As I said in the previous entry I came from Scotland (or Copenhagen, Denmark to be exact) at 4am this morning. The reason behind this is that almost all of the airtraffic controllers at Norways main controlcentre have been 'sick' the last few days.
The reason behind this is that Avinor - responsible for air traffic control services in Norway - has decided to close the main centre and move everything to Sola outside Stavanger. This is to be acomplished within four years. The strange thing is that Avinor has used around 1 billion NOK (£ 80m) to upgrade the main controlcentre and will now get less than ten years of service out of it. They will then be forced to upgrade the new site for a huge load of money as well, to get it up to grade. All to 'save' money.
What's even stranger is that earlier this years the regional controlcentre at Værnes (outside Trondheim) was closed and moved north to Bodø (700km further north). This also sparked a huge reaction among the airtraffic controllers, who went on sickleave. To make it even better Avinor also had spent a huge amount of money to upgrade the Værnes-controlcentre to one of the most moderne in Europe - all machinery will remain at Værnes, and the controllers have to take classes again to learn how to use the old and soon to be outdated equipment at Bodø. This also was a sqeme to save money, acording to the latest figures they hav saved around nil.
Well all this caused our flight from London, Heathrow to be cancelled. A not-so-compentent serviceman at SAS rebooked us to flight through Copenhagen (he tried to get us to go on a flight to Torp - two hours drive out of Oslo - first, but we refused. This was a good thing since this flight was cancelled a bit later). The plane to Copenhagen left Heathrow around 50 minutes after we had been rebooked, so we were in for a small run - although we reached the departure lounge with time to spare. In Copenhage there reigned a controlled chaos among the Norwegian passengers. Planes where cancelled all over the place, and others delayed several hours. One of the few SAS-planes going to Oslo was to go at 7.50pm, it left shortly before midnight. Our flight was supposed to get going at 10.45pm, but we got to board the plane aroudn midnight and didn't land i Oslo 'till 1.30am. Getting our bags, running in to Robin's mother (who'd been together with us in Scotland, and had tickets for a plane that actually went from London to Oslo, albeit several hours delayed) and thet off to find transport in to town. Lucikly they had put up busses that drove off as soon as they where filled - we of course where among the first passengers on one of them, and sat there for ages. 2.50am the bus started it'a engines and around one hours later we where finaly home - five minutes after that again we had collapsed on top of the bed.
Back from Scotland as of 4am today.
Going to Trondheim for a workinterview tonigh - travelling eight hours on a nightbus to get to a half an hour interview and then back again the same day.
Madness isn't it? But I really want this job so there's no way around it. Here's hoping for the best.
1. You're a student/employee at the University of Toledo
2. You at the College of Business Administration
3. You need detailed instructions on how to turn on your laptop!?!?!?!?
Look here: How to Turn On Your Laptop
From Coolios Weblog
A short little quiz to find out how much of an American you are:
Foreigners confuse the crap out of me. But, of course they do. I'm American!
I got 14/16 btw.
From wtfpeople.com/
Ok, it's Tuesday and maybe a bit too early to begin longing for the week-end - but then again I've been longing for this week-end for months now.
Just been told that I'm needed to work this Saturday, since the one originally has been set up to work want go go off for a few days. That's not a problem since I didn't have any proper plans for that day, except packing.
It's the Sunday that's the main thing. Although the plane leaves all too early, we're going to London - so most of that day will be spent in a pub with the Sunday Times. Oh joy!
According to the Norwegian daily Adresseavisen an eldery gentleman has lent two door-to-door carpetsellers a total of 110.000 NOK (almost £10.000). The first one got 100.000 NOK and promptly disappeared before the elderly chap returnetwith a receipt for him to sign.
A few days later another salesman came calling at his door, and he managed to loan 10.000 NOK without much trouble, he also - of course - promptly vanished.
The local paper in this town, Trondheim has the past few month been riddled with stories of door-to-door carpetsellers who cheat and steal. So when two such sellers come to your door and you lend them both a great deal of money - you really only have yourself to blame, IMHO.
Now that was an exhausting week-end. Driving up to Hitra in partly bad weather and with loads of ignorant drivers took a bit longer that expected. We didn't arrive until 2 o'clock in the am. So time for a few hours sleep before the reunion-program started.
Little time to rest. First on the program was a trek to my great-grandparents home (no roads) for coffee and cake. Not everybody who had come to this reunion felt up to it (some had more dodgy legs than others ;-). But for dinner a bit later we were approxomately 150 people. Lapskaus (lobscouse for the englishspeaking or just scouse for Liverpudlians) was the one and only course, problem was of course that the caterer was etremely stingy on both the quantity of scouse and the bits and pices he put in it. So many people didn't get as much as they wanted. Luckily there was plenty of cake (Marie Antoinette's 'let them eat cake', springs to mind) - so I don't think anybody went hungry for long.
Feeling a bit on the tired side, Robin and I retired early (sometime between eigth and nine) while the party didn't let up until sometime in the wee hours of the morning (around 5am I think most people had gone home).
There was a lunch planned, but since we had to get back to Oslo - with a detour to Trondheim for lunch with Robin's mother (who just had a birthday), we drove off early.
