ゆりの世界

2009 is going towards it's end. The typical end of the year thing is to do a summarize which is what I'm thinking of doing as a maybe last entry of this year. The fact that I'm emptying my camera memory so I can fill it with plenty of new ones on my trip has of course nothing to do with this choice of theme. =P

8th June Flew to Norway for job interview. The commercial billboard below from the airport really hit the spot. I was flying most of the 24 hours that day on a round trip to Brattvåg.

Birthday dinner. Proper sushi since I came to Norway and dessert is a must. Thanks dear! =)

One of christmas gifts from company - a piggy in marzipan!

I must be out of my mind... or internet addicted. After the power cut the other day our connection somehow stoped to function. Might just be coincidently but NEway it didn't change much since I managed to get on one of my neigbour's connection. BUT earlier today it just suddently stop working too! The good thing out of this is I found a comfy spot on my bed, open the book I started on a couples of weeks ago, open a bag of candy and start reading again.
Before bedtime I just had to make a last try and see if I can reach out to the world wide web and magically I got internet back. Since I've been disconnected from the civilization for a whole 3 hours I just have to make it up by surfing and blogging instead of sleeping. OMG somebody please kill me!

I didn't realize that Lucia day was on is way until I saw that poster in office about small childrenn comming to our cantine to sing for us and offering Lussekatter. From this point of view it just felt like I'm still living in sweden. Except that the Lussekatt they offered didn't quite taste the same as the ones in Sweden. I especially like the Pressbyrå ones. The smell when walking by, the can't-say-no offer of getting 4 for 20 sek and they are just so yummy to eat on the subway train.
I hope they still sell them when I'm back in Sweden on the 23rd which is not so far away now.

The red hood and the reindeer on my table calender shows that this is the last month of 2009. It also reminds me that it's 2 more weeks and then I'll be off. Thanks to Sweetie almost everything is arranged for the trip which is quite relief coz I haven't had much time or know-how to arrange them in a good way.
Work is still going on fine and so is the life outside work....I think.
Feels like I'm entering a calmer period which makes me a bit unease. When it's chaos you can't be anything than sure that it's chaos but when it's calm, does it really means that everything is OK?

For the second time in my life I stood on a pair of skii. As a result every muscle in my body is aching. Had a few seconds where my whole life passes by while my knees were shaking. Apart from that I really enjoy the fun in skiing although I must admit - I sucked.

That little person in red is me btw. The skii weekend was quite spontaneous. We decided thursday night and went on friday evening which gives me 15 min to choose and buy my skii outfit. The result is far from pretty but filled it's functions. I was warm, dry and moveable. Next project - pink skii outfit and some equipments. ^^

Besides from skii, we also played games. I really had a great time. =)

Time passed rapidly since I moved to Ålesund and soon it's time for China. So much to do and so little time left.

A senior at my company taught me a word which I've known the meaning of for many years - "passive aggression". Working with improvement often means working with change. Everybody reacts to change differently. The group categories as "passive aggression" is one of the most difficult one to deal with. They'll give the impression that they agree with you and then subtlety trying to do anything to sabotage. For example make simple things complicated, finding illogical reasons to justify their acts and so on.
If you feel like you're unfortunated enough to always cross path with a certain type of people that you hate, there can be several reasons:

1. You're really unlucky. (Come on, what's the odds?)
2. There's something about you that drawn them to you. (Probably you're of the same kind)
3. Your behaviour made them react that way towards you. (Wake-up call maybe?)

As I was about to give up - it came!

Also the sign of time passing by. I've again became one year older and hopefully many years wiser.


As I put my foot down in the fresh snow I can't help but wonder if my footprint will still be there tomorrow.

I ran to the post office today just seconds before they close and I made it =)

Thanks my dear brother! Can't wait to start reading it. ^^

There's something with Norway and credit cards. First of all, you can have an ID-card function on the back which is quite good - one card less to bring on a saturday night out. But that's about all the positive sides of it. On the negative side:
1. You can't get a proper credit card if you don't have a Norwegian Social Security number. As a D-nr person you're limited to crappy Visa-Electron

2. Fees; yearly fee and fee when you withdraw money from a cash point

3. Some stores just DON'T accept credit card or Mastercard. They take Visa only.

With 3 different credit cards I still resort to use cash when I'm doing grocery shopping @ Kiwi.

Tomorrow I will leave this country for the first time since I came here. Wonder how that would feel. I kind of grew fond of this weird shaped country.
I asked for a rollercoaster ride and I guessed I got it.
A bit terrified, a bit worried but it does make me excited a lot. =)

Do you believe in shoemaker? I used to. I mean I find them everywhere. Around every corner. Obviously in this town, they're like a myth. They should exist but nowhere to be found.
I've wanted to fix my shoes for over a month now. First it was hard to find them with google. Finally I found the only 2 that operate in town. Went to the one in center and it was closed. They close at 17!!!
Today is the first day that I manage to be back in town before 17, went there with my shoes and it was closed! Obviously they're closed on every bloody monday.
Shoemakers in this town must be very wealthy coz they obvioulsy don't want customers!

