Private Michael Ahgren
I'm 53 years old and in a relationship again, after being single for 5 years. The 8th of July this year I got engaged to Gunilla, at the top of the volcano Etna (Sicily, Italy).
Life is good at the moment! I have a great job, interesting projects to work on in my spare time and two great, but slightly lazy, kids (Clara 20 y/o and Victor 21).
My crib
I live in a house, 20 miles north of Stockholm, and a quarter of a mile from the Baltic Sea, with untouched woods and lakes nearby. Still, it's only a 35 minute drive to downtown Stockholm, or 45 minutes with the commuter train. Check out the Pictures page if you want to see some snap shots from my neck of the woods.
Hobbies
Photography has been a hobby of mine for as long as I can remember. During a trip to California I dipped my Canon 20D into the Pacific Ocean, which didn't improve its performance one bit. Now I've replaced the 20D (it was beyond repair) with a 40D and hope to shoot a lot of great pictures, both for commercial use and for my own photo library. (Since this was written I've upgraded to a EOS 5D MkII for its video capabilities)
NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) and hypnosis fascinates me. I've taken some classes in hypnosis and it was very interesting. Hypnosis is just a a form of trans, and we all go in and out of trans many times every day. When we wake up, when we go to sleep, when we daydream, when the traffic lights turn green but we're somewhere else, when we are extremely focused on a work task, etc, etc... If you want to see NLP used for entertainment purposes please check this out! (Derren Brown on BBC)
Downhill skiing is another hobby of mine. There are a lot of nice places to go skiing here in Sweden, even though the slopes are a little bit shorter than in the Alps. Skiing is actually the only sport I'm pretty good at…
Learning new stuff has always been an important part of my life and since my girl friend has a deaf daughter, Amanda, I've been studying Swedish Sign Language for 2 years. Probably the coolest thing I've ever learned!
The archipelago
The Stockholm archipelago consists of more than 24.000 islands, so living right at the edge of it means that you HAVE to have a boat. My boat is a small and fast Askeladden 505 with a 90 hp out boarder (see promotional image).
These days every island in the archipelago has a restaurant (well, a small exaggeration maybe) so a perfect summer day might include sunbathing on an islet and ending the day with a nice dinner at one of those restaurants.
Well, that's a little about me…