Mummimamma's kitchen

The first chick has hatched for the oyster catchers living on top of the science building at the University of Bergen - just across the street from my house.

Have a look at them at tjeldcam - (Tjeld is the Norwegian name for oyster catcher.)

Cuuuute!

Thank you everybody for your birthday wishes. And a specially big thank you to hierophantrix for the birthday cake! And to niora for the calorie-free cake :)

Birthday was spent in the office while the students on the beginner's level wrote their exams. In the evening I had extra choir practise for our 17th of May concert, and afterwards I went for beers with my friends, quite successfully (compared to some other attempts) trying to mingle new colleagues/friends with old friends (all language nerds). I came home late and somewhat drunk, but not feeling particularly older.
( 17th of May, experiences with bunad, and more about dead Norwegians than you want to know )

So, life is busy, but good. I don't feel older, and I have got a new mobile phone. It is a Nokia E51, and so far I quite like it.

Some months ago my old mobile stopped feeding, and and since the warranty had expired I had to buy a new reasonably cheap phone fast. After all I can't live without one! So I decided on a flip phone, since they looked kind of cool. So far I had only owned candy bar telephones. Now I have had my flip phone for about four months, and to tell you the truth, I do not like it much. I can't say I hate it, but unlike the old ones I wouldn't be sad to see it gone. I find the endless flipping annoying. And since I live in a country where text-messages is the normal way of communicating (gossip, making arrangements, getting job-offers, sending in tax reports....), there is a lot of flipping during the day. So, since I at the moment is slightly not-poor I planned on using some money on a new phone, which I really do not need, but would very much like. I have contemplated a slide phone, but am worried that the sliding will annoy me equally much as the flipping. So I turn to you my wise LJ-friends, slide or bar? Or is it just me who hasn't understood the beauty of the flip phone?

Poll #1185250 Phone-shaped poll
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

I think it is important to vote - even in a mobile-shape poll

Which shape is your mobile phone?

Which shape do you prefer

Why do you prefer a ...-shaped phone?

Can mummimamma buy herself a new phone?

Recommend a phone

As you understand - my life is really hard at the moment...

ETA: Perhaps I should go for this lovely Buddha-phone? Although I need to brush up on my Chinese (if that is the language it uses) first...

There is one thing I can not do, and that is to draw. I suck at it. I wish I could draw. I always fill my notebooks with horrible attempts at sketching. Since I am an avid writer - and even more so when I am travelling - I wish I could draw.

Anyhow - I have committed drawings. Several in fact, of myself. And I am going to inflict them on you. The background for this is davario's meme to draw oneself as a teenager. I spent several  hours last night looking at the various representations of selves. I was rather amused how many showed themselves as so much sleeker and trendier now than in their youths. Yes, being a teenager is a horrible thing, filled with angst and acne. But I bet a lot of them were way trendier stressed back then than now - it is just that who, who I ask, want to admit today that they found the late eighties fashion the coolest ever? Also a lot of girls stressed how their hair was much better now. There is nothing as bad as old fashion....

Or it may be that I am strangely unchanged. I haven't undergone a huge external change, I have shorter hair and slightly less acne*, but I still fit in some of the clothes I wore as a 16 year old. And I have worn scarfs and books most of my life...

* My mother tells me that it gets better after menopause...

( self portraits ugh... )

This last week my house hunting has been seriously impeded by an attack of witches, that was the learned opinion of the learned doctor at least. Hekseskudd in Norwegian, Hexenschuss in German according to my students - which is called something as boring as lumbago in English. So what can you do when attacked by witches? Not sitting I have found, but it is all right to lie down, walk or stand. While listening to Terry Pratchett's stories about witches of course.

But in better news, my article has at long last been published!

Happy author

And since the wonderful place I work for have this incentive to write articles, I will get a nice bonus for it by the end of the year. Obviously it works, because I plan to write another one now, to another and even more famous journal (more money!). Of course I've forgotten everything about long harrowing evenings of lonely writing...

Also I've finished teaching for this semester - now only I only have to make the exams, correct the exams, prepare the oral exams and hold the oral exams. And scare calm the panicking students of course.

Now I am just fed up with the house hunt, and am seriously planning to use my savings on whisky and trips abroad (to buy more whisky).

Flats are expensive - yes, I should have bought in 1992. But why are all the refurbishments so sloppily done? Fast and sloppy to earn more money. The walls are covered with plates of plaster instead of fixing up the walls, often the plates are rather badly cut and fitted with holes and crack. And in general all that the skirting is improperly done. In one flat they had just nailed one moulding on top of another without fitting them. And yes, that left a bent moulding and a crack a centimetre wide. Amazing.

Currently I must be the most boring friend in the world. Whereas I usually am an enthusiastic and spiritual conversation partner in topics as varied as my students, languages, Norwegian language, Latin language, Greek language, etymology, Finnish language, second language acquisition, science fiction books, science fiction films, lack of women in science fiction in general, badly written woman roles in science fiction films, badly written women characters in science fiction books and science fiction and languages, I currently have only one topic; house hunting.

