June 2005 Archives

Emilia and John has been married longer than anybody else in the world!

All this time, I've been checking Diane's blog, who is traveling in Russia and promised to share her experiences. Hmm. But no updates... nothing.. I began thinking that perhaps I should worry about her.

Suddenly, I found out why. Diane is here: Priviet, Priviet.

... for Pitaen!

...requested by Jeffrey!

Now this is a topic I could write a book about. And if, at the last page, I could give the answer to complete heartache recover.... I'd buy it too.

There are so many kinds of heart aches. My grandfather once gave me a ring, with a purple dog made of ceramics, which fell off the base of the ring during play. One of the older boys in my street found it but didn't return it. "It must still be in the grass" he said, hiding his fist behind his back. And so I spent an entire summer aching for this purple, spotty dog, longing to find him in the grass and glue him back onto the ring so that I could restore this lovely gemstone. But the summer ended, the snow came, and still no dog. He must be freezing somewhere! I worried, although I knew very well who stole him away from me.

Later, during my first school year, my grandfather gave me a mirror. It was small, round, and had a black background with tiny pink roses on the back, held together by a transparent plastic frame. Until then, I had only seen square mirrors, so this was a facinating thing for me, leading me to fantazise about triangular mirrors....

My grandfather died of a heart attach soon after, and so the mirror became a treasure. I didn't let anyone touch it, until... that fatal day in sixth grade, when the hottest guy in my class asked for it: Our teacher had just confiscated his own mirror for blinding him during class.

Now, any smart young girl would have known what not to do, right?

Wanting to win his heart, I caved in and lent him my mirror, which soon ended up confiscated in the teacher's drawer, locked away. When I came to pick it up at the end of the day, it was stolen. I was devastated. The world had just changed, and nothing could be the same, unless that mirror came back.

But these are things, you might think. What does this have to do with heartache?

Things that we treasure, carry memories. Memories that we need, memories that we worry we otherwise worry we will loose. I didn't want the mirror back, I wanted my grandfather back. My grandparent's dog died just before I lost the purple ring, and somehow, that little piece of ceramics to me became Rexi, the loving, red and fluffy Norwegian Elkhound, lost and nowhere to be found.

Romantic relationships are like this, too. It's a thrill when love goes well - love bring hope, promise and excitement into our lives, and we spend endless amounts of energy protecting us from that day it might end. And so it seems, if we're unlucky and loose, it is not just a person walking away, but our dreams, or hopes, desires, our wishes for the future. Oh torture!

My grandfather won't come back, my mirror is probably broken and thrown away years ago, and who knows where my poor purple dog is at the moment you're reading this. While all these things small or large happens, it seems to me that no matter how much heartache we're destined to endure, there is always a new beginning to the end. All you need is time is to remember yourself: Your dreams, your hopes, your desires, and goals.

Someone might not come back into your life, the world has changed, and nothing might be the same, but you're still there to enjoy a new beginning. Perhaps what you want back, is not another person, but you. And when you realize that you've still got you, and you'd like to share that you with someone new, that's when you'll finally recover from heartache misery.

- based on a photo by Doug Miller

Doug Miller pointed me to this - all I can say is that if you don't love Norway by now, you will.

...requested by Nick!

Once upon a time, there was the tiniest little Breiflabb (Anglerfish), swimming along with the other fish in the fjord. It was a happy Breiflabb, for he owned a funicular.

"Aieressera, oi' ne', me ne sagliette, tu saie addo'? Addo' 'stu core 'ngrato cchiu' dispietto farme nun po'!" he sang, of the top of his lungs, squinting his eyes and pouting his lips as much as he could in order to reach the highest note. Judging by the waves in the ocean, you could sense that the Breiflabb had to be some sort of professional amateur.

"Will you shut it up, please!" begged the Eel. "My skin is literally crawling here." He wriggled in the waves, to prove his discomfort. The Breiflabb lost his voice for a moment. What could this be about? Was the Eel envious of his beautiful, big voice? Surely, he had to be lying about the crawling skin. What nonsense.

