On old acquaintances

The previous weekend I got to hang out with some old friends. One of them - let's call him Ken* - is Japanese and I met him when we were both attending university in a remote city of Japan, almost seven years ago.

Since we last saw each other our lives have taken very different turns. I returned to Norway to finish first my BA and then MA degree, I've had two other short-term stays abroad (one of them in Japan, but somehow we never managed to meet then, even though he didn't live very far from Tokyo), and I eventually started working at my alma mater here in Oslo, where I currently teach history.

Ken, on the other hand, graduated to become a somewhat classic Japanese business man, working for a big firm in Yokohama. He got married and he's got a son. Then, his company purchased part of a Norwegian shipping company, and as a result of this, they made Ken come work here. "Here" not meaning Oslo at all, but a small town on the western coast of Norway.

Even if it's on the other side of the country from Oslo, Ken is now living a whole lot closer to me than Japan, so we decided that it would be fun to meet up and hang out like the old days.

From our days at the uni in Japan I remember him as a boyish, charming, fun guy. We had a few classes together, and we'd frequently have lunch in the school cafeteria or go out drinking with a bigger group of friends. Meeting him again all these years later he had "grown up" more, but he was still fun and charming, and as easy to talk to as I remembered. For him, coming to Oslo after having lived the small town life for a few weeks was something of a luxury, and I think it's safe to say that it was a very successful weekend for all those involved.

When he was here we obviously wanted to show him not only Oslo by day (the Holmenkollen Ski Jump, the Opera, the Royal Palace and the Vigeland Park), but also Oslo by night. So we went out for dinner and later drinks on Saturday night.

Oslo by  night isn't classy. It can be - there are places where the drinks are too expensive to get ridiculously drunk no matter how rich you are - but for the average Joe we go to places where the drinks are "only" expensive enough to make you have to mortgage your house after a drunken brawl. I'm only kidding a bit. (Foreigners tend to complain about the price level in general, but for alcohol in particular.)

Anyway, we managed to find several places that were okay, and we managed to make ourselves eligible for mortgages (had any of us been house owners). Eventually, after having been to a few other places first, we ended up in a bar I've never visited before. The place was packed, and the noise was almost unbearable. Since it was getting late and we had plans for Sunday morning as well (last chance for sightseeing!), we decided to only stay for one drink and then leave.

As I went to get mine, I passed a group of girls where one of them suddenly went into squeal mode. "OMG, it's you!" she exclaimed.

I knew her face. I knew where I knew her from. We went to high school together. I even knew the two girls she were with, also from high school. We exchanged some pleasantries, and then I quickly made an excuse and went on my way, even though she seemed eager to stay and chat about everything that had happened in our lives since we last met. I was more eager to get back to Ken and my other friends.

I didn't remember this girl's name, and it took me well into the next day (and perhaps a little Facebook research) before it came back to me. We were never close in high school; in fact, I'm not even sure we ever had a proper conversation back then. She was in a different crowd than me, and from the little I knew of her,  I didn't much care for her. After not having seen her for almost ten years, neither of those things had changed.

Still, it hit me. This girl is my own age. We are from the same hometown and now we live in the same city. Looking at her Facebook profile (or the limited version of it, as we are not friends there either), we have approximately 60 or so friends in common. Some of which I count as good friends of mine.

Yet, despite having so much things in common, I have no desire to get to know her, and I don't care what she's made of herself. It makes no difference to me whether we see each other again in the next ten years or not.

Whereas Ken, whom I clearly do not have so much in common with - in fact, I have more or less nothing in common with him apart from the fact that we once attended the same university - I enjoyed seeing again. I hope to see him more times soon. I would like to meet his wife and son (who will move here from Japan soon). I think it's interesting to check out what he's been up to via Facebook, and I enjoy talking to him.

Personal chemistry is important, of course. I have that with the people I count among my close friends, several of them from high school. And I don't necessarily think I would have as fun with all my friends from Japan or elsewhere that I technically don't have very much in common with today, should I get to see them again.

But still, it intrigues me that it is so much easier to stay in touch with some people than others, and that with certain friends you don't have to talk with them very often - maybe once every seventh year - and things are still as they used to be. Fortunately.

Sometimes friendship is like a ski jump without snow. Mostly, it's not.
(I'm in this picture. Or my foot is. The first person to find it gets a prize!**)

*Actually, his name is Kensuke, but I noticed he introduced himself as Ken here in Norway, presumably because Norwegians would have trouble pronouncing his name. It's supposed to be "Ken-ske" rather than "Ken-su-ke" as we would say.

** The prize is to jump from the top of the Holmenkollen Ski Jump without skis or snow.
Still want to be that first person?

On embracing chaos

It's my new motto. Embrace the chaos.

It's my new motto: Embrace the chaos.

It's my new motto; embrace the chaos.

It's my new motto — embrace the chaos.

I couldn't decide which punctuation worked better, so I chose them all
(It's my new motto.:;— E[e]mbrace the chaos.)

Most people use punctuation to avoid chaos. I'm not most people. Besides,

besides

besides, punctuation is chaos. To me.

So I'm embracing it.

Chaos is everywhere. Chaos is everything. Chaos is a movie starring Ryan Philippe, Jason Statham and Wesley Snipes. Chaos is "a state of utter confusion or disorder; a total lack of organization or order." Chaos is (religion) a chasms or abyss; it is (science) any state of confusion or disorder, plus a branch of mathematics and physics; it is (in the Discordian calendar) a month. Chaos is punctuation. Chaos is being punctured by chaos.

My head is chaos.

Chaos = my head = chaos.

Stop thinking so much, they say. I have no means to do so. Besides,

besides,

Chaos = my head - thinking = chaos.

(This is a very specialized version of chaos theory. A branch of mathematics and physics.)

I cannot stop thinking. I cannot even stop thinking so much. Define "so much". Definitions are meant to make things less chaotic. But then there are so many of them. =chaos.

My only remaining solution.

Embrace.

Embracing the chaos.

Letting it surround me.

Inviting more of it in.

Maybe I'll explode.

Or implode.

Either way explained by a complex branch of mathematics and physics, I'm sure.



On ego

Hey! Hello. This is me. Moi. C'est moi.

I'm speaking to you. You. I wish I knew you. Maybe I do. But when do we really know someone? I'm not even sure I know myself.

I analyse things. It's a professional hazard. Can't help it. "Hey! Hello. This is me. Moi. C'est moi." Why "hey"? Why add an extra "hello"? Why exclamation mark for the first, full stop for the second? And why French? I'm not French.

I analyse myself. Try to see me as others do.

Students.

Colleagues.

Friends.

Family.

Boys/men.

And within these categories, each person individually.

I fail. If we can't know someone - not even ourselves - how can we even fathom the idea of knowing what someone (that we don't know) knows anything about ourselves (that we don't know), or that we can know this something they know (or don't know) about ourselves?

Big question. No answer.

Listen to this song:




Not the lyrics. They're in Swedish, and most you don't speak Swedish. "Most of you." Whether that means most people in the world, or most people potentially reading this blog. Maybe most of you (reading this blog) do speak Swedish. I don't care. Don't listen to the lyrics. Not this time. I don't. I never do. Even if I discovered that I knew these almost by heart. But I don't pay attention to them. It's a standing joke. And also true.

Don't listen to the lyrics, whether you speak Swedish or not. Listen to the trumpet. That quiet, vulnerable, wintery tone. It's spring. Kent is winter/autumn music to me. But the wintery trumpet gives me all-year-appropriate goosebumps, every time. That trumpet says more than the lyrics I'm not listening to anyway.

