And I thought Exams Were Over….

Yes, I do actually live less than half an hour from Hell, though I must admit, it is rather lovely. To quote an AC\DC track “Hell ain’t a Bad Place to Be’. Wonderful rail links and close proximity to a major airport and city. Can’t really go wrong with Hell.

How have you all been? I have been good for the most part, apart from one unexpected surprise on Tuesday morning. I was sitting at home, minding my own business and enjoying post exam freedom. Then I get an email. Below is a fairly realistic reenactment of my face the moment it arrived:

Academia is a cruel mistress, which decided to spring on me an entrance exam to my next Norwegian course with only 8 days notice. Wonderful. My written Norwegian is a little rusty of late so I am now back in the throws of revision. Still, at least my brain now is marginally less likely to turn to porridge.

I am trying to use every mean possible to get myself up to scratch and as you can see from this picture below, there is always Norwegian to be learnt wherever you look:

In other news, I am now a full time Amnesty International recruiting Dave. By this I mean I spend everyday running up to people and appealing to their good nature to join us.

This is the sight that will most likely greet you on the streets of Trondheim when you are innocently on your way to buy reindeer steak or out to procure a new shovel to bury your newly harvested fish. I am polite I promise, although you will be subject to dreadful jokes and even the possibility of dancing. I got six members on Thursday through this tried and tested method

In my job I get to meet some amazing people, but few are cooler than accordian guy! Accordian guy is local street musician who genuinely enjoys seeing people happy and especially likes it when people dance for him.  I have posted a photo of him here in the hope that you will give him the odd 20kr knocking around your pocket should you see him!

Once again, I have been dreadful looking for ‘Culture Shock’ this week so I will try and try harder for next time!

There will now be a two week break, buy stay tuned for more blogging the first Sunday in July.

Take care everyone, stay out of trouble and don’t forget to post comments.

See ya in two weeks!

Looks Who’s Back….

Bet you thought I had gone forever hadn’t you? Well fear not, I am back after my unplanned three months sabbatical. My initial claim of this blog being biweekly appeared in hindsight to be a complete lie. Exams and essays took over and am afraid that the blog had to suffer. Apart from one or two scheduled short outages over the summer, I am hopefully ‘back for good’.

There are now two things missing from Trondheim. Snow, and darkness. The snow went around a month ago which means my shoe spikes and gloves can go on a well earned summer holiday. We are also in that part of the year where we have near enough 24 hours of sunlight. The latter I am not so pleased with as I am old fashioned and believe that the night time should be fully dedicated to darkness. Damn sunlight, coming over here, taking our jobs, effecting our night day cycle uurrgghh.

So, what have I been up to? Well, thank you for being so considerate and asking! A chunk of my time has been sorting out marriage based stuff. The least fun one of these things was having to travel to Oslo for a ten minute appointment at the British Embassy that cost 610kr for me to hold a Bible and insist that I am currently not married. I then had to pay another 610kr for them to send me a certificate that I could have printed out on Word that shows this in writing. Great. I did however get to see a cool sculpture of a hand.

All other arrangements have thus far been fun, hopefully it will be smoother from here on in.

In terms of academic work, things are going pretty well. I have an internship lined up for August, I passed all of my assignments and I feel confident that my exam result will be OK. Assuming I have passed everything, I am done with exams forever apart from an oral defense of my thesis next year. Yay! This semester also brought out my artistic side, see this chalkboard drawing I indulged in when the teacher was out of the room:

In terms of work work, I have been kept busy. The tour guiding has kicked off again but I do not want it to interfere with my work at Amnesty International, hence I will only be doing it on weekends. Amnesty is going well and I have broken my personal members record twice since we last spoke (my record now stands at 7). See happy face below:

That is me with my prized 7!

This was more of a ‘review’ post this week, but from here on in they will focus more on what I have been up to that week.

We cannot forget ‘Culture Shock’ of course, however, I haven’t got one this week! I will find something worth looking at for you all next time.

Take care everyone, stay out of trouble and don’t forget to post comments.

See ya next week!

Snow, Essays and Stuff

I couldn’t resist making you call go ‘aaaww’ before beginning my first blog post for a couple of weeks.

As per my last post, this is a prime example of the slightly extended gaps I will be taking from blogging due to other commitments. At the end of April I hope things will begin to ease up, but this will be the pattern until then.

After a period of comparatively mild weather it has now returned to minus 10 and all of the potentially crippling ice and the like that goes with it. One things that a nice clear day can offer though it as truly beautiful view over the fjord, such as this view that I get a chance to see every time that I go to work.

 

Not bad is it? The scenery of Wales is lovely but this is in a different category all together. My visit to Chicago in October showed me how nasty it can be to have NO greenery at all. What a terrible way to live all the time!

