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! →

Another thing I was thinking about in connection with my trip to bergen is the extreme focus all other regions in Norway put on Oslo – at the same time as they really don’t like it at all.

They were all very certain that in Oslo you can get killed by just walking out on the street and living for them was apparently all about moving back out into the middle of nowhere where they were born after finishing their education in the nearest town with a population just large enough to provide for a college.

The most amazing thing about these misconceptions of Oslo is that Norway is incredibly Oslo-focused.

Continue reading Oslo Oslo Oslo →

This weekend I was in Bergen and it was the first time for a very long time that I have spend an extensive amount of time with “normal” non-political Norwegian youngsters. Well, not really, they were not all that unpolitical, but they were not on the extreme far left. Or at least not all of them were. I was attending the fall camp of the Pedagogy Students (PS) – the student chapter of the main teachers labor union.

And then yesterday, I started reflecting a bit upon the the meaning of coffe-substitutes…
Continue reading post-modern coffe substitute →

Do you know those situations when you think you feel love (or have recently) for a person at the same time that you really despise their behavior? Well, that’s where I’m at right now. It might not even be her behavior so much as what my subjective interpretation is of it: whenever she shows some positive signs – a smile, a brief, a flattering remark, a yell of my name across a room full of people – I almost always tend to interpret it as no sign at all or a sign of her trying to play with me. But then I got this dream (with Nazis and stuff), and I think that explained a lot.

Continue reading a strange dream →

Do you know those situations when you move too fast to reflect upon your? It feels like I’m trying to do that right now. Just looking at the time span between Thursday evening and until now (Saturday morning)…

Continue reading No end to it… →

Last Saturday we had two demonstrations right after oneanother. The goals of the demonstration were slightly different, altough probably most participating in one, could also have been in the other. However, they did turn out to be quite different.

While the first demonstration was against the Norwegian company Yara handing out an ecology prize to the dictator of Ethiopia, the second one was for a true left wing shift in Norwegian politics after the general elections next week, no matter how they turn out.

Now look at these pictures (more pics below). Aren’t the differences telling?

Actually, it’s not even all about race, as I’ll explain…
Continue reading two demonstrations, two worlds →

hmm, I worte earlier this summer that my Norwegian sumemr would be over. While that turned out not quite to be the case back then, by now it definitely has. While one could walk aorund with just a T and a pair of short as recent as last week end and be completely comfortable, at this time, wearing short sleeves and no jacket is probably more something of a statement, or a sign of a hope for summer to return once more, rather than appropriate clothing.

But what will fall bring? Well, elections, both here and in Germany. But elections and politics are not everything. I wonder what more, other than rain, I can expect coming up. And how is one to make fall a tiem to look forward to?
Continue reading fall… →