Vacation

So, I've finished my packing, and now I'm waiting for my aunt and uncle who'll pick me up around 1800, and then we're off on the ship to Denmark.

Don't know if I'll be able to log on in the next 10 days, so don't expect much to be happenin' here! But I guess you all have better things to do with your lives anyway....

Not much...

I must be totally in vacation mode now, cause my head feels completely empty (more so than usual, yeah!!) and all I find myself able to do is waiting for the vacation to start!

The ferry for Denmark leaves Oslo tomorrow evening at 1930, tonight I've got some packing to do.

Other than that - it's quite a warm and beautiful day in Oslo. The forecast for Herning this weekend is not very good, but it does seem like it's going to be some nice weather in Untersteinach and Kulmbach next week.

About carrying water melons

Since my head feels kind of empty these days, I thought I’d make a post today explaining the expression “I carried a water melon” for those of you unfamiliar with the phrase.

This is a fairly well knows phrase among girls. It is taken from the all time big romantic movie “Dirty Dancing”, the first time the young female character, Baby, meets, the hot male character Johnny. Baby is a guest at this big luxury holiday resort, and one evening she sneaks away from the resort and ends up in the servants’ quarters, where she helps one of the servants carrying watermelons to a dance party that the servants are having. When she enters the big room, Johnny is there doing the “dirty dancing” – and when she is introduced to him, he asks the person who brought her there what she’s doing there since guests are not allowed to mingle with the help – and to this Baby answers: “I carried a water melon”. Johnny is obviously not impressed by the answer, and as he turns away, we watch Baby kicking herself for what she said.

Me and my girl friends now use the phrase for whenever we meet a guy we really really like, and whom we want to impress by saying something really clever and cool, but instead end up saying something really stupid. I find that most girls totally understand if I tell them that I met this really cool guy, but when I was talking with him, I ended up carrying watermelons! Most guys how ever are not that familiar with the phrase – but, now I’ve given the explanation here!

The music

I don't really have that much to write about these days. It's 3 more days at work, and then I'm finally off on my vacation to Denmark and Germany.

But, as I have seen that it is fairly popular to let people know what you're listening to in music, I thought I'd write a few lines about that.

I have lately re-discovered Katie Melua "Call off the search".


She had a big hit with "the closest thing to crazy" last summer - and I kept playing the cd over and over till I got bored with it. Last week the lyrics of the song "crawling up a hill" suddenly came to me, so I dug out my Katie Melua cd and I have been listening to it quite a lot this last week. I guess I've been kind of in a "girly" mood when it comes to music the last week, because I have also been listning to "Songs from Dawson's creek", I won't comment on that any further!!!

A couple of weeks ago when I was in Solör, I made a cd from some of the music I found on my dad's computer, here's what I put on it:

Wig Wam - In my dreams
U2 - Hold me, thrill me, kiss me
Beastie Boys - Fight for your right to party
Chumbawamba - Tubthumping
Wig Wam - It's hard to be a rock'n roller
U2 - Elevation
Robbie Williams - Millenium
Nickelback - How U remind me
Meat Loaf - Paradise by the dashboard light
Timbuk3 - The future's so bright I gotta wear shades
U2 - With or without you
Leonard Cohen - Dance me to the end of love
Marylin Manson - The Speed of pain
Robbie Williams - Supreme
U2 - Sweetest thing
Leonard Cohen - I'm your man
Postgirobygget - Idyll

So - that's the music in my life these days.

Thank God it's Friday!

5 more hours at work and I'm off to Solör for the weekend.

Next week I will spend 4 days at work and then I'm off to Herning (where my uncle Hans is going to participate in a motor cross competition next Saturday) and Untersteinach for this year's summer vacation. I can hardly wait, I always enjoy my vacation in Untersteinach and Kulmbach so much - especially when it's time for bierfest.

