The World in Tonevision

Opening of the quiz-season

My quiz-team is almost a year old, assembled after two of its members participated in a literature quiz with a modicum of success last fall. For a number of reasons - one being one of the team members being located out of town, the other being our piss-poor planning of the one attempt of going to a quiz that was actually made early spring (resulting in no room in the house maria and joseph-style) we never actually made it to a quiz until yesterday.

As it turns out we're not that bad at it. Ok, I'm using the already loose term "not that bad" even more loosely, but let me just assert that we didn't lose. There were more than one team worse than ours. I think we got almost half the questions right. We split the fourteenth place with a few other of the 18 teams taking part. Could be worse.

The quiz was in a fantastic pub, fru Burums, which is right in the vincinity of where I live but where I have never been before in my life. The place was a proper pub like you would find in Ireland or England, with nooks and crannies and Strongbow on tap (no, I don't actually take Strongbow but it is the principle of the thing that matters). And the quiz was interrupted by a twenty minute smoke and hot-dog break in which free hot-dogs were served - free stuff in Oslo, that's pretty much unheard of. The hot-dog line never abated for the whole break, they must have fed seventy people hot-dogs. One team even named themselves "we're only here for the hot-dogs", although that was clearly not entirely true as they beat us by quite a lot of points.

All in all I feel that we're off to a good start, as there's plenty of room for improvement which is always the best foundation for growth and learning. Hopefully this will put me on in top form for the yearly, all-importmant office christmas quiz where my team, the somewhat misnamed "we've never won team" has actually won both times that I've participated. A hat-trick would be nice.

How I spent my sunday morning

Pilates @ Oslo Opera House, originally uploaded by feelinstrangelyfine.

I was even able to persuade my boyfriend to come along to this giant pilates class on top of the Oslo Opera House. Weird but really nice - the event was an attempt at a guinness world record, and while they couldn't tell us at the end of the session if the attempt had succeeded we know for sure it was a Norwegian and Nordic record in biggest pilates class. Strangely exhilarating experience swaying elegantly (or so I thought myself at least) in rythm with hundreds of other people. Really cool actually! Yay for this kind of thing!

(tpicture by feelingstrangelyfine)

The summer of mountain tops

I haven't generally been a mountain climbing kind of person, but this summer I have been up and down three summits thus far: Litjvola in Norway with my parents and Mount Vesuvius as well as the steep hills of Capri in Italy. I notice the same thing happening every time: at first the body's resistance to the climb is considerable and the mind's resistance massive. Then after the first 10-15 minutes I start to get into the groove of things and my cursing goes from incessant to intermittent. Then when one hilltop is reached I kind of want to stop, but much more I want to go on, and so I do. Sweating and breathing like a steamtrain, but nevertheless doing it. And then once the view gets good it is all worth it times twenty, and I am H*A*P*P*Y.

It might be hereditary. See my parents:

And then me:

Maybe next year I will actually plan ahead to do this. But I wouldn't count on it, given the physical exertion involved I might well try to forget how great the feeling on the top is.

hot scampi rice

I have to say I was pretty chuffed with myself - after yesterday's two consecutive popcorn + soda pop with the movie dinners (not identical mind you, the first one was butter flavour+solo+welcome to the chtlis and the second one was caramel and butter flavour+champagne flavoured soda+Dean Spanley) some cooking was in order, and this was a big hit with the audience (sadly, just myself). Anyhow, here's how to do it, all measures are approximate of course.

Ingredients:
200 g scampi - the nice ready-cooked kind from the frozen foods counter, it's not like I'm that awful man from Hell's kitchen or anything. Defrost them by all means.
4 dl fresh spinach leaves.
3-4 dl leftover cooked rice.

some tablespoons of sunflower oil
1 tablespoon of sesame oil
a good few drops of chili oil
1 tsp sambal olek
2 garlic cloves

Fry the garlic in the oil in a wok pan, add first the scampi and then the spinach and wok until the spinach is limp. Then add the rice and cook until all is warm. Season with salt if you wish.

The result came out really hot and extremely satisfying, especially with the strong tasting ginger beer I found in the supermarket - to quote John Travolta in Broken Arrow in the scene where they just blew up a nuclear bomb: "I say God Damn what a rush!"

Summery salmon

200g salmon loin (i.e. really fresh salmon)->cut into 1 cm thick slices

Blend together:
0,5 dl dark thick soy sauce
1 table spoon sesame oil
2 cm fresh ginger, grated

Marinate the salmon in the sauce in the fridge for 20 minutes or so

Cut half a cucumber into half-moons and 100 g sugar peas in half, and lay them out prettily on a dinner plate. Spread the marinated fish on top. Eat with a clear conscience and chopstics.

