Superlatives

My nail is falling of my middle finger on my left hand. It sucks and the new nail is the weirdest thing I've ever seen.

My Process Design has started and I don't have a client. I'm the laziest KaosPilot there ever was.

I sit and stare at my inbox, reloading every one and a half minute. I'm the saddest person in the universe.

I've watched way too many Grey's Anatomy episodes in the passing week. It's the most unreasonable thing I've ever watched. Still I am addicted.

And Teitur is the best fitting soundtrack that my life could have.

I truly believe that I was a pioneer:

http://www.mmedia.is/rafkris/inga.htm

Together we're never alone...

The Faroese government has decided to lend us 300 million Danish Kronas.

Somehow this feels like getting a lone from your 11 year old brother. Two years of his pocket money to pay your traffic fine of 15.000 ÍSK...

...annað meiri háttar skemmdir

I know it might be a bit hypocritical of myself, throwing stones in a house of glass like this, but this article here almost offends me. Not the article itself of course, and I feel sorry for the stakeholders of Gjögur Bridge, but if you are getting paid to write for the most read Icelandic newspaper, you certainly have to hold some kind of language standard. There are a couple of easily spotted declension mistakes, in addition to spelling mistakes, typos and just bad language in general.

Maybe the mbl.is should introduce some sort of proof-reading programme in their work?

Ik ben een blonde IJslandse meisje. Wat kan ik voor jíj doen?

Big, bold headlines with the word IJsland somewhere amongst other Dutch words are no longer to be found on front pages of newspapers. No longer are there articles, written by bitter owners of IceSave accounts, requesting that de blonde IJslandse meisjes, the blond Icelandic girls, work for the debts of the nation by baby-sitting, gardening or free prostitution (is that a value exchange?). But the news of our financial crash are nowhere near to be forgotten. Lectures of school give me the poor girl-look, wedding guests in Germany make jokes about the deceased economy of Iceland and Mahir from the Tyrkish Café on the ground floor of my flat just laughs, shakes his head and puts my money back in my bag when I insist on paying for my coffee. Then he brings me a beer and says: "Save your money, little girl. Don't worry, be happy!"

At least I'm not chased out of bag-shops on Strøget...

Don't matter...

When one has a dry blog spell it's hard to start again. So much has happened since last blog, I've moved in with Unnsteinn, the Icelandic economy crashed and a man got shot in front of school. But I wouldn't know which topic to choose, how to write, what to say. So I'll just post a photo of me and my new glasses.

Winter Fashion 2008

This surprisingly sunny summer made a severe interval in my blogging archives; one just doesn't get the urge to blog while at home with friends and family.

However, since my sports interested was awoken from it's 22 years of hibernation today when the handsome team of Icelandic male handball players took their Spanish colleagues to the bakery*, I've decided to continue my blogging career.

I think it'll be save to predict two following things:

• All handball teams in Iceland will be full with enthusiastic kids in the coming fall.
  
  
• The male hair-fashion will change dramatically, see following picture:

*To take to the bakery is an Icelandic expression which could be translated as to kick ass. So, the handball heroes kicked their ass; 36-30. Yeah!

Vert et blue...

I cannot help it. As much as my secretly stingy heart hurts when I pay my rent, which has jumped from 32.000 Icelandic Krónur to 45.000 Icelandic Krónur since I moved here due to currency changes, I just cannot hide my little grin when I read headlines like "10 years of affluence on a halt". For a decade now, and probably more, we, Icelanders, have been amongst the richest of richest. We've be able to afford grand cars, gigantic villas and meals consisting largely of pine nuts and truffles.
Don't get me wrong, there are of course some downsides to our sudden shrinkage of wallets. But I also think it is extremely healthy to the average ostentatious lifestyle of an Icelander. And not to forget the benefits of the environments. Instead of polluting LandRovers the nation is now digging through the clutter in the garage, locating the bicycle somewhere under the 3 almost-unused gas BBQ and the trampoline the children wanted last summer but are now tired of. Instead of buying the latest model of iPods every fortnight and throwing the old one away with all it's single-use plastic and aluminum the consumers take care and try to make things last a bit longer.

Sadly the nation is barely more green because of the longing to be green. They're just green 'cause they cannot be blue anymore. But at least the color is green...

Choices

Bed is broken again. Katrín was here, now she's gone again. I ate too much kúlusúkk. Again.

