I shot this yesterday in (of all places) Borås. I spent 24 hours there checking out a few of the city’s excellent museums, including Borås Konstmusuem, Abecita Popkonst & Foto, and Borås Textile Museum. It was my first visit to Borås in almost 45 years and even if I don’t remember Borås being much fun back in those days (early 1980s), I was pleasantly surprised to find how much the city has evolved – especially culturally. It’s still “small-town Sweden”, but in a charming way and with much less of the “Hickville” vibe some towns never shake off no matter how many cafés and shopping centers they have.

Part of my trip was also to do some soul-searching, which is something I tend to do every spring.

My view of life varies from one day to the next. that hasn’t changed much over time. My baseline is generally very positive and optimistic and I can usually deal with the slew of normal, everyday setbacks and obstacles that come my way without much effort. My survival strategy has always been to focus on keeping my journey going without dwelling on the stuff I can’t overcome or bypass and to not look too much or too closely in the rearview mirror.​

Push on, move forward.

I try to keep my eye on the long game and the exciting, creative stuff that each day provides. Even if each is short-lived and only gives a tiny burst of happiness, by stringing all these small joys together and looking forward to experiencing them, I’m usually able to maintain a healthy mindset throughout my day.

I suppose I could redefine “problems” as “challenges” just to put a more positive spin on tougher stuff.​

But tackling life’s inevitable hurdles and barriers might then become an exercise in semantics and minimize the achievement of coming up with more or less creative solutions that help me move forward.

I’ve always preferred taking on problems straight ahead and not letting them pile up.

Although some of my challenges can’t be resolved, especially chronic pain and general physical degradation that arrives as I age, I tend not to dwell too much on them unless they prevent me from doing really fun things, like skiing, which I will probably not be able to do this season as my back is still not completely healed.

I wrote this post mostly to remind myself of the book project “Happy Islands” that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately.

Lots of stuff going on right now. I don’t want to jinx anything, so this post will be about…popcorn…the single greatest snack in the known universe. I always make it with organic olive oil and seasoned with sea salt flakes. I use either a deep pot or a wide shallow pan, pour in the oil, pour in the kernels, put the lid on and turn the  heat to eleven. No fussing. Just popping. Once there’s only a pop a second, take the pot or pan off the heat. Done.

I’ve tried explaining to younger folks about how there used to be double and even triple features when I was a kid in L.A. We’d pay about $1:50 in admission and maybe another buck for a bucket of buttered popcorn. In between the first and second feature, you could get a “refill” of popcorn and a tasty beverage for just fifty cents. I have vivid memories of riding my Schwinn home from a worn and torn movie theater on Hollywood Boulevard and feeling like I was OD:ing on greasy popped corn and one too many root beers.

My love of popcorn probably started when I was a really young kid. Don’t remember who, but someone introduced me to the make-it-yourself-on-a-stove Jiffy Pop Popcorn. Here’s how it worked: you’d grab this little aluminum pan, already filled with popcorn kernels and just the right amount of oil and salt. The top was sealed with a crimped aluminum foil lid, which sat flat at first. But that was the best part – because the second you put it on the gas stove and it heated up – while you were shaking it around – you’d hear the first little pop, then another, then an all-out explosion of popping.

Slowly, that foil top would start to rise, inflating like a giant silver balloon. You had to keep shaking it so the kernels wouldn’t burn, but once it was fully puffed up, you knew it was ready. Then came the big moment – ripping open that foil and watching steam escape as the smell from hot, buttery popcorn filled the kitchen. It was like making your own little popcorn show. No fancy machines, no microwave, just pure stovetop excitement. Jiffy Pop was the closest thing to movie theater popcorn at home before microwaves took over. And honestly? It was way more fun.

I met the fellow above on a street in Tirana, the capital of Albania. Needless to say we at least one thing in common.

This shot is from a corner of Omonoia Square in Athens, Greece. Omonoia is a mixed bag of architecture, people, and atmosphere. A visually interesting place during the daytime but if the rumors are true, not very nice at night where I’ve read the square and surrounding streets are riddled with some of the capital’s most sketchy folks.

Feeling a bit bipolar in Athens. Once you’ve ticked off all the easy stuff – like the ancient attractions, the ridiculously good food, the spontaneous openness and generosity of locals, and the fact that the city gets around 300 days of sunshine a year – Athens isn’t exactly an easy city to befriend.

It feels like Athens plays in the same league as Mumbai or Bangkok: brutally large, endlessly dirty, and unbelievably chaotic. The paradox is that it’s precisely all that stuff that makes me feel such a strong pull toward Athens. There’s always stuff to look at, document, admire, or lament, something to feel inspired by or to despise.

