The week in summary

I've been sooo lazy this weekend.  Mainly sleeping and watching videos on current affairs.  And doing domestic chores.  This week it's been 3 months since I've moved to Norway.  I'm still in a bit of a shell shocked state but I think I'm coming to terms with it better.  It hasn't been an easy 3 months but it sure has been a learning experience.  I'm currently learning Norwegian.  Jeg snakke litt men perfekt Norsk.  I'm doing it online with Language Direct, it's a bit expensive compared to the other courses which I will probably do at some point too but right now that's going to suffice.  My teacher's Norsk but he lives in Germany.

To recap this week...

February 22nd - Dinner at Delicatessen

I had dinner at Delicatessen on Feb 22nd with Jennifer, a girl from Toronto Canada.  She moved here 8 months ago and she's married to a Norwegian.  If she's reading this and I'm wrong I stand by to be corrected. :)  Dinner was tapas.  It was not too bad.  We paid about 500 nok (89 australian) for 8 of the little things shared between the two of us.  I don't eat out a lot since it's rather expensive here, but the food is worth it if I had to spend that much on food in Norway.

Fooooood... miam miam.

After dinner we walked to Karl Johan's Gate where they had built ice sculptures in celebration of the ski championships.  Here are some photos.

Professionally sculptured snowmen.

The screams, modelled after MaCaulay Culkin in Home Alone of course.

The largest ass creams I have ever seen.

More Edward Munch.

Norsk jenga.

There was also the rehearsals going on for the opening ceremony outside the old University of Oslo.  I thought it was the opening ceremony but I've since discovered it was the Moods of Norway fashion show (credit to Jennifer on finding that out) that was part of the opening ceremony.  It was interesting to watch.  At some point there was death metal, pop, and some 80s music.  One of the songs played was this song, which is pop but has a bit of a corny title.  And of course, performers in sailor costumes.  I was freezing and wearing "proper" winter clothes.  Can't imagine how the performers must have felt.  All in all it was a good evening.

February 23rd - Ice skating at Frogner Stadion

On this day I went ice skating, 12 years since my last time.  I've only ever ice skated twice, once in Singapore, once in Australia and today was my first in Norway.  My first goal was not to fall on my ass, which I succeeded in doing.  I didn't do too bad.  Of course most people were gliding past me, but I've got an excuse where I've lived for years in countries where snow only existed on tv and in Arctic wet dreams.  It was fun.  The previous times I've ice skated it was in an ice rink, but this is in a more natural environment.  Heck I would even go as far as to say I enjoyed myself.  Although there were times I had to concentrate while people were talking to me, because I was trying to balance myself.  We ice skated for close to 2 hours then went to a pub which for the life of me I cannot remember the name of.  I ordered food even though I had some microwave food earlier at work, I've got hungry starving child syndrome almost all the time, which was tequila scampi (prawns).  It was alright, I can probably make better. :)  I'm embarrassed to say I can only remember a few names off the top of my head but the nationalities and gender that were present comprised of Dutch girl, German girl, Ukrainian girl, Romanian girl, Norwegian girl, Italian male (?), Canadian male and one unknown.  That's excluding me.  So it's a very multinational, multicultural environment, which I find stimulating.  Many more Europeans here, which I'm not used to, but that's not a bad thing.  Living in Australia the company I'm used to comprise mainly of Australians and some Chinese now and then. :)

Speaking of which a new guy from Sweden joined us on the 22nd.  I spoke to him on the 23rd, Matthias is his name as I recall.

February 24th - Stayed at home learning Norsk after work.  There was an event gathering at Internations somewhere in the city but I didn't get to go even though I really wanted to!  There would've been at least 38 nationalities there.  I also went to pick up a rose that Lauren sent for valentine's day, delivered by delayed pigeon carrier at Lysaker Blomst.  You receive an SMS on your phone in Norsk informing you that you have a rose to pick up, and you have to pick up the rose by visiting the nearing Interflora florist.  The lady who served me told me that the roses are grown in Stavanger in greenhouses.  That's a pretty long way the rose has travelled, shown here on Google maps, it's 554km!  They probably deliver by planes though so maybe it travels a bit less.

View Larger Map

Here are the images of the well travelled rose.

Unwrapped.

Up close.

