The World in Tonevision

2010 this far

moment of beauty, originally uploaded by tonbel.

January tends to be a bit of a black hole of a month for me, and this year was no exception. When I say a black hole, I mean that it's really dark, and it makes stuff disappear. Time disappears, and I disappear a little as well. My energy and high spirits, especially.

This year it flew by, thankfully. I spent it in transit, visiting a string of metropoles one after the other: Trondheim, Kristiansund, Lillehammer, Dublin, Odense, Svendborg, Stockholm (albeit just for an hour and a half, got in a nice walk and a cuppa though), Linköping, Karlstad and last but not least Gautefall which is a small place far, far up in the mountains of Telemark. Lovely though. With all that time spent in plains, trains and buses I got a fair bit of reading done, which is good since one of my new years resolutions is to read at least 26 books in 2010 (preferably more like 52).



I have another new years resolution that might sound familiar if you read a few blogposts back: yes, I did try cutting sugar before to no avail. But a new year and the prospect of triple digits on the (metric) scales does wonders for motivation. Now I am allowed an exemption for a nice little piece of cake in the company of good friends, but with the condition that this too will be revoked should I start bending the definition of "nice little" to mean "quarter" or "good friends" to mean the postman or someone who lives on the street who I pay to eat cake with me. And this far it has not been going too badly. I've also mostly been able to stay off the crisps. Alcohol too, with one major and one minor exception. It is very hard not to drink at a kick-off. I tried last year, and it was indeed possible but not much fun when everyone else is partying like there is no tomorrow. A wise (?) colleague told me it takes the alcohol 10 days to leave the body, which should make me sober again just about now. Great fun though. But as we all know alcohol and inhibitions don't go together, and the very first inhibitions to fly out the window are of course the ones we don't really have (dessert. crisps. double bacon whopper cheese meals with large milkshake. that kind of thing).

I've even been to the gym a fair few times, I learnt my lesson from last year and now have my incentive system firmly in place. It consists of a monthly calendar where I get a gold star every time I exercise. That's right, just like they do to make the brats clean their rooms in Nanny 911. Works a charm. Unless you don't have a calendar (or, I suppose, a grid chart).

Other new years resolutions include achieving at least one single digit placement in the pubquiz this spring (best placement to date on a very lucky day with the full team assembled is 10th), and writing a short story a month. It's not good to keep all your eggs in one basket, you know.

Keeping this busy, eating healthy, getting exercise and making sure to get some daylight every day is doing a great job of keeping the winter blues away, so yay for that. Here's to keeping it up!

it was the romantic thing to do

...so my baby took me to the zoo. In his mind, going to the zoo is one of the must-do romantic things that every couply couple absolutely must do before they rightfully can call themselves a couple. I wasn't as convinced, having grown up in a zoo-deprived environment where "the zoo" equalled the Frösön animal park in Østersund, of which I can mostly remember non-showing lions, unpleasant, iffy smells and a scary episode of mistaking some stranger for my dad. On a more abstract level there is also the animals in captivity-issue. However, I can now report that after having caved in and gone to the Dublin Zoo that I am a changed woman. I now agree completely: there can surely not be anything quite as romantic as seeing a rhinocerouses arse with the person you love.

Also, we saw this very strange bird, which apparently is something like a flying dinosaur. Cool.

Getting lost in strange places

I like to get a little bit lost sometimes.This is a shot from when I got a little bit lost in Riga last week. I was only going to the Statoil station for a coffee, then decided to make a little walk around the block of it. Turns out the blocks in Riga are a great deal bigger than the ones I'm used to. On my way around the block I saw this beautiful church, I saw two statoil stations and a narvesen kiosk - both of which gave me the oddly pleasing feeling of being a cultural imperialist that is in fact quite rare when you come from Norway, and I got heckled at in Latvian by a couple of twelve year olds -I'm guessing it was because of my big camera, but who knows really. I also found myself a new favourite ice cream and had a thrilling feeling that I actually might be really lost. All in the course of half an hour or so - not bad, huh?

