Flowermountains

And now…

…for something completely different. It has been quiet here for a bit. Sorry. Let’s say I have been busy and/or not in the mood. But despair not, dear readers. The silence is broken, the blog revived, here it is, a brand new post, your moment of Zen!

Let me tell you something about music (for a change). At Easter, and again last Sunday, I attended a concert of one of the coolest bands around. They are called Frank Znort Quartet, which is one of the worst names you could think of, since the band has over 10 members. However, this doesn’t decrease their amount of coolness. They play every Sunday at Blå, one of the hippest places in Oslo. To share some of the flavor, here’s a movie of one of their songs. Enjoy!

If you like this, come to Oslo, and visit Blå any Sunday. For NOK 10 you can buy a lottery ticket and win their CD. Awesome!

What’s on the Radio?

Here’s a small experiment I’m too lazy to do myself. I’m honestly also not that interested in the result, but still it might be cool to do, so if you’re bored, here it is!

Tune your radio to some general popular music channel. Stuff they play on MTV (or TMF, for the Dutch) and the like. Count the number of songs they play, and also count the number of songs with the following structure:

1. Some lines of text, probably 2 or 4.
2. Refrain
3. Again, some lines of text.
4. Refrain
5. Refrain, but now slightly altered.
6. Refrain

Then take the ratio of those. I would guess that over 50% of all songs you hear complies to this insanely boring, absolutely cliche, and utterly brainless structure. Last week I heard the most depressing thing ever: a song that started right away with the refrain. How desperate for money (or fame, or whatever) can you be? Maybe not fame, actually, or just temporary fame. Those songs won’t last. Oh well.

Luckily there are still bands around that understand how to make good music. It’s not all lost.

Random useless stuff

Picture this: you’re at the University, and you’re bored (can it happen?!). What to do?

You could clean up your desk…

Or, when the weather is good, you could pimp the garden of your faculty…

And when you absolutely have no clue, you could always play with some balloons…

(Don’t worry M1, I won’t tell who did it…)

(First two pictures UM, third UiO. Same shit, different place.)

Toilet Philosophy

With the term ‘toilet philosophy’ I don’t mean philosophies that are ready to be flushed down the toilet, nor philosophies regarding toilets. With it I mean actual philosophizing while being at the toilet. If this sounds too obscure for you, you’re really missing out on the greatest opportunities of life! Consider this as a gentle introduction.

The most straightforward type of toilet philosophies concerns the kind of stuff you’re actually busy with while being there. I don’t really like to go into much more detail here, so I’ll just give an example:

Easy, understandable, true (in a way), and straightforward. Let’s move on to the second category. It could very well happen that you get a bit bored with the actual toilet business. In that case, you might spend some time thinking about life (in general, and yours in particular). This leads to something that might be termed ‘philosophies about life, the universe, and everything’. This would of course be utterly useless and incomprehensible without an example:

This one might be a bit on the depressing side, but still, that’s completely up to you! Is there more? Of course. Now we get to the most interesting and deep bit. This is the category of philosophies that require a flash of genius (or madness), do not necessarily make any sense, but are special in some way or another. Of course, if there’s no example it doesn’t exist, so here you go:

On first view, you probably can’t make any chocolate out of it, but still it shows some glimpse of genius (or, again, madness). This category is clearly my favorite, but you shouldn’t be too disappointed if you don’t produce something like this every day. That’s it, I hope it enlightened your life.

Just as a reference, the philosophies shown here as examples can be found in the men’s room in the basement of the social science faculty of the university of Oslo, second unit from the entrance.

Guide to Norway part 1: Prices

Welcome to part 1 of my extensive, comprehensive and inexpensive Guide to Norway! Living in Norway is of course an art in itself, and therefore I thought it would be nice to share some of my experiences with the World (that’s you, dear reader!). In this first part I will deal with one of the most well-known fact about Norway: it is expensive. As a consequence, Oslo is one of the 10 most expensive cities in the world, out-pricing places like Rome, Paris and New York (in 2005, according to Wikipedia). So, how bad is it? It depends very much on what you’re buying. Things like clothes for example are only slightly more expensive than in the Netherlands, the same goes for CDs and DVDs. Public transport is also quite OK, as a student you can travel around the city one month for just over €50,- (including all sorts of transport, even ferries). However, the fun starts when you want to buy food, and when it comes to alcohol you better be drunk already before asking for the bill. So, let’s put some things together. Prices are in Euros, just for convenience.

First some general food stuff:

• Milk, 1L: €1,50
• One bread: €2~3
• Cheese, 1Kg: €11,-
• Minced meat (gehakt), 350g: €4,-
• Chicken, 250g: €6,-

Fortunately you can still make a tasty spaghetti for not too much, if you use tuna instead of minced meat. Perfect, since that is one of my favorite meals..! In general, fish is a lot cheaper than meat (vegetarians, unite!). Furthermore, some brands are less expensive, such as First Price. Some supermarkets even have Euroshopper! Buying those can save a lot of money. Now, let’s go to the drinks department:

• Beer, in the supermarket, 0.5L can: €2,-
• Normal bottle of wine, in the liquor store: €12,-
• Pint of beer in a student pub: €4,50
• Pint of beer in the city center: €7,-
• Glass of wine in a normal bar: €6,-

So, if you like your money, don’t drink too much when gong out, and stay clear of wine! And -never- think of buying something like a bottle of Hoegaarden, because you’ll regret it! Seriously.

That brings us to the end of this first introduction to Norway. Some possible future topics: language, culture, going out, places to visit, places not to visit, and weather. Not necessarily in that order. To be continued!