(H)Owling

So the weather is quite bad at the moment, snowy and windy and not at all pleasant. So here are some owls to keep you company. The first are a picture that we got as a house warming present.

I think it looks just like us.

And this one is just priceless.

Week 48

As I am entering have already started this last week, I thought I’d tell you a bit about my weekend and about the week to come. The weekend ended up being a quiet one. The meeting with my supervisor on Friday was good, but we have to do most of the important stuff on Monday. But I got to meet most of my co-workers and they are really nice 🙂 The meeting with the programme committee included some really good discussions and I went home on Saturday looking forward to 2013. Oh, and I cut my hair on Friday. And got a new hair product I will talk more about later. Saturday was just Erik and I and Sunday we cleaned the flat, went to Astrup Fernley, I had dinner at the new Jeppes in Stabekk with my parents and I got some new stuff from my grandmother.

But this week I don’t really know what I am going to do.

  • Monday I spent at home, re-organising and reading the paper.
  • I also went to an extra rehearsal with the choir and there will be a rehearsal today as well.
  • Today I am going to Nasjonalgalleriet to see the Emil Nolde exibition with Ida and to have lunch.
  • And for a surprise, Erik has asked me if I want to be a troop leader with him in his scout group, Longship! So on Wednesday I’m going to their last meeting before Christmas. I really hope that I have time to go to a Christmas concert as well, but we’ll see.
  • Thursday is open (unless someone wants to go with me to the Michael Kiwanuka concert at Rockefeller).
  • We haven’t decided what we want to do this weekend, but it looks like friends, food and relaxing.
  • During daytime I will have to get some time to go to the gym, but I don’t know what else to do. I still haven’t taken the Python exam, but I really don’t feel like it either. There is still some organising left at home, and when I’m finished, I’ll post some pictures.

Have a happy week!

Astrup Fearnley

We went to the Astrup Fernley museum this Sunday

image

image

image

image

image

image

image

image

They have a lot of strange things there, but I really like to experience something I can’t understand every now and then.

And it’s really nice at Tjuvholmen at night.

image

image

Show me some moves

As life is slowly settling down as Erik is getting used to office hours and I have stopped applying for work, I have had time to look through more pictures. I just wanted to thank all our friends and family that helped us move. We have a lot of stuff, but it all took four hours and we were done.

This last pic is my outfit at our little house warming. I apologise for my expression, but look at the nice west I bought in Tunisia. I think I have to take it in a bit, but I love all the glitter 🙂

Red and gold

After pink, I think red is my favourite colour. On Wednesday we had a spontaneous board game night with Martin and Åse and this is what I wore.

image

Red sweater dress, red laqured belt with gold buckle and black tights.

image

A close up of my new necklace (from my grandmother)  and the belt (from the other grandmother). Sometimes you just need a bit of glamorous.

Meetings!

Today I have two important meetings. The first (and most important) is the first meeting with my supervisor. After an hour in the gym, I’m going to Ås to have our first chat. We will decide when I am actually going to start working (probably in a week or so), what courses I should take when and where (UiO or Ås, this spring or next autumn) and get my contract ready for signing. It is all super exciting and scary at the same time. I actually can’t wait to start work, but as you know, a PhD is not ordinary work and it is probably my biggest challenge so far.

The other meeting is with the programme committee. We are having a two day meeting this weekend to get to know each other better, have time for the important discussions and eat some good food. I’ll be back home Saturday night, and I think it will be a quiet one.

The rest of the weekend (aka Sunday) will be spent at home. My parents are coming over for coffee to see the apartment and Erik will have pizza with his scouts, so I’ll probably rehearse for the consert on Sunday evening.

Wish me luck with the meetings!

Cultural commotion

You might not read news online, but if you do, you might have heard of the case with Victoria’s Secret and the Native American headdress, where the brand got outraged responses after their annual fashion show where they showed a bikini together with a traditional headdress and finally withdrew the headdress from the TV-show that will be aired in a month.

A good example of an outraged citizen is the blog Jezebel, where she writes a very cross post about the misuse of traditional Native American pieces, and says that she (the author) will boycot the brand from now on.

