MIK

Every year during the Whitsun holidays Mensa Denmark has an annual gathering. We spend this long weekend together, have some activities, enjoy each other's company, and have our annual general meeting. We call this annual gathering MIK. I didn't attend MIK in 2006 when the first one after I became a member was held. I was going to the Roskilde Festival and couldn't afford MIK as well. But last year I participated, and it was very nice, although not quite as good a social experience as I had hoped. This was partly because I'm shy and not good at walking up to people to participate in what they're doing; partly because Stefan and I had just got together; and partly because of the facilities at the place it was held. The last two reasons deserve some further explanation. As for Stefan and I, the reason our newly started relationship prevented some socialising was partly that we kept a bit to ourselves, being very much in love and all that, but also partly that people seemed to want to give us some privacy when they saw us standing together, holding hands, etc. So in addition to me not being good at approaching others, others tended not to want to approach me as much as usual either. As for the facilities at the premises, there were simply too many long halls and too few places that felt natural to stop and talk to each other. Still, in spite of all that, it was a very nice experience and made me want to come back this year.
And this year it was much better. Having been together for more than a year now, Stefan and I were less prone to keep to ourselves, and others were less prone to avoid us to give us privacy. I also knew more people and thus felt much more comfortable approaching them. And the place it was held was a lot nicer. The amount of places where it was natural to gather was larger which helped make it natural to socialise. Also, the weather was wonderful, so we could really take advantage of the nice facilities outdoors.

So I've had lovely Whitsun holidays playing games, talking, sitting in the sun, playing pool and table tennis, drinking beer, listening to interesting lectures, enduring a loooooong general meeting (I got a lot of knitting done while there), sleeping too little, going on a small trip to an old abbey, and enjoying myself in general.

I also managed to be quite unlucky, though. I fell on the stairs (no damage done), fell on a chair when trying to navigate through a narrow space between rows of stairs (some bruising), and cut myself on the bread knife (small wound in my palm). But no serious damage was done.

Note to self

• Most people actually like you.
• People who like you are good, nice people who will stick by you. They won't suddenly decide that you're a horrible person if someone should happen to say something that implies it, not even if it is being said based on some episode they didn't personally observe.
• They won't even stop liking you if you sometimes do react a little harshly. Everybody does that, and they know that, they don't expect you to be some perfect creature who does nothing wrong ever.
• It doesn't matter if not everybody likes you. Nobody is liked by everyone. If someones dislikes you, it won't magically make everyone dislike you.

Do you hear that, little voice in the back of my head? If it's so hard of you to really let me believe in my own worth, at least let me believe in the fact that my friends and accquaintances are decent people, and that I can't be so enormously disgusting that it would make even nice, decent people stop behaving like nice, decent people. Because that's the truth. I'm going to start believing it right now, and then you, little hateful voice in the back of my head, will just have to follow at some point. I'm tired of listening to stupid nonsensical ideas from inside my own head. Maybe I can't stop them right away, but at least I can decide to do my best not to listen.

Candy

Today we bought a little bit of candy. 4.6 kg, to be precise.

Alright, there is a boring explanation, and we won't just stuff ourselves with it. 1 kg is for Stefan to bring to work and share with his colleagues (they tend to do that kind of thing at his work, so of course he must also contribute now and then). The last 3.5 kg is for the wedding - as part of dessert or as "cookies" with coffee. And it was all very cheap - they're rearranging stuff in the supermarket, and clearing out some of the things to make room for new ones, so sometimes there's cheap stuff to be bought.

Still, it's quite something to have bought 4.6 kg of candy in one afternoon.

What's Wrong with Albertslund

Alberstslund (the town where I'm currently living) - at first glance an ordinary, not terribly interesting Copenhagen suburb. Most people, if asked what's wrong with it, would probably suggest that it's boring or that there may be some rough areas. They'd be wrong. Well, they may not be entirely wrong, but they'd only have mentioned run of the mill faults that might be found in ever so many suburbs out there. The very special things that are wrong with Albertslund, the reasons I wouldn't want to live here permanently, are much more subtle and much more interesting. And I'm about to reveal them to you!

The most ordinary fault first: Blocks of flats, and row houses - large numbers of identical buildings. Albertslund has a lot of that, being a rather new town, and a preplanned one too. There are places with more individual houses, most notably (but not only) the small villages that the rest of the town has been built around. But compared to other towns, there's a lot of "mass production buildings". And these kinds of buildings just don't look like homes to me. Especially not the row houses. In blocks of flats I can tolerate the sameness, since the units are smaller than one house, making it more obviously practical not to try to make each unit look individual from the outside. But as for the row houses, it's part of my concept "house" that it's individual, so it really bothers me to see a long row of them looking exactly the same. Also, bricks bother me less than concrete. Concrete just looks industrial to me. None of this is terribly new and interesting - lots of people don't particularly like housing that looks mass produced, and in particular, concrete has been criticised much. What strikes me as funny is that it means so much to me, even when there's a lot of other things in the town that rather tend to create a pleasant and cosy feeling. There's quite a lot of grass and trees and nature in general to be seen here, there are playgrounds and little lakes and nice walking paths in plenty strewn between the too identical buildings. You'd think it made up for them so that, on average, the town felt as cosy and homelike as towns with more individual houses but inferior recreational areas in between them. But it doesn't. Not for me anyway. I like those cosy, pleasant things, I enjoy them very much, but the same way I'd enjoy a walk through the woods, not in the way that I enjoy the feeling of walking through a town that feels lived in. Most of Albertslund just doesn't feel habitated, even if it feel pleasant in other ways. And it makes me feel isolated. Inside the houses and flats there's no problem, here is life aplenty - but it doesn't shine through properly. Perhaps it wouldn't bother me if I'd lived in a place like this all my life, but I haven't. I grew up in Herning, also a relatively new town (though older than Albertslund), but a much less preplanned one. There are blocks of apartmenst, certainly, I'm sure there are also row houses, but the more individual buildings dominate, after all. And though my family has lived in one of the blocks of flats, I was no more than about five when we moved into a real house.