Harassment

Like many other big cities (and yes, I still insist that Oslo is a big city, it is the largest in Norway – even though I know compared to other cities in the world Oslo with its’ 600 000 inhabitants really isn’t that big) Oslo also has problems with drug addicts and prostitution in the streets. This summer the problem has become even bigger as the city in an attempt to hide the problem, has managed to move it to other places where it is even more visible.

Now there are prostitutes patrolling Karl Johan, the main parade street of Oslo, some might even call it the parade street of Norway. It is a street for pedestrians only, and runs from the main railway station in Oslo to the castle of the royal family. It seems like the problem of prostitution has been growing a lot the last years, with foreign criminals moving in and trying to take over this area of “business” in Oslo, bringing with them foreign girls who are forced into the “trade”. These girls probably have a quota they have to fill every day otherwise the men behind them will be very “upset” with them – and because of this many of the prostitutes on Karl Johan are very aggressive in their “marketing”. They harass single men walking alone on Karl Johan in the evening, grabbing them and refusing to let go. Several of my male friends and colleagues have experienced this themselves. There has been a lot of writing about it in the newspapers and a lot of people agree that something has to be done – but so far not much has happened.
I do of course not have a solution to the problem myself, because a solution to this problem – would have to be a solution to how to prevent forced prostitution. I am not against prostitution on a principal basis, if it really is by someone’s own free will, either they be man or woman – and as long as it doesn’t harm anyone, I think it’s their body to use as they choose. I do however suspect that 99% percent of the girls working in the streets of Oslo do not to this out of free will – they do it either because they need money for drugs, or they do it because there are people behind them forcing them to do this.

As for this particular problem with the aggressive prostitutes on Karl Johan, why don’t any of the men that are harassed press charges against these girls? Would it be embarrassing for them, as they are men and are able to protect themselves? And why is it that so many people talk about doing something about it, but no one does? Like a friend of mine said: If there were suddenly men working the streets like these girls do, approaching single women on Karl Johan, grabbing them and refusing to let go while telling them “come with me and I’ll fuck you real nice, and it’ll only cost you 100 kroner” how long do you think it would be before the police and the politicians would react? How long before those men would find themselves locked up somewhere where they couldn’t easily harass women like that?

Why do we allow women to do this to men, when we all know that we would never allow for it to happen the other way around? Oh, yeah, and I know the obvious answer to this one, women are less able to protect themselves than men are. But still, I know that many of those men who have been harassed like this, they feel very ashamed and distressed by this, because it really isn’t nice to be walking down Karl Johan with a prostitute on your arm that refuses to let go, is it? And really, people walking on the street, whether they are men or women should be allowed to do so without having to be harassed by people trying to sell them sexual favours!

Why pollute?

Every time I spend some time waiting for a tram, or a subway train or a bus I always notice how cigarettes pollute the ground around me. It is so ugly and disgusting, and so much of it. Why is it that those who smoke don’t see how ugly it really is? Why do they just throw their leftover cigarettes on the ground? Do they really think that it will just shrink into the asphalt and disappear?

I have never smoked myself, but I have never been fanatic about other people doing it. I mean, it’s not like the law forbids it or anything, so those who feel the need to do so, why shouldn’t they. I don’t like it if people start smoking when they’re at the same table as me when I’m eating, luckily most smokers know that this isn’t really a nice thing to do – so I don’t very often run into that problem.

Still, I must admit, when I see how bad some of the tram stops, subway stations and bus stops look in these city, because of those who smoke, I get a bit disgusted. I know some of my friends smoke, and some of them might actually also read this page. It would be nice if someone could enlighten me on this, why is it that you just throw garbage on the street, do you also do that with paper from your chocolate or ice cream, or any other things that you want to get rid of?

Dreamland

I have a very vivid imagination. This is something that you should think a blessing for someone who wants to make a living out of writing down stories for other people to read. In many ways it is a blessing, but not always.

