Norway in a Nutshell
Before putting up the cheap postcards of the fantastic Norwegian summer, these must be shared.
Preikestolen is possibly the only other tourist attraction in the world (apart from Amsterdam’s Red Light District) where upon arriving, you promptly lie down, hang on and enjoy it
The magical song and dance at the waterfall
Where’s Dmitry?
Multi-lingual fish market
Ship, roof and ship
HTC Diamond Doesn't Ring?
This has annoyed me for several days. Do you have a HTC Diamond (great phone by the way) that seems awfully timid to announce new calls? Calls come in and are missed with neither peep or soothing vibration?
It may be because the ringer volume is muted even though the system volume is high. Press the volume up button on the side, and the system volume will show. Then tap the left arrow which appears on the top left to get the ringer volume. Push that up, and hey presto your Diamond shall sing again.
17 days agoMore stuff in: drivel
Vegetarian
For 14 years now I’ve been a vegetarian. At the time, it seemed it was only odd, washed-up hippies who were into it. Eating choices were more limited then, supermarket shelves did not offer a plethora of tofu varieties, and restaurants could only offer to pick out the bacon from a Caesar salad. That is, in Australia. Here in Norway the situation is pretty grim for vegetarians, although no doubt improving. It’s not yet at the stage of being able to find tofu at a normal supermarket, but luckily my local ethnic has it in stock.
During the Norwegian leg of my fantastic Scandy tour of 2006 I was at a dinner in a cabin in the far, far north. The others at the table chowed down on some kind of moose stew, while my hosts prepared a very tasty wild mushroom stew for The Difficult Eater1. The head chef, the father of a friend of mine, was sitting next to me and was quite befuddled by vegetarianism.
“So, why are you a vegetarian?” came the question shortly after starting. I gave my usual vague answer. “I see,” he replies, thinking for a bit and then earnestly adding, “but how?” He really couldn’t understand how I could physically bring myself to do it. To him it was as if I had chosen a life of celibacy. Conversation moved on to other matters, but after a few minutes he stopped eating, looked at me, and said with a sigh: “well, it’s your life.” In his eyes, not only was I celibate for life, but was now running off and joining an extremist Pakistani madrassa. Once again conversation moved on, but from what I remember on at least two more occasions he would stop and bring it up again. “But how? I don’t understand.” Shaking his head he would once again add, “well, it’s your life.”
I have met a few veggos here though, one of whom (bless her sweet, adorable soul) gave her life to vegetarianism thanks to Moby. Good to hear that licensing every track off Play was not his only life accomplishment. Oh, and dating Natalie Portman, that has to count for something.
I knew I hated Moby for a reason.
1 On the spectrum of difficult eaters, surely a plain ‘ol vegetarian rates pretty low these days. Try eating with a gluten-intolerant, calorie-sensitive vegan.
52 days agoMore stuff in: drivel
Sunday Craft
This rainy Sunday I scratched two of my (many) perennial itches: neatness and creativity.
Sorting and cataloguing photographs somewhat sated my pernickety Virgo desire for neatness and order. When things are not ‘in place’ I am essentially incapacitated until they are. Someone dear to me composed a little ditty about this, something along the lines of:
“Something’s in a place it shouldn’t be! I’m going to fetch my apparatus to put it right”
They would gently sing it to me in an ultimately vain attempt for me to come to my senses when I was in a ‘putting-in-order’ paralysis.
In the process of tagging, starring and deleting I found a number of photos I wanted to polish up and put online. The ensuing Photoshopping sated my second itch of the day. As for other itches, let me just thank-you for the cream recommendation; it’s working out fantastically.
As a result, there are a number of new pictures up in:
63 days agoComment [3]