Tomorrow the test pilots for the admission workshop arrive.

Choosing new teamers from the pile of test pilots will be interesting.

Choosing the choice of the evening is uninteresting but vital; opening the window to avoid suffocating in the immense heat that my Mac omits. Or avoid getting bitten by more mosquitoes.

Mosquitoes. Heat. Mosquitoes. Heat.

Mosquitoes....

Rotten Apples

At my school, which I guess most of my blog-audience knows already; www.kaospilots.nl, we've been focusing on the power of word of mouth marketing and how sharing of experiences amongst ordinary people can bring down a company or rapidly market a product without a single cent spent on advertising.
Now, I don't dream of creating big of a fuss with my following words, having only 8.84 visits per day on average, but I still want to share my very disappointing experience with one of the most popular company on the market.

When I choose a product there are a couple of factors that contribute to my choice. Being a poor student the price plays an important role. In a way I don't mind at all the crappy service at RyanAir, since they're airfares are just so much lower than most of their competitors. I really don't need a free microwaved meal, leather seats or a crappy American family movie. Some other purchases go beyond the factor of pricing. I like good coffee and am thereby ready to pay a couple of euros for a cup of freshly and correctly brewed coffee instead of getting it for free from a crappy Douwe Egberts machine. Sometimes I go for quality, sometimes for prise, sometimes values, sometimes extreme coolness.

Now, one and a half year ago I apparently made a big mistake. My laptop, which I chose to name Hólmfríður (all my dearest products get Icelandic human names, Skúli, my red Toyota was sold a couple of months ago and Sigmar, my mp3 player provides me with music all day round), was a hand-down from my mother and was getting quite slow and outdated. I knew that a laptop was gonna play an ever growing part of my life, so I asked for a new one as a graduation gift.

Hólmfríður was a PC and during most of my life I had worked with PC, both at school and at home, but beside that, my father had always been a Macintosh man, so I was also quite used to the Apple interface, especially the older one. Since I was used to both types of computers, old habits didn't play a huge role in my choice. So I weighed the pro's and con's of each choice and ended up buying a MacBook, which I named Jarþrúður.

Apple products are way more expensive than PC-based products, but they have some things that PC don't have. Whenever I sat down at a café, I seriously felt way cooler than the others who had those ugly, gray Dell's with all the ugly stickers and wires. My computer was white, of a beautiful design and everything was just so sleek and pretty. The interface was also easy and convenient and the computer came with a lot of programmes that were not intended for professionals, but normal people like me that wanted to take the first steps in things like movie editing and music recording.

Now, I paid quite a high prise for the product and thought to myself that now I was paying my way into the community of the hip and cool elite and that I was also buying a high quality product that would come with high quality service. I was wrong, 2 out of 3.

I most certainly belong to the artsy elite now, sitting with my MacBook with all it's hot-corner features and Dashboard but the product is crap and so is the service. If you're still reading I apologize for the length of this, I just prefer to get the whole story out. Now the story of my Apple Ordeal begins:

• December 2006, Klemenz, my brother, buys the computer second hand. The guy that sold it to him had bought it in USA for reselling purposes and had only turned it on once so it was literally unused.
  
  
• Spring 2007, the battery fails. I get a new one instantly and am happy with the service.
  
  
• Autumn 2007, the new battery fails. I get a new one, since I'm lucky enough to be in Iceland at the time. So, the hardware is obviously not of good quality, but at least Apple replaces it for free.
  
  
• The front or the keyboard housing starts braking apart at the edges. Apple fixes this for free but that means that I need to send it in for a couple of days. Being without a computer, even only for a couple of days, is bothering, especially if one lives in a foreign country and being away from the computer would mean being away from MSN and gmail, and thus away from far-away friends... So I decide to never mind the aesthetical faults and just ignore the problem, since it doesn't cause any other further damage. However, it does feel a bit shitty, for such an expensive product.
  
