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...

I was tagged in couple of those 25 things you don't know about me lists on Facebook a while back. I got a bit inspired by that and some other
people's interesting facts. I however never got around to posting my list. So since this has been a horribly boring day here are 25 boring things about me you might not have known, needed to know, or wanted to know :) .

1. I have irrational fear of rotating doors.

2. I am certified as an "Information System Security Officer".

3. I collect playing cards. One from each deck with a unique back side.

4. I have never smoked in my life despite living with a smoker for 8-9 years. Seriously, not a single puff!

5. I didn't just have imaginary friends when I was a kid, I had an entire imaginary scout division since I wasn't allowed to join one.

6. I am slightly prejudice against people that claim shopping as their hobby. Seriously, that is like stating vacuuming is your hobby!

7. I once completed a 4 year school in 3 years because I was in a hurry.

8. One of my dreams is to own a pillow with a electric cooler in it so I don't have to keep rotating my pillow when my head gets too warm at night.

9. I find it extremely hard to listen to lyrics in songs as the music always seem to take over and the voice just becomes one of the instruments.

10. I once won an award in an invention contest for inventing a backpack that could be turned into a tent and sleeping bag.

11. Caroway seeds are about the only thing that I have serious problems eating. They make me gag. Runner up, rotten shark.

12. I have managed to get rid of almost any irrational belief I grew up with. This includes Santa Claus, Christianity, Tarot Card reading, elves, astrology etc. I however still struggle with not knocking on wood and wishing upon an eye brow...

13. The hardest thing for me to accept in life is that to succeed you need to spend more time talking to the right people and not actually getting things done.

14. I started programming web browsers for mobile phones before I ever owned a mobile phone.

15. Oh and did I mention that I have serious phone phobia. I will go to great lengths to avoid picking up the phone... well except when I wanna browse.

16. If I had just one wish (that couldn't be used to wish for world peace), I would wish I could sing.

17. It annoys me at great lengths that my job title is incomprehensible to a large part the population (interaction designer). Seriously, I don't think my family has a clue what I do.

18. My great great great great great great great great great grandmother was captured by Algerian slave hunters in Iceland and she spent almost a decade in slavery in Algeria.

19. I regularly force myself to read women magazines to try to get in touch with my feminine side despite thinking they must be written by dust bunnies without a brain.

20. I no longer have a TV at home and I love it. Only few years ago I thought people that didn't have a TV were just plain weird...

21. I love sad books and know nothing better than the rare occasion when a book makes me weep!

22. The most relaxing thing I can do is to spend hours in the kitchen cooking a really complicated meal.

23. I used to secretly play with Legos well into my teenage year.

24. I keep a devil costume in my office just in case...

25. And despite of all of these things I still often wonder why I am so normal :) .

I can't blog about something postive two entries in a row so here it goes...

Someone posted a flier in the entrance of my building trying to rent out an apartment. There I was standing, thinking I was living in a modern country where men and women were considered equal...

Translation:
Perfect apartment for a couple:
For him: Parking space, place to store your bike, elevator, internet, cable TV, big storage space in basement and inbuilt kitchen appliances.
For her: A lot of closet space, heating in floor, big mirror in bathroom, sunny balcony with romantic evening sun, and space for 30 pairs of shoes in the hallway.
For both: Space for a 180-bed

Still seems some people think women only care about clothes, looking pretty, and relaxing while the guys do all the cool stuff. The only thing they might want to share is the bed of course...

Ok, the only positive thing was that the guys seems to be supposed to do the cooking... or is it implying he doesn't have to buy the kitchen appliances for the lady? Hrmrfrm...

Mediumgeek peeks through the curtains and whispers "is it safe to come out?"

Then she jumps out and shouts in a loud obnoxious way "I am back". The place is dead silent...
An eyebrow goes up and there is look of skepticism on her face.... a hesitant voice whispers "you have all left?" There is no answer...

After a awkward moment of silent there is all of a sudden a smile and she shouts "what the f%$# I will do it anyway. I am blogging again."

Yes, I am giving it a go! It is a new year and I am leaving 2007 behind together with all its problems.

I really miss blogging! It has been 5 months since my last entry, but I guess I really didn't blog much the entire last year. Why? Early last year I got sick and it just took me a little bit of time to get back on track. It was nothing serious really, just a mix of small ailments that really wore me down. I had to use all my energy on trying to get better and managing work. A bad case of allergies, some old injuries gone wild, a vitamin deficiency, and I could go on for few more lines. I realized I needed to do something. So I started a treatment, started eating healthier, and in addition started spending extensive hours at the gym. The result is an almost 100% healthy Mediumgeek, yet at least 10% smaller:).

The brain engine has started turning again. It is a bit rusty and making sounds but all the old stupid things I used to think about have started surfacing again. So be aware:).

Ok, to be honest I have ulterior motive for starting to blog again. I am going on a really cool and fancy vacation next Friday. It has been in the planning for half of a year and it feels like I have been saving money for it forever. The destination is Guadeloupe and Antigua in the Caribbean. I must admit that the fear of spending 3 weeks in a bikini also helped motivate me at the gym but that is another story:).

So my hope is that I can blog a little bit from there and post pictures in case anyone is interested (read: "I want to make my friends envious").

In any case, Mediumgeek is back!

