Hei! You look like...

It's not easy being a hairy American... :P

Last week (with beard)
- Tom Hanks (from Castaway) 5+

Last week (with beard and knit cap)
- B-real (from Cypress Hill) 1

This uka (beard reduced to wide moustache)
- "Hi, my name is Earl." 5+
- Borat 1

I didn't mind the first few Earl comments when they were said to my face - Jason Lee is a handsome dude. The rest are not dudes I want to evoke. I think the moustache might take a vacation as well in favor of increased make-out potential.

At least 90% of the music I hear here is the worst of American radio-chaff. Most of the programming on TV is American with Norsk subtitles - except for the cartoons which are American with Norsk dubbing. Same at the theaters. Yes - thanks - I do know that Sacha Baron Cohen is British. The Borat movie was all about unhealthy obsession with America.

Open letter to the world: We're not that cool. Yes - there is a lot of good music in the states - but most of it is never recorded and you'll never hear the bits that are unless systems of media distribution continue to change. Please try to focus somewhere else for the next 100 years. Iran has some nice (slow) cinema and Germany is supposed to have incredible theater.

Også - Also

So.
Wow. I just met my first actually helpful administrative Nordmann. The first person who let me point out a problem without getting defensive. Toosen takk RANDI! Du er veldig flink! You are very clever.
I visited Randi yesterday and explained my beef with the unnecessary fees and redundant bureaucracy and just plain ridiculousness of asking me to put down 3 000 NOK against trashing my room when they already have control over 81 000 NOK of my flow. I went back today and she'd taken care of the problem. Randi arranged for a direct transfer of my funds from the SiT general account to the SiT bolig (residence) account. She wrote up a tiny little english contract paragraph missing some key phrasing. We added it - printed it - I signed and *poof* fees and running all over town - gone. Wow.
When we were all stuck in the basement the SiT bolig people just stood there like deer in headlights and would put their hands up defensively and cry "It's not our fault!" and then turn and run away.

She even said that maybe I am helping to change their systems for the better - has no one pointed out the ridiculousness before? Anyway -- Randi = A+ Nordmann!!

Også.
Last night I played my first Norwegian ultimate. I am going to try to be nice because someday someone might read this... but DAMN!!! that sucked. Like SUPER GIANT BOLD TYPEFACE NEON LIGHTS !!!!!! SUCKED. I will be back every single time - but I won't be quite so happy about it.
I am used to an organic pick-up game. I don't need a stack or score or a dump - but this was like a jostled hive of hornets and another jostled hive of hornets. People running willy-nilly. Hospital passes all day and night. Everyone dropping everything. Arms flailing (the previously mentioned Jude is a tall long armed guy who doesn't run with his arms in near his sides and wears a damn hard watch and didn't take it off and hugely back-handed/wristed/watched me in the forehead and my forehead is split open and bumpy right now). People just clogged each other to no end. Bah. Norwegians may be taller but they jump sucky.
Ugh! The group organizer seemed to have slightly more skill but not by much.
Out of close to 30 people (two games) - there were maybe four Norwegians that showed some skill or promise. There's German Andi who I tossed with last week and will enjoy playing against/with and there's my wee ruddy Scottish mate Sean Suckling - Little Flame - The Ginger Streak. Bigger heart than all of the others combined - he's brand new to it and can't throw very well but he'll quickly outdistance most of the other 26 if he really cares as much as he seems to. I need to send him an email and tell him I thought he did great and to not stress on throwing so much at the moment because nearly everyone starts in the role of receiver.
The fields were small and rocky and while the general field was a good width - the endzone was a more of a centered third-width box. This was okay (not great) when we were playing small fields of 4-on-4 or so - but went to complete shit when I convinced them to combine two smaller games into a larger game and the group leader wanted to keep the box. 7-8 people running into this box was not unlike visiting one of the city center bars on a Thursday night - uncomfortably crowded.
We played only maybe 1.5 hours - boo. When it was over I went to get my bike (left near the first game I played with) and came back to find everyone just finishing something that had them standing in a circle. The organizing group is a Christian Fellowship of some sort. Some sort of church group. They play disc on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
German Andi played with a different group (NTNUI) on Sunday (while I was picking blåbær) and he says they weren't quite so horrid. I hope I will play with them this Sunday but I am supposed to tour the Samfundet (student union club/bar/cafe/maze) and learn about volunteering and maybe doing some live sound there. My only fear is that they may have way fancier gear than any of the bars in Boston ever bother to pay for and that I may have to learn some fancy multi-tiered menu systems and crap before I can do even the simplest set-ups. Not that I can't usually figure that shit out - but to have to do it in a language I don't yet really know - that has DISASTER POTENTIAL for sure. The tour is at 1800 and the game at 2000 - hope to do both.