  
• I fall onto my computer, which is of course my fault only, and need to have the screen replaced. And here it is where Apples ingenious but morally wrong marketing strategy comes in. A new screen with a replacement is € 804. That's almost a new computer! But since I was insured I rather got it repaired than buying a new one, since it was fairly new anyway. Now, just the price of the screen was a robbery, but the worse part was that the repair took way longer than they promised me and when I called them to announce that I was going abroad and needed to take it with me, it hadn't been fixed yet and they told me that there was nothing I could do, they wouldn't be able to fix it in time (it had already been in their possession for three weeks). Now, I made some calls, cried a bit and voila, a nice guy named Eric fixed the same evening and sent it to Rotterdam where I could pick it up. He, however, did not have the time to fix the keyboard housing as they had promised, but told me I could bring it in again. (Which I wouldn't do, since I need my computer, both for school and for my oversea social life).
  
  
• After I got my computer back from repair I noticed that some things, that had been working before the repair (even whilst the screen wasn't working; I used my computer for a while with only half a screen working and the rest black and pink, in order to punish myself for falling on it) weren't working anymore: The right speaker did not work, making the volume very faint, but MacBooks don't have very powerful speakers to begin with. The microphone does not work, not even if I plug in an external one. The system preferences all zero themselves if I restart, so when I turn my computer on I have to go through all the settings, like making the wireless icon appear in the menu bar so that I can choose a network, setting the hot-corners (which I don't bother anymore and just use the F9 - F12 keys instead although thats not nearly as comfortable) and resetting the Dashboard (but I frequently use the dictionary). When I brought it to iFactor, my local Apple store, the tech guy told me that there was nothing he could do and I should try to... and then he spoke some geek-gibberish which a normal curly girl like me (I know there are also some technically intelligent curly females out there but I aint one of them) doesn't understand and cannot do by herself. Helpful, eh? So still no skype or musical recordings for me...
  
  
• Someone stole my charger. OK, probably it was just me who lost it, but that does not change the fact that a new one costs insanely much for a product that is mainly made up of plastic and copper wires. €89 was the price. Eighty-nine euros could buy me a ticket to Barcelona, could buy me 9 bikes from a junkie, 4 tickets to a theater show. Eighty-nine euros. For a charger. This is no Dell price. This is not a Sony price. Only Apple would charge so much for an essential accessory. I'm a poor student, for Zeus's sake. So I didn't buy one. I just used Chris's and Soe's, my flatmates, who were stupid enough to buy the same kind of computer as me.
  
  
• Now, one would think that getting one factory-flawed battery would be plenty of bad luck for one person, not to mention getting two. Now my third battery crashed, with the X-mark in the battery icon, like the other two, so I thought I could easily get a new one for free in just a couple of minutes like when I was back in Iceland. The guy told me that since the computer was out of warranty, being more than one years old, I couldn't get one for free. Remembering that the Icelandic Apple dude had told me that the battery itself had a warranty of one year I told him this and Dutch Apple dude said "Ah yes... OK". He didn't give me a new one, but he gave me a number and told me to call there the day after and ask for a new battery. The day after I called (since it was after office hours the day before) but the number didn't work. So I called again the day after that. Number didn't work. I asked Selma. She told me that it might be that I couldn't call a 0900 number with my phone. So they were trying to gain money from my problems with their product! How nice of them...
  
  Remembering that the Icelandic Apple was way more helpful I called them and asked if it was true what they had told me a couple of months before, that the battery had a years warranty. She confirmed that and told me to send an email to a certain girl and ask for a pdf version of my receipt. I did that and after having to wait a couple of days and send a reminder I got the receipt.
  
  Then I went again to iFactor, triumphantly with my receipt and asked for a new battery. The response was that the guy that handles battery replacement had gone home and would be back on monday. After having poured out of the bowls of my wrath (sorry, an Icelandic saying) another Apple guy tells me that I'll still need to call that 0900 number, which is Macintosh Netherlands, and get an OK from Macintosh, so that they could give me a new battery. A new one is €129 so it's out of the question just buying one.
  
  
  
  I called from Selma's phone (and gave her a lunch instead) and after having talked to an unfriendly dude I reached the conclusion that he wasn't just gonna give me a new battery just like this (the reason being that I hadn't bought my laptop or swapped the previous batteries in the Netherlands... Apple in Iceland never complained, even though this Mac was bought in the USA). So Inga got into bitch-mode and told him that that was OK, since I was gonna sell this rotten laptop and buy a PC. Then he all of a sudden turned a bit friendlier and told me that he would send a guy over but I would need to give him my credit-card number and they would maybe charge me for it. No way, José, don't try this on me now! Didn't have my credit-card with me anyway, so he told me to call back.
  
