Sun and fun here I come

Six months ago, I thought seven years of moving around and being restless was enough. I've never been so wrong about anything my entire life...

So now I've decided to move back to Perth. I'm aiming towards a master's degree, but knwoing how "well" I handle Norwegian winters I won't be surprised if I stay longer. So if you're in Perth and have a job for me sometime around early 2009, drop me a line.

This is where I go every day to remind myself that I won't have to live in the arctic forever.

Pandora's box?

Music is important to most of us, and finding new bands can sometimes be a hassle. But now the web can help out with that as well.

pandora.com let's you enter the name of your favorite artist or song and tells you about other artists in the same genre. It also lets you stream music from the artists it finds for you. Worth a try if you're bored at work.

Poor result for the tabloids

A few days ago, 2005 circulation numbers for newspapers were released. For most papers the trend is negative.

The two major tabloids, Dagbladet and VG each sold 20.000 fewer papers a day than in 2004, and are responsible for more than half the total decline in the newspaper market. All in all, Norwegian newspapers were down 68.000.

The good news is that Aftenposten and DN, papers which cover the more serious end of the market, have had an increase in circulation. It seems that people are moving away from the scandals and gossip of the tabloids towards more serious news coverage.

But it could also signal an increasing divide, where we on one hand see more people reading only the "shallow" news online, and on the other those who take the time to go behind the headlines and attempt to understand the news. It is not so hard to imagine that the newspaper will become the medium for society's elite, while the rest of us are busy reading about Britney's latest breast enlargement...

Cowboys on the road

Most Norwegians are polite and law-abiding citizens. They don't steal when they go to the supermarket, they obey every stupid law the government throws at them (even the stupid ban on smoking in pubs). But when they get behind the wheel of a car something strange happens.

When Nils Norwegian hits the road you need to watch yourself. Speed limits are for wimps, signal lights are only used as Christmas decorations, those new fancy 1000W fog lights are fun to light up oncoming traffic with and hugging the bumper of the car in front is a national sport only surpassed by cross-country skiing.

It never ceases to amaze me how selfish most drivers are. On the 30km drive to work I'm lucky if I see one in fifty cars signaling when they exit a roundabout. If I drive at the speed limit it takes no more than three minutes before I have a car attempting to attach itself to my rear bumper. On a recent drive across the border to Sweden I had three cars with the aforementioned 1000W fog lights flash me (yes, my lights are too high...) resulting in a ten second blindness and a frenzied struggle to stay on the road. And the list continues...

Why do nice, polite and otherwise friendly people behave like this? Is it because they don't know the law? Because of stress? Poor driving skills? I think the answer is simple. People are ego-centric bastards. We (yes, I as well) have forgotten how to be nice to each other. If being nice to someone means we actually have to make an effort (such as signaling when we exit the roundabout so others can drive) we can't be bothered. Because that's just how society works in 2006. Being kind for kindness' sake is a thing of the past, from before turbo-capitalism and the "buy yourself a good life" society.

Traffic behaviour is not the problem, it is merely a symptom of a far deeper problem that all western societies share. A society that needs books to learn how to be nice to people is a society in trouble.

Allergic to gold?

So far the Norwegian Olympic team has won more medals and points than any other nation. But when it comes to winning the gold, it seems the entire team is allergic.

Not only have the Norwegians missed that last 1/10 second that would have taken them to the top. 12 of Norway's athletes have been too ill to participate in one or more events. Hopefully the allergy will pass, and Norway climb ahead of the US in the lists. Not that I'd usually mind the US winning, not until I heard that the US team's goal is first to prevent Norwegians from winning, then cash in medals of their own. Wanting to win is one thing, wanting someone else to fail quite another...

What's up with curling?

Ever heard about curling? Neither had I, until the 2002 olympics...

During the winter olympics in Salt Lake City, the Norwegian interest for curling skyrocketed. That Norway's men's team took the gold probably explains most of the interest, but heaps of people actually followed every curling game during the olympics.