Linköping

I spent most of this week in Sweden, attending a course in Stockholm and then visiting the Linköping department. It's nice to go places and see people, of course, but the best part is returning home. Having said that, this is one of my favourite things about Linköping, that shiny metal thing right there that looks different depending on the light and time of year. Also, Linköping smells really nice in the fall. I went jogging. It was quite lovely.

Trouble

Remember how much logistics and trouble I had to go to when I forgot my keys back in july? Well, this is much, much, much worse. I'm in Denmark this week, and while I was enjoying a nice cappucino in the railroad station on the way, someone else decided they might enjoy my backpack and helped themselves to it. My backpack is essentially my office, so that someone are currently in possession of my wallet including credit cards and money, my passport, my laptop, my house keys and -worst of all- my camera. I suspect I'll be spending the next month or so painstakingly reconstructing my practical life, in a constant state of emergency. I try to look on the bright side, though.

The Bright Side:

• What a great opportunity to curb my spending habit, I've never shopped less when abroad, especially in such a lovely place for it as Kolding is.
• I have an extra set of house keys. (then again, these are situated inside my house, so I'll still have to make some arrangements with a locksmith before I can sleep in my own bed).
• I think I'll have spent all my bad luck for a year or so, so everything else will go swimmingly from now on - just as it normally does, let's face it. On average, even counting this incident, I'm a pretty darn lucky person.
• I'll appreciate having a laptop all the more once I get a new one.
• Same with camera, only multiplied by fourteen.
• I do as a matter of fact have travel insurance. Yay!

I did have a bad feeling about this trip even before I embarked on it, though. So much so that I almost was hoping I'd get sick so I couldn't go (fat chance, I'm as healthy as lettuce). Homesickness begun even before I'd left the house. I would have missed the airport train if I hadn't run the whole way. I only managed to check-in on my fourth attempt, and then it was actually past the final check-in time. But still, I prevailed, only to have everything stolen once I arrived in Denmark.

Well. Enough with the bitching already, I have a lovely train-bus-train- ride of a good 20 hours to look forward to (since airports tend to frown upon people without identity papers), and the train part is actually going to be good - travelling by train in Norway in the fall is very beautiful. -I'll try not to think of my camera too much- and then I get to see my parents and some friends. It's going to be great. Monday I get a new visa card, and everything will be right with the world...

Snow and pine trees

Originally uploaded by tonbel.

oddly seem to be two things I haven't been seeing a lot of lately. Even more oddly, I seem to have been missing it (just a little).

nine percent down, ninety-one to go.

create your own visited countries map

Pack, unpack, pack, unpack

Tomorrow I'll be packing my office paperclips, pens, monitor and post-it notes once again (for the second time since christmas) in order to achieve a truly nomadic lifestyle (all the while staying in the same office). I hope it's the last time for a while, because to be truthful it's a bit of a hassle to try to re-patch the phone connection and reassemble my whole office time and time again. Hopefully, too, I'll come into the office and not find that someone thought they needed the telephone or computer mouse more than I do, and colonized it.
I suppose that's what you get for complaining about the noise level in the open office area and for spending more time in airports than in the actual office - I'm officially the office nomad.
The office I'll be using now is the biggest, nicest one in the building and sports an elaborate carpet as well as a leather couch, so I'll be counting my blessings while it lasts...

Sky seen from above

Originally uploaded by tonbel.

Happy new year 2007 - one week in, the jetsetting life is back on. Or should that be the jetsitting life? Or possibly the life of endless waiting in airports, planes, trains and buses? Well, at least I had a great view coming home from my most recent excursion to Alta way up north.

The train ride from Lillehammer can be pretty beautiful, as well - see below for example. Only eight more places to go in the coming month!

Denmark boat

Originally uploaded by tonbel.

the weekend was spent doing the denmark ferry roundtrip with Jan Rune's workmates. The weather was shitty, but the food was good and the people turned out to be of the easygoing, fun loving kind that are easy to be around. No lovely sunset shots from the cabin though - only rain and fog the whole day through. I can still feel the motion of the sea, even though I've been back for a whole day already...