  In the end I just gave up, bought a new charger since the computer was completely useless without it and have decided that I won't get the battery replaced this month, I'll just wait 'til I get home.

I will just sit with my rotten apple. And then I might just replace it with a PC, even running it on Linux. I've just had enough of this.

Now, this was a lengthy post and I doubt anyone will read the whole thing through, but maybe, just maybe, I'll manage to save someone's happiness, by convincing that person to buy something else. Or at least to think things through...

Til Kötu

Ég brýt hér með odd af oflæti mínu og læt mig hafa það að skrifa á íslensku. Annað er ekki við hæfi.

Til hamingju elsku Kata mín!

And the Oscar goes to...

Different Cultures... I guess...

Iceland and the Netherlands are both Western countries and one would thus expect that there were no real culture shocks, maybe a bit of an awakening if an innocent Icelander wanders around the red light district (since we don't have any street hoockers in Iceland... Only ones that are ordered online...) or if the same Icelander accidentally (or not) stumbles into a Coffee Shop, and not finding exeptionally good coffee but some strange smell of... insences...

But I did have my real culture shock. And it did not include any strange substances or poorly dressed women.

I was late. It was already 21:02 and I was in the tram, trying to get home as fast as possible after a long day at work. And I wasn't the only one in the tram. There were all kinds of people, and quite many of them in fact.

Many!

Even though Eurovision had already started!

Astonishing!

A scandal!

Just plain wrong!

gODEss

I now also blog, amongst other KaosPilots at www.odemagazine.com

Here's my first post there...

Reykjavík and Rotterdam, Netherlands and Niceland

I'll now have a plus and minus section (Ragnheidur style) about my life here in the Netherlands versus my life in Iceland.

Netherlands:

plus:
+The Sun. Makes it possible for me to wear my new sunglasses.


+Proximity. Everything is so close. It's not a problem to wisit Sendenhorst in Germany to compete in an a capella competition or go to a unconference in London over a weekend.

+Bycicles. Biking is fun. Especially in the sun.

+Social Innovation. Yes I know, I'm also sick and tired of that phrase. But really. There are so many cool things going on here as opposed Iceland which seems almost primitive in social innovation.

+Albert Heijn. You can get everything. Hagkaup smagkaup.

minus:
-The Sun. It is barbequeing me and my Icelandic skin, which despite all that grilling sun ceases to develop any other colour than clorine white. And anyway, would it decide to develope a new colour, I know for a fact that that colour wouldn't be the one of delicious milk-chocolate, but more of a tomato. And I don't like tomatoes.

-Skyscrapers. I don't like all those tall, tall buildings that hover over me and block the view. They're ugly.

-Service attitude and bureucracy. Service here sucks. You'll always have to make a couple of thousand calls before you get what you want and everything takes ages. Eneco, our electricity provider, is winning the race of bad CEM (Customer Experience Management, a frequent topic in my studies these days) with the worst service I've ever encountered, but Apple is drawing on them with a very lousy service attitude and high prices. Everything is falling appart in that one year old laptop and they don't really want to help me with that. Fuckers.

Niceland:

plus:
+Kúlusúkk. Golly, I miss kúlusúkk. The combination of soft salty liqurish and the creamy chocolate is irresistable.

+The Nature. I miss lava. I miss moss. I miss mountains. They are allowed to block the view that the skyscrapers are not. I miss the birds and the smell of þari.

+Bergdís. Without her I'm lost and only half a being. Guess I'll just have to import her.

+Laugardalslaug. I'm generally not a fan of exposing myself in a swimsuit but the weather today just calls for going to Laugardalslaug, swimming a couple of hundred meters and gossiping in the hot pots.

+Bragðarefur. Mmm... Strange that other nations just don't come up with the mix of ice-cream, þristur, bananas and mars-bars. Fuck the swirls and MacTwisters or whatever their called. There isn't any liqurish in it!

minus:
-Kúlusúkk. It's not healthy for my body and my lovelife.

-Transportational System. I hate driving and I hate taking the inefficient buses in Iceland. And biking is generally impossible if you live in Álftanes, unless you have unlimited time. So I guess I'm fucked. I want sustainable methods of travelling. Tell that to the government, and then I might just reconsider living there...