When I'm in my bed in the evening, lights turned out - that's when many of my stories comes to me. Not like a complete story told from A to Z, but like glimpses of stories - pieces, images, like parts of movies running in my head. I don't very often write these scenes down, just because I have experienced that if they actually are a part of a bigger story they will eventually come back to me when the rest of the story is ready to be told.

Often this pictures, short scenes that come to me are intriguing, interesting, and I toy around with them, trying to find out what sort of story they belong to. But, sometimes my mind wanders places I'd sort of rather not want to go - the really dark places. From the dark places comes the horrible, scary stories - and the images that follow them are sometimes so ugly and so terrifying that they appal me. Sometimes I think that I must be sick to have images like these in my mind, but really - what would be really sick was if I had these images and wasn't appalled by them, or scared or sick - then there surely would be something wrong with me.

Some of these horrible images are as taken out of real life, terrifying tales of murder or torture - but as I am a big fan of fantasy and science fiction stories, many of the "movies in my head" are also of that kind. There are no limits to the sort of monster stories my mind can come up with to scare the living daylights out of me. And one thing are these stories that bother me while I'm still awake, because these I can push away, if not exactly easily, but still, I can force myself to think of other things if the stories get to bad.

My dreams however, that's a completely different story. Most of the time I have wonderful dreams. As I said, I'm really into fantasy stories, and because of this, most of my dreams are fantastic too. I can have dreams that go on for days or weeks, that is, every night when I go to sleep I might continue a dream from the previous night. In these dreams there is magic, and fantastic creatures - and much of it is so amazing. But like all fantastic stories there are also the bad guys in my dreams - and some of these are so bad I wake almost screaming. When my dreams go bad it haunts me. I must struggle to get out of the dream and wake up, and when I do wake up I can't just shake the dream out of my head and go back to sleep because if I do - then I'll immediately step right back into the dream where I got out of it, and that's no good. So, when the dreams go terribly bad and I manage to get out of it by waking up, I have to turn on the light and spend some time trying to get it out of my head. Which is very hard, because first of all, with my imagination the story just continues in my head after I've woken up, exploring all the ways the story might continue - and also because, even though I'm scared stiff by the dream, often the story seems so interesting it would be a shame to waste it by forcing myself to get it out of my head.

The problem very often is that when I fight these bad dreams at night and wake up, I also almost immediately look at the watch to find out how many hours are left till I have to get up to work - and I always know that I need to get back to sleep pretty soon to get enough sleep to get up in the morning - so there is really no time to pursue the dreams when awake.

This is something I hope will change when I'm made redundant from New Year - then when I wake up screaming at night, I can actually turn on the light and go to work exploring the dreams and the stories that come from them, writing things down - and getting something out of the bad dreams - and in that way hopefully get them out of my head.

So, a vivid imagination, I guess it is both a curse and a blessing - I certainly wouldn't want to be without it - even though it gives me some really tough mornings because I have had way to little sleep that night!

The tip of the day

Don't eat a salad with lots of onion and curry directly before going to bed.

Everybody's going to the party...

Why can't artists just call their songs with the obvious name? The last 3 - 4 days I've been searching the radio and the TV for this song that I have heard bits and pieces of, but never managed to catch the name of the group or the song. It's so anoying when you get parts of a song on your brain like that but doesn't know the name of it.

I was lucky this time and suddenly saw the whole of it on TV earlier this afternoon. This really is a cool song, well, by my standards anyway: System of a down - Byob.

The very obvious dangers of thunderstorms - and sunbeds???

So, this last week because the weather has become a lot more less sunny than it was earlier and I'm soon going on vacation I have been spending some time paying to get a tan from an artificial sun - that is in a sunbed. The last days there have also been weather forecasts saying that there would be heavy thunderstorms across eastern Norway. Then I'm wondering, should I be worried about this when I'm in the sunbed? I mean, if lightening was to strike the very building where I'm in the sunbed, is there any danger of me being affected by that in a bad way, like say, I would get electrocuted????

