Greetings from grandchildren on MY day

Greetings from Sagene and Swansea. Klick on the video below.
Or see the greetings on this link.
Thanks to you all.

Erected Tulips

From one morning to another.
Friday morning my Tulips had emptied all the water in the flower vase. The position of the hanging heads was a new experience. Ready for the garbage bin or? or could they be saved.
Saturday morning.
After filling fluid in the vase the erected Tulips can be compared to Penile Erection which can occur due to a full urinary bladder. I take it for granted that the Tulips not got erection as a result of the complex interaction of psychological, neural, vascular and endocrine factors, which is usually, though not exclusively, associated with sexual arousal.
Well you never know everything about nature.

"There is a jungle out there"

We are in the beginning of the repainting process of our apartment. The ceilings and walls need to be renovated and the time before Christmas has been chosen. However, doing the 300 sqm of painted surface (with ceilings and stucco 340cm over the floor) is a job for professional craftsmen, and "there is a jungle out there" a friend told me when we asked for support in finding some that was trustworthy, efficient and cost-effective. We used his references and starts on Monday.That gave us some chalenges in moving heavy furniture and gathering plants from different parts of the rooms away from the working area. On the table in the dining room we have thus put a lot of large green plants, recalling some of the memories from our stay in Asia Pacific some years ago. The jungle har moved home.
The narrow path outside our apartment in Ardmore Park and down to our Gourmet Grocer - Jason´s is shown on this photo. No need for using the car if we had forgotten something for dinner. Walking among snakes and lizards with the jungle sound in our ears became a natural cause.
The Bukit Timah Rainforest was another unforgettable jungle memory. Bukit Timah is Singapore's oldest primary rainforest. The forest was never extensively cleared for cultivation and shelters a vast variety of plants. Bukit Timah was declared by Alfred Russel Wallace to be 'exceedingly productive'. Indeed, species new to science continue to be discovered here, even today!
We used the nature reserve for weekend walks and exercise like HHHS the Hash House Harriers, Singapore. The Monday 15th run will take plce at Pulau Ubin
Moving around in rain forests and playing in jungles became one of the maturing activities for our children, and here you see Rikke swinging in a liane.The Bukit Timah and Central Catchment nature reserves are home to more than 840 flowering plants and over 500 species of animals. These include towering trees, climbing palms (better known as rattans), ferns, orchids, gingers and strange blooms such as the Black or Bat lily. The forest is home to all kinds of animals. The most commonly encountered are the Long-tailed Macaques or monkeys.

The jungle on my dinner table has no animals or creeps.

Virus probability here and there

Manchester United have been hit with a virus ahead of tomorrow's derby against City with Patrice Evra, Nemanja Vidic, Dimitar Berbatov and Paul Scholes all believed to be among the victims, we can read in Guardian.co.uk

Normally Virus is a small infectious agent that can replicate only inside the living cells of organisms. Within the IT-world we know Computer virus as a computer program that can copy itself and infect a computer. The term "virus" is also commonly but erroneously used to refer to other types of malware, including but not limited to adware and spyware programs that do not have the reproductive ability.
Hopefully the virus is not following Ole Gunnar Solskjær on his return to Norwegian fotball and Molde FK. At least this confirmation of a Virus/malware-free Mac Book Pro can stand as a artificial confirmation that the virus in Manchester not already has reached our part of the world.

If you want to check your computer yourself, take a look at ESET Cybersecurity
and be sure: This blogpost is no invitation for an attack against my compurers.

First Heart Transplant, BonFire Celebration and Weekend

We don´t need to celebrate Bente and the RH-team83 every year, but just to keep you updated: Today it is 27 years since the first TX Cor took place in Norway. All the best wishes to those involved and their developed competence making me successfully the 294th Heart Transplant (and the first simultaneous Heart and Kidney Transplant) in Norway in 1998.

But today there is another celebration too.The History behind the Night 405 years ago you can read yourself on the British Life and Culture Site. I expect however to receive photos and Twitter updates from the celebration my family in Wales probably takes part in.And as an end to this week different activities in- and outside the walls: Have a nice weekend wherever you are.

Big Brother monitoring ordinary Norwegians?

Almost straight across the street where some retired Norwegian secret service police officers and ex-military personnel (on behalf of USA) had a secret nest for monitoring life and attitude of other Norwegian citizens (according to Norwegian TV2), you may find this beautiful sculpture by Auguste Rodin from 1902. Today you can go and see the beauty without being afraid of the watchdogs. The nest has moved somewhere else or is closed. The square outside the US Embassy is on the other side of the nest with view towards Parkveien / Henrik Ibsensgt. In March 2008 I stayed a long time (a litle longer than normal) in this area waiting for some friends arriving by train at Nationaltheatret Railway Station. I took this photo of the embassy while waiting, but did the monitoring system from the window on the other side find it suspect and registered me in their system?
I don´t know, and as long as I have a good conscience I have nothing to be afraid of either. And as long as at least one of these guys visited USA and New York earlier this autumn, I can take it as a small evidence of not being interested for the secret service.
Maybe this blogpost will make everything upside down. What Big Brother is monitoring on digital media we still do not know.