February 25th - I went to the old University of Oslo after work and met Asgeir and Jessie and we watched the medal ceremony for the women's ski jump.  While I was waiting for them outside Nationaltheatret I spoke to a Norwegian girl by the name of Sirin who was helping out with the Salvation army, they had set up a stall just outside.  She's from Bergen, a little island off Bergen actually and came to Oslo 8 months ago to go to bible college.  And the bonus is that her boyfriend lives in Oslo.  Haha.  No I did not ask for her number, and she did say come to church at 8pm but that didn't happen because I was having dinner.  Anyway, the common theme I realise is many people, expats or otherwise, who come to Oslo come because of love, or they're here because they already have a partner and are working here or trying to find work here.  Unlike me the nut who left Australia and came because I didn't want to be 70 and think I had a chance to work here and turned it down.  Anyway, the women's ski jump isn't in the olympics but it might be in the near future.  The winner was an italian. I bet the Norwegians aren't very happy about that. :)  The area was quite packed, when we arrived it wasn't so but at the end it was.  There were also some stalls set up that sold food, different clothes and other misc.  Little cans of coke were given out to the public, they're tiny!  Only 150mls, smaller than the ones you get on the plane.  Here's me holding the can to show how small it is.

We had dinner at a kebab place, 49 nok what a bargain.  I don't know if there is anything cheaper that you can get from any food places.  After dinner we were going to have a game of bowling but that didn't come to fruition as the waiting was an hour so we called it a night.

Skiing in Tryvann winter park

This morning I went skiing. The place of interest was Tryvann winter park, which is 523 meters above sea level.  I caught the train (tog) from Stabekk to Oslo S then caught the Train 1 (t-bane) Frognerseteren line from Oslo S (Oslo Central) to Voksenkollen station where a free bus then takes you to the winter park.  The view going uphill is pretty, you can see much of Oslo just from the train ride.

I met Sunil and two of his other friends there.  You first register at a computer terminal then take your receipt to the counter, get your shoe size fitted before collecting your skis.  A day pass including ski rental costs 330 nok (58 australian).  If you want a ski pass to catch the lift that costs 320 nok (56 australian) for 2 hours.

This is yours truly.

Well what can I say.  It was really fun even though I feel like I've humped an elephant, i.e. I am really sore in between my bits and my legs are in pain but it was really fun.  I was really scared shitless going down the slopes because this is only the 2nd time I had ever skied, and the last time I did was 4 years ago in China.  I was going downhill all the way "pizza slice style", so my technique isn't very good but it was still fun. :)  We went down 3 slopes and the first two slopes were maybe about 2kms long, and the last slope was short but pretty steep, of course a Norwegian might disagree. :) This was what the last slope looked like.  I don't know if the image conveys that impression but it is steep!

What I really like is the ample area so if you're really retarded at least you won't crash into someone else, or the likelihood is being reduced.

Here are some other photos that I took.

The house at the bottom is where you rent your skis and stuff.  This is the little mini slope that you can go on and learn how to ski, I'm assuming.  We went down this slope a few times.  For the other slopes you can't even look over the edge.  That's my definition of steep. :)

Pretty trees on the other side.  You can also see the ski lift, and one of the slopes.  We didn't go down this one.

I spoke with an 11 year old whilst on the ski lift, she learnt to ski when she was 3 and learn to ice skate when she was 2.  No way on Earth (maybe on a different planet?) would I be able to compete with her. :)  But she doesn't snowboard, so maybe I could win in that area.  She also learns piano.  She sure is a lot more talented than I was at 11!  I saw one kid, maybe 10 at most, go down and up one of the slopes in the above image and did a somersault while he was going up the slope.  That was amazing.  It's truly amazing what someone young can achieve with many many many years of practise starting from a really early age!

Why getting pickpocketed is not a big deal

Last night I lost my wallet. I strongly suspect that I was pickpocketed. I was waiting to catch the tram 12 to Asgeir's place and decided to let this couple ahead of me go on board first. The guy boarded and the door shut, leaving her and me behind. I told her we could catch the tram 11 as it takes the same route. So I took a walk down with her and she followed me. Then when I was close to the tram stop this middle eastern man bumps into me and starts talking gibberish to me and well, he came into very close contact with me. I suspect at this point my wallet was nabbed although I did not realise until 4 hours later when it was missing.