The guitar is good too. As a complementary - no, as a driving force for the aforementioned trumpet.

The trumpet that says anything. And of course nothing. But at least it makes me think that "nothing" is okay. Some questions don't have answers. Some answers are too complicated for us to understand. Some questions only trigger more questions. Some answers do too. And sometimes that is okay.

I don't know you. You don't know me. I don't know me. We don't know ourselves.

The trumpet. Listen to the trumpet.

It's okay.

On this

This is irony. I overheard a conversation last night. In a restaurant, in Norway. The party having the conversation was a 50/50 mix of Norwegians and non-Norwegians, so the language employed was English. They were talking, eagerly, about many topics not appropriate for this blog (for instance, let me non-appropriately mention that I now know that these ladies thought it should be called "IT engineer's crack" rather than plumber's crack). What feels more appropriate, though, is to refer to the part of the conversation I meant to address in this paragraph:

(only now it's not in  that paragraph anymore)

(or this one. Also - this part of the conversation was not in English, for reasons that shall be revealed)

"Hva heter ordforråd på engelsk?"

This is irony.

Let me translate.

"What's vocabulary in English?"

This is irony.

This is not:

I'm having a Facebook detox experience. Meaning I'm off the drug, cold turkey. This week only - I wouldn't dream of quitting altogether - but still. I needed to prove to myself that I could. And I needed to break the destructive pattern I've been stuck in there for a while. If you logged off two minutes ago, chances are not much new will have happened when you compulsively opens the window again for the 19th time that day.

Interestingly enough, the thing that finally made me realize it was a bad habit I could break was the introduction of Facebook's new timeline. I love it. And I don't see the issues so many people seem to have with it. Okay, so the timeline makes it a lot easier to see what you were up to on Facebook three years ago. So what? You posted that three years ago, knowing well that you yourself was responsible for the content. If you can't handle it today, chances are you shouldn't have posted it back then.

Personally, though, I look back and remember happier times. Sadder times. Different times. I find it interesting to see my own (less destructive?) patterns - how I for weeks would post nothing but rants about my thesis (not unlike what I did on this blog), or the weather, or - believe it or not - what I actually was doing. "CC is at work" or "CC is about to go for a walk". (Did you remember the "is"? I'd almost forgotten) I was more boring in the past. My current updates are more amusing (but also an aqcuired taste. I like to think that those who haven't gotten used to it unsubscribed from me ages ago).

What perhaps surprised me the most, though, was how little I posted in the past. It seemed as though, perhaps, I didn't visit the site more than once or twice a day. Huh. How did that work?

Like with the missing status update "is", I had forgotten that my Facebook life once consisted of different patterns than it does now. I once knew how to limit my own use.

Thus, the discovery of a younger, naïver, funny-but-not-quite-as-clever self, through the help of the Facebook timeline, helped me realize I could just quit. For a while. This is irony, I suppose.

And yes. This. Irony. Charles Dickens (happy birthday yesterday, old man!) had it right. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times". In a way I am happier with my life at the moment than I've been for as long as I can remember. In a way I am not at all. I compartmentalize. Try to accept that I don't have to know everything, professionally and personally. I enjoy a great many things, hate a great many others. It's the hardest time of year for me - when winter is loosening its grip but spring still is aeons away. I long for spring. Or for getting away. At the same time as there is nowhere I'd rather be, than right here, right now. I went ice skating this weekend. And I watched an incredulous amount of "Sex and the City". I'm in Carrie-overload, the greatest philosopher of our time. I listen to Eels and Wilco, trying to catch the lyrics. But I only hear voices and instruments. I miss writing. Yesterday reminded me. I'm rusty and my writer's confidence is at an all time low, but I miss it. I wish I had the strenght to tell myself to take it up again, the way I managed to tell myself to quit Facebook. Once I decided, it was so much easier than I'd thought.

Is it irony that we all know the first part of that Dickens quote, but most of us have no idea what comes next? It's not his most famous work, after all, even if it probably is the most famous quote:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities.

Indeed. 'Tis a good quote (even if I generally despise quotes).

On heresay

I'm not here.

Oh, don't you worry. I don't mean literally. Well, actually, I do. Assuming that "here" is defined by where you are at the moment, since you are reading it, and a text automatically belongs to the reader once it has left the authors hand (or so the post-structuralists say) (or maybe they don't say that, but bear with me) (in fact, don't. I'm not here. As the author of this text I am dead, post-structurally speaking, and I am also physically not in the same place as you, real-world-istically speaking. Unless you also happens to sit on a train on the way to Oslo. But I highly doubt that.)

I'm on a train to Oslo. This train may or may not have wifi - I don't know that now (now being the time of writing of this text), even if I will know by the time "now" becomes now (now being the time of you reading this text, since that realistically have to be at least eight hours after I write it, since that is when I am scheduling it for). Regardless of whether I know now or "now" if my train has wifi, though, that still won't interfere with my statement "I am not here", because I still will have written and scheduled this post now (before), and not now (after). So I am not - physically, obviously, but also metaphysically and mentally - here, if "here" is the blog, or the place from which you are reading this blog, or perhaps the Internet in general. I'm not there. Here. Whereorwhatever.

It's complicated, I know. Barthes and Derrida would have been proud. Except for the fact that I am making a thorough effort to place myself in the text by defining myself out of it, so in fact it seems as though I am here, now, even if I claim that I am not. Instead, I will claim I am elsewhere. On the train, yes, you already know that. On my way to Oslo. To where a job (a job!) is awaiting. A temporary job, but still. You will be free of the endless complaints of my unemployedness for a few weeks, at least. Hooray!

But also. My intention for defining myself out of this text by stating the obvious "I am not here", was not simply to confuse you or make you question my presence/existence/mental state. I meant to direct your attention towards the places where I do define myself as present. Such as the Burrow blog, where I have written a slightly less (but not by much) silly post that this one. It won't post till noon GMT, so if you are looking for me there before then you won't find me. I'll still be on the train, of course.

The other place, however, I wanted to direct your attention to, is here - in a sense - but it is here in a past "now". In yesterday's now in fact. The now that was (is!) a now when I wrote (am writing!) this. Yesterday I wrote a much more sensible post about an important topic I feel the need to share again. So, if you're tired of looking for me here, you might as well go here to find a more serious me.

In the meantime I need to get off this train and try to figure out where I am and what I'm supposed to do here. It is not unlikely that it might involve the death of the author.

On even more ecards

(I'll stop soon, I swear. But first...)

On wisdom (your mother should have told you, but I obnoxiously will instead)

Tights are not pants.

Don't make eye contact when eating a banana. Unless you're prepared for the consequences.

Always use the bathroom before leaving the house.

If your relationship has to be a secret, it probably shouldn't be at all.

Your cell phone is not better company than whomever you're sharing a table with.

Splashing puddles is not just okay; every now and then, it's necessary.

Punctuation isn't redundant.

Smile!

How you feel about yourself is much more important than (what you think) others think about you.

When someone says "No offence, but..." that is code for "I'm about to offend you, but don't get mad."

Remember that you deserve appreciation.

Bad hair day? Wear a low-cut top.

Venture outside your comfort zone every now and then, but never let anyone push you to do something you cannot stand for afterwards.

So there wasn't an iPhone 5. It's not the end of the world.

Always bring a towel.

If you trim your hair every now and then, it will not grow faster, but it will look healthier.

Life is too short to read crappy books. Even if they are classics.

It qualifies as a crappy book if you don't like it. Even if it is a classic.

Never underestimate your need for sleep.

Music should make you feel something. If it doesn't - turn it off.