The Nordic Federation once more

Today I directly copy a Comment by Eirikur Bergmann in The Guardian yesterday. (However I cannot see why he did not chose Ålesund as the Capital.)

The Nordic nations together would have economic and political clout – if they could overcome their fierce independent spirits

Today the leaders of the five Nordic states are meeting to discuss the possibility of creating a Nordic federal state. Ever since the Kalmar Union of the kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden – reaching to Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe Islands, Shetland and Orkney – collapsed in 1523, the idea of reinstating some sort of a supra-national Nordic state regularly crops up. Now this old idea has resurfaced in a book the Swedish history professor Gunnar Wetterberg submitted to the Nordic Council in Reykjavik today.

Wetterberg argues that together the Nordics (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, with the three micro territories the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Aland), will be stronger and more stable and prosperous than they are on their own. After Sweden and Finland joined Denmark in the European Union in 1995, leaving Norway and Iceland in the European Free Trade Association (Efta) (and within the European Economic Area, which brings them in to the European internal market), the Nordic Council has been in search of renewed purpose. Over the last 15 years the cracks have become ever more obvious in Nordic co-operation: it has been downgraded to cover soft policy issues such as culture, while economics and other hard policy has been transferred to the European level.

With a joint government and a parliament based on a common constitution, the federal Nordic state should concentrate on foreign policy and defence, the economy and the labour-market, and research, leaving most other policy areas to the regional authorities in Copenhagen, Helsinki, Oslo, Reykjavik and Stockholm. Wetterberg compares his Nordic federation to the Swiss model and links it with the creation of the UK, France, Spain, Germany and Italy, which he claims developed from a similar situation as the one now found in the Nordics. This Nordic state would have 25 million inhabitants and, because of its wealth, would be one of the larger economies in Europe, equalling that of Spain. Its economic size would secure the federation an influential seat at the G20.

The discussion on a possible federation speaks directly to the fierce debate on Europe still raging in the Nordic states. However culturally and politically homogenous they might be, the Nordics are split on different sides of the EU fence – and while Denmark, Norway and Iceland are founding members of Nato, Sweden and Finland remain neutral. Finland is the only one to have adopted the euro, and Denmark has remained defiant in the face of the continuing changes within the EU and refused to sign up to either the Maastricht treaty or the euro. The Norwegian electorate has twice rejected EU accession. And Iceland only decided to apply for EU membership last year, after the economic crash.

In addition to common European values and identities such as protection of democracy, human rights and being based on Christian heritage within a stable nation state, scholars have also identified a set of joint Nordic values and identities. They include a belief in the welfare state and high taxes, systematic corporatism between government, interested organisations and civil society. These societies are built on Protestant ethics and emphasise equality, with special focus on woman's rights. Most of them share a similar language, and strong national sentiments can be found in all of them – put more negatively, one can even spot a joint xenophobia. Taking into account this sense of a common cultural space, the apparent difference in foreign policy becomes even more interesting.

A Nordic federation might be feasible from and economic and security perspective but if the debate on Europe tells us anything, it is that all of the Nordics guard their independence fiercely. The EU is a supra-national institution of independent states that have pooled sovereignty in specific, limited areas, but joining in a Nordic state, by definition, would end the independence of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden and create a completely new state. Wetterberg therefore proposes much greater integration than can be found in the wildest dreams of European federalists.

Interestingly, 42% of the inhabitants of the Nordic five support the idea. Ironically, the proposal has even been welcomed by many of the anti-EU movements in the Nordic states. Many of them might see the Nordic state as an alternative to the EU, but Wetterberg actually argues that it should be one of the main pillars within the EU. That would surely be the worst of both worlds for those who believe in independent Nordic states outside of the EU. After a long and hard-fought struggle for independence, Norway and Iceland finally gained sovereignty and independence from Denmark in the early 20th century, and Finland escaped from the Swedes. It's difficult to see them surrendering to Copenhagen or Stockholm again.

It can, however, be a stimulating academic exercise to speculate about what this Nordic federal state should look like. In that spirit I propose beautiful Stockholm for a capital (the only never conquered by an foreign force), that we all share the Danish royal family (which is mostly German anyhow), that the Scandinavians return to Icelandic (the old Norse) as a common language, that we adopt the Norwegian kroner (with a stake in the large oil fund) and then, finally, bag our troubled past, hand on heart, under the Finnish flag.