I guess if there really was any kind of danger involved there would be warnings posted about not using the sunbeds during thunderstorms, but then again, maybe no one has ever thought about this before - and no one will really recognize it as a problem before the first person gets affected by it - and knowing my luck - that might just be me!!!

Obviously, I don't know much about physics, anyone who does?

100 days and counting...

Today I've got 100 work days left before I leave the Norwegian Defence to go on my big adventure and pursue my life long dream....

Improving my blog

So as you probably already have seen I've added my photo to my profile and my blogpage, if this is an improvement or not I won't say but..

Now I'm thinking I'd like to ad a hit counter as well, and I'm hoping that maybe someone who's surfing by who's got a blogspot of their own could recommend one for me? Anyone?

Life

On the bus back to Oslo yesterday morning, besides sleeping, I also had some time for thinking about life, the universe and... What I suddenly realized is that I am actually quite happy with my life. That's something, isn't it? It's not like everything in my life is perfect and that I'm hilariously happy - but my life really isn't half bad these days. I have a job I enjoy, I did well on my exams and that sure gave me a lot of happiness and I've got some great plans for the near future, so what's not to be happy about? I see so many people going through life doing things they don't enjoy, complaining that life hasn't giventhem what they want. That truly is sad. As far as I know we're only given one life on this earth, and having to go through that being constantly unhappy about all the things that didn't happen for you must be terrible. And often it isn't that easy for people to change their lives into something else either because of commitments, society's rules or what ever. I guess I'm lucky; so far I've been given a pretty good life.

I am quite aware of the fact that the most cause for my happiness is probably that, even though I do enjoy the work I'm doing now, from New Year on and through the next 3 years I'll have the opportunity to pursue a dream - and that to me, seems greater than everything else.

What my plans are? Well, first of all, for those of you who still don't know this, I have been made redundant by the Norwegian Defence from January 2006 - this means that I get to keep my salary for 3 years whilst being a student. My primary plans for these 3 years are the following:

• Spring 2006: Nordic literature, 1st module, correspondence course, University of Bergen
• Autumn 2006/Spring-Summer 2007: Master Creative Writing, University college Chichester
• Autumn 2007: Nordic literature, 2nd module, correspondence course, university of Bergen
• Spring 2008: Nordic literature, 3rd module, correspondence course, university of Bergen
• Spring 2008: Authorized translators’ exam from English to Norwegian
• Autumn 2008: Nordic literature, 4th module, correspondence course, university of Bergen
  

So, there it is, my grand plan for the next 3 years. The reason why I'm doing so much of the studying as a correspondence student is that I am also planning to spend a lot of my time writing, and I will also try to get to do some travelling. So far in my life I've still not been outside Europe and it seems to me it's about time I do something about it:

I want to go to Iceland, on horse back vacation - riding on horses across Iceland for a week or two.
I want to spend time in Africa, watching and ideally doing some volunteer work with animals, preferably the big cats - love those!
I want to visit the US (even though I'm really not at all happy with the current president!) and Mexico.

I guess those are on the top of my list of places I want to go - hopefully I will get to do some of it some time before 2008.

So, today this is my life and my plans for it!

Reading

I bought "Harry Potter and the half-blood prince" today. I'm a big Harry Potter fan. Now I'm trying to decide whether I should start reading it immideately, and thus complete it sometime during tomorrow, or if I should try to "save" it till my holliday starts in only 10 days. The longer I save it, I still got something to look forward to!

Then again, I haven't gotten as far as to read the last "Dark Tower" book by Stephen King yet either, so there are always other books to look forward to when I've finished this Potter book.

This weekend I read the last 2 books of the "Tawny man" by Robin Hobb so now I've finished all three of his thrilogies - they were all great! If I were to choose between "The liveship traders", "The Farseer" and "The Tawny Man", I'd say that you really need to read them all because they belong together and you need them all to get the whole story, but I do perhaps think I most enjoyed all of "The Farseer" books.

