I spent a few hours napping in a departure lounge of Frankfurt airport this afternoon waiting for my Oslo flight. Sitting behind me was a middle aged Japanese man, an engineer of some kind who works on those traffic computers found in cars. He is off to Oslo on a business trip and it is [...]
I just read in today’s Aftenposten that you can ask Norwegian librarians, via SMS, chat, or email, pretty much anything you are wondering about and they claim they will answer within a day. Here is the small article which announced this service: Lurer du på hvor langt det er mellom Røros og Trondheim, hvorfor myggstikk [...]
Nicolas de Fer, geographer to the French royal court had this to say about Scandinavians in 1708: “The Swedes are an honest and courageous folk and fond of the arts and sciences. The air of their country is clear, keen and salubrious; their forests are the haunt of numerous wild and ferocious animals. The Danes [...]
Two Korean friends, Seyeon and Youngsoo, visited me for a few days in Stavanger before continuing their month of travel around Europe. I treated them to some outdoor fun, a stroll around old Stavanger, and splashed about in a forest lake nearby my apartment. We rode the Clipper tour boat into the beautiful Lysefjorden and [...]
ChinaJapan.org Down My host for my ChinaJapan.org site had a crash and had no functional backups. They handled the whole thing with complete incompetence which I will be describing at major hosting forums to warn future customers. I’m going to be moving the site to another host where I am hosting Muninn and FrogInAWell along [...]
Sunday was hiking day. I have been biking around islands recently, but it was time to head to the mountains for a nice day trip. Joining my uncle, cousins, and a number of friends, we took the ferry to Tau, and drove to one of my favorite places to hike in this area: Trollkjeften. I [...]
I hopped on my bicycle and left Saturday afternoon to go on another elaborate reading/biking adventure. I decided to go to Kvitsøy which is a small island full of historical relics which is accessible by ferry about 30 minutes bike ride from my home. My uncle Thomas’ last question to me as I left the [...]
While enjoying my daily musli this morning, I was amused to find this written on my milk carton: “Fordi vi nordmenn ikke er spesielt bortskjemte når det gjelder sollys, har vi beriket TineMelk Ekstra Lett med vitamin D.” “Because we Norwegians aren’t exactly spoiled when it comes to getting sunlight, we have enriched Extra Low-fat [...]
I have never looked closely at the Norwegian laws regarding things like adoption, maternal/paternal leave, and marriage. I repeat what I hear from friends, when other friends ask, but never really knew the details. Thanks to some colorful charts in yesterday’s Stavanger Aftenblad, I got a little bit of a better understanding, all of my [...]
After my adventures at the city archive, I checked the sky to confirm decent weather and embarked on this afternoon’s biking adventure. I packed a book on Norwegian treason trials and took the bus out to Mosterøy, which is just north of Stavanger’s peninsula and reachable by tunnel and bus. For anyone making the same [...]