Everyone except Anders gathered at Arlanda, the airport in Stockholm, for the British Airways flight to London Heathrow. There, we had a couple of hours to kill, and did so by eating before Anders joined us from Copenhagen.

The next part of the trip was with Emirates and took us to Dubai, and man, what a plane! Everything looked brand new, and there seemingly was no end to the luxury. It was an Airbus 380, and it was the biggest plane I have ever seen! The economy class alone seated at least 800 passengers in 88 rows. Each seat had a screen with an entertainment system, which is pretty much par for the course for long flights these days. But a couple of things stood out.

First of all, it was a wide screen, something I have never seen on a plane before. Second, you had lots and lots of movies and television programs to choose from, some feature films were so new I didn't even know they had come out yet! You could share your screen with the ones immediately next to you, so Fredrik, Joacim and I watched the post-apocalyptic Carriers (was good, but pretty uneventful). And if hundreds of movies, TV shows, CD's and radio stations wasn't enough, you could plug in an USB device of your own and play stuff from there. There was an e-mail and an SMS function in the controller, which of course also could be used as a telephone. Very expensive to use, no doubt, but it had the cool bonus feature that you could call between seats. Anders sat fifteen rows away from us, and was to put it mildly, a little surprised when his screen informed him he had an incoming call.

The weather was fantastic today as well, so I decided to check out the hotel pool located on the roof. The sun is extremely hot here at this time of year, and I had to cover myself in sunblock to prevent my skin from burning I barely have seen it (the sun, not my skin) since September last year.

Then, the fun began! I decided to have my own still photo Wipeout show, trying to be in the air when the timer went off. It was not as hard as I thought, actually, because the camera had a rhythmical timer. I finished everything with the obligatory "I'm so cool" pose afterwards.

We're not allowed to divulge anything about the course or the result, but fucking hell what a draining track! Shit cardio and performance nerves (yes, playing live in front of 70,000 is absolutely NOTHING compared to this!) made me blow everything ounce I had already halfway through, I have never been more tired in my life! Let's leave it at that.

In the evening, we went out to eat at an Italian restaurant nearby one of the hotels we are staying at. In a ridiculous coincidence, it turned out to be ten metres from El Mirasol, the place we went to have dinner when we were here with HammerFall three yeas ago! I ordered a Coke, and the label said 350 cubic centimetres, which I found odd and surely way off. A quick discussion and a confirmation with my iPhone later, and we found it to be accurate. Weird, but correct.

I left the house at nine on Thursday to go to the airport, and were in London a couple of hours later. There, we had eight fucking hours to kill before we could board the flight to Argentina. In an "ideal" world, that is...

At long last on the plane, we were immediately informed that there would be a delay of an hour and a half, which somehow stretched into four (4!) hours of waiting on the plane before we were cleared for take off. For a 14 hour flight via Sao Paolo to Buenos Aires. Some 30 hours after I initially left, we arrived at the hotel. And what a nice one that was!

An actual suite, it turned out, with a reception area and then the bedroom. And a bathtub, I will heal my aching muscles and sore body in the tub afterwards! On the roof, there's a pool. Did I mention that it's summer here, and over 30°C! I am going to enjoy the five nights here, I know it! Most of the other contestants on Wipeout are lodged in a different hotel ten minutes from here, so I guess we'll join up with them for dinner later. Tomorrow, no matter how anyone fares on the course, we'll all party afterwards. Anyone who has tips on where to go? Nice bars, rock clubs or anything like that? Would be much appreciated!

These past two weeks have been filled with Hell's Jingle Bells (the Christmas show Joacim and I are doing, see
hellsjinglebells.se for details in Swedish) and taekwon-do for me. We had rehearsals almost daily, with the première being last weekend. And on top of it all, I had a taekwon-do promotion test on Sunday, where I was trying for a red-stripe (halfway to red) for my blue belt. My entire focus was on the show and the test, and I am happy to report everything went according to plan!
The show is now rolling, with ten more performances before Christmas, and I got my coveted red stripe in the end. All in all, a pretty satisfying weekend's work! : )

It was rehearsal time again last week, and it was the première for us in our new facilities. We've got so much stuff now from the tours we've done over the years - decorations, backdrops, equipment we don't use - that we need somewhere to store all the junk. Plus we wanted to get out of the cramped, dark, badly ventilated space we had before. Now, we've got 150 square meters to use for storage, rehearsing and lounging; we've brought couches, table and a pinball machine to make it more hospitable.

The sound in the room is great, and we've got lots of air in between our equipment to make the rehearsing more pleasant. HammerFall will only do one more show this year, at the Knock Out Festival in Karlsruhe on December 12th. Together with Edguy, U.D.O., Rage and Pink Cream 69 we will end the year a little prematurely but with no less of a bang than had it been New Years Eve itself! The setlist will be a mix between the tour and the festivals, and even if we haven't played together since August 20th, it sounded like we just left the tour yesterday (well, almost…).

I went to a very cool Halloween party last night! Hosted by Andy LaRoque and held at Varbergs Fästning (a castle), it was full of witches, vampires and other undead, but only one zombie.

I got my first tattoo today! Had been thinking about it for the last 20 years, deciding to do it but hesitating what to get, then deciding not to, then changing my mind again, and so on. I had finally resigned myself to the fact that I never would come up with a motif that I knew I would want to have 40-50 years from now. Besides, not having a tattoo these days is almost more unique than having one. So what made me change my mind? I don't know, to be honest, all I know is I reconnected with the idea in May and the desire only grew over the summer.

So here it is. Took 4,5 hrs under the needle, hurt like hell and gave me the shakes halfway through, but with the moral support of Fredrik, I made it. I am extremely happy with it, it turned out just as I hoped it would!

Ever since the recording of "Threshold", some of us in the band have gotten together at various points and watched the SAW movies. The participants have varied slightly, but Stefan and I have remained constant. In later years, it's been Fredrik, Stefan and I, and this was the trio who convened at my place yesterday to take in number five in the series. With SAW VI opening next month, we wanted to se V now so we - for the first time - could watch the new one in a movie theatre.

IV was a little hard to follow and left a lot of questions unanswered, so our hopes were mild for V. Boy, were we mistaken! They must have written and shot IV and V more or less simultaneously or something, because they both deal with more or less the same things (at least partly). Where IV sometimes left you wondering what the hell happened and why (and, more importantly, who), V answered in detail and believably all those questions. Great stuff, and we all are very, very excited about VI!

While browsing for the SAW VI trailer, I found an iPhone app for the movie. Apart from the trailer, it also had one of the coolest features I have seen in a while: Jigsaw your voice. You record what you want in your normal voice (semi-whisper works best), and then the app make it sound just like Jigsaw himself. Lots of variables to adjust yourself, to tweak the result a little. You can even e-mail your recording to friends, if you want to give them a little scare. Fucking excellent and highly recommended!

My dog Leo, literally taking a shit on rules and regulations. Quite the little rebel, I am so proud!