Well, off to bed now, and no reading before I go to sleep this night! So Harry will have to wait at least one more day!

Some thoughts about bus rides...

Since Solör is the place I consider home (it's where I grew up and where my parents and most of my relatives live) I try to go there as often as possible. 2 out of 3 weekends you're likely to find me there and not in the flat in Oslo. When I travel between Oslo and Solör I go by bus, it's about a 3 hours bus ride where I have to change buses at Kongsvinger.

I came back to Oslo from Solör this morning, with the 0542 bus from Flisa. And as usual, that early in the morning I'm dead tired, and I did fall immideately asleep when I got on the bus. I staggered between the buses on Kongsvinger and then fell dead asleep again. When the bus approaches Oslo the bus driver starts calling out all the stops, it's about 10 or 15 of them before we reach the bus terminal in the middle of Oslo where I get off. I was so tired this morning when he started calling out the names of the stops, and I just kept begging for something to happen to make the bus ride longer so that I could sleep longer - nothing did, and at 0830 I had to get off the bus no mather how tired I was.

A couple of years ago I went to Berlin on a bus, all the way from Oslo. The bus left at about 4 in the morning and arrived in Berling at about 7 in the evening, most of the time was spent on the bus, except for 3 hours on a ferry between Sweeden and Germany. It really was a nice trip, even though when we got the Germany it was 30°C and the aircondition didn't work. I am one of those who sleep very well on buses or in cars, so travelling on buses, alone, is a perfect way for me to travel.

This morning I dreamt about the bus ride to Berlin, it would've been so nice if the ride could have been at least a couple of hours longer.

On Fridays however, when it's time to get back home for the weekend, 3 hours on the bus is way to long time...

Yeah, I know - I really must have little going on in my life these days since I felt the need to share this oh so interesting thoughts with the world. Anyway...

Would you belive this?

Even though the temperature has gone down about 5° I still find my brain almost at the boiling point, and I find it hard to write these days, in my blog or otherwise. Just to make sure those who might still visit this page don't get fed up with never finding anything new here, I'll tell a little (real) story.

It's sort of a follow up to my previous post.

In March this year I attended a one week history course at trade union school. At this course there were people from all sorts of trade unions all over the country. One of the other people in my class at this course was a somewhat older man of the sami people (the indigenous people of Scandinavia) and he claimed to be a "seer", that is someone who is able to see the future. On the very last evening of the course he suddenly came up to me and told me that the next time we meet at a course, I will have a fiancé. I laughed then and said well this means that it will be a long time before we ever meet at a course again because there is no one in my life at all right now, and he told me that we were to meet again at a course this autumn and that by then I would be engaged.

I have never really said that I don't belive in these sort of things, that someone has psycic powers and so on, as a big fan of both fantasy and sci-fi literature I have always liked to entertain the idea that there might be more to the world than the things we actually see. However, the minute he told me this I realized that I didn't belive it, not one bit. It seemed so very unlikely, and so totally not me that I just laughed again and said I didn't belive in things like these. He just told me it didn't mather because he could clearly see that it was true. He also told me that the guy I am supposed to meet is kind of tall and kind of dark haired.

First of all, I am pretty sure I'm not the marrying type. It could of course be fun to dress up in a white gown, gathering all my friends for a party and get lots of present - but other than that I don't really see the need for marriage.

Secondly, there isn't and hasn't been for quite a long time now anyone in my life that I'm even halfway interested in.

Thirdly, I'm not at all interested in getting very involved with anyone now, only about a year before I'm hopefully heading to England to do my Master's degree.

These are just some of the reasons why this seems so unlikely to happen in my life in the coming 3 - 4 months.

The strangest thing though is that when I tell people about this "prediction", a lot more people than I would have thought say that I shouldn't handle it so lightly, a prediction from one of the sami people.