"You should try singing, too" suggested the Breiflabb with a friendly smile on his lips. "Of course, your voice would be nothing like mine, but hey, perhaps you'd sound like a trumpet?" Or, more likely, like a terse clarinet, thought the Breiflabb, snickering to himself.

"Nah," said the Eel, his head drooping towards the rocky bottom of the sea. "I'd just sound like... like one of those sour clarinets. I'm afraid I have no musical talent."

The Breiflabb was flabbergasted. Did the Eel read minds?

You see, in spite of his foul arrogance, the Breiflabb was a compassionate type of fish. He swam closer to the Eel. "Listen," he whispered into the Eel's petite ear, "You and I could do business. All we need to do is to set up shop, and we'd be rocking. See, I've got this funicular hanging around, and just thinking of this damned fine thing makes me sing. You and I could fix it up and get something going."

The Eel, inspecting the old, scruffy>, "fine" thing, swam from one end of the funicula to the other, then shook his head.

"I'd say it's a slim chance we'd get that going on this foundation" he thought, tapping his tail into the slammy sea bottom. "Foundation is everything. Without a good foundation, no business."

"You misunderstand!" The Breiflabb's eyes where shining. "Our brains and smarts are the foundation! Now, YOU tell me: What's the purpose of a funicula?"

The Eel wrinkled his body, unsure. "I'd say it's to bring someone from one place to another?" he guessed.

"EXACTLY!" Now brimming over with excitement, the Breiflabb flapped his big tail back and forth, swimming to the front of his Funicula where he stopped briefly: "Ne'... jammo da la terra a la montagna! no passo nc'e'!!" sang the Breiflabb, not his best performance, admittedly.

The Eel sighed: This was torture, again.

But then the Breiflabb swam through the funicular and ended on the other side where he paused again to sing.

"Sto core canta sempe nu taluorno Sposammo, oi' ne'!!" he sang, warmly, and to the Eels surprise, it sounded... better?

"I know what you're thinking," exclaimed the Eel suddenly. "The Transformation Ride!"

"Exactly" smiled the Breiflabb."You'll charge them up front, I'll flatter them at the end."

And should you ever peek into the ocean on a clear, sunny day, you might see the Eel and the Breiflabb doing business together with a busy crowd of sea creatures. The Transformation Ride is particularly popular with Crabs and Octopuses, all of whom are incurable dreamers. And if you listen carefully, you might even agree that their voices are as beautiful as their dreams, regardless what end they're at.

Ensemble playing is so much fun!

... and what do you know, he forgot to hire a mummy sitter:-(

Left behind here between all the chocolate milk stains, empty coke bottles, dirty socks, computer manuals, bags of chips, toblerone wrappings and more, I'm lonely, bored, unfed, and ... did I mention lonely?

Chez Henri, T H E place to be on a hot & humid late summer evening, finally put up a website. A very charming one, too:

(Yes, that really is my handsome bike in front of the entrance!)

Congratulations to my mum, who won Journal of the Week with her Blog:

After a cold rainfull may month, we had nice warm sunshine today. Both my husbond Sigurd and I have been working in the garden all day long. Because the weather was so nice I left all the doors open. Suddently A bird found its way in to the house, and we tryed to help him out. I bleendet all the windows exept for one small one, and the bird hit the window and fall down. He was scared, crying, and I took a clooding around him carrying him outside.

Read more of her blog

Frostey (my autistic student) tells a story about how English became so darned complicated - a theory he came up with after learning a little bit Norwegian~!

Back incredibly long ago, when the Englishmen were escaping from Rome, one child who was studying on how to speak Latin totally flunked out (just like the soon-to-be immigrants from Rome-to-France and Rome-to-Spain).

Read on!

