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Thursday, September 17th, 2009
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10:11 pm - Crazy Day
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Don't get your hopes up high. My crazy days aren't that crazy.
For the third day in a row, I've managed to wake up at 6:30 am. My life in general has improved because of this, and I need to focus to keep at it. I had two uneventful hours of work supervising a room of computers at Uni. Great time. Afterwards, in a sudden whim, I decided to climb up on the roof on the balcony outside. Even Link couldn't have done it, but with the help of a kick on the wall, I got up. Felt like the Prince of Persia.
During the next five hours, I surprised myself again by actually managing to work on a project for one of my courses. Counting the fact that I woke up before 4 pm, that's the third time I surprised myself today.
Eating lunch at the cafeteria, I realized how they could save money and the environment by changing some of their policies, like where you get napkins and how salt and pepper is stored. Sent them a mail about it, then went to my second shift of the day in another computer hall.
Lots of people needed help. Most of them with their courses, and not the computers, but I did what I could. After three years of physics studies, you know a few things about math and programming, even in courses you haven't taken yourself. I could help many, but some problems were simply beyond my knowledge. It's frustrating, but I find helping people very giving, so there's a balance in it.
Three times, a girl of above average cuteness tested my knowledge on detailed subjects regarding how you program math into a document. I flirted a little bit with her. It makes people feel good. Then, towards the end of the shift, a tremendously cute girl needed help troubleshooting her programming script. She was a skinny, little thing, the silent type, but getting well along with individuals at a time. Like me! Helping her was very easy and comfortable, as we both understood and accepted eachother on a intuitive level. How seldom I meet people like that! Anyway, before I knew it, she was off, her problem solved, and I sat with the good feeling of human resonance. Perhaps I'll see her again some time.
I walked home from campus and picked up my bike by the subway station where I left it. Just as I pass the phone booth beside the bike rack, it rings. And it rings again. Being in a content and open state of mind, I pick it up and say hello.
(the conversation is translated)
Guy: "Hi, I'll have a pizza with ham and two big bottles of coke, please."
Me: "That's fine and all, but, eh... you missed Dolly Dimples by 100 feet. This is the phone booth outside."
Guy: "Oh... but hey, could you relay my order? I don't have their number with me, so I'm stuck here."
Me: "Well... sure. I'll do it."
So I lock my bike, walk into the pizza place and tell the story. They are not entirely convinced, and frankly, neither am I. I return to the bike, thinking it was all a funny scam. But the phone rings again.
Me: "Oh, hello."
Guy: "Hey, I tried calling you. How'd it go?"
Me: "Well, they weren't entirely willing to take an order through me and a phone booth, so..."
Guy: "Really? (...)"
Here, I don't remember all that was said, but I eventually ended up telling him I could go and fetch the number for him, so he could call them himself. I did so, and he called back yet again.
Me: "Hi there. I got the number, it's 0 44 40"
Guy: "Oh! Wait a minute, I got to find something to write on... okay, I got it! Thank you so much!"
Me: "No problem. Bye!"
As I unlock the bike and head on home, the phone rings again. I don't pick it up.
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10:24 am - Daydreaming through lectures
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I want to be saved. I want someone to come and give me all the joy and, even more importantly, all the good and special emotions which I still get in glimpses: the meaning of life. Vitality. Art in pure form. Nature's gift. Everything else falters compared to these dreams, these promises, whose mere existence I only realize in a rare moment. And in that moment, every single time, it is like a revelation. All of a sudden, everything is fine, I am not alone – I am not even myself, I am merely the emotion, taking pleasure from its own existence. I am the frost, I am the birds, I am the white-rimmed leaves waiting to drop from the branches. I am the air, chilly and full of memories of past times when the emotion existed. I am the earth that waits, the deer that grazes warily by the trees, the fox that sneaks past looking for things to eat. I am my self, and I am something completely different. I am free, in focus, but without thought.
