The first day of summer, and the last day of my almost ten month unemployment. It’s very weird to think that it’s been so long… I can’t even tell you what I’ve done to keep myself sane in that time. Of course I spent a lot of time looking at job websites and writing job applications. But now those days are past (for the time being anyway). I start at Mamut on Monday.

I know I haven’t written a blog for a while, so there are a few unrelated things I’ve been thinking about that I thought I’d just round up in this one entry.

First I wanted to talk about a cool service here in Oslo called “Bysykkel” (basically City Bike). In various places around the city they have these bike racks filled with loanable bikes. You buy a card for the season (costing around $14 Australian) and then you swipe your card at the bike rack and borrow a bike for 3 hours. When you’re done riding around, you just plug your bike back at the nearest rack. Every night you see trucks toting around trailers filled with bikes, as they maintain them and redistribute them throughout the city. Considering the price of public transport, petrol and taxis in Oslo, I think this is a really cool idea. Chris and I have ordered cards for the first time this year. We have a rack about 100m up the road from us, and there is another one just around the corner from work, so I’ll probably ride to or from work when the weather is nice.

The next thing is funny expressions in different languages. For example, non-Australians think doing anything “like a pork chop” is very weird, and when I thought about it I really couldn’t understand why we say that. A friend of mine from Holland told me that they have an expression when they get startled which translates to “I scared myself a little hat”. The mental image is hilarious. Can you imagine sneaking up on someone and saying BOO! and seeing a little hat appear on their head?! If you know of any others, feel free to add a comment to this entry.

We celebrated my new job by cracking open one of the cute little bottles of champagne Nathan and Hilde gave me for my 30th. I took a picture of them before I opened one, because they were so cute:

The one on the left is brut, and the one on the right is rosé. We opened the brut. Delicious!

Finally, we went for a walk in the Botanic Gardens the other day and took a whole lot of pictures. I’ve put them up in a brand new photo gallery along with some pictures of Chris’s little brother’s confirmation and the 17th of May celebrations.

I guess the next blog I write will be all about my new job.