On another note, I have also been ill, possibly the most ill I have ever felt to be honest. It was only gastroenteritis, but I felt dreadful. Anyone who knows me will know that I love my food, and being unable to eat properly for nearly a week was the stuff of nightmares. In my wisdom I took a photo of myself on my first day of illness for the sake of the blog. You can see the misery ingrained into my very soul.

 

But, enough of that.

On happier notes, I have been called back by my old boss asking me to do tour guiding again this summer. I had an amazing time last time. I do however also have my job with Amnesty to consider which may mean dropping the guiding completely as it might not work happily along side my current job. I will however look at the logistics when the time comes and one thing is for certain, the Amnesty job is very much here to stay.

Let us recapture last summer with a tour guide photo from the ‘Swapping Marmite for Brown Cheese’ archives.

 

Back to life in Trondheim, there have been various sales going on in Trondheim and one particular one took place two weeks ago at City Syd called the Bananas sale. See photographic evidence of said event below:

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In reality this event was entirely misleading. It didn’t matter which shop I visited, I couldn’t find these reduced priced bananas anywhere. I did think it was silly shoe shops and the like potentially selling bananas anyway, but attracting people to the shopping centre under the false impression that they would receive a good deal on bananas is unacceptable. Tut tut tut.

Fun and games have also been boundless and I have also had a good chance to party. For the first time in my entire life, I have more offers for social events than I can sensibly accept. Quite a nice position to be in! With so much work to do it is nice to let my hair down sometimes. I couldn’t find a party photo from this round, so here is a picture of me dancing on a table in December.

 

Wonderful stuff!

After a stressful few weeks because of various reasons life is now on track again. I have gone once again on Norwegian course ‘sabbatical’ as I didn’t want to snap or fail my Masters course because of those commitments. I feel like my University assignments are under control, I am doing well at Amnesty and I am very happy once again. A friend of mine was messing about with a camera a couple of week ago and took a nice photo that pretty much sums up my mood at the moment, see below.

 

Now for this week’s ‘Culture Shock’. This week it features a slightly sexist Norwegian cook book. This might not make a lot of sense to my Norwegian readers, but my British readers especially might giggle.

 

‘Kjøkken’ means ‘kitchen’ by the way.

Thank you for reading and once again, not sure when the next post will be, might be a week or two.

Take care everyone, stay out of trouble and don’t forget to post comments.

See ya soon!

The Only Way is Up

 

Seen as I am writing an essay about modern Russia, I felt that this photo would be appropriate, but not necessarily as scholarly as it should be.

After last week’s ‘Birthday Issue’ we are now back to a business as usual regiment of blogging. On that note, there will be a temporary regime change here at Swapping Marmite for Brown Cheese due to academic obligations on my party. I have several essay deadlines coming up over the next six weeks or so, meaning that I am likely to skip the odd week. You won’t miss me too much though right?

Most of my news is academic this week, owing to little else happening as a result of my intense studying. My Xbox is feeling so neglected of late.

I finally have a study desk!

 

This now gives me a little bit of NTNU where I can sit and focus and at least give the impression that I am working hard. You have to be quiet when you are there so YouTube is a big no no. People even stare at me for typing too loud. There is no bloody pleasing some people.

Now for the big news of the week.

My course requires me to have a one semester internship beginning this summer. This will work out quite well for me as if I am going to have any long term future in this country, Norwegian work experience is going to be a must. There was on option of going abroad but I decided to give some ‘added value’ to my Nordic circumstances by sticking around this ‘hood’.

I was invited to an interview this week by my first choice, the delightful SINTEF. Want to know more? Here is the link http://www.sintef.no/home/About-us/

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In a nutshell, they are  the largest independent research organisation in Scandinavia. They deal with everything from social research to technological innovation.

I was invited to an interview in their Applied Economics section of their Technology and Society department. I had a good laugh during the interview (it was delightfully informal, an experience I have enjoyed with all three of my Scandinavian job interviews) and they told me there and then that I had got the position.

How did I feel? A bit like this:

 

Says it better than words doesn’t it?

A year ago my Norwegian experience felt lacking in direction or opportunity to some extent, now things could not be more different. Life is wonderful!

I will begin my new internship sometime in August, but the details of the specifics of my project along with start dates will be discussed in an interview in a week or two.

 

This week’s blog post has been a bit short, but I am sure the big news made up for its length.

No ‘Culture Shock’ this week (ooppss) but instead a warning for you from Facebook HQ.

 

Take care everyone, stay out of trouble and don’t forget to post comments.

See ya next week!

 

Happy Birthday to Us! A Year in Review

Can you believe it my dedicated legion of followers, Swapping Marmite for Brown Cheese is one whole year old. Wow! That also means that I have been in the land of woolen socks for a whole year myself, scary.

Rather than do a normal post I will instead do a “how have we got this far?” type of thing divided into headings. Don’t worry, I will try not to bore you all to death!

