The Sun Never Sets

...on the Norwegian emp- no wait, that isn't right. But the sun has definitely been staying up way past its bedtime lately. This picture was taken at 2am today, from my balcony (facing North). That means it would be the middle of the day in Alaska, just over the North Pole from where I am.

Pronunciation

ø = burn
å = all
æ = sad

Ahh!

Ahh! No Oslo! I booked the weekend in Oslo for the same weekend as the bike race! Nooo....Now I have to cancel flights and hostels.

Blatur (Surprise Trip)

The surprise work trip was yesterday afternoon to the nearby island of Kalvøy. First we had a ferry ride to Langøy island, then we got on some wave-jumping speedboats and rode the waves for about 20 minutes to Kalvøy. On Kalvøy we had a picnic, a small treasure hunt, played some soccer and listened to music. We headed back around 9:30 to Stavanger and I walked home.

This country is ridiculously picturesque.

Oslo!

I'm going to be in Oslo for a week-long training course from the 8th of June to the 12th of June. Normally these courses have short days, ending at 3:30pm or 4:00pm, giving one plenty of time to do a bit of touring. This is especially true here in Norway in summer since there is daylight until at least 10pm. However, I added two days to the end of my trip in order to take advantage and be able to see more. I'll be in Anker Hostel on the nights of Friday the 12th and Saturday the 13th and flying back to Stavanger on the 14th.

Economy

Unemployment in Canada is at 8%. Inflation is at 0.4%. Food prices are still rising. The prime lending rate is 2.25%, the lowest in Canadian history. Variable rate mortgages are at 3%. Two months ago the DOW fell faster than it did during the Great Depression, and in January Investors panicked as British banks announced huge losses. Money is being printed which must eventually result in inflation as dollars are devalued.

So why the market rally? What real-world, concrete, positive news do we have to explain this?

Bike Race

As I mentioned before, I'm going to be in a bike race in a couple of weeks. Here's a rough map!

Surprise Trip

Work has organized a surprise trip (blåtur) for this Thursday. We aren't being told anything except to wear warm clothes and to meet at the harbour fish market at 3pm on Thursday. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Also to bring cash because drinks are 50 NOK for a beer and 300 NOK for a bottle of wine.

Picasa Albums!

L. sent me a Picasa album of pictures from yesterday's hike, so I spent some time uploading a lot of pictures to Picasa. You can find my albums here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/victor.rodriguez

Bynuten Hike

This blog has been a been scarce on pictures lately, so let's fix that shall we?

Today I hiked to Bynuten with M and L. At 671 meters, Bynuten is the highest peak in the Sandnes commune and affords some amazing views of the surrounding area. We could not have asked for a nicer day for the hike: Sunny, but with a blue sky and enough clouds to make the sky interesting for pictures. Warm but not hot. Great driving and hiking weather. I managed to get a bit of a tan! With scenery like this it's hard to take bad pictures.

Norwegian Constitution Day

Last Sunday was Norwegian Constitution Day, so I went downtown to see the crowds and parades. There were floats from all the surrounding small towns, local schools, bands, athletic and recreational clubs as well as a smattering of dignitaries and people wearing traditional Norwegian costumes. There were even floats from the oil companies! Three of the floats were playing the song Fairytale which has been getting a lot of attention since it won Eurovision.

Here are some pictures and a video.

Orienteering Results

Yesterday's course was by far the hardest so far. The terrain was a giant swamp containing a number of large lakes, so you had to keep running around the lakes through the swamp. By the end, I was muddy and soaked up to my waist.

Results:

41 Rodriguez,Victor 1:09:51 + 33:43

(out of 56)

Yahoo Answers

I used to participate pretty regularly at Experts-Exchange. That's a site where people ask [usually] computer-related questions and others answer them for points. The questions are generally quite advanced, and the answers require a fair bit of time to explain. That's if you have any idea how to answer them at all. The quality overall is great though, and EE solutions are often the first Google hit for computer-related searches I've done (ex: "How do I _______ in Excel?").

I recently started participating a bit at Yahoo Answers. This is a totally different world than EE. It's more like a bunch of gibbering morons walking around in a pitch-black room, occasionally bumping into each other and mumbling a question or an answer or something not quite resembling either one.

I've seen multiple 'answers' to questions such as "i don't know thats hard lol!". I mean, what's the point? Why did you waste 9 seconds of your life to write that, not to mention 1 second of my life to read that? It's also a bit disheartening to see a math question with 8 responses, 4 *different* answers, half of which are followed by "but im not reely sure tho". Again, why did you bother then?

People also answer legitimate questions completely incorrectly with what appear to be total guesses. The worst part of this is that those answers are often picked as the best answer by the asker!