When I read her post, I was a bit surpriced. Isn’t it very common to use different cultures as inspiration? Why do they take it so seriously? This happens to every minority culture in the world, not just them. I know they have a bad history with the other Americans, but witch minority colture doesn’t? When the maori war paint patterns are used by the New Zealand rugby team, the maoris are proud, not offended.

I recommend you to read this blog post that Susie Bubble wrote about the issue already in 2010. She is of Chinese origin, but British, and I think she aires some good comments on the subject. For where do you draw the line? How much can you use in fashion, before it’s too mutch?

Week 47

Last week ended on a very good note, with the offer from Ås. And then we had a really good weekend. We visited Mathallen, had brunch with Beate and Ruben, did a big house cleaning and ended Saturday with a spontaneous cocktail party. And Sunday we slept in, had pancakes for breakfast and saw both the new James Bond (Skyfall) and an old one (Die another day). A weekend filled with good friends and good food, just like it should be.

This week will be all about finishing my Udacity class and getting everything ready to start working. And I am a very good girl, going to the gym three times a week. Maybe I’ll get stronger and faster sometime too.

  • There is choir practice on Tuesday (the concert is getting closer) and I have both melodies and text to remember. Christmas is all around.
  • There is a meeting with my soon-to-be supervisor in Ås, where we will make plans for the future and decide when I will start.
  • This weekend we have a meeting in the Programme Committee, Komité Speiding, so I have to prepare for that as well.
  • And if I have any energy left on Sunday I will help my dad move all my granmother’s things. She died a little more than a week ago and she left a small mountain of possessions that we need to get rid of.

Sunday walk

I really like Bjølsen and Sagene. It’s calm and peaceful, but also urban and close to everything else. We did a little walk in our neighbourhood our first Sunday here, to see what we had actually moved into.

It was cold and sunny, so the ground had thawed just where the sun was shining.

Walking!

Autumn is my favorite season. Who can resist all those golden leaves?

Sagene church, quite pretty in the sun.

Someone’s back yard

The Turkish grosery store at Advokat Dehlis plass. They have got the best variation and quality in greens I have ever seen. Love it!

I especially love that they have a lot of greens I have never seen og heard of before. We have already tried a couple of new ones 🙂

Then we went to Mat og mer. We didn’t buy lunch, but we bought some cheese 🙂

Sunny Thursday

It’s yet again been a while since I posted pictures from my actual camera. After I got the message that I was given the chance to do a PhD I went out in the sunshine to celebrate. So here is one frosty leaf and my very nice neighbourhood.

Yesterdays’ outfit

Just wanted to show you my regular colour bomb combo, yellow, bright pink and brown.

You have seen it all before, but I have never done this yellow/pink combination before. And with yellow bag and pink gloves, it was almost too good a match 🙂

I’m so excited, and I just can’t hide it

I am going to spend the next three years of my life working with this guy! Yes, I got the PhD at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (UMB) in Ås! Yey! You know what this means? I am getting a real job with co-workers and tasks and holidays. I can’t wait. And now we can finally do some real planning for the future. Where should we live? Right now Erik and I work at completely opposite sides of town, so we might get our first heated debate…

What am I doing my PhD on? Well, it is in genomics and bioinformatics (taking those two courses this Autumn was the smartest thing I have done) on salmon. I am going to compare the genome of wild and bred salmon and see how they differ. I’m not going to see or toutch a single salmon, but only work on huge datasets on my computer.

This also means that I will start taking the train for 56 minutes every day, be bugged with traffic and snow chaos and such. I will probably have time to read newspapers or blog twice a day or read a ton of articles on my way to work, so I guess it’s all good. It also means that I have more courses to do, more exams and a final, huge, terrifying exam in three years. Oh, well, I should worry about that later.

To cheer you and myself up, I give you this nice picture of all the flowers in our apartment right now.

