The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Category: Life

What’s happening in my life

  • How do you find your playmates

    My good friend Carsten introduced this question some months ago, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since: How do you find your playmates? As a kid it was easy: Go up to any house on the road where a kid about your age lived, ring the doorbell, and ask “Wanna play?”

    The need for playmates doesn’t go away as we get older, but the way we find them certainly changes. Adults don’t even call them playmaytes, we call them friends, acquaintances, colleagues, etc. But they still offer us the same space as playmates: A safe environment where you can try new things, be yourself and be surrounded by people you like, who like you.

    So here’s my question to you: “How do you find your playmates?”. Think about it and comment if you like, I’m very curious to know what you think.

  • Attention, adrenaline junkies

    I want to go to Ohio, and try the worlds fastest, tallest roller coaster, Top Thrill Dragster in Cedar Point. How does 128 meters tall, and 0 to 190 kph acceleration in 4 seconds sound to you?

  • Seven Lotus Sevens

    Saturday I was riding my motorcycle to Svendborg. At the toll plaza for the Great Belt bridge, I noticed a Lotus Seven in front of me. And another one. And two more in the next lane! They got through before me, so I floored it across the bridge to try and catch them to get a closer look. (Fortunately for me the speed trap was on the other side of the road.)

    I passed them a little later, and there were seven of them in all. Read, blue, green, yellow and silver ones, from different scandinavian countries. It was a beautiful sight. Anyway, I turned off the bridge towards Svendborg – and they followed, so that for the next 20 km or so, I was leading a convoy of Lotus Sevens. That felt pretty good.

  • Happy birthday to me

    Today’s my birthday, and the flags are up all over town – not just for me though, it also happens to be the birthday of the crown prince. Anyway, I think that todays Over The Hedge strip was especially fitting. And in case you’re wondering: The crown prince and I turn 35 today.

  • Street musicians giving away money

    I saw something really cool today: A choir of 10 or 12 middle-aged swedish men were singing in one of the squares in central Copenhagen (they were really good, btw). On the ground in front of them, they’d placed a cap, and people of course put in money. And here’s the twist: One of the men then started giving the money away. He took the cap and gave money to a kid standing there with his mother and to a homeless guy sitting on the ground.

    Then they went around to other people collecting more money (I gave what change I had). I saw them again further down the street, giving away some of that money to a guy collecting for Africa. So they weren’t really collecting, they were redistributing. Nifty. Actually I think it might have been a bachelor party, but a remarkably well behaved and generous one, in that case.

  • mblogging

    I’ve been mblogged. And I think I want one myself.

  • World laughter day

    The first sunday in may is world laughter day. This is arranged by the global laughter movement, who see laughter as a way to promote opennes, peace and love. The world laughter day was celebrated all over the world today, and the biggest gathering was in Copenhagen. I went there with my friend Carsten, and we laughed together with around 2000 others. Great fun.

    I took a course with the laughter club a couple of years back, so I’m actually a certified laugh instructor. The principle behind it is, that you do laughter exercises wich stimulate laughter, without you actually laughing at anything. It sounds weird, but it works extremely well. If there’s a laughter club near you, I can only recommend that you try it.

  • Self-organizing motorcycles

    Every year, on the last thursday in march, motorcyclists from all over Denmark meet in Copenhagen. This is the day when Bakken (an amusement park outside town) opens, and it has become an event for thousands of motorcyclists.

    The most fantastic thing about it is that nobody organizes it. There’s no planning committee, no sponsors, no management, no advertising, no participation fee, nothing. Motorcycle riders know about it, and all day long they arrive from all over the country, parking their bikes all up and down Nørrebrogade and adjacent streets.

    The whole thing started around 15 years ago, with just a few friends meeting at a certain cafe, to drive out to Bakken. This year they were expecting 8.000 bikes.
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  • Feelgood movies

    Carsten and I arranged a feel-good movie night last week. It’s simple: Get some nice people together and watch a movie that makes you feel good. We saw Field of dreams, which to me epitomizes the genre. It contains every single element that makes a good feel-good movie: It’s a quiet, touching movie with a positive theme, it shows people acting selflessly and it has a happy ending (essential to a feel-good movie). Also, Field of dreams is about forgiveness, redemption and second chances – themes which often figure in feel-good movies. Other excellent examples of the genre are:
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  • What’s in a name

    One of the true pleasures of being a Kjerulf (or a Kierulff, a Kjerulff or a Kjærulf) is to know that I’m part of a huge family of over 11.000 other Kjerulf’s. I know this beacuse of one guy, Cap Kierulff, who has collected the entire family tree going back 600 years to our common ancestor, Anders Kjaerulf. I looked myself up in the family tree, and seeing my own name in that context gave me a real sense of having roots – of being connected to history. But it doesn’t stop there: Every four years there’s a Kiermeet, an international Convention of Kierulff’s. I’m thinking of going to the next one, which is in 2006 in the Philippines.

    I invited Cap to visit my website and he did. His nice comments on it can be seen here.

    Interesting fact about Cap K: He was not only a witness to, but a key participant in, the birth of the “Hi-Fi” phenomenon. Read all about it.