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Flat 2 - Room 5

Havard's web log

Ipswich

Now that I've stayed in Ipswich for two months and soon am packing by bags to go back to Birmingham, I finally have gathered material and pictures to do this little article about the centre of Suffolk in the east of England. Since one of my friends, princeofnorway (no, not The Prince, it's just a nick name...) begged for an extended review of the town, here it is for all of you. Oh yeah, before I start, I have to add that the reason for his interest in this little town is the local football club, hence this picture.

Click on pictures to view larger images.

Little big Ipswich

Now, if you come to Ipswich on a Saturday, you may very well get the impression that this is a quite big and busy city of England. And if you wander up in the big park just north of the city centre some random weekend, like we did, you might get the idea that quite a lot goes on in Ipswich. The muppet people on stilts below were only some of the entertainment on the annual music day.

However, don't let this big city life fool you. If you walk out in the streets after 5 pm on the weekdays, you'll find that most of the shops are closed and the whole place look deserted. Sarpsborg at 4 pm, anyone? (I'll have to add that the Norwegian 8 till 4 working day translates into 9 till 5, so yes, Sarpsborg isn't a far shot). And if you happen to be walking up from the railway station past midnight on a Sunday, you'll find that, just as in Sarpsborg, teenagers with cars have very little to do here. You find them either racing each other between the traffic lights, going round and round. Or when they grow tiered of it, stop by the KFC restaurant, which is of course closed at that hour. (Pellygata? :)

By now you may think that I don't like it here at all, and just is bashing the city, but that's not true. Although it is a small city, with the advantages that also has, it has its charm. You can walk from anywhere in the city centre to most other places you may find interesting. I find myself every so often down in the marine looking at all the sail boats. Some two hundred down there, I reckon, and all big sail boats with high masts as the pictures below suggests.

Other interesting sight of Ipswich includes Elm Street, where you of course don't want to spend the night. Well, it's right by the police station, so I suppose that's another reason for not ending up here.

The Cusp

Then there is The Cusp. As any other respected European city, including Sarpsborg, Ipswich has its African ethno shop selling wooden figures, masks, candle holders, talismans and other stuff that look neat but doesn't always serve a purpose. (At this point I'll have to add that when I was in Prague with the Jenssen sisters, we made a point of using the city's African shop as a point of reference. However, after it moved it didn't maintain that function and the same is true for the one in Ipswich. It's just in the middle of the shopping street; nothing special about the location).

What strikes you as you visit several of these shops across Europe though, is how similar their goods are. And I don't mean just slightly equal designs, figures and shapes, but the exact same, small, wooden couples embracing each other. The exact same tall and slender wooden men and the exact same lamps (somebody reading this might recognise the shape of the yellow object to the left in the shop window bellow).

Well, what if, I'll probably get in trouble for exposing this, what if these seemingly personal shops all are part of one, big multinational African franchise?? No, cannot be, you think. Leave franchise business to the Americans, right? However, it would explain the same products spreading in the same shops all over Europe. And to add to the scandal, it's probably all manufactured by child labour from the third world. You'll have to admit that the prices some of these shops keep would not even pay rent if the proper production cost was taken into account. Still not convinced? Where is the multinational logo, you ask? Where are the million dollar marketing campaigns to let you know that you are in fact buying from and Ethno Africa(TM) store? Well, you see that is the whole point; part of this particular franchise deal is to personalise your store as much as possible. The market segment that you'd want in your little boutique would only get repulsed by any signs of a familiar brands. Yet, the products remain the same. All over Europe. After all, a Big Mac is a Big Mac is a Big Mac no matter where in the World.

Churches, busses and the fat cat

However, I'm drifting. Let's get back to Ipswich and see what more it has to offer. If you take a look at any map of the city centre, you'll find that the town has twelve or more churches or other relgious sites within five or ten minutes walking distance. Still, I haven't walked around to take picture of all of them, as it probably would interest very few of you.

More interesting is the bus service here in this little town: It has no less than to bus companies with two separate bus stations (but within walking distance of each other, of course). Privitasation? :) Never the less, some of the busses I've seen in the streets are a bit run down.

