Norwegian Saga

That’s right, I was at Oslo’s fancy new opera to see “The Bat.” It’s an operetta about a ballroom fiasco.

The opera building had almost its entire foundation laid out in the water, though I may be wrong about that. It’s a gorgeous building with a sloping roof that you can climb all the way to the top (when it’s open in the summer). It was technically closed on account of all the snow but there were loads of people on it.

I’m off for a week at the moment so there are no lectures for me to attend. My work has been going slowly with one of the private students canceling a slew of appointments. The main chunk of my bread and butter though, the school I teach at, has resumed and is going on as normal.

My pompous British professor has grown on me, as those types usually do. I’ve managed to catch him making a mistake and so he has become human to me. Unlike what he was before, simply a hypercritic of everything imaginable. Now that I can hang an error he made over his head I feel justified in believing he was nothing but a pompous dink. But in that process I forgot my righteous anger and simply accepted him as a person who makes corny jokes.

In other news, my sister is going to be visiting me a few days. I’m very excited. I have a number of things planned but what we’re going to be doing depends on her. Of course there will be photos for all of you to see.

That’s about it then. Go see the photos of the opera house.

Hello everyone. I’ve been quiet for awhile and I apologize for that. The weather makes it very hard for me to overcome my latent laziness and do things. So I’m just going to put to paper a number of unconnected events for you.

I discovered a very cool map of Oslo. It’s one of those street photo maps. You can have a look at it here:

Sesam Katalog Kart

Every one of the blue dots is a photo that you can click on and “look around” in.

A classmate in my Norwegian class has spotted that I’m Canadian by the MEC (Mountain Equipment Coop) logo on my knapsack. He’s also a Canadian and also shops at MEC, he’s from Winnipeg.

I’m finally debating getting a mobile phone plan. I’ve been using the Norwegian equivalent of “pay as you go” but it’s more expensive than a plan. But to get a plan you need a folk number, which I received over two months ago.

Some more Norsk for the Polsk readers. Boss = sjef (pronounced shef), painter = maler, ticket = billet, and water = vann (notice the pronunciation of bathtub in Polish…).

The prices for a number of things went up (why does it never go down?). My favourite ice cream, Maple Walnut by Mövenpick has gone up by 10kr, the cost of laundry has gone from 12kr to 15kr, and maple syrup that I thought was obscenely priced at 50kr/300ml (only to discover that it had gone up in Canada to the same price) has jumped to 90kr/300ml. At least beer is still the same price.

So other than that I can’t really think of anything else noteworthy. In fact, it’s the morning so I’m having trouble thinking at all. I will write again soon.