Don't drink and drive. Or text and drive. Or drink and text.

Wear sunscreen.

This is Norway

The past few days I have seen the worst and the best of mankind.

It started with the worst. With terrorism, hate, fear.

But it quickly turned around, into a show of strength far superior to that of one individual's hatred. It was the will of an entire people - and with us an entire world - who chose love, solidarity, democracy to battle terrorism.

"We meet terror and violence with more democracy and will continue to fight against intolerance," our Prime Minister said. And the people replied. By organizing hundreds of events in support of the victims. By speaking out in public, or by use of social platforms like Twitter and Facebook. By standing together, in rain and sunshine throughout the weekend, in Oslo and around the country (and also abroad). The sea of roses in front of one of Oslo's churches grew from a few hundred to thousands and thousands in the course of a few days. And then the rose march yesterday - taking place simultaneously in Oslo and the rest of the country. We're a small country, of only 4,6 million people. About 1 million of us were out marching with roses or candles yesterday. Even though we're not many, though, even though we're small; we're also big. Together we are more than 1 million roses, more than 4,6 million people. We're a nation coming together in a time of grief. 


Another inspiring quote that has circulated these past few days is from one of the young politicians who was at the Utøya camp on Friday: "If one man can show so much hate, imagine how much love we could show, standing together."


This is exactly what we are now doing.

Matching our solidarity and love, however, must also be what our Prime Minister called for: democracy.

According to our laws, the maximum punishment the culprit from Friday's terror actions can get is 21 years (though there is the possibility of charging him with "crimes against humanity", which might make him eligible for a total of 30 years). In addition, these are not calendar years, but "prison years". Which means that in theory, he could be out of jail after 16 years.

16 years does not seem much considering the many lives lost. 16 years does not do justice to the loss of these young lives, the dreams and hopes. But then again - what would? Prison for life? Capital punishment? Public lynching?

Of course not. Nothing will ever do this justice. The best we can do is to make sure that the terrorist's intention will not prevail. He attacked our democracy. Our democracy will fight back.

So it is important to me to answer to what I've seen of international (and national) skepticism with regards to the "mild" sentence. Yes, it is mild. 16 years in a comfortable Norwegian prison is not much. But it is what we have at hand, determined as we are to not let him win by changing us.

In addition, even if his official punishment ends at 21 years, his time locked up will not. We have a system in Norway called "forvaring" (involuntary commitment), reserved for criminals who are considered a particular danger to society. There is no doubt that he will end up there, probably for the rest of his life.

It's still not justice. But neither would changing our society and somehow find it in us to execute him. It would not help. It would not bring back those who died. And if we did, then it really would be appropriate to consider this a "loss of innocence".

I trust my country and the people ruling it. I have faith in our ability to get past this without changing for the worse. As many have pointed out - this will change Norway. But it is us - not him - who decide how.

Finally, some impressions from the rose march, which wasn't a march after all, since 200 000 people showed up in Oslo. It was simply impossible to logistically organize it, so we stayed put in front of the city hall. Here there were speeches from Prime Minister Stoltenberg, Crown Prince Haakon, the leader of the Labour Party Youth Organization, and several others. There was music, togetherness, and roses. Roses everywhere. Every few minutes someone raised their rose to the sky, and this triggered a wave of roses all over the crowd. It was stunning to see what resembled a meadow of flowers growing from the hands of the people. And it was impossible to fight back the tears when the crowd spontaneously erupted into song.

This memory will be with me for life. I can only share with you the pictures.

That is how much love we can show each other, standing together. OsLove <3


maria mena "Mitt Lille Land" by maria mena

On nihilism

I once wanted to be a nihilist, but then I realized I don't believe in it.

The above is an unintentional (and unknowing, until I realized I probably wouldn't be the first to think of this and thus googled it) paraphrased quote, from a movie I had neither seen nor heard about until five minutes ago. I have, however, heard about Charlie Chaplin. It's his birthday today, which would have made him 122 years old. This in turn - had he still been alive - would have made him the world's oldest man. I know that, because I recently read that the world's oldest man died at 114. It's rubbish, of course. The world's oldest man is still alive, somewhere, at some age. You cease to be oldest when you die. But the man who until he died a few days ago was the world's oldest is now dead. The world's oldest person remains the same - a lady also at 114, and 26 days older than the aforementioned man (not Charlie Chaplin).

These people (both the elderly and Charlie Chaplin) have lived in a world where religion and belief systems have changed a lot. Entire religions have been born and died. Wars, or at least warlike fighting, have been fought with (helpless? Careless? Nonexistent?) gods on each side. "God is dead", said Nietzsche.* "Nietzsche is dead," said God.** Charlie Chaplin is said to have been an agnostic. I don't know if the world's oldest man, or the world's oldest lady/person, believed or believes in anything or anyone. The man formerly known as the world's oldest man might be finding out whether he was right in his beliefs (or non-beliefs) as we speak.

Personally, I do believe in things. Ironically (or perfectly logically?), this is what makes me not believe in nihilism. I cannot see how it is possible, to not believe in anything at all. One of the things I don't believe in - deities - probably makes a lot of people wonder how I get by. I can imagine that if you do believe in a god (or several), knowing others that don't might make you as skeptic as I am towards nihilism. For instance, how do I process all the things humans cannot explain if I don't believe in God? The answer is twofold. First of all, lack of attention. I don't pay overly lot of attention to questions I cannot answer. I remember my teacher once said that people had gone mad over pondering what lies outside the universe. I empathize. I have thought about this. I have touched the border to madness, trying to understand what I cannot understand. By avoiding thinking about it, I solve a lot of problems.

The other part of the answer, however, is that I accept that there are things I cannot explain or understand. This is similar to religion, actually, only that within most religions the believers assume the god(s) know the answer to the questions humans fail to understand. I simply assume there are things no one knows. Or I keep an open mind to the possibility that someone do understand it, or someone one day will, but it isn't necessarily a deity.

I avoid and I accept, but I don't not believe. In anything. Such as my own existence. I am pretty sure there is someone sitting here at my desk, in front of my laptop, typing with my fingers. I am pretty sure that someone is me. I am pretty sure that I, the desk, the laptop, the words, the ideas, the blog, the readers - these are not figments of my imagination (well, the readers might be). And even if they were, someone - me - would be having that imagination. I imagine, therefore I am - another paraphrase. Descartes was no nihilist, that's for sure.


*Yes, yes. Nietzsche said this in 1882. The older-than-everyone-else 114-year olds were born in 1897; Mr. Chaplin in 1889. Semantics. Or numerology.

**

On distant digital derivation (and a digression or two)

This weekend I attended a photo class. It was a impulsive thing - a wish generated by my mother, adopted by me, triggered by an ad in our local newspaper, and eventually followed through by the combined effort of miscommunication and generosity. My mother entered us despite me having laid other plans, and without knowing the cost. When discovering the cost (which was a little over the price we'd expected), she offered to pay. I altered my original plan, and we were thus able to participate.

Much alike how I will change my original plan for this post. 

I meant to write a little about the class, about how useful it had been, and to show a few samples of snapshots that proved I had through the course of 14 hours concentrated on one hectic weekend, I had become a superb photographer. But then the course didn't prove that. 

What I learned through this course, in addition to the stuff on the curriculum, was a) that I am NOT (as I thought) a good-ish amateur photographer; I am a terribly mediocre one, b) my beloved camera, Buck, that has been my compadre for four years, on three continents, during various times of stress and worry; is outdated. Buck is no class act camera. Buck has limitations, and c) if I want to take great pictures I also will have to do some post-shot work, meaning Photoshop. Tampering with images is no longer an issue; only purists will consider it any different than doing work in a darkroom. Photoshop is the darkroom of the digital age. 