More up to date then, are the bus stops around the city, or a bit out in the pheriary, rather. You'll find that some of the stops feature online displays that show when the next busses are due to arrive. Some stops also have screens that show a map of the route of the bus, so you can see it closing up on your stop. It looks very fancy, indeed, but the usefullness is not always clear as you end up waiting for busses that don't show up anyhow.

Almost finally, I have to had obligatory pictures: Of work, and The Fat Cat. As you see from the left picture, the BT site shines in the light of grey concrete from the 60s. At some point this twisted tower must have look like an arrow pointing up and into the futre. Now it just looks gray and a bit odd. Is it used for anything in particular?

The Fat Cat to the right is a favrourite pub of the group I work with. And trully, they do have a good viarity of drinks there. (However, I will not go on about my thories about the XXL wine glases you get beer in...)

Finally, the very finally note about Ipswich in this version of my blog: The 20th of August Ipswich hosted the football game bewteen England and Croatia. I am impressed indeed. And international game in the town of Ipswich. Now that's something that wouldn't happen in Sarpsborg.

26 July 2003

Sommerparde 2003

This Saturday for the seventh year in a row the Sommerparade broke loose in Oslo, with ten thousands of people in the streets both dancing and watching. We, who included Espen, Heidi and myself, were of course dancing through the whole parade and for several hours at Redhusplassen. Although it was dripping a bit while the parade took place, it did not seem to stop people from being outside, however when it started to rain in buckets later in the evening, we found a small pub where we could get a pint.

For some reason, the people behind this year's parade had decided that it would be dedicated to peace, as in "dancing for peace". Oh well, it sounds cute and of course it is very politically correct in these times, but to be honest, I don't think most people bothered about that message. You don't dance for politics, but rather for the music itself, the beats, the techno babes and muppet babes. (Hmm... you'd think that those furry leg warmers would go off fashion soon, but after two years, they are still with us. :)

The music this year, as every year, reflected what had been going on in the field of electronica since last summer. Of course you get a lot of commercial crap and Euro trash, however there was loads of good tunes to dance to. Surprisingly, one of the smaller stages, the "Oxygen stage", this year featured a complete drum & bass show, which reminded me of good Brummy beats, especially those you would find at the Medicine Bar (as described in an earlier entry in this blog). I can't find the name of the people who played here, but in fact, several of the tracks we danced to on Saturday are on the Sound of Movement compilation from London based label Movement. Where some of the artists borrowed from here? I don't know.

Finally, as thanks to our devoted contribution to yet another Sommerparade, we got our picture in the newspaper. The Internet site of Dagbladet, a tabloid paper it should be noted, but still we got there (or here, rather, since they change the order of the pictures several times a day). Of course we took a lot of pictures as well, and they will be published here, as soon as they are developed and scanned. For even more pictures, have a look at the party site or Aftenposten coverage of the event.

Norwegian dress code

When the dancers started to disappear from the streets and poor into the night clubs, we also found a place to sit down and relax our sour muscles. However, when we wanted to have a drink at the bar "Fridays" at Karl Johann, I was not let in(!) The reason? Well, the man in the door insisted that they tried to maintain a certain style to their clients. Fair enough, most clubs in England have dress codes, and you are not let in wearing jeans, snickers or T-shirts. Back at Fridays the guy at the door looked at my rave outfit and said that they did not want people from the parade in their club. However, had I just dressed more formal, I would have been let in. A looked at the people inside and just laughed out loud. The formal dress code he was referring to seemed to be jeans, snickers and white T-shirts. When I pointed out the irony of the difference between his dress code and what you would find in English clubs, he deduced that people and they Sommerparade where scumbags and that I thought those wearing jeans and snickers were funny. I gave up talking to him and waited for my friend to fetch the others already inside, so we could find another place to get a drink.

8 July 2003

In Ipswich

I've now been in Ipswich little over a week, and having a good time here. The work for my MSc thesis at BT is going smoothly and we are making fast progression so far, so I'm expecting a good product and dissertation at the end of this summer.

On a special request I'm doing a longer article about Ipswich for this blog. I have taken several pictures for it already, and expect to publish as soon as the film is developed. Stay tuned! :-)

01 July 2003

Vacation at home

When you're living away from what you often refer to as home, and especially when living abroad, you get the great privilege of spending your vacation at home; at least that's what I did in mid June. Don't misunderstand me here, I'm actually had some great ten days doing gardening more or less for the fun of it, but also two nice trips in the sailboat of my father (pictures might appear some day). Unfortunately, ten days in not enough to do what I usually spend a summer doing, and definitely not enough to visit all the people I had wished to, but I hope to see you all sooner rather than later.