I have sought love, and I still do, but I am not fully a human being, a social creature. When I am my self, in harmony and peace, I am immaterial. This meaning and value can be brought forth by love, but love is not it. I can follow it alone. Back to the soul. Depths of my heart that doesn't concern other people. I want those emotions back, and I can have them back without having to seek love first. I need my self. Me without biological limitations. Love could help me, but... I have to seek other ways.
current mood:  momentarily awake
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| Tuesday, August 11th, 2009
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12:56 am - Minnesota: August 10th
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[I've just imported one of my journals from my stay in Minnesota. I'll be continuing this journal here on LJ.]
Argh, today was the longest day ever. It was also the first day we gave the organizers something back, instead of them sending us off on lectures all around the place. We all had presentations. Mine was about communication. I put big words in it.
( The last paragraph of my presentation. )
That's what they've taught us to do, anyway: saving the world. This group of 12 different people is going to keep in touch and keep influencing the surrounding world into becoming greener and greener. Right now, we're heading into a warm future that promises to bring about changes that will threaten our way of life on this planet. Through reducing climate gases, we can manage to stabilize the world into falling back to its own, natural rhythms, with changes we can more comfortably adapt to. No one solution is going to make this happen: knowledge and attitude is the key, then things will fall in place by themselves. We need to understand that whatever we emit, is going somewhere. For a hundred years we're simply been throwing most our waste out of sight. Now, with six billion contributors, that pile is starting to stack up high. We have some cleaning up to do, and at the same time, we need to think waste processing on a huge scale. Nature does that with its own materials, and so we need to do it with ours, if the cycle is going to work, and we need such a cycle if we intend to stay on this planet for a while.
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| Friday, August 7th, 2009
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9:53 pm - Minnesota: August 7th
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I'm sitting in my room in the dorm, my only light except the laptop a soy light with a slight fragrance of leaves. There's a violent thunder storm up in the clouds outside, giving some extra but untrustworthy enlightenment.
Four of us went to Cirque du Soleil today. It was crazy. Women turning their hips around their bodies like it was a flail, guys taking double backflips on stilts, a dude standing on one hand on top of ten stacked chairs, a couple dancing wildly in a circle while on a unicycle and one fellow standing on a chair on a pole on the shoulders of two guys on bicycles on a tight line thirty feet above the ground. We had a great time, ate popcorn, and I pondered how it'd be like having such a bendy girlfriend.
For the past couple of days, we're been up at Itasca and Wadena in northern MN. We switched from being hosted by an old married couple to living in nice cabins. I got to visit a farm, play with kids, regard to a local girl of swedish descent very cute, and I now have lots of new mosquito bites.
Also, I went to the Mall of America again and bought a giant PEZ dispenser with R2D2 on it.
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| Monday, August 3rd, 2009
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12:10 am - Why I dislike the internet
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(it's not a real skeleton, it's a sculpture)
Several of my friends tell me how great Facebook is because you can "keep in touch" with peripheral friends without actually having to contact them: you just have to log on and read their latest updates, and presto, you're living in the moment again! But I ask: what ideal does this feed? You turn your life into a TV channel, and you distance yourself from the spectators. We all know how much bad TV there is out there. Shall our lives undergo the same scrutiny, by those friends that are not close enough for us to make out their faces?
The practicality of spectating others' lives like this, feeds our thirst for social networking, without actually having a practical application. Thus it isn't keeping in touch, but merely a selfish action, and a self-deception at that, as we feel a false sense of accomplishment.
And still I keep coming back to the internet in my free time. Because back in the day, I used to successfully sate my thirst for social input on the internet. I can no longer do that, but neither can I sate it in other ways as easily as I'd like to. So when my day is incomplete, I turn to the internet. But what do I find there, today?