I haven't seen any metal yet. :(
Ha det bra!

Hjem Søt Hjem

It's been something like 12 days (11 and change) since my last post og (and) I apologize for that... I have definitely had time to post but not the will.

I've been in my room since the evening of the 17th and it's OK (ooh-koh) and I have been attending class since Mondag. I have 12 hours of sit down class per week and 1 hour of conversation on Fridays - not happening this week because we don't have enough words yet.

Hei. Jeg heter Seth, og jeg kommer fra Boston.
Hva heter du? Hvor kommer du far?

One very nice thing about norsk - no conjugation. Tenses yes. Conjugation no.

Jeg HETER Seth.
Hva HETER du?
Han HETER Kyung-Te. Hun HETER Antonia. Det HETER...
Vi HETER... Dere HETER... De HETER...

Get it?
I don't have to learn a bunch of different verb forms for different peoples/pronouns/pronomen.

MY ROOMMATES
------------
- Julia (don't pronounce the "J") kommer fra Tyskland (I haven't yet sussed out how that means Germany) og (don't pronounce the "g") will be freeze-drying food og learning norsk. She drinks only carbonated water and brought her own carbonater men (but) needs a new gas cartridge.
- Salah kommer fra Bangladesh. He's about 30 and will be studying... I forget. We don't talk about school. Bangladeshi often eat with their hands. He tries not to eat with his hands in front of others but I saw him and it looked like great fun and we are going to try together.
- Jean-Julian kommer fra Frankrike. He's studying architecture. Will be going to Kina (China) for a month with class and has been in the flat only about two hours in the last week.
------------

On Sunday I went blueberry picking with a Wolfram (Tyskland/Germany M), Jude (Nord-England/Northern England M), Im (Sør Korea/South Korea F), and Stella (Hellas/Greece F). Im and Stella are former kjellerfolk (cellar people). Tuesday night I went fishing with Mathis and Marc (Tyskland M) and together we caught 10 herring in a few hours - or more than few - didn't feel sporting to use lures og no bait at all.
Wolfram and Jude bor sammen. They live together in the flat just below mine. While I was fishing they followed through on the plan to make Jam from our blueberries.
Last night I grilled four herring with garlic stuffed in their bellies.
My small end table is covered in ripening green plums from a tree not far from here.
For a while I was eating the rose hips that grow everywhere while I walked from place to place - there's not much too them but if you carefully eat just the outside layer they are pretty tasty.
No dumpstering yet - life has been exhausting.

Bleh. This whole blog was supposed to be in list form so I didn't have to type so much... but... food is expensive but food can be quite cheap. Yesterday I biked down (I live near the top of a ridiculous hill system) to a new supermarket (new for me) to take advantage of a one-day 40% off deal on frukt og grønt (fruits and vegetables).

I know that my first picture should be some sort of glorious mountain-to-fjord hiking trip panorama - but it isn't. Here is my receipt from yesterday.



Let me indulge in some math. Here's how we convert units. And figure out just how cheap some things are.

Let's pick two items. The clementines and the carrots (gulrot).
The 40% was taken off at the end so I will do the same.



I don't think I have ever bought clementines by the pound but $1.19 seems pretty damn good for - even the $2.00 that it would have cost before the -40% seems pretty sweet. Same with carrots. I forgot to think about the Kg/lbs relationship until yesterday. Am I right? Even without the 40% off that's pretty sweet compared to American produce prices.