The little differences or taxies and queues

Now that I've lived in England for nine months, I get to enjoy and ponder about not only the little differences in England, but also the small Norwegian tweaks. Like when I walked home from a party one night: It was a warm, nice summer night, or morning rather as it was around 3 or 4 AM, and I took my time enjoying the sun rice and a fountain on my way.

As I walked toward the city centre of Sarpsborg, I raised my thumb for the bypassing cars more to see if anybody would be bothered to stop than for actually needing a lift. Nobody stopped. It wasn't a big surprise, as most are eager to just get home at that time of day, however what puzzled me a bit was that even free taxis passed by without any sign of slowing down. That would not happen in England, I thought as I walked along.

The reason for this peculiar behaviour I found as I got to the city centre: You see, in Norway there was no Thatcher ear or any major political agenda to privatise everything (even things has loosened up a bit over the past years). Monopolies (often state run or substituted) seems to be a preferred way of business on, if not everything, quite a few things, like dairy products, railways and taxis. I think Oslo is on of the few cities with competing taxi companies and even here they run their business and their cars as they see fit (or so it might seem).

It results in some interesting differences between the Norwegian and English taxi service at night. Where as the English drivers eagerly pick you up anywhere, also while walking along the road, this could not be done in Norway. The reason is another interesting custom: queue culture. The English happily lines up for anything, anywhere, except for taxis at night. It works quite well for them as queues during the day keeps everybody at a cheerful mood, while all the competing taxis gets people reasonable quickly out of town from where ever they are. In Norway however, it is totally opposite: To get to the counter or the cash point you'll need to use your elbows or you'll get one. While at night everybody has to line up for one or two (in Oslo down town I think there's three or four) assigned places to get a cab. Of course this makes no sense, as drunk Norwegians don't get more happy and polite in a taxi queue. Fighting and knife stabbing are frequent headlines on Monday morning.

Therefore, it was with great interest and amusement I sat down in the city centre of Sarpsborg and watched the taxi queue. When I got there around 4.30 AM it still were five people in the line and to organise the safe departure of these half asleep folks were two big blokes with "Security" printed on their jackets. They took their jobs very seriously. No line jumping!

Of course taxi queues are interesting up to a certain ping, so after three minutes a got up from my bench a walked home.

The birth of the next Messiah

As you know, it is beyond dispute that the new Messiah will be brought fourth by a man (well, of course it isn't, but let's pretend for the sake of the argument). What is very certain however, is where this birth will take place: in the men's room close to the escalators for gate 40+ at Stansted Airport. Are you curious what bring me to this conclusion? Take a look at this sign and be convinced:

6 June 2003

Nurses and drugs at the Medicine Bar

Tonight was my first time at the Medicine Bar at the Custard Factory down at Digbet; a good place for fast drum n' bass and slow, laid-back people. In fact, most of the crowd there were only wiggling around to the slowest, deepest baseline, so my moves reflecting every beat and snare attracted some attention, as it always does. :-)

However, I guess I'll have to include the story about the nurses at the Latino place we visited before the Medicine Bar. They were having this birthday party for one of their colleagues turning fifty, and of course a gang of only female nurses are up to some pranks. They had prepared some dares and went into a great effort to include the rest of the pub as well, especially Paulo, Mark and me. Some of the dares included collecting hair from here and there, and getting drinks from male guests. Of course, as the gentlemen we are, we helped the nurses out with quite a few of these dares, although it got to the point where one of them actually felt she needed to apoplogise for the behaviour of her younger colleagues. Unfortunately, none of them felt like joining us to the Medicine Bar. Maybe the name reminded them too much of the work waiting in the morning. :)

Well, back to the drum n' bass place, we joined the dancing crowd for a while, and enjoyed the fresh air of what was almost an outside club. However, as I mentioned people were very laid-back there. The rather sweat, very distinguished smell drifted the whole place, both inside and outside, and a few of them were just to laid-back, "joe dude", wanna-be-cool for me liking.

