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Having slacked away Saturday in front of the TV with Gorgeous (or rather, SHE slacked with me as collateral damage), we decided to do something worthwhile last Sunday; go and have a peek at the much discussed new opera house here in Oslo. So we packed our bags with bananas (don't ask), umbrellas and photo cameras and headed downtown in the less than stellar June weather. Having arrived downtown, we made our way towards our destination, crossing the area in front of Central Station - which for the moment looks a bit like a war zone, with debris and rubble left, right and center. Luckily, all we had to worry about was dodging the usual junkies, not live ammo. I really don't see what the tourists are complaining about - what do they expect when they arrive, a parade? Sheesh, some people will complain about anything...
Photo by G
"I think we're on the right track," I told Gorgeous, as we crossed the enclosed bridge over the main road outside of the opera building - "Look, the usual broken beer bottles and kebab leftovers have been replaced by broken wine bottles and half-eaten canapes: surely, this must be the path oft trodden by our intellectual elite!" Unfortunately, I had to abandon the hope of finding some nice caviar along the way, as we emerged from the opening of the bridge outside of the opera. "Oh my, that's... white!" Gorgeous gasped as we walked along the slanted side of the building towards the rooftop. "Gah! My eyes! It... it burns!" I whimpered as my corneas practically melted from the overwhelming whiteness. "No wonder people have tripped and broken limbs up here - the whole damn thing is so white, and then they have all these little edges and crevices up here!" I said, almost tripping over an almost invisible 10 cm edge that had popped up right in front of me.
"Stop complaining and let's get the sightseeing over with, I'm getting a headache," Gorgeous said, matter-of-factly. "Where are you, dear?" I replied, half blind and more than a little disoriented. Gorgeous grabbed me by the arm and guided us to the top of the building. "The view is... interesting," she said, gazing over the container park in front of the building. "Yeah, well... it's better than this side, " I said, turning back from feasting my eyes on the massive construction work being done of the railroad tracks and main road across the other side of the building. We carefully descended the front of the building, and made our way inside to have a look. "It's like a twisted, psychedelic architectonic joy-ride, " I commented, having almost bumped into at least three different walls as we took a small tour of the main foyer and the wardrobe area "Everything is angled or curved or both - I feel dizzy. Might be just the snow blindness declining, though." Gorgeous put her elbow in my ribs again (for the umpteenth time that day) and we headed back outside.
We crossed the area in front of the opera and G took - half-heartedly - some snaps of the opera. "I dunno, " she said, "It's awfully white, isn't it?" "We definitely need to bring sunglasses the next time we visit," I said, eyes still hurting. In all fairness, though, I must say that it's a very cool building - isolated from the rest of the architecture in downtown Oslo. Seen in context though, it kinda sticks out like a big, sore, white thumb. There's absolutely no correlation between the building itself and any of the buildings nearby. I should mention though, the same can be said for most new buildings in the area - they're all nice and shiny on their own, but they are all in different styles and separate themselves from each other and the rest of the city. Of course, I don't know squat about city planning or architecture, so I'm blatantly subjective here.
Photo from MrJorgen's Flickr page
But damn, that thing is white!
My friend M is spending an uncanny amount of time trying to wrap his head around this little thing called string theory. For the uninitiated, string theory is defined on Wikipedia in this simple sentence (ahem):
"String theory is a model of fundamental physics whose building blocks are one-dimensional extended objects called strings, rather than the zero-dimensional point particles that form the basis for the Standard Model of particle physics."
Got that? Good. Now, as complex and dumbfounding as string theory might be, there is one theory that is even more complex and strange - Spring theory. Each year this thing called Spring (heh) arrives here in Norway, and its mysterious ways and perplexing unpredictability continues to catch me off guard. I don't know what Spring is like in other parts of the world, but here it's like a strangely playful and taunting entity - and by "playful and taunting" I mean "childish and annoying". If Spring was a kid, it would be a spoiled 4 year-old with a slight case of ADHD - fueled by too much sugar.