But where are the curling people outside of the olympics? You never hear from them, you don't see them walking around your neighbourhood, and there are no curling events announced in the local newspaper. I think we are witnessing some kind of conspiracy here. After the olympics are over, the curling people go into hibernation, and then they are thawed for the next olympics. Because you neveer see the curling people and never hear about their sport, the few people actually competing are far too valuable to be allowed to roam around between competitions. So we freeze them in order to make them live forever and win gold upon gold for the glory of our nation.

Or it could be that noone really cares about curling outside of the olympics, and so we just don't bother to find out what's happening... But I think the hibernation theory is far more likely.

Time

I always thought that time was constant. 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour etc. But that was before I started working...

In the morning, a minute is more like 15 seconds, and an hour goes by in 20 minutes. Showering, brekkie and tooth-brushing takes twice as long as they do other times of the day, and walking the three meters from my front-door to my car, getting in and starting the engine eats another 5 minutes... I've been struggling with this for eight months now, and I can't seem to figure out where the lost minutes are hiding. I've tried using alarm clocks for each part of the morning ritual, having my mum over to shake me from station to station, eating in the shower, showering in the kitchen. But still my precious minutes are lost. oh, well, my boss doesn't care that I'm late, and at least I'm living proof that the theory of relativity is valid.

Let it snow...

Southern Norway is a strange place. We get heavy snowfalls just about every winter, so you'd think we were prepared. But every winter the papers are full of stories about buses driving off the road, trains stopping due to snowy and icy tracks, People in Oslo walk around in the snow wearing high-heeled shoes and don't understand why they keep falling on their ar**es. And so on. And we never, ever learn. About time we acknowledge the fact that we live in a place where people aren't meant to be?

But worst of all: Every snowfall in the south gives the people in the north something to laugh about...

Why did people ever come here?

The first people who settled the Scandinavian peninsula must have had a huge quarrel with the rest of humanity. Or a terrible urge to be alone. What kind of sane stone-age guy would want to move to a place where the sun's behind the horizon for months at a time with only a wolfskin and a tent to protect themselves from the cold?

I haven't been awake since October. Late October the sun didn't come up until after I came to work. It still doesn't, and it wont for another few weeks. And I spend longer and longer periods of time wondering why I don't just pack my bags and move back to Australia, where I've spent the last three years as a student in the best city on earth. I might just do that some day. When the sun returns and I'm able to stay awake for more than three hours...

A sad day for freedom of expression

I had hoped that my first post should be on a more cheerful issue, but I just can't keep my mouth shut any longer.

Fanatic muslims have for the past few days tried to dictate what Danes and Norwegians can and cannot publish in their news media. Trusted members of the Muslim community in both countries are shouting "racism" and calling for a ban on expressions against the prophet Muhammed and even Islam in general. It is not surprising that fanatical religious people feel this way. It is not that long ago the Catolic church were banning books, and the movie "life of Brian" was banned in Norway as late as 1984. But since then, dialogue and argumentation has won. I can say whatever I want and noone can harm or prosecute me for my opinions, no matter how stupid they may seem.

Now, with the publication of these drawings, the tide is again turning. Prominent politicians have all but said that they wish they could have stopped the publication of the Muhammed drawings. Professors, researchers and others claim that we should not criticise the prophet, as this might hurt the feelings of Muslims. Western societies have fought for the right to debate freely for hundreds of years, and now the very people who have benefitted from this right are speaking up on behalf of those who would rather we did not have the right to freedom of expression.

Personally I don't much care for the drawings being published. One should consider other people's reaction before publishing something. But the publication has turned out to be extremely important, as it clearly shows a great schism between the western and the muslim way of thinking. It seems almost impossible to reach an agreement between those who claim the right to speak freely and those who want to oppress oposing thought. But I do believe we can manage. A few hundred years ago, catholics attempted to crush all opposition by telling people what to think and how to live. Today catholic priests in Ireland are telling people to go out and think for themselves (interview in the travel program "Walkabout" on Norwegian TV).There is no reason why we shouldn't be able to accomplish the same with Islam. The least we need to aim for is to agree to disagree. hurting other people's feelings is not nice, but it is a lot less nice to tell fanatics that they don't need to live by the same rules as us.