-Ríkið. What is the cup! Why can I not just go to the nearest supermarket and buy a bottle of white wine or a sixpack of Grolsch without having to mind what time it is or having to empty my wallet completely?

Pictures:

• Benedikt Nientied, Pictures from Sendenhorst
• Wikipedia, skyscrapers and Icelandic nature

Coming up...

How to...

My newest waste of time is videojug.com. Instead of fixing my bed so that I have somewhere to sleep I choose to learn how to clean toilets, remember names, hide my erections, make a chocolate brownie, speak Geek or just anything I would ever want to learn.

I will never have to fail at anything again!

Blue is good, ass is not.

-Alexander Aiden Falk

to Catherine Ruth Skinner:

Of independence...

I'd say that independence is a virtue. But sometime one can be just a bit too independent.

My father is far too independent. He doesn't believe in reading IKEA manuals. And although I am very grateful to him for buying me a bed and putting it together, I think it would have been better for everyone if he'd just opened the little brochure and read the instructions.

I tried strapping my bed together with red string that my mum left me. Worked well for a couple of days, or until the string broke. Then Jakob fixed it. That worked well until the screws ripped themselves out of the wood. Now I have to drill through the metal bars on the side.

I slept on the couch last night. Couch-surfing in your own home... hmm...

Home, Sweet Home!

I think I haven't been served breakfast in bed once the last 10 years. But this morning (ok, I admit, afternoon), I was just reading the pdf version of Morgunblaðið in my bed when Christian knocks on my door, says matur*, and leaves me a plate with muesli, an ommelette and an apple. Isn't he sweet?



*Matur is the only word Christian knows in Icelandic. Christian loves matur...

Inconsistency?

American aluminium companies buy up all the CO₂ emission quota so that they can set up factories in Iceland. In order to power the fabrics they need to sink large parts of Iceland, producing energy with water turbines.
Beautiful landscapes change from vivid rocks to sand-colored man-made lakes. Birds loose their homes and nests and reindeers drown.
50 people protest.

The government of the People's Republic of China continues to reign over Tibet, despite the clear will of the Tibetans to be independent.
Monks, who were demonstrating in a quiet and non-violent manner, were and are being killed, whilst the Chinese government refuses both media and human rights NGO's to enter Lhasa and other areas in order to make sure that no-one's civil rights are being broken.
40 people protest.

Gas prices around the world are getting higher, due to rising prices of crude oil and inflation. The price in Iceland per litre of gasoline is currently €1.21. In Europe it's around €1.45.
An Icelandic family of 5 has 4 cars and therefore has a high price to pay now that the price of gasoline is this high. No more Rúnturinn. Children have to hitch a ride to school with their parents or even worse: take the bus! "Out-door-loving" Icelanders that drive those fabulous 4x4 jeeps cannot any longer cruise the vulnerable nature with their moss-massacre tyres. They have to turn their lives to a more affordable lifestyles, picking up cheap hobbies like people-watching or grass-growing.
Half the Icelandic nation protests, driving 200 cars in a demonstration, handing the head of Parliament a tyre with their message: Lower the levies -Now!

The Sum of All Feelings

Wikipedia is in itself the sum of all knowledge in the universe. Of course it's limited but still, I trust that collective mindset way better than a few professors at Oxford. But knowledge is one thing, emotions are another.

Two young American web-artists have created a brilliant database that is the sum of all emotions in the modern world. It is indescribable so I have to send you there: We Feel Fine

There you can click on little dots or even squares, which are photographs, and read sentences from blogs where the writer is describing his or her feelings. And the interface of their page just makes me wonder why there are still companies using frontpage-made websites...

I am feeling unproductive and a bit confused right now but also amazed.

Two B's and one dollar $ign.

No more being woken up with a cup of coffee by a smiling, tall girl. No more playing sleep with/marry/throw from a cliff in Icelandic. No more tourist-places for now. No more gossip under four eyes (plus two, not that interested).

Bergdís and Jakob have left me here, sitting on the couch with my two karlkynhneigðir teddy bears. No use in that...

We're told that money makes the world go round. Now, for the first time, I'm out of it. I have no money what so ever. I'm used to not even consider small amount of money, only those big numbers. Now I can't even afford the small purchases. And what? I don't really mind it. It kind of feels a bit liberating even. Who needs the ostentatious lifestyle of Icelanders? Or what. I don't know. I'm a bit lost in everything these days.

