name of Anthony at church yesterday. Really interesting guy. His outsider's view of Europe and Western culture opened my eyes to a few things and got a few other things in perspective.

Just a couple more things left to get in perspective and then I'll be doing ok.