Rice cooker = good, red tape and floods = bad

This evening I bought a rice cooker from clas ohlson, a shop that sells a wide variety of goods, they are located at Oslo City, which is apparently Scandinavia's largest shopping centre.  It's 5 floors high (I'd sure love to visit the smallest one. :)).  The rice cooker costs 199 NOK, and apparently that is cheap.  It's the most expensive rice cooker I've ever bought, hands down.  Or paws down.

I'm hoping it would play a jingle while it's cooking rice but sadly I think that answer would be no.  I'll probably use it tomorrow to make some food.

There's also a public hospital in Oslo City.  Funny that they built a hospital on top of it.  I didn't see any wandering patients.  So maybe they're not allowed to wander around.

Earlier in the afternoon I was at Sunil's place watching soccer, the match between Chelsea and Blackburn.  It was a match dominated by Chelsea from start to finish, Blackburn had no chance.  Frankly I wish I hadn't watched that match, Blackburn were really 2nd class compared to Chelsea.  It's the first time I had watched a premiere league match in years.  Although I did watch the world cup this year.

Floods!  Oh floods in Brisbane, I was completely absorbed with floods this week, since I used to live there just before I came here.  It's amazing to see the places where I used to live now completely submerged underwater.  So far about 18 people (as of Jan 16th) in Queensland have died, and that's really sad but what's even sadder is over 100000 people getting killed in the stupid Iraq war which is preventable.  Anyway that is another topic.  It's going to take a while for Brisbane to recover, unfortunately.

Check out this video link on the floods.

Issues on red tape.  Where do I even begin.  Monday I was supposed to go for a tuberculosis check.  When I turned up the doctor told me that since I was already working I was supposed to go for a chest x-ray instead.  So on Friday I made an appointment for that and I'll be going to Ullevaal University Hospital on 14th of Feb.  I just wonder why didn't the police tell me that when I went to collect my work permit?  It is very annoying when you go from one place to another and they keep telling you different information.  Also I am still waiting for my national id and tax number, without that I cannot open a bank account.  To anyone who wants to work in Norway, make a note of that. :)  I have waited more than 7 weeks now.  The person at the tax office thinks my papers are lost or misplaced somewhere and had to resubmit my application, and the ridiculous thing is you do not get a reference number or anything and there is no number you can ring to even find out what is happening, you just have to wait. :)

But the good news is I have a really good manager at work, she's the manager of my manager actually.  I have not been reimbursed for moving here yet and the team over in India did not inform anyone that the bank did not allow for transfers to Australian bank accounts, so she was really angry with that and sent out an angry email.  She also sent out an email to her boss's boss who is the VP to let him know what's happening.  I put in the reimbursement form more than 6 weeks ago :) so it should've been paid quite a while ago.  The process is just horrid.  Anyway she's getting my salary paid into my Australian bank account from the time I arrive till the end of Jan so that's really good.  Although I suspect it would be only partially what I am getting since I don't have a tax card at the moment but that's still really good that I'm getting paid, finally.  I've been working for free since I got here. :)  The money's supposed to turn up in my account next week so we'll see!  She also lent me some of her money and of course I'll give it back to her when the money's in my account.

Wednesday I missed out on dinner at work because 20 people showed up without signing up for it. :(  Yes work provides free dinner on Mondays and Wednesdays, and the dinner is really good.  It's like going to a good restaurant that type of good.  Other than that it's not been a really tough week.  I wrote my first piece of code this week that's been checked into main source.  Even wrote unit tests (And if you're not, you should be!) for it using Rhino Mocks.  Rhino Mocks is an easy to use framework for anyone who wants to write unit tests in c#.

Speaking of dinner, tonight's dinner which was rice with grilled duck cost me 162 NOK.  Had it in a small restaurant in Oslo City by the name of Nam-Nam.  Haha.  The people working there speak Cantonese and Norwegian.  Pity I don't speak either. :)  So, today's expenditure totals out to be

Dinner 162 NOK
Rice cooker 199 NOK
Bus back to Stabekk from the City 40 NOK
Total 401 NOK (70 AUD)

Sunil was telling me he goes out every weekend to drink and spends over 1000 NOK each time.  That's excessive in my opinion.  If you lived like that over here and you weren't making a lot you would be living paycheck to paycheck.  Then again I'm not really a drinker, I'm more of a food type of person.  Speaking of which I think I shall go have some chips now. :)