All right house hunting topics can be broken down into various topics;

Economy; How much capital do one have, including debate on BSU, a Norwegian home investment saving scheme with tax deduction for young people. How big a loan can one get. And even more important, how much will the interest rate increase, or will it decrease? Discussion of national and international financial politics may ensue. Also I get to talk union politics, since I get a lower interest rate as a union member. Related topics, renting versus owning.

The house hunting itself; Currently I think most of my surfing time is spent here, browsing for apartments. When I have found some that seems reasonable, well not too unreasonable, I make a list and go to the viewings. I have realised that the people who take pictures for the brokers are really fond of the wide angle lens, there is also a photographer who likes to take pictures of the bathroom in a bird perspective. Most of the flats I have a look at have been styled. Which means that it in no way resembles a flat I would ever inhabit. I have seen one - ONE - flat where they had bookshelves. Some of the stylists have certain strange ideas, one likes to have a guitar in the room, one likes to arrange pillows on the floor in a corner, and there is this one stylist who obviously likes dragging the hide of a dead cow around. I am also slightly puzzled by the fact that most flats seems to have been refurbished within 12 months of selling it. In general I think many of the new refurbishments are ugly and boring. Current trends are the colour white, downlights and open plan kitchen/living room (is that what you call it? When the kitchen is a part of the living room). I am not a fan of either.

What I want; After three months of viewings I have decided that I have a lot of things I want in a flat, but I have some thing that are absolutes:
* I shall be able to walk naked from my bed to the bathroom without meeting or being seen by anybody. This is the result of sharing a flat for 8 years. I do not want to buy a new bathrobe.
* I want a separate kitchen. It don't have to be huge, but I want a separate kitchen, preferably with a door I can close and a window I can open. I like to cook, I don't like cooking grease on my books.
* I want a separate bedroom. I have had too many people occupying my bed without offering having sex with me. Friends should sit in the sofa, at the kitchen table, not in my bed.
* I don't want to live in a cellar. I have lived in a way to humid flat where I never had to water my flowers and I got systemic pneumonia. I don't want to live below ground. Preferably not at ground level either, but this is renegotiable.
* It should be within walking distance to the centre of Bergen, but preferably not in the centre itself. And accessible to my workplace, NHH, without changing buses

Obviously these are difficult demands, especially the kitchen one it seems. Mostly the market is going slow, excepting just the kind of flat I am looking for, I've found two that where great, both in the same area (Solheimsviken, an area built 1930-1960, which means a separate kitchen is the norm), and the same price 1.2 - 1.4 million kroner i both went approximately 200.000 kroner above the estimate, whereas most of the other flats are currently going below, if at all. 1.2 seems to be the loan one gets without any savings.

So I was contemplating, what are your absolute demands in a flat - or do you demand a house?

Poll #1170432 Absolute house
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

I must live in

Absolute demands

I would like (but must not have):

I want to live (check all that sounds reasonable)

What have I forgotten to ask about?

Is mummimamma too demanding?

When I haven't been busy fattening myself on Easter food, I have been walking around looking at flats. I am getting the hang of it now I think (although I just got overbid). As you understand - life is exciting...

But I have question! I have been thinking about myths and stories lately; How some myths become the "official" version - the one that everybody knows - of the myth, and how some are only live in the margins. I guess it works for fairytales as well, our collections of fairytales are just that, collections. Editions and collections.

The fairytale collectors walked around, collecting tales. Then they decided between the versions, quite possibly did some merging, or cutting to make them to the standard they wanted them to be, before publishing them for the general consumption of the people. Here you can add layers, like a famous rewriting or a film version, becoming the main reference point for a story (I'm looking at you Disney). For some time the oral traditions and the written tradition lived side by side,  but - at least in Norway the oral tradition is dead. Those who seek to revive it draw upon the written material.

What I has been pondering is whether anything has been written about the process of making this "official" versions. Or if this mechanism has a name.

I other news a cd is stuck in the cd-drive at my work computer. There is no little hole to put a paper clip. I have called and e-mailed the it-department to ask for help. I think they think I am stupid. Can I throw the computer through the window now?

So, my trip to Marrakesh. Unlike our trip to Istanbul we really didn't have much of an idea what we wanted to see and do. The tickets where bought mostly on whim. I wanted to listen to the storytellers at the Djemma el-Fna*, which I heard about a couple of years ago when I attended a course in storytelling. Hilde wanted to smoke waterpipe, and these were our plans at arrival.
*Djemma el-Fna, also known as Djemaa el Fna, or Jemma/Jami/Jeema/Jema/Jmma/Djmma/Djema el Fna. I follow the age-old Norwegian tradition by writing it the way I think it should be written based on how I pronounce it.
( Pictures ahoy! )

In between my trip to Morocco and Easter break one of my best friends has planned to have his wedding. He, and his wife to be (which is also a friend, since the world of classic philology is rather incestuous) are people who've been reading wedding magazines since long before they had anyone to wed. So it's going to be a rather big affair. (He also finds it hilarious that their wedding day is the Ides of March.)