Finally, I'm amazed at the number of stupid questions on the site. I've often heard from teachers and parents that there are no stupid questions. Well, they should probably take a look at Yahoo Answers. I can assure them that there are plenty of stupid questions - questions that took longer to type into YA than they would have taken to Google or punch into a basic calculator ("who was the first man on the moon?", "what is 20% off of $2?", "what is 97 divided by 63?"). I'm not making these up!

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090519025026AAXlD9a

What the hell is galactic dung? I just couldn't resist.

Suckers Rally

Interesting post on suckers rallies like the one we are [probably] experiencing right now.

http://www.planbeconomics.com/2009/05/12/the-suckers-rally/

Demotivational Posters

Can't. Stop. Laughing. Must. Stop. Clicking.

Awesome

(http://motivatedphotos.com/?id=17581)

Greenify Your Life

Cool! My book has been downloaded over 100 times! Hopefully this represents over 100 different people, not one really obsessed fan.

I Got Paid!!

It's not a scam! I got paid! Woohoo! I got paid for April before March because the March payment was rejected, but I should have March soon too. Whew! No dog food for me. :)

(slightly) Better Orienteering Results

Well, it would be hard to go down from disqualified wouldn't it? I got 43rd out of 62 in yesterday's orienteering race. This was again the 'male trainer' category. A couple of big screw-ups but no HUGE screw-ups like last time. I was faster than the 1st place guy between two of the posts by 45 seconds!

Accents

I work with quite a few British guys. Today, two of them confirmed something I've suspected for a while. We got to talking about how much the local accents vary across the UK, and I asked about Canadian accents. According to the two guys I was speaking to, Canadian (and Northern US and Australian) accents are often easier to understand for the British than the accents of other Britons! The accents simply vary so much as you head North in the UK that foreign English accents are more universally understood. I contrast this with the fact that a person from Vancouver sounds (to me at least) identical to someone from Ontario. Newfoundland is another story...

Mån Tur

It's been a while since I posted so I have a lot of updates. Last Friday and Saturday, I overnighted at a cabin in the mountains with about a dozen people from work. 'Cabin' is a bit of an underexageration. This place had running water, electricity, a gas stove, a few fireplaces, and could sleep about 30 on bunk beds. Not exactly roughing it.





We played Norwegian Trivial Pursuit with a few people taking turns translating the questions. I had no idea there were so many [not] famous Norwegian soap opera stars. Unfortunately it rained almost the entire time we were there, but we had fun anyway cooking and playing games. I would have liked to stay until Sunday (we had WAY too much food) but another group was coming in so we had to leave.





I started biking to work. It's about 10km each way, so a good distance, and it's mostly along the coast which makes for gorgeous scenery. The extra time it takes over driving is a bit of a bummer since I not only have to bike but also shower and change, but it's a great way to start the day. I feel so awake by the time I get to my desk! No coffee for me! I also figure this country has got to be the world capital for cycling so if I don't do this now, when will I?

Speaking of biking, I managed to get into a 'sold out' bike race in June. It'll be 85km along country roads. Apparently there are something like 20 000 or 15 000 people participating, but my company bought a block of tickets and had some spares.

I did orienteering again today. The terrain was very rough. I didn't miss any posts this time, and didn't get lost for 20+ minutes. Still, I'll have to see my ranking tomorrow but I'm somewhere near the bottom of my category. I'm glad I have all summer to improve. My running shoes are not made for this and are taking an absolute beating in the forest. I'm likely going to regret this when they break and I can't run anymore.

This weekend there are huge celebrations in Stavanger for Norwegian Constitution Day. Should be good, and I'll take lots of pictures. The weather is getting nicer by the day, and everyone is out until late being active. It's light out until almost 11pm!!

I posted a lot more pictures on DeviantArt where my nickname is 'uforic' (uforia was taken). I've spent a lot of time browsing the site and am absolutely awed by the talent some people have. I want to try an HDR picture, but I need my screen to work for that (or a new camera).

Savings

This really takes away a lot of the motivation behind a strategy of savings:

Interest Plus™ savings account

a high interest rate savings account — plus an anniversary bonus!

Daily balance	annual rate (%)
$0 - $1,000.00	0.50
$1,000.01 and up	1.00

deviantArt

I signed up for deviantArt as a place to dump the photos I think are amoung my better ones. I will upload more as I have time.

http://uforic.deviantart.com/

Victor Suffers Crushing Defeat

Yesterday I was moved up to the next category in orienteering. Instead of the 'new' category where you get to see the map for as long as you wish before starting, and the posts are relatively close together and easy to find, I was moved up to HT (training level - male). The distance doubles and you only get the map when the person ahead of you starts. You start 1 minute later.

