Time Zero

After a very inspiring and fascinating weekend there where a few hours to spend in London before returning to Gothenburg. Visited Tower Bridge, The Millennium Dom and the Greenwich Meriddian, it's been a long time since I visited those things and this day it felt all new again. The last week has been very strange, a loss of a close friend and at the same time some amazing emotions high and low all in once. In all it's beauty life is strange.

A dear friend and a true fighter is gone

Pelle Östman is not among us any longer. He's been fighting cancer for many years and friday the 22th june his body fell to sleep. For him it was a relief to end the pain, for us it's a loss of an amazing person and a friend. I'm sad not being able to meet him again but also very grateful for all those moments of fun and laughter in my memory, for myself and shared with others.

Pelle had 7 hard years of resistance and all reasons to be miserable but he choose not to. He lived with passion and always did more then other people expected from him. I remember a time when I went up the mountain with my son and Pelle was joining us. I didn't think about it and we started to climb, after some time it started to be more advanced and I realized that Pelle was struggling and I felt stupid for putting him in that spot. I asked him how he was doing and he said "I wish my doctor could see me now". We gut up to the top and down again and laughing about this comment.

He loved to prove the doctors wrong because they always said he couldn't do this or that and he wanted to live, not aim for the mellow.

He know that his day might come but we all know that and nobody knows when. So what Pelle taught me and many others was, choose who you want to be and what you want to do and don't let others decide for you.

Always in my mind

NEVER SURRENDER

I haven't been around since the trip in Philippines because everything has been crazy. There has been some serious struggling in all sort of ways. I expected a couple of tough weeks and hard work due to some final examination in the two year education I've been doing (which have been a lot of fun). But when people around you are in medical emergency your focus change right away.

A very close and dear friend is fighting cancer since 7 years, ha has shown tremendous will power and fighting spirit. He have kept proving doctors wrong over and over again and always made more than he was supposed to do. Since I came back his condition got seriously to the point where the hospital said "there's nothing more we can offer" which means it's over (give up). It was a shock to all of us and at that point it is very easy to just surrender and start to count down.

A couple of days before this though, we heard about some alternative treatments at different hospitals which we planned to find out more about. So then all of this happened we started to work for this with all we got and that was a real challenge. Because what we found out is that this big and ineffective machinery is very stubborn to new ideas if they don't come from the people of their own department. And you can't take no for an answer, because then they are right.

So after really hard work and loads of phone calls his girlfriend managed at least to get him on this program. Now we pray it's not to late...

Amazing idees create amazing results

In 1995 someone decided to rebuild a trading ship that was touring from Göteborg to China in the old days. On one tour it wrecked outside Göteborg, but in modern days they made a new copy of the original. And then they sailed it to China and back in 20 months. I think it is an outstanding act of dedication, management and guts.

There has been many hick ups and challenges on the way, but they "Improvised, Adapted and Overcame" as they say in the movie "Heartbreak ridge".

At the return it was a big celebration day and some of the guys from the club did a "pirate" exhibition and joined the fun.