I find message boards, and I find Facebook and Twitter. Cold walls of self-deception, and I know there is no real interaction in it. Even so, while there is something new, I am satisfied, and I keep eating. But as soon as I realize that the new things are gone and that I did nothing more than write new letters on the cold walls, I find I am hungrier than ever. I become lonely, and I search harder. My mood falters, and I start just mindlessly flicking through all bookmarked sources of deception, looking for signs of life to devour fruitlessly. deviantART can keep me going for a while, but after a while even that is old, but then it's too late, and I am caught in the same old oblivion. Stopping would signalize giving up, and comes with a disappointment, so I always postpone it.
The only good thing I can spend my time doing, during the long stretches where no mentionworthy IM conversations can be had, is to put together some sort of text, like this entry, or upload a photo on deviantART. However, that is also a source of disappointment, because most of the things I write are never read, and the creator alone can never give anything meaning.
All in all, whatever I do, the internet drains more attention and energy from me than it gives me back. It is an investment that doesn't pay off, a superfluous expense, but in today's society, one it is hard to rid oneself of.
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| Sunday, August 2nd, 2009
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12:44 am - A portrait of wonder
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Of the world's many layers, it is the colors, the relative interpretations that we can never agree upon, that speak to me the clearest. Though I have sought knowledge about the logics and connections between the Earth and the Heavens, and though I understand it well, it has come to mean nothing to me, for I have found that the source of meaning lies elsewhere. Meaning lies in the yearning of the heart, in the longing of the soul, and in the wonder of the mind; and it is as real as can be within itself, in its own domain, the domain of colors.
My greatest joy lies in the pursuit of colors, the collection of sensations. I gather seperate universes and marvel at their exclusiveness. The sense of awe I recollect from experiencing vast changes of perspective, tells me clearly of the sheer size of the world of colors. Whereas all of the physical world, which could once fit inside a marble, can be overwhelmed by a daring imagination about a greater infinity, there is no trick of the mind that can envelope the world of colors. Whereas the passive forces of the tangible universe can be harvested by science, the exploration of art has never been able to bring the greater worlds of color to heel. Whether it be that we have been gifted poorly, or that the colors are truly unruly, the result is a humbling yet fantastic wilderness that ever allows new journeys, never taking hurt from the traffic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8Iyi_HeAhA
---
( In other news... )
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| Friday, July 24th, 2009
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11:51 pm - Minnesota: July 24th
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Today we went to a basketball baseball game. It sucked.
Then I saw a girl with a dragon tattooed over the upper half of her back. It made my day. It was the dragon below. Good taste.
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| Thursday, July 23rd, 2009
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7:50 pm - Minnesota: July 23rd
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Today:
Saw:
- Bald Eagle
- Dead Deer
- Dead Snake
Got:
- Turkey feather
- Blue Jay feather (could not keep)
Did not see bear.
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| Sunday, July 19th, 2009
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11:48 pm - Minnesota: July 17-19th
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We went up to Will Steger's Homestead in the woods of Ely in northern Minnesota, home to half a dozen people who work on keeping the homestead intact, and also on educating people on climate change. I was the first to meet the man himself, on my way to the outhouse. We are soon split up into different cabins in the surrounding woods. They're incredibly rustic, but have got all a man needs.
( Read more )
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| Thursday, July 16th, 2009
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5:47 pm - Minnesota: July 14-16th
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Got up early, as usual, but I missed breakfast. I remember stopping at a gas station on the way to Duluth, MN: it was raining, and I changed from the not-foresighted outfit of shorts to a full-fledged bad weather outfit in the (huuuuuge, I have to repeat) van. I ran and bought a cinnamon roll as my breakfast.
Many long miles of forest later, we arrive at the Cloquet Forestry Center and poke around there. Later, we arrive at the Uni of Minnesota Duluth campus, where we check into the dorms. Weather is still bad. And it will, in fact, stay so for that day, the next and the one after, when we leave Duluth. Now, the stay in Duluth was really okay, but so far the least giving and least interesting part of the journey. The campus was interesting, and we had some fun together as a group, but it was nothing compared to the next days.
