Train or airplane?

This Monday, I had a morning meeting in Gothenburg. Since I am a tired old man nowadays, I detest the morning flights, especially with connections. It means waking up before going to bed and feeling like a flipper ball with all the transfers, security checks and stress. I sincerely hate it. However, a mate of mine advised me to grab the night train. When the train works, it is fantastic. There are two killer features with the train. No connections and when you wake up you are precisely in the city center.

DiaryRikard ÖqvistSeptember 5, 2024travelling, train, flying, business tripComment

Quality time

My oldest son (5yo) is a petrolhead and loves anything with an engine. That’s why I got the brilliant idea of using up a bunch of airline and hotel bonus points to book a father-son weekend in Stockholm. We would go on an airplane, buses, trams, trains, and metro. Those things that I usually couldn’t like even if I tried, but with petrolhead junior, just about any boring chore can be fun again. What a blessing it is to experience it all once again through him. We threw in a couple of museums and a zoo into the equation too.

DiaryRikard ÖqvistApril 12, 2024parenting, travellingComment

Home = Vacation

A common conception regarding vacation is to travel somewhere. To change your everyday environment for something else. I used to think exactly that way for most of my adult life, until we moved to our house. Now, I want to go on vacation to go home, which is the precise anti-thesis to my previous stance. There is no place on Earth I would rather want to be than home. How did that happen?

Diary, ParentingRikard ÖqvistJuly 17, 2023vacation, home, parenting, travelling, road tripComment

It takes very little to make things nice

Last Thursday I had one of the best cups of tea ever and on Friday I visited the nicest public toilet in a gas station ever. And it was all because of unforeseen events that messed up my original plans. It was a great reminder about how important it is to always snap back into normal mode as quickly as humanly possible and not be upset. If your thoughts are elsewhere, you will certainly miss a lot of opportunities. Good planning and preparation is my personal savior in this regard.

DiaryRikard ÖqvistJuly 4, 2023mindset, peace, acoustics, road trip, travellingComment

Self-solving problems and pleasant surprises

Last week I had a couple of sound measurements planned in Eskilstuna and Uppsala. However, just a couple of days before departure, I realized that I had forgotten to book a hotel. In big cities, that is usually not a problem, but in a smaller city like Eskilstuna it is quite possible that all the rooms run out on a given night. And that is precisely what happened to me. I found one room left on a place called Thottska Villan, about 20-25 minutes from the city centre. When you consider that you park in front of the entrance, I am not convinced that I even lost any time. But when I arrived on site, I was blown away by what turned out to be jackpot as far as hotel nights go.

Diary, Parenting, Travel, MusicRikard ÖqvistFebruary 13, 2023road trip, travelling, hotel, surprise, expectationComment

There is no place like home

The most frustrating thing about being an acoustician (for me) is the delay between you giving a recommendation to a client and the final result. This process typically takes several years. I have had many sleepless nights (metaphorically speaking) where I have thought about specific technical solutions like floor structures or junctions. And when I finally send my documents to be used for the construction of a building, that’s typically it. I never hear about it again, except for some control measurements at the building site in the best-case scenario. But I want to know how the final product turned out! Last week, I decided to do something about it and went on a road trip visiting eight of our dwelling projects.

Engineering, AcousticsRikard ÖqvistAugust 15, 2022photography, engineering, travelling, work, family Comments

Road trip

This last weekend I experienced freedom of a kind I haven’t felt in years. I went on a road trip with my 2,5-year-old son Elis and my Labrador Jussi. I had been looking forward to this trip and been prepping the whole week. Elis is now old enough that he is no problem at all to travel with. And he loves anything with an engine so long car journeys are pure fun. We would spend the night south of Luleå at my friend’s house. After a quick stop in Skellefteå where we both had a smoothie as a snack something unexpected happened, that made the road trip even more enjoyable. Around 21:30 Elis suddenly decided to replicate Gary´s puke scene from Team America in the front seat of my car.

Parenting, TravelRikard ÖqvistAugust 23, 2021dad, child, parenting, road trip, travelling, familyComment

New year's resolution 2021: Double up

We all have different personality profiles with corresponding strengths and weaknesses, and I have learned the hard way that one of my biggest weaknesses is my ability to gather and pack my stuff on a short notice. For example, a couple of years ago I was going to do a university lecture and record it for later YouTube publication. As you can imagine, it involves a lot of technology with microphones, cables, sound cards, cameras etc… My lecture was scheduled to start around 10:00 in the morning, and since we lived close to campus back then, I thought it would be fine to gather up my stuff in the morning just before I leave. My wife got home before me that day, and when she entered our little office the whole place was a complete mess. Cables and stuff were lying everywhere, and it is probably what a home burglary looks like. However, my wife knows me well so she could easily figure out what had happened.

Habits, TravelRikard ÖqvistJanuary 2, 2021habits, travelling, productivity, lifehack, packing, simplify, stress, planning, focus, new years resolutionComment

Erhan the taxi driver

Last Tuesday I went to Stockholm to do field measurements. I took the first flight down and had booked the last one home. I wanted to minimize the time away from home, but I learned the hard way that it is not worth it. When you are leaving with the first flight, your night sleep is severely disrupted. I woke up before my alarm clock at 04:00. Isn’t it funny how we tend to wake up without an alarm when we have some important appointment in the morning? Anyway, the trip went fine, and I met up with my colleague at the construction site and we worked all day. When at a building site, you are obliged to always wear protective helmet and glasses. I am not used to that. After lunch time, the slight pressure on the sides of my head in combination with the sleep disturbance had set off a headache. A really bad one, that got worse by the hour.

PhilosophyRikard ÖqvistOctober 24, 2020travelling, taxi, kind, kindness, love, potential, headache, migraine, karma, coffee, authenticityComment

Why you should dress dapper while driving

About two years ago, I was going to do a presentation the next day for some VIPs in another town about five hours drive away. I had prepared an exquisite suit combination and packed it in a travel wardrobe. Some two hours into my road trip, I realized that I had forgot my presentation outfit at home. You know that feeling when you realize something like this, it is like someone just poured an ice-cold bucket of water over your head. Should I turn around and get it, and loose half the night’s sleep? The presentation was scheduled early in the morning before the stores opened up so I had no choice but to do the presentation in my driving clothes. And then it hit me… Driving clothes! I was wearing an odd combination with a jacket, pocket square and a knit tie and I thought “just go ahead and do your presentation” and then I relaxed. At the presentation the next day, I still was the best dressed man in the room even with my driving clothes.

Habits, StyleRikard ÖqvistAugust 8, 2020dresscode, style, dapper, travelling, casual, mensfashion, driving, habits, car, suit, pullover, knit tieComment