VU, Top Gear and Opera House

Time flew this past week!  On Sunday 27rd March, Adrian and I went to watch the Top Gear show for 2011 held at Oslo Spektrum, we caught the 3pm show.  The cost was 485 NOK (85.29 AUD) a ticket.  The Saturday show was sold out.  It lasted an hour and a half and featured car stunts, a cage of death with 4 motorbikes, car soccer, and British humour.  You can check out the opening show here, courtesy of a random studio audience.


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Oslo Spektrum venue

A race with vehicles made from a toolshed.  Captain Slow won this round with some contraption that featured chainsaws on the side and Jeremy Clarkson came in last with a "hovercraft" that moved forward by spinning.

The audience gets to review cars.  Each person is given a card with the words "Cool" (Red colour) on one side and "Uncool" (Green colour) on the other side.  If you think a car is "Cool", you hold the card with the "Uncool" side facing towards you so that the stadium cameras will pick up the "cool" side.  The car is deemed "Cool" or "Uncool" by the majority.  This car, was "cool".

Another "Cool" car.

Another "Cool" car.

A car that looks like a cow.  "Uncool".  Moo.

Jeremy Clarkson polls the audience on the type of car they drive.  Most people polled drove Japanese cars.

In between segments, you watch racing stunts like the above.  Some imagination required.

Perdy.

Lamborgini and friends.  One day I'll get one.  For real.  Mark my words.  Here!

Cage of death with four frenchmen duking it out on bikes.  Before this segment the audience got to participate in a virtual race on screen using the same Top Gear test track.  The audience was divided into two halves.  You accelerate by making as much noise as you can.  To steer, you use your card, the "Cool" side to turn left (or right?) and the "Uncool" side to turn the other way.  Captain slow's side won, I blame Hammond for not inspiring the crowd enough.  It was fun anyway.

Soccer.  Norway vs Denmark.  Guess who won?  Home team won 7-4.

A moment of pandemonium.

The show ended with the Stig vs other vehicles in a stunt called "carmegeddon".  And of course, the stig won.

All in all it was entertaining.  We took a short walk to the opera house afterwards and snapped some photos.

Oslo harbour, with mini fortress of solitude in the background.

Oslo city in the background.

We walked into the opera house and there was an event to raise money for Japan.  In my opinion raising money isn't going to help.  We already live in a world awash with money.  The Central Bank of Japan during the crisis has magically conjoured trillions of yen to so call, "boost" their economy, and here in the opera house we have people giving money away with the hours that they actually put in.  Are people insane?

On the Friday before, the 25th March, we went to VU which is a nightclub in downtown Oslo.  It was an expat meeting.  Entrance fee was 100 NOK (17.60 AUD) per person.  We were given a welcome drink that we never redeemed.  We must've been the only two who never redeemed our drinks.  I'm not a big fan of nightclubs because of, well, generally speaking, the type of people that usually show up to these things (no offense to anyone) and it's so freaking loud that you can't really talk.  There was a guy named "Mike" who we talked to, was French, reeked of cigarette breath and was dying to hump anything that moved.  Also some people there were.. maybe a bit too old to be there.  Well we were there from 8 till half past 12 so I think we got our money's worth, and managed to talk to some different, if not entertaining people.  There's a pretty long couch in the corner and at one point I counted at least 12 guys sitting on the couch and all of them were guys.  That was a bit.. weird.  Surprisingly there was another person there from work too.  Oslo is just such a small town.

I'm going to have to end this post because I have to sleep, but on 1st of April we went to watch a soccer match at Ullevaal Stadion, I'm going to have to blog about that another day.