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| Monday, July 13th, 2009
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11:46 pm - Minnesota: July 13th
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I could hardly sleep, due to really itchy insect bites that cover both of my legs. Because of this, I could get up early. Did that, and went jogging before breakfast together with one of the other guys. At breakfast, as I had just taken two pancakes and maple syruped them, the really friendly (and really huge) assistant cook asked me to try out the belgian waffles as well. I hadn't intended to have such a sweet breakfast, so I tried to compensate by eating a bowl of oatmeal as well.
We met up with our mentors, and they drove us to the St. Paul campus, where we had a lecture on climate change in general, in a real fancy room with comfy chairs and a huge LCD screen. The lecturer was the earthy kind of climate scientist, who does this only for the best of mankind -- as opposed to all of us (and most of the other climate scientists), who do it out of devotion to and love for the Earth and its well-being. This, I realize, enabled him to escape the depression that strikes many concerned scientists. I wish to implement his positive attitude without acting the escapist towards Earth.
Then we had lunch by a ginkgo tree. The dining hall had made us lunch bags, since we couldn't get back in time. I was amused to find that its contents included a bag of potato chips, two cookies and a chocolate chip granola bar. As we wandered there and back, I was testing out the polaroid glasses I got at Target: by tilting my head, suddenly reflected light appears! It's a clever invention.
For the next hour, we took the Ecological Footprin test over and over again. Apparently, it calculates the footprint verydifferently depending on what country you live in -- even if you fill in all the fields identically. We discussed why. Well, mainly, a select few of us argued about some stupid and irrelevant point. Arguments disinterest me, so I stayed out of it.
Now we're back, and we're supposed to pack for five days in the wild. There's just one detail that's kind of amiss: we're not getting proper backpacks until we're there. Because we were to be given such equipment, I didn't bring anything spacey enough to store the proper amount of luggage -- short of my suitcase, in which I'd rather prefer to securely store my laptop while I'm gone. Furthermore, we're to store all of our collective luggage in one room while we're gone, and if I use my suitcase to transport the necessary items out, I don't have anything spacey enough to store the rest while I'm gone!
So I'll just get dinner and then see if things'll work out.
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4:37 pm - Minnesota: July 12th
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Mall of America day. Also Sunday. I slept past breakfast and was woken up by one of the girls kindly asking if I was going to join them on the bus. I took the next bus instead, so that I could not only reach, but also eat lunch. Almost fell asleep on the tram.
I wasn't entirely shocked and apalled by the sheer size of the mall. That's because in my mind, it wasn't a mall, but two theme parks and fifteen blocks of shops that happened to be gathered pretty close. We gathered at 2 PM to see the underground aquarium -- with ten types of shark, lots of sting rays and also a forest. Afterwards, we wandered the endless alleys of consumer heaven for three hours straight. I got myself a set of new clothes and a big fan hand-painted with cranes and mountains.
I almost fell asleep on the tram back, too. Once back at campus, we went to Applebee's, which turned out to be a great restaurant, and thus recharged our energy enough to get back to the dorm.
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| Sunday, July 12th, 2009
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1:40 pm - Minnesota: July 10-11th
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July 10th
I overslept and didn't reach breakfast. I ran to reach our first and only lecture, which was about wood rotting at the poles. After lunch, we individually discussed our results at an "intercultural understanding" test: my "analyst" was a South-Korean woman who liked Norway because we ate lots of fish.
Then we went to the Minnesota Science Museum, where we were taken behind the scenes and got to see their actual archive of items. There were rooms chock full of drawers chock full of bugs, bones, pots and textiles -- a million items that are not on display! We had a ball. Afterwars, we got to see their Titanic themed exhibition (and IMAX Dome movie!), which left an emotional impression on us all. We were each given a boarding pass with the name of an actual passenger that rode on the Titanic. My passenger died.
