Bok och bibliotek – Sweden's biggest book fair

As a part of my involvement in Vetenskap och folkbildning (the Swedish sceptics) I recently visited the biggest book fair in Sweden. The book fair took place between the 22nd and 25th this month and is a great place to meet some interesting people.

The first person that I ran into was Mattias Ribbing who I met earlier at a lecture he did for the Swedish Magic Circle about how to improve your memory. And the last I ran into was the expert on rhetoric Elaine Eksvärd, who I last met at the political week at Almedalen but then her name was Bergqvist (congratulations delivered).
In between these two I talked to people like Jonas Hallberg, Martin Lind, Bo Berggren, and Ulf Danielsson who all came by our booth. But I also met a lot of less famous people including a number of old classmates from my studies in physical-chemistry, psychology, rhetoric, and philosophy, don't ask me what they were all doing there. And I also met a few fans from my television appearances earlier this year.

Part of my work in the booth consisted in attracting visitors, or perhaps more aptly put luring people in once they had shown an initial interest. This is what the author Peter Olausson has to say about my contribution

Notera att publiken här varken är besökare eller utställare utan Svenska Mässans byggpojkar. När man har sitt jobb på mässan, alla dagar, så kan man tänka sig att det ska något särskilt till för att de ska stanna vid en monter och låta sig underhållas.

Translation:
Note that the audience is neither visitors nor exhibitioners but the Swedish fairs construction workers. When you work at the fair, all days, you could think that something extraordinary is required in order for them to stop by a booth and be entertained.

As an additional comment I can say that they came back with some friends the next day.

In all it was a very pleasant experience to be back in Gothenburg and at the book fair. I enjoyed meeting the people that came to the boot and who worked at the boot. I also really enjoyed meeting my brothers who live in the city and other friends who reside there. I hope I will have the opportunity to go there next year as well (the fair) or perhaps sooner (the city).

The hard life of a competing mentalist

It is now Tuesday and I have finally the strength to write about my experiences on the cruise arranged by Magiska Bröderna (a fraternity for magicians) in honour of their 70 year anniversary.
The cruise was on Birka Paradise a smaller cruise ship, between Saturday and Sunday and took about 22 hours. During the cruise we magicians had seminars to attend, shows to watch (the shows were also open to the public), and there was also a competition.

I am quite hesitant when it comes to competing in magic since I think it is difficult to compete in art in general but I made an exception this time since I thought it could be fun and the concept was a bit different. The competition was divided in two parts. First every magician/mentalist walked around the boat and performed for the passengers. The passengers voted for the different artist and the four best got to meet in a final judged by magicians

I really liked to do the strolling mentalism part since I got to meet different people and I had the feeling that the crowed slightly changed over time. Since I performed from around eight in the evening till four in the morning, with just a few brakes to eat and attend the shows and lectures, I got to see all the different passengers, from the families with small children to the younger crowed. I also got up quite early to meet people for breakfast at about seven and get some more votes before the end of the competition.
Any one who wants to know more about the cruise and knows Swedish can read about it at Christer Nilssons blog magi-arkivet.

A few interesting and out of the ordinary things happened during my time with the passengers. A number of people actually recognised me from my television appearance in Fenomen and that was a glad surprise. I also had one person who insisted on trying to wrestle me to the ground whenever he was fooled by an effect, he continued to try that until security turned up and hoovered around. I guess one could describe it as my first experience of having to need security to protect me from my fans. But to be honest the guy did it in a very playful way and had no intention of hurting me.

The same playfulness was absent from the guy who threatened me early in the morning, exactly what he was threatening me with is hard to say since he only said that I would be sorry if I didn't stop talking to this one girl. Even if it was his girlfriend I would not have yielded for such behaviour since I was only doing my “job” but she didn't even know him. The girl herself was not making it easy for me since she didn't know Swedish or English and we had to resort to French as our lingua franca.

There was also another girl in a white mask who had a very confrontational attitude and wanted to control the workings of the effect, handle the cards herself and all of those things that ordinary magicians hate. Unfortunately her friends dragged her away before I had a chance to finish what I was doing.

I know that about four hundred of the 1200 passengers voted for a magician but I have no idea who managed to get the most votes but I know that I got to the final with three other performers. Unfortunately it didn't go so well in the final, maybe because I only did two effects and one of the effects had unbeknownst to me been performed in the dealer show a few hours earlier although with a different method.