Preikestolen Hike III

With the imminent return of the car in just one more day, I went on a third hike of Preikestolen today, this time with H. from offshore training and three friends of his. We had a very wet hike (no surprise there) but luckily the deluge stopped after the first 45 minutes and we had fairly clear weather after that.

The mist made for some nice shots, and a few were taking advantage of it. At the top was a bride and groom taking wedding photos. I don't envy her carrying the dress up the climb. There were also two models modeling some weird fantasy dresses. H. is fasting for Ramadan which made the topic of food come up much more than usual. It seemed really mean to eat in front of him but he insisted (and we were famished). Finally, just as we were leaving, I got to play long-armed hero to a couple who had dropped their sunglasses down a crack. By putting my torso into the crack, I was able to just reach them.

Pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.com/victor.rodriguez/PreikestolenHikeIII#

EDIT: Booooooooooo! I just realized that I ripped my running jacket while playing hero! :( Booo!!!

Tomorrow I'm moving to my new apartment.

Persistence and Tenacity FTW

Today persistence paid off. After two and a half months of emails and telephone conversations, the first umbrella company I worked for have addressed all my exit concerns. They have agreed that their commission fees should not be taxed as income. They have provided some information about my missing D-Number. Finally, and most satisfyingly, they have reimbursed me for all the conversion losses I suffered due to not setting up a local bank account.

All in all, I have actually come out ahead of the point where I paid all the Norwegian back taxes as part of my June payment. Needless to say, this is excellent news.

Working Conditions

Today, at 1pm, for no apparent reason, I got the following email:

Subject: PARTY!
Message: Hi. Rune is serving waffles in 3.rd floor at 1 pm today. Welcome to you all.

No reason, no great milestone, nothing other than a Friday afternoon in August. I like this place.



Viking helmet and braids not included.

Y!A Quote

"The meek will never inherit the earth. Never. They will be stomped into the ground by the non-meek. At most they will inherit six feet of it."

- Ishtar

Random Stuff

Here's a quick update with a few random items...

First, on Monday M. signed a one-year lease to rent out the Oakville house. That's a big concern off the table as now the house will be paying for itself. Her brother will be our property manager. Now she just has to pack up and clean up. We're keeping the bulk of our stuff, not that we have much, in a locked room in the basement.

I went orienteering again yesterday. After the race, I checked the times on the scoreboard for my category, and saw that I was near the bottom of the times entered thus far. However, after checking the official results this morning, I guess only the top people had written down their times yesterday because I got 10th out of 37 overall (plus 6 disqualified). Not bad! I beat the winner on 5 posts out of 22 so I'm happy about that too. I thought it was interesting that the 4 fastest were within 1.5 minutes of each other, then one a minute later, one a minute after him, and then a gap of four minutes to places 7, 8, 9 and 10 who finished within 1 minute of each other.

I went out Saturday night with K. and her friend M. who was visiting her from Oslo. K. will be doing a long (180km) bike ride from Lysebotn to Kristiansand this upcoming weekend, so I'm lending her some basic cycling gear.

I've almost got all my issues sorted out with the umbrella company I was working under when I first arrived here. After leaving them due to their screw-ups, they changed my tax scheme so that I was paying all my income tax here in Norway. This had the effect of greatly increasing my tax rate overall and thus costing me a fair bit in back taxes. As lame as that was, I don't think it's worth fighting from a legal standpoint. However, I'm very carefully checking their math after I found some errors to try to make sure I get every penny I'm owed. I also need paperwork from them showing proof of earnings and taxes paid.

M.'s credit card info was stolen a few days ago, possibly while filling up on gas in Mississauga. Her credit card company cancelled the card and now she has to wait a few days for a new one. The scary thing is she did not lose her credit card, so somehow the information was copied without her knowledge. Possibly scarier is that the only reason the fraud was caught so quickly is because the criminals were stupid and made 'red-flag' purchases (gas three times in three days). Had they made 'normal' purchases, it would likely have taken longer to cancel the card. This is a good lesson for those who don't check their credit card and banking statements regularly.

I move out of my nice apartment in Stavanger at the end of August, and into a ground floor apartment in Sandnes. That means I'll also lose the car, but at least I'll be much closer (half the distance) to work. My employer has not been paying for my apartment since the beginning of August, and I can't justify the 15000 NOK ($2718 CAD) monthly rent cost of the apartment I'm in right now. Hopefully the new place is good enough or I'll be looking again soon.

Work is pretty boring/slow at the moment, but at least the fact that project I'm on is behind schedule means that my contract is not likely to be ended early. I'm slated to go offshore in about a month. I've also been getting a surprising number of recruitment calls in the last 10 days, and activity on my LinkedIn profile has picked up. The recruitment calls are for jobs around Europe, so I'm really happy about that!

My parents are doing another stretch of the Camino de Santiago, expecting to travel back to Porrino on September 1st. They finally started blogging.