But is it really so strange that I’m drawn to the chaos, the grime, the cragginess? Maybe not.

Oddly enough, Athens feels much bigger than it actually is. Even bigger than many other major cities I’ve visited. With “just” 3.1 million residents, Athens ranks only eighth among Europe’s capitals. Its population is actually a third of London’s and barely half of Berlin’s or Madrid’s. This is partly due to Athens’ lack of skyscrapers and partly because the city has slowly but surely sprawled out over more than 3,000 years.

At least half of the buildings we see here are either in really bad shape or in need of some serious upkeep. I’m constantly reminded of Havana, Sofia, and Tbilisi – wonderfully beautiful capitals that are slowly deteriorating without authorities caring or being able to stop it.

The Greeks we’ve spoken to about Athens’ decaying state mostly just shake their heads and shrug. They explain the problems as being caused by deeply rooted nepotism, which operates relatively openly, and corruption and bribery scandals that follow one after another. Regular people try to make ends meet and balance life’s challenges between moments of hopelessness and cautious optimism, like when a new charismatic politician appears on the scene. Probably as they’ve been doing for thousands of years.

The Greeks love to talk about politics. Complaining about the country’s problems is almost as popular as playing backgammon. Just like in many other countries nowadays, people here are trying to find scapegoats to explain all the misfortunes and why life is so tough. We’ve heard about several scapegoats here: the Roma mafia, undocumented Pakistanis, Afghans who’ve been smuggled in to the country, and wealthy foreigners who buy up property, renovate it, and then make big money renting out IKEA-furnished apartments on Airbnb. We’re currently staying in one of those apartments. The owner is from Iran, and I haven’t yet found anything in the flat that wasn’t designed in Älmhult, Sweden.

This Friday, Greece will come to a standstill. Various unions will go on a nationwide strike to protest the train disaster of February 28, 2023. That was when a freight train and a passenger train collided head-on between the cities of Tempi and Evangelismos, killing 57 people. It was by far the country’s worst train disaster, and according to the strikers, the crash would never have happened if the Government had modernized the long-neglected railway safety system.

The Athens metro is among the most modern and well-maintained systems I’ve ever used. It’s clean, well-kept and the trains run on time. The metro was financed through loans from the European Investment Bank and supplied by French firm Alstom and German company Siemens.

Portion sizes at ordinary restaurants here are almost American-sized. You never leave the table without feeling properly full. At some places, you get a small bottle of raki before dinner and sometimes a little dessert after.

Most Athenians we chat with are super friendly. They’re curious about where we’re from, how long we’re staying, and what we think of the city. We love the country, the people, the food, the culture, and the climate, so some get a little overwhelmed by our enthusiasm. Surprisingly many have some kind of connection to Sweden, and almost everyone knows who Kojak was.

During winter, Athens suffers from chronic temperature inversion, where cold air settles over the city like a lid, trapping the exhaust fumes from the intense traffic. I haven’t seen many electric cars here. Most people drive diesel, and you can feel it in both your nose and lungs. I’ve already gone through a whole container of Ventolin.

The other day, we walked from Syntagma Square in the heart of the city all the way to the sea – a total of 25,000 steps. The road there wasn’t particularly inspiring, but it gave us a glimpse of a few of Athens’ suburbs. Not exactly uplifting, but it was humbling.

There’s a tiny Shell gas station a couple of blocks from our apartment. It’s probably the smallest Shell station I’ve ever seen. The man working there mostly sits inside his little office smoking. It can’t be more than 4 meters to the nearest gas or diesel pump. The other day we saw a grill with smoldering coal placed on the gas station’s lot. Amazing.

Walking along the sidewalk at a leisurely pace is no guarantee that you won’t get hit by a motorcycle here. Fortunately, we’re used to it from walks in among other Asian cities, Ho Chi Minh. You need to stay alert and definitely not drink too much raki or ouzo if you have a long walk home.

This is how Charlotte wanted me to promote my new book on her website (and its social media channels) for folks working in the airline industry: www.airlinestaffrates.com

The background you see here behind the book’s cover was shot during a helicopter tour of L.A., sponsored by the city’s tourism bureau while we were there to produce a guide for a Swedish travel magazine.

The pilot – a young, attractive yet not very tall woman – did an excellent job of flying us to all kinds of classic locations, including Los Angeles International Airport, which, to this day, I still don’t understand how she was granted permission to fly over.