Homes

In January 2012 we were living in a well situated but below par apartment right in the heart of Cardiff. Whilst only five minutes or so away from the shops, it was far too small (and moldy) for our needs. Then we packed up our stuff and left the country!

Landing in Norway without a job, my parents in law kindly let us live in their house for what ended up being somewhere in the region of 8 months. Due to it not being my house, I will instead represent the point by showing an unrelated photo of me holding a fish that I took in February last year.

They gave us a place to sleep, fed us and gave us lots and lots of love. It wasn’t always easy during my first few months in Norway, but they made it all so much easier for me.

After sometime things like jobs came along and with it I am pleased to say a salary. Thus, we spread our wings and headed off to a place to call our very own in September.

I know that photo doesn’t look very homely, but this is the spare room… and we we hadn’t unpacked by that point. Notice the familiar box from the pack away photo earlier?

Now we have our own place complete with wooden fire, windows and even a roof. All of the mod cons!

Jobs

The issue of jobs has probably caused me more grief than any other single issue since I have come to Norway. Whilst it has a very happy ending, the search for work was for the most part miserable.

In January 2012 I had a nice job in South Wales. I was an immigration caseworker for an MP and absolutely loved it. I made friends for life, did some truly wonderful and amazing things and found the job fulfilling and enjoyable. It was like my hobby and job combined in some respects.

All of a sudden, I am in Norway with no job and no friends. Ah. Whilst I moved to Norway knowing that this would be the case, it doesn’t make the stark reality of it any easier. What does one do? Bring the mountain to Mohammad!

After emails proved fruitless, I would print off a bundle of CVs and visit office blocks such as these:

I would often have very nice conversations with people but my lack of Norwegian was a bigger disability to me than being a brain in a jar with an eye on a stalk. This level of difficulty I did not expect!

As will so many things, good things come to those who wait. This came in the form of one of the must fun jobs I have ever done. Tour guiding!

I would spend whole days rolling in laughter. If it had been a year round job with work everyday I think I would have stuck with it. I would go home everyday with a huge smile on my face.

Things move on and the the summer came to an end. After several emails and a really fun job interview, Amnesty International welcomed me into their team and I once again returned to the world of not for profit organisations.

This job is not only fun and rewarding, but has brought with it some wonderful friends and a great (and sometimes too great) social life. This combined with my Masters degree has given me more offers to go out and and enjoy myself than I have the time to accept.

I feel that I have landed on my feet on the job front and am very content with how things are plodding along. Even if that drop was a very steep one at times!

Language

This has been an interesting journey and one that is still ongoing and will continue to do so for many years I should think.

When I first came to Norway I found the language issue quite stressful as I couldn’t even understand road signs. This issue however has largely vanished and I am feeling more and more comfortable.

I began with (and to some extent am continuing) with formal language tuition.

This has been helpful for my written Norwegian, but I feel my spoken has developed more from practice ‘on the street’ than anything else.

I am not as far with my Norwegian as I would have guessed at this point, however I feel that this is more due to unrealistic goals than any lack of effort on my part. I have a goal of being broadly functional in 18 months from now when I finish my masters, otherwise no good jobs for Mr Dave!

The Verdict – One Year On

I can’t believe it has been a year as it as gone so quickly, and over all I am very pleased with how things have gone.

It hasn’t always been easy- There have been tears at times, frustration but for the most part I have beaten obstacles that have faced me. I miss home dreadfully sometimes, but I am pleased that I made the decision to come here.

What the long term future holds for me depends on how good I am at Norwegian in a year or so. If things work out well, I could see myself staying here for a considerable amount of time.

No blog would be complete without a ‘Culture Shock’ picture. I will post my very favourite here for this ‘clips’ episode.

He he he.

Thank you all for sticking with me for the past 12 months. I wouldn’t have continued to write if people didn’t read it, so thank you all for your loyalty to my little project.

Here’s to another year!

Take care everyone, stay out of trouble and don’t forget to post comments.

See ya next week!

Return to norskkurs

 

Doesn’t the fjord look pretty with all of this snow? It is for reasons like this that I am more of a winter person than a summer person.

I have been very very bad at taking photos this week. There have been a couple of reasons for this. 1) I kept forgetting 2) Much of my free time for the next few weeks has been eaten up by something called a ‘Norwegian course’, but more on that later.

University work has picked up and the full extent of the work before me has somewhat hit home. This is especially the case for my new Soviet Union module. I need to have an 8,000 word essay ready to rock by mid April. The big problem thus far is, I have no title. I presented one on Wednesday and my lecturer was not happy with it. I now have to get my mental gears going and have something to use at a meeting with the lecturer on Monday.