Well, I still don't belive it! But, hey, if you should happen to see a kind of tall dark fellow with a ring who claims to be searching for someone called Lena, be sure to point him my way so that I can take a closer look at him!!!

How is your heartbeat today?

As I have told in my profile, I am single. I have been single since 1999. I'm growing very accustomed to being single; I like the liberty, the freedom to do whatever I want, whenever I want without having to make plans together with someone.

How ever, these days I find that even though I don't exactly miss a boyfriend, I do miss being in love with someone. I would of course, if I fell in love with someone, not write about it here, I'm not that bold that I would advertise for the whole world who it is that makes my heart skip a beat! How ever, this I can tell, because there's not even anyone in my life that I could imagine falling in love with right now, and I do miss that feeling.

During the last six years I have been madly in love with the wrong guy at least once. And even though it hurts beings in love with someone who's not interested, there's still so much good about the feeling of love itself. How it makes you a little light headed, your heart beats faster, your toes tingle - and just hearing his voice makes your knees so weak you have to sit down. Things like that sort of makes up for the bad things that might happen if you fall in love, and I miss it!

I would guess the problem is that I'm so used to being single and I value it so much, I'm hardly looking at men these days. Especially considering my plans to move to England next autumn to study. I'd rather not meet anyone now that it would be hard to leave behind.

All that said, it's summer, it's warm and sunny, it is the time for being in love. That is probably also why I miss someone who can make my heart beat a little faster!

The London bombing

I have been thinking since the terror attack on London that I should write something about it in my blog. But, it's hard to think of what I can say about something as awful as this that someone else hasn't already said.

I'll give it a go anyway:
I am horrified. Like many others I'd also say that it wasn't completely unexpected, still when the bombs strike the results are terrible. I'll always condemn those who thinks that killing innocent civilians in the name of some religion or the other is a good idea, no mather if it is the UK, the US, Spain, Bagdad or any other part of the world. Still, when the bombs hits London it does hurt a little bit more. I have loved England since the first time I visited the country when I was 16, and even though I can't say I love it as much as I do Norway - bombs going off and killing people in the capital of my favourite country almost hurts and horrifies me as much as had it been Oslo they had targeted.

As for these cowards, these brainwashed religious fanatics that probably are behind this, I sincerely do hope that they will some day burn in hell! I'm not a very religious person myself, but the little I have read about religions tells me that there's is really no religion in the world that says "hey, go out and kill some people for me" (well, there might of course be some small obscure cults somewhere that'd say that but...), everytime someone kills in the name of religion I'd say they've got it all wrong, and whatever God they belive in won't be happy with them when they are to leave this world.

I get so angry with this meaningless pointless killing, that I can actually almost imagine, if I had had been the leader of a big powerfull country I might find a smaller country to pick on and throw some bombs myself, just to work off the anger. Since I don't belive in fighting violence with violence almost is the key word in this paragraph!!

Weather report

When out to buy lunch I stopped at Clas Ohlson and bought a thermometre. Right now the temperature in my office is 30°C, in the shadow outside my window the temperature is 29,4°C. I'm eating the strawberries I bought for lunch and pondering about whether or not it feels wamer when you actually now how warm it is?

It's a beautiful day isn't it?

I will admit that wasn't exactly my first thought when waking up this morning. After having spent the weekend camping in the forest of Finnskogen with millions of flesh eating bugs, to much sun and to little sleep, dragging myself out of bed this morning and getting ready for work was rather tough... Still here I am - at work, and thought that since it's been 6 days since my last report on this blog - I'd better try to put some letters together that might form words that eventuelly will form sentences that'll make sence to other people than myself.