Last week, in a loud place, far away from here, a gentleman asked if he could buy me a drink. He was tall, dark and handsome and sitting at the end of the bar, with his friend and my friend sitting in the seats between us. He wanted to chat. It was a very loud place. Isn't this is how every fairy-tale begins?

After a few polite phrases, I returned his question: "So what do you do?"

He smiled, proudly. "I'm a human waste bin"

A human ... what? I felt my eyebrows wrinkle wildly. Did I hear him right?

"Repeat that, please?" I asked and put my hand to my ear. He leaned forward, grinned even wider than first and shouted: "... human waste bin!"

"Oh..?" Confused, I looked at my friend to see if she by any chance had caught this. But she was busy.

I turned to the tall, dark & handsome again. Sparkly eyes were looking right at me. He lifted an eyebrow. Was he .... joking with me? Was he just making it very clear to me that he was here to pick up women? He couldn't be serious. But...come to think of it, he did kind of look like a Playboy, didn't he? Very slick, trendy suit, Italian perhaps. It was clear that I had only a few seconds left to come up with some kind of reply to this, or I'd look like a fool. Hmm...of course he was joking with me. Playboy look, human waste bin, I get it!

"But... that's TERRIBLE!" I said, smiling back, with a wink, to show that I got the joke.

Suddenly, no more smiles.

"No it isn't!" he insisted darkly and turned away. If you think he was offended, you're spot on.

I swallowed a large drop of my drink while I wondered - what went wrong here, exactly?

That's when his friend gently tapped my shoulder. "Hazardous Waste" he clarified, bubbling with laughter. "He's in the hazardous waste industry."

The geography of love has been mapped: Very interesting love study from Dr. Lucy Brown and Dr. Arthur Aron.

About 2,500 brain images from 17 college students in early love were analyzed. It turns out that the act of falling in love happens at an unconscious level, and that long term love resides in a different area of the brain than new found love.

While passion might bring a couple together, sooner or later the abillity to commit matters more. Without forming a sense of attachment to each other, a long term relationship can't develop. Some people are not able to feel attached to others. So, if your recreant lover closes the door on you, perhaps this was biological fate, and quite inevitable?

The study says that those who have been rejected by their lovers often go through a period of "frustration-attraction":

To lose all that, all at once, while still in love, plays havoc with the emotional, cognitive and deeper reward-driven areas of the brain. But the heightened activity in these areas inevitably settles down. And the circuits in the brain related to passion remain intact, the researchers say -- intact and capable in time of flaring to life with someone new.

Not to worry then. "Up again!" says the parent to the child who fell. This study is interesting, but I'm not sure if it says anything more than what old wise wo/men already know and tell us, sans scans.. It's fantastic to be in love, yet it's hard to make love last - being in love is different than loving someone. When the feeling of being in love changes, love can't survive unless you commit to the person, not the feeling. I'd be curious to read a study on couples where both are of the kind who are able to commit, but still choose to leave each other. Perhaps then love would prove to be something else than biology?

...with no prominent facial features: Sir Orange FlaggyTail has been tested and found guilty of the following traits (bold emphasis mine):

neat freak, organized, worrying, phobic, fears the unknown, irritable, pessimistic, emotionally sensitive, fears chaos, risk averse, fragile, unadventurous, depressed, frequently second guesses self, likes to fit in, does not like to stand out, perfectionist, hard working, does not like to be alone, clingy, dependent, practical, ordinary, cautious, takes precautions, good at saving money, suspicious, heart over mind, busy, altruistic

Stability results were moderately low which suggests you are worrying, insecure, emotional, and anxious.

Orderliness results were high which suggests you are overly organized, reliable, neat, and hard working at the expense too often of flexibility, efficiency, spontaneity, and fun.

Extraversion results were moderately low which suggests you are reclusive, quiet, unassertive, and secretive.

"I don't believe the hardworking part for a second," said Mr. Teen.

If he only knew who licks his dishes clean when he's at school, Mr. Teen might not be so dismissive.