The cast of my life only just includes me...

Sølvi and I went to old Bergen town today... It's seriously a gingerbread fairytale village... So I said, if this is the house of pancakes, why can't I eat the walls???

The other night, we went to a tiny little pub on the northern tip of Austrheim, the island north of Radøy (see map in previous post), and by pure chance I saw a guy there who I tutored in systems and control labs when he came to oz on exchange 1.5 years ago.

Prolly heading up to Gurocknroll's mountain shack tomorrow or next day for skiing and new years. Then hopefully hook up with Kjetil in Oslo on the 2nd.

So far on radio/tv today I've encountered AC/DC, savage garden twice, natalie imbruglia, Kylie (old school - I should be so lucky), and, wait for it, Andrew Daddo. Yes, he's on Norwegian tv. My worst fears have been realised...

yots of pix when I get back to umeå, I promise

Jettebra i Norge

Hejsan all,

having a wonderful time in Norway. I'm completely surrounded by Norwegians!

Soelvi actually lives, not in Bergen but Radøy, an island half an hour north of Bergen, connected to the mainland by bridge. See here. Specifically, on a little sheep farm at Sletta, which you can see on the east of Radøy.

Everyone warned me that Bergen is the rain capital of europe, they have about 300 rainy days a year, but we've had straight sunshine and it's supposed to continue. Must be my Aussie influence!

Yesterday we climbed the tallest hill on the island, which was absolutely beautiful, you can see mountains to the east and the north sea to the west. Last night we went out looking for hjort, a kind of deer that is native in the area. (to pronounce hjort, say "yurt" while choking on a milkshake). Not only did we find them, but we saw the northern lights as well. First time for me!

Anyway, got heaps of jubbly photos but can't really be arsed trying to upload them from this computer right now.

Lots more to say, but you'll have to wait...

Laterz! xox

Ho Ho Ho.... Ho

Update: Hmmm, just went to the supermarket to get something for my last dinner before jag komma til Norge, and everyone in the queue was buying shitloads of milk. Like, 8-10 litres each. It gave me an eerie "what haven't I been told" feeling, like if everyone in town suddenly starts stocking up on tinned food and ammunition for no apparent reason... why milk?

Merry Christmas, Hanukah, Atheist Kids Get Presents Day, the Awesome and Vibratory Power of Colour, or whatever it is you all celebrate!

Tomorrow morning I fly to Norway to eat the lambs slaughtered by my new surrogate family, S-Rock and the Mellingens, and party on down with Guuurockandroll Vik, and all that entails. Wish me luck.

Not sure if I'll be on the net much until after new years, but hopefully you'll all be having too much fun to read blogs anyway.

Time to reveal the mysterious photographic experiment I hinted at in the last post. Yesterday was the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. I set my camera up on a tripod looking out my kitchen window, from which the entire path of the sun can be seen, and put it in its time-lapse mode, and let it go.

Unfortunately, due to cloud cover, most of the pictures are as dull as dogshit, but I picked out a few in which the sun is visible, which I think give some idea:

Just after sunrise (9:50):


10:30


11:50:


12:30:


12:50:


1:10 (just before sunset, unfortunately the clouds came on strong at this point)


And, as promised, a pic of my haircut. Problem areas are indicated in red:



(okay, maybe its not quite as bad as I said, but seriously, 70 bucks!)

Pot is to Kettle as Swede is to Norwegian. Also, haircuts.

UPDATE: This is quite interesting: Google Zeitgeist. The world affairs and Nature tabs are particularly arousing for people who like impulse responses.

"Humour is not a mood but a way of looking at the world. So if it is correct to say that humor was stamped out in Nazi Germany, that does not mean that people were not in good spirits, or anything of that sort, but something much deeper and more important"

-Ludwig Wittgenstein

Read that today, found it interesting given recent talk on here of communist humour, european humour, etc.

Speaking of which, there are ads on tv selling ringtones which, as far as I can gather, make fun of the hilarious accents Norwegians have. I'm not kidding. Swedes making fun of how people speak. Now I've seen everything.

I realised the other day that in my recent efforts to actually understand what Swedes are saying to me and each other, I've been neglecting what's really important: to laugh at it as the floopy floopy gibberish it really is. I can change, I promise.

In actual news, I got a haircut this arvo. Jayzus, they're expensive here. About AU$70 for a basic hack and slash job. For that money, I expect a work of art. Well, come to think of it, that's actually what I got: a work of art. Some critics have labelled it derivative and unoriginal (resemblances to Goya's "Yard with Lunatics" are undeniable) but who can predict the path art takes? I'm sure its a closed book to even the smartest of minds.

