The Two-Day War

Tjenamors!

Now I'm finished with all theory for obtaining a PPL (Private Pilot License)! Two weeks ago we had nine exams in one day in school - and I passed them all, some with a 100% score and some just on the 80% pass mark... This meant I had 1½ week of basically free time, except that had to take the official exams for Transportstyrelsen as well. I did that alone in Uppsala on Monday last week so that I could spend some days in Uppsala meeting friends and then stay in Falun for most of my short holiday. The offical exams also went well – which made me very relieved since every failed exam would have cost me another 570 SEK.

In Falun I also met a lot of friends, having a really good time! Since I'm planning to go to Japan this Christmas holiday I have to save a lot of money why this probably was my last visit before Christmas. I returned to Ljungbyhed on Sunday leaving home at 09:30 and arriving around 22:00 after a long trip by bus, another bus, train, commuter train and car... Looking forward to five consecutive weeks of only flying, everything felt good then, but a nasty surprise was waiting for me to go to sleep...

I woke up in the early morning on Monday, being thirsty and feeling itchy. Scratching my back a small (0.5 cm) bug falls off and when I stamp on it, it explodes and a pool of blood appears. Terrified I return to my bed and checks it for more bugs. I soon find more than 10 of them, and my bedsheet is literally covered with blood stains. Looking in the mirror my back is covered in mosquite bite looking rashes (utslag). While hoping I'm dreaming or something I quickly carry all bedsheets to the laundry room and wash them in 95 degrees with excessive detergent. Back in my room I check the walls and kill another five or so bugs. I google them and soon confirm what I suspected – that they are bedbugs (vägglöss), a plague my brother suffered earlier this year and I've heard is a common problem in student corridors. Somehow I manage to fall asleep again on a new bedsheet for an hour until my alarm clock sounds. Later I call the landlady and she calls Anticimex (the major Swedish pest control company. Anticimex actually means ”anti-bedbugs”).

Bedbugs are quite persistent pests, so on Monday and Tuesday I, the Anticimex worker and the caretaker did the following things to get rid of them: threw away and burned the bed and mattress, along with all splines (lister) near the bed, put all stuff (rucksacks, books, a sleeping bag, all shoes etc.) that had been lying beneath the bed or on the floor in the sauna at 90 degrees for 4 hours, washed most clothes at 60 degrees and poured poison on the whole floor and on the new bed. Hopefully – and only hopefully – are they gone now... Preliminary, I declare myself winner of this war with the bedbugs.

Unfortunately, autumn has got a firm grip on Ljungbyhed and the weather this week has been really bad and unreliable why I've only flown on Monday, while the last three days were cancelled for everybody. Hopefully this is not how the whole of October will be, or it will a very boring and frustrating month. By the way I'm now halfway to obtaining my PPL having flown soon 25 hours.

Photos and videos:

In Uppsala I went to Laser Game! We lost... (Kanpei Hayashi's photo)

In Falun we homemade pizza! It was nice! (Misaki Arihama's photo)

A cool video taken from the nosewheel of a 747.

When we practice landings, we always aim to land within a specified area (at the beginning of the runway), and if we are about to overshoot that area we must always do a ”go around” (give full throttle and cancel the landing). This pilot seems to have forgot that fundamental part of his training.