On to the second fault then: Albertslund is really two towns, and they're not sufficiently interconnected. Also, one of them seems to float in space with no proper orientation. Does this sound like some kind of science fiction? The simple reality is that when they made Albertslund, they did something very kind and smart: They made a system of foot and bicycle paths separate from the roads. You can pretty much go anywhere on foot or by bike without ever having to cross a road. It's a great idea, it promotes safety by keeping pedestrians and bicyclists away from cars, it makes it posibble to have pretty walking paths with a view other than cars passing by, it's really a very good idea. But it disturbs my brain! Although paths sometimes follow roads, they don't always do so, and although you can of course get from one to the other, it's only at certain points. And the paths are mostly on a lower level than the roads (because they can then cross the raods simply by passing under small bridges), so often you can't really see what's going on at road level, even if the path follows the road. Combine this with the fact that paths often go through green areas or through areas with lots of identical houses, and that some of them twist rather than go in straight lines. What you end up with is a system of paths that offer very few cues as to where you are and in which direction you're going. I can easily find my way into town on the paths, but my sense of the direction in which I'm headed and how it compares to the direction in which I was headed at another part of the route is very weak. And this is something I'm usually good at. It's how I find my way in unfamiliar places. Well, I use maps too, of course, but normally I can easily vary my route just because I know I'm headed in a certain direction, and then I can just choose random streets that'll lead me in that direction. I generally have some kind of mental map in my head, telling me that these roads go in pretty much that direction and these in that one, and that this place is in that sort of angle and direction relative to that one. The directions are rather up and down, left and right than north, south, east and west, but because I usually have to look at a map when I first go to an unfamiliar place, I generally end up with an "up" that corresponds to north, and so forth. On the paths in Albertslund, I can have this sense of direction, but only for small bits at a time. Yesterday we took an evening walk, and we walked down a path that I didn't immediately recognise. I identified this path as going in the direction "up-down" because we'd been going along a street following Roskildevej, a road which I know to be going east-west, and then turned onto this path, making a fairly right angle. We walked along it a bit, and I noticed we were at a place I pass by when riding my bike to the center of Albertslund. When I go there on bike, I've always felt like I was coming to this place in a direction that ran from side to side, not "up-down", so I was convinced I must normally be coming to this point from a different direction that the one we'd come from on our walk. We walked about a little and then started going home. We'd agreed to go home by the prettiest route, a route which I thought would be about the same one I use when I ride my bike to or from the center of Albertslund. So when we started going up the path where we'd first come from, I expressed surprise that we went a different way. Stefan looked confused and said this was the way I usually went by bike, and I started to explain that no, I usually took the other path that lead to that place I'd recognised as one I passed on my bike. We went back to look, and there was no other path! This was the very one I'd come along by bike so many times! I'd simply been so convinced that there must be another path, that I thought I'd actually seen it. And why? Well, because the path we'd come by was one I identified as going in the direction "up-down" whereas I'd identified the path I took when on my bike as going "left-right" - thus, they couldn't be the same path. Normally, of course, this kind of mistake would be corrected because you'd recognise the path and realise you had got the directions wrong at some point - something that may very well happen when some of the time you're not finding your way yourself but are being led by someone who knows the way. But the path offered me no clues that I'd been there before. Like so many of the paths in Albertslund, it was bordered by some plants and grass, and went under some concrete bridges. And that's what bothers me about these paths. They offer way too few landmarks for my brain to hold on to and use to establish where things are relatively to each other. In most towns, you walk along the roads on the pavement, and there are plenty of different looking houses to give your brain something to hold on to. The roads themselves also look different - some are broad, some are narrow, some have heavy traffic, some are very quiet. The paths in Albertslund just don't offer the same amount of clues and landmarks. There are differences between places, certainly, and you can easily learn the way somewhere and be able to recognise where you are. But piecing it all together is harder, at least for me, because it's harder to get everything turned the same way in my mental map, and so I sometimes get surprises like the one I had yesterday. And this doesn't feel nice. In fact I almost started crying yesterday because it felt really creepy that the world just seemed to have moved about and turned things a new way. I like my sense of direction. It makes me feel lost when I try to hold on to the landscape and be aware where I am and which way I'm turned, and then just feel it slipping. This doesn't happen all the time of course. Mostly I feel fine on the paths. But I still don't like the occasional feeling that the world has moved about.

