Snusmumriken

I got up at eight today, threw on a jumper because I don’t believe in heated houses (that’s a lie, I just can’t stand high temperatures) and drank my morning coffee in bed while reading test-chapters that two of my fellow students had written for a group meeting with our study adviser today. It took a bit longer than planned, and I ended up getting dressed really quickly, making lunch even faster and packing my bag faster than I thought possible. For some reason I couldn’t find my rucksack, i guess I must have thrown it into a closet or something in an act of tidyness, - and I ran to school.

While running, I realised I hadn’t put my bra on, but I didn’t have the time to return home.

Different people, and especially different generations have different views on what’s considered decent. My mum thinks you can be decently dressed while not wearing a bra, but that for instance showing too much of your breasts is less decent. I don’t care about how much of people’s thighs and breasts I see, but I feel practically vulgar when my tits are jumping up and down (usually making my jumper ride upwards). Today, i’ve been oddly concious of my appearance. I’ve even been wearing my (rather thin) jacket indoors to prevent people from noticing this act of not being properly dressed.

This could have happened on a day where I didn’t have a full program until eight in the evening. Of course it happened today. Stupid world.

After having been “repaired” for three months or so, I finally got my old phone back, unrepaired. The repairing firm wrote that it was water-damaged which isn’t convered by the guarantee. And no. I haven’t been dipping the phone in glasses of water, not even tea (although, being diuretic and all, perhaps that would drain hte water out of the phone.) The phone really wasn’t even moist when it broke.

Seeing as the phone I’m currently using insist on turning itself off everytime I speak to anyone, even when the battery is full, i started looking for the cheapest noki (those are hte only ones i understand) phone i could find online. The chess web shop doesn’t have any cheap ones anymore, and i think the cheapest one I found online is the nokia 1200. But it doesn’t say if it has a wirdlist-function. Does all phones have a wordlist function these days?

Please say that it has. It looks nice and low tech.

Today I’ve been to the dentist and filled my first (albeit tiny) cavity since I was 18. I’ve also checked my eyesight, and although my eyesight seems to be the best on this side of town, which is relieving, my head hurts. Off to study, I guess, and i’ve picked up the unrepaired phone.

Two weeks ago, I went to Stockholm and uppsala to visit a girl in my class a school. I tried to write a bit about it, but it all turned documentary-y and weird, and I ended up deleting half of it and never finishin the rest. But old or new. It’s still text. Here it is.

Uppsala/stockholm 1. Getting there and getting home.

I’m on the train home from Uppsala, where my friend Maria is an exchange student for a couple of months. One part of me wishes that I had been there too, which I could have if it wasn’t for the fact that I chose to stay in Oslo. Fortunately there is another part of me who is incredibly happy to be where I am, nowhere temporary, but rather good old permanent Oslo.

I brought books over, planning to read my way to Sweden and back. I should have known beforehand that this would fail miserably, but I guess I am the naïve kind who never learns from experiences. Trains have this weird effect on me. I end up zoning out. Even though this was a six hour drive, I spent part of it reading a novel, part of it sleeping and most of it just zoning out and staring out of the window while looking at the landscapes and the houses gliding by.

The wagon I was in was jammed with a group of free masons in their fifties, and they managed to add a whole new set of prejudices to the ones I already had against free masons. There were three young mothers in the wagon, and as none of the children can have been more than a few months of age they needed to sleep. One of the mothers had gotten a seat in the middle of the free masons, and asked one of the frontmost free masons if they could swap seats, but he was completely unwilling, stating that “If we keep swapping seats, chaos will ensue”. After this the free masons downed five bottles of Aquavit, (60%? liquor), got really loud and started smoking in the bathrooms. At the same time, the kids kept on waking up whenever they fell asleep because of the noise, but oddly enough didn’t start screaming. The mothers were starting to get that desperate “oh fuck my day is going to become a nightmare if the kid doesn’t get some sleep soon”-look in their eyes, especially the one who was seated in the middle of the crowd. When a lady who was seated next to me asked the masons to please take it a bit easier, they started yelling that “she had to have some problems that she was taking out on them, and what a bitch she was who wouldn’t let them have any fun”. Arguing with someone who has downed half a bottle of hard liquor isn’t too much fun, and for some reason people in their 50’s and sixties manage to be worse than most in that aspect, possibly because they can say that “hey, I’m older than you, thus I am right”.

Now, on the way home, there aren’t any masons. I won’t be writing about the actual trip until tomorrow, because this is turning into a rather long body of text.

I think the train just hit a moose or something. There was a thump, the train braked really quickly and stood still for quite some time.

Uppsala 2: Actually being there.
(the part I never really got around to write)

Maria lives at a place called Flogsta, where the houses are tall and eastern block-ey, and where the corridors are incredibly long. Where twelve people are sharing one kitchen, and where everyone screams as loudly as they can at ten o’clock every night. Apparantly they have been doing it since the sixties. I can understand how sharing a kitchen with eleven other people creates a need to get rid of some built up aggression. It felt weird. It was a place like I explected student housing to be like, but completely unlike how it was when I lived in a student house myself.

