It's Hammer Time!

I wasn't sure at first, however I'm fairly certain now that Hammer Pants (aka parachute pants) are making a comeback amongst chic Norwegian girls. I wish I was joking, but unfortunately it's all very true. Lest you have forgotten:





I had noticed it a few times since arriving here, but had figured that those people had been cycling and were afraid of getting their baggy trousers caught in the gears or some such. However yesterday, while waiting for the metro, I noticed a girl all decked out (hair and make-up done, fancy bag, big hoop earrings etc. etc.) who had extremely baggy jeans which were then TIED OFF at the ankle with TWINE!

Even more accurate to the original style are the girls who are buying retro hi-tops and tucking the bottom of their overly baggy trousers into them! It's like Back to the Future 2! (only 8 years early....)

New E-mail Address

I have a new gmail address that I am going to use as my main account from now on. In order to avoid spam, I'm not going to post it here, however you can find it on my facebook profile or else send a message to my old yahoo account and you will get the new e-mail message in an auto-response.

Over-react much??

This is absolutely ridiculous. A Culture of Fear indeed.

This, on the other hand, warrants some serious investigation...

My New Backyard

As an update to my previous post, I entirely retract what I said about the dude at the help desk. I made that post from one of the computers on campus and then as soon as I got home I had Internet access in my room. I don't know if it was a coincidence or not, but I hate to be rude if the guy did go out of his way to hook me up.

Anyways, today was a lovely day and the student village where I live is a 5 minute walk from a lake so I went with some of my new friends and we had a picnic. I even went swimming! Here are some pics (keep an eye out for the pig on a leash):

Norwegian Bureaucracy

A Norwegian girl told me today that bureaucracy is the price that you have to pay for living in a socialist welfare state. Originally I thought it wasnt so bad, but now im beginning to question that.

I went to the student residence desk to ask why internet access hadnt been hooked up to my room yet. They told me that my account hadnt been activated and that I needed to talk to the IT deptarment. So I went to the IT department today and asked them to activate my account. The guy at the help desk asked me whether I had registered on StudentWeb (the universitys online course registration system) and I told him yes. He asked whether I had paid my semester fee and I told him yes. I then logged into StudentWeb and showed him how the screen acknowledged that both of those things had been completed. He asked when I paid the fee and I said last week. He asked how I paid the fee and I told him at the post office because I dont have a Norwegian bank account yet (I have to jump through about 3 more hoops before that one is ready, and it will probably take another month or so) and he said thats likely the problem - the payment takes longer to register on their system from the post office than from a direct transfer (despite it somehow ALREADY REGISTERING in StudentWeb). I asked if there was anyone I could talk to in order to show them my predicament and he said no, I just have to wait, and that I should come back on Wednesday if its not working by then.

I get the feeling, however, that if the guy at the help desk had to live without Internet access for 2 weeks that perhaps something might be done to remedy the situation a little more quickly...

Norway

...is where I live now.