I'll end this with a disclaimer: None of these faults are huge overwhelming things that make me hate living here. There are plenty of nice things here too, and in general I feel just fine. They're just things that sometimes bother me a little. Enough that I wouldn't want to stay here always, but not enough to make me dislike living here for the present and a few years into the future. But it facinates me that this kind of thing is important to my judgment of whether a town is a potential long term home or not.

Just an update

I have nothing extraordinary to write, but it's been a while since I wrote anything, so I decided that a simple update about what I've been doing lately would suffice.

• We made all the exterior parts of our wedding invitations (exterior as in: There's a card made of cardboard with some other paper, some paper ribbon and such on it, and then inside that some coloured regular paper with the invitation text will be put - the cardboard card is what I here refer to as the exterior). A few things must be found out that need to be in the text before we can finish that and print it. Also, we need to collect addresses. Hopefully they'll be all finished, interior as well as exterior, and sent a few days after Easter.
• Saturday we had some people over for a beer tasting. We tasted sour kinds of beer, and we had a nice time and some nice beer. Two of the guests (a couple) brought their little baby, and he was very cute.
  
• So far the class I'm taking about human-technology interaction is really interesting.
• I just baked a bread.
• Stefan bought really cheap candy at work.

That's all I can think of, really - apparently I haven't done anything terribly interesting :)

Skurren i ørerne

(This post will be in Danish. Apologies to non-Danish readers, but I'm going to write about expressions people use in Danish that I find annoying, and this won't really make sense in English without so many explanations that it would rob it of being interesting at all)

Nu er det tid til at brokke sig lidt over andres fejl og mangler - det er jo altid sjovt :) Hermed en liste over sproglige fejl og udtryk, der virkelig irriterer mig:

• Udtrykket "bling bling" (eller bare "bling") om sten i smykker. Det lyder som noget taget fra en rap af den værste slags - den slags, der bare handler om, hvor sej rapperen er, og hvor mange lækre kvinder der er vilde med ham. Eller alternativt som en form for babysprog. Ja, diamanter og andre smykkesten blinker. Vi ved det alle sammen godt, også selv om I bare kalder dem det, de hedder.
  
• Den enorme udbredelse af troen på, at det hedder "ynglings-", ikke "yndlings-". En yngling er en ung mand, for pokker da. Det giver ikke mening at tale om din "ynglingsbluse", medmindre det er den, du af og til giver unge mænd på - eller måske, hvis den skjuler dine bryster og får alle til at tro, du er en dreng. For slet ikke at tale om din "ynglingsmad", som i bedste fald er noget, du serverer for unge mænd, i værste fald et udtryk for kannibalisme. Medmindre du selvfølgelig også laver en fejlagtig opdeling af ordet - din "ynglings mad" er simpelthen mad, der tilhører din yngling (din store søn, f.eks.). Mindre foruroligende, men stadig noget andet end det, du egentlig mener.
  
• Hermed bør manglende viden om, at sammensatte ord på dansk netop skal sidde sammen, også nævnes. Jeg går ud fra, det er en påvirkning fra engelsk, men det gør det ikke mindre irriterende. Hvis så i det mindste folk ville begå fejlen, når det ville være specielt sjovt, at de gjorde det, som f.eks. hvis de skrev "topløs bar pige" - men næh nej.
• I samme forbindelse (påvirkning fra engelsk, altså) er der også den stadigt mere udbredte tendens til at danne genitiv med apostrof på dansk. Suk.
• Udtrykket "sur røv". Det er klamt og modbydeligt, og jeg har hadet det, siden det først kom på mode, da jeg gik i 8. eller 9. klasse. Ja, der er sikkert mange andre udtryk, der egentlig er lige så ulækre, hvis man tænker over det. Det gør jeg så bare ikke, og derfor irriterer de mig ikke, mens dette gør. Heldigvis er det noget, man kun hører engang imellem nu om dage, så jeg kan holde det ud uden de store problemer.
• Når folk siger "nødvendigvis ikke", når de i virkeligheden mener "ikke nødvendigvis". Det betyder altså noget helt andet, end hvad I mener.
• Sproglige fejl i videnskabelige artikler og bøger, nyhedsudsendelser, aviser og lignende. Jeg kan sagtens acceptere, at almindelige mennesker ikke er perfekte og ind imellem laver sproglige fejl - selv når det er nogle af dem på denne liste (det skurrer stadig i ørerne, men jeg bliver ikke irriteret på personen som sådan). Men steder som de nævnte bør man virkelig anstrenge sig noget mere. Der er ikke noget at sige til, at almindelige mennesker har svært ved det, hvis man i officielle og videnskabelige sammenhænge ikke gider gøre den indsats, det er enten selv at have styr på sproget eller at få nogen til at læse korrektur. Et lille eksempel: Gyldendals røde fremmedordbog har titlen stående som "Dansk fremmed ordbog" (på tre linjer). Det kan godt ske, de synes, det ser pænere ud rent grafisk, men helt ærligt - en ordbog, der ikke kan finde ud af at skrive "fremmedordbog" i et ord? Godt nok er "fremmedordbog" ikke et af de fremmedord, denne ordbog beskæftiger sig med, men alligevel.
  

