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??

The World Is Wearing Red

As you may have noticed, the peaceful protest in Burma has rather captured my attention. Although I would love to fly to Bangkok and sneak over the Burmese border to join in, I figure that's not entirely practical. So instead I decided to make a website to consolidate info on all the various demonstrations and protests that are going on around the world in solidarity with the Burmese people and their struggle for democracy. It's pretty basic, but I think it works. The address is:

http://WorldIsWearingRed.blogspot.com


Go check it out if you have a minute. Use the archives on the right hand side to see media from various cities around the world.

Burmese Solidarity in Oslo - videos

Burmese Solidarity in Oslo

I attended the Burma Solidarity Rally at the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo yesterday. I was surprised to learn that there is a large Burmese community in Oslo! In fact, a group called the Democratic Voice of Burma is based out of Oslo. They produce pro-democracy media (TV, radio, print, etc.) and beam it into Burma through various methods. Anyhow, I'm uploading some videos to YouTube, but here are some pictures to tide you over.

Japanese Reporter Shot in Burma

If you have been following the news, you've probably heard that a Japanese reporter has been shot and killed in Burma. The following YouTube video is from a Japanese news report, showing Nagai Kenji being shot. I post this not out of some morbid fascination, but rather to highlight that ACTUAL LIVES are being TAKEN AWAY by the Burmese military.

It is absolutely wrong on the most basic level. There is a worldwide campaign today to wear a red shirt in solidarity with the Burmese people and their struggle. I'm also attending a rally outside the Nobel Peace Centre where there will be speeches from the former Prime Minister of Norway, a Burmese monk, a Bishop of the Norwegian church and others. I will post pictures when I return.

Culture Clash

Ha! Check this out:



(Link is here for those who can't see it)

News From Myanmar

Sad today to hear that the military has started to violently crackdown on the monks protesting in Burma. With the media being so tightly controlled by the ruling military, it's hard to know exactly what's going on. However! I did discover something extremely interesting! This article on the BBC talks about how dissidents within Burma are uploading photos, videos and information to bloggers living in the West. Although less than 1% of the Burmese population has internet access, this still helps to show the rest of the world how the military junta is treating its people. The article explains how the internet is becoming a useful tool for organizing the resistance. Man, sometimes I hate technology, but other days I just love it!

Anyways, check out this dude's blog - there's a lot of Burmese text on it (which may come up as question marks if your computer doesn't have the language installed) but it's still cool to see pictures and videos from inside the country.

10 Degrees and Cloudy

Before I write shallow, narcissistic stuff about my own life, I would first like to draw your attention to this story. I think that it is incredibly exciting and has the potential for a non-violent revolution - of course there is also the potential that the military will turn it into a bloodbath and that would be horrible. Nevertheless, I feel like this is an excellent example of religion being put to good use. Religion often gets blamed as being the cause of every war in the world (and perhaps, rightly so) but it seems to me that the folks who point this out tend to neglect the positive contributions of religion and religious people to society. For those of us who pray, let's remember Myanmar and its buddhist monks and nuns.



All right, so you may or may not have noticed that I tarted my blog up a bit. The old template was broken so I migrated to the new one with a fancy archival process. Looking through the archives I noticed that it is nearly the end of the year and I don't even have 1/3 as many posts as I did in 2006. I think that is due to several reasons. The first being that I spent most of 2007 in Canada, which I find less stimulating and less conducive to blog-post-coming-up-withness. I believe also, as Matt pointed out, Facebook has contributed to a general decline in the world of casual bloggers. After all, it's a lot easier to change your status update (one line) and upload a bunch of photos from your camera (automated process) than it is to actually sit down and come up with something to say. However, I am not content to let my blog die. I have never felt obligated to post (nor would I want to) but there are still times in which it is the better suited medium. So having said that, I will try to be more intentional in sharing my life and thoughts here in the future.


What am I up to then? The truth is, not a heck of a lot. I have had lots of visitors the past little while (both couchsurfers and dear friends) and while it has been nice to see them, it is also going to be nice to have some time on my own again. School is, well, I'm not sure - I've kinda been neglecting it with my visitors, so it's important to focus on that again for the next little while. I'm also hoping to move into a room in a flat in the city centre, but that hasn't been finalized yet, so more on it later. I'm slowly adjusting to the Norwegian lifestyle, and hopefully even more so if I move in with this bunch of Norwegians. Oh! Speaking of whom, I have another Norwegian fashion update!

For some reason, clothing from UCLA is really popular here. One of my female norwegian friends told me that they even sell it in clothing stores alongside other popular brands. She also believes that a lot of young norwegian girls don't even know where it's from since they refer to it as 'ook-lah' (which is how it would be pronounced if it was a Norwegian word). Ha!

PS: For the Facebook-less, here are pictures from Oslo and Fredrikstad.

You and me both, buddy

Le Sigh

This is entirely unacceptable and yet it appears as if no one can do anything about it.

To put it into perspective: there have been 10 times more innocent people killed in Iraq since the US invaded than were killed in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001. How much blood is enough?

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...