Sheffield

woke up this morning, turned bbc world news to the words 'sheffield, its in yorkshire...and its in danger of being wiped out by floods...' certainly woke me up quick enough. massive rains have flooded my home town (5th biggest city in england), even more worryingly, a nearby dam is cracking which could do god knows what damage. on a lighter moment, the bottom photo shows sheffield wednesday football ground is completely under water...best news all day :-)

Weekend

Weekend was a good one. went to a house party with my 'new' friends. a mixture of aussies, british, french and norwegian. was really good fun. headed into oslo later on and partied on. norway seems to only have one brand of beer, Rignes...and its not good for your head believe me.

saturday woke up late with a killer headache. went to look for a mountain bike, but only had a few hours as it was late. annoyingly, shops arent open on sundays in norway, so i only get one day a week to go shopping for stuff. oh, and you cant buy alcohol in shops after 6pm on weekdays, or 8pm on weekends....lord only knows why.

sat night went to cinema on my own. saw tarantinos new film 'death proof'. disliked it lots. overstylised, over 'cool' same old same old tarantino

sunday, lunch in a lovely outdoor cafe with chums. my my...i cant believe youre reading this inane drivel...

Gdansk - Poland

this is the old town in gdansk. absolutely stunning architecture, so nice it almost looks fake, or a film set. such a beautiful city. i did have a few pre conceptions about poland, and in truth there are run down grey tower blocks in a lot of places, but some of the old towns take your breath away...again, 30 degree temperatures add to its beauty. Poland was a communist country up until 10 years ago (ish) and its incredibly interesting to hear the stories about how life used to be. one that sticks in my mind is that cartoons were only played on tv for 1 hour once a year, around christmas time as a treat. can you imagine that in an age of 24 hour cartoon channels and cable tv???

Sopot

nice bar on the beach...which is apparently dismantled every winter...entirely. oh, and my colleagues were quick to point out that the pier is the longest wooden pier in europe...a 'discussion' ensued as to the validity of this point, as brighton pier looks longer, but is not a wooden structure apparently...thats me wrong then

the rather stunning hotel in the distance (right hand side of the pier) is where hitler used to stay.

the first picture, is the hotel where i stayed, which itself was beautiful...not as nice as hitlers though...doesnt seem fair really, ive never hurt a fly, and HE gets the nicer hotel. i might write a letter...

Our office in Poland

I kid you not, this is our office...bit bendy, something out of a lewis carrol book (its not bendy inside though :-( )

Sopot (Poland)

Sopot is on the north coast of poland on the baltic sea (ashamedly, when asked, i didnt know it was the baltic sea...i wont even say what i thought it was) its where our office in poland is based, and is an old seaside town, a favourite of hitler no less when he decided to invade

Copenhagen

Not actually managed to get the disposable camera printed yet, ill put some photos in here when i do. (printed is the wrong word....whats the word for when you get photos printed??? jesus...one year with a digital camera and ive forgotten that word already...modern society eh?? ooh whats the word??????)..here they are eventually.

Poland

Went on a 3 day business trip to poland last week. nightmare journey...kinda. had to be up at 4am for first flight from oslo. 1 hour queue to check in, and when i got to the check in desk, there was only 20 mins before the flight took off...anyway, bit flustered i got to the desk, where i was promptly told that i had no ticket...yes i was booked on, but my ticket hadnt been issued (we use american express to book flights) anyway, something had gone wrong, so after a few terse phone calls, all was sorted, however i was too late for the flight, but being the luckiest person in the world, the flight was then delayed by 1 hour allowing me to fly (karma for the delays from london last week) unfortunately that meant i missed my connection from copenhagen to gdansk in poland, and the next flight wasnt for another 5 hours, so i picked up a disposable camera (had packed my real camera in my luggage (idiot)...and took the 15 minute train to copenhagen, which is the capital of denmark. spent a lovely 3 hours then in glorious sunshine. copenhagen is similar to oslo in its beautiful architecture and old market squares etc... sat having a lovely lunch in the sun while i should have been in a factory somewhere in the middle of poland. copenhagen is beautiful, heartily recommended.

Norwegian Wood Festival

typically, as i flew to the uk for a gig...just around the corner from me, in the sculpture park in oslo was a weekend rock festival. it started on thursday (i know i know, we're out of chronological sequence now...hang in there) i went round to see a few new friends at one of their apartments that looks out over the park, and we could just see the stage from their balcony...we 'saw'/listened to tori amos and wolfmother....some great bands played that weekend, (evanesence, gareth)while i was in the uk. nuts

Laaaandan Innit!

sunday, went around camden market in london. camden market is totally ace, a huge uber cool area and street with loads of old buildings and loads and loads of 'stalls' and shops selling all kinds of alternative/hippy clothes and stuff....an absolute must if youre ever in london.

This Saturday - MUSE!