As for the dress code at this place, it seemed like there were none enforced at the door, and almost as a counter culture to the "smart clubs" i Birmingham, jeans and white, shining snickers seemed to be the most hip thing to wear.

On the whole, a good place worth visiting, however don't expect pumping up-beat trance or girls dressed up for the beach (as you will find next door, at Code). On the other hand, people didn't ask be if I had pills to sell, which was almost a new experience when clubbing in Brum.

Ferdig!!!

No more exams

Yesterday I had my very last exam here in Birmingham, and perhaps the very, very last exam ever. Oh, well, I've said that before, but it might actually be the case this time, at least within the university setting. It's learning for real from now on...

The rest of the summer, till 22nd of September, will be work on my MSc project and dissertation. I'll be working for BTexact in Ipswich during July and August, and live there for those months. It also means my "Room 5, Flat 2" era will soon be over, but don't worry I'll come up with something new once a find another place to stay for a while.

Good news! Good news!

Cash to become illegal in Norway!

In this article in Aftenposten Rune Grundekjøn, a special adviser of Kredittilsynet, the Norwegian credit and financial supervision organization, suggests that the use of cash in transactions over ten thousand NOK should be illegal. I say, very good initiative Rune! But why not make it ten kroner!?

Roar Østby, the leader of the money fraud investigation team, in this article responds, "this is an interesting discussion". I totally agree, however I have to add that I started it years ago! :-)

Money is virtual, so let's keep it that way!
Håvard

1 May 2003

It has now been a very long time since I've written anything here, so I guess I have to get started again. Quite a lot has happened since the last notice, but I'll just give a breif outline.

Easter - Back in Norway

I went back to Norway for the Easter holidays, but it sure was no calm vacation; both pleasant and sad events kept me busy. I just made it for "The Last Plaza Party" 5th of April, at Plaza, Halden of course. This was a great reunion for some of us who used to live there and some of the current inhabitants. All in the good spirit of Plaza parties.

However, there was more to celebrate; both my parents had their birthday parties while I was home, and then there was the wedding anniversary of Selma and Victor. But an event that put clouds in the sky was the death of the father of a friend of mine. Peace to his memory.

Between all this I spent my time working with the spring semester mini project, which is now finished and delivered. And finally, of course I got to see quite a lot of friends. It sure was worth all the traveling. :)

The war

As you may have noticed, this lbog does not raise any big political issues or other discussions; it's merely brief notes from my life. However, when an significant emergency as the war in Iraq is thrown in our face it does become part of us. Unfortunately, there was not much we, common people, could do about the working of corrupt world leaders. Nothing but joining the anti-war marches all over the world, to show disgust for this war. At the 20th of March students from the University of Birmingham joined other activists in a peaceful protest in the city centre.

Tolkien's home

Before all this, from the 23th to the 25th of February, I had a pleasant visit by my friend and fellow traveler Trond. He went on a grand one-week tour in the UK and in Birmingham we visited the home of J.R.R. Tolkien. It is, or was rather, as we couldn't find the home just the road, located at Hall Green, by the Sharehole Mill. From the pictures below you get an idea of what inspired him to write about the Hobbit Shire.

These events were however, over shadowed by another tragic death in a short period. This time my Dutch grandmother. She was supposed to turn 92 this October, so she now needed peace. Still, we are left behind in sorrow.

22 February 2003

Boiling in God's Kitchen

Last night Tiina and I finally managed to experience Godskitchen @ Code. Perhaps one of the biggest concepts running here in Birmingham. It was really worth going, even if my body feels totally beaten up today. After dancing five and a half hours straight, I didn't have have much stamina left, yet the music was stilling pumping and it was still a great rush.

Last night the DJs John Kelly, Lange and Petrae Foy were doing their best to work the crowd. The first four hours featured mostly trance and hard trance music with some great memories mixed in: Anybody recall Bobby Flexter's Profondo Rosso or BBE's Seven Days and One week? Both still shining pearls. After four hours or so, at roughly 3 am, Petrae Foy, if I'm not mistaken, really turned up the phase with some hard house. The dance floor exploded and people were still banging there heads, although some were getting rather exhausted.