Driving back to Oslo was also plaged by shoddy weather at the beginning and shoddy drivers in between. This and the fact there werte several speedcheck on the way meant that the drive took a bit longer time than usual, but we got home in the end and more or less collapsed on the bed. After driving 660 km (412,5 miles) in a not-too-comfortable car, who can blame us?
A certain country, I won't mention which, likes to dub it self the 'land of the free', 'a shine example of true democracy' and so forth.
Problem is of course, it's all a lie. The future for this country might be the one portrayed in this little flash-film (remember to turn on the speakers).
Just a few hours now till I'm off to Hitra for the week-end. Or like I use to explain it, off to Trondheim and two hours to the left.
There's a family reunion this Saturday and it's sort of a must-attend thing. Misunderstand me wrongly, I'm looking forward to it - but such thing can be a bit tedious.
Only thing I'm not looking to is the drive there, somewhere between eigth to ten hours is somewhat of a bother. Flying wouldn't have shortened the trip that much since the boats from Trondheim doesn't go that often.
Is it just me or have the animals of this planet finally started to get some sense in to their heads?
There is a pattern that's starting to emerge:
* Pup shoots man, saves litter mates
* Kitten tries to hi-jack Belgian plane
Don't bother with G-mail or other whatchamacallits.
Sign up now for the worlds longest email-account.
(And yes, it's free)
It so long that:
* Some web forms are uanble to read your email adress
* Some email software can't be configured
* People have a hard time typing it (best reason of them all ;-)
* Companies will think it's fake
* It's the longest alphabetical email adress on Earth
http://www.abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijk.com/
Great news!
According to a recent survey by The Times the Lib Dems are neck and neck with Labour and Conservatives. Finally the British two-party system is on the brink of collapse.
UK down, US to go.
A couple of exciting news at the Norwegian Wine Monopoly:
1. A cheap champagne - Champagne Brut Tradition (Baron-Fuente). At the low price of 179,70 NOK (£14.60) it's the cheapest one of them all. And a Norwegian paper gives it a score of 85/100 - so it must be sampled.
2. Ardbeg Uigeadail - must have! Oh! That right, we already have a bottle. Must have more!
Can't say I'm surprised.
I haven't flown that much with RyanAir, but I've never been all that pleased with them - even with the socalled low prices.
I'm not alone in disliking this airline - http://www.ryan-be-fair.org/
Maby not for the big-leauge criminals (we're too small for them) - but certainly for small time criminals or people just starting up in that line of work.
Accoriding to recent press-reports in the Norwegian daily Aftenposten there is a 1,2% chance for a robbery preformed in public to be solved and the guilty party punished.
WTF?
Nciket from the Isle of Arran Brewery homepage:
Zymocenosilicaphobia - excessive or irrational fear or an empty beer glass; prejudice or hatred of an empty beer glass.
I think I've got this one...
This is a story run in most scandinavian papers the last week or so.
Scientist have discovered that people with blue eyes are more prone to binge drinking than others, due to the fact that they are more shy...
For me this just proves (yet again) that some scientist just have too much free time on their hands.
As you all probably know it is now forbidden to wear religious symbols in French schools. Critics have attacked the law claiming it to be directed solely at the muslim hijab. But as we all know, resourceful minds always come up with a way to beat the law. The Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidene has a story on it.
The muslim tradition states that women should cover their hair, more or less for the same reasons Norwegian women used to wear headscarves in the past. But two young pupils in the south of France have started wearing wigs - therefore still covering their hair as per the muslim tradition, but doing it in a way that is not forbidden by law.
A exhausting weekend has just passed us by.
On the Saturday there was a 'Back-to-basics' workshop with the dancegroup (OSCDG) with a social dance-evening to follow. We left a bit earlier than the others from the workshop since Robin's legs started to hurt. Upon leaving I got a message on my mobile, stating there was a minor flooding at work - in the room where Robin and I had stored around 50 pices of stuff (mainly books - go figure) we haven't got room for at home. So an hour of rescuing the boxes and books later we finaly got to go home and relax a few hours before heading to the dance again. Exhausting but fun.
The sunday was spent on the couch, period.
Not even a forthnight 'till we're going to the British Isles. The plane on the morning of the 19th, adn we'll spend a couple of days in London before heading north to Inverness and Speyside.
It's not like I'm looking forward to it or anything.
In the meantime, this weekend is taken with a family renunion at the birthplace of my forefathers. Have to drive the whole way, it only takes 8 hours or so.
So what been happening as of late?
Well this spring I moved in with Robin and our real life together started.
On April 30th I proposed to her infromt of around 50ish people at the Aberlour Dinner during the Speyside Festival. This was promptly taped by a gang of Americans who are making a DVD-series called 'The Malt Project'. So look for that on the shelves of your local whisky-webstore this winter/spring.
Wedding arrangements started taking off, the progress can be follow over at the wedding blog.
Summer holidays came and went all too quickly, might have had something to do with the fact I only took one week during summer - the rest has been/will be used during whiskyfestivals in Dufftown.
I've gotten the boot from my workplace on grounds of the downturn of sales, being the last person employed I really have no problem with that, specially since we were planning on moving from Oslo to Trondheim anyway - the plans have just been speeded up a bit.
That's the short version on what's been going on.
I just can't belive the amount of spam-comment's I've gotten lately. The blog's been more or less dead, but the spam has just kept on coming.
Please stop it.