En sidste bemærkning, der ikke er et punkt på listen: Er "godt nok" virkelig et udtryk, man ikke bør bruge i skriftsprog, fordi det er for talesprogsagtigt og for jysk? Min vejleder, da jeg var i praktik, mente, det var tilfældet, og bad mig altid rette det til "ganske vist" i mine rapporter. Selv synes jeg godt nok/ganske vist, at det er lidt tættere på talesprog end "ganske vist", men slet ikke nok til ikke at kunne bruges i skriftsprog. Men nu er jeg jo også jyde. Jeg vil forsøge at spørge til det forskellige steder (kommentér endelig også her, hvis nogen har lyst).

100 things about me

I stumbled upon a little excercise where you have to write 100 facts about yourself and thought I'd try it. Here goes:

1) My name is Ditte.
2) I'm 24 years old.
3) I live in Albertslund, a Copenhagen suburb, with my fiancé, Stefan.
4) I study psychology at Aarhus University
5) The reason I'm not studying in Copenhagen is that I lived in Århus till last november when I moved over here to live with Stefan. Switching universities turned out to be hard to do and would involve me not getting credit for all the classes I took in Århus, so staying on at Aarhus university was easier. I only need to go back and forth once a week for one semester to take one class, then only my master thesis is left - and who cares where in the world I write that?
6) I will always identify myself as being from Jutland, no matter how long I live on Sealand.
7) It's nice over here, though. I LOVE the better public transport. And I enjoy the process of getting to know a new place.
8) My favourite colours are blue and green.
9) I've never been able to pick a favourite kind of food.
10) I really like it when there's garlic in food, though.
11) I am a member of Mensa.
12) My favourite band is Suede.
13) I love books. Books are amazingly wonderful.
14) My favourite authors include Jane Austen, Neil Gaiman, J.R.R. Tolkien, Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Douglas Adams, Philip Pullman, Dan Turèll and Guy Gavriel Kay. And probably several others I didn't think of right now.
15) I've memorised several poems we read in English in high school.
16) And also some passages from Macbeth.
17) My favourite poem is "The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot.
18) I think a good sign that you found not just love, but a relationship that will last, is that it's not hard work at all.
19) This does not mean that I don't think there could be rough periods, and that you should work hard at staying together and not give up on the relationship. It just means that I think it's a very good start if you're compatible enough that getting used to having each other in each other's lives does not require major adjustment.
20) I'm very satisfied with my current relationship.
21) That's the reason I felt completely comfortable saying yes when he asked me to marry him.
22) We'll get married on June 28th. Wee!
23) I absolutely loathe the colour pink, and I will never ever dress a daughter of mine in that colour until she's old enough to have her own favourite colours. If she likes pink at that point, I'll let her wear it of course (I liked pink myself when I was little, I must admit, and would have been sad if I didn't get a say in what colours I could wear).
24) When I was little, I loved playing with My Little Ponies.
25) It may be all pink and glittery and stuff I don't really like now, but I still think they're great, and I still have all of mine (in my parents' attic, ready for when I have children of my own). Nostalgia's a powerful thing :)
26) I love Norse mythology and know a lot about it.
27) When I was little, one of my favourite books for my mum to read to me at bed time was an astronomy book for children.
28) According to my parents, I impressed the grown-ups at my daycare when I was little (2-3 years old I think) by talking about how the pupils change size based on the amount of light.
29) On my left hand I can bend my pinky finger without bending my ring finger. On my right hand I can't.
30) I think romanesco broccoli is very very cool.
31) I bought a new jacket recently, and I finally feel warm when I'm outside.
32) I feel cold very easily.
33) I once had a dream where gravity shifted. It was very life like and very interesting.
34) I dream of getting a pubquiz question where the answer is "oligodendrocytes".
35) I got new glasses recently, and it's incredibly nice to be able to see faraway things properly.
36) I have broken a bone once in my life.
37) That was a bone in my right foot, and I broke it by twisting the foot when I fell down the stairs at my parents' house.
38) I'm an atheist.
39) My favourite things to drink are orange juice, red wine, quality beer, and water.
40) I think soliloquy is a cool word.
41) I like my coffee both black and with milk, sometimes one, sometimes the other. This seems to be very hard for people to grasp.
42) My sense of empathy sometimes misguidedly stretches out to dead things. For instance I sometimes have to tell people to stop if they jokingly say there's reason to feel sorry for a thing because I actually start feeling sad.
43) I don't like olives.
44) It bothers me if the cutlery on a table isn't straight or is put in the wrong place.
45) It also bothers me when my clothes aren't folded the way I do it. Yes, I'm strange, I know.
46) I love chocolate.
47) I don't like films very much in general. There are several individual films I like alot, but I'm still not thrilled about the concept as such, for some reason.
48) I enjoy tv series, however.
49) I'm happy that I found a boyfriend with the same last name as me, since I like my last name, but also like the idea of having the same last name.
50)I can play the recorder.
51) As I write this fact, my internet is down.
52) We intend to get a cat, but it probably won't happen until after the wedding, since then I'll be able to be at home with it every day while it gets used to living with us.
53) During my life I've had a few birds, two rabbits, and a guinea pig as pets.
54) For our honeymoon we'll go to Belgium where we'll drink beer, eat french fries and chocolate, and of course see the sights.
55) My fiancé got a present from his job yesterday which consisted of champagne and a big amount of really expensive chocolate. Mmmmmmmmmmm!
56) I was born and grew up in Herning.
57) I was born at 12.50 in the (early) afternoon.
58) My favourite stuffed animal during my childhood was a dolphin I won at a tombola.
59) I have two younger brothers.
60) I was present at the birth of the youngest of them (I was 11 at the time).
61) In my family we always joke at Christmas and birthdays that there is an elephant in one of the presents.
62) One of my teeth is a milk tooth since there is no permanent tooth to replace it.
63) I had a root canal done once. I was very nervous, having heard it could hurt a lot even with the local anaestetics, but the only pain I felt was when my neck muscles started to hurt because I had to keep my mouth open for so long.
64) I'm very fond of trees.
65) I have a keyring with a shark that glows in different colours when you press a button.
66) I don't use it for my keys, though.
67) There are 3 keys on my key chain: The key to the flat, the key to my bicycle, and a key to my parents' house.
68) I wear a helmet when I ride my bicycle.
69) I'm finding this so much harder than I thought.
70) I've had my brain scanned when I took a class where we got to see an MRI scanner, and they needed someone to be scanned in order to show us the procedure.
71) I still have the scan pictures.
72) I like grey socks.
73) I think one of the most annoying and rude things people can do is to play music on their mobile phones on the bus without using headphones.
74) I want my master thesis to be about how knowledge is stored and organised in the human mind/brain.
75) I'm generally a positive person.
76) I loathe postmodernism and social constructionism.
77) My hair is very straight and smooth which means that if I try to do more with it in than just putting it in a ponytail, it very often just falls down again.
78) I'm very often very silly.
79) I'm quite a perfectionist (although not about everything).
80) I sometimes discover that I remind myself of my mother.
81) This is not at all something I mind. In fact, I'm proud of it.
82) I killed a spider today.
83) I hate getting up early.
84) People say my handwriting is hard to decipher.
85) I talk to myself.
86) I also talk to things - often to complain if they won't behave as I want them to.
87) Yes, I'm weird. I like it.
88) When I'm stressed I tend to snap at people if they don't do things exactly my way.
89) I don't really like that about myself so I usually apologise right away.
90) I'm not adverse to cheating a little to get to the point where I only need to write 10 more facts.
91) I have a small cut under my left foot from a small shard of porcelain I stepped on a few days ago.
92) A wasp once flew down my cleavage, got stuck on my stomach, and stung me. I think I killed it when I brushed it out from under my t-shirt - that'll teach it not to sexually harass someone from another species again!
93) I have a small scar where the wasp stung me.
94) I also have a scar on my cheek from a fall, two on my left foot from another fall, and a couple on my right arm from some hot oil.
95) I'm very tired right now.
96) I am, however, also too stubborn not to finish this tonight.
97) I ate too much candy tonight.
98) I think pointy shoes are very ugly.
99) After sharing a kitchen with others who didn't all clean up after themselves for 4 years, I really enjoy having a kitchen of my own.
100) I was able to come up with 100 facts about myself!