Even if some were taking a rest in the end, the party crowd at God's Kitchen was simply great! All dancing, happy and enjoying themselves. No angry faces or expressions even if we were bumping into each other quite a lot. In front of the DJ stage, four performance dancers, all girls, were taking shifts to cheer up the guys, and they did a good job! :)

God's Kitchen has a dress code, which I think is good. It goes something like: No effort - no entry. So you get some good costumes on some good looking people. Most had really made an effort to be seen with fluorescent colours, little clothing or outrageous costumes. On the whole, a place worth going back to!

Cooking in Barcelona

A nice weekend

This weekend I took a short break from my studies and went to Barcelona to please a friend with some delicious meals. Marit and her flatmate, Line, both enjoyed to be a bit spoiled with special dishes. What I made? Check you the food section of my web site to get an idea! :)

A great city

If you haven't been to Barcelona, you should go! It is a beautiful city with lots of exiting architecture in Gaudi's special style. Just walking down the main street, La Rambla, was an exiting experience. Perhaps most impressive was Gaudi's church "The Sagrada Familia", which still is under construction after some 120 years.

A detail worth mentioning is Barcelona's underground system. Impressive indeed. The maximum waiting time for any train on any line was 8 minutes, and on the most busy line there was a train every 2 minutes and 30 seconds. On every stations there was a counter, telling you how many seconds to wait for the next train, and it never failed you. If only the entrepreneurs of Oslo's underground system could have a look at this! And the people on London's Tube could smell the cleanness...

A busy nightlife

Besides cooking, walking in the city and using the underground, I got to see some of Barcelona's nightlife. On Saturday we got VIP tickets to a club a bit outside the core of the city centre. It was located inside what looked like a 1800s village or castle, and featured some trendy clubbers and hip performance dancers. The music was interesting: Not the hard Brum techno and house but kinda Latino rhythms to softer trance beats. Keeps you hapy all night. :)

Another interesting feature about Barcelona's nightlife is the "late clubs or bars". If you know where to go, there seems to always be a party going on till the sun rises. The thing is, these places are not in the main street, and you have to ring a bell or knock at some door to get in. In other words, only for the special guests who know where to go. :)

24 January 2003

Revelation @ The Sanctuary

Finally we managed to visit a good club here in Birmingham: Birthday party for the concept House of God at The Sanctuary! And was that some good party!! Some really kick ass music, mostly evolving round hard house, techno and some old school stuff, which keeps you moving all night. The people were also great; cheerful, English clubbers in all ages, shapes and colours. Furthermore, the no-dress-code policy brought in all sorts of people and styles, and let everybody have fun in their way. There is of course one thing though, that I feel I must comment upon: The queue mentality at the dance floor. Everybody was dancing while facing the DJ stage, with arms length room in between each clubber. Just like any other line at the bus stop or elsewhere. They sure like to move towards the same target, these Englishmen. :)

Pictures

On the last update, I forgot to upload the pictures I made while I was on Christmas vacation in Norway. Thought I might should you non-Norwegian readers what snow means in this country. The left picture is taken at night, while it was snowing. The snowflakes you see are not added afterwards, they shine nicely in the reflection of the blitz. The right one is taken the day after, or some 10 hours later; you can hardly make out the shape of my mother's car. :)

Click on pictures to view larger images.

Finally tonight, I would like to recommend you an article in Aftenposten some weeks ago. You'll have to know Norwegian to read it though. It's a cleverly written story about London seen with Norwegian eyes, and some of Norway seen with British eyes.

Happy New Year!

Back in Brum

After a nice holiday in Norway, I'm now back in Birmingham and ready to start a new semester. Fresh books, new lectures and new opportunities. Especially exiting the upcoming month is the interview at Accenture. The second round interview, that is. I applied in November, and went for a short first interview in Manchester right before Christmas, and apparently I did well, so the 19th of February I'm heading for London for a new one. Maybe I'll be working in London. I'll know by the end of February

Enough about my career. While I was in Norway, I visited lots for friends and stayed with my family to relax and enjoy some days of snow and cold. Well, I you know me, you are aware of that fact that I relay don't enjoy any of the last. And I've discovered, that Norway is actually very, very cold. So much for the joke about "Norway is not so cold", at the beginning of this blog. Here in Birmingham you wear a scarf only because it goes with season, rather than using it to prevent your neck from freezing and falling off your shoulders. So, you can see that it's really nice to be back in Brum. :)

DIY Travelling

One good story I do have to tell you is of the day I travelled back to Norway, before Christmas. As anybody who have lived with a broadband connection for four years would do, I ordered my plan and train tickets off the Internet, an got neat little reference numbers in return. You do the job for the transport companies, and get a better price. Right? Great with this communication technology, isn't it?

