Afonso in Norway: December 2011

Friday 23 December 2011

Alarm clock set up for 5:15

Flying to Tromsø first thing in the morning.
While getting ready for tomorrow, I came across the luggage tag that identified my suitcase four months and four days ago, when I arrived in Oslo and inevitably started looking back at what was in my mind back then. It's pointless to compare what were the expectations of the guy sitting on the flight TP649529 with the result of this first four months, but it's an exercise your mind makes faster than you notice. The reason it's pointless is that the past expectations entailed at least a minimum knowledge you thought you had about what it was going to be like. A wiser exercise would be, perhaps, to look to the next six months keeping in mind this knowledge acquired in the meanwhile about the expectations and "receive with simplicity everything that happens to you" like it's said in the beginning of A Serious Man by Coen brothers.
This is an utopia and I do realize it. Only a Buddha is able to do this and, although I'm getting fatter, it's not that much,
I won't be writing before January so it's useless to come here until then.
Last words to thank everybody who made this four months possible and to wish them and the ones reading this from Portugal a merry Christmas and a happy new year.

Friday 16 December 2011

Oliver

Luckily, this year has been very interesting in a lot of levels. Besides the incredible people I’ve been meeting and the incredible places I’ve already visited, I’ve been discovering, step by step what the Norwegian culture is.

Art is one of the aspects present in the definition of culture. I’ve learned about some artists at school, I’ve visited museums, I’ve heard, when advised, to some Norwegian groups and, recently, I had the opportunity to see a musical performed by kids aged from 10 to 18.

I was first invited to the premiere, again to a second performance in which the Norwegian King was present and finally (if I don’t manage, with this post, to convince someone to invite me again) a third time that wasn’t any less impressive than the two others.

We always applause young kids’ effort and agree it’s so sweet that they’re trying. This time, I applauded a great artistic moment performed by very smart, talented and hard-working little actors.

It helps when you have incredible singers, that’s, for sure, the base of the performance, but there is so much more than this. The best way to describe the quality of the acting is by saying that with my basic norwegian skills, I managed to understand quite well what was going on.

What I liked the most was a solo singing moment by the girl playing Oliver. She has this touching young voice with just a bit of insecurity and an abnormal simplicity.

The older actors are incredibly talented and you can tell by the facial expressions how passionate they are with what they are doing.

For the ones interested, here is the official link: http://www.baerumkulturhus.no/arrangement/595

If you want to go, but don’t know who to go with, invite me, I will be so glad. The last shows are this weekend so it might be difficult to get tickets if you don't order before the day.

(the picture is from the website I set the link before)

Meet you there.

Lunch break in Norway

I've just came been in a snowball fight. Turns out, this is what we do around here in lunch breaks. And I got 5+ in my Maths Christmas exam which lasted for five long hours.

Wednesday 14 December 2011

Norwegian response to the butter crisis as an example of Norwegian way of thinking

Everybody who is reading this, regardless being in Portugal, in Norway, in the US, in Germany or in Argentina, has already heard about the lack of butter that Norwegians are facing.

Media around the world has been describing the butter crisis around here, how it’s affecting people and the bizarre histories such as the one about the man that was caught trying to bring 90kg from Sweden.

Meanwhile, today, in the front page of the biggest Norwegian newspaper, you could read “Se hvordan du kan lager ditt eget smør” which means “See how you can make your own butter” and in the cover of the Economic section “Smørkrisen kunne vært unngått”: “Butter crisis could have been avoided”.

This quick answer showing what you can make to circumvent the problem and pointing out the reasons for what went wrong so it won’t happen again shows how, instead of worrying about the simple description of the problems or its consequences, Norwegians are interested in learning from the mistakes and dealing with the short-term effects in their own.