Radom

Radom, Poland is where I am at the moment, helping start Norstats first CATI department in Poland. As only one person in the department apart from me really speaks english, it is a little bit of a challenge (my Polish is that of a twisted one-year-old: I know how to say "yes" and "coffee", and that is about it). Nevertheless, I am clothed and fed and surviving, and today as I have a day off - the department is closed sundays- I went jogging and started a challenge for myself: I'll see how many countries I can go jogging in in 2009. I aim for ten, and as this was my firs run for the whole of the year (not too impressive, I know) I am currently at one. I should make two easily, as occasions to jog in Norway will obviously be abundant, but that leaves eight. It's still only january, though, so I'm sure it's doable.

Notes to self (or: portrait photography outside at night in the cold of winter)

My very good friend Helena asked me if I would be interested in shooting a family portrait of her pretty little family, and of course I would. Like I often do in situations where I'm asked to do things I don't really know how to do, I assumed it would just sort of come to me. Sometimes it does, and often no one really notices if it doesn't. It's not a bad strategy, as I do tend to learn a lot from it, yet I have a feeling that there might be others out there just as effective (I'm familiar with the one where you read up on things, and use it a lot, but it doesn't work on everything. I have also heard of the one where you ask experienced folks about advice, but much like a man stuck in a foreign town without map or clue I tend to see this as my very last resort). Be that as it may, I jumped in and learned at least this:
1)Being a big fan of natural lighting isn't necessarily very helpful when outside at night in Norway in december.
2)sometimes a plan and/or some research can be a good idea. That probably should have dawned on me earlier, ut I'm not going to beat myself up about it.
3) The built-in flash doesn't really do it outside or at any distance at all.
4) people who aren't professional models (oh, what do I know, maybe it's just people in general) can sometimes get a little fed up with being photograped outside in the cold at winter after about an hour. So the last shot isn't necessarily the best
5) I want a proper flash with some kind of diffusion device on it. Must read up.
6) I want to do this more. In daylight, if possible.

baked root vegetables

I have been reading books about eating again, and as per usual there is a resultant change in diet. I am one of those people whose reading should probably be closely supervised. After I read dr. atkins' new diet revolution I lived of pork chops for a couple of years -happily, I might add. This time, I read You are what You Eat by Gillian McKeith and also Skinny Bitch. Both good books, the former was rich on dietary advice and the experience of reading the latter was more that of being punched in the belly while at the same time having someone shout at you in a megaphone from three feet away. So I have some new ideas. Both books promote a diet based on fruit, vegetables and some grains (one of them says fish are ok, the other is going against Nirvanas assertion and says that fish do indeed have feelings, so the jury's still out on that one).

I boiled the whole thing down in my mind to this one idea: I will only eat food that my body is able to recognize as food.

So I'm eating a lot of veg and fruit these days, and after a loooooooooooooong time eating pork chops and chicken wings 70% of the time, it is a bit of a challenge, but it is dawning on me that vegetables taste really really good. They taste more than meat, and they all taste differently, and they actually do make me feel better (ok, I'm not going to discount the placebo effect here) - so I will try to eat like this as much as possible and see if that helps me not crave chocolate, pepsi max, ice cream and potato crisps every evening.

It means I will have to try out some new recipes, and cooking without meat is a very novel concept for me, but this one was definitely a success:

BAKED ROOT VEGETABLES
Carrots
Onions
Potatoes
Sweet potato
(any root vegetables are supposed to work well, and the amounts are really up to how much you want. I used two carrots, an onion, a sweet potato and four or five quite small potatoes)

2dl chicken stock (ok, maybe it was beef stock -the cube had got separated from the mothership. I think either will work)
two cloves garlic
some fresh ginger, grated.
Butter, to butter the pan (sorry, cow, I know I shouldn't exploit you like this)

I peeled the sweet potato, because the original recipe said so and I have never met a sweet potato before in my life. Did not peel the carrots or potatos even though the original recipe said so, as they were really fresh and had delicate skin and I wanted to keep as much of the nutrients as possible. The onion I had to skin, obviously. And then I just cut all the root vegetables into similar-sized pieces, and put in the pan. Then poured stock with garlic and ginger over the vegetables, and baked them on 180 degrees celsius for about 40 minutes until everything was tender. It was absolutely delicious.

If I didn't have a mind full of images of poor mistreated chickens after reading the skinny bitch book, I would mention that this would almost certainly be a lovely accompaniment for roast chicken, but I won't mention that at this point.

This is going to work out splendidly, I can tell.

recipe for perfect day - version #1

sleep until noon.
find you have a new shot in explore.
go on photo safari with a good friend for eight hours in the autumn sun
take 250 pictures of moving water and blowing leaves
eat a fantastic burger
find two new favorite cafes
beat boyfriend at dominoes online
fool around in photoshop until lateish
play on flickr until really late
read a thriller until you fall asleep

Of course, like for bacalao there's more than one recipe for the perfect day - and you can't call yourself a real woman until you know at least 365 different ones.

Wedding photography!

You better believe I had fun doing this. I must find ways to do this more. I'll be stalking churches and courthouses from now on.