Feels like ages since I've been here last time. I guess I'm not a dedicated blogger after all.
Autumn went quietly to winter but still no first snow, frost is all we got.
Hasn't been in the right mood to write something publishable lately.
I couldn't help but wonder, who is the most stupid? The one acting stupid or the one who believed in the stupid one. Anyway it will soon be over.
Looking on the brighter side, I now see my true friends - those who really care about me. I guess you win some and you loose some.
I'll prolly look back and laugh about this in the future. Now it's a flopping sick joke to me.

Time is passing so fast lately. It's already november. Although it's known for being a rainy, windy and messy month I used to look forward to november because I'll become one year older.
Birthdays are fun uptil a certain age and then you'll try to convince yourself that age is just a number, which it really is.
Also I now feel a little bit more settle down. I now have a proper place to stay, an address for ppl (read online shopping sites) to send me mails (I love mails) and looking forward to no more unexpected costs.
You can actually notice that my life is getting on more routinely by my absent in blogging. I kind of running out of exciting things to write about.

Do you remember a while ago when we had the www.rxxxxx.se site were you can see the yearly income of any swedish citizen? Well norway's got one too and this one is run by the goverment. They even created rules to make this happen.
So if you know anybody working in norway since begining of last year just surf in to this page type their name and town and voila you'll know how his/her income. Pretty neat huh?
Norwegian people are actually quite open about their salary. Just ask and they'll tell you. No hush hush.

Now that blogspot let me upload picture again, here is some I supposed to post but couldn't.

Don't you hate it when things don't function the way you expected them to? I tried to upload some pictures to this blog the other day but it just refuses to let me. That's the reason why it's been quiet for a while. Yup in the end I just gave up.
Another thing I hate to do is nagging at ppl. I don't think they feel good hearing me nagging and I too feel bad about it afterwards. So it's official, I'll stop nagging.
Anyway I finally decided to part with a small fortune for the sake of my life. I went and bought/changed winter tires today. It was amazing how fast and strutured the guys worked. Done in no time. Now I hope for icy roads muhahahah.

Now all my stuff is in my room but I think I need more furniture to host them. =(
It's raining outside and I think I overworked my back. Ouch!
Anyway pic of one of the object "we" moved this weekend.

I finally got out of Brattvåg last fridag. Since we are two ppl moving using my tiny volvo we just brought with us the most important things to go for the weekend. The plan is moving bit by bit this week since we'll be going back and forth everyday to work anyway.

The weather has been nice this whole weekend which is very rare. Not to waste this rare opportunity I went out mountain climbing with some collegue. My image of mountain climbing was a little different from theirs. When they say mountain climbing they do literary mean mounting vertically. Halfway up I was so exhausted that I had to stop and climb back down. Below you can see the path and how far I got. Also what shoes I was wearing  (>_<)

One of the collegues was very kind and accompany me down. I don't think I could have made it without him showing the way coz going down is a bit trickier than going up.
Anyway today more moving to do and I must remember to buy more rice coz I'm running out of rice soon.

Yup it's been quite empty here for a couple of days and the reason is that right now there's a lot thing going through my mind. Also because there hasn't been anything interesting to write about. I'm getting more used to the constant rain that I didn't bother opening my umbrella unless I'm about to get an unwanted cold shower. I'm even getting used to not being able to use our oven coz the previous tenants wrecked it.
Now some piece of information about the Norwegian appartment renting market.
1. Very pricey
2. Mostly private
3. Mostly unfurnished and with unfurnished it's literally unfurnished, no stove and no freezer or fridge.
4. No common washing house like in sweden so you need to get a washing mashine yourself.
5. Deposit is required. Normally 2-3 months rent
Those are the back side. Hopefully I can tell you all about the good side next time. ^^

I brist på torkskåp. Nämnde jag att vi har fri el? Yes we do =)

Yesterday I mustered my courage, lifted the phone and booked me a session at the local dentist. To my surprise, and a bit of horror, they had a free spot today. So today I went to the dentist for the first time in a couple of years. Fortunately almost all my teeth are healthy only 1-2 fillings need to be fix.
And the price? 580 nok for 20mins of examination. It will cost me about 2000 nok later to get those fillings done but well I don't have much choices.

Cought the local news saying that it's time to put on winter tires because snow is here. >_<

Maybe they are right coz yesterday I spotted hails outside our factory. Other than that it's still as rainy and windy as usual. That's because how this place is situated geographically, in a valley surrounded by mountains and neighbour with the sea.
Daydreaming for better weather elsewhere I've been looking at flight tickets for china and they are sooooo cheap!!! Around 5000sek!

Been looking up my options for taking holidays and so far it looks good coz those "mellandagar" are not included in the 5 weeks vacation days I'm entitled to =)
The down side is that if I don't have any paid vacation days for this year since I haven't earnt them yet.