Good news from furry friends

The polar fox and the okapi excitedly run into the post.

Polar fox: We can tell now, we can tell! We can tell people why we multiplied back in September!

Okapi: We most certainly can! But perhaps we ought to quote that post from September first, or people will have no idea what we're talking about.

Fox: Good idea, old chap, absolutely splendid idea. Allow me:

"The polar fox and the okapi multiply for the special occasion, so 6 polar foxes and 28 okapis run across the post and throw confetti." (from "A New Home, September 17)

Okapi: Thanks a bunch my furry little friend! Can I tell people why we did it then?

Fox: Go ahead, my dear fellow!

Okapi: All right then: We were simply enacting a date. A wedding date, more specifically!

Fox: Even more specifically, we were enacting the date of our brilliant and ever so kind and beautiful creator, Ditte's wedding! June 28, 2008.

Okapi: And Stefan's too, don't forget Stefan. She can't go get married all by herself, now can she? And besides, he's such a lovely guy as well!

Fox: You are right as always, my friend, most delightfully right!

Okapi: We should tell the newest news too, I think. Will you do it, mate?

Fox: I'd be very much honoured! Very well, then: They have just booked a place where they can have the party. It's Herstedvester Forsamlingshus, a community center close to where they live.

Okapi: I'm so happy I could sing! Come sing with me, old boy!

Fox: Oh I couldn't, really I couldn't! I don't sing that well, I shouldn't bother the readers with my voice.

Okapi: It's a written blog, you can't really bother anyone. Come on now, be a good sport!

Fox: Oh, all right then, if you're certain I won't annoy anyone. What shall we sing then?

Okapi: Let's sing whatever each individual reader imagines we sing. That's one of the cool things you can do when you're just a character in someone's blog.

Fox: Indeed it is, dear fellow, indeed it is! And since it is another one of those cool things one can do when one is but a blog character, I shall also conjure up a brass band to accompany us.

The polar fox conjures up the brass band, and the band starts playing and the two animals start singing exactly what you think they start playing and singing.

