On Any Given Night...

My friend Oria has a game called "that's not normal!" and I think that I inadvertantly played a round tonight.

While waiting for the metro this evening at my student residence an African man walked by alone, then suddenly burst into some sweet, sweet karate moves (dangerously close to the track, I might add). They were so exuberant that it sent his mobile phone flying out onto the platform. After he was finished he said something to the Norwegian couple beside me, but I missed it because I had my headphones on. He then picked his phone up off the ground and continued to walk to the other end of the platform.

THAT'S NOT NORMAL!!!

Recap

I always forget how long the day is when you get up early. You would think I'd learn, but it surprises me every time.

This morning I got up at 8 in order to get my mom to the bus station in time to get a bus to the airport for her flight out this afternoon (she has been visiting for the past 9 days during which we took a trip to Finland!)

After waving goodbye I walked from the bus station to Lixian's place downtown. Lixian is probably the best friend I've made here, but I hadn't seen her in a couple weeks since she was away visiting friends in Sweden and then I was in Finland with my mom. We ate some breakfast, drank coffee and the discussed our respective trips. At 11:45 there was a student demonstration across the street, so we went to check that out. There were a few hundred students there listening to someone passionately shouting into a microphone, but not being able to understand Norwegian, we left pretty shortly afterward. We then went to go pick up -- oh I forgot to mention this...while hanging out after breakfast we decided to get tickets to go see Jose Gonzales in Oslo on December 13th! So we put in an order then went to the Post Office to collect them (ha! take THAT ticketmaster service charge!!)

It was a nice day out so next we decided to head to the cemetery. I'm not sure what it's called, but it must be Norway's national cemetery or something since Henrik Ibsen and Edvard Munch (along with many others) are buried there. Lixian was excited to see dry leaves on the ground since apparently in Vancouver it's too wet to ever play in piles of leaves. Me, being the experienced leaf player, kicked up a sizeable amount and then dove head-first into them. Lixian followed suit, and then afterwards we just laid there with out heads sticking out above our respective leaf piles and chatted about life (we got a couple of menacing looks from the workers whose job it was to rake/blow the leaves into piles, but I don't feel too bad about it).

I don't think I'm describing this very artfully (I definitely overused the words 'leaf' and 'pile' in that last paragraph), but it was a great moment. At one point I thought to myself "I'm laying in a pile of leaves in OSLO, the sun is shining, and I'm talking to a good friend -- yes, this is my life!" After chatting for a while we headed back to her place, said goodbye and went our separate ways. I grabbed a kebab before hopping on the metro and heading home for a nap. Someone smart once said "Bed's are best appreciated after a night away." It having been NINE nights since I had last slept in mine, you can only imagine how good the nap was.

Humanity is Awesome

I hope we don't become extinct.

My Faculty Building

I've been meaning to take some photos of the art project in the lobby of my faculty building for a while now, but always forget. Then I remembered that Erin took some while she was here, and that I still have her photos on my computer, so I'll just use them (without her permission!)

The piece is made up of a bunch of individual tiles with all sorts of different text/images on them.

Some highlights spray-painted across it all include: Gud er kvinne (God is a woman), Alle vil til himmelen men ingen vil dø (Everyone wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die), Live until you die, and The wall is in your mind.

I have no idea who created this but I love seeing it on my way to class each day...

Posterity

For the sake of accuracy in journalism, I will admit that I forgot to include the following:

• Laundry Access Card

That is all.

The Current Contents Of My Wallet:

• Ontario Driver's License
• Ontario Health Card
• British Driver's License
• Canadian Social Insurance Number
• List of 101 Things To Do Before You Die
• Ontario Birth Certificate
• Videosyncratic Membership Card
• Hostelling International Membership Card
• Starbucks gift certificate
• Queen's University Student Card
• University of Oslo Student Card
• Oslo Monthly Transit Pass
• Norwegian Bank Card
• Norwegian Credit Card
• Canadian Bank Card
• Canadian Credit Card
• British Bank Card
• British Credit Card
• Receipt with all the print rubbed off (x4)
• 119 Norwegian Crowns

I'm starting to feel a little like George Costanza

Happy (Canadian) Thanksgiving

Did you know that for most of the 20th century the Canadians used syrup as currency?

Webmail

I received the following message at my university (uio.no) e-mail account the other day:

"Dear My functional group...hahahahaha

I attached my reaserch work/Abstract on iodized salt that hopefully will give some
information about one of the indictaors and monitiroing in the IDD prevention and
control program ...and also don't forget i already sent for publication and waiting
the reply from reviwers, so ur comment will be valuable and also invited to give
comment.

Keep reading, but don't waste time on medical jurgeons..hahaha.

Cheers"

Just a reminder to those who forgot, I am here studying THEOLOGY.

wtf??