Painting

Yesterday and today I've been painting my apartment, it has been an interesting experience.
So far, only my bedroom is being painted in the future I plan to paint the living room, the hallway and the kitchen. It's interesting to see how things change with a little color, my apartment was originally "hospital white", which means that it was almost colorless. Now my bedroom is yellow and you can tell right away that it looks much better and much more alive than before. I still have to finish some details but I can say that it's almost done.
One thing that I noticed is, why am I doing this? meaning why do I go through all the pain of painting my bedroom? It's quite an interesting question, but the answer so far is because I really like where I am now, and I really like the life that I have so I would like to establish here and that's why I paint my apartment to start the process.

Apartments and moving issues

Last week I had to move to a new apartment, since my first month in Norway was approaching. I found a nice apartment at a very convenient price and I rented it.
It must be said that renting was an "interesting" experience, since at first I had help from some people but the last steps I had to do it myself. To spice things up, the landlord spoke very little english, so it was basically a sign language conversation. Finally the move day came, I move all my stuff from the 4th floor to the door (moving things that way is not funny), and I called a taxi. I tried to speak norwegian and I prepare myself, so I knew exactly what I needed to say (although it was not the most usual way, most people agreed that it was correct). I called, listened the options in the menu and selected a "Maxitaxi" since I was moving my stuff and had some boxes to carry. Finally I reached an operator and I said: "Jeg vil en taxi fra ... til ...", totally proud of myself and feeling totally sure that after that my problems were over. Of course the lady asked me something that sounded like white noise to me, so swallowing my pride I replied "Could you repeat that in english please?". I turned to be a very simple question (once the question was asked in english of course): " Do you think that you need a van or is it a station wagon enough?". I asked for a station wagon, and wait for a few minutes.
Once everything was in, we went to my new place and I unload the station wagon. Thinking that finally I could do something without much pain, I went to my apartment and tried to open the door.... voila! the landlord didn't give me all the keys.... I called him (at this time I was pissed off) and demanded a solution because I was not going to pack everything and return to my previous place. After a while, the building manager came and gave me the missing key and finally I was able to move my stuff.
Despite all the troubles I'm really happy now, this weekend I went to Ikea and bought some curtains, and I'm thinking about painting my room. My furniture & friends are still "sailing" through customs, so I'm sleeping on a sleep bag on the floor, but at least my apartment is going to look really nice in a few days.

I think...

I think I really like Norway, life is so peaceful here. I know I've been here only for a little while, but so far I really love it.
This Saturday I went to a fishing sport store to ask about fishing here in Norway. The guy was really nice and he explained that fishing near Oslo is really easy but only during spring and summer and that during October it's forbidded. He told me that during winter I could don "ice fishing". Since I didn't know what "ice fishing" was, naively I asked the guy if he could tell me more. He looked at me like "duh...." and started: "ok, you get yourself a drill go to the frozen rivers or lakes, drill a hole and then start fishing".... I think he saw the surprise on my eyes while he was telling me about this... sounds fun, but I'm not sure if I'm going to try it in the short term.

Vikings, elves and... Trolls :-)

19 days ago I started a new face on my life, I left the US and my previous job, and I moved to Norway looking for new challenges.
I have to admit, if you are a developer and you work in the US you probably earn more money than you will in other parts of the world, although cost of living there is really expensive.
I also have to acknowledge that working for Microsoft was a great experience because of all the things that I learned. It has to be said that working for such a humungus company makes you open your eyes and pay attention to how they manage to do something at all.
That being said, my stay here in Norway has been great so far. The country is beautiful, the people is friendly and my job is great. Finally I am working for open source again, which make me feel really good.
People in Norway seem to be very elvish, I was expecting to find lots of viking looking people, but people here is more elvish than anything. Of course, walking around I've seen viking looking people, but so far (probably because I've been mainly in Oslo) they don't seem to be too many.
I do not belong to any of those categories, since my new employer is Trolltech, I'm officially a troll :-)