No new pictures to upload as I haven't really done anything picture-worthy lately. I've been busy with a lot of sports instead. In addition to commuting to work by bike (10km each way), I'm playing soccer twice a week, orienteering once a week, going to the gym 2-3 times per week, and running 2-3 times per week. Whew! However, it's always nice to train for something more interesting.

That's all for now!

Greenify Your Life

As of today, my book has been downloaded 158 times. I think I'll retire soon.

Orienteering!

Yesterday was the first orienteering meet after the summer break. I got 20th out of 56! Sweet!

Dalsnuten Hike

This Sunday I did a very wet hike up Dalsnuten with P. and K. We initially started in the direction of Lifjell, and later changed to Dalsnuten. It took us about 4 hours to go all the way around and up and down to eventually reach Dalsnuten, and they were calling it the Canadian shortcut.

Comparing Market Data

This article compares various current economic data to 1929. Unfortunately the article is 2 months old.

http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/3421

The Recession is Over!

Right?

I had two job offers for contracts in Europe arrive in my inbox today, one through LinkedIn and the other must be from an inside recruiting whore. One is in the Netherlands and the other is based in the UK with commissioning....somewhere. I have to read them in more detail.

Hip Flexors

Hip flexor injury is very common in sports, especially soccer, football, and running. Caused by explosive movements, injury to these muscles can be painful, and cause all kinds of problems.

Awesome. I'm explosive now.

It turns out running a long time yesterday after not running for over a month was a "bad idea". Now my hip flexors are sore. Should pass by tomorrow I hope.

I'm trying to get a job in the GTA for M's brother M. Sounds like the job market is very slow despite the TSX breaking 11k last week.

Another Weekend

Yesterday was rather rainy and I slept in. I spent the day around the apartment, doing some cleaning and on the computer.

Today is bright and sunny! I ran around Mosvatnet three times, once fast and twice at a more leisurely pace. Then came home, made myself some lunch, and sat on the balcony reading and eating.

About half an hour ago, while I was reading, a little girl cycling with her family in the park behind the apartment took a nasty spill, so I went down to take them some bandaids. They were quite impressed.

Maybe I'll go for a ride this afternoon.

Murphy's Lesser Known Law

The things that come to those who wait will be the things left by those who got there first.

H.U.E.T. at Falck Nutec

Yesterday I completed a week of H.U.E.T. (helicopter underwater escape training) at Falck Nutec. This was the best-organized and fun safety training I have ever done, likely because of the focus on practical exercises rather than just theory.

We were a group of about 22 people representing 12 countries (including 4 Canadians)! We spent a lot of time in the orange survival suits you can see below. The suits are supposed to keep you from getting hypothermia within 2 hours in 12 degree (I think) water, but have been tested for up to 6 hours in water near 0 degrees. However, despite the suit, I was chilly in 17 degree water after about 20 minutes.

We practiced moving as a group in water, swimming with the suits, donning an escape suit in less than 2 minutes, using an escape chute, getting in and out of the various styles of emergency rafts and escape boats, jumping into water (simulating a jump from a height), using rebreathers, and doing an orderly evacuation of a ditched (in water) helicopter. We also had a few hours of fire fighting and first aid training. One of my favourite lessons was an escape from a completely pitch black series of rooms full of obstacles, stairs, locked doors, etc. while wearing the full survival suit. In 10 minutes, nobody in my group found their way out.

Friday was the big day where you have to escape a submerged helicopter using the emergency escape methods they teach you. This is what FN is famous for, as their simulator is world-class. Due to the level of training, if you get certified in Norway, you are qualified to work offshore anywhere in the world. You go through 6 simulations:

- Punch windows out before submerging. Brace. Fill rebreather. Submerge. Release belt and escape.
- Brace. Fill rebreather. Submerge. Open window, release belt and escape.
- Punch windows out before submerging. Brace. Fill rebreather. Helicopter turns upside-down and submerges. Release belt and escape.
- Brace. Fill rebreather. Helicopter turns upside-down and submerges. Open window, release belt and escape.
- Punch windows out before submerging. Brace. Submerge. Release belt and escape. (no rebreather)
- Brace. Submerge. Open window, release belt and escape. (no rebreather)

After all this, assuming you don't panic and back out of a test, you get certified to work offshore for four years.

We celebrated the week with an after-party at two local bars, a dance club and one person's house. It was a loooong night. Some of us got pretty close during the week. I guess ex-pats have to stick together. We traded all our email addresses and we'll likely meet up again.



Life raft and water formation practice.



Sitting inside the free-fall lifeboat.



Free-fall lifeboat - exactly what it sounds like. Here is a video of a similar boat in action.



Escape chute - used to get you down to a life raft (it beats jumping).



Helicopter simulator.



Submerged upside-down helicopter simulator.

More photos here.

Here's a video. I think this is test #5.