Hotel booking - musical style!

My friends Yngve and Hannah invited me over for chilli the other day. Afterwards Yngve told me about this incredibly funny radio show he had heard. We spent a few minutes googling and managed to find the show on mp3. I've listened to it a couple of times now, and it really is funny! :)

The radio show is called "O-Fag" (it's Norwegian, it's the name of a school subject kids have in primary school). The hosts of the show are two well known Norwegian commedians, the "Ylvis brothers".

In this particular show one of the Ylvis brothers challenges the other one to call a hotel in London to book a room. But to make it more interesting the whole thing has to be done in the form of a musical!

I can't quite explain it, you have to listen to it yourself. Check out this link (it's in English)!

http://rita.nrk.no/community/o-fag/mp3/uploads/o-fag_hotellbooking.mp3

Hop on the bus, Gus...

During the last couple of months I've started taking the bus to work almost every day. At some point last Spring I was getting so frustrated with being stuck in traffic every morning, and found out it's a lot more comfortable chillin' in the back of the bus, listening to my iPod, half asleep.

Besides, it's supposed to be good for the environment to take public transportation. Maybe even help stop the global warming stuff going on. But considering my job is to help oil companies find more oil I guess I'm not entitled to brag too much about helping the environment...

Anyway, lately the traffic has been a lot better! It's flowing really smooth all the way to downtown! A lot less cars on the road for some reason! So I could probably start taking the car to work again now, but so far I've been sticking to the bus. I guess I just like it so much.

There is one thing that may get me to take the car again though. The case is that in order to get to work I have to take two buses. First bus nr M2 to downtown, then bus nr 19 to my office. Previously the timing has been perfect! Bus M2 arrives a few minutes before nr 19 leaves. So I practically hop from one bus to another. The last two weeks however, there's been a new bus driver on the M2 bus. And this new driver drives so slow, and makes these looooong stops at every bus stop along the way. So by the time we arrive downtown I can do nothing but watch the 19 bus disappear around a corner. I always miss it! So I either have to walk for 30 minutes to get to work, or wait 15 minutes for the next bus. Either way, it's really frustrating to miss that bus!

I'm going to keep taking the bus for a couple of more weeks, but if this continues I'll probably switch back to the car, even though I may contribute to a little bit of global warming...

Going to Qatar.... NOT!

On Saturday morning I'm leaving for Qatar! I'm going to be working there for 3 weeks, until 13th of August. I didn't know I was going until yesterday, and a two days notice is kind of short when you're going away for three weeks... But it's fine, I don't mind going!

It's going to be hot down there this time of year, temperatures will be in the 110°F region, that is around 45°C. So I plan on spending most of my time indoors.

Anyway, I'll try to share some of my experiences and pictures from my trip on this blog once I get down there!

UPDATE!!!!
NOT GOING AFTERALL!

The kind of job I have is fairly unpredictable. Yesterday I received confirmation from our customer that they absolutely wanted me in Qatar for three weeks. So I booked tickets and started updating myself on our operations down there. Still I knew there was always a possibility of the whole thing being cancelled. Things can happen very fast in this industry. So I didn't bother to start packing, decided to delay it until the evening before I was about to go. That turned out to be a wise decission...

Today, at around noon we got a call back from our customer. Now they wanted to renegotiate the deal, and didn't feel comfortable with the rates we had agreed on. So the whole trip got cancelled, at least for now.

New A/V receiver

For a while now I've been in the possession of 5 surround speakers. I bought them maybe two years ago for just 100 NOK ($20). The packaging had been slightly damaged by water, so the store couldn't sell them for the full price and needed to get rid of them, so they sold them very cheaply.

Anyway, I've had these surround speakers set up in my apartment since October. They look really nice. The only problem? I haven't had anything to connect them to! The speakers sure look pretty, they're tall and elegant, but without an amplifier or receiver to connect them to they really haven't fulfilled their purpose yet.

So last Thursday I decided to go downtown to look for an audio/video receiver! This was by coincidence the official "shopping day" in Kristiansand. One day every year all the stores in the downtown area get together to arrange a "shopping day" with all sorts of discounted prices and good bargains. The city was packed with bargain hunting shopaholics! I turned a blind eye to all of this though, my only thought was to find an electronics store selling hifi stuff.

"30% discount on all shoes", "take 3 shirts, pay for 2!", "buy a lawnmower, get a free first-aid kit!". I discarded all of these fantastic bargains. I was on my way to "HiFi-Klubben", one of the best sources of hifi equipment in town.

I'm really not big on shopping on impulse. Usually I spend a lot of time on the Internet, trying to find out all I can about a product before deciding whether to buy it or not. This time though, I was ready to trust the store staff and listen to their recommendations. This is pretty much how it went down:

Staff: "Hello, how can I help you today?"
Me: "Hi, I have a TV, 5 surround speakers, but nothing to connect the speakers to. What do I need?"
Staff: "Are the speakers really huge and powerful?"
Me: "No, not really, they're nothing fancy, pretty average I guess"
Staff: "Then get the NAD T754! It's the best thing since sliced bread!"