Secondly, the final assessment is an oral exam. For anyone who knows me, they know I like talking. This will suit me fine, however an oral exam requires a broader level of knowledge. This means that I have to know back to front, cover to cover three Russian history books by May. Combined with my other two modules, this is quite a challenge. I am confident however that all of the pieces will fall into place.

 

Just to brighten up the post, here is a picture of Claude the fish, I created him last week. Lovely isn’t he?

I have also returned to my Norwegian language study. I was told by the University not to do it during the first Semester due to the workload, a very wise idea. I have now started module three and it’s nice to be back. This further eats away at any time I may have to relax (I will be home just before 9pm two night a week) but it is worth it for the linguistic dividends.

My new teacher is by far the best I have had. He is easy to understand and gets you to learn new words through what I can only describe as his own made up sign language. His way of teaching you how to pronounce the letter ‘Å’ makes you feel like you are trying to remove wrinkles off your face through stretching. I am also in my class with an old classmate who decided to take a break from study, a familiar face can always make one feel more comfortable!

The weather at the moment is fine and not too icy. It is hovering around minus ten but I can happily walk around without a hat and gloves if I am just walking to University or something. It is strange how I am slowing beginning to adapt to the climate here, I no longer have a compulsive need to wrap up like an Eskimo!

This weeks ‘Culture Shock’ is definitely representative of something you may only see in Trondheim.

I met a friend for lunch on Thursday and she insisted that I got myself a library card. I visited the city library and it never ceases to amaze me that welcoming you at the entrance, are dead people.

 

Is this the outcome if you are really late bringing back your books? Hmm.

On Tuesday it will officially be one year since I arrived in Norway. This means that next weeks blog will take the tone of a ‘year in review’ type of deal. I will do my best to make it interesting!

Take care everyone, stay out of trouble, and don’t forget to post comments.

See ya next week!

The Planeswalker Cometh

 

This opening photo is a nod to Britain and the snow chaos. When you are living in a country where this week it has exceeded minus eleven, it is quite amusing seeing life coming to a grinding halt back home!

I have been very busy this week due to being an awkward sod and deciding to change one of my University modules. I was doing one on the topic of religion and science in a global society, but this just wasn’t for me to be honest. I have spent so many years of my education doing various forms of philosophy, there comes a point where I just wasn’t really caring. Instead, I have switched to once about Soviet Russia, much more in keeping with my leftist sympathies! I will represent my joy at the switch through the use of the following hat.

 

On the downside, I have had a week to prepare a five minute presentation on my chosen semester assignment along with at least five sources to back it up. No pain, no gain right?

Work at Amnesty is going well and I am enjoying it despite the cold. Norwegians have a phrase that says “there is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing”. This for the most part true, although a nice hat and scarf is probably of little use against the likes of a blizzard. That said, recruiting members in minus eleven or twelve is a doddle if you are wrapped up appropriately. What is amazes me is that people actually stop, you Norwegians are so damn tough! If someone wanted my attention for three or four minutes in such cold I would probably tell them to sod off.

Before Christmas you would have heard me mention that I had taken up the card game ‘Magic: the Gathering’ in a bid to have a more social hobby. After weeks of practice and two weeks of playing lots of games with my friends (and almost universally loosing) I yesterday entered my first official tournament.

The game centres around a fight between two wizards called ‘Planeswalkers’ and features lots of spells, creatures and all sorts of other things which you use to reduce your opponent Planeswalker’s life to zero.

I was playing in the ‘London Grand Prix’ in the Outland games store in Trondheim. The winner would get three automatic wins at the London tournament next month.

I opened my cards, built a deck and fought with all of the skills I knew (both of them). I played round after round before at the end… coming last. The way I look at it, this is quite a prestigious position to be in, only one person can be last! Success (or lack of) aside I had a fantastic time, and will definitely go again!’

Do any of my long time readers remember this food? It’s klubb! For those of you who want an introduction to this food, check out a post in June called ‘Klubb, Cabins and Countryside’. It was an all you can eat Klubb night (potato dumplings in brown cheese sauce) where I went in with the express goal of beating my previous record of eight balls. I hit nine, but chose not to go to ten for fear of making it impossible for my next visit to also be record breaking.

Now for this week’s ‘Culture Shock’. Way back in February I mentioned my surprise that people eat Cods tongues. The post was called ‘Seven Days Later’, however to save you rushing through old posts here is the picture I took at the time of them in their uncooked form.

As a reward for sorting out a Java problem on my mother in law’s computer I got to try some this week! And I can confirm that they were lovely. Here is a photo of them cooked.

 

Don’t look much likes tongues do they? That is because it is just the little bit at the front that is the tongue, the rest is the muscle behind. The texture is very much like you are eating tongue and muscle, and the flavour reminds me of flour fried Sprats. I hope to have them again, it is another Norwegian delicacy that I like!

Take care everyone, stay out of trouble and don’t forget to post comments.

See ya next week!