Basically, my typical Spring day goes like this: I wake up, have a look outside. It's sunny, yay! I then proceed to look at the thermometer, which typically shows something like 0 degrees. "Hmm, fair enough. It's probably warmer in the sun." I think to myself, but put on a warmer sweater anyway. I then go outside, only to be greeted with a gust of wind that brings the temperature down to -5 degrees or thereabout. "Hah! See, putting on that extra sweater was a good idea." I loudly proclaim (and usually get some strange looks from by-passers) while awkwardly trying to pat myself on the back. Then, ten minutes into my walk to work, the temperature rises about 15 degrees and my wisely chosen sweater is turned into a instrument of torment as my body temperature rises above my preference. "Oh, well. It could be worse." I say, scaring a little old lady in the process (who then tries to take a swing at me with her umbrella). "Hey, was that lady swinging at me with her umbrella?" I think to myself - seconds before the skies turn dark, relative humidity shoots up to 90% and rain starts pouring down.
So there I am: warm, sweaty and soaked. "Well, this is Norway. No reason to be depressed about the weather." I say to myself - somewhat quieter this time. Five minutes later, the Sun is gone, the wind is back and the temperature is back down to -5 degrees. At this point, I usually let out a small sigh, break off a few icicles off my nose and ears and contemplate moving to Hawaii - but just for a few seconds, because lo and behold! The Sun is back, the ice is melting and my clothes are pretty much dry again. Freeze dried. Not too comfortable, but it works. After this showcase of weather phenomena (which all take place in a 25 minute period of time) I usually arrive at work more or less happy and prepared for other extraordinary things.
Such as my customers.
It's January, it's winter (or whatever one would call it these days - it's certainly not of the snowy, white variety as popularized by the Coke commercials) and it's Monday; in other words, the perfect setting for a rant or two.
Rant subject #1: Neighbors.
Generally, I get on pretty well with my neighbors. As in, I don't bother them and they mostly don't bother me. Much. Apart from that guy that sings in the shower - loudly and horribly out of tune - and whose voice magically transfers very well to MY bathroom through our shared ventilation shaft. Then, there are the folks living in the apartment above me, that seem to do a lot of furniture rearranging. After midnight. On Tuesdays. Why after midnight? Why Tuesdays? I fear these are questions I'll never know the answers to (I'll put them up on my long list of unanswered questions, like where do all my left socks, pencils and guitar picks go when they suddenly disappear).
Lastly, there's the mystery woman living in the apartment next to mine; this morning, as I picked up my newspaper, I tripped in her slalom gear that was haphazardly placed against her door - it was there last night as well. Who leaves their slalom gear outside their door for more than a day? Is it some secret getaway solution - can I expect my neighbor to one day escape some unknown fiend by sliding down the stairway in a Bond-like fashion? Although it's not completely improbable that she's some kind of secret agent - I have, after all, only met her twice since I moved here - I do doubt the efficiency of escaping potential thugs by sliding down a concrete stairway on slalom skis. The Bond Aficianados might beg to differ.
Rant subject #2: Weather.
More specifically, fog. I have a serious problem with fog. Not as FOG, but as weather. I mean, rain, wind and snow all have some sort of purpose; we need water for our lawns, wind for our para-gliders and snow for our Christmas clichés, but what the heck is fog good for? FOG - huh - what is it good for? Absolutely nothing! Say it again. Fog is not weather; it's a horror B-movie prop. Whenever there's fog outside, I half expect to see Bela Lugosi pop out and go "Chiiildren of the niiight" or something along those lines.
Fog isn't weather; it's colorized (gray) rain without the proper h2o percentage. What do we need it for? I'm pretty sure fog is one big elaborate joke staged by some top secret meteorologists' society just to annoy us. I bet part of those huge electricity bills (this is Norway, after all - it's not like we have abundances of water or anything) go to pay for a big-ass smoke machine somewhere in the hills. Seriously, this morning it was dark AND foggy. Yes. This is Norway; during winter, mornings are pitch black ANYWAY. What does the fog add to pitch black? Nothing but atmosphere. And I don't need no frickin' atmosphere with my pitch blackness, thank you very much - I can be grumpy on Monday mornings without atmosphere. Fog, I've officially taken you off the weather list. So there.
(See, this is what you get when I submit to peer pressure and blog without having anything to say; rants. You asked for it!)
Oh, laundry room:
Where the good inhabitants of your apartment building meet to socialize and engage in friendly banter; where strangers' eyes meet in brief moments of forbidden desire or unabashed disgust; where the intelligentsia gather to plot their next reality-altering scheme (such as keeping the laundry closed on Sundays and thus making sure nobody can do their laundry on the only day they have the time to do so); where the janitor's notice board is constantly covered in a glorious mix of complaints, questions and nonsensical, semi-poetic dabblings.