Our flat

Well, I think I promised some pictures of our new flat. I haven't taken any until yesterday, because it's taken some time to get things in place, but now the living room looks as it should, although there are still some things yet to be taken care of in other rooms. But it's close enough to being finished that I took the pictures.

Here's a bit of the area:















Our entrance door:




















The entrance:




















The bathroom:




















The bedroom:















The kitchen:




















A few of the living room:


























































And finally one of a Christmas decoration:

The Joys and Troubles of Moving

I have now moved into Stefan's and my new home, so I thought a post about the nice and less nice things about moving would be in order.

Nice:

• The new place in general. It's so great to have a real flat and not just a room
• To get to live with Stefan in general.
  
• Getting rid of a lot of the useless stuff I had accumulated since last time I moved. I've become quite good at throwing stuff away - it feels good, actually.
• Lovely new IKEA furniture - cheap but perfectly good. I especially love our new dining table and chairs.
• The lovely feeling of getting things arranged well when you unpack.
• A new place to explore and get to know
  

Not so nice:

• It takes such a long time to unpack!
• The stress I get from unpacking. There's too much I have to try to be in control of, and it makes me stressed and annoyed so I start snapping at poor Stefan when he doesn't do things exactly as I want them. I think it's good that I have time alone while he's at work, and also that I'm going back to Århus for a few days to clean my old room and see friends, because I can feel that my fuse hasn't quite regained it's normal length yet :)
• The longer distance to my friends and family.
• The queue on the way here, and the whole long car trip in general.
• All the cardboard boxes, paper, plastic, etc. you get when you buy new furniture.
• Reporting to the authorities that we've moved: We found a web page where you could do that, if you had a so called digital signature. So we ordered one each and reported moving when we got it. But there was no option for me to choose a new doctor then, which I remembered a day or two ago. Today it turns out the central register hasn't registered my new address at all as far as I can see, but I found a different place to get it registered which will also let me choose a new doctor at the same time. Stefan doesn't think his registration worked either, so now we're both going to try the new site this evening, and hopefully it will work.

I've found as many negative things as positive, apparently, but the first two positive things are so positive they make up for the negative ones easily. So I'm happy with my new home! I'll take some pictures when we've got more done with the new place ( like hanging pictures) and post a few here.

Countdown 3 + election results

0 more days to go! It's today! :)

The election went worse than expected, it looks like things will continue much as before, with only the nationalist party as support for the government, plus one person from the Faeroe Islands (we have 2 people from there and 2 from Greenland in our parliament). It said today in the paper that this person objected to having such a big say about that, so maybe we will end up with a government needing support from other parties besides the nationalist one anyway - but still, it's not much, and I'm disappointed by the results. The nationalist party even got an extra mandate this time :(

But anyway, I'm moving today, so I'm happy!

Countdown 2 + election

3 days to go, 2 days left where I won't see Stefan at all, 3 nights to sleep on my own, 3 mornings to wake up alone, 1 more patient to see, 1 more Mensa café meeting in Århus (tonight!), 1 more time watching Desperate Housewives in the common room ... we're getting close!

The countdown done, I can report that today in Denmark we have elections for our parliament. I've voted and can now only wait and hope it goes well. It will be an exciting election this time, and at the very least it looks like the government will need one more party to support it besides the nationalist party which supports it now. I'd prefer no influence at all for that nationalist party, but if they and the current government can't get anything decided on their own, at least their influence will be diminished. So it looks like there'll be some improvement for sure, and of course I can still hope there'll be even more.

Countdown

Next weekend will be the last weekend where I have to say goodbye to Stefan Sunday evening. In other words, this week is the second last week of my internship. There are 11 days to go, 7 days left where I won't see Stefan at all, 9 nights to sleep on my own, 9 mornings to wake up alone, 4 more patients to see (unless there are cancellations or my supervisor only gives me one the last week to make sure I get the report finished), 2 more Mensa café meetings in Århus, 2 more times watching Desperate Housewives in the common room ...

And when all those numbers reach zero, I'll have a real home instead of just a room, I'll get to sleep in a lovely big bed rather than the old one here, I'll have a nice kitchen and a bathroom where you don't risk water running down your back when you try to wash your hands, I'll have moved the farthest away from my family I've ever been (although still close enough to feel fine about it), and I'll get to live with the man I plan to spend the rest of my life with.

Life isn't all that bad, really.

Last Week's Events

Last week I had events to go to 4 out of the week's 7 days. Tuesday was the usual Mensa café meeting. We tried out a new café, since we're looking for a new regular place to go. So far we've been to one place with bad service, music that sounded like either the cd was scratched or the player was broken, but with nice food; and one nice place where way too much of the café was smoking area (at least after 22 where a large space changed into a smoking area, and we often stay till after 22). So we're still looking.

