What is the world coming to???

What is the work coming too. Things are definitely changing when Postman Pat is to get a helicopter. Yes a helicopter and a parachute so that he can deliver the mail to those more hard to reach locations….jeeeeze !!

I can remember the days of Postman Pat when all he had was his little red van

Only in Texas!!!

Is a nipple ring like a wedding ring….after being in place for a number of years no amount of twisting, tugging and pulling will make it budge???  Well, if it wont budge then be prepared to use a pair of pliers if boarding a flight in Lubbock, Texas.   Just read this story in The Register, about some poor woman who faced such a problem.   Apparently, such body adornments are a threat the passenger security.  At least now you will be offered the option of a visual inspection.

So guys…..are you gonna proudly slap that PA out onto the the counter for a visual security inspection, or slip behind the curtain for a quick tug  with the pliers

…some more reasons why I love living in Norway - part II

Ok, here’s my first list post. Not done one before, but it seems to be a “blog” thing to do

Things that bug me about living in Norway

• the cost of beer - ok, this one is obvious, and its not just the cost. The local pub doesn’t have its beer (Hansa) delivered and stored in barrels. Its delivered by what looks like a petrol tanker from where it is pumped into a huge vat in the basement. From there its piped to the bar taps. The hangover it gives is real icky - not the sort that a dose of Alka-Seltzer can cure. Its probably all the formaldehyde they put into it
• using public transport - its expensive. Just comparing with my home town Edinburgh. A monthly pass there cost 37 UKP (about 430,-kr), and that covers the area from Edinburgh city center to the extent of the bus network (about the equivalent of a zone 5 pass here). except here a zone 5 pass costs 1315,-kr. Then what makes this worse is knowing that the public transport system is still essentially a state owned monopoly AND is subsidized. Given that one of the reasons that cars and car usage is so heavily taxed here is due to a policy of”make the polluter pay”, you’d think that that there’d be some incentive to travel public. But no, you drive a car and they beat you with a heavy,- stick….use public transport and they beat you again with the same stick. Not a carrot in sight !!
• ….and still on the subject of public transport….boarding a bus or train during rush hour - it’s like trying to get on the last helicopter out of Saigon.
• then there’s queues, Norwegians don’t seem to believe in them…unless there’s a machine giving out numbered tickets
• magazines - no, not actually magazines, but how much they cost. In particular I mean foreign mags (utenlandske blader ). They can cost up to three times the original price. “Empire” has a UK stand price of UKP 3.80 (about 43,-kr), while the Narvesen price is 95,- (and just for comparison, the US stand price is $9.99 - about 55,-kr!!) . Taking out a subscription with your own personally delivered copy will cost you about half the local price…..go figure.
• taxes, taxes and more taxes. They always seem to be trying to find out more ways to tax your hard earned cash. The funny things is, Norwegians seem to like paying it

as they say in Norway - norsk ikke sant??

One of these day I’ll do a “things I like about living here”

The Last Polar Bear

This photo appeared in the online Aftenposten, being taken by a Norwegian (Arne Naevra ) and being runner up in a recent photo competition. Whatever…. I think its an amazing pic. Global warming, the disappearing ice caps, polar bears facing extinction….says it all.

I’ve been a bad…bad boy

Ooooh yes, I’ve been bad. No, not that kind of bad Go wash that dirty mind out with soap and water.

You probably noticed I haven’t said much for a while…..quite a while.

Weather’s been crap…..days of rain…….some sunny days……lots of gloomy cloudy days……more days of rain……yeah…..lots of days of crap weather!!!

Been to the pictures a few times. Seen the Transformers movie, which was good schoolboy fun. A typical Michael Bay action movie, but tempered down to schoolboy friendly levels - probably with the deft touch of Mr Spielberg….lots of people exclaiming “mother…!!”

And, just the other weekend I just had to go see Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix. Not bad, but felt a bit too condensed at times. I think I’m correct in saying that this is the shortest of the movies so far. Seems to presuppose to much that you’ve read the book. That big archway….very significant in the book, looks great in the movie….but not a word said about it. And then there’s what happened to Lucius Malfoy….you’ll need to read the book for an explanation.