Seriously, it's a pretty shocking haircut, quite uneven. I look like a coconut. You know that Shania Twain song "That don't impresssuh me much"? Well, when I saw what kind of haircut you get for $70, I felt just as angry and helpless as I do when I hear that terrible song.

Do you have any rubber walrus protectors??

Call the poleeeeeece!

This post is a collection of short stories bearing little to no relation to one another.

*

Yesterday I attempted to cook an improvised Thai-style stir fry with beef, basil, cashew nuts, and so forth. But in my haste at the supermarket, I accidentally bought sjömansbiff (translation: sailor's beef, heavily salted, kinda like corned beef) instead of regular off-the-cow beef.

Ian's Words of Wisdom: One of the difficult things about living in a country that speaks a different language is that lots of stuff has different names.

I realised this just as I was browning the onions on a medium heat, but decided to strengthen my resolve and press ahead with the recipe regardless. It actually turned out tolerable, in spite of the beef being tougher and saltier than blackbeard himself.

I may, in fact, have inadvertantly cooked Swedish-style Thai-style beef. On my birthday last week, one of the ladies at work gave me a sample of a Swedish delicacy, salted elk. Actually, that's an understatement - I'd rather describe it as a big hunk of salt which had been lightly elked.

(Old joke format, I know, but if the Beastie Boys can still use it, so can I. Also, I think it's worth it just to introduce the verb "to elk". Future history books will remember me as: Turn of the century millionaire philanthropist and raconteur, most famous for making his fortune by tripping over the worlds largest gold nugget whilst studying in Sweden, for giving the song Yummy yummy yummy I've got love in my tummy the deeply sinister connotations it now has, and for championing the now common verb form of the word "elk", chiefly used in the preparation of foodstuffs.)

*

Interesting tidbit: Almost everything I write on this blog, I think of in the shower as I clamber out of the dreamy sleepytime gorilla museum. That means: if there's ever a movie made about my life as a blog-writer, there'll be lots of shower scenes, and that's good news for the ladies!

*

If you look at your jeans, chances are on the inside-leg, running from ankle to apex, there is a double-line of stitching holding the front of the trouser to the back. The outer thread completely vanished from my jeans the other day, leaving just a single line of defense against the possibility of sudden and uncontrollable indecent exposure. That's more good news for the ladies, but not for me, as it's getting down to -15 degrees at night now, and the cold wind should be kept out of the trouser region at all costs.

I'm very dissapointed with Levi Strauss & Co Quality Clothing, as they are less than a year old and previous pairs have lasted me much longer. I'm hoping they'll hold out til I get back to oz in January, as clothing is quite pricey here.

*

Go here to watch videos from the US tour of Norwegian band "Hurratorpedo". Their schtick is to play fairly standard rock and roll, but also smash kitchen appliances on stage. The videos are quite funny, I recommend the one where the band breaks up.

Actually, the best one is on this page, their first gig in america.... at a little girl's birthday party.

Øyvind has seen them play in Trondheim, sez they're a laff. The tall guy is also famous in Norway for various Jackass/Supersizeme-esque stunts, such as sitting a shop window for a week trying to live as unhealthily as possible. Drinking a whole litre of strong espresso, then eating nothing but pure lard for days, and so on.

Schopenhauer sez martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability, but clearly in modern times you needn't actually die, just do some damage.

Stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out

Some of my confusions can be safely laid to rest. The key is this: for different epsilons, the limit in n in the second equation here could converge at completely different rates. This implies that, in general, nonlinear systems cannot be exponentially observed with block codes of fixed length. For linear systems, the n actually drops out completely, so no probs there. There is, perhaps, only one reader of this blog who would actually care, but it's been doing my head in for weeks, and it's my blog, and I can write what I want.

Sipping cool lemonade one balmy afternoon on the verandah of an elegant new home built by k's small sibling on our leafy street in the freedom-loving capitalistic utopia that is blog village, a topic of conversation, a gift as welcome as a new-born child to verandah-sitting lemonade sippers, descended upon the congregation. Continental Europe, so the gilded cue card read, is a desert region when it comes to humour, getting more and more barren as the dry wind takes you eastwards.