Sunday walk, Akerselva from Maridalen

Yesterday I posted about Christmas. A wrong message to the world.
Today we had +11C, clear high sky, beautiful autumn colors and perfect weather for walking along Oslo´s main waterway Akerselva. The entire river is about 8.2 kilometres long, and has a difference in altitude of approximately 149 meters. The river starts at Lake "Maridalsvannet", the most important water reservoar for Oslo.From the water reservoar the river moves slowly like a smile-wrinkle, but the altitude variations make the waterfalls down to the fjord very spectacular.In the "new" city at Nydalen (previously Christiania Spigerverk) artificial waterfalls are constructed for strenghtening the combination of modern buildings and traditional waterways.
Further down the beauty of Lower Voyen Fall at Graah´s Spinning Factory and HønseLovisas House, had to be part of this blogpost.Turning west and away from the beauty along the riverside we pass Damstredet at Fredensborg on our way back home.
Damstredet was mostly built from 1810 to 1860, as part of the expansion of Oslo that begun at this time. The first house, Solberg, was erected in 1756 by sculptor Ole Meyer. His nephew, sculptor Andreas Hansen Meyer, took over in 1767, while his son Ole, also sculptor, erected another building in 1838. His friend, author and poet Henrik Wergeland, then newly wed, moved in and spent two of his most productive years here, until moving to Grotten in 1841.
The monumental building of Deichman Library (Norway´s lagest public library at Hammersborg makes the photo report from our Sunday walk complete. The Library will move to Bjørvika close to Oslo Opera House within a few years.

More photos from Akerselva can be found at our riverside walk September 2009

Christmas is here

It is the last Saturday of October 2010 and the Christmas table is already covered and ready for Christmas dinner at Glassmagasinet down town Oslo. However.Tomorrow we are having Lutefisk for the third time this season.
And Rakfisk is also coming up once more during next week.
I is a lovely eating time here in Norway and Gammel Opland is still our favorite

My Internet and Blogging World

In January 2008 my blogtext still was in Norwegian. I had been "on the air" since March 21st 2005 as a continuation of the Homepage option given by Apple through iPhoto. Today my Internet World looks like this with visitors spread all over the Globe counting almost 91,000 page views. While I in 2008 had 61.5% Norwegian visits. I then swapped to English text. The statistics now show 63,372 unique visitors from 159 countries. They have for one reason or another found my Blog on the Internet, and the percentage of Norwegians have been reduced to 39%.

In April 2005 I found the possibility to add photos to my blog through Flickr, and in the same month The First YouTube video ever was uploaded at 8:27 PM on Saturday April 23rd, 2005. The video was shot by Yakov Lapitsky at the San Diego Zoo.
The speedy development accelerated.
Today over 2 billion views are registered on YouTube. 24 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every MINUTE. The average person spends 15 MINUTES per DAY on YouTube . More video is uploaded to YouTube in 60 days than all 3 major US networks created in 60 YEARS.

In September same year (five years ago) I made some (not so good) experiments on Video-blogging myself, but have never reached any point of competence above pure pre-amateur bad results. Today I more recommend the online communication through the Facetime possibilities both on Mac and iPhone. Try it!

In April 2007 our family bought our last Newspaper, and turned completely into the ITC-age by reading news and all other stuff only on digital media (in addition to watching TV and Radio). At the same time Twitter was chosen as our social networking platform. Follow me @ArneA.
Looking deeper into the updated map above you can see the French Polynesia / Tahiti as my westernmost visited country. Paul Gauguin (1848–1903), French impressionist painter, spent the last years of his life in French Polynesia.
When preparing this post I discovered a website Worldometers where I could follow in real times the population growth on earth. We are now almost 6,881 million persons in the world. The net population growth with more than 100.000 per day, which will give us a total of 9 billion people in 2042. Will my transplanted new organs and pacemaker be operating, and will I still be here, at that time. It is only 32 years ahead.
32 years ago I got my first daughter and was working with computer programming by coding COBOL on Punch Cards with instructions.

We are presently about 2,010 millions Internet users in the world creating more than 500.000 blogposts a day.
If interested in other statistics you can also find out that we have (on global basis) only 15.378 days or about 42 years left til the end of global oil storages. However it is 160 years till the gas reserves are out, and water and wind are still circulating.Therefore we need Gas Power Plants, Windmills and Transport systems (high voltage lines). In the meantime be careful to blog too much. Big Brother NAV can see you. Instead use your time watching the beauty of stormy weather. Here from Alnes outside Ålesund.