It must be the heat, but I don't feel like writing much of anything this days. It's so warm all the time it feels like my brain is boiling and I feel like sitting completely still all the time because every move I make causes my body temperature to rise and go from hot to extremely hot. Don't get me wrong, I'm not REALLY complaining about the fact that Norway's got sort of a nice summer with lots of sun that's been going on for days now and seems to continue like this at least through this week, but is it really neccessary to keep it this warm at night as well? I'm quite certain that Norway used to be a lot colder some time back, and my Viking genes surely aren't prepared to handle temperatures around 30°C for more than a couple of days at a time. I would of course REALLY have been complaining if the summer had come and gone with not a day with temperatures warmer than 10°C and rain rain rain - as it is now, I'm not complaining - but it still is unbareably hot - especially when you have to work!

I will get my vacation eventually and that is what keeps me going these days. 3 more weeks at work and then I'm off to Germany. It's a tradition, every year I go to Bavaria to attend the bierfest in Kulmbach. Must be the 10th time or something this year - and it really is a great party! And I get to meet friends I've made there through all the years I've been down there and that surely is even more great than going to the party!

But untill then - I have to spend lots of time in this sauna that is called my office!

Have a nice day!

G8 or whatever is going on in Edinburgh

If you'd like to get an "inside" report from what's going on in Edinburgh I really recommend going to my friend Ross' bloggerpage. He lives in Edinburgh and has written an excellent report on what did or did not go down yesterday - slightly different from what's been told by the media!

Cnut

"Bättel Kynndammen 2005"

The weekend was great! Spent it in Solör partying at the big fair "Solör Mart'n" both Friday and Saturday. This is the weekend when all the people that have moved out from Solör come back to socialize and meet people they haven't met for the last 10-15 years. I was not at all disappointed by this years turn out, and even the weather ended up not being half bad - so all in all it really was a great weekend.

Now I'm in the planning of the next weekend. Then I'm organizing this years "Bättel Kynndammen". This is an annual event with lots of friends and friends of friends. where we travel into the woods of "Finnskogen" in Solör, camp in tents from Friday to Sunday and whilst drinking lots and lots of beer either talk a lot of rubbish or try to solve all the problem of the world at once! This event is in many ways even better than the fair, because here I get to meet really good friends that I don't get to see that often through out the year because we're often just to busy to hang out. People always do their best to attend our "Bättel" though, last year's turnout was 17 persones - I'm thinking it might be even better this year.

I'm preparing the traditional contest, which is held on Saturday, where 3 or 4 teams get to compete for GREAT prizes in several more or less serious events! For all of you who are planning to participate this year: I can promise this year's competition will truly be something special!!!

Live8

Add Your name to the list right now:

http://www.live8live.com

The New Zealand "experiment"

For those of you who are actually considering still supporting the right-wing coalition or the Progress party in the upcoming election - before you place your vote - please have a look at the links below. It's about New Zealand and the politics there from 1985 till the end of the 1990s, and how a politic very similar to the one the right-wing coalition is running in Norway (with the support of the Progress party) has almost completely ruined the country.

Here's a Danish article:
Eksperimentet på New Zealand

Here's an English article:
New Zealand "experiment"

And here's a short one in Norwegian:
Skrekkeksemplet New Zealand

Why would anyone possibly want to do this to their own country? Why not learn from the errors made by others?

The coming national election in Norway

In a new poll (article in Norwegian) released today, 56% asked would like Labor leader Jens Stoltenberg to become the new Prime Minister after the upcoming election in September.

For those of you who don’t know that much about Norwegian politics, Norway has had a coalition government consisting of the Conservative, Christian Democrat and Liberal party for the last 5 years. Since this coalition got less than 50% of the seats in the Norwegian parliament, Stortinget, they have been dependent on support from other parties for their politics, and have mostly gotten it from the populist Progress party. The Prime Minister for this government has been the Christian Democrat leader Kjell Magne Bondevik. As Prime Minister Bondevik has been loosing support for several years now, and about a week ago the leader of the Progress Party, Karl I Hagen, said that there was no way (article in English) that the Progress Party would support the sitting right-wing government as long as Bondevik continued as Prime Minister.