It was three largeish disappointments to handle on top of a whole lot of (very useful) information regarding shutter speed, aperture, ISO, file formats, lightning, composition and so on. The class was interesting; the instructor impressive, engaging and lovely; and I think in the long run it will make me appreciate photography more. It has triggered a new set of thoughts around this vagueish hobby of mine. But I feel I had more use of learning of these things than of learning how to use them (especially since I didn't learn how to use them, due to points a) and b), and by default c) (since I don't have or plan to get Photoshop) above. But rather than taking all these new "rules" I've learned and putting them into use, I prefer learning by doing. Walking the road myself, see what happens. Okay, so the chances are that I will take a gazillion crappy photographs. But perhaps that is the price I have to pay to find my way of taking those few, great ones I sometimes feel I get. 

One could easily turn this into a writing analogy. I recently almost applied for a writing class. I didn't tell a soul about it, because I didn't want to face having to deal with people's reactions should I not get in. In the end, I shouldn't have worried, since I didn't even apply. One reason was the whole Japan debacle that turned my life upside down for quite a while (and to an extent still does). But at the same time, this freed up considerable amounts of time, so if I had wanted I still could have applied. 

The deadline was April 1st. I ended up not even trying. I could analyze it all day long, and I could make excuses all day long. It makes very little difference. But the lesson from the photo class applies here too: a writing class might have infuriated me more than inspired me, since I like to walk the path myself. Everything I know about writing, I have taught myself, from reading. By adding new genres, new authors, new books, I have expanded my horizon. Obviously there are still things I could have learned from a writing class, but I am not sure I'm ready to go there just yet. I need to figure out things on my own first, then I can absorb more information, more "rules", more ideas. 

Or maybe I'm just scared to discover that I am mediocre, that I am outdated, and that I need to "Photoshop" my work before it's ready for the world? 

Or. Maybe my failure to apply for the class has to do with the general post-Japan funk I've been hitting lately. I'm having a hard time getting out of bed, getting my butt off the chair in front of my computer, enjoying the weather, enjoying free time. I've been restless and motionless at the same time. I don't have anything to do, but there is an abundance of things I could do, should I feel like it. But I don't. I don't feel like doing anything. It took me days to summon the energy to write one single email to my current (former? Past and future?) employer to ask them if anything regarding "my situation" had changed. Will I go back? I still don't know. They still don't know. Shall I apply for jobs? Of course I shall. But I postpone. And postpone. It took me another day to change two lines in my resume. At this rate it will take weeks before I send off any applications. 

Limbo funk. Writing funk. Spring funk. Japan funk. And now photo funk. I need to snap out of it, but I don't really feel like it. I feel like sitting in a blanket hut in my room with a flashlight, pretending that the grown-ups are monsters, and that they cannot reach me as long as I keep completely still. 

This post is long, especially for A-Z standards. And yet I am asking you to visit a few links I'm about to post. Outrageous. One is another blog post I wrote for today. Over at Burrowers, Books & Balderdash the complete different side of my funk is showing - the silly side. Then, at our Burrow website, www.the-burrow.org, our collective spring mood is displayed in a brand new drabble feature. ¨

Finally, I read a blog post by the lovely Bru yesterday that really made me nod and shake my head all at the same time. She makes some very good points about the A-Z challenge, and I think the post and the comments below are well worth a read no matter how you feel about the challenge (but please keep the discussion civil). Obviously I don't agree with everything she says, since I am participating. But I must admit it got to me, even if I feel I've been clear from I signed up that I'm in this for my own part - for regularity - and not to gain followers. I won't attempt to visit every other blog in the challenge, and I don't expect every participant to visit mine. The new blogs I find as a result of the challenge, I consider a bonus. (I had a longer comment on this over at Bru's blog, but something technical sumfink has been messing with me, because it is all gone, and it was waaaay too long for me to even consider writing it again.)

Anyway. In response to Bru, possibly; as a way of talking myself through the funk, definitely; and because the whole "reader friendly, short post" concept doesn't always go well with my random, digressionary nature - this has been the monster post of the century. Bear over with me, and come back for Wordless Wednesday tomorrow (it will be a picture from my sorrow-less, pre-photo class days as a good-ish amateur, when Buck was solid gold and I thought Photoshop was for the tech savvy alone). Thanks for listening.  

On radio silence

Do you ever feel overwhelmed by the availability we create for ourselves by constantly being online, having our cell phones on at all times and generally being easy to contact wherever, whenever? 

I do. The remedy is often to log off for a little while, for instance going for a solitary walk without bringing any electronic equipment. The world will just have to accept that you are not available for a while. Sometimes it takes a little longer – if someone had offered me two weeks in a cabin in a remote location where no internet could reach me, I would have accepted immediately. I would have brought a cell phone in case of an emergency, but I think I would have switched it off for the most of the time to experience something I haven’t really done in years (if ever) – complete radio silence. With no one to talk to, no Facebook statuses to “like”, no text messages to reply to, I believe that my mind and my imagination would get a much-deserved and needed break. A complete disconnection from the world might be exactly what I need to recharge my own batteries.

Now, the chances of being offered this cabin is slim (the chances of it existing at all is slim, in the age of satellites and wireless connections anywhere in the world), but there is nothing stopping me from attempting radio silence right here in my own apartment. Nothing but my own will.

Because the one thing most frequently interfering with my intentions to take a break from the world is myself. I can’t seem to stop checking my email, “just one more time”; or refreshing Facebook to see if anything new happened; or scroll down one of the newspapers I follow just to make sure that Lady Gaga hasn't done anything crazy the last ten minutes. Even if I turn off my phone and unplug the internet and lock the door, I would still consider sitting down to write a blog post intended for others to read. Interaction has become an integral part of my life, and it seems almost impossible to cut it out. The task, then, is to keep it to a manageable level.

Because the reason I don’t unplug the internet isn’t that I can’t, it is that I won’t. After all I like the interaction. Even if I occasionally have to duck away from people, online and offline, to preserve my sanity, I wouldn’t want to become a hermit full time (not even one with internet access). Perhaps I should strive to take a week or two off a year, though, just to prove to myself I can?

As you all should know (since I’m constantly complaining about it), the final deadline for my MA thesis is coming up. I survived NaBloWriMo thinking I would not blog much in November, but nevertheless post every now and then, since I do have a few spare posts written. However, even if these posts are written, I realized that I shouldn't post them just yet. Until I have passed the deadline for my thesis, I have other things to do. It wouldn't feel right to post just for the sake of posting, when it is becoming increasingly apparent to me (and everyone else, I suspect) that I don't have the time or stamina to keep up with comments, both here and on other blogs. I miss being an active participant in the blogosphere, but until I have a little more spare time and brain power, I don't see the point of keeping up this half-mode I've succumbed to. Thus I am evoking radio silence. I am going to the dark side of the moon, and I won’t be back in Earth orbit for a few weeks (I’m thinking December).

Wish me luck – both in finishing the thesis and in staying true to my resolution of radio silence – I’m frankly not sure which one will be the hardest.

See you on the flip side! 

On Socrates

Socrates, the philosopher, supposedly said that the only true wisdom lies in knowing that you know nothing.

I must be really wise, then.

It is humbling, really, to be able to work with a research project of a magnitude that whenever I think I almost have the hang of it, I only discover that there are new things popping up. Things I haven't considered. Things I really should consider. I keep getting the feeling that I could easily devote my life to writing my thesis, and it still would never be entirely done.