Speaking of Harry Potter, I was there on Saturday morning getting my copy and unless friends in Austin were in the bookshop at midnight then I got mine first….nah nah n’ na nah

BTW, if you like to visit the cinema in Norway then i would recommend signing up for Kinosonen ( I might have mentioned this before). Its a sort of prepaid cinema ticket card. You top up the card with cash and then use it to by your tickets and you get kr.10 off the ticket price - and if you book online the booking fee is kr.3 instead of kr.5 One word of caution, the card can only be used at the cinema which you sign up for (although all Oslo cinemas count as the same).

Just before I go, a few more movie recommendations. Just seen on DVD, “Kontroll“, a weird and quirky movie about the strange and downright bizzare folks that inhabit the Budapest subway system. Cool soundtrack too.

Another movie worth checking out is the recent Norwegian slasher flick Fritt Vilt (or Cold Prey). A group of snowboarders head off for some off-piste boarding, one guy falls and breaks leg, group take refuge in an old abandoned mountain ski lodge….guess what…..they’re not alone. Formulaic stuff, but plays to the genre pretty well. Looks great and makes you jump in all the right places Check out the DVD, which thankfully also has English subtitles.

oooooh…..sexy box

Just got myself a new ‘puter and it looks kinda cool in its sleek’n’ sexy black box with a sooooothing amber neon down the front Its one of those choose your own bits and build yourself jobs. Although I got the shop to build it - coz when I built my last PC myself I managed to fry the cpu chip just by touching it the wrong way!! My last PC has been struggling for a while. Been treating it as my slave and getting it to do lots of heavy stuff …. couldn’t cope so it had to go …. sigh.

Was playing round with layers in Photoshop and came up with this (which almost killed the old PC) and was kinda chuffed. Got come cool comments in Flickr too

Anyway, thanks to Karla’s Rich, now got the grandaddy version of Photoshop, that’s CS2 (without the Elements )   I had him bring it back for me when he was over in the US ( …. and yes it was over two thirds cheaper than buying it here).  Runs like a dream on my new PC too.

Pending travels and a new friend

Thought I’d better say something after such a long absence from these pages (or some other bloggers might start to beat me up - you know who you are).

Looking forward to my trip to Chicago later this week. But, yikes, looks like its going to be damn cold….even colder than here. Temperatures down to -17C. Forecast predicting cloudy and sunny. So hopefully clear skies and no fog - one thing I hate is freezing fox. Rich, Karla’s other half, has been insisting that I just have to go visit the Natural HistoryMuseum. He probably wants me to have a date with “Sue” …. that’s T-Rex “Sue“. You see, Rich is such a “Ross”like dino-guru

Been filling up my Archos vid player with movies and TV shows just incase the inflight movies aren’t up to much. Lots of CSI episodes from Season 5, which I haven’t got round to watching at home yet, and a good helping of Simpsons episodes. On the movie front, A Simple Plan (such a good movie), Cars (been sitting in the shelf and not got round to watching it yet), Hidden (Heneke’s latest - no idea about this one) and The Wedding Crashers (just heard that this one was a hoot).

Recently made another really great friend The Cable TV company have just released a new decoder with an inbuilt Personal Video Recorder. That means the box contains a 160GB hard drive which can be used for recording TV and claims to hold up to 80 hrs. The other really cool thing is being able to pause and rewind live TV. Even more cool is that the Cable TV operator seem to have made a bit of a screw up when they sent me the box. Included was a new smart card which appeared to unlock ALL TV channels.

Being the honest person that I am (and also not wanting to have to pay for it all) I called up to ask about the new card. It turns out that some kind of mistake had been made and my subscription details hadn’t been transferred properly to the new card. Anyway, I was told that it was now fixed and should reset the box ASAP. Thought I would see how long I could keep all the channels for. That was over a week ago and I’ve filling up the hard drive with lots of premium movie content The box will be powered off whileI’m away, which mean that I’ll probably end up back with my normal channels after I get back.

Talking of movies, recently went and say Blood Diamond and Last King of Scotland. Forest Whitaker gives a power house performance in an amazing movie, but there was one excruciatingly gruesome scene in a very Man Called Horse sort of way. Blood Diamond was also pretty damn good, but let down by a lousy feel good ending.