In the evening, half of us went to an Irish pub named Blarney, and half of us arrived later. I got tired after the first hour, and the last two or three hours were painstakingly boring. I had a glass of beer in the start, just to blend in (and because sometimes even I try new things), but didn't see any reason to have more. We got home 1:30 AM, and I was in a grim mood because of party-induced isolation.
July 11th
Today was a great day. We went to a park in Minneapolis, named Minnehaha Falls. I got up early so I could go to the bookstore and buy shorts to fit the weather. They're supposedly the same as the Minnesota Golden Gophers' basket team wears.
The park was very interesting, because though not conspicuous or very special, it was different from any park I'd seen before. We had picnic together with a Minneapolis-based, Norwegian-focused organization. (Everybody seems to be to excited that we're here: real Norwegians!) We also rented a four-person bike-wagon and played with frisbees and slack lines. But the best part was on the way back, when we had to make a side-stop to our Program Coordinator's house. She's wonderful being, and she's brought her whole family into this ordeal; her husband and two kids are often around, and now we met them in and got to see their own house. And what a house! Small and narrow to navigate, but very cosy. The kids (aged somewhat about 4 and 7) showed us their rooms with great enthusiasm; the little brother always grinned and tried to get our attention by doing silly things, while his older sister did all the talking.
After delivering the bikes back at the rental, half of us went and got smoothies and just sat in a park for a while, being happy. Then we returned to the dorm -- on the way, I got some UofM posters to hang on the sad walls of my room -- and had dinner. The remainder of the day, we're going to have a pre-party in one of the girls' room. Most of them are going out afterwards to get drunk, but personally I've had enough after the two glasses of beer I've had so far this week.
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| Friday, July 10th, 2009
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3:36 pm - Minnesota: July 8-9th
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Yesterday we had three good lectures. First was about doing research, second was about the climate research that's being done at this Uni, and the third was about how to communicate research to the public. We discussed the Carbon Counter in the end. And then we went all around town. The others had lots of plans, but I needed rest and peace, and so I locked myself into my room and read all the texts we were supposed to read for the next day.
[Oh yeah, we is me and the 11 other Norwegian students who've been accepted to this exchange program. We're here to study global warming.]
The jetlag has had a nice effect on my circadian rhythm. Now I can wake up at 6 AM. Many of us are being sporty and jogging before breakfast, but I wasn't in the mood for that today. Now, I really like the dining hall, but it is slightly problematic that they have the dessert items out all day -- I end up eating dessert after every meal. To make it worse, my breakfast today was pancakes with maple syrup.
Our lecturer today reminded me a lot of Homer Simpson, only that this guy was quite capable. He's got a portable planetarium, in which we spent some hours lying on our backs looking at space. He also called lots of scientists over Skype, making them tell us about their research. The whole day was about making science accessible to the public, as a scientist. We also had lunch at a chinese restaurant, where we bumped into two ladies and this old professor who's presumably a big shot around here. They told us it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. But being Norwegians, we didn't really get it.
In the evening, we had a football match with a group of north Africans who're here on a program somewhat similar to ours. I'd had enough after ten minutes of play, so I just sat in the grass and got lots of insect bites. On our way back to the dorm, we saw a rabbit!
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| Wednesday, July 8th, 2009
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3:36 pm - Minnesota: July 7th
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Today I met and spoke to the President of the University of Minnesota. Everyone here seem so excited about us Norwegians coming over, which is making us all a bit queasy, because we ourselves have never taken anything this seriously. It's a cultural thing. I try to open-minded, because honestly I don't much like the Norwegian attitude.
So we had several people speak to us about what's going to happen over the next six weeks. We also had to endure chit-chatting with all of these people for a while, which exhausted me. We met another exchange student group for lunch, but my social processing unit had shut down already, so I didn't gain any new friends there.
There's one thing here that's probably good for me: they just never stop giving us food. There's hardly two hours between each meal. On the other hand, they don't seem to eat supper, which is strange because I end up going five or six hours without a meal before I go to bed, thus not eating for an additional eight hours. Not to mention that we've started off the sporty habit of jogging before breakfast. But that is also good for me.