I started out, two years ago, knowing nothing more about the Middle East and the conflict(s) there than the average newspaper reader does. I dived into the subject - took out every book there was in the library, and even managed to read some of them. I copied off articles to read. I wrote a project proposal. I held a "test lecture" for two professors as part of my exams. I did everything I could to make sure I knew everything I had to know about what was going to become the topic of my master's thesis.

And yet. Every time I opened a new book there was a new aspect. Something I hadn't thought about. Something that changed my perception of what I was working on completely - over and over again. No matter how deep I penetrated the problems I was working with, I continued to return to my starting point. There was still much more I didn't know about this conflict than what I did know.

I wrote a chapter. I read some more. I went to the US, where I spent the greater part of my time in an archive. I've read through thousands of documents. I've categorized them, analyzed them, written about them. I've read more books. I've written more chapters. I've talked to professors, and fellow students and other who have worked with this conflict.

I have done everything that was possible for someone with my resources and capacity to understand the topic of my thesis, and to make it comprehensible for others. Looking back, I can see my learning curve has been steep. Reading my first project proposal makes me cringe, because I am now able to see flaws, inconsistencies and imprecise formulations in every paragraph.

Despite this, however, I still feel like there are light-years to go. There are more books and articles and papers than I can fathom written about the very thing I try to make sense of. Then why in the world am I trying to write another one? I have no idea. I am supposed to have a brilliant answer to that, and it is supposed to go on page 8, circa, of my introduction chapter, which currently is a mess.

Regardless of all my hard work - or because of it, actually - I am still left with the feeling that I know nothing. I suspect that this is the way it will be. And I'm starting to wonder if it isn't also how it's supposed to be. The more I learn, the deeper I go in my research, I will only find that there is more left to explore. I will never reach a total understanding of the conflict I am supposed to be an expert of - nor would I of any other subject. It's just not possible. The more I search for answers, the more questions I come up with.

In the end, isn't that what research is all about? Perhaps Socrates had it right?

On cousins and comparisons

I recently met a person I am sure many of you know:




“Oh, you are going to Paris for a vacation? I didn’t know people still went there. It’s very 2006, don’t you think? But I’m sure you’ll have a great time. When you’re there you should make sure to see – oh, wait, they don’t let just anybody in there, do they?”



“Personally, I think buying books is unnecessary nowadays. I just buy them on my iPad. You do have an iPad, don’t you? Oh, I see… Well, I suppose a Kindle isn’t too bad either. Oh, you don’t even have a..? I admire you, I really do – standing up against evolution like that.”



“Master’s Degree? Yeah, that’s a lot of work. I remember when I finished my PhD while I had an internship and simultaneously wrote a book, I could hardly find the time to work out more than four-five times a week. Of course my volunteer work at the animal shelter took a lot of my time as well.”



“I can’t tell you how happy I am to live on the West Side of the city. It’s so much nicer here, you don’t risk running into drug dealers and criminals. You live on the East Side, you say? Ah… Well, I’m sure it’s – charming.”



“In my field of work… Oh, sorry, am I bothering you with details flying over your head?”



I am exaggerating (slightly. Miss Done It All hadn’t written a book). But she acted this way all night, making me (and many others in the party) feel very uncomfortable. No matter what we had or hadn’t done, she had done it better. Rationally I can compare myself to her and know that I don’t actually come out of it too poorly, but it is difficult being rational about things like this. She made me feel inferior, even if I am not.

The Norwegian poet/songwriter Alf Prøysen wrote a song called Æille har ett syskjenbån på Gjøvik [Everyone has a cousin at Gjøvik – Gjøvik is the regional centre to his hometown]. In the song, the main character is passing through life’s many milestones (slight digression, but hey, it’s me, I’m not only allowed, I’m encouraged to digress. Why is it called milestone in English, but milepæl [mile pole] in Norwegian. Did we use poles and you stones? Or are Norwegians merely more fascinated with poles? We do have a number of famous pole explorers, after all… But let’s return to the song…)

The main character is passing through life’s many milestones, but every time he achieves something, his cousin has done something better. In the end, the main character dies, and the cousin merely sends flowers. I guess there is a bitter irony in that – the main character finally outdid his cousin – but since he wasn’t around to gloat I am not sure how much use it did him...

I think it is part of human nature to compare ourselves to others. But why is it so that some chose comparisons where they come out as the winner, while many of us always look to the impossible? I am definitely in the latter category. In a way I am glad, because it allows me to strive for higher achievements. But at the same time, it would be nice to sometimes feel content. Ideally I wish I didn’t compare myself or my own achievements to anyone else at all – I shouldn’t have to compete with anyone but myself. But since I seem incapable of doing that – why do I always have to pick the ones that make me feel like I am worth nothing?

As I said, rationally I am aware that the cousins in Gjøvik out there are not good choices for comparison. If you insist on using them as measurement, you should at the very least be aware that it only is to enhance your own performance. Even though I know this, though, I can’t help but feel uncomfortable around people such as Miss Done It All. Why isn’t my brain and my heart communicating on this?

On 4th of July

I wasn’t going to post at all today, and especially not on this topic as I feel it isn’t mine to tackle. But then I read this wonderful post over at Confessions of a Watery Tart. I started writing a comment to her post, but before I was done typing I realized I had accidentally written a post of my own. So, since today is a special day (did y’all know it was the Norwegian queen’s birthday? I bet you didn’t. Most Norwegians don’t… But that is hardly the point. It is Independence Day in the US, and frankly, that is more important – even in Norway):

The United States of America is probably the one country in the world EVERYONE, regardless of whether they have been there or not, has an opinion about. Add that it is one of the most diverse countries in the world, and it shouldn't come as a surprise that the images floating around about the US are varied and often misunderstood or plain wrong.

Personally I have gone through several phases in how I have seen the US. During the Clinton years I was too young to know the meaning of the word "critical", but it wouldn't have mattered all that much anyway, since the world was still recovering from decades of Cold War-ness, and since we (in the West, at least) mostly agreed with the US, it was difficult not to still see the Americans as "the good guys".

I grew up, became a little more aware and a little wiser, and along came Bush. Regardless of whether you liked his politics or not, Bush definitely had one quality that made him collide with many people in other parts of the world. Everything he said was black & white. "You're with us or against us." "You're right or wrong." I think Norway mostly fell into the "with" and "right" categories, but we still felt queasy about it. Many Norwegians disliked Bush, then by extension the US, and eventually, Americans in general. (Which is ironic, because that meant that we saw the world in black & white, just like Bush...)

What turned me around again, were two things: first, I got to know some actual, real, flesh and blood Americans (since I, after all, can't be said to *know* Brad Pitt or Johnny Depp even if I've seen many of their movies). Through the online community, and through my studies abroad, I started to learn that Americans were as different, and as human, as the rest of us. Many of them became close friends. Some of them agreed with the Bush government. Some of them didn't. All of them were much more than their political and religious beliefs.

Secondly, Obama came to save the day. Please note that I am not saying that he is right or wrong, that I agree or disagree, or that you should agree or disagree with his politics. But the message he sent to the world – "we are willing to talk to you again" – definitely made a whole lot of difference. Let me just add that the jury is still out on whether this is a lasting difference or if it merely was a temporary after-effect of the reintroduction of grey zones in world politics.

By the time I finally got to visit the US last fall, my mind was filled with any number of ideas of what this country would be like. That is where I made my first mistake. As I said, the US is probably one of the most diverse countries in the world. It is nearly impossible to say what it is “like”, because it is like everything and nothing all at once. Mysteriously silent cowboys? Sure. Loud-mouthed rednecks? Absolutely. Clever and intelligent academics. Definitely. Sweet old ladies with the Bible close at hand? Yes, ma’am! Emo teenagers, stay-at-home moms and donut-munching police officers? All of the above. There is hardly a stereotype you cannot find in real life in the US. But in addition there are hundreds, thousands, probably millions more.