I would also have been great if I had ordered the right tickets, because when I got to Stansted and asked for flight, it turned out it had already left. What a pity! It also turned out that there were no more flights to Norway that evening. I was beginning to get a little bit stressed now. By calling my friend Audun back in Norway, I got a new flight the following day, and by asking for the absolutely cheapest hotel, I got to Little Hallingbury Mill guesthouse.

It turned out that this was a lovely little guesthouse with friendly, caring staff who made you relax and feel comfortable in the rather unpleasant situation of missing the plane. They picked us up at the airport and drove use there in the morning. (I was going in the car together with a German who also had missed his flight.) I would recommend this place to anybody who needs to stay the night at Stansted airport.

To finish the story; I went down to the little hotel bar after I had brought my bags to my room to get a Blok-Haakonsen. Unfortunately, they did not have Martini Bianco. However, at the bar I meet a sweet Norwegian girl who, guess what, had also missed her flight. (You do understand now, that the staff at Little Hallingbury Mill have first class experience on how to handle stressed up people.) We travelled to Oslo the following day without missing or losing anything, besides our suitcases, but that's another story. It turned out that missing that plane wasn't so bad after all. In fact, I spent a night at the guesthouse when I travelled back as well. It was just as cosy.

11 November 2002

Exotic Birmingham

If you thought you'd had to go to Australia for an exotic experience, think again. (Of course, while not having the weather in mind :). The other day Richard and I actually ate crocodile at a pub. Oh well, I have to admit that the name was "The Australian Pub", but it still was in the City Centre of Brum. As for the taste, I wouldn't recommend it. It could have been chicken or turkey, and almost tasted like the later, however with a bit "wilder" taste to some of the bites. :)

When it comes to exotic species still alive. Or at least alive up till recently, we have the Aggressive Squirrel over here. Even the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten, reports about it. I've tried to search for it on Google, and Aggressive Squirrel north england" does come up with some 1,800 hits(!) In fact, I had the original Sun article also, and I intended to scan it for you guys, but I kind of lost it. :-/ It included silly pictures, and some comments from mom Karen, whose child was attacked by the squirrel: "I was shocked. You don't expect that from a squirrel!"

Traveling to Brum

I have now checked out some ticket prices, and in fact I expect to go home for Xmas and back again for some NOK 1200 or 100 pounds. This includes the flight with Raynair for only 60 pounds for a round trip. Have a look at their site and do some searches. Some days or 60 pounds plus taxes one way, while other are only 18. Furthermore, Raynair has corresponding coaches Torp - Oslo for NOK 110,- one way. Coaches from London to Birmingham are cheapest from National Express if you book in advance.

I will try to put up a page for all this, including some information on local hotels. However, don't expect it to happen by the end of this week.

That's all for now folks.
See ya.

29 October 2002

Food

I guess I've gotten some of you guys reading this blog worried, have I? Well, worry no more. I've now found thick sliced bread at the supermarket, so I wont go hungry. :)

What's more, I visited a balti restaurant for the first time tonight. Now "balti" doesn't sound very exotic in Norwegian, or at least I don't think so. However, it turned out to be delicious Indian food, yet the Indian fellow who was with us could tell that this really was a British twist to the whole concept. Never the less, it was all splendid, and at a very good price. At least if you compare it to a Norwegian restaurant serving Indian food. For about 15 pounds we got a starter, large main course, nan, desert and wine. I guess the Norwegian equivalent would be closer to three times the prize than double.

Drinks

When it comes to drinks it turns out that we have a problem. Or, Haakonsen and I have found that we have a problem. One of four the main ingredients (the other ones being Martini Bianco and two ice-cubes, but I suppose you all knew that :), the Schweppes Bitter Lemon, is green! That's right, green like your tropical kiwi pop. The taste is the same, but the colour just doesn't work. It really should look like the Martini Metz, with a whitish colour. It might be possible to export the stuff, but I suppose it would be tedious for Haakonsen. We will get back to you when we've figured this out.

