I find that I never stick to my goals and resolutions unless I tell someone about them. On that note, I am hereby publicly announcing what this year's resolution is.

My New Year's Resolution for 2010 is to read books from 26 countries and blog about it. I want to keep this blog for random stuff so I have created a brand new blog just for this goal. So if you like books, wanna support me, or just secretly follow and hope I fail, come and visit my ItsRoots Blog.

Happy New Year everyone!

It is a tradition to look at the year that is about to pass, isn't it? So I figured I would bombard you with some statistics...

• I exercised over 200 times this year. Not that it made me particularly fit but at least I am in better shape then ever before.
• I worked approx. 2 extra work months this year. Will I never become wiser?
• I finished 28 book. This is a record low and I blame the two items above.
• I read books from 13 countries. 16 written by men, 12 by women. And there I just exposed one of my obsessions...
• I visited 11 countries this year, 5 new ones, and Asia for the first time. Thumbs up for that one!
• I flew at least 73,859 km. I will go to environmental hell for sure!
• I got upgraded to business class three times (+ one upgraded hotel room) and made my "friends" hate me.
• I was away from home because of travel approx 68 days.
• I only passed 4 out of 10 New Year's Resolution.

But life isn't just statistics. To really figure out what I have been doing this year I decided to go through my Facebook profile and look at what I was doing when I wasn't working, exercising, or reading. This is what I found:

I started the year with "big" plans. In January I stated I had a new mission in life. Become rich enough to afford a personal shopper to take care of annoying clothes shopping! In February my plans grew into starting some evil money-making religion since the government seemed eager to protect religion from any criticism. In March it really took off and I decided to say yes to everything and wait for exciting things to happen. Oh man did that one come and bite me later...

April was quiet but I learned two important lessons: to not place my coffee cup under the automatic antibacterial soap dispenser and to always check the content of the web pages you use in a demo. Otherwise you might send out stuff about "man boobies" and such...

In May, saying yes to everything got me a trip to San Fransisco where I spent most of my time eating cold medicines and becoming addicted to Starbucks. In June I finished my exercise New Year's Resolution to exercise on average twice a week and got nickname together with the boyfriend at the gym as "the Sporty couple". How tacky is that?

In July, the "yes" thing really went downhill and July's Facebook status messages were mostly bitching about late night marathon telcos and not seeing the summer. Not that I learned from this. In August I said yet another yes which brought me to Japan. There I got to know gadget toilets, cubicle meeting rooms and girls that all wore shoes they couldn't walk on. Very interesting cultural experience.

In September, another yes brought me to Korea where I discovered the wonders of Korean cuisine and how frustrating it is that you can't easily scrape your plate with chopsticks. October was spent in a windy country where the waterfall would go upwards because of crazy weather and in room at a seminar with 500 other geeks and not feeling particularly unique. November was then spent joking about the swine flu which had spread like wildfire among all those geeks.

In December I was just cold. So cold that I contemplated risking burning to death rather then going outside when the fire alarm went off...

Eventful year huh? :)

And now I am gonna work on my New Year's Resolution! Stay tuned for the silly idea I got to keep myself insanely busy in 2010...

Being at home has started feeling like being on vacation... it is so rare these days. I have been traveling a lot for work and yesterday I got back home from Iceland where I was visiting my family. Right now I am enjoying the fact that I have nothing that I have to do! This is rare. I am trying to forget the fact that I soon have to pack my bag again and go to Sweden for an Engineering seminar :(

Some statistics. In the last 2 months I have been in 9 different countries (Norway, USA, Japan, South-Korea, Germany, Switzerland, Lichtenstein, Austria, and Iceland).
Total of 11 this year (Sweden and Spain). A mixture of work and vacation.

I remember always dreaming of traveling a lot. Let me tell you traveling for work is not traveling and especially not when traveling out side of Europe. A typical one week travel consists of 70-80 hours of work/travel time, one kilo lost, and a truckload of follow-up work when I get back. Then you usually try to squeeze in a little bit of sightseeing since that you travel so far you simply cannot go back without being able to say you have been there. Try to do that with a 80 hour work week and "some" sleep! I have dragged myself jetlagged infront of half of the palaces in Seoul and half run in front of famous landmarks such as the Chrysler building. Oh yeah and I vaguely remember seeing the Golden Gate bridge in San Fransisco high on cold medicine...

So what have I learned during all this travel?
* You have Starbucks everywhere except in Norway and Iceland :(
* Korean food rocks (and helps you fend of any vampires in 100 km range...)
* All fashionable Korean men seem to wear glasses... designer glasses
* Being lucky and being upgraded on flights few times in a row makes your friends very jealous... ;)
* Lichtenstein has very good beer and extremely nice and helpful people
* Japanese girls like shoes they cannot walk on
* Korea and Japan have weird toilets designed for gadget freaks
* Iceland has weird toilet signs...