I hate the Króna. I'm paying 10.000 krónur more for rent than when I moved last autumn. From 27.200 to 38.400. Not fair.

*?*
Someone googled Clogs spank and landed on my blog. Interesting concept.

Home & Home

I'm back home at William Boothlaan 7c. It feels relaxing being back from the intense EuroTrip and an emotional IMWe. I guess the IMWe-blues will be of different sorts this year.

The flat welcomed me, my best friend Bergdís and her boyfriend Jakob with a strong stench from the unplugged fridge and very cold breeze from an open kitchen window. None of us could manage to turn on the heating so the first day was spent in the cold. Bergdís had Jakob to warm her up. I had a Danish heat blowing machine. Isn't the world unfair?

The Liquid Lounge on the ground floor is scattering broken Arabic notes in the air and despite the clock showing 3:45 AM. I try to cover it with Iron & Wine but the rhythm of the two just causes cacophony.

---

After each TED speech there's an advertisement for BMW's hydrodriven automobile. It's shot in Iceland. It makes me proud to come from a country so beautiful. It makes me proud that it's associated with such a great thing like TED.com. I wish I were proud of all things that stem from Iceland.

Final destination: Rieneck

The counter at www.IMWe.net says that now there are zero days, zero minutes and zero seconds to next IMWe. Therefore it feels kind of strange to sit here in Tobi's room in Wien, chatting on MSN and trying to figure out where my class-mates are gonna stay tomorrow night, instead of being in Rieneck's basement singing Vår and drinking Keiler.
It's allright. I can manage for another day. I think. I thought. But now my feelings towards IMWe are even more mixed than before.
When will the develope an instant transporting plutonic machine? Or at least just a time machine...

$%&$@%!

I am trying to act cool. All I want to do is just sit down and cry. My purse was stolen. This purse was my late grandmothers so I am sad to see it go. Or not see it go. If I would have seen it I would have jumped at the thief and boxed him with my unbelievable boxing skills. It included my passport, which by the way is the coolest passport on earth. I will never again be allowed to be so finky on my photo. I will never again make tired security control staff laugh. It included my credid-card and my debit-card. Those are the only cards I have in this continent. 100 euros. 88 Euro tax-refund note. My make up. My compass.

Fuck.
Life sucks.

But I do not win the biggest loser today. This is Birkir, Bergdís's brother: http://www.visir.is/article/20080309/FRETTIR01/80309042

Welcome back!

Dear Jarþrúður,

Welcome back from the hospital. Believe you me, I've missed you terribly. And since I triggered this nasty accident I've felt extremely bad every time I had to run my fingers over your vulnerable body, looking at your broken face, seeing the blue blood pouring underneath your blank skin. How could I ever have treated you so bad? You, who are my only true friend here in the land beneath the surface of the ocean. You who are always willing to lend me a hand, whether it's in contacting my friends, searching for answers to the questions of the Universe or just to sing me to sleep with melancholy music.

I've been a bad sister. I've been a bad mother. I've been a bad friend.
And I promise to treat you better from here on in. I shall care for you, clean you when you're schmutzig and cloak you in your new green sleeve.

Now, that you're alright again, I think we're ready to go and explore the unknown together. Me. And you.

Love you forever*

Your owner, Inga

*or until I can afford MacAir...

It aint bloggleti, but a sick Mac.

In a week I'll be on the road with my class mates in a Fire Truck, driving around Europe, making a documentary about Social Innovation.

Pivo + framing + Lenka mín + dzien dobry + solutions instead of problems + more pivo + kde domov muj + Auto-Bahns + zooming in and out + IMWe + the Hub in Berlin + my banjo in the back of the Fire Truck + going over footage + more and more pivo + social innovation...

-All this should produce a lovely tingle of happiness in my ears and elbows but at the moment all I recieve is a headache and outside it's raining.

But I'm not worried. We will work everything out and before I know it I will hold the concept of social innovation molded in a plastic DVD, I'll have a smelly IMWe costume, I'll have a thorough knowledge of Polish and I'll have a Fire Truck Phobia...

Aint that leuk my friends?

Vicious Circle

Nobody comments 'cause I don't blog and I don't blog 'cause nobody comments...

This is my life!