Evidently, the Blok-Haakonsen is facing problems in Australia as well, as Martini Bianco is hard, even impossible, to dig up. Our sales agents down under have substituted it with the Cinzano Bianco. You should be aware, however, that this really changes the taste of the drink. Maybe the solution to both problems is to copyright the drink, and export the whole package. Well, half of it rather, as you'd had to make the two ice-cubes yourself.

Bills

Oh, yeah, the bills. It could be that I just haven't figured it out yet, so I wont go on long about this, but it really seems that the concept of bills is slightly different here. Today I walked around and lined up in queues for one and a half hour to pay three of them (!). Maybe it is just these particular bills; the tuition, accommodation and course fees, so I will get back when I've found I more clever way around it. A more 21st century approach to it, that is. Walking around with paper money (cash and cheques) and signing stuff to settle financial details really is something of the past. Or at least, it ought to be.

17 October 2002

A cheerful phone call from far away

This nice, chilly October morning started off with a phone call from down under. Gunnhild, currently staying in Brisbane, called to say hello. Uplifting, indeed. Thanks, Gunnhild! :)

Also, she had some great news. She told that she had talked to a taxi driver, a Czech taxi driver that is. It turned out that he had actually worked for the worlds best micro brewery, U Fleku, located in Prague. He had worked there for some seven years, but now he was driving a taxi i Australia. My theory is that U Fleku is planning to expand their business and introduce their brilliant beer down there. Could be, could be...

Some updates

In the introduction some weeks ago, I wrote that the club called "The Works" looked like a place where REAL hard house and techno tunes once had been played. Now it turns out that the place actually opened only a year a ago. Thanks, Synnøve, for pointing this out. :)

Furthermore, I discovered, to my surprise (well, not too surprised, but I was still a bit puzzled) that the club I danced at two weeks ago is listed under gay & lesbian in the Metro Magazine. I guess I was lucky that Friday, since it was a special event and not a regular club night... But I will be a bit more careful recommending places to you guys in the future. (Now, I didn't mentioned the name of it in the first place, so I might as well have left this paragraph out.)

Linux meeting

Tonight I went to the Birmingham Linux User group meeting at the Computer Science department. Thought I'd just check it out and see what the British Linux nerds look like. Well, I can now tell you, they are exactly the same as back home. One of them could easily have been the bigger brother of one of my previous class mates. (it actually turns out that most Norwegians has a twin sister or brother here in Britain. It's true! :)

Another interesting experience was the topics they discussed. Linux stuff, for sure, and the usual "there is no driver for that yet" things. But in the middle of that there was a demo of SSH. Yeah, you heard me right, there was a demonstration of how convenient and secure the Secure Shell server and client was. I thought everybody used that. Apparently, I was wrong.

A trip to Manchester

This weekend I went to Manchester to meet Christer, Eirin and Anita. As we did not have any particular plan or special things to see, we ended up eating lots of food, which wasn't so bad. Very good, actually. I think the only error we made, was not booking accommodation in advance. All the lower priced rooms were booked when we tried to find some, so we ended up with two medium priced onces at the ??? Hotel. However, it worked out fine.

Not surprisingly, since three of use were computer geeks, one of the places we visited was a Java coffee bar. The coffee was good.
Then we had lunch at an Italian restaurant and later at Saturday night we had a tasteful three meal dinner at The Alexander Restaurant close to the main library. It was an inexpensive, yet delicious meal. Splendid!
On Sunday morning, or midday rather, we had breakfast at the Dutch Pancake House. It didn't open before midday (which is 12 am :), and we totally agree with the man coming out at 11:30 am, stating that "the opening hours were ridiculous for a place which was serving breakfast". When we meet him half an hour later, he was heading for McDonald's looking really hungry.

To finish off a great weekend in Manchester, we spent some hours at the Manchester Art gallery on Sunday afternoon. It was a huge gallery, and a pity we couldn't come back a couple of times, rather than seeing it all in one day. However, we did fine some really nice pictures in there. My favorite being a photography by Nick Crowe and Ian Rawlinson called "Two Lamps" (For some obscure reason the picture on that site is mirrored to what was in the gallery.)

