It started snowing here in Oslo about 2 days ago. So forgive me for some of my more sentimental comments lately, but I have been sitting in the dark looking at the snow on the trees outside my windows the last few night – and since yesterday with a few candles spread about in my room. I really like both the weather and the candles and the whole atmosphere with Kahimi Karie’s “Photosong”, Serge Gainsbourg’s “Ballade De Melody Nelson” or Margo Guryan’s “Sunday Morning” playing in the background – the first and the last of which I only heard quite recently. (Today some of the snow melted again, so I won’t be able to make pictures right now, but it’ll probably be back and I promise pictures for then.)

But it also makes me sentimental, and crying is really popular with me these days. And I staretd watching some movies (most of which you can download yourself!)

Continue reading Free Movies! →

Last night I had another dream that I believe had some kind of significance, and interestingly, it was again a night before I was to go to a conference of the Pedagogy Students. However, I happened to miss the bus and they couldn’t call me cause my mobile still hasn’t shown back up. But it’s not that far this time (in the “city” of Halden, close to the Swedish border), so I’ll take the train there first thing tomorrow morning. I don’t know whether the prospect of attending those conferences (with the overly high percentage of women/girls that know no greater joy in life but hanging around small screaming pre-school kids all life) give me a sudden flash back to my own current situation as a single, or whether it’s just that I happen to remember the dreams on these exact nights as I wake up abruptly, and not through the normal cycle which usually makes one forget about ones dreams.

In either case, last night I was presented with yet another dream for me to interpret. This time it wasn’t quiet as crazy and open to interpretation as last time, but it still left me somewhat confused this morning…
Continue reading Johannes in Educational Dreamland once more →

I didn’t think Norwegian subways could get that crowded, nor that they could ever pose a threat to me in any way. But unfortunately, on Friday my mobile phone disappeared while I took the subway just one single station. I started calling it immediately, but nobody took it.
Fortunately I can check online who I have been calling, and so I could see the following three numbers having been called since Friday 1600, when I lost the phone: +48774162530, +48888203385 and +4798416477. The first two numbers are in Poland, and the person on the third number either speaks only Polish or pretends to only speak Polish.
Anyway, I find it fair to suspect that it is some poor Polish migrant worker who probably only needs it to call back home, and given the wage level that it has been revealed several of them receive here in Norway, I can totally understand that.
But when I lost the phone, there were about 150kr on it, and now there are about 74kr on it, so at the current rate it will probably be empty within a day or two. And by then I’d rather want it back then ending up in some trash can, with my entire address book and everything. So if you have any knowledge of Polish, or just some spare time that you don’t mind using on the phone, just start caloling those above numbers. My mobile number is +4794352594, by the way.

I just got this from another Caro-fan (see a few posts below). It’s the text for the Caro advertisement that was send in TV (and radio?) advertisement in the late 1980s (maybe also somewhat later). You have to know German to understand it of course.

Ich mag das Schöne dieser Welt, ich mag den Wind im Roggenfeld
– Ich mag es, wenn der Tag erwacht
Und die Sonne dazu lacht
Ich mag Plaudern am Nachmittag, Obstkuchen mit Schlag
– Ich mag die Lichter meiner Stadt
Diskutieren bis in den Tag
Lass mich von deinem Duft verführ’n
Deine Wärme spür’n
– Caro, ich mag dich! Du bist einfach gut!

But the important part is anyways not the text in itself – the important part is the time period that West Germans connect to it.
Continue reading Caro-song →

Oh my, these last two experiences really made me loose the last little bit of faith in “the system” (OK – granted, that’s a lie, I lost that quite a long time ago, but it makes it sound more dramatic). It’s really not meant to be read all the way through- if you fall off some time in there you really got my main point 🙂

The situation that I want to tell you about is about a friend of my from Douglas, AZ. I met him there when he was about to graduate high school, and now he has been attending Cochise College for almost three semesters. He has good grades and all, and he thought that he could just come over here under whatever program they have in place. So he asked me to find out what possibilities there are, and this is where the fun starts… We have this building called the “Administration building” and it looks very much the way I remember the office building that Asterix and Obelix (a very popular comic book series in Europe) have to enter in their tour to Rome when they have to get just one form for some reason, but they are send back and forth and up and down the stairs as they always need just one more form to get the form they request, etc. .

Now I don’t know whether they modeled the comic drawings after our building or whether they build our admin building according to the comic or whether simply all bureaucrats make their buildings look that way, but the similarity seems striking to me.
Continue reading BureauCRAZY! →