I was just watching Så som i Himmelen. It reminded me that I am exactly who I am and I should make the most out of it. This is my chance to live and maybe I shouldn't be wasting life on having lazy Sundays lying on the couch. Or maybe that's exactly how one should spend one's life: in relaxation, drinking coffee and watching Swedish movies. Why waste it on stress? What is the waste here?
That's probably the point. You're only wasting if you feel like you are wasting. Today was not wasted away, despite the fact that the freshest of air that I got was when I opened the window. I'm still wearing pyjamas. And I did get some work done. If washing one's clothes is concidered work.

Gabriella sang, in the movie, that she wanted to feel like she's lived her life. I think I probably have, uptil now, done so, and I certainly hope that I'll be carry on doing so. But sometimes someone needs to pinch you and say: "Fucking hell! Enjoy what you're doing! You'll only do that exact thing once!"

On a lighter note, (A 440 Hz to be specific, I just bought a tuning fork), the only things that inhabit our mailbox are bills from eneco, advertisements for crappy electronics and a thick phone book.

Feel free to change that. I accept post cards, letters, fake-anthrax, love-letters, boxes of chocolate, roses or tulips, lava-rocks or wedding rings.

The address is

Inga Audbjorg
William Boothlaan 7c
3012 vg Rotterdam
the Netherlands

(Post Scriptum:

I just listened to our, our as in Iceland's, tribute to the Eurovision Song Contest in Serbia later this year. It seems to have the exact same theme as this blog and thus Gabriella's Song in As it is in Heaven. Coincidence?)

Quotes from a Friday night

"It was salty, sour and with a bit of lemmon taste. It wasn't bad. I didn't think it was bad"
-Joris Martens whilst talking about the taste of his urine.

David: So which bar in Milano was that?
Christian, describing with his hands: It was... on some kind of corner.

Hunang! Ég er heimili!

He stood there, in a hand-down suit from one of his older brothers, nodding his head to the rhythm of the music. The band was playing some of the old schlagers, ever so popular at the country-balls. He was scoping the young ladies, looking for a suitable target to ask to dance.

There she stood. Quite short in height but attractive all the same, in her pretty blue dress. Should he, or should he not? He waited and watched her, as she sat and conversed with another girl her age. Probably her best friend, he thought and wished that the friend would go away so that he could have a chance to speak to her alone. Why do girls always have to move around in flocks like that?

Finally, he gave up on waiting and decided to approach her no matter what.

"Hi, I'm Kristján. Would you like to dance with me?" he asked her, trying to sound casual and self confident.

"No thank you. I'm busy." It was a definite answer. He walked away, sulking and disappointed.

***

Now, almost thirty years later, they're married, the young man and the best friend of the girl in the blue dress. Second choice? Not at all. More like practice makes perfect I guess...

This couple, my parents, were over here in the Netherlands, along with my brother, supposedly being tourists in Holland, but actually doing more of IKEA furniture building.

A gigant thanks to my folks, little-bro Leifur and Austrian Tobi for helping me settle propperly in my new flat. I now have a bed. I now have curtains. I now have shelves. I now have nice flat mates. It's perfect.

The last 3 days in numbers:

• 1 Icelander
• 2 Austrians
• 2 nights
• 13 pubs
• 48 cans of Grolsch
• 10 donuts
• 1 kilo of chicken
• 7 liters of dubbel vla

...And I am a material girl!

Here are 7 things that make my life nicer these days: (Yes, I realize that this post is stupid, materialistic and yes Oli; probably unsustainable, but sometimes, whilst far away from your friends, family and kúlusúkk (although you have new friends, a new (Maroccan) family and new candy (mmmm... appelkoeken...)) you just need to fill your life a bit up with material happiness).

• My Difrnce Mp3 player 'cause he (yes it's a he, his name is Theophilius) makes my life like a little tailor-made musical.
  
  
• My Lebara SIM-card. Supposedly I'm supposed to be calling back home for 13cent (if I'm calling to a land line). That's 87cents less than at Orange. But then again, I spoke to Bjargey for 6 minutes today and ran out of beltegoed, but I had 7,37 euros when I started. I'm not a big maths fan, but something's just not right here...
  
  
• The piano here at Casa Leisure makes me happy.
  
  
• The gas-warming up units (have no idea what that's called in English and quite frankly I don't bother blackling it...) that now warm up our class room. So now it's just cold. Not freezing.
  