For my birthday, my good good friend tami bought me a ticket to see the rock band Muse at the new Wembley stadium in london. flew friday night (3 hours delay)

the new stadium is only a few weeks old and is fantastic. its the first stadium gig ive been to. supporting were Dirty Pretty Things (meh), and The Streets, who i love. Anyway, the gig was incredible, an absolute experience of a lifetime, there was about 70,000 people there, and a drunk me and tami. cannot describe how amazing it truly was, in my top 5 gigs of all time, maybe in my top 3. its a shame the photos dont really do it justice . on one of the photos, if you look at the big blue ball things, half way through a really nice and slow song, these balls floated above the audience, attached to the bottom of them were two acrobats spinning and doing fancy acrobatic stuff attached to these balls, all in time with the music, was incredible...you can just see them dressed in white under the lit balls (3rd picture, right hand side of the screen)

Monday

monday evening i was honoured to be invited by my dierctor at work to join him and a few other guys from the uk to go sailing with him on his 40 foot yacht on the oslo fjord. was a beautiful evening again, blue skies, brilliant sunshine. spent a blissful 3 hours sailing up and down the fjord. note, a fjord is kinda like a huge lake which runs to the sea. triavia, in the fjord, the bottom layer is sea water from the sea, but the top 10 metres is fresh water that runs down from the moutnains

Sunday

saturday night went to see pirates of the carribean 3....dont, thats my only advice.
sunday, went to a small island near where my new hotel is (10km from oslo centre). again, the weather was scorching hot. (took sun cream this time, not daft me) and sunbathed all day amongst the young and beautiful of oslo. (also decided i needed to start going to the gym again!) most people here have either holiday cabins in the mountains, or boats. the fjords around oslo are packed with people on small boats. anyway, spent a lovely day snoozing in the sun. only drawback was not actually speaking to anyone for a straight 55 hours....hmmmm, note to self, 'get friends'

Saturday

After what was probably my most expensive hangover ever, i went to oslo centre to mooch about. on advice i went on a boat trip to an island called bygdøy, about 15 mins boat trip from oslo centre. found a beach where there were literally thousands of norwegians. all tanned gods and goddesses (they dont do ugly or out of shape, or normal here) on the 'beach'. i say beach, was more brown sand and grassy hills. pretty cool place though, plenty of bbq's and sunbathing. note, norway has the 3rd highest skin cancer rate in the world behind australia and new zealand. they love it here (the sun that is, not skin cancer) . the elephant picture was taken from a photography exhibition in the town....its taken from underneath an elephant as it swims!

Last Weekend

saturday was my first full weekend in norway. have managed luckily, to meet a few people, a bunch of english-scottish-australain-norwegian people my own age...long story, but cool people and around my age. (bugger me, wheres the forward slash key, question mark question mark)

went out for a few beers on friday night with two of the guys...and at up to £7 per pint...its not a cheap night out. had a great time. this young guy from texas came over and started talking to-at us...and proceeded for 3 hours to tell us about this book called 'the game', which is his bible of 'pulling chicks'...not my words. was hilarious all night. little did i know that groups of woemen were called 'sets', going out was called 'sarging', there is a AMOG (alpha male of the group), and a bar full of said 'chicks' is referred to as a 'target rich environment'. also, the best way to pull 'chicks' is to compliment them, while putting them down also...ie 'tell a woman she has man-hands' this will make her think youre being nice, while destroying her self confidence, hence she'll want you....nope, i didnt get it either, made for a funny night watching him try though. he also said that i was considered 'exotic' as im not from norway and the 'chicks' would be able to resist...i politely asked him if he'd ever been to yorkshire, or sheffield for that matter, and that 'exotic' wasnt really a description of someone coming from there, and that if he told a woman from england that she had 'man-hands', then those said 'man-hands' would probably break his nose....its a strange world

AARRGH

this is what happens when you have no internet connection for a week...you totally lose track... bit of useless trivia...although asian computer keyboards are weird, thay are NOTHING compared to scandinavian ones...have been here over two weeks and cannot find the '@' sign...i kid you not, everytime i log into my email, i have to go to wikipedia, search for the 'at' sign and copy and paste. i also cant understand a flippin word this screen is saying, im just going by memory on what buttons to press.

norwegian lessons needed methinks...now, do we think 'publiser innlegg', or 'lagre na' means 'publish post' (question mark question mark)....oh yeah, cant find the question mark either so have to hand write it every time

Flat

didnt get my dream apartment...totally gutted. saw a few more today, one quite nice, nice area....but awful decor...im talking paisley print sofa. saw one on top of the hill overlooking oslo, amazing views of the fjords and town centre...just too remote, and my favourite was in such a great location, right behind the palace of the king and queen (50 metres) and on the same street of all the embassy's, such an amazing road of buildings....got there, and it was a 28sq metre flat/bedsit, basically just a small room with a kitchen and living room all mashed together, with a single bed wedged in a corner...and it was in a basement with no windows...and that was 600 pounds per month! losing faith that ill find somewhere nice...

...oh and i have the worst cold ever! and literally havent slept in 2 nights because of it...soooo tired, cant even function anymore

The ugliest car in the world

was expecting a vw golf...then this thing turned up. who in gods earth would design a car this ugly???!!! its a skoda 'roomster'...which may also count as the stupidest named car in the world...jeez

drove for the first time tonight....and of course, they drive on the right (wrong side to english, japanese and malaysian), kept forgetting which side the car was on...and managed to go round most of the roundabouts in the correct direction....i say most, as i did go round the wrong way once...was just outside the hotel...not sure the person coming the opposite direction was best pleased, although if this car was in a head on collision, it might improve the looks

Welcome gift

was on my desk when i arrived, all wrapped up nicely...how was i supposed to know it was for me??

The View From the Afternoon

this is the view from my office window...the yellow wooden house is the typical norwegian style