Where quiet battles are fought over who booked the dryer first or stole someone's bleach;
where little old ladies will gently persuade you into letting them have the washing machine for
another 30 minutes (and nobody says no because it would be like saying no to your own
grandmother), thereby nudging the already rickety booking schedule into a magnificent
collapse; where socks disappear into thin air, only to manifest themselves four months later
in a tattered, washed out state after having been stuck in the dark realms of the leftmost
washing machine where not even the keenest of eyes could see them, or strongest of hands pry them free from their ever-rotating iron cell; where the principle of "love thy neighbour" is put to the test every day as you find your clothes strewn all over the usually less then squeaky clean laundry room floor.
Where creatures big and small - of both the human and non-human kind - roam freely among the comforting warmth emitted from the large electrical mammoths that leave our laundry in a state of variable decontamination; where the strong, concrete walls block all cell phone reception and leave you blissful isolation from the brouhaha of the outside world (and prevents your mum calling you and nagging about that thing you were supposed to pick up somewhere).
Oh, laundry room - my life revolves around thy existence and thy etheric booking system!
Oh, laundry room - may thy electricity never be absent, thus leaving my clothes wet and full of detergent!
(I really, really need to get my own washing machine.)
Ever had one of those days when you feel like everything moves past you at lightening speed, that whenever you turn around there's a new task at hand, that for every phone-call you answer there are two more on hold, that for every form you archive there are ten more waiting to be reviewed? That you're working your butt off, sweating blood and tears, and that everyone just takes you for granted? That you're the only one who can answer the questions about how this and that product works, why there are items missing from the latest product delivery, why the server is down and how to use the credit card terminal? That the blood in your veins are 75% caffeine, that someone stole your lunch from the fridge (again) and that your boss just asked you to work overtime this weekend?
And when the day is over, and you leave your underpaid work (for which you are highly overqualified, of course) and return home to find that the only energy you have left barely lets you collapse on your coach in front of the TV/computer screen, only to doze of a few minutes later and wake up in the middle of the night, realizing you have to leave for work again in a couple of hours?
By Grapthar's Hammer, I'm glad I don't have a job like that!
Here, on the other hand, are some of the interesting characters you meet in my line of work (musical instrument sales):
- The Auditionist: Enters the store at opening hours, finds himself (or rarely: herself) a chair and a guitar, and starts playing. Sometimes, they'll sing, too. Loudly. Not that I have anything against Creedence Clearwater Revival, but once you've heard "Rolling On The River" performed on an out of tune guitar by someone whose voice have a strong crow-like quality, it loses some of its charm.
- The Worried Parent: While I can understand that buying a guitar/keyboard/kazoo for their child prodigy may be an arduous task, and that every musical instrument salesman (in their eyes) is as trustworthy as a used car salesman and only out to rob you of your hard-earned money (probably earned in a job as described in the opening paragraph of this blog entry), I do find it tiresome to be labeled as a jerk for not giving them a 30% discount on their high-quality 99$ beginner's instrument.
- The Hardcore Haggler: Look, I know there is some kind of unwritten rule that you're supposed to haggle in a musical instrument store - heck, I'll even play along if there's the possibility for a sale in the horizon - but asking for a 50% discount because you bought your first guitar in the store 20 years ago is a little far-fetched and shows a disturbing lack of understanding about our mark-ups and the inner workings of a store. You know, actually making money off the products you sell and stuff?
- The Manual-thrower: Manuals are scary things. Not only do they accurately describe the functionality and operation of that high-tech thingamajig you just unwrapped, it also contains wise words regarding the dos and don'ts of said thingamajig. So, while I am happy to explain to you that lowering your newly acquired gizmo into an acid bath may not be the best way of treating it, and yes - it will probably stop working if you do so, I do not have to listen to your complains about the product's failure to comply to your rigid quality expectations. It's a microphone. You plug it in. You sing. If your voice sounds horrible, it may have something to do with your voice, or the fact that you just put it in an acid bath.
Note: this is all written with tongue firmly in cheek. If you have ever bought an instrument from me and feel hurt by this, please let me know and I'll throw in a free kazoo the next time you buy some strings or a cable (it's hard enough to get rid of the blasted things as it is).