This evening, we had a city tour, with our supervisors as guides, in these gigantomongous vans that are everywhere around here. We drove around from sight to sight until nightfall, and the jetlag got to me already halfway through, so I don't remember much of it right now, but it was all urban landscape, and I don't care much for that anyway.
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| Tuesday, July 7th, 2009
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12:31 pm - Minnesota: July 6th
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I visited Target today! After all of ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) pikestaff's rants about it on LJ, it was legendary. =P In it, I bought a booster pack of Pokémon cards; it had a rare holo Gallade, which made my day.
Just before that, I had an hour long intro about how to ride the bus and train in town. I am very thankful for my own patience, because that session was stretching it a bit.
The only thing that's like home, is the sound made by the airplanes as they cross the sky. Everything else is alien, but not so much as to make it scary. We're being really well treated, they give us candies and ice creams and burgers and fries and cookies, and I can actually feel that my mind is transforming -- it's creating a Minnesotan way of thinking. It might affect my way of writing.
All of it, it's like living in a dream -- not a euphoric dream, but not a nightmare either. Just really different, and I like it.
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| Monday, July 6th, 2009
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2:24 pm - Minnesota: July 5th
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I'm in Minnesota right now, hawking off of the Uni's wireless to write this post. Everything is new and exciting, so I want to try and share that experience.
In truth, I'm insanely tired. Because of the difference in timezones, this day lasts for 31 hours, which is beyond mildly unusual. Everything here is big, and there are squirrels everywhere. I don't recognize the trees nor the birds' songs. I like the place.
I got my own room with two beds and lots of compartments. It's icy cold inside, and inside everywhere else as well, even though it's blazing hot outside. I think it's a Minnesotan thing. I've put up my window to try and warm up the room a bit, so I can stop shaking. Tomorrow, my summer institute program is starting up.
I've even got an american address! If you feel like sending me anything, like chocolate wrappings or cherry flavored anthrax, just PM me, and I'll give you the address.
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| Friday, May 29th, 2009
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10:13 pm - Another attempt at redirection
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My writings have been somewhat spread out all over the internet since I stopped trying to use LJ. I'm going to try and reunite them. Here:
http://p2.cerapter.net/
Whatever I find of use that I want to share with anyone interested in reading it, will be found there. :)
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| Wednesday, May 20th, 2009
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3:49 pm - Stepping Forward
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I have just been accepted into a Summer Institute across the Atlantic.
From July 5th to August 15th, I'll be staying in Minnesota!
:D There'll be lots of interesting science symposiums, and also tours and cultural events. I'm going to see the Mississippi, Lake Superior, and I'm going to watch (or play) actual baseball! Haha. It's all fantastic, especially compared to the University of Oslo, who barely gives a *cough* about us students.
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| Monday, January 12th, 2009
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11:53 pm - Know Your Disappointments
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I took all of my heart's strongest desires (for a mate), as I wrote them in my previous entry, and turned them all around. The result was unexpected.
anti-Companion: "She doesn't really know me. Inside, we're strangers to one another."
anti-Lover: "She never lets me touch her. She's cold towards me."
anti-Playmate: "She sets high standards for me, it's all so serious now."
anti-Reciever: "She does not deserve me. I dislike her."
anti-Muse: "She is boring and no special at all."
anti-Partner: "She holds me back, doesn't want me to change."
anti-Guardian: "One moment she feels this way and the next she feels that way. I'm caught in the maelstrom, helpless."
anti-Spouse: "I do everything in this house, and in the relationship, and she just SITS there, looking discontent."
Aren't these typical relationship problems? All of a sudden, they're connected to the failure of having established important roles... And I mean, if I hadn't these desires, the lack of the roles wouldn't bother me. For each set of desires, is there a respective set of failures?
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