  
• Selma's computer. Poor girl doesn't see much of it these days. She could, if she would just say "Inga, get your fucking fingers of my zebra-patterned Mac!". But she doesn't. And she's not a lot at home these days and her computer gets left behind... And I just hate to see it all alone, lying on the floor and just wanna keep it some company. But anyway, I had kind of forgotten how nice it is to have a screen that actually allows you to look at pictures, have large windows open and such luxury that I haven't been accustomed to since I died on my screen...
  
  
• The green H&M coat that I bought the other day. It's fab! And the pockets are not designed in the way that if one's drunk one will accidentally sit down in a cab and slam the door in the same millisecond that one's 4 days old mobile phone falls out of the pocket. Erm... if anyone would ever do that... ehe...
  
  
• Bollur. The dutch version of cream puffs may not be as big and juicy as the Icelandic ones (but to fill those in who are not lonely island castaways like myself, today is Cream-Puff-day, the day when children spank their parents and get delicious cream puffs for each spank. Our national holidays are special, aren't they?) but that just means you have to eat much more of them. I ate 10. But, honestly, they are really really small...

Appart from material things, there are, of course, a lot of people, consepts and ideas that make my world spin. Be sure of that...

"...and so you felt like droppin' in..."

Every single time I sing karaoke (which, frankly, is not nearly as often as I'd like) I sing I will survive. Maybe I should try to find a less clichéic standard number, but guess that's too late now.
BUT I will never manage to cover Gloria as well as those guys:

"Magic makes the music more..."

I'm not a fan of iPods. Some years ago when the whole Mp3 trend was in it's birth I decided to be different, not for the sake of it though, and get myself an iriver. iriver (oh, one despises to break the rules of capitalization just for the sake of a brand name, but even Wikipedia does it), is actually a Windows based product, just as iPod is an Apple based one, but has the advantage of having a drag and drop system, instead of having to rely on a certain media-player (like the relationship of iPods and iTunes...).
Anyhow, it turned out to be the wrong bet, 'cause after I'd had my precious iriver for a short period of time yours truly lost the recharching cable. Now if it had been a iPod I would have had no troubles of finding, buying, getting, a new one. But Hans Petersen, who apparently were the only ones who sold irivers in Iceland, didn't have an extra cable and although they promised to order a new one for me (multiple times actually) I never heard from them.
If you know me well, you'll recognize my procrastinatory personality and know that since this was the case I just lived without music for years.
But now I've done something about it. I went to MediaMarkt, which by the way is open every working day until 21:00, and bought a cheap 2GB Mp3 player. Now, at last my life has an appropriate themescore.

Kings of Convenience seem to make shopping so much easier...
Feist makes trams fun...
The Faroese Teitur sings me to sleep...

What's the theme-music to your life?

Rochussenstraat 355A

The coffee-maker snores whilst making the coffee which focus-seeking KaosPilots will slurp. Someone quivers a bit: Those dutch simple-glassed windows. The natural-coloured floor, wooden and rough to one's feet. Seagulls are lauging at the students standing inside, moving under the command of Darryl, the Kung Fu master. One of the 20 sets of keys, owned by students and staff who can access the building at all times, makes it's own little tune while it follows the Chi Gong movements of it's owner. The taste of either cold or burnt coffee along with appelkoeken. Cars passing by, slowing down a bit to peek through the windows. The mixed stench of the toilet and Ragnar's snus drifting by. Two girls making a Mind Map of the coming weekend. Muffled techno-beats from someone's headphones.

My school is becoming my home...

Oops, I did it again!

There she goes again. Her second blog, and in fact, her fourth attempt to express herself on an homepage (even if we exclude MySpace and Facebook, the latter taking up almost increadible amounts of seconds, minutes and even hours of her precious life...)

I've always found blogs in English by Icelanders quite pretentious but I'm ready to eat my own hat and be named Mr. Dog.
Practice makes perfect...
I hope this will indeed increase my fluency and have a positive impact on my English spelling, although I do acknowledge that I'm way more comfortable with writing on the Ástkæra, ylhýra (Love-Dear Luke Warm-Gay, aka Icelandic) but that language, although splendid, cannot be read by more than a 300.000 people or so. Not that I expect such a big audience here, but of some of the people closest to me don't even speak my mother language.

So Elfried, I loose.

And here we go...