Women's toilet with a peeping tom?

* Trying to walk upon a Liechtensteinian mountain and depending on a bus back down is not very smart without first checking the schedule.
* Hitler is reincarnated in South Korea....

The Hitler cat

This blogging thing isn't coming back to me as naturally as I had hoped. I have started some entries but find it difficult to sit down to finish them.

Until I get off my ass... or actually until I get onto my ass, here is the funniest English translation we saw in Guadeloupe at the Fort Fleur d'Epee.

My vacation, which I spent half of last year looking forward to, is over. I am home now and while it is good to be home it is very sad that there is no more vacation. I will really miss beaches and swimming!

I wont miss the French as much but that is another story. Why don't the French know how to stand in line? They will ask you if you are standing in line to wait for some particular thing and when you respond "yes" they will either barge ahead of your or quietly walk to the beginning of the line and sneak into the line there.

Cultural differences are quite fascinating even though they are extremely frustrating at other times. The people on both Antigua and Guadeloupe were very polite and said hello to you in the streets. It made you feel welcome. They were however very relaxed, which could mean that you had to wait for a long time until they would serve you in restaurants.

Anyways, I am just rambling a little so that I could squeeze in that complaint about the French, trying to disguise it as a cultural observation...

No again, the vacation is over. So what to look forward to next, now that I no longer have my Caribbean vacation? I really need to find something or otherwise I will feel lost. That will have to wait for tomorrow though, as I have a mountain of clothes to wash and hundreds of photos to go through!

Being on vacation is a certain process. You spend the first days being excited about everything and nothing. Your mind is churning and you are simply what could be termed as “high on vacation”. Then you hit the part of the vacation when you start relaxing, all the old built up work exhaustion gets to you and you go into a vegetative state unable to think and you just pass through the days without really being able to process what is going on around you.

Honestly, there really isn't much difference between you and the coconut in the tree hanging above you! I have been in this state for few days now. Sleep, relaxing, and not thinking were my highest priority. Thankfully, my mind seems to be back! I was getting worried that I had turned into some kind of “vacation vegetable”.

Talking about vegetables. This is really an island with lots of exotic vegetables and fruits. Couple days ago we rented a car and drove around the northern part of one of Guadeloupe's butterfly wings. We visited among other things a rum factory, “Domaine de Séverin” which makes rum from sugar canes. We also visited “La Maison du Caccao” (The House of Cacao) where we got to see the cacao fruit grown, dried, and even to taste it at various stages. Ok, I must admit that tthe last state was the best (when it had become a nice delicious chocolate cake), but this was very interesting.

Today André decided he had to buy a coconut at the beach. I got kind of worried when the guy selling it took out a big, black machete and starting hacking at the coconut. I probably didn't need to be worried, everyone here seems to be very nice. With the exception of the old ladies at the market and in small vegetable stores. I decided to take a photo of one of those stores and had a old lady come running out and shouting something at me. I didn't really understand anything but it didn't sound to nice. Since when is it not allowed to take photos of houses? The old ladies at the outdoor markets seem to get very angry if you happen to pass by their stalls and not buy anything. I am staying away from the outdoor markets hereafter.

Back to the coconut at the beach. It was cool to sit with a coconut and drinking from it with a straw but the taste was a bit boring. Lets put it this way. We didn't manage to finish the whole coconut.

Over to today's highlight! So here we have been in Guadeloupe for more than a week being dumber than a coconut. We have been under the impression that we needed to take some long exotic trip (involving potential encounters with snakes) to see one of those iguanas which we think are very cool. What do you know, they are just few hundred meters from here in the park at our hotel hiding in the cliffs. I think we will be regulars at that park until we leave.

Right as I speak, we are watching a Mardi Gras Carnival celebration at our hotel. Obviously they have hired in bunch of people to do a simple parade, dancing in white with hats formed in the shape of houses on their heads. The grown-ups seemed to be having fun but it was quite cute watching the kids who just seemed to be a bit tired and bored. Sneaking off to sit down and probably swearing at those boring foreigners around them, just sitting still and watching them. Hmmm... maybe time to stop blogging, stand up and dance when the get back from their latest parade around the beach...

We are now in Guadeloupe, scratching our heads over what people around us are saying. Pretty much every conversation starts with "Bon jour", a "Je ne parle pas francais" and a silly apologetic smile. Thankfully, people are very nice and most people understand at least a little English. At least we know how to ask for beer and the check in French. We will survive!

Guadeloupe is surprisingly different from Antigua. It seems to have retained much more of its character and culture, which is good! (But the infrastructure is mostly paid for by EU and France, hence is in a different league compared to the other islands we visited.) We no longer get the beaches to ourselves, but the beaches here are quite nice. And the sovenirs here are to die for! In Antigua they only had cheap crap made in China with an Antigua sticker on it. Ok, some of the souvenirs here are probably also made in China, but they are at least very cool. There is even a shack outside of the hotel where there is a man actually making woven hats, baskets mats etc on the spot. He seems to be there from sunrise to late into the night. We never saw anything like that on Antigua.

