Expats

While surfing the net I happened to land on some blogs of expats living in my country. While it is nice to read about impressions of people living in your country it is also interesting to see that people usually make the same mistakes as you do. So in order to collaborate to world peace I decided to use the little experience I have as a country-hopper-expat and write some advices for blogging about other countries:
1. Remember you are living in another country, what is normal for you might not be normal at all there and vice versa. Don't make judgments.
2. No country is perfect, not even your country.
3. It does not matter how well you speak another language, natives will always recognize you as a foreigner.
4. Be polite and try not to offend people.
5. Being an expat means that you decided to go and live somewhere else. If you don't like what you see, either help to fix it or move on.

These rules are harder to follow than what they seem. I find myself breaking them all the time, but if one tries to follow them you'll see how much your perception changes and how much natives start improving their perception of you.

Jotunheimen

Today I came back from an incredibly wonderful experience, skiing in the Norwegian mountains in Jotunheimen National Park.
We started on Sunday taking the DNT bus to Gjendesheim, and once there we went out to check the skis and see how things were going. On monday we crossed the lake Gjende to get to the cabin at the other end, Gjendebu. The first half was against the wind and the second half was more or less problematic because I rewaxed my skis in the middle and I choose the wrong wax. The result was that I was accumulating a lot of snow under my skis, so I had to stop and rewax them. We arrived at Gjendebu at around 15:30 (18 kms trip).
On tuesday morning we started the trip to Olavsbu, a self-service cabin located around 14 kms from Gjendebu. The weather was perfect most of the way, and the trip was very pleasant. The only problem came at the very end when we were caught by a strong wind but we managed to get to the cabin without problems. We arrived at Olavsbu at around 15:00.
On wednesday morning we started our trip to Fondsbu, more or less 12 kms from Olavsbu. The very first part of the trip was hell, it was an almost vertical climb and since I don't master the technique yet it took a lot of energy and time (almost one hour for about 200 meters). After that the trip went better until we hit another climb, although this was shorter. Once we were done with that climb, the down hill part came. That was fun, although I fell like a gazillion times. We arrived at Fondsbu at around 14:30.
Today we started at around 9:00 to Tyin, in the hope to get to Tyinkrysset and catch the bus back. The original plan included a final stop at a cabin called Slettningsbu (very close to Tyinkrysset), but we decided that we were too tired to do it, so we went straight to Tyin. It was a 22 kms trip, and 20 of those were over the lake Tyin. We arrived at Tyin at around 13:40 and we started walking to Tyinkrysset. We missed the 14:15 bus so we had to wait for the 17:05 bus. However while we were waiting, somebody approached us and told us that he was snow blinded so he couldn't drive his car back to Oslo and asked us if we were going to Oslo and could drive him there. We agreed and we got a ride home!
Despite being incredibly tired, I'm totally looking forward for the next trip.

Am I being childish?

I have a job that I like and I can afford to live my life the way I want to live it. If I compare myself to many other people, I'm in a really nice situation. Specially on these harsh times.
Most important, my job is challenging. Or at least, it used to be. Is not that is less challenging now, but we are going through many changes and I don't agree with some of them. I have told my manager but he thinks that things are going on the right direction. If I look at things in perspective, some of them are although some others are not. Should I just grow up and accept that life is not always as we want it? Am I being childish by thinking that I should find something else and do not accept the changes? I need to think about this.

pushing limits

I've been enjoying cross country skiing for the past three months. I'm progressing at a fast pace and to test how much I've learned I decided to join to an activity by the "Ski Føreningen" (Ski association) and try to go 57 kilometers in a single trip!
I'm impressed with myself, I was able to finish the 57 kilometers without major problems. My strategy was to go a little bit slower than normal and do very little stops. In fact, I can count only two stop that lasted for more than 5 minutes. The other two stops were about one minute, and they were basically to drink some water. The fact that my skis were glided was a key factor, I was able to glide quite a lot and that made the energy saving part very effective. Together with the slow pace that made me feel really well.
Nevertheless, I'm exhausted but terribly happy!

Skiing over a frozen lake

Today I wanted to do some cross country ski, so I woke up and send some sms to some friends and waited to see if there was somebody interested in joining. Last time I tried cross country ski was a week and a half ago and it was all ice so it was not very fun. Since it has snowed a little in Sognsvann I decided that I should give it a try.
I only got one companion and we headed to Sognsvann with our skis. Once we got there we found out the situation was not the best and that there was still a lot of ice and very little snow. We checked two trails and we decided that it was not worth it. So we left our skis and went for a hike instead. While hiking we saw lot of people skating on the lake and one or two skiing on the lake so when we were back at the beginning I told my friend that we should give it a try.
We walked to the lake, wore our skis and voila! It was amazing, it was very nice since it was all flat and I could concentrate in trying to get my rhythm right. We crossed the lake and came back. I realized that I almost got the right rhythm, although I fell a couple of times (whenever there was too many people skating they removed the little snow and left pure ice, so those regions were very slippery).
I look forward to do it again, although I would like to have some snow next time ;-)

Me, myself and I

I know I'm stubborn and I know I can be a PITA sometimes. I also know that I hate to make mistakes, and I get very angry with myself when I make mistakes. The problem is many times I don't realize the consequence of getting angry with myself and let that anger damage other people. Worst of all, I realize afterwards and it is kinda difficult for me to fix things up. To top it all, in the past two weeks I didn't do it only once but twice, to two different persons and in two completely different circumstances. Let's hope that next year I'll find a way to fix things up, otherwise it's going to be a very interesting year.

Maxbo sucks!

Two days ago I bought a small hose to connect my washing machine to the water supply. It seemed like a pretty easy thing to do, and something you will expect to find in a store the size of Maxbo. I went there after my work, and I asked for help. They told me they didn't have one, but that I could try the hoses for showers and bring it back if the size was wrong. It seemed like a good solution for me so I did that. When I arrived home I realized that the shower hoses are different since they have one side that is smaller than the other, besides they are not made to handle the pressure that a washing machine hose can. So, I packed it the best I could and today I went back to Maxbo to ask for my money back. Notice that I bought it on thursday, unpacked it and try to connect it to the hose I didn't do anything to the hose. The person handling returns told me that he couldn't accept the hose back because I had opened the bag.... I told him that I was told to do that and try to see if it was the right size and if not I should bring it back. He refused again and said that if I wanted to do that I shouldn't have cut the small ties they use to pack them (notice that those small laces are plastic, incredibly tight and besides they are cheap and they have them everywhere they need to pack hoses or cables). I told the guy how I was supposed to try the hose if I was not supposed to remove those laces. He refused again and told me that he didn't have the authority to refund me (hello, you are handling the returns section of the store...) so I needed to come back on Monday when his boss was around. Of course I asked at what time his boss was there and I'll go on monday to get my money back.
Of course, after all this Maxbo just lost a customer.