Those two movies tooks my kinosonen membership up to the Hovedrolle level. Fat lot of good that appears to have done. Made a concerted effeort to get the required number of points and then……..nada. Oh well, its only been a week. Maybe somebody could let me know if I should expect any goodies in the near future.

5 Minutes to Midnight

This recent story just caught my attention.

If you like to worry about things, then here’s something else to add to your list. Tomorrow 17th January at 14.00 hrs GMT we will be at 5 minutes to midnight. That’s 5 minutes until Armageddon, the Apocalypse, end of the world……!! The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists will be moving the “Doomsday clock”, which currently stands at 7 minutes to midnight, forward by 2 minutes.

In a statement released on Monday they said:

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (BAS) will move the minute hand of the “Doomsday Clock” on January 17, 2007…the first such change to the Clock since February 2002. The major new step reflects growing concerns about a “Second Nuclear Age” marked by grave threats, including: nuclear ambitions in Iran and North Korea, unsecured nuclear materials in Russia and elsewhere, the continuing “launch-ready” status of 2,000 of the 25,000 nuclear weapons held by the U.S. and Russia, escalating terrorism, and new pressure from climate change for expanded civilian nuclear power that could increase proliferation risks.

Watch their ominous looking web site for the announcement….yikes. In the meantime, for a concise summary of our march to oblivion checkout wikipedia.

Maybe those tilflukstrom which you find in buildings all over Norway will come in handy after all (and not just for being used as storage cupboards)

Wow….I mean Wow!!

Just finished watching the last season of Six Feet Under. Those last few episodes were an amazing finish to a great TV show. The final montage, with Claire driving into the future and watching everyone die was just brilliant. Not as morbid as it sounds. A real showstopper. Got to find out the track playing over that scene??? The Fishers are probably amongst the most screwed up, dysfunctional people on TV but still gonna miss them

Talking of TV shows, been slowly working through the Frasier DVD box sets. Now halfway into season 4. Used to hate the show when it first started on TV, seeing it as a feeble substitute for Cheers. But it grows on you after a while and can get quite addictive. Sometimes very clever and often laugh out loud funny.

Got a visit to the dentist on Friday…and no ordinary visit. Last visit was a few weeks ago for my yearly checkup. Everything looks good he says, but there’s something which concerns me with one of those back molars. Think it might need….(remember, he’s Norwegian)…..a…em…(trying to get the English word)….oh yeah….root canal. Nope, I thought, that’s not right….try again. Anyway, been fixed up with a session to see the “root canal” specialist to see what he says.

The really scary part….no….not the thought of impending pain, the uncontrollable dribbling from a mouth feeling like a slab of concrete, nor the sensation of my mouth sucking a football for the rest of the day….the really scary part was being told the cost…..yikes!!!

Joining Karla in the pub on Friday night sounds like a appealing idea. Without being able to get half decent non-prescription pain killers from the Apotek, alcohol is the next best thing

Today’s Bush-ism

On my work desk I have one of those “quote a day” desk calendars - “Presidential Speak - The Very Curious Language of George W.Bush”. On most days these quotes read like some primary school kid learning the basics of English grammar, often giving a good laugh. Of course, if you really start to think about it, you realize its not so funny. Anyway, today’s insightful comment was a classic -

“If you can’t read, it doesn’t matter. That’s just as simple as that. I mean, I know it doesn’t sound very nuanced or sophisticated, but it’s true. It’s the absolute truth.“

May 12, 2004
Speaking at the National Institutes of Health on the topic of education. Bethesda, Maryland.

It looks like this dude was on a mission. A few days later we were given another pearl of wisdom, which was revealed in last Monday’s quote -

“Others may have spent a little less time in the library - a little more time keeping the stools warm down at The Chimes. But you earned your degrees, and you, too, can leave here with high hopes. I speak with some authority here - I’ve seen how things can work out pretty well for a ‘C’ student.“

May 21, 2004
Delivering the Commencement Address at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

There you have it….the leader of the free world appearing to champion illiteracy?? If these literacy rate rankings are accurate then he must be proud as punch