Back in Oslo

So, Boston Summer Club is now Oslo Summer Club for a while.. Arrived in Oslo yesterday and started my new job today. Having set the clock on my mobile only to Icelandic time zone, I managed to wake up 30 minutes prior to when I was supposed to meet my boss. Great start!

Like I've always told people abroad, Norway is ridiculously expensive! I feel like I have drained my account already (haha, as if there is anything to drain), my first shopping experience was spending $70 to buy two bags of groceries :( I also feel like I have lost a couple of pounds already, the dinner portion I paid $15 for was barely enough to satisfy my hunger, a faaaar way from the American portions I've gotten used to..

My favorite songs

These have been my favorite songs over the past months, you should check them out! (Warning: my taste in music is diverse and very unpretentious.. :p)

• Kent - Mannen i den hvita hatten (16 år etter)
• Cake - Comfort Eagle
• Good Charlotte - Mountain
• Idlewild - Blame it on obvious ways
• Idlewild - El Capitan (really, anything by Idlewild is AWESOME!)
• Journey - Don't stop believing
• Timbaland - Apologize
• Elvis Presley - Kentucky Rain
• Incubus - Zee Deveel
• Jim Stärk - Hear of Coal
• Billie the Vision and the Dancers - Nightmares
  
• Placebo - Meds
• Placebo - Plasticine (especially worth listening to the lyrics - philosophy of life!)
  

To challenge myself and escape the consequences of my laziness, I have an ongoing experiement of breaking some of my habits. I am already well underway to getting nice nails, after a lifetime of biting.. This morning I decided to walk instead of taking the bus to work, and I sat down by the river to eat breakfast in the sun :) I also walked on the path along the river, where I made friends with both a rabbit and a Canadian goose! At work, I did not plug in the internet cable for the first hour, and actually got some work done! During a really boring meeting (which I attended only for the free lunch) I almost fell asleep, but then started drawing horses, a trend started by some Norwegian politicians that have a hilarious Facebook group. It was pretty fun, and I ended up drawing a siamese horse that was bent in two.. Tomorrow, my boss wants me to give her a walk-through on how the brain works, and we're then gonna philosophize over how the brains of young people change when they use technology. What started out as a marketing internship has now become a brain research internship.. When I came home, Daniel had made norwegian meatballs with potatoes, which I haven't eaten in ages! Then we had a smoothie-making contest, which I easily won :D

If I was a rich girl..

Since I am very soon becoming a mortal income-earning employee, I have started to dream about the benefits of actually getting more money than you need for subsistence. So after doing my personal Year 1 financials in excel and discovering that I will in fact break-even in October (the credit card bill from the summer of course being a major factor of uncertainty in the budget analysis), I've made a list of the things I would like to buy when I move to Oslo and grow up in august:
1. Really big loudspeakers!!
2. Membership at a gym that has fresh towels, steam room and shampoo in the showers (see earlier post)
3. Many pairs of shoes
4. A yoga mat
5. Opera cd's
6. New telemark skis
7. A Blackberry (still a little uncertain about this, I really like them, but not sure if I want my e-mail available constantly)

It strikes me now that I'm actually pretty well off and not missing that many things...! It's the small stuff in life that matters.

A typical saturday morning..

I was woken by my mom calling at 1:30 pm this morning. Being a mother, she could immidiately detect from my voice that I had been partying last night. "You are not still sleeping, are you??" was the obvious question, to which I of course reassured her that I had been up for hours (while tucking the comforter around me). The rest of the morning has been spent on usual Saturday morning activities; checking that I still have all the credit cards, phone and keys, looking on the pictures in the camera, browsing Facebook to ensure that no compromising pictures have been published, clearing the living room of beer bottles, nachos and garlic salsa, going to starbucks for a bacon & egg muffin, recycling all the bottles (and earning a fabulous $2.05!), stocking up on staples required to survive through the day (such as chocolate milk)...

Inspired by New Orleans, we decided to defy Massachusetts' pietist law about public drinking being illegal, and had a picnic with pils in the park! The weather which looked so good in the morning decided not to cooperate, so it was a little cold, but still nice. Me and Silas spent the first hour eating sushi, brie and baguette, while discussing life, the law of attraction and Norway. When the others showed up somewhat late, they caught the last glimpse of the sunset. We played guitar for a while until everybody was freezing and then went to my house. We ended the evening by dancing silly with two fat Greek guys in Phoenix landing before eating a large pizza.

It's now approaching 5 pm, which means time to start thinking about the evening. Going to a birthday party for Bjørn, and the theme is rock. I feel my costume possibilities are severely limited by the fact that we're not allowed to wear heals in the venue..!

Marathon Monday

I took a break from work to go down to Beacon street and watch the Boston Marathon, which apparently gathers around 41.000 people from all over the world! The winners finished in 2:07 (men) and 2:25 (women) hours!! The funniest thing was watching all the college students being drunk in the streets, it's a custom to start drinking in the morning. One girl (picture was wearing a t-shirt saying: "Marathon Monday: You run - We drink"

Workout Week

Relatively speaking, this has probably been one of the most healthy weeks of this year. After a couple of exuberant weekends lately, I felt the need to recharge and prepare my body for the rapidly approaching bikini season. Luckily, I received a direct mail offer for a free week at the Sports Club/LA, a fashionable gym next to the Ritz Carlton downtown, so I decided to give it a try.

Here follows a quick summary of the week's activities:
Monday - Yoga with an instructor named Chanel who told great stories about her trip to New Orleans to help hurricane victims through a project called "Yoga for peace".
Tuesday - Endurance spinning class, OH MY GOD! One of the most brutal workouts ever, I was about to quit half way through, but stayed just to exercise my willpower, which has been severely under challenged lately. It felt awesome afterwards though..
Wednesday - Splash Core workout in the pool with buoys and an somewhat middle-aged instructor who recommended we go see the MIT water polo team, which consisted of "gorgeous blond German guys with blue eyes and really fit bodies"
Thursday - MedBall Power. You know it has to be good if it has "Power" in the title. Great workout with weights, step and a ball, really good exercise for the telemark muscles. Still had energy left afterwards, so finished with a good 15 minutes on a tread mill
Friday - Another Yoga class in a room with an enormous glass wall facing the street in the theater district. Great to relax in the quiet room while hearing all the sirens and cars rushing by outside. My muscles definitely are not yet yoga-proficient, some of those poses are harsh..

Although the classes were really good, the best part was the locker rooms, filled with hot-from -the-dryer towels, a sauna and a steam room. And a fancy café outside were all the executives turn their blackberries back on while having dinner. I'm totally determined to find a club like this in Oslo, and I'm sure as hell gonna miss the luxury when I now have to start going to the BU gym! Oh well, just another month left of my student life, soon I'll be a veritable income-earning worker..