I only got to see a small part of the country when I was there. And yet this was enough to make me realize that I had been gravely underestimating the variety of the country. In Europe we tend to get offended when people refer to our vast and diverse continent as just “Europe”. You’re not European, you’re Italian or Swedish or Estonian or Hungarian. When Americans say they’ve been to Europe, we roll our eyes and count to ten before we ask them to specify the countries they visited. And yet we never do the same about the US. Whenever I talk about my stay last fall, I say I visited the US – I never say “I lived in Maryland”. Even if I now know that Maryland is a whole lot different than for instance Minnesota (which I also visited).

I remember writing a school report once, I’m guessing fifth grade or so. It was supposed to be about a country. I thought I’d be clever and ask my relative, Darlene, to give me some inside information about the US. So I wrote to her, asking what the main characteristics of the US were. I remember being slightly disappointed at her reply – which was something along the lines of “I don’t know where to start, can I perhaps tell you some of the characteristics of Minnesota specifically?”

I now know what she meant.

There probably isn’t any day as well-suited to celebrate the American diversity as Independence Day – the commemoration of the Declaration of Independence. In this declaration lay the foundations of the rights and freedoms that make the US the country it has become. Using these (at the time) new ideas stemming from the Enlightenment created a unique cornerstone for political thinking, both in the US and in many other countries. These are ideas that we still hold to our heart, and they have continued to play an important role in the development of international Human Rights for instance.

For this I admire the United States. There are many other reasons for me to admire this country (most have to do with the Americans I have met). In additon, there are a lot of things I don’t admire, and a lot of things about the way the US presents itself and is presented by others to the world that annoy me, or sadden me, or disappoint me. But those are issues I don’t feel the need to get into today. Because according to the American way of thinking (I am generalizing again, I know…) I am at liberty to believe what I want to believe, and I have the right to disagree. For that I am thankful.

So, regardless if you agree with the politics of the US or not; regardless if you love or hate whatever it is you perceive as “American culture”; regardless if you yourself is American – I encourage you to take some time today to consider your opinions about the US. Are you absolutely sure they are all correct?



Happy “birthday” United States of America, and queen Sonja of Norway ;)

On Tn̂g-ām-lo̍k*

If you had a giraffe
and he stretched another half…
you would have a giraffe and a half
Shel Silverstein

It’s all about stretching another half, isn’t it?



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

* Tn̂g-ām-lo̍k is the Min Nan (or Bân-lâm-gú) word for giraffe. I bet most of you haven’t heard of the Min Nan language (at least I hadn’t). From what Wikipedia can tell me, it’s actually a family of Chinese languages and dialects spoken in Fujian and neighbouring areas. I didn’t know where that was, but once again Wikipedia was helpful. Fujian is a province on the Southeast coast of China, right across the Taiwan strait from, exactly, Taiwan. Min Nan usually refers to the Hokkien, which is a dialect, and in particular the Amoy and Taiwanese. The language spoken by 70% of Taiwanese population is a dialect of Min Nan. I think…

I find myself writing this, pretending that I understand it, but in reality, the only parts of the above sentences that broke through my dumb shield were the words “China” and “Taiwan”.

The university I went to in Japan prided itself with the word “International” in its name. There really were a lot of international students attending (though mostly from the privileged part of the world, but that is another story). We represented different countries with different cultures and it was fascinating to have such a unique opportunity to hang out with people from around the globe. I loved being able to tell my friends at home that I had just had lunch with a Japanese, a Singaporean, a Mongolian, a German, a Swede and a couple of Americans. That one semester in Japan made me very aware of the opportunities we have, living in a global world. Trade, commerce and business is one thing, but much more interesting to me is cooperation, exchange of ideas and knowledge, respect and admiration for foreign cultures. I took a class about Korea, but I think I learned almost as much from having lunch one day with one of the (South) Korean boys who told me about everyday life in his home country.

Unfortunately, the international stage isn’t all about peace and understanding. Sadly, our own mini-international stage reflected this. While I was there, we had eight Taiwanese girls, and three Chinese students. The Taiwanese girls were all very social, their English was near-perfect (as was their Japanese, I was told), they were friendly and eager to get to know new people. The three Chinese students kept to themselves, they spoke very little English (which is interesting, seeing as English was the language all classes were taught in), and they did not seem all that interested in participating in any social activities.

Two months into the semester, the school festival was scheduled. The entire university was given a polish to present a perfect façade. Among the many decorations put up were flags representing all the international students’ countries. This included the People’s Republic of China’s red flag with the yellow stars, and it included the flag of the Republic of China, Taiwan.

It doesn’t take a historian to know that this is slightly complicated, but in case your Chinese history is a little rusty, let me elaborate. In 1927 there was a civil war in China, fought between Nationalists and Communists. The war was interrupted by the Japanese invasion in 1937, but resumed once World War Two was over. The Communists eventually controlled the entire mainland China, and they established the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. The PRC considers itself as the successor state to the Republic of China (ROC), but the ROC continues to exist on the island of Taiwan. Seeing as this happened during the Cold War, it was not politically acceptable to the Western nations to recognize PRC. Thus, for a long time ROC remained the China officially recognized by most of the world. The small island even had a permanent place in the United Nations Security Council until 1971. After this PRC (or “Red China” as it is referred to in the sources for my thesis; a term I – wisely, I think – avoid in my actual thesis) gradually was recognized by more and more countries, and it is what we today know as China.

You all probably knew this… Sorry, I had a “historian moment”…

Anyway. China (PRC) still claims Taiwan as part of its territory (and until recently, Taiwan also claimed mainland China as part of their territory, but this seems slightly less realistic, somehow…). The world community is not exactly condoning this, but there aren’t any attempts to solidify Taiwan’s status either. There exists a sort of tacit agreement to unofficially treat Taiwan as an independent state, but very few states have actual diplomatic relations with Taiwan (which is the measuring cup for whether a state is recognized or not, which in turn is what determined whether it is a state. Which in essence is my bachelor degree, slightly simplified).

In our cozy, little university, these world events took a dramatic turn. Because the Chinese students who had been taught their entire life about how Taiwan had been the “bad guy” in the civil war; who only knew Taiwan as a bogus state opposing their own country; who like their country’s official policy did not recognize Taiwan as a state at all – these students were provoked by the Taiwanese flag. I did not witness the incident, but rumours and gossip travels like fire in dry grass in a small community like that. Apparently some harsh words were exchanged, and the Taiwanese flag was ripped down from the wall. The mood was fairly sour for a while, but as far as I know it never came to any further confrontations.

The implication, however, of the fact that international affairs could have such a direct influence over how people treated each other on an individual level, struck me. I am something of an idealist in many ways, and I have always hoped and believed that many wars and conflicts could be avoided if people were given the chance of meeting face to face. That way, I reasoned, they would realize that they were only dealing with people, and not a faceless enemy. Instead, in this case, it was the other way around. Putting these people in a small community only personified the enemy.

Ironically (considering the international climate), the sympathy from the other students mostly went to the Taiwanese students. First of all, they had been the “victims”. Secondly, they were our friends, while we hardly knew the Chinese students. Since this did not become an actual problem, however, no one was forced to take a stand.

