14. september 2003

White food The NYT's food column's Jonathan Reynolds has been in Norway, and while he managed to find some good food, he was obviously not too impressed by our traditional dishes. Ever since the Vikings took over Iceland and Greenland as pre-Australian penal colonies for their incorrigibles in the 10th century, the culinary stereotype has been that all food in Norway has to look and taste white. A typical serving is boiled cod plated next to florets of cauliflower with a cheese sauce juxtaposed with a few boiled potatoes accompanied by the sour-cream porridge that is a national dish. This is followed by aged cheese snowy as a cleric's collar and concluded with fruits smothered in whipped cream -- all served on bleached china, making the meal a circular celebration of Wite-Out. You might need not just sunglasses to get through dinner but also a can of Jolt. He was far more impressed with the landscape, in fact the area just north of Bergen: And by the way, spectacular as the Solstrand is, the five-hour drive from it to Harahorn is Spectacular Squared. You can see more drama than on all of Broadway, the West End and ''America's Most Wanted'' combined: thrilling fjords, ravines, waterfalls, sheer cliffs, trees, flowers, sometimes all at the same time, and once you get up in the mountains, a landscape hybrid of our Wild West and the moon. In fact, so continuously beautiful is the Norwegian landscape that after 10 days of it, I turned to a friend and said: ''I'm sick of this. I want to see a slum.'' But there weren't any to be found. I guess there is a reason that French, Italian and Chinese cuisine took over the world, not the Norwegian white dishes. Thanks to Miguel, who writes from and about a country with somewhat more exotic cuisine, for mailing me about this article. 10:32:30 PM    comment []  trackback []

Standing up to cancer The slow blogging this weekend is due to my participation in a charity project for cancer patients. Since 1997, The English Pub, my local watering hole, has been arranging a charity auction to raise money for various local charities that help cancer patients. The manager, Anthony Hill, and the former DJ/asst. mngr. at the pub, Mark Pettit, are both survivors of cancer, and started this annual charity to help others. This year Hