God Jul Dinner

Tonight I had my first American Christmas Dinner in Norway.  It was with Carl and his family, they're from Utah.  Carl picked me up at 3:30 and we had dinner at 4ish pm.  Carl's a friend from work, he moved to Norway last year around December, so this year's the first time he's having Christmas with his family in Norway.  Did you know Americans celebrate their Christmas on Christmas day whereas Norwegians celebrate it on New Year's Eve?

Dinner was turkey, green peas, potato, grapes, turkey stuffing and gravy.  It was really good, compliments to the chef, Carl's wife, Kami.  He has 4 kids, James, Joseph, Sam and Annie.  His kids are really nice, and cute.  Sam's full of energy, the moment I walked in he showed me his angry birds game on the iPad.  Annie showed me her dolls and James and Joseph were busy mashing on their x-arcade joystick that Carl bought them.  It's very cool.  I got to play old games that I used to play many years ago.  It's called MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator).

Here's a photo that I took using my Lumix camera and magic timer technology.  Clockwise from the left, Kami, Annie, Carl, Me, Joseph, Sam and James.

This is a video that is played every year once a year during Christmas, in Norway.  It's in English but they've dubbed it in Norwegian on TV.  Did you know Norway only had a single free to air TV channel in the early 90s?  Now they have three. :)



Carl told me the house he bought (which they are living in) does not come with circuit breakers even though it was built in the 1980s.  It's only equipped with a fusebox.  The house is not designed to have many electrical devices in use at the same time.

Here's a nice Christmas song by a Norwegian artist by the name of Maria Mena.  One of the girls in Cisco sang it a few days ago at work in the cantina as part of demo day.  You can find the song on YouTube but it's blocked for me, however I did find a link which worked, the song is called Home For Christmas.

Thanks Carl for a great Christmas evening.

Alternative Jul

Yesterday on Christmas eve I had Pinnekjøtt (lamb ribs, it was quite tasty, I don't usually eat lamb), courtesy of Alternativjul.no  It's an "alternate" Christmas organised by volunteers for the homeless, drug addicts or people who have nowhere to go basically.  From their website:

OUR GUESTS are many people in our city that fall outside the "usual" Christmas celebration. Homeless, people with alcohol and drug problems, or just lonely people who, for one reason or another wandering the streets during the Christmas weekend because there is no "space" for them in the traditional family Christmas.


It's still going on as of today and will go on till Monday and is held at the Oslo Kongressenter.


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You first register at the counter where they take your coat and place a green tag around your wrist then you go up one level to the ballroom where there's plenty of different food and drink (non alcoholic).  The food was actually really good.  There were many different types of people including shady ones.. and many romanian gypsies.  Some people were so greedy they grabbed bags of chocolates and Christmas presents (they give up out as well).  I saw some people pile up their plate with food and not even finish a 10th of it (It's a bit stupid they even do that because you can go back for more if you want, it's a buffett).  Really human greed has no end. :)  There were some people who got chased out too because they were attempting to steal from other people.

I chatted with a 53 year old Croatian by the name of Ante and a 52 year old Chilean by the name of Carlos.  Ante was there he was supposed to be staying at a friend's place but the friend didn't show up so he's staying at there overnight and leaving tomorrow for Hamburg.  He told me stories of how he thinks Norwegians are cold and do not share personal things with you, but he's grown used to that.  He thinks Arabs are friendlier!  Maybe he has some truth in what he says, he's been living in Norway for 40 years.  He is from a town close to Split in Croatia and says it's very beautiful there.  I also found out from him that it's really cheap to catch the train into Europe, a monthly InterRail pass is about 7000 nok, and that allows you to travel all around Europe.  He also told me several times how he almost won the lottery, but didn't because one number didn't show up. :)  He's divorced, has one adult son but hasn't seen him at all. We also talked about soccer.  He's happy the Croats defeated Norway 2-1.  Oh another thing is over here you can greet your parents by their first name, or rather, you can.  But in Croatia if you do that you'll probably get a slap just like in Asia.  Interesting.  So Western Europe and Eastern Europe appear to have different customs.

There was a girl who I spoke to and she was there doing an assignment on the event.  At first she thought I was working there until she saw the green wristband.  She took 2 photos of me and asked me for my details.  I said to her please email me if you publish this.  So who knows, I'll end up in a magazine or some publication with a bunch of other homeless people?

Anyway this is what I got from them.  Of course each person was given one but many went back for seconds and thirds. ;)

It's even nicely wrapped!  I have opened it now and what's inside is a brown ribbed jacket, not very thick though so you can't use it for this weather.  But maybe in autumn or spring.

I was there about 4 hours from 6pm till 10pm.  When I left the ambulance had arrived and there was some commotion.  I'm assuming it's drug related. :)  The person ahead of me who picked up his jacket didn't have gloves or a beanie and the woman behind the counter gave him a pair of gloves and a beanie, I thought that's really nice.

All in all, it was a very.. interesting occasion.  If nothing it's definitely an eye opener.

I'm off to have an American Christmas soon.

Risgrøt for lunch and terrorists on the east side

Today at work we had Risgrøt for lunch, it's Norwegian rice porridge and you normally have it during Christmas.  It's sort of like congee except you use milk instead of water.  Initially I thought it was oatmeal but it was rice.  There's a recipe for it available here.  Tastes rather alright actually, but if you have too much it can be a bit heavy.  You would normally have it as a desert rather than a meal.  Gunnar said you would also put an almond into the pot when you cook it and the person who gets the almond in their bowl when it's being served gets a present.  Nice.

Terrorists, I wanted to bring that up because there's a well known "terrorist" by the name of Mullah Krekar who lives in Oslo.  Apparently he is the neighbour to a few of my work collegues, and just lives a few blocks down to where they live. :)  My manager is really paranoid about people who live in the east side of Oslo, he thinks they are bad and it's all shady.  My manager wouldn't even take me to the rental places in the east that I wanted to see.  He said if I valued my life I wouldn't go.  He lives in the west side.  It seems that people who live in the west think that way of the east.  But my work collegues who live in the east don't think it's unsafe. :)  Funny eh?

Went to see a doctor

Today I went to see a doctor because I have shingles.  Apparently it's from stress.  I've had it since 6 days ago.  At first I thought I was having hives but then today I did more research and it was shingles.  So this afternoon I went to see a doctor, he was a private GP.  I took a walk from St Olavs Gate 31 to Rosernborg Gata 1 which is about 1.4 kms away.  The private GP is called Bogstadveien Legevakt.  It was snowing so the walk wasn't very pleasant.  Plus I had pain on where the shingles are located, so it was very discomforting.  You wouldn't believe how much the consultation cost was, it was 700 nok (119 AUD).  Insane?  You bet.  Check out the prices here.  The doctor pretty much told me what I already knew, and he prescribed me some creams.  Anyway there was something wrong with the cash register and he could not issue me a receipt so he brought it down to 400 nok (68 AUD) which is better but still crazy.  I don't have my national id card yet nor my tax card so unfortunately I can't get subsidised healthcare until I do.  Anyway, after that I went to get the creams for it and both cost 200 nok so the total cost of visiting the doctor was 600 nok (102 AUD).  The moral of the story is, do not fall sick in Norway if you are not covered by the health system here, otherwise be prepared to pay a bomb.

This is the path I took walking from the hotel (A), to the clinic (B) and then to Majorstuen train station (C).


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There's a nearby pharmacy but that's only open from 5pm so I couldn't get them from there and had to get them from central.  So I walked to the Majorstua train station and dropped by Burger King to try out their nacho burger, that was a lot cheaper, for a medium sized meal it was 82 NOK (14 AUD).

At central station I went to the pharmacy and they didn't have the other cream, I also found out they charge an extra 12 NOK on Sundays for some reason, just for shopping there.  So I didn't get my things from there and walked to another pharmacy that's closer to the hospital.  A lady there couldn't find the other cream either but then she was helpful and rang the clinic I went to see earlier to ask if there was something else they could prescribe and I got a different cream, so that was good.  Had a quick walk to an Asian supermarket to get some instant noodles for dinner then caught the train back.

Next week I'll be moving to a collegue's friend's apartment until I move in to my apartment on 1st Jan, I finally found a decent place to live in.  I'll post photos when I finally move.  So far I've been quite depressed throughout this period and am wondering what the heck have I done leaving Australia.

Happy St Lucia Day

Today's St Lucia Day!  Apparently in school kids sing songs, eat buns made from saffron and the oldest girl in the grade gets to wear candles on their head.  That's about as much as I know.  Gunnar's wife made the buns and I tried them, they were very saffrony.  Prema made cheese cake today too and that was pretty good.  After that we had a discussion on how alcohol is made.  I just realised my current blog entries really makes it sound like we don't do a lot of work but honestly we do. :)  If you want to know about what today is really about look up wikipedia, the article is here

In other news I looked at an apartment today that wasn't was what depicted in the ad, ad said 36 square meters and the place I looked at was only 19!  It was a shoebox.  Location was good though.  Looks like I'm going to have to continue looking even though I don't have much time left.  Went through more ads and pulled a few out so hopefully will get to view them soon.

The (9 hour) Christmas Party

Okay yesterday I had my first Norwegian Christmas Party.  It was organised by Rune and Hege.  It consisted only of the team that I work with which is all in all maybe about.. 20+ people?  Unsure.  The Christmas Party was.. interesting.  It started off at 5:30pm in the office, everyone started to drink.  I got given a can of beer.  Of course I didn't finish it.  Everyone was really dressed up.  Most if not all the guys were wearing suits.  I was the only person just wearing a formal black long sleeved shirt.  The women also dressed well, seemed like pink frocks are pretty common.

So, 5:30pm it started.  We waited for the karaoke taxi (mini van).  Yes they have them here.  They probably exist elsewhere too.  I think we caught it about 6:30pm from work.  It took us to Årvoll.  Here's the location.  It's about 10kms away from Lysaker.

Nico mostly hogged the mic in the taxi.  It seems like he likes the limelight, and hogging a lot of things.

The place where the Christmas dinner was held was actually a farm house.  The moment I stepped into the house I could smell the animals that used to be there.  It went away after a while.  Each of us were given responsibilities, and our "team" was supposed to bring out the food, so that's what we did.  We brought food out that was provided by some food catering company.  The food was potato, corned beef, gravy, brussel sprouts, carrots, and broccoli.  There was also a lot of alcohol (red wine, cognac, beer) and the insanely strong coffee that Norwegians are well known for.  I had my coffee with ice cream.  There was also cakes but I didn't really try all of that.  What else was there, right after we had our first serving of dinner one of the work guys played on the piano and everyone sang Norwegian songs, of course I have no idea what they were singing but I'm assuming it's Christmas related.  It was a bit loud. :)

After dinner we had some trivia game and we came in 2nd for that.  I found out a baby whale drinks about 500 litres of milk a day and a human being drinks about 1 litre of snot a day.  Oh and an adult crocodile can go 2 years without eating.

Well after that we had musical chairs, each team was supposed to send up 3 persons and I was one of them, it was like a knock out tournament.  In the end it was down to me and Nico and even though we both got on the chair his bum was bigger than mine so alas I didn't win but it was nice to hear others cheer for me. :)  I'm surprised I made it that far actually, Norwegians are pretty rough and they were very competitive but maybe it's only the people who I work with.  Anyway, there were 2 rounds after that and I was in the last round too and that was pretty well, interesting.  When it comes down to 2 people they do things like hold on to the chair.

The last game was a bit of a bummer, you're supposed to blow up a balloon (2 people each from each team from the final 2 teams) and put it inbetween you then run through the kitchen, through the coat hanging area and back to the dining room, it was a bit silly.  And at this point because of all the booze people in one team were bursting the other team's balloon because they were slower at blowing them!

In between the games there were people talking all the time.  I talked to a few people and they gave me interesting views of Australia.  One of them said Australia is really backward in terms of society, the words "racist" and "gender inequality" were some words used.  Hey this isn't me saying it's someone who has been there 4 years.  Surprisingly a huge chunk of the team are married/partnered (Apparently it's normal now to have kids out of wedlock, but that's another story) and have kids.  Many of the persons I've talked to have travelled quite a bit to Asia, Australia and Europe.  Also very different backgrounds, one's family is from Iran, another one's from the US, another one was in the army for 5 years and was sent to Iran so there's a bit of variety there.  I remember it was 1:30am and I was overhearing this discussion on functional programming and I thought wow, such geeks we are.

Anyway there was a lot of talking going on, dancing on tables, drink spillage and loud behaviour generally. :)  I was asking why was it ok to have the Christmas party on a Thursday, it would make more sense to have it on a Friday but apparently it's normal because over in Norway they want you to keep your Fridays.  So what happens is everyone goes home late after the party and then turns up late at work on the Friday!  Which was what I did.  The government also takes more tax from your income in July and takes less tax from you at the end of the year so that you would "save" your money, apparently.  Now that's what I call being a control freak(tm).  None of the older generation would question it.

So come 2:30am we finally packed up.  We only had the place till 2am, so we over exceeded.  Many people had already left at this point, there was maybe about 10 of us left.  It was freezing when we got out.  Thomas and I caught a cab and everyone else caught a bus.  So now I'm home recollecting last night's events.

And thus was my first Norwegian Christmas Party (Apparently there was an after Christmas party at that point but I didn't go).

Norway, it's expensive

I just went to get some groceries from Rema 1000, a popular Norwegian supermarket.  Here's what I bought

• 2 bowls of instant noodles
• 2 packets of instant soup
• 1 crayfish pasta

Here's the receipt

If you can't read it clearly, the cost for each items in Norwegian Kroner, Australian dollars and Singapore dollars are as follows:

Instant noodles 21.60 NOK - 3.64 Australian dollars - 4.63 Singapore dollars
Crayfish pasta        38.50 NOK - 6.48 Australian dollars - 8.25 Singapore dollars
Instant soup        9.50 NOK - 1.60 Australian dollars - 2 Singapore dollars

The total bill was 100.70 NOK - 16.96 Australian dollars - 21.59 Singapore dollars

For lunch earlier I had about 15 pieces of sushi for 140 NOK - 23.57 Australian dollars - 30 Singapore dollars.  You can easily spend at least 100 Australian dollars here on meals.

I found an indian shop earlier and the price of rice was about 3 Australian dollars a kilo.  Roughly two to three times higher than what it costs in Australia.  They did sell some reasonably priced instant noodles for 8 NOK though but the flavour they were selling wasn't to my liking so I didn't purchase from them.

My first day of work

Well, today I finally started work at Cisco.  After days of police station touring I finally got my work permit sorted.

Here's the path that I take from the train station to the R&D building (B).  It snowed lightly today, so just imagine snow covered paths.

I arrived around 9:30ish, which was half an hour later than what I expected.  I'm still in a pretty jet lagged state but if it's anything I want to say it's today went well.  Mona (the director) met me at building B, and she was saying how cold it was and it's not normal for it to be this cold.  Today was -10 C. :)  She introduced me to Gunnar who is the manager of the team.  Gunnar joined Cisco only a couple of months before I did, think he joined in June.  Previously he was working at a Norwegian company and before that he was at HP California for 8 years.  He speaks with a  really strong American accent, so I thought he was American but no, he's Norwegian.

The image below is the route that I walk, Lysaker train station to building B (Well I walked to building A first because I didn't have a pass to get into B)

Anyway I had a quick tour of the floor, met the rest of my team members (Niko and this other guy's name who I can't pronounce, let's call him Mr Black Framed Glasses or Mr BFG), and the rest of the floor.  There's quite a few people so I can't really remember all of them.  I remember my interviewers, of course.  There's people from all over the shop, Americans, Canadians, there was one Australian girl who is leaving to go to Sydney today.  I'm the only Asian on the floor.  Oh wait I did see another Asian lady but she's in the building marked A.  Building B is where all the R&D is done.  A is where the IT department and sales/marketing guys are.

So, had a quick tour of the floor then made my security pass, by that time it was already lunch so all of us walked to the main building which is A.  Lunch was wraps, you could have sausages (pork/chicken) or beef mince.  There's also shredded cheese, different sauces, fried onion, and a lot of salad stuff (mushrooms, capsicum, lettuce, and a whole lot of things that I did not have room for to pile on my plate).  There's also different drinks available, peach tea, apple, orange juice, and some others that I can't remember.  Reminds me a bit of Sizzler.  Lunch was actually good and if I wasn't so jet lagged I would appreciate it more!

After lunch we stayed in building A and took a tour of the existing technology so I can have a better feel of what I'll be working with.  Also went to one of the upper levels to collect my laptop.  After that we went back to building B and within a couple of minutes Niko and Mr BFG gave a short presentation to me, Gunnar, QA girl, the product manager and another person on what they have been working on (which is what I'll be working on) which is integrating Outlook with Cisco TMS.  So, it's pretty much a tech talk.  My brain was trying to absorb it all in but I think my mind went blank at some parts.  Anyway 1:30pm and we had waffles.  Apparently waffles occur at 1:30pm every Friday.  So we all gathered and had.. waffles.  I had it with the crazy brown cheese, it was quite good.

After that I attended a short refactoring session with the TMS team, which was interesting.  I grabbed a drink from their drink fridge (Oh that reminds me they actually also have a freezer with frozen microwavable lasagne and other meals, so if you're hungry you can just grab a few and bring it home if you want).  The session's basically looking at existing code and figuring it out how to make it better, one step at a time.  That session lasted maybe an hour or so.  After that we went back to my desk and tried to set up my machine but it was failing to reach active directory or something like that and IT support had already gone home (this was around 4pm) so I just had a chat with Mr BFG.  He showed me the server room with all the racks and how they actually set it all up themselves.  There's no dedicated person there supporting their servers which I was well, stupendously impressed.  It was basically just them who set up all the virtual machines and hooked up the hardware together, and these are supposed to be just software guys!  Normally you would have a dedicated IT hardware team to do it.  It's crazy :)

Well, come 5pm and I grabbed a lift back to the city with Thomas who was one of my interviewers a few months back.  There's another person in the guy, he's Canadian and he moved to Norway because of his girlfriend, he was in the car too.

That's my day in a couple of paragraphs.  I'm also supposed to be given a company credit card but I don't have my national number yet.  There's a list of other things you get being a Cisco employee but I have to ask about them.  You are able to purchase 40% off every type of Cisco hardware and get discounts for courses and things like that.  And other thingys.

It feels a bit strange to be looking outside and it's dark when you look at your watch and it's only 3pm.  I'm still getting used to that.  Also the freezing cold is making me sneeze blood out and cough blood out which isn't very nice.

If you're interested in finding out I ended up working in Norway, here's the link on how it all started.