Whereas I love the food, gossip and dancing at the wedding itself, I'm not very fond of everything I have to do to get there, which is one of the reason why my, purely theoretical wedding, is going to be a informal affair with lots of food and friends. So today I've had my hair cut, and had to buy some stuff like a black underskirt, a couple of extra pantyhoses, and a new black bra because I haven't gotten around to wash the (nice) one I have yet, new lipstick and a million of other things that I only wear at weddings. Thankfully I bought my outfit before I went to Marrakesh, I just went into a shop and said "I'm going to a wedding. I hate shopping. Dress me." It worked I think. At least I got clothes. And my friend Liv, whom I travelled with to Marrakesh, is the Shopping Goddess, and she found me some nice accessories in the souqs.

All right, I have to be in the church in two hours, time to hit the shower.

I am indeed back. And did you know that there is a limit to how many entries you can skip backwards? It's 1000 if you wondered. But hey, I'm back from Morocco, which is, in my experiences, a lush green country with nice people, yoghurt that give you diarrhoea and badly placed street signs that attack you out of the blue (or red since it was Marrakesh) and make your head bleed a lot. Also I get height-sick.

Has anyone gotten any postcards yet? The post-office in the Medina was under refurbishment, so I'm not sure the post box I stuffed my cards into, is actually working...

Sadly, even though I went away, my work didn't, so I've been cooped up in a backlog of administrative trivialities and papers that need to be graded. But pictures of the lush and green country are forthcoming. Eventually.

We've now had several (at least two) planning meetings about our trip to Marrakesh. So far we've established that there will be shopping, eating, hammam-ing, relaxing and postcard-writing on our holiday. And perhaps and perhaps a day trip out of town.

And since my contributions are the postcard-writing (and the hammam-ing, eating and relaxing), I present you with the traditional postcard poll:

Poll #1147242 Postcards from Marrakesh
Open to: All, results viewable to: None

I want a postcard from Marrakesh!

Address (and name)(and country)

On my postcard I would like

Anything else on your mind?

I just made a bid for a house - well a flat to be precise. It's really scary.
But I am totally fed up with sharing a flat, so it is about time.

In other news, Monday next week I'm going to Marrakesh with three of my friends, two of those I was in Konstantinopolis Byzantium Istanbul Miklagard The City with, and another friend of us.
So, if you think there is anything I must see and do there, this is the time to tell me. Also, if you really long to tell me about the book I ought to bring, no time better than the present.

ETA: Urk, if the seller/broker calls me one more time now, urging me to raise my bid I will scream. Don't they learn in broker school that some people don't like aggressive sellers and reacts negatively when wheedled, urged, - pressed - into decision? I suck at this house buying business.

20 dollars? That is 106 kroner by today's exchange rate. Except that I will probably have to pay about 60 kroner in exchange fee. So for the 46 kroner that is left I can buy a big plate of chocolate (24 kroner; frivolous), a newspaper (15 kroner; own choice) and a pencil (3 kroner; practical) so I could do the crossword while eating chocolate. Then I have 4 kroner left. I'll put them in my piggy bank.

In other news I talked to the bank yesterday and have a loan limit on about 1,4 million kroner - about 260000 dollars/178000 euro. Now I only have to find a flat...

Lately I've been wondering, maybe it is the Norwegian media coverage, maybe it's not, but I find the coverage of the USanian election confusing. First of all, they are more or less only talking about Clinton and Obama, and which of them are going to win. But they are both from the same party, and is it definite that the Democrats are going to win the election at all? Furthermore, this popularity contest between Clinton and Obama, is it a good thing or a bad thing for the Democrats? The USanian election system is confusing to me.

Else, nothing much happens, at least not today since I am rather hung over. One of my flatmates celebrated her 30th birthday yesterday. There were about 40 guest, lots of food and several litres of alcohol. Some time during the evening there even came hardingfele-player, who played for us. That was really great. I threw out the last guests at about 630 this morning. The flatmate whose party it was had withdrawn a couple of hours earlier (for some bed-related activities). Also I think our land-couple aren't very happy with us...

Tomorrow I have an appointment at (with? in?) the bank to talk about loans. Yay?
Also I am now a member of the NHH curling team. Yay!

One of the big laws of the universe is that The neighbours always has bad taste in music. But my neighbours? Quite often show good taste in music - or perhaps the same weird taste in music as me. But now, the last 15 minutes they've played what could be one of my mixtapes from the eighties (although without the occasional radio-jockey voice on top), it is almost scary.


But really, it's time to go to bed, since I have a concert tomorrow, and need more of my beauty sleep than usually. (Also I've had enough beers for today.)

Today my life feels just like today's PhD Comic



Except there is no wine and no chocolate. Only the (all right - only 42(he)) essays to grade