Wednesday evening Brett Anderson gave a concert at Århus Musikhus, with just him on acoustic guitar or piano, and a cellist. It's my very first Brett solo gig so I was looking forward to it a lot. The night before, he played in Copenhagen, and when that was announced I was quite disappointed I couldn't go because it was a week night and I needed to be back here to go to "work" next day. So I was really glad they announced the Århus gig Wednesday. It was a very nice evening, Brett's voice was wonderful, the cello worked great with the songs, and at the encore Brett played a few bits of songs people suggested - even a little of Stay Together! The only downside was that most of the audience wouldn't really sing along when Brett asked them to. I find it rather understandable for some of the gig, since a seated acoustic gig in a concert hall is a different experience than a regular gig, and it was actually nice to be able to concentrate on enjoying what you were hearing. But in the end when the athmosphere softened somewhat, it would have been nice with a bit more noise from the audience. At the very end he succeeded in eliciting such a response (and getting people to stand up), but I think the audience should have been faster to respond to the changed athmosphere and Brett's requests. But a very nice experience nonetheless!

Friday and Saturday I went to two more Mensa arrangements, and since it was the weekend, Stefan went too. Friday we were at Randers Regnskov by night. For non Danish readers, Randers is the name of a town not so far from Århus, and "regnskov" means rain forest. It's a place where they made a sort of indoor rain forest with plants and animals, and people can come see it, usually during the day. However, you can get to experience it at night too, with a guide, if you're a group of people (and pay for it of course :)). It was interesting to see the animals, but I'd probably prefer going during the day and getting to walk around on my own rather than having to follow a guide and only be allowed to stay for a fixed amount of time. Still, it was fun.

Saturday there was a lecture in Århus about the evolution of man, with a doctor who has written books on that subject. I read one of his books when I did my bachelor thesis, and liked it a lot. The lecture was interesting too, although of course much of it was stuff I'd already read about in the book. It was still nice to get it refreshed, though, and I also got to buy the book - much cheaper than in the shops!

So it's been an interesting week, but I must admit I'm glad I have less to do this week. Some time just to relax will be nice.

Exile

We moved all Stefan's things to our new flat during our holiday last week. It really felt like home. But after going to Århus during the weekend for a party, only Stefan got to go back to our home. I still have 4 more weeks as an intern, so I have to stay in Århus. And my room here doesn't feel like home anymore at all. Only one good friend and a couple of others who've been here a while still live here. Most of the others I don't even know the names of. Nor do I really care to know.

This isn't home, this is some kind of exile, and I'm homesick for my real, new home. And I miss my Stefan so. When I finally get to move there properly, it'll be the best thing I ever did, but waiting for it is so hard. So please, please, be November 16th soon, so I can go home.

A little of this and a little of that

I don't really have much to say on any particular subject, so a few words about several different thing seems the way to go today.

I promised that I'd write about being an intern at a dementia clinic. Well, the patients are interesting, but getting comfortable in the work environment has been quite hard, as has learning to test patients myself. The first because I feel a little bit left to myself which is not easy when you're also quite shy and not good at taking initiatives. The latter because I'm not great at dealing with people (yes, an aspiring psychologist with bad social skills - a bit strange, I know) and because I'm quite perfectionistic and get nervous. At this point I'm doing alright in both those areas, but it still seems to take a fair amount of energy, and after 4 weeks and a day of spending extra energy I'm starting to feel a bit drained. The week after next week is a week off, fortunately, so I'm looking forward to get recharged a bit then. And after that there's just 4 weeks to go, and then I get to go live with Stefan :)

My diet is still working alright. The progress isn't as fast as it was in the beginning, but it's still going downwards, and I'm now less than 1 kg from my first goal.

Stefan and I signed the contract for our new flat, and today he paid the deposit and the rent for the first month. In principle we have a flat together from precisely today! We can't get into it for two more weeks, though, as they're doing some repairing there. But we officially have a place that's ours now, not his or mine - yay!

A new home

Stefan and I will have a flat together!

We signed up for a two room flat at the place where his current flat also is (you get moved up in the queue by already living in a flat in the same place), and were given an estimated waiting period of 5 to 6 months. So I was very surprised when I got a text message today, telling me we had could get a flat (when signing up online you could choose to get notified that way). But it's real: They've offered us a flat from October 1. We really don't need it till the middle of November, but since it seems likely we only got an offer so fast because some other people said no, we can't be sure to get one by then if we don't take this one. And we can afford to pay more than one rent for just two months.
Stefan went to check the location of the flat, and to talk to the current tenants who haven't moved out yet. The location seemed fine, and the girl he talked to said they hadn't had any particular trouble with noisy neighbours or such. So we have now said yes to the offer.

We officially have a flat together, yay! :D

The polar fox and the okapi multiply for the special occasion, so 6 polar foxes and 28 okapis run across the post and throw confetti.

Diet

Since Stefan is usually away on Monday nights, I think I'll move my update day to Monday. I have less to do while sitting at the computer when I'm not talking to him on MSN, so it's nice to have this. When I move to Copenhagen myself to live with him, I'll move update day again, since I'll also be away on Monday nights then (doing the same thing he's doing now).

But anyway, one of the topics I promised I'd write about was my new diet.

