Posts Tagged ‘oslo’
Heyoo.
I come to your computer screens this evening firstly to procrastinate from writing a 6 page essay on nationalism, secondly to tell you about what a marvelous couple of weeks I’ve had.
It all started last thursday. I went down to my basement storage compartment to get the inflating air-matress I keep there. I arrived to the sight of my lock gone, my air-matress gone, my entire DVD-collection gone, and one of my moms suitcases. The basement floor was also covered in water, I’ll get back to that. So after a moment of “WTF” I accepted that my storage compartment had been broken into and I had been robbed. I went into the city to talk to the police (my case has been rejected as unsolveable. Thanks, useless norwegian police), bought a new padlock and went home to lock up agian.
When I returned, i noticed that while robbing me, the thieves had tumbled one of my cases of books, scattering them on the floor. On closer inspection, I saw lots of books ruined by water-damage. Worst day ever!
So I called the student-collective place I rent from, and they told me to take pictures of the ruined books and mail it to them with a list of them, and they would pay me back. So I did, and the monday after the weekend I got a responce saying the wouldn’t cover my damaged books after all. Argueing did not help.
It does get even worse, though. Because Oslo, as most cities, has a public transportation system. You get a fancy card, which lasts for one month at the time. Every month, you buy another month of travel. And there are fancy beeping machines on the busses and trams, that you beep your card infront of to activate tickets or something like that.
Well, when I moved to Oslo, I read that they could not give tickets to people for not beeping their cards every time, which was judged in court. I was also told that I didn’t have to beep my card by friends. But apparently, unlike in every other city in Norway, the month of travel-time you buy isn’t activated when you buy it, but when you beep your card on a machine. I had no idea, so I still got a ticket.
So it appears that Oslo has realized I’m here to stay, and is trying to reject me like a virus. But as a guy who won norwegian Idol a few years ago, had one hit, got booed of stage and now is a nobody once sang, I’m standing tall!
I can’t get the embed video-thing working, so here is an anticlimactic link instead.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HW_siSnPWqs
Vegard
Hay.
Since last i speedposted outside of my exam locale, alot has happened in my speedy world.
At the moment, i am sitting at a slightly unconfortable chair in Oslo, waiting for my train home. I’ve been here this weekend for a globalization conferance held by the norwegian branch of the world social forum. It has been awesome.
I wish to share a tale I came upon. It is quite sad. Me and my special ladyfriend were sitting at a coffehouse, waiting for the buss. We were sitting in a sofa outside in the snow (but under a pull-out roof and heat lamps), enjoying a nice hot cup of delicious cocoa.
Inside of the store a man sat, by himself. He was enjoying a delicious pastry and a cup of coffe, obviously quite satisfied as he was singing to himself of his achievement. “Nice for him”, I thought.
So, there we are outside of the store in the sofa. He then comes out, and tells us that it looks like we are having a nice time, and that he never could have that when he was young, because he was too shy. Now he is all alone, all his family is dead, no children or grandchildren. Noone he can have a nice time with but himself. He said that if he could go back 40 years, he would do it all differently. Then he told us that he lives in an institution, and they have failed to make him better.
After this extremely sad note, he walked back inside the coffehouse and sat back down at his table. As we walked away I could hear him sing to himself “I am crazy, I am crazy”
Sometimes I hate what this world does to some people. I do hope this poor man finds happiness, because noone should live their last days regretting their life.
Vegard