Early in this post I mentioned that I learned a lot about Korea from speaking to a Korean boy over lunch one day. What I didn’t mention was what he told me (I was saving it for dramatic effect). We touched upon many subjects, but one of the things we talked about was how he had been taught all life that the North Koreans were monsters. Growing up in South Korea before the “Sunshine Policy” of the 1990s (here I could give you another lecture, but let’s leave it at “google Kim Dae-jung if you’re interested”), this was the harsh reality. “No wonder there is war in the world!” I thought to myself.

He further elaborated, though, that once he grew older he met some real, live North Koreans. Then he discovered that the truth was much more complex. This is what I hoped would happen with the Chinese and Taiwanese students, and perhaps more generally between the Chinese students and the rest of us. Personally, I never got to know them that well. Language problems was an issue, but if there is something my two visits to Japan have taught me, it is that communication does not always depend on the ability of speaking the same language. I admit that I did not go the extra yard to try to get to know the Chinese students. In retrospect, I wish I had. I can only hope they warmed up a little to the other students (and vice versa) after I left.

While the China/Taiwan incident was something of a setback for my idealist philosophy, my Korean encounter was much more promising. I still believe that learning about other cultures, gaining new perspectives and befriending someone you thought was an enemy is the key to peaceful settlement of many conflicts. If anything, the China/Taiwan incident proved this, because they didn’t do any of those things – they were placed together without getting to know one another.

So my faith in cultural exchange and personal relationships as a means of reducing conflict is restored, but with one important restriction: make sure that the conditions are right. (Perhaps you’ll have to stretch another half)

On job applications

Dear future employer (because there really is no doubt you will hire me after I have made you aware of the following),


I can proudly announce that I am applying for a position in your company. I do realize that you have not announced any openings, but I have no worries that you will rethink this once I enlighten you on the unique and extremely useful competence I possess.

It is a fact that most jobs consist of doing one thing, and one thing alone: What most jobs is all about (unless you are a male lingerie photographer or a female chocolate tester) is doing endless amounts of things you do not want to do. Now, if there is anything six years at the university have trained me for, it is doing things I do not want to do.

I do not find it particularly rewarding going through endless amounts of pointless sources for my pointless master thesis. The few glimpses of unpointlessness are too rare and too short to give much if any satisfaction. I also do not find it rewarding to spend time writing nonsense in an attempt to make sense out of all the pointlessness. I do, occasionally, find it slightly rewarding to post random status updates to Facebook, but I realize this only in a very limited way can be said to be linked to my studies.

And yet I force myself to stray off Facebook every now and then.

I have spent hours after hours on leafing through documents by people whose names I cannot keep apart (mostly Johnson or Johnston). These people were sending each other letters and telegrams and airgrams and memos (they must have had poor email access in the 1950s) about more or less significant topics, topics that occasionally are related to the topic of my thesis. I have spent even more time trying to make sense of these documents, and to write about them. I have even spent time trying to make the text I write seem relevant and plausible and professional. Definitely not something I like to do (I am more of a parentheses and italics kind of gal, after all).

Therefore you should, without hesitation, hire me immediately. Preferably for a well-paid job. Let us be honest – I will not glow with enthusiasm for the work I perform in your company. But I will do it nonetheless. Because this is the most important lesson I have learned from my expensive education: Life is all about doing things you do not feel like doing. So if you do not feel like hiring me after this inspirational note, that actually implies all the more that you should.

Best regards,

Your future (reluctant) employee

On æøå

It is Friday (I bet you all knew that, but it’s a neat way to introduce what I’m about to say, you see. Also, it’s a neat way for those of you who perhaps didn’t know it was Friday to find out. Plus, there might be readers in the future [I said might. Unrealistic, perhaps, but there might be…] who are not reading this on a Friday, and for them it would surely be useful to know this was supposed to be read on a Friday. I think. I’m not entirely sure why that would be so useful, but you never know what comes in handy. So I’m including this particular piece of information mostly the convenience of any potential future readers who for some reason are backtracking my blog and for some other reason [probably] needs to know what day this was posted [because, in all fairness, it is not written on a Friday. It’s written on a Thursday. Delusional Thursday, obviously] [have I closed all brackets then? No? No.]) [There.]


It is Friday. And on Fridays, everyone should make a point of laughing. This is my philosophy (well, no, it isn’t really. If I do have a philosophy regarding laughing – and I am not at all sure I do – it should be more in the lines of “everyone should be laughing every day”, but for the sake of the argument I’ll stick to the Friday-laugh-philosophy. In all fairness, Friday is a day too, so it’s not a contradictory philosophy. It’s not Descartes and Rousseau. Anyway…). Seeing as everyone should make a point of laughing on Fridays, it also follows that we all should make a point of making others laugh. Spread the laugh, so to speak. So, it is my goal to make you laugh with this post (are you laughing yet? No? Oh, come on… It doesn’t matter if you have to force it – that’ll count! Ha? Ha ha? Hahaha? Still nothing? Right, I’ll keep on trying then…).

The thing is, I don’t really have an idea where to start trying to make you laugh. I don’t have anything particularly funny to blog about, seeing as there has been very little “funny” on my schedule lately. I spent great parts of today (yesterday, when you’re reading this. No, I’m not deliberately trying to confuse you…) talking to my supervisor about my thesis, and we all know (at least I assume you know this, but then again I have a nasty tendency to think people can read my mind and thus understand how I feel. Not often happening [fortunately, I suppose], but in this case I think it is safe to say that if you have read my blog with some regularity, you should know…) how little humour there is to be found in my thesis and the work surrounding it (yes, I know the phrase “work surrounding my thesis” is awkward, but I am too tired to straighten it out. After all, this is no thesis).

Where was I? Oh, yes. Non-funny day. And while I sometimes feel that non-funniness can be converted to funniness by employing a great big dash of irony, I don’t really feel like doing that now. I might be too sleepy, or the subject (my thesis, in case you fell off in between all the digressions) might be too touchy. Either way, no ironizing (oh, why, of all nights, isn’t this a word? Ironizing should totally be a word! But the only option offered by my spell check alternative thingie is ionizing, which isn’t the same thing at all!) (UPDATE! Ironize is indeed a word according to the Free Online Dictionary, which means that the stupid Word dictionary has failed AGAIN [or it means I am putting too much emphasis on an online dictionary]. Ha! Take that! [not the band. Did they reunite, or was that only a rumour? And what about Robbie Williams?]) – no ironizing tonight (or today, Friday. Maintain the illusion).

So, funny is off the list. Only I wanted to be funny. So what I am left with is this little Facebook incident that happened while I was impatiently waiting for the cake I am baking (long story – all right – let’s face it, I’m in a long story kind of mood... I am baking because I promised to bring a cake to a book circle meeting/radio program broadcast survey thing I am going to tomorrow. It was supposed to be last week [well, actually, it was supposed to be two weeks ago], but due to any number of unfortunate events, it got cancelled, twice. So, tomorrow we are on, and I promised to bring a carrot [well, no, cake] since I have largely been the one holding the stick, trying to make people commit. I meant to bake the cake earlier today, but for some reason we didn’t have sugar, and this is not the kind of neighbourhood where you borrow a cup of sugar [plus, there is a convenience store about 100 meters down the road]. So I had to go out and buy sugar. Which I did. Eventually. But it got a lot later than I planned, not that it is terribly late [22:30/10:30 pm], but I am terribly tired. So I should go to bed. Which I can do, now that the cake is done. But then I started writing this. Wow. Now I digress within my digressions. Even I get confused then! Anyway [#2]).

While I was waiting for the cake in the oven, I decided to try to figure out on my very own how some people are able to post stars (★) on Facebook. I tried a couple likely options, but no matter what I did, the only thing I accomplished was to spam the newsfeed of my friends (sorry if any of you are reading). Instead, I asked for help. And help I got.