All in all I lost probably around several hundred Australian dollars, my credit card, debit cards and well, some other things. My wallet was a birthday present, it was 13 years old and run down but it had sentimental value dammit. Looks like I have to replace it now.

To make things more interesting my keys were attached to my wallet so with that gone no way I could've gone home. I had to ring my landlord who was holidaying in Spain and had to tell him what had happened. He said he'll ring his daughter the next morning to sort things out. My landlord wanted me to check the mail for him too but guess what the keys to the mailbox were also attached to my wallet. My landlord must love me so much right now. :)

Anyway, I had to ring and cancel my credit card and debit cards, so I had to ring both Singapore and Australia. I also rang the US office to arrange for an emergency debit card to be sent to me. Visa will be sending me one which will arrive in 2 days. I had to commend their efficiency. Kudos to the Visa team. They gave me a reference number and actually bothered to ring me back and told me how the process worked. Compared to the Norwegian process it's light years ahead. Private industry always kicks the shit out of government agencies. So I stayed overnight as Asgeir's place. I was going to Wouter's place after Asgeir's but that didn't happen. I called it a night at 2am after I was done making international calls.

This morning I had breakfast and had to borrow some money from Asgeir. I dislike borrowing money from people but had no choice at this point. I went to the police station at Brugata and lodged a report before buying groceries and coming back home. My landlord also arranged to have the key put somewhere that I could find so that I could return to the flat. Unfortunately his daughter placed it elsewhere so there was again some minor drama there when I arrived home and realised it wasn't where it was supposed to be. :) But I got that sorted thankfully. I was envisioning images of me living in the shed.

Tomorrow I'm going to the physio to get my back checked, I had some pain last week, you could call it a pain in the butt literally, it's not there anymore but I just want to be sure, and later in the afternoon I have to visit the hospital for a chest x-ray. I'll probably visit the lost and found places after that to see if some kind soul would return it.

All in all, last night was full of drama that I could do without. But I still have my physical self, free clean air, people who care about me, and natural beauty all around me so I still feel really blessed to be here. Sometimes it's hard to be positive when shit happens to you but think of all the good that has happened in your life. Humans are conditioned to remember pain but not to remember the good things that happen. That is because pain can be caused by so many ways, a roof falling on your head, heat, an accidental slip, and so on. You know the fact that you even exist is a blessing in itself. The following is a quote from Richard Dawkins.

"We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here."

The things that you get for nothing can never be replaced, your mind, your soul, your body and your dreams are priceless. Things that cost money are cheap! Which is why I can never understand why people chase money and measure themselves by the money they earn. There is someone who will always make more money than you and who will always be better looking than you are.  Therefore there is no point in thinking about these things.  That BMW, Lexus, honestly, who cares?  If you want to truly make money then you must think of how you can help others. You must think outwardly, you must follow your passion and you must believe in yourself despite what others may say, or think of you, and you must commit to what you believe in.

The other day I saw the following quote by Albert Pine, an English author who died in 1851.

"What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal"

For me my real end goal is to help others, and that I believe is the only goal worth achieving. It is what is real. Our money system today is not real. I'll come back to that point some time in the near future but just remember the numbers you see in your bank account are just that, numbers on the screen.

To end I would like to congratulate my 14 year old cousin on getting promoted to the express stream from the normal stream. That means she now studies 4 years of secondary school instead of 5. That is a phenomenal achievement in itself. The odds aren't very high when you're in the normal stream on getting to the express stream. I know, because I was there. We had 4 students being promoted out of 160, that's a miserly 2.5%. That is because you're stuck with students who don't want to achieve and who get jealous of you when you perform well. And you're always under peer pressure to do things that you may not want to do, and you're at a young impressionable age. I remember when I was 12 or 13 and in the normal stream I had some real asshole classmates who were jealous of my English score and decided to hide some things from me apparently to "teach me a lesson". It is really hard when people all around you aren't motivated enough and you have to constantly motivate yourself. I would say that is the hardest thing to be, an example to follow, to inspire others to be something greater than themselves. To do what you believe in, not caring what others say or think about you, to feel secure about yourself.

Sometimes I feel like I am unable to motivate myself but for some reason I am able to motivate others like my cousin and my aunt and that makes me feel a bit better. :)  I don't know how many people will actually read this post but if you feel inspired I would like to know what you think.