Quickly some of the other vegetables. At full and discounted prices...
Hodekal (cabbage) $1.26-0.75/lb
Tomater (pretty nice ones) $3.17-1.90/lb
Bananer $1.42-0.85/lb
Ferkspotet (fresh taters) $1.18-0.71/lb
And the Kroner has actually gone down in the last few weeks (I enter the country and the currency drops... coincidence?) so these are actually slightly inflated. I actually just made myself curious about NOK/USD activity around my arrival...


Next time I go to the market I will bring my calculator and maybe I can actually afford the brussel sprouts I've been wanting. I can eat them with hvitøk while watching Headbanger's Ball on the TV I pulled from the trash.

There was a lot of other stuff I wanted to say but thus has taken a long time now.
Ask me questions if you like. I think I am going to drop some Duckets, nei, Kroner on some new gearing for my bike today and a few tools so I can try to do the work myself. Also I need to figure out a phone sooner rather than later. Until then you can AIM or SKYPE me if I am near my computer. And if you ask for my address you can mail me something.

I'm off to argue about having to pay ridiculous fees just to give money back to the organization that is already holding all of my money. It would go something like this - pay SiT (studenter i trondheim) 100NOK for them to write me a check from my money that is sitting in their SiT general account - then pay a fee at the bank to cash the check at a bank and pay another 65NOK at the bank or post office to pay the bill for the security deposit for my SiT owned/managed room. They want a relatively small amount money from me to make sure I won't trash their room but they already have control of ALL of my money. Not likely.

I guess you deserve a nice picture now. Or two. Or some nice ones and some not so nice ones and some others.

Here's my beard and facial expression while hiking.

Same hiking trip. WE ARE LEGION!

Hmm...

Det er my moustache in front of a statue of the last king.
I need a better shot of it - my moustache and not the king statue.
Cuz it looks funnier than this.


Og de er some nature something-or-others.




Ha det bra! "Have it well." = GOODBYE

BLAH

so.
i have a lot of new friends because we have been forced to live in one basement room together.
school and semi-independent housing association have fucked up and none of our rooms are available - they said sheepishly "well it's not our fault" in front of all of us - what? i can't think clear or know what to write about because there is so much. i bought some bread and cold cooked chicken and brown cheese (goat+cow = a little sweet) and some carrots and an onion and a tin of makeral in tomato sauce on friday after i got here and have been eating crumbly sandwiches since then. i really want hot food - which i will maybe get tonight at a BBQ at the other student village tonight. i live most of the way up a gigantic hill. i don't know how high i climb but it makes me want a granny gear (wish i'd had one put on before i left)
i just asked for this word - kjellerfolk (sounds like "shelleh") - basement folk
our basement room is the chinese student union space and they came to both us a little bit the other day when i was still half asleep
our basement houses 4 koreans (the girl is very friendly - the men less so but one shows some potential with a frisbee)(more on beating my frisbee to shit in a parking lot some other time), 1 italian knucklehead who totally does not fit my mental understanding of italians (red-blonde and gets far too embarassed far too easily), 1 gangly tall irish-man who will work here rather than study, a blond russian, an absentee fenchman (he's missing all of the group fun), a spunky greek woman *koff* cute/smart/fun/etc *koff* and me.
my pronunciation has been commended by many people from many country - saying french names and korean names and norwegian words (i have learned very little norwegian so far - which is frustrating - but i will have many months of classes starting soon so i will wait patiently)(i have some italian from my walking time with simone who initially introduced himself as simon which i wouldn't accept - simone is plenty easy to say)
now we're sitting around doing fuck all in the housing office because the basement is a bit depressing. orientation starts tomorrow and i have an offer of housing from an american friend of susan's who has lived here for 30 years.
anyway - please distribute this blog address to anyone you know who might care for an update - i am going to go back to the actual experience in progress.
i have very limited internet access. there is very little wireless around here. more on the actual campus - but they block P2P completely so i don't know how i will keep up with certain american things thta make me feel comfortable (comic books, some TV, movies, books) hoping to find some way around it but i guess maybe they catch you eventually - the swedish don't care a bit about this shit - i thought it would be the same here - bleh
we're learning to count in each other's languages and i am missing it

i'm in some south-easterly neighborhood of Oslo
or i might be somewhere in Canada
overnight train tonight - i'll see Trondheim by 0730
and my room some time tomorrow afternoon
more for real later

i want to go outside and i am hungry