Sometimes you have reached a state where it seems like all the excitement is gone. It's time for change. Question is what to change? Environment? People? Or both?
From now on I'm so going hardcore for flat hunting in Ålesund. My soul need a fresh atmosphere.
Talking about the "big city", it became my sanctuary for this weekend. We even found a sushi restaurant. I decided to try something new so I picked sashimi, made on fresh fishes coz it's a sushi/fish shop.

As I mentioned, I needed air so I went to the biggest shopping center again and here's what I found that day.

I just had one of my worse days. Not going smootly at work. Annoyed by people and circumstances in my surrounding and the weather was horrible, rainy, windy, gloomy. I felt so down. But after talking in the phone with a dear friend of mine, you know who you are, I felt much better. Now I have the energy and resolution to drag myself out from where I am now. I'm going to that party tonight! I need to meet people. I need to change atmosphere.  Better start arranging.

Today we had a teambuilding/training day. One of the task is to build the highest tower with paper in 10 min and out team won yay! =)

I received my code generator for internet bank today. I was quite surpise of it's size. I mean I signed up with Nordea and as I know, Nordea in sweden have a literarily huge code generator.  Looks like this

But in Norway it looks quite normal.

As the weather was tremendously good yesterday we just spontaneously decided to take the ferry out and explore the islands nearby. After some "quick" research I picked out Haroya which lies a little less than one hour away by ferry and off we went. Taking the ferry from here to Haroya cost about 39nok per adult and 117nok car+driver so that makes a 2 x 156nok for the roundtrip.

I feel in contact with the world again. I feel the flexibility at work, freedom of moving around without missing a call. Yes I finally got a cellphone. This one:

I haven't had a Nokia since the very first cellphone I got long long time ago. And Nokia has made progress since then. This one is quite close to a moveable office, which is should be or I will use it as such.
One disadvantage is that I couldn't transfer my phonebook over to this phone no matter how hard I tried. In the end I gave up and just send over some numbers through bluetooth. If I happened to not have received a sms from me with my new number, well first of all I owe you an apologize. Secondly you can find it on my facebook =)

I went to my bank today and got it verified. I've been working for only 2-3 weeks but yay I've already got paid! In norway you can choose to get around half of your monthly salary payed out in the middle of the month. That's because the original payday is at the absolutly last date in every month instead of on the 25th like in sweden.
I also got the first mail from sweden. I know it's sounds a bit ridiculous but I've been checking with the local post office every week and they've always said that I got nothing but today my Ny Teknik arrived, although a week late but that's good enough for me.
Whatelse? Work got intensified that's why I haven't been writing anything for the past couple days. Just did have energy to, or I rather spent my time resting or slacking more correct.
Even though I'm working in Norway, the people I mostly interact with everyday is actualy british working here - and they are quite a numbers. They too just like us love using irony and sarcasm in their jokes which I find wonderful.

I've been feeling frozen for the whole weekend. Time to take out thicker clothes coz autumn seems to arrived.
There's differences between a night out for different cultures. I didn't noticed it before but we tend to aim at pubs - tiny places with no entrance fee and no dance floor. I actually thought that they didn't have clubs with dance floors in Ålesund until we accidently crashed into one yesterday.
I need to sort some issues out so I might not be updating here for a couples days.

...that's my plans for this weekend. Tomorrow I intend to spend some time at the biggest mall in this area. If my information is correct they should have two asian food stores Yay!
After that we'll meet up with our colleges and have a hell of fun ^^
Oh yeah we are going to check a flat for rent in Ålesund too. Hopefully we can move soon, if not well we'll just continue looking.

..for my absence yesterday, here 2 pictues before I dig myself into bed.

One of the exciting part in the job of an engineer is to visit the place where the products we're manufacturing is used. Today we went on such a trip.
It was rainy and windy and really not a day for being out but the trip was worth it. There were a lot of mens (I didn't spot one single woman) working on building the ship.
I was told that there were a lot more of shipyards in this area before but now there's only a few big ones. Wonder how much a ship like this costs.

...which I'm trying my best to fill it up for the moment.
Today I went swimming in the local swimmingpool. It's been awhile but it was quite refreshing.
Anyway the thing is not what you do or where you are, it's with whom you are doing it. I think I can enjoy life here base on all the wonderful colleges I've met in this company.
It's just monday today but it seems like I won't lack any plans for this coming weekend. We are so going to have fun. ^^

To reality, to life and to fun ^^
Just woke up actualy. Haven't had enough of sleep last night so my eyes were constantly shuting down directly after dinner.
It's been a great weekend. We took the car to Ålesund and did some party with our colleges over there. Started out with a dinner and I absolutely loved the salad I took.

...and end of my first week in Norway.
It feels like the pieces is falling into place one by one so it's kind of relieving.
I took the opportunity to visit the "down town" of Brattvåg where I stay for the moment since it's impossible to find a flat in Ålesund. Runing some errands at the post office and did some groceries for the weekend. And this is what I found.