Muse Gig

Oslo has a surprisingly high number of great bands playing here. Muse are one of my absolute favourites, and i got the chance to see them in july at Wembley, this was a smaller venue, which brings its own pro's and cons, but i was very very excited about the gig. Unfortunately, i had aquired seating tickets...much to my mate daves annoyance, which was compounded by the fact that my friend Sidsel and her sister had standing tickets...so for about 20 minutes, myself and dave scoured the ticket touts outside to find standing tickets (note. the touts were all scousers from liverpool in england...ill avoid the obvious stereotyping), but all the touts had were seating tickets. eventually we found 2 standing tickets and had to pay an absolute fortune for them, plus we still had paid for our seating tickets...which we managed to sell for a pitance to a tout. we had paid more than twice as much as theface value to have the opportunity to stand in the mosh pit at the front...which in oslo, believe me is expensive!

anyway, gig shots below. was an incredible gig, both visually and sounds wise (is there a sound/listening version of visual??)

crowds here are weird though...in the uk in the front of gigs, everyone bounces and jumps around like lemmings on speed (best i could think of, sorry), but here, its all 'hands/fists in the air'....much prefer the uk method

anyway...was a fantastic gig. (the barometer of a good gig is how sore my neck is in the morning, and what my range of turning my head has...needless to say im very careful crossing the road today)

top night

ps apologies for the self indulgent posting of so many gig photos, that will be meaningless to most.

pps i stopped trying to convince people that 'my music taste was better than anyone elses...so you should listen to my music' about 10 years ago...however, for reference, Muse are well worth a listen. Genre is kinda rock, with electro stuff, piano and a falsetto voiced singer. well i like it

Post gig

with yet another band t shirt that will probably be resigned to the bottom 'never wear, but don'twant to throw out' draw

Oslo Spektrum

pic from inside the venue

Galaxian!

the visual effects at a Muse gig are amazing...(see Wembley photos from July??) at this particular song...they electronic backdrop played at high speed images of my favourite 80's arcade game (galaxian)...a bit of self indulgence showing this...but was just one of those 'postcard moments' in life. was a very happy boy

Plug in Baby!

i guess the 'signature' song for Muse is called Plug in Baby..and my favourite also...when this came on, i saw people looking behind (i was at the front), and was confronted by loads of huuge orange balloons descending towards me (those who have seen the brilliant 70's drama tv series 'The Prisoner' my absolute favourite, will understand the fear that these things can put into people). anyway, they bounced along the crowd for the whole song, and when they burst, they were filled with streamers...it was an incredible sight)

Matt Bellamy

Oh dear....

in the mosh pit with too much beer and too much excitement for one boy to handle

Gig Photos

Muse pre-gig

Mette, Dave, Sidsel, moi

Ah...yet more photos of Frogner park

on my way home sunday...

Yomping in the woods

lappi (who actually hardly barked at all), johiris and a moose/elk thing...i think maybe an elk

Sunday

I went for a healthy hike on sunday to clear away my post world cup hangover, with my friend johiris, and her dog lappi (nicknamed yappy as the thing never normally shuts up)

we got the train from town to the top of oslo, now i felt particularly rough from over comiserating the previous night, and had a healthy headache, when many many many young folk (young folk? how old am i??) all got on the train in ball gowns and tuxedo's...apparently there was a ball at the top of the mountain in a restaurant...which in itself was fine...but they had brought an entire brass band with them, who played at full volume the 80's rock classic 'The Final Countdown' by Europe..ALL the way up (30 mins ish). apparently, and i didnt know this, Europe are Swedish, and so are a bit of a cult over here. so in a packed carraige, with headache from hell, i listned over and over again while a full brass band played cheesy rock, while everyone on the train sang along. triffic

Post rugby world cup 2003

this was taken 5 minutes after the 2003 final while i was in barcelona (i look particularly sozzled as it was pretty early in the morning 9am?? as the game was played in australia)

Post rugby world cup 2007

this was taken 5 minutes after the final this year...whilst watching south africa pick up the trophy...and...

Rugby World Cup Final

Amazingly against all the odds, England made it through to the rugby world cup final, played on saturday night...so was the usual cramming into an irish bar (are there more irish bars than irish people globally?) nervously drinking too much beer, and spending 80 minutes shouting at the tv. We won the world cup 4 years ago, and we would have been the first ever team to retain it if we had won. unfortunately, partly due to the most incredibly 'wrong' decision in the history of sport ever! (ok, maybe not 'ever') when we were disallowed a perfectly good try, we lost to south africa. totally gutted, but very proud none the less

Goodness...

Taken from todays daily national newspaper...