And then I stopped writing. I was sitting on the train in the middle of the night, it was chokingly hot and I couldn’t sleep. Yeah. So the rest of the holiday, even the nice photos that were supposed to make the text less lonely will be my secret. Haha

There once was a man called Elling Pedersen, a sailor who was happily married to a girl called Marthe Thorsdatter. His father, who was called Peder had died a few years before, - thus his firstborn son, born in 1750 was called Peder Ellingsen (nr1). Unfortunately he died before he was christened. Three years later, the couple got a new son, named him Peder Ellingsen (nr2) and he dies before he’s christened. In 1756 they got a third son, called him Peder Ellingsen (nr3), and christened him in the local church in Lyngør. Three years later, they got a new son, named him Nils Ellingsen, and having two living kids they must have been happy for some time, - until something happened and both the wife and both sons died.

Elling waited twelwe years before remarrying in 1773, and in 1774 he got a son and christened him Peder Ellingsen (nr4), but unfortunately he died the year after. Only one year later he got a new son. He was called Peder Ellingsen (nr5) and lived to get married and have kids. He also got a daughter, and named her Marthe, after his fist wife. She got to be twenty nine, but never married.

I’m writing about a food riot in 1801, where both Peder and Elling receivs a barrel of wheat. Fortunately. If the only surviving of six sons, or rather the only surviving of sive sons named Peder Ellingsen had died of starvation at an age of 24, it wouldn’t have been too nice.

I’m not sure if it’s a victorious story about the guy who never gave up, or if it’s a story about the guy who didn’t realise that the name of Peder Ellingsen really was cursed.

Does anyone remember Spellbinder, a polish/australian scifi-fantasy tv show that ran (in norway at least) in 95-96. I was really fond of it back then. I had just started my life as a complete fantasy buff, something that would continue for at least four years. Spellbinder had everything I loved at the time, a weird fantasy world, a parallell world where the antagonist can start anew, poor people versus an oppressive government.. you name it.

I just refound the show on quicksilverscreen, and I’ve watched the first four episodes. In spite of how much I loved it when i was 11, it’s really remarkably bad. It’s a too clear spoken series about people internalising an oppressive government. That the oppressed people in the parallell world are played by polish actors speaking english underlines it in a way. The parallell world-cast’s unfamiliarity with the english language also makes sure that they can’t act. The dialogue is stiff and the acting is stiffer. In addition to this, most costumes look like they have been bought on H&M and sewn patches on. Lovely.

And nostalgia makes me enjoy it.

1. My back is burning. The doctor said “you probably have hypersensitive skin” when i sked her if i was about to get an infection from all the work out machines, the all day sessions in front of hte computer and all the guitar playing, - but she just told me to eat painkillers and keep on doing whatever i usually do. She didn’t even get a blood sample to check for infections. I’ve been eating four rounds of ibuprofen+paracetamol a day like she told me to, but refrained from… doing back-exercises at the gym, writing too much on the computer and playing guitar. It got a bit better. As the doctor said it was the skin that hurt, nothing muscular, i tried using that ZON cream, but that make it worse, not feeling your skin and still hurting underneath isn’t nay fun. And then i had to write on the computer today and the day before, and i ended up playing guitar because i wanted to and BAM. Now it pains so much it’s hard to focus. Sensitive skin my arse.

2. I have found the appartment of my dreams.

3. My mother talked to some person at the bank, who said “yes she’s a student, but she can get a “first home loan”, seeing as she has lots of savings and seeing as she can rent one of the rooms to someone. But now i talked to the bank, and of course I am chanceless. To be allowed take the fact that I’d be renting out a bedroom into consideration when buying a place, it needs to have it’s own toilet and it’s own kitchen. I’ve never had my own kitchen or toilet. Ever. What kind of a rule is that? I know i could manage. I’ve been budgeting and i know it would work if they would give me the money. But when they won’t, and when the man on the phone sounded really patronising, like “oh, you think you can get a loan when you have one and a half year left of your studies, you are so cute”-patronising. It’s no use. I’m not trying that again until… a long time from now.

Does that mean that the only way to buy an appartment is that my parents get a loan, buy the house, and then gradually transfers it to me?

This was an annoyed rant. I’ll write something smarter later on.

I’m sad now.

Past
I’ve been planning a few posts, but i haven’t gotten as fas as to write any thing. Things are happening. I’ve gotten a part time job at NLI. I’m going to stockholm next thursday. Me and martine have bought tickets for finland in april, yesterday was a nasty snow-storm, and today my parents came visiting.

Present
This evening, i went to the housewarming of a friend of mine, and we ended up going out, and as there were people under 20 around, finding somewhere to go. The end of the story is that i ended up paying to get into some RnB place, and as I had paid to get in, for the first time in my life, i decided to enjoy it. I tried to dance and all. Fortunately there were likeminded people around saying “i know we paid to get in but… i really don’t feel comfortable here. Could we find a pub or something?” So we did. But I forgot my lovely home knitted westham scarf at the scary RnB place. I guess i need to return there later.

Random
Stevia is a sexy weed, in case you didn’t know. Sweeter than sugar and grown on the windowcill. Unfortunately, they are not in common sale in Norway. I got mine from Lene last year, and you can get one form me if you’d like to.

As virrvarr mentioned, I just made baby stevias, so if anyone in Oslo would like a stevia baby, they will be ready in some weeks.

Of course, you can’t exchange a spoonful of sugar iwth one of dried stevia. Stevia, beeing thirty times sweeter can make your food taste too sweet and rather bitter. You also have to add some other sort of emulgator. I’m still learning to use it, when i find some recipes that work well, i’ll post them here.