Last night, having birthday drinks at a local pub, I threw down the gauntlet and challenged one of my colleagues on this. He is from East Germany. To be specific, he's my second friend from Leipzig. Jenny of course is funny, but more in a narcoleptic boozy floozy way. He is the one who once for piked on a night out with the excuse "I have eaten too much, now I am lying on the bed and I cannot move", which is also funny, though not intentionally so on his part. More to the point, he is the one known about town for laughing uproariously with the Russians after saying something which is not at all funny. Not even bad jokes, just not jokes at all.

I thought, no point beating round the bush (also I was drunk) so I said to him "what is all this, some kind of communist humour?". And, to my surprise (and relief) he pretty much agreed with me. He said "In communist countries, you have to learn how to make a joke without actually saying what is funny, or you get arrested". Sounds to me suspiciously like an excuse for just saying stuff which isn't funny, and then laughing, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

His fräulein grew up in East Berlin, and one of the school projects they gave the kids was to write a short report on a story they saw on the news that night. This would test their comprehension skills. It also indicated which families were watching capitalist television broadcast from West Berlin, which was reported to the authorities, and the parents were demoted to the lowest levels in society.

When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called 'the People's Stick.'
(Bakunin)

Bulging eyes abound about the birthday boy today

I'm 26 years young today (Australian time, i.e. the 14th). The lovely folks here made me a birthday cake in the shape of a girl's head, just like I've always wanted, replete with candles:

Actually, coincidentally, today (Swedish time, i.e. the 13th) was Lucia. Each year on the 13th of December, small candle-bearing choirs of school children go from place to place singing traditional Swedish songs. In each choir, one has the honour of being candle-crowned Lucia, always a pretty blonde girl.

Every school has a Lucia, then there are regional competitions, and the regional Lucias go on to the nationals, a televised competition to choose the Lucia of all Sweden.

Some more pix from the Lucia choir that visited our department are here.

p.s., belated birthday greetings to Mat P, who apparently turned 27 a few days ago. He's a year ahead of me, but I'm catching up fast...

Cronulla

I know this picture is doing the email rounds, but it ties in Sydney beach violence with Big Kev, so I couldn't pass it up.

Although, shouldn't Mr Crowe have a mobile phone in his hand?

I get real raw, change arrangements on your face.

Update: I've added some of Mandy's and Guro's pix from my Swedish farewell party to my gallery. Hint hint, Alex, a CD of your pix would make a real nice birthday or Christmas present!!

Update: speaking of monkeys, the new Ricky Gervais podcast features more monkey news, and the Cambodian Midget Fighting League!!

When I read about the recent scuffles at Cronulla, I was a bit jealous. Aww, I thought, Maroubra used to be the place for that sort of thing...

Happily, things are sorting themselves out.

Although, even from Sweden, I can tell you it wasn't really race-fuelled. Not in Maroubra, anyway. I'll bet my bottom dollar that the Bra Boys just heard that people at another beach were smashing shit, and, well, gotta keep up with the Jones's, natch.

In other news, I've been a bit boring actually. Just working, working, working, christmas shopping, etc, etc.

Hi ho, hi ho,
a useless life is an early death.

Heard some comedian say this:

It used to be said that if you give a million monkeys a million typewriters, eventually you'd get the complete works of Shakespeare. Thanks to the internet, we now know that's not true.

Nail, feel that? that was your head getting hit.

A tiger shark

(Not taken by me. Check back in late January)

Mat's return to form has me thinking all things reefy.

Like on the night dive, when Woody and Tim went out to grab the Kiosk (boat) from the outer mooring, not 100% sober, and when they came back to grab the rest of the divers from the beach, they were nervously jabbering about something huge, fast, and black in the water. They thought: either a manta (good) or a tiger shark (bad).

Tigers had been spotted off the reef a couple of times that week, and we weren't far from the fish-guts-dumping/black-vee-feeding area.

We geared up and I was first in the black water. For a long time, no one else got in. I was the canary in the mine, so to speak, bobbing up and down in the torchlight like a sacrificial offering to Neptune, while all the natives looked on in guilty expectant wonder. (I'd already acted as an offering to Uranus earlier that night, so it had a familiar ring to it)

Now we get to a point in the story where it would be a much more interesting one if anything else actually happened. But it didn't. We were all fine, and had quite a pleasant dive. Sorry.

I'd like to see a tiger shark this year, though. Hopefully during the day, though, when they are sleepy, rather than during the night, when they are bitey.

The Lord giveth excitement, The Lord taketh excitement away

He who died, that we may be excited

A world gearing up to celebrate the birth of one of humanity's purest souls has been thrown back upon the hard ground of reality by the death of another. Today, Big Kev died.