In the upcoming election there’s a left-wing coalition to challenge the sitting government, consisting of the Labor, Socialist left and the Centre party. Their candidate for Prime Minister is Stoltenberg.

I have many thoughts and opinions on this topic, as will no doubt be shown through this blog as election time comes closer. First of all I’ll let you know that I myself am a member of the Labor party, and was even elected into local government in my home community, Aasnes, for the Labor Part in 1999.

Today's poll shows that 44% of those likely to vote for the Progress party, and 30% of those likely to vote for the Conservative party prefers Stoltenberg as new Prime Minister this autumn. Rather good news if you ask me, all they have to do now is realising that they don’t really want to be voting for neither the Progress or the Conservative party at all! After all the best way to ensure that Stoltenberg do become the new Prime Minister in September is to vote for a party that supports him as the new PM. I am afraid that it will be a close race. All polls this spring seem to indicate that the left-wing coalition has a lead on the right-wing coalition, but if it’ll actually get more than 50% of the votes is still very uncertain. They will certainly need that to be able to change the politics that has been destroying so many aspects of Norwegian life through the last 5 years.

One of my own biggest objections about Bondevik, except from the fact that he is leading a right-wing coalition, is that he is a priest and very religious. I don’t believe in mixing politics and religion, then there will always be some fanatic fundamentalist ending up in power in the end – and that’s sure not good for anyone.

I’ll leave it for another time to tell you all about how this right-wing government has ruined the Norwegian labour law and the civil servant’s law. How they have continuously through the last 5 years done everything they can to make the working conditions harder for the employees: they have made the work day longer and allowed for more use of temporary contracts for employees. They have attacked the current sick leave regulations, wanting to worsen them for the workers – and if it hadn’t been for the fact that both the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (LO) and the left-wing coalition worked against it, they probably would have managed to ruin the pension system as well!

So as election times draws closer, I’d say that any polls that says Stoltenberg will become the new PM this autumn sure makes my day a lot brighter!

What language do you dream in?

I guess it's the morning for more of less serious questions to be asked and perhaps solved? I've already asked about where the birds go when their lives come to an end, the other thing I'm also occasionally wondering about is: if you're bi-lingual, which language do you dream in? I asked my uncle Hans this once. He is German, but he has lived in Norway for more than 15 years, and he speaks Norwegian really well - so I asked him, do you dream in German or Norwegian? He just couldn't tell! Some say that you don't dream in languages, but only in pictures, I'm not entirly convinced about that.

Besides, I've got the story to prove it isn't so, because even before I started learning English this happened to me:

When I was 6 and came into the kitchen to my mother in the morning, I told her "Mother, this night I had a very strange dream", and she of course asked me what it had been about where to I answered "I'm not sure. It was in English so I didn't understand any of it!"

So, I for one is convinced that it is possible to dream in other languages than your native one!!! :-)

Where do birds go to die?

Occasionally I ask this question of people, and most of the time they look at me like I'm a little bit weird even for wondering!

But, really, it's a real question isn't it? I mean, even in the middle of the city there are thousands of birds, but still, how often do you actually see a dead one? Except for those that have obviously been hit by cars or killed by for example cats you never see a dead bird. There are so many of them, there's got to be a lot of them that actually die of old age, so why don't they drop dead around us all the time?

Where do birds go to die? Is there a risk if you're out for a walk in the woods that you'll suddenly run into an opening filled with millions of dead birds? Do they have their very own bird cematary that they all fly to when they feel that life is about to end? It just doesn't make sense does it? To me it seems a bit strange that even the inner city birds would fly out of the city into some forest somewhere to die.

Since no one has been able to give me a really good answer to this one yet, I'll try posting it here and see if there's anyone on the net who's thought about the same thing and actually might have come up with an answer as well!!