"Amidst all the talk about carbon dioxide emissions and global warming comes news that Norway's national mascot may be contributing to the destruction of the environment, through burping and other bodily functions.

The country's so-called "King of the Forest" hasn't been widely viewed as having any really nasty personal habits, surely none that could be considered an environmental threat.
But now some researchers linked to Norway's technical university (NTNU) in Trondheim contend that moose are responsible for tons of gas emissions a year through their frequent burping and, well, farting.
"Shoot a moose and save yourself a climate quota," joked moose researcher (and moose hunter) Reidar Andersen at NTNU to newspaper VG on Tuesday. He's published a book on the life of a moose.
And he's only half joking. The research web site www.forskning.no has calculated that the annual gas emissions from a moose are equal to those from an individual's 36 flights between Oslo and Trondheim.
A grown moose will burp and pass so much methane gas in the course of a year that it amounts to 2,100 kilos of carbon dioxide emissions.
Newspaper VG reported that a motorist would have to drive 13,000 kilometers in a car to emit the same.
Bacteria in a moose's stomach create the methane gas, which in turn breaks down the plant fibers the moose has eaten. Excess gas is (ahem) farted out, and methane gas is considered more destructive than carbon gas. Cows are also a source of such gas emissions, while pigs and chickens are more environmentally considerate.
VG reported that 120,000 moose wander around in Norwegian forests. This year's looming moose hunt (elgjakt), which begins September 25, will eliminate an estimated 35,000 of them."

Apologies, this won't turn into a daily newspaper review, but come on...!

Come on in...the water's fine...

"Oslo water unsafeCitizens were warned Wednesday not to drink tap water in the capital after the discovery of potentially dangerous parasites in the drinking water supply.

On Tuesday the Oslo Department of Water and Sanitation discovered the microscopic Giardia lamblia and cryptosporidium parasites at three locations in the Storo district, an area that along with 80 percent of the capital gets its drinking water from the Oset water treatment plant.
"This is the same bacteria that caused the drinking water epidemic in Bergen," Food Safety Authority district chief Kjetil Berg told Aftenposten.no."

The aforementioned Bergen problem in 2004 left 35,000 rather ill! some still have not fully recovered...nice. Oh, and why oh why did they have to put a photo up of the parasite??? now im getting paranoid..i swear i have belly ache!

On a lighter note...i have discovered the norwegian daily newspaper website...that also has all the news AND tv guide in english. simple things...

Weekend

Beer, headache, beer, football (england v estonia), beer, rugby (england v france world cup semi), headache, mountain biking, beer, dinner, mohito's, bed. nutshell

Weekend

After a late night arrival back from the uk, i met up with quite a few mates downtown, for a couple of beers (well...) saturday i went out to the pub at 2pm to watch england beat the aussies in the world cup! whoo hoo...then stayed and watched bristol city (who?!) demolish sheff utd...was a bit crap sat in the pub on my own in the corner with a single tiny screen, while the rest of the pub was cheering at the italian game on, on the big screen, then watched the new zealand game with the guys again after that...THEN went out for a few celebratory beers in a cool new bar ive discovered. am starting to find the more alternative places now which is great, so i dragged about 10 people to my new discovery. a racous but great night ensued. sunday was a quiet affair, lunch with those who could get up, folowed by dinner in the evening. pics taken from frogner park (again), behond my house, on the way to lunch.

this morning, the temperatures hit below for the first time this year. autumn has arrived, and despite a crappy summer, we are having many a lovely blue sky crisp day

Strange Russian Girl

so we're sitting there and this blonde russian girl comes and site next to dave...she speaks no english (that we know of)...and proceeds to completely molest dave, who is so drunk he fell asleep not long after. in fact, he was that drunk, when i spoke to him the next day, he had absolutely no recollection of these events...dave, here is the proof mate

Dave

take 1

Spasibar

take 2

Weekend

Spasibar...a kitch Russian bar that i have found in the centre of oslo (when i say 'found', i obviously mean someone told me about it). there was a band on, some kind of experimental thing from the u.s. and so theer was a cover charge of 50nok (£5) to get in...however, we had a russian friend with us, and as she was russian, she got in free...so bernado (argentinian) who was next in line, told the girl on the counter that he was russian (in a terrible faux russian accent)...and was also duly let in for free. ill never forget dave though, he was next, and from sheffield, and strolled up to the counter, and in his strongest/thickest yorskshire accent proceeded to try and explain (in the worst james bond bad guy style russian accent) that he too was russian. "dasvidanya love...im russian an' all"...needless to say, it didnt work. although strangely it did work for steve from australia. bit of a mad night in the end...well, we were celebrating the england rugby win. i left at 2am...others were literally thrown out by the huge russian bouncers at 3