When does something that is wrong become right?When I grew up as a kid, Christmas was the time of fruits. The house would smell of apples, oranges, grapes, and mandarins. While oranges, apples, and grapes are now in excess all year long, Christmas is still the time of what I call mandarins (mandarínur in Icelandic and mandariner in Norwegian). For close to 30 years, at least few of the Nordic nations have been wrongly calling clementines mandarins. My question is, hasn't it really become mandarínur and mandariner (in Icelandic and Norwegian respectively)? Instead of forcing ourselves to call it clementines, which will never feel right, shouldn't we rather just call them mandarins and note down the history of the word in dictionaries?

This is not the only example of slight mess-ups. Few other examples are Naan bread and Chai tea. I am told that Naan means bread in many of the languages where Naan bread originates from, and hence we are really saying bread-bread. The same goes for chai, which means tea in many Asian languages. Hence we are drinking tea-tea. For people speaking languages using these words correctly, it sounds stupid to hear us say these things but we have adapted them for certain types of tea and bread. Is their use incorrect or can a word simply mean different things in a different language?

I would like to point out that many of the Scandinavian languages have different meanings of the same words (called false friends) and I am quite sure this is common in many other languages.

Now lets go over to a much more sensitive topic. The word "neger" in Norwegian and the word "negri" in Icelandic, translation "negro" as mentioned in previous entry. In English, it is clearer that the word has a negative meaning with regards to slavery and apartheid. As far as I know, there have never been black slaves in neither Norway nor Iceland. To these nations black people were exotic, foreign, and we knew nothing about them other than what we read in books and later saw on TV. At least when I was a kid the word "negri" was just a label on an equal level as a Norwegian, Asian, Chinese, American, Indian, Eskimo etc. It was lack of education about the parts of the world where black people come from that made us give them a generic label, not that we wanted to be mean.

I cannot quite make up my mind about what is right or wrong here. If this had happened 100 years ago those words would have for sure got stuck in the language. Now at the age of Internet and media we are told that what we are saying is wrong/stupid and even horrible as in the case of the last example.

When does a word gain a new meaning? When does a name stick to a thing? I guess a linguistic would be the right person to answer this one but I am a bit curious what people think about the various instances?

I am still alive even if I felt like I would die for a while from over strained muscles and legs covered in bruises. Moving can really take its toll on you, even my toes got tired and stiff:-). I have pretty much
spent the last two weeks moving, cleaning, and getting settled into my new apartment (and in between I have been at work "resting"). I am really happy with my new apartment and I am looking forward to actually enjoying all the new space. Right now life feels a bit like the never-ending-unpacking-and-organizing story but things have almost started to look tidy.



In other news is that I have had a slight change of jobs. I am no longer just working on Series 60 but will also work on the Uiq user interface for the Opera browser. Fun to do something different for a change. I am also now a member of a Norwegian political party and am looking forward to getting a bit more engaged into politics.



So that is the quick update on what is happening in my life these days. Hopefully, I will have more time soon to waste my time on something like silly blogging sitting in my nice new office...

There is a lot of interesting things happening that would be worth blogging about. Ahhhh... it is simply sweet to watch the Norwegian government committing a slow, painful suicide. But I am selfish, I am pretty preoccupied with what is happening in my own life now...



Only 11 hours and 23 minutes...



Update: Mediumgeek is now the proud owner of a beautiful new apartment. Hopefully pictures soon.

How do you know if you just attended a good Opera party? Well, I at least know because I always feel like I have been twisted like a wet towel by some giant hand the day after. My entire body is aching (not just the head like with normal people).

I am just grateful to the wonderful guys that actually do know how to dance and have the patience to dance with me even if it is obvious that I don't know a single dance step. This time I even vaguely remember making it into the air... Great fun and worth all the pain! Well, at least now when the pain has started to go away:-).

I can feel the blogging cloud coming over me...

Summer has been so great that I simply haven't had the need to blog (nor time). This has made me realize that I usually blog because I either have to complain about something, or if I feel like airing my opinions. It just doesn't feel right to blog about happy stuff to much:-). Sure I have had things to complain about this summer but only so much that I have been able to relief my brain waste on friends.

This summer has probably been one of the best summer I have ever had but now when it has become gray and rainy outside, the bitter, frustrated, opinionated me is re-emerging. To spare my friends from having to listen to all I need to get out of my head I think it is time to dust the keyboard and start blogging. At least then they can safely ignore what I am saying/writing without me noticing that they don't give a damn. Aren't I nice:-)?

I might need few more days of rain to brew some frustrations to blog about or maybe I just need to think up some ways of disguising few of my recents frustrations...

Don't you just hate people that are really happy and seem to be enjoying their life to the
fullest? For example, people that are travelling, enjoying weekend trips to visit their friends,
trying new exciting outdoor activities in the sun, and telling you about it? The worst
cases are when you yourself have had a mediocre weekend and the only thing people want
to talk about is their exciting weekend adventure. It is not that you really want people to be just as miserable as you are, but you just don't want to hear about all the fun they had... or okey sometimes you really just wish they hadn't enjoyed their weekend at all. Anyone experienced this?



I definitely have so I have decided to be nice and not blog about my wonderful sunny weekend I spent visiting friends, kayaking, sunbathing, and partying. See how nice I am;-).