From the Caribbean Sea to South East Asia

Once again I am pleased to present new visitors. We have now moved from The Caribbean Sea and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines to Myanmar on the 22nd and Macau today.
Republic of the Union of Myanmar, adopted a new state flag on 21 October 2010 (6 days ago) to replace the former socialist flag in use since 1974. The new flag was introduced along with implementing changes to the country's name and national anthem, which were laid out in the 2008 Constitution. The design of the flag has three horizontal stripes of yellow, green and red with a five-pointed white star in the middle. The three colors of the stripes are meant to symbolize solidarity, peace and tranquility, and courage and decisiveness.The previous flag adopted on 3 January 1974 upon the declaration of a socialist republic by Ne Win depicted 14 stars, encircling a gear and a rice plant in a blue-colored canton against a red field. The rice stands for agriculture, the gear represents industry, and the 14 stars represent each of the 14 member states of the Union. Both flags originated in the Burmese Resistance and the country call them: Flag of the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma (1974-1988) and the Union of Myanmar (1988-2010).
Maybe it is time for us in Norway to start using Myanmar instead of Burma as the name of the republic. We did so (as all other Asian officials) when living in Asia Pacific 15 years ago, but as you know, it took some time to stop using Peking instead of Beijing too
The other new flag is from Macau.
The Regional flag of the Macau ( Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ), is light green with a lotus flower above the stylized Governor Nobre de Carvalho Bridge and water in white, beneath an arc of five gold, five-pointed stars: one large in the center of the arc and four smaller ones.

Macau was a Portuguese colony and both the first and last European colony in China.Portuguese traders first settled in Macau in the 16th century and subsequently administered the region until the handover on 20 December 1999. Before the Portuguese settlement in the early 16th century, Macau was known as Haojing (Oyster Mirror) or Jinghai (Mirror Sea).
During our stay in Southeast Asia we mostly thought of Macau as a gambling city, and we never visited the Portuguese colony (both the first and last European colony in China) although it was close to Hong Kong where we stayed many times.

Lisbeth Salander and I - part 2

In August I had just finished reading the Millennium Trilogy about the Hacker Lisbeth Salander and "jævla Kalle Blomkvist".Tonight I have been watching the forth episode the TV version of the Millennium Trilogy covering the first book Men Who Hate Women or "The girl with the Dragon Tattoo". A great and intense production, and I almost cannot wait for upcoming Monday when the next book The girl who Played with Fire starts, and for the last book (starting November 29) The Air Castle That was Blown up or "The girl who Kicked the Hornets Nest".
All three films and twelve TV episodes feature Michael Nyqvist as Mikael Blomkvist and Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander.

When I published my post in August the comments was that I should not wait for the American adaptation of the trilogy expected to be released late next year. I am glad I followed their advise and spent these hours in front of the TV.

From garden to garden

Yesterday she made the front garden down town. Today she made the lawn at our summer residence. Leaves are placed on top of the flowerbeds so now the cold and snow are pleased do cover and protect it all.

A walking trip around Sognsvann in a sunny autumn day when the job was done, made the Sunday perfect. Now its time to prepare dinner without public recipe this week.Greetings from Andalucia and Puerto Banus make the day even more perfect. See you later.

Volunteer Work in our Joint Ownership

This Saturday our Joint Ownership had Volunteer Work performing some minor repairs in the foundation of the house and leaves raking in the front garden. At 11 am the garden looked like this.Then Jannicke and Tullen started the job on the pavement before Jesper took his turn with equipment borrowed from a neighbor, friend and old college Odd Sollien next door.Hedda put all the leaves in black bags
and when we all gathered up in our apartment for a homemade Pizza lunch the first image had changed to the image that can be seen on the last. Well done all of us, and my two large Pizzas (plus an extra Grandiosa with Mozzarella) was well received and all gone.

An evening with Sound

As a following up of Kaare Berntsen´s 80 Years Anniversary Exhibition "The Five Senses" we participated this evening in a Gallery-concert with the percussionist Eirik Raude under the title "An Evening with Sound" A very interesing event, and all my complements to the artist, here performing in front of the 16 sqm painting "untitled" by Kaare Melgaard.However, as I mentioned in my previous blogpost Andy Warhol´s portrait of Mick Jagger is the highlight of the exhibition if you will spend almost 300.000 nok. A good buy and I envy them with enough money for getting the work.On Tuesday we had lunch at Bølgen and Moi, Tjuvholmen together with AnneKath and Asbjørn. For their information after returning to Sykkylven, the area looks like this when the dark night is covering Oslo.As I posted in yesterday blog we could expect snow in Oslo tonight. The evidence of the first snowfall can be seen here, and we are curious about the situation in the streets tomorrow morning.In the meantime we can enjoy the blossom of our dark red Gladiolus while watching "Bones" on TV.