Mark handily provided me with a link to a useful blog with lots and lots of funny, useless Facebook thingies. Which I tried. All of them. Or at least almost all of them.

The stars and ♫ and ♣♣ and ♦♦ and ♠ all worked perfectly, but there were also something you could do to make sparkly things (notice how the ratio of words like “things” and “thingies” increase dramatically as I grow more tired) appear on your screen. I could not make this work, but apparently I must have done something. Because my Facebook (both profiles too) now think my keyboard is an English-speaking one, instead of the Norwegian-speaking one I do have. Which means that I can no longer use the letters æøå on Facebook (bet you were wondering what the hing today’s blog post title had to do with anything). It also means that a lot of symbols have a different location than what I am used to. ) is (, for instance. Æ is ‘. Ø is ; and å is [.

Refreshing the page did not help.

Logging in and out did not help.

I pictured a future where I would have to convert completely to English, seeing as I would no longer be able to express myself properly in Norwegian on Facebook. Yes, I spend too much time on Facebook.

Fortunately, what did help was either to bake a cake; to write an overly long, complicated and silly blog post; or to fall slightly asleep over the keyboard. I may never know which of these that actually did the trick, but Facebook has forgiven me now. I can once again write Norwegian there (sleepy yay).

So, to conclude, seeing as it is Friday, I think you should do your very best to laugh. If this post did not make you laugh, my feelings aren’t hurt (if anything, I am dead impressed you are still reading, seeing as most people would have fallen off waaaaay up at the first paragraph), but I will strongly encourage you to find something else to laugh about. My stupidity at the keyboard might not have done the trick (but who am I to judge – this might simply be because you have so much compassion that you couldn’t bring yourself to laugh at my misery). My parentheses and brackets might not have done it either (that sounded sort of naughty. I didn’t intend it to, I swear!). My cake might – but chances are you won’t be eating my cake (unless you show up at my friends Merethe and Anne-Lene’s place at 19:30/7:30 pm tomorrow [today – it’s Friday, remember!]). So to make absolutely sure you have a good laugh today, I once again recommend that you force it. Start off with a single “ha”. Keep repeating your “ha’s” with increasing speed. “Ha ha.” “Ha-ha-ha.” “Hahahahahahahahaha.” I promise, if you keep this activity up for more than a minute, you will actually be laughing!

Have a nice weekend! ☺



Good Giraffe! Now Blogger is doing it to me too?!? I suppose that isn’t such a big deal seeing as I always write my blog posts in Word and then copy&paste, but I am NOT happy with Blogger pulling a Facebook on me, pretending that my keyboard isn’t Norwegian! Bah! Bah-ha! Hahahaha! Habahabababababahahahahabahabahbaha! (It isn’t actually helping when you only type it…)

On hviskeleken

It took me some googling to figure out the English name of what I wanted to address in today’s blog. Hviskeleken is the Norwegian name of the game that (according to the never-failing source of useless information, Wikipedia) in English often is referred to as “Chinese whispers” (which isn’t all that common anymore, apparently, because it can be considered offensive. Though this is still the name of the Wikipedia entry…), “(Broken) Telephone”, “Whisper Down the Lane”, “Gossip”, or, my favourite (I suspect it stems from the 1950s and the contemporary view on certain parts of the world), “Arab Phone” (to support my argument, I can reveal that it is not uncommon among US state department officials in the 1950s to refer to the Arab population in the Middle East as “culprits”. Clearly there were some ethical guidelines not yet invoked in the linguistic department at that point…).


Regardless of its complicated name, the game is a pretty simple one. The first person makes up a phrase, and then whispers this to the player next to him (or her). Extra points are often awarded if you are able to make up a phrase that phonetically resembles dirty words. The phrase is repeated through whispers one player to the next, until the last in line says what he (or she) heard out loud. By then the original phrase will almost always have been altered beyond recognition. “I like to eat potatoes” can easily have been translated into “Vikings greet tomatoes”.

Frequently, I find myself suspecting that this is the game played in academic writing.

Professor So-and So researched the relationship between State A and State B. He put extra emphasis on the brief period the two were in war with each other, because this fitted with his theory of mutual aggression between states in this particular area. From this, Professor This And That deduced that State A and State B were in a continuous hostile relationship with one another. This interpretation was picked up by Professor Up’n Comin’, who used it to show that all the states in the area most likely would take part in the ongoing war between State A and State B. The opinion of the players in this game of hviskeleken becomes the accepted truth, regardless of its origin. Talk about a feather growing into five chickens! (I’ve no idea if this is an expression in English, or what the proper idiom to use would be. When I tried googling it, it only came up with sites for either cooking or performing first-aid (!) on chickens, plus the occasional “how fast does a chicken’s feather grow”…)

Fortunately, the above example is extreme. I rarely come across violations of the principles of science as grave as this one. However, there have been more than one occasion when I most specifically wondered if the Vikings indeed were greeting tomatoes, or if something had been lost in “translation”. A few times I have even been able to consult original sources and call the bluff.

Will I revolutionize history with my critical eye? Of course not. We (and by “we” I mean history students, but it is fair to acknowledge that the description easily could have been extended to apply to other students as well) are already indoctrinated to read critically, write critically and think critically. If the criticism was to include a questioning of the entire foundation of our science, we might readily discover that there is no foundation.

And we can’t have that.

















As a disclaimer, let me assure you that like all proper sciences, history has indeed questioned its foundations and discovered that there are none. And then the great historians created a foundation instead, and it is this splendid journey that today is known to all students of history as historiography. Oh joy. As a cynical student, however, it is my duty to trash said historiography, and it is my pleasure to do so without proof or justification.



















I might use this as the preface to my thesis.

On retaining and recalling past experience (in short, a memory)

The class opened like any other class opened. The teacher asked no question to the fact that four new students, apparently foreign students, were present. He seemed to be a man that asked surprisingly few questions at all. “Surprisingly”, since his subject was philosophy, where, after all, the main point is to ask (and occasionally answer) questions.


“Philosophy” meant an endless flow of words about the life and work of Jean Paul Sartre. I remember wondering if the teacher ever took breaks, say, to breathe; and I remember being impressed by myself (and my French) that I was able to understand most of what he was saying. At that point I understood probably 90% of all French I heard or read, but I didn’t speak much. Today I’m ashamed to say I do neither.

The class could have been a boring one – should have, even – but in reality is wasn’t so bad. I know I found it both educational and interesting, though somewhat monotone. I wasn’t at all impressed by the teaching methods employed by that particular professeur.

Today, five years later, I don’t remember much from the class, except a rather comical situation. The classroom was on the attic floor, where all the hot air from the floors below seemed to gather. The conditions were ripe for the students’ minds to start drifting, and drift they probably did. In a feeble attempt to prevent this, someone had opened a window – but in reality it only promoted it, as no city can give alluring sounds like Paris; especially in springtime.

No student spoke during the class, until one of the boys suddenly exclaimed with a surprised voice: “Monsieur, un chat!” And indeed, a cat it was. A small, black and white cat had strayed up to the roof of the grand old building, and now it had discovered an open window. The cat only joined the class for a few minutes before it was hoisted out through the same window it had entered. However, I am sure that most of the students in that class, like me, remember the cat far better than the life and philosophy of a certain Monsieur Sartre.

And just to be clear - this isn't the cat in question. This cat is just a pretty one that Wikipedia lent me.

The other picture is, however,  from Paris, though not from that trip. I've done Paris a lot :)