The diet is of the type where you reduce your intake of carbohydrates, but it's a relatively permissive one where you keep the kinds of carbohydrates that are not so easily processed in the body. So I can eat wholemeal bread, for instance, but I need to stay away from sugar, potatoes, rice, pasta and white bread as much as possible. This is a bit tricky, but in many ways also kind of fun, since you get to invent ways to replace those things with other things. Today I tried making something somewhat resembling lasagna, and decided to replace the pasta plates with cabbage. It turns out I should probably have boiled the cabbage first, as it's still rather hard, but it works fine as far as the taste goes, since neither pasta nor cabbage has much taste in it.
Not eating sugar (or rather eating very little of it) has turned out to be much much easier than I expected. Diet soda is actually not hard to get used to, and one brand of sweetener (actually one specific kind from a brand that has more than one kind) tastes almost exactly like sugar when you use it in tea. Furthermore, having something that's sweet, but doesn't contain sugar, actually seems to satisfy my occassional cravings for sweet stuff. I'm allowing myself a little bit of chocolate every now and then, because I really love chocolate so much - and because I ate so much of it before that eating just a little bit still makes a big difference :)
And it's actually going quite well. I've weighed myself every day, and except for one day I've lost a little weight each time. Tomorrow it'll have been a week since the first time I weighed myself on my new weight, and if I don't gain anything compared to what I weighed this morning, I'll have lost almost 2 kg during that week.

Bad Luck

Yesterday, my friend Maria's baby boy Noah was baptised. This took place in Kolding, and since I was in Copenhagen, but had to be back in Århus in the evening, we had to get up very early at Stefan's place, bring ourselves and all of my luggage to Kolding, leave the luggage in a luggage box at the train station, go to the baptism, go back to the station afterwards, get the luggage out, and then take trains in different direction (Stefan back to his place and me and my luggage back to my own place in Århus). This sounds complicated enough, but apparently the universe disagreed and added several complications.

First, there were no buses to take us to the station early on a Sunday morning, so we had to take a taxi. That's manageable, since Stefan has a job and thus money.

Second, the dress I had bought turned out to show a lot more of my breasts than I had originally thought. This had the potential for being very troublesome, considering the impossibility of finding new nice clothes early in the morning at a place where you only have the clothes you chose to bring. However, I had also bought a big scarf to wear with the dress, and this could conveniently cover me up while looking nice at the same time.

Third - now it's getting rather more serious. Being occupied with my dress problems, I conveniently forgot the present, and didn't remember so until we'd gone about a third of the way to the station in our taxi. It turned out okay, but the taxi driver had to drive back, breaking the speed limit, I had to get out of the taxi and run to Stefan's flat and back to the taxi in my high heels, and the taxi driver then had to continue breaking the law to get us to the station with some time to spare. He managed quite well, though, so we actually had plenty of time.

Fourth, more taxis. This time from the church to the place where the party was, and from that place to the train station. Another relatively minor thing, since the fare from the church to the party was paid for by our hosts.

Fifth and worst: Luggage box trouble! (this is the grand finale!) Some complete idiot had failed to notice the difference between his own box (no. 2191) and ours (2194) and put his key in our box where he managed to get it completely stuck. So when we came to get our stuff, we couldn't get it out. We notified the staff, and in the end they did find a key that could open the box, but not before we'd refused to let one lady tell us she couldn't do anything about it - apparently she thought leaving us to cope with it ourselves was an excellent way to handle it, until it was clear we intended to keep bothering her unless she actually tried to do something. Fortunately, the other woman whom she asked to help her find out what to do seemed more competent, and the problem was solved.

So that's it for now. Coming up here on my blog: My new diet (I need to lose weight, unfortunately), and my experiences as an intern at a dementia clinic where I started today.

Everyday stuff - but a new kind

I'm spending August at Stefan's place, since he's working and I'm doing nothing because uni doesn't start until September. Thus, we get to try out some sort of everyday routine together, which is rather uninteresting to write about since it is, by definition, not anything earth shatteringly interesting. It's an interesting experience, though, not just being each other's guests, but living together for a little while. The most interesting (and very positive) thing is that it doesn't actually require any getting used to at all.

Anyway, we did do some things a little out of the ordinary:

1) Last Tuesday was Stefan's birthday. We went out with some of his friends, and he got some presents from them, his family, and of course me. I gave him a book about Danish syntax and a toaster. A funny fact: When you live with someone, giving needed household items as presents is something not very exciting (although quite alright now and then as long as one person doesn't always get that kind of thing while the other gets more personal things). When you don't, but intend to do so later on, it can suddenly be something somewhat symbolic (alliteration intended). The book was the main present, though - I don't think you can stretch toaster symbolism as far as making it the main thing.

2) The day after we went to see the new Simpsons movie. It was really good, especially the spider pig thing (and if you don't know what that is, go see the movie - you should anyway). The was a terribly annoying man behind us, though. He kept repeating the punchlines or reading written things from the movie or the subtitles out loud. After a while I actually got sufficently annoyed that I turned around and told him we really didn't need to hear him repeat everything. It takes a while to make me do that kind of thing which says something about how annoying he was. Felt really good too :)

3) We cleaned the upstairs part of Stefan's place which is actually quite something. We threw out quite a lot of things too, among them an old and out of order computer, a computer table, and his bed. The bed was thrown out to make room for a new one that's big enough for both of us. I'm looking forward to go buying that. I like bying furniture and such much more than I like shopping for clothes, really. Weeee, furniture!!!

The polar fox does somersaults across the page while the okapi sings a catchy jingle about furniture.