Big Kev was ill for some time. Shortly before His death he was heard to remark: "... I didn't think much of it until the next night when I got halfway through a Crownie [Crown Lager] and couldn't finish it, A panic set in because I knew something was drastically wrong." Many of the world's greatest rock stars came together for Him, with the hit charity single Does Big Kev Know It's Christmas? [mp3] [Album website]. But the forces that controlled His fate were beyond the reach of even Irish rockstars.

For many years to come, historians and theologians will have a lucrative cottage industry in comparing and contrasting the life of Big Kev with the life of Jesus. The parallels are obvious, but in point of detail they are not as similar as they may first appear.

Fact: Jesus never appeared on national TV selling cleaning products.
Fact: Jesus never draped himself in Australian flag clothing.
Fact: Jesus was nowhere near as fat as Big Kev.

Sure, Jesus did some good stuff too, like wandering around being nice to people, and curing leprosy and stuff. But if moral virtue were decided by sumo wrestling, as it still is in many tribal societies around the world, and certain highly developed gorilla communities, there seems little doubt that Big Kev would emerge most virtuous.

Some analysts have suggested that, in the wake of Big Kev's passing, world excitement will reach an all time low. But I think that is missing the point of His message. Surely He would have wanted us to be just as excited as ever, perhaps more so. A sun has set, but the sun also rises, and the time between sunset and sunrise can be pretty exciting too.

And, isn't it comforting to know that somewhere up there, He is looking down on us, and giving us two very enthusiastic thumbs up?

Open this door or I'll break my arms down

Another update: Podcast by Ricky Gervais, basically just him and Steven Merchant making fun of a slightly dim co-host. Very amusing.

Update: feeling a bit better today. Anyone who wants to track down some hard to find books at bargain prices, I highly recommend abebooks.com, which searches hundreds of second hand bookstores around the world. For example, you can get an original edition of Darwin's The Origin of Species, for only 170,000 US dollars!

I've been a bit sick lately, so all of you must send me your pity (preferrably in the form of cash).

* - I've joined a gym, for the first time in my life. So be preparred for the new buffed Ian next time you see me. Seems pretty cool, even got a rock climbing wall. Of course, being swedish, there's also a sauna.

* - As hinted at before, Swedes are mad for the whole Christmas Spirit thing, despite being a largely secular nation. Yesterday on the bus, a group of local church-goers (or perhaps escaped mental patients) got on and gave out biscuits and coffee, then proceeded to sing a clutch of Christmas songs in a kinda barbershop style.

* - One of my colleagues suggested an ice fishing trip soon, as long as we can get our hands on a drill. Sounds fun!

* - Saw Sin City the other day (I know I'm a bit behind the times on that). Pretty full on! stylistically very cool though. Definitely the best "comic book" movie I've seen.

ain't no tuition for having no ambitionand ain't no loans for sittin yo ass at home

For last few days we've been visited by Rolf Johansson from Lund, a very distinguished professor who is both a medical doctor, and a PhD in control theory. He's worked on everything, now he's working with people from Volvo on a new type of engine.

Aside for anyone interested:

The engine is called Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition, which has a cycle something like a hybrid between diesel and petrol engines. This has been tried before (as early as 1890s!), but it's fundamentally unstable. That's good news for control scientists!

At Lund they have working prototypes which combine the thermodynamic efficiency of diesel with the cleaner emmissions of petrol. Only stumbling block is it requires pressure sensors in every cylinder for feedback, which is currently very expensive and prone to breaking. But they have a new technique using a spark plug as a passive sensor (with just a 100 or so volts across it) to measure the amount of ions in the chamber, from which information about the combustion phase can be derived

He has a very good memory. I met him once before at a conference in Las Vegas, when I was a piddling little first year PhD student, but upon seeing me the other day he remembered me, including which uni and which department I was from, and what my research was about.

After the talk, the group a nice dinner at a local restaurant, thankfully paid for by the department since it worked out to be about 70 bucks a head. I had lobster soup, followed by Reindeer steak in a kind of hot raspberry sauce. Very Nice!

I said previously that the restaurant scene here sucks. Well, it does if the idea of spending more than 20 bucks on a meal sends you running, but if you've got limitless cash it's pretty damn good.

Our table was very cool, had a little fireplace in the middle.

Some pix:

Kalle, Rolf (our visitor) and Anton (my boss)

I peruse the menu, looking to milk the department for all I can

Pedro and Uwe deep in discussion. These two share an office at uni and also, as of this week, an apartment. Now, they're both cool guys, but that would drive me mad I think.