My new book with a collection of selected scenes and places from my hometown of Los Angeles is now available on Amazon.

Order the new book by clicking on this link if you’re in Sweden, or the United Kingdom, by clicking on this link if you’re ordering the book from the US of A and this link from India, Singapore, and Japan.

Since Charlotte is soon celebrating her 60th birthday and has been a devoted fan of the TV series White Lotus since season 1, I just looked up what it would cost for us to stay a few nights at the Four Seasons Resort Koh Samui in Thailand, where the latest season (3) was filmed.

Well, it turns out that at $10,000 per night, we won’t be staying there anytime soon.

The first time I visited Koh Samui was in the fall of 1988 – almost to the date two years after my father Ernest had passed away in his small apartment in Los Angeles. I had received an irresistible job offer from a guy named Peter Forsberg, an acquaintance from Göteborg, Sweden who turned out to own a simple bungalow place on La Mai Beach on Koh Samui, near where White Lotus was filmed, an island in the southeast of Thailand. Peter wanted me to be informally in charge of guest relations. In return, I’d get a bungalow by the beach, free meals, and a small monthly tab at the hotel’s bar.

In the fall of 1988, a bungalow at Golden Sands cost a mere $5 per night, including a basic English breakfast.

There was no airport on Koh Samui at that time, just a rickety ferry from the mainland town of Surat Thani.When you finally stepped off the boat – on shaky legs – and onto the concrete pier in Nathon (Koh Samui’s only real village back then), a small armada of dusty old Toyota pickups were waiting to take visitors to the island’s various beaches.

“Laa-Mai! Laa-Mai! Laa-Mai!” “Cha-weng! Cha-weng! Cha-weng!” shouted the hurried ladies collecting the fare. I think it was 10 baht (about 20 cents) to get from Nathon to La Mai Beach.

Once the backpacks were tossed onto the roof of the Toyota and all of us passengers had climbed into the back – gripping whatever we could while the truck sped over the island’s bumpy dirt roads – our island adventure could begin.

I ended up staying at Peter’s bungalow place for six months before returning to Sweden.

In 2005, Charlotte, Elle, and I lived on Koh Samui for half a year, with several friends visiting us at our little rented house. Charlotte says we paid about $500 per month for the house. The owner, an older American guy named Gary had retired in Thailand after a career as an engineer at General Electric in Chicago or Detroit. I still remember Gary vividly, but mostly for his struggle to pronounce my name: “Joe-Kim? Joe-Chim?”

It strikes me now that if I add up all the times I’ve been on Koh Samui, I’ve spent about one year of my life there and I feel eternally grateful to have experienced Koh Samui when the island was still just a backpacker’s paradise. And even if I probably won’t ever be checking into the Four Seasons, there is still a fair chance that I will one day revisit the lush island of Koh Samui – and while there, stop by for a refreshing drink at the hotel’s bar, without breaking the bank.

Here’s one of the hundreds (if not thousands) of feral kittykats “guarding” the sacred grounds of the Acropolis. Built a mind-boggling 2400 years ago, in its heyday, the Acropolis of Athens served mostly as a religious and ceremonial hub, dedicated to Athena, the city’s patron goddess.

Though Athens is one of the most cat-friendly capitals in the world, these furry felines were not originally native to Greece and have not been part of Greek mythology. Ancient Greeks and Romans did however import them to Athens from Egypt (where they were worshiped as deities) to control rats and other rodents. Hats off to cats for that important role.

First day in Athens. Got in kinda late yesterday after my flight from @copenhagenairport and used whatever energy I had left to walk to the nearest local market and stock up on delicious olives (three kinds, no less), tasty feta cheese, the creamiest yogurt, and other Greek essentials.

The one-bedroom apartment Charlotte rented for the month is roomy and comfy and located in Thissio – a neighborhood with a very local vibe – yet close to Acropolis and other ancient sites, some of which I visited today (like the view above from lunchtime today).

This is my third visit to Athens but my first off-season stay. Love this city’s contrast. It’s gritty, modern and ancient all at once. Charlotte says Athens is our new Lisbon just as Lisbon was our new Malaga a few years ago. From a culinary perspective, while not as “fancy” as say, French or Italian cuisines, Greek food is arguably the healthiest of all the countries around the Mediterranean. And I’ve always experienced the Greeks as friendly, welcoming, and generous people.

Going to complete my book about phobias while here and then begin compiling a book of personal stories which I’ve been inspired to create after that my cousin Laura @brushedthread so generously shared her limited edition “Little Memoirs” with me a couple of years ago.