Here we're staying at a resort so some of the authenticity is lost compared to the little hotel we stayed at in Antigua. I really miss my donkey and rooster alarm clock that woke me up every morning in Antigua. I however don't miss the spider and the occasional cockroach as much :) . Oh well, there are some strange creatures here too. I haven't quite gotten used to the typical French topless, smoking "lady" at the beach :) .

But I am busy looking up into the palm trees at the beach so no more blogging today!!

(Very) few pictures are now posted in my Antigua album and my Guadeloupe album.

The Antigua Racer is thought to be the rarest snake in the world, with only about 200 snakes left. The only place you can find an Antiguan Racer is on a small island outside of Antigua called Great Bird Island. By surprise we found ourselves on the beach of that island last Wednesday…

On Antigua itself, our friend the mongoose has gotten rid of all snakes and we were feeling pretty comfortable. What we didn’t know when we signed up for a kayaking/snorkeling trip was that they stopped on that island for a short hike. We even got to see on of those 200 snakes when a local pointed one of those out right next to the beach. It seemed pretty harmless and it isn’t poisonous but was slightly disgusting when it slithered around in the sand. But in an odd, twisted way it was a bit cool to see it before it becomes extinct.

It was a nice little island with a lady selling beer at the beach. “What kind of o'silver do ya’all have?” she said with a pirate accent when we dug up the local currency Easter Caribbean dollars from our pockets. For some reasons we seem to be the only tourists who pay with the local money instead of US dollars. They quote all prices to us in US dollars. Come on tourists show some courtesy and get the local money!

The stay at Antigua is coming to an end and we are heading over to Guadeloupe today. It is sad to leave because the people here are very nice and the beaches are just fabulous. We have spent quite some time at the beach, done some sightseeing, done a boat trip around the island, and I am becoming a big fan of snorkeling. Oh, and we have had quite a few Wadadli beers which is the local beer and is quite good.

I hope I will be able to post few pictures soon. We are having some technical difficulties with the Internet here but I will explain that one later :) .

We were only minutes away from missing our flight to Guadeloupe. The flight from Oslo was delayed because of weather. The Caribbean ocean was a bit colder than expected and it has also been raining a bit since we arrived. In the few days I have been here I have gotten quite a few mosquito bites some of which seem to be infected…

If reading the first paragraph made you happy, stop reading now!

Because despite these few minor problems we are having a great time enjoying wonderful Antigua. The rest of this entry will be pretty much praise.

We started the trip by flying to Guadeloupe and staying there one night to rest after what seemed like an endless flight. The next day we flew with Liat Air to Antigua. We weren’t quite expecting an airline that wrote their boarding card by hands and put us on a tiny little flight with only 21 passengers but we survived. It turned out quite nice actually because we got a fantastic view of both Guadeloupe and Antigua.

We are now staying at a little, cheap hotel, La Galleria Inn which is quite close to three wonderful Caribbean beaches which we have been spending our time at and we are “slowly” turning into what could be termed as red nosed lobsters.

We have also visited the capital St. John and English Harbor. We decided to take the bus, but were a bit concerned when a rusty, green minivan that seemed to be about to fall apart arrived. I don’t think that minivan would have gotten through the EU control in Norway but we made it to St. John alive. We even risked taking the bus again later that day to English Harbor. It was a bit interesting to take the bus. People just shouted “Bus stop” (loud enough to scare the hell out of you) when they wanted to get off the bus and some of the bus drivers played music at full strength in the bus. You don’t exactly expect to enter a bus with a young, hip black guy as the driver, playing Celine Dion at mind blowing strength. I guess he felt like he was making up for the missing manliness by driving like a maniac but then again they all did.

St. John was a bit of a downer. The town was full of cruise ship tourists which didn’t really make it enjoyable. English Harbor was also a disappointment with too many rich tourist stepping off their yachts. Thankfully, we live close to a small village which gives us a slight insight into the local live. The surroundings of our hotel are quite nice and we can watch goat herds and an occasional mongoose snooping around. When eating breakfast on the balcony we see an occasional humming bird buzzing in the trees and there are tiny little lizards running around.

That together with drinking local beer on those wonderful beaches really makes this a wonderful place to be!

Only few hours until I need to get up again to head to the airport. The fact that I am going on the coolest vacation of my life hasn't really hit me yet so I am pretty calm.

So the plan is to blog once in a while. Mainly so I can look back at it later and remember what a cool trip I went on.

There are however two factors that might ruin that plan for me. If there are no updates it probably means that I haven't got access to the Internet or that I have been eaten by a shark...

Au revoir for now!