Overhanging Dangers

A rock the size of three office blocks falls down on the only road out of my town



After a near death experience last night, flying in from Oslo in something so exceptional and freaky as a winter thunder storm, I decided to dodge danger and declared a day of "home office". This was a smart move as the road authorities decided to secure the mountain side by first making it very dangerous: An immensely huge and risky block had been discovered - and they wanted it down.

Curious as we are, my mum and I snuck out in monstrous rain for an extended home office lunch break to enjoy the wild heralded scenes of explosion and devastation. My mum decided to test a path she remembered having tried in the past (no doubt in bright sunshine and with no previous month of daily rain). Horrendous mudslide was the viscious result, but our shared desire to see the fantastic explosion saved us from another intra-familial quarrel. We got there just in time to have our ear drums shaken from behind a tree a few kilometres away from the spot ("in case of stone splinters"). Guess what: there was fog. But the bang was fun.

The tiny orange spots in the first picture are the wackos whose job it was to climb about 200 m up the vertical mountainside to place dynamite on the danger spot. They were still looking alive when we left. At the foot of the mountain, we ran into a bunch of former journalist colleagues who were also waiting for the horror scenes. My mum managed to get interviewed, while I kept a lower profile.

Summer...

November in Norway. No words can describe the darkness, the cold. Horror.

But luckily we have photos to remind us that life can be different. And then, how we long for the wonderful times when this (photos) was the colour of our skin. And the days when London was too hot to exist indoors, and life along the canal, in an air con building or under a tall tree in the park were the only viable options!

Our PhD Princess

Friends... You are looking at a photo of someone we may now refer to as Dr. Sultana Pavlou! Tania passed her university's grilling session - without having to make a single change - just a few days ago.


This basically means that her PhD is made of gold, as is her brain and entire self. Tania...I'm incredibly proud of you.

Congratulations!

Is Small Ugly?

An example of how small places may simply get too small

I was in a taxi. Not one for just me, but a huge big shared maxi one. The other passengers, like me, had flown in from Oslo and Bergen half an hour earlier. All of us were going to Leikanger [where my parents live], and all 13 of us were employed at some state, region or independent office or institute [Leikanger being something like a mini Brussels, where about 1500 out of 2000 inhabitants are "bueraucrats"].

It was pitch dark as the taxi approached Leikanger, and this is where it gets exciting. In any other case, the young man driving the taxi would have inquired about where the 13 individuals wanted to get off. But not in my teeny-weeny town. This is where the driver simply slows down his vehicle, swithces on the interior car light for about five seconds and scans the back of his taxi. Then - one by one - we politely get dropped off in front of our homes. Directions, [God forbid!] are seen as superflous; after all there is not a soul in town whose life is not to some extent monitored by the silent We.

Incredible as it may sound in our security scandal-haunted times, this mechanism of instant identificaton still allows all 2000 of us to dial the bank's number and ask the clerk to make payments and transfer money between our accounts, based on pure voice recognition. To be honest, I am not sure whether I like it or not, because this also means that news travels fast. The downside: Puke in a person's flower bed today, and (you can be damned sure) you feature in the jungle telegraph tomorrow. (Not that I ever did that).