Introduction

Birmingham

Birmingham is a big city.

There is not one main street. There are not some roads with shops along. Its many shopping streets and its loads of shopping centers and markets. And if that weren't enough, the core of the city, Bullring, is currently a huge construction site to make room for even more shopping centers and office buildings. Birmingham is a big city.

It is big, and it is always crowded. There's always people everywhere. There's always action somewhere. Luckily, the University is situated a bit outside the city centre and surrounded by "lot's of green stuff" as a friend noted.

The University

The University of Birmingham is a huge redbrick university from the last century. Only walking around the campus is a great experience, at least the first time. After a while you just see at as exercise, if you're an optimist. If you're a pessimist, I don't know.

I not sure of the exact numbers, but I've heard that there are some 23,000 students here, which of some 3000 are international students. How many who live on campus, I do not know, but my guess is that its more than a thousand students. Thus, the nights at the Student's Guild are always crowded. Unfortunately, they only play 80s there, so there's really no use going.

My flat and flat mates

My flat is in Oakley Court at Pritchatts Park, near by Queen Elizabeth's Hospital. (You can use the big clock at the hospital as a landmark to get here, but be prepared to jump some fences. Been there, done that. :). I live some eight minutes from my computer science department.

The four guys I share the flat with are from Taiwan, Brazil, Greece and Japan. Indeed an intercultural mix. You can not hold on to all your traditions and customs in such a setting. It would serve no good, really. However, I did bring my Norwegian cheese cutter. The Japanese fellow was very impressed by it. :) Surly, we already do enriched each others experiences in the field of cooking.

Music

Evidently, Birmingham is know as the birth place of hard house. I am not sure when that happened, but it is definitely an era of the past. That whole techno culture is, for that matter. Do not get me wrong. I love techno music, but like every thing else it is a style, culture and era that has to end sometime.

Going to the larger clubs at Broad Street, you can witness the decay of techno: At "Tiger Tiger", by Five Ways, they have a ware house like basement where you still can feel some of the old atmosphere in the walls. However, today euro cheese is the name of the game.

Down the street at "The Works" it's even more evident: Even the name insinuate pumping beats in run down warehouses, and the interior really emphasises this with huge pipes, gears and machine parts. It must have been The place to go raving in the last part of the 90s. Now even Scooter is played in cheesy mixes. Not that I would describe Scooter as hard house, but the original mixes are quite hard in terms of trance.. The UK mixes competes more with Madonna and Spice Girls than Faithless or Dune.

Still, I have not lost all hope in the UK club culture. Last Friday I managed to dig up some club with descent music, and I've yet to see the Godskitchen at Code and Sundissential. Hopefully, I will be able to report from the within some weeks.

About Norway

When I say I'm from Norway, the fist thing that comes to peoples mind is the question: "It's cold there, isn't it?" So by presuming the question and answering: "...and it's not cold there", you bring about a good laugh.

Others know that Norway is not apart of the EU. And many see the oil as the main explanation. A Japanese fellow who had worked in the branch dealing with Europe in his Foreign Department found the Norwegian economic structure quite unique and explain the relationship to EU as stated above. He also thought that Norway might as well stay in that position. I told him otherwise.

The little things

"They got the same things over there as we have here, but it's the little things..."
- John Travolta in Pulp Fiction, comparing Europe to the US

I guess the same thing could be said about many countries, and it surly applies to Norway and England. Take the water taps, for example.

They always seem to come in pairs. So either you burn your hands, or you freeze them. I asked a local if there was a trick to it, and he said. "No, its not. You just forget about the hot water". And it seems like that's what they have done: Of most of the sinks I have visited, I have not experience cold nor hot water in most of them. There's just two taps of 30 +/- 5 degrees water. If this is because of some historical lawsuit, I do not know.

Then there's the bread. I've yet to see non-sliced loafs of bread. They're all pre-sliced to one half or even one third of my desired measure. This might fool you into eating less than you're used to, and in my case that would mean both breakfast and lunch, every day. You now might think I'll end up with a beer belly from a bad diet and too much to drink. However, since my tummy stays put, I will not speculate in what will happen. I need to find some whole loafs of bread. :)

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