It Has Begun

To sum up the month of March here, it was unusually sunny and dry, but still chilly. Now April is here, and so far no big change in that respect. The next couple of months are likely to bring more changes, though - and not just in nature. The Men At Work, putting new tiles on the roofs around here, are just getting started on 'my' building as well.

How much disturbance and noise it will mean to my daily life still remains to be seen. So far they're just building the scaffolding, and it's not been too bad. They seem to be well organized, having been through the process on several similar buildings already now. But living on the 2nd floor, I'm not used to having people climbing about outside my windows!

I'll probably end up having the Venetian blinds down and at least 'half-closed' during the days (whether the sun is shining or not). Besides protecting my own privacy, this might also protect the Men at Work from being harassed by the crazy woman with the camera!

The bottom photo in the collage shows the last finished roof. You can see that they've added solar panels on top! That was a surprise to me, as they did not do that on the first few roofs they've been working on over winter. But perhaps they'll go back and add them there too. Anyway, solar panels where ever possible seems like an excellent idea!

Sunrise and 'Daylight Saving Time'

In general, I'm not an early riser; but yesterday morning I happened to be temporarily up on my feet just before 6 a.m. Looking out of the window in my living room, I was met by this view - slightly alarming at first sight...

Just sunrise and trees, though, reflected in the windows of the next building!

Walking over to the kitchen, on the other side of the building, this was the view:

  Playing with the window reflections in a collage:

Yesterday, when I took these photos, the sun rose at 05:51.
I went back to bed afterwards - the Sun did not. 

Between yesterday and today, the Sun too seems to have had second thoughts about rising that early in the morning - so today it didn't get up until 06:48. 

Yes - Daylight Saving Time is back again - or "summer time" (sommartid) as we call it here in Sweden. (And as usual, I don't see the point of it...)

Remains to be seen what clock I may have forgotten to change this time - usually there's at least one, which I don't discover until later...
 

Fashion, Wallpaper and Textile Art

 

Saturday was a beautiful sunny day here, with a proper spring feeling to it. I decided to walk to the Textile Museum in the afternoon. On the way there, I passed one f my favourite views of the town (above); and in a little park on 'my' side of the river, I found some crocuses in bloom (below).

Jaume Plensa's huge sculpture House of Knowledge is still sitting in front of the Textile Fashion Center - which besides the Textile Museum also houses the Swedish School of Textiles (part of Borås University), and some textile-related businesses.

Last time I was there was at the end of October, on a rather crowded Open House day. Two of the exhibitions from the autumn are still running; a couple of others had been exchanged for new ones. Less people there this time, so more space to walk around and get up close to various objects and showcases.

A new exhibition shows the development of women's fashion from the 1930s onward, using examples from one local fashion company. Here we are in the 1950s I think! 

Another exhibition was about a local wallpaper-company (Borås-tapeter).

Curious swans seem to follow me around this month!
(Last week, it was a live one...)

 I was glad to find the exhibition Material World by Ian Berry still going on.

"Worn jeans are the medium that British artist Ian Berry uses in his artwork. At first glance, it’s easy to mistake his works for blue toned photographs or indigo coloured oil paintings. Up close you realize that they are carefully put together by layer upon layer of denim."

 

Sofa on the floor

Sofa on the wall

Spam Warnings

Last week I received this email, which looked like it came from Amazon, and was sent to the email address I use with my Kindle.

Something about it made me suspicious, though. So I did not click on the link in the e-mail, but went to my computer (where I also have an extra anti-virus program installed) and opened my amazon account the usual way, via the website, to check my recent orders and purchases. I had no problem logging in and could not see anything suspicious there. The only thing I buy from them is e-books and I have no subscriptions or 'pending orders'.

To be on the safe side, I followed instructions about suspected spam on the website and forwarded the (spam) email to Amazon for inspection. 

I received an auto-reply saying (among other things):

In all likelihood, the message you received was not sent to you by Amazon.com. We strongly advise that you *not* send any information about yourself back to this individual (especially your credit card number or any personal information).
--- if you are ever uncertain of the validity of an e-mail, even from us, don't click on any supplied links - instead, type our web site address --- directly into your browser and follow the regular links to Your Account. Many unscrupulous spoofers mislead consumers by displaying one URL while taking the visitor to another. By typing in a well-known address you can avoid this trick. --- Many spammers and spoofers use programs that randomly generate e-mail addresses, in the hope that some percentage of these randomly-generated addresses will actually exist.

This week I received the same spam-email again. I followed the same procedure (including informing Amazon). (Again no actual problem with my account.)

Today I received a similar kind of threatening spam email, but this time giving McAfee (antivirus protection company) as sender, saying that my subscription had expired and should be renewed immediately. As I never had any subscription with McAfee (but with another company, recently renewed), I sent this one straight to my email spam folder, though. (It also looked more amateurish than the "Amazon" one - far too many exclamation marks etc.) 

These kinds of fake messages make me not only tired but angry, as they play on our fears of already having been attacked/swindled etc.  

I think most bloggers are probably aware of it, but it can't be repeated too often: Do not click on links in emails that seem in any way strange. Much better to be on the safe side and go to the website the usual way. 

Swan Among the Ducks

 We live in confusing times. I woke up fairly early (I think around 7:30) to another sunny day; but decided to stay in bed for a while, listening to the radio - forgetting that nowadays, that just means war news and speculations repeated over and over again, and not much else. My brain obviously almost immediately decided it had had enough of that depressing stuff, and when I did not turn off the radio, the brain turned itself off and went back to sleep.

Next time I woke up, it was 10:30. And I was still tired. (I dare not guess how I'll cope with daylight saving time in a couple of weeks...).  

Having had breakfast around 11, it felt a bit too soon to have lunch at 12, or even 13. So I decided to go out for a walk before the next meal, rather than after. My camera persuaded me to go somewhere "different" for a change, and suggested the little lake where there used to be a bird sanctuary, including some rare birds. A few years ago, they had to move the rare birds, though, as they were putting down pipes for long-distance heating through the lake.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Signs say that they intend to restore the sanctuary and bring in some new rarer birds. But for now, there is mostly the usual common mallards to be seen there - and sometimes bigger migrating birds landing there for a break - like geese or swans; and gulls in the summer.

Today, there were more mallards than I could count, plus among them, one (1) swan, making me think of H.C. Andersen's story The ugly duckling. (If you don't know it, it's about a swan hatched and growing up among ducklings, and feeling different).  

"He is too big," they all said.

 

 

I think they were all a bit disappointed with me because I hadn't brought them any food.

 

 

 

Somewhat to my surprise, there was still a thin layer of ice covering a large part of the lake.

Alas, as nice as the walk around that lake is, getting there and back involves walking along streets/roads with heavy traffic - which is one reason why I don't go there more often.

On my way back, I choose the "steep shortcut", a wooden walk-bridge over the railway. It makes the way shorter, but especially the first time in spring it's also a "fitness test" (phew):

43 steps up, and 46 down on the other side.