Antiblogg

Jeg har akkurat oppdaget en blogg jeg burde funnet for lenge siden, nemlig Magnhilds antiblogg. Om du skummer litt raskt gjennom bloggen hennes kan det virke som om hun bare syter og klager, men jeg synes hun tar tak i mange spennende temaer og skriver akkurat passe langt og akkurat passe fra levra. Jeg har faktisk tenkt til å gå så langt som å anbefale noen spesifike blogginnlegg hun har skrevet denne høsten, som jeg synes dere der ute bør lese, om dere ikke har gjort det allerede.

Den første er om hvor lett det er å være homofil og fotballspiller samtidig. Hun tar opp hvordan Norges Fotballforbund har fått skryt for at holdningskampanjen deres for homofili i fotballen har hatt gode resultater, men at det er besnærende hvordan det bare er fotballspillere på lavere nivå som er åpent homofile. For gutta som tjener mye penger på fotball og som er en del av det store pengesirkuset er det tydeligvis ikke like greit å være homo. Gode poenger og vel verdt å lese.

De to neste er om hvordan det er å være en bunnsolid skattebetaler enten fordi du faktisk ikke tar fri i høstferien eller fordi du verken er syk eller gravid i november. Og at du derfor er alene igjen på jobben og må gjøre all jobben til alle andre, fordi det forventes at du “tar i et tak”. Jeg synes begge innleggende hadde mange poenger som var pent satt på spissen, spesielt med tanke på den økonomiske krisen Norge vil havne i om 60 år, når det er innbetalt for lite skatt og utbetalt for mye støtte og man i tillegg har for få voksne folk i arbeid sammenliknet med folk utenfor arbeid.

Så skrev hun et alvorlig, ryddig og ordentlig innlegg om Øygard-saken og om hvordan det handler om alle voksne menneskers ansvar for barn, uansett hvordan utfallet av saken blir. Hun skriver mange tankene jeg selv har hatt, bare mye bedre formulert enn jeg hadde fått til. Hun skriver om hvordan en jente på mellom 14 og 16 år har blitt tolerert som følget til en ordfører i offisielle sammenhenger, en jente han ikke har hatt noe juridisk forhold til og som har hatt et vaklende familieliv. Det er hårreisende at alle disse voksne menneskene mener de ikke hadde noe ansvar for å si ifra og stille kritiske spørsmål.

Til slutt et kort innlegg om skjult forskjellsbehandling av kvinner og menn, som både kvinner og menn gjør. Magnhild er irritert over hvordan mange bruker ordet “tøff” om jenter som mestrer sin hverdag. Jenter som får til å ha både fulltidsjobb og barn er ikke tøffe, mener hun, de bare får til livet. Som alle andre. At du er ekstra tøff om du får det til, sier noe om forventningene vi har til jenter. Og det er jeg helt enig med henne i. Du er ikke ekstra tøff fordi du tar en lederposisjon, i hvert fall ikke når du faktisk er kvalifisert til jobben. Du gjør bare det man kan forvente av deg.

Jeg anbefaler dere å lese litt på bloggen hennes. Jeg merker selv at det er mange startpunkter for gode diskusjoner her.

New jewellery

Just thought I’d show you what I wore on Sunday, when we had one of Erik’s grandmothers over for dinner. Now that we have our own place, everyone we know are on the list, to come visit us. So we see a lot of people and eat a lot of good food 🙂

Skirt from Zara, top from H&M and jacket from Stine Goya.

This is one of my new necklaces, inherited from my grandmother that died last week.

It has tiny stars 🙂

I also got a lot of bracelets, I particurlarly like this one.

Week 46

I thought I’d write up what I’m doing this week. Compared to last week, it will be quite quiet, but hopefully change my life.

  • I’m writing another PhD application, this time to London University.
  • Erik has his first day at work, so I will be making a wonderful “first day at work”-dinner on Monday.
  • I will be spending a lot of time with Udacity, trying to finish my programming course.
  • On Tuesday there will be choir practice as usual.
  • On Wednesday Ås will call me and tell me if I get the PhD position there or not.
  • Dad and I will change the coil of my car, and then put it away for the winter.
  • And for the first time in a long time, the weekend is completely empty. But there has been talk both of hiking in the woods and of concerts.