He went on to explain all the great features of the unit, and told me he never had received any complaints about it. We talked a few minutes more before I decided I would go for it! 5000 NOK ($1000), a lot of money, but I felt lucky.

Back home I connected everything. The first tests I ran were promising. I got the menu up on the TV and quickly went through the initial configuration. It was almost too easy! But of course, I had to run into some problems. The final test I ran was to test the sound on each individual speaker. That's when I discovered it! There was no sound on the front left speaker!

I went from being happy, to confused, to extreeeemely frustrated, then even more frustrated, then threw the whole receiver out the window! Well, actually I didn't throw it, but think I was contemplating doing it. Eventually I resigned and sat back... I had tried everything, but nothing would bring any sound on the front left speaker... I realized I wouldn't be able to get this thing working on my own, so I decided to bring the NAD T754 back to the store and get them to test it there.

Now, I had spent more than an hour trying to figure out what was wrong, maybe two hours! So when the guy at the store found out what the problem was after 30 seconds I didn't feel too smart. It was just a tiny little thing missing at the back of the receiver. he plugged it back in and everything was working.

So back at my apartment I connected everything again, and sure enough, now everything was working perfectly! I was happy again, just like I was when I first thought everything was working!

Anyway, after 8 months living in my new apartment I've now finally been able to put my surround speakers to use! I still need to get some new cables to connect the DVD player and stuff like that, but as far as the sound quality is concerned I've got no complaints!

N.Y. and Philly

I returned from the US five hours ago, at 12:20 local Norwegian time.
The jet lag is messing up my head. My eyes want to sleep, but my body wants to stay awake. I can't decide if I'm hungry or not. I think maybe a little bit. I'll grab a snack later. The time difference is six hours. Sleeping on the airplane is near impossible. Especially when you're 6'8" and have longer legs than usual...

This was my third summer vacation in a row that I spent in the US. It's quickly becoming a tradition. I probably wouldn't have gone over there this year if my sister Hilde hadn't convinced me to go with her. But I'm glad she did! It was a great trip!

My brother Arne lives in Philly, so our main motivation of going to the US was to visit him. Me and my other brother Johannes went over to visit him there last year as well, but since then he has bought a new apartment, so I was eager to see what it looked like. We didn't go to Philly right away though. My brother was on a business trip to Las Vegas the first week, so me and my sister stayed in New York the first 4 days, and then later took the Amtrak down to Philly to meed up with Arne there.

I've been to New York twice before, but never as long as 4 days. The extra time was nice to have, cause then we didn't have to rush around Manhattan in order to see everything. We did the usual touristy stuff like visiting the Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, Ground Zero, Time Square and so on. We also went to see "The Phantom of the Opera" on Broadway. I had always wanted to see that musical, so even thought we had to wait in line for one hour to get tickets it was a great experience! The hotel we stayed at was the Skyline hotel in Hell's Kitchen. It was just a couple of blocks away from Time Square, so no complaints there. The service was also good. We were upgraded from a normal hotel room to a suite for some reason. On the bad side there was no breakfast included. And also there was some restoration work going on in the elevators so they were often unavailable. A little bit annoying. I wouldn't mind staying at the hotel again though!

In Philly I saw my brothers apartment for the first time. It was a very nice place! Very central, and a very interesting layout. The apartment was spread out on three floors. Sitting room and kitchen on 1st floor, bedroom and bathroom on 2nd floor, and another room on the 3rd floor with access to the roof! A friend of my brother's also teamed up with us in Philly and stayed with us the whole week. So the apartment was a little crowded with all 4 of us staying there, but it worked out quite fine! From Philly we had day trips out to the Amish country, Washington DC and Nazareth (Martin Guitar Co). We also had plenty of time to check out the historical district in Philly. I saw a lot of it last year, but didn't mind refreshing my memory. The Art Museum, Constitution Center, Liberty Bell and Penn's landing were just a few of the tings we saw. We also went to the Eastern State Penitentiary. That was incredible and can be recommended to everyone who ever visits Philly! Al Capone is one of the prisoners who have been in there. It was the first Penitentiary ever built and served as the model for more than 300 other prisons world wide. Originally the prisoners would be isolated and not allowed to talk to each other. The purpose of this was so the prisoners could think about the crime they had committed and develop a feeling of guilt and regret.

Now I have decided that I am in fact hungry, so I'll wrap this up.

The bottom line is that my vacation in the US was a great success! The weather was great most of the time, and my sister was a great traveling companion! I'll try to add some pictures later.

Blogg kick-off!

The Internet is already flooding over with all sorts of blogs. Travel-blogs, fashion-blogs, sports-blogs, celebrity-blogs, food-blogs... you name it!

So this simple little blogg will just be a small drop in the big blogg-ocean. But I don't know, maybe some people out there will somehow find it interesting to read about my observations and experiences as I travel the world.