The first four posts (out of 15) were challenging, with the fourth being the worst. I spent just over 20 minutes on the 4th. The problem was that there were two parallel roads, and I thought I was on one but was actually on the other. At least I wasn't alone. There were three of us beating the bushes around the wrong road looking for the post. To make matters worse, the map showed a rock fence near the right road, and there was a rock fence near the road we were on, and in the right place according to the map. However, no rock fence was shown on the map near the road we were actually on! Anyway, after finally finding that post, the remainder went smoothly.

Final result:


1 Sondresen,Arne M. Sandnes kommune BIL 27:12 + 00:00 1000
2 Nyseth,Roger Sandnes kommune BIL 30:06 + 02:54 903
3 Birkeland,Gunnar Tieto Enator BIL 32:20 + 05:08 841
4 Johanssen,Ulf StatoilHydro BIL 33:17 + 06:05 817
5 Hetland,Bjarte EnterNett BIL 33:40 + 06:28 807
...
...
...
(lots and lots of people)
...
...
DSQ Rodriguez,Victor ABB Automasjon BIL 1:05:42 0

I'll have to check my score card tonight and see what happened. I know I did not miss any posts, but my swipe card may not have contacted one of them. I'm somewhat hopeful in that if the first four posts had taken me as long on average as all the rest did, I would have done quite well. Next time....

Finances and Other Stuff

I have been here for 1.5 months already and I have not been paid yet. There are delays due to the fact that they only pay once a month coupled with the fact that they screwed up payment to a foreign bank. Today I bought a package of 4 veggie burgers for 50NOK ($10CAN) and then filled a tank of gas at just over $2CAN a liter. It's good I have savings or I'd be eating dog food by now.

On other fronts, I took an introductory kickboxing class today. What a workout! I went with a guy from work who has a few years of experience kickboxing. About halfway through the class we partnered up and he got to do punches and kicks while I held a blocking pad. But for some reason, we never switched! The class was over and I was left going "but....but....?"

Tomorrow I'm orienteering again, and this time I've been moved up to the next category because of my performance two weeks ago. The route will be twice as long, the flags more hidden, and you only get to see the map 59 seconds before you go. Should be fun....

Thursday I'm hoping to bike to work for the first time now that I was taught the best route by a guy from work. He started drawing it on a map and then said that this simply wasn't working. I figured that was the end of it, but instead we got in his car and we drove it....in the middle of the day. It took about 30 minutes to get back to the office. Priorities.....are different here.

On Friday I'm overnighting at a cabin with about ten people from work (hence veggie burgers). Should be good. I'll post pictures.

Never tak a Taxi in Norway

On Friday I paid more for a taxi ride coming home from the airport than for SIX taxi rides of equivalent distance in the UK. I would estimate that taxi prices in the UK were about 50% more expensive than I'm used to in Canada.

Vistehola / Svarthola

Today I biked to a cave near Randaberg that was once (6000 to 8000 years ago) home to a small group of humans. I was shocked by how small the cave is, considering Wikipedia states it was home to about 25 people. Apparently the water used to lap at the entrance to the cave when it was in use, but today this is clearly not the case. You can see the distance to the sea in the second picture.

Telford

Sunday I traveled North from London to Telford for some training. The only tourist attraction in Telford is the iron bridge over the Severn River. I walked there on my first day, getting some incredulous looks when I told people I had walked (maybe because it's 12km).

The only other touring I did was to climb the Wrekin, a local hill of some 400m. Actually, I tried to climb it once but climbed the wrong hill (the Ercall as it turns out). When I got to the top, I could see the Wrekin but there was a quarry in the way and it was getting late. I climbed the Wrekin (for real this time) two days later.

I have no idea what the story is behind the teddy-bear-heads-on-spikes fence, but I know it kept me out. The cooling towers are from a local power plant. They totally dominate the skyline in the area, but apparently a lot of attention to detail was put into their construction to make them fit in in better. The concrete is the colour of autumn leaves on purpose to blend in better.

I need to fix my camera as it's occasionally very annoying not to have a screen.

London

If some of these pictures are slightly askew, it's probably because I took them after sleeping just a few hours on a couch. It was too nice to sleep the day away though. There will be plenty of time to sleep when I'm dead.

Pictures include the Palace of Westminster including Westminster Abbey and St. Margaret's, London Eye and Big Ben. Also some random side street with a neat colour scheme.

4th MoS Video

3rd MoS Video

2nd MoS Video

I'm Back

I'm back in Norway so here's a big update to cover my week in the UK.

First, I spent two days in London, starting with Friday night clubbing at the Ministry of Sound. MoS was celebrating their 14th anniversary so it was a big (sold out) night. To make the night even bigger, the star act was Armin van Buuren, the #1 ranked DJ in the world!

It's really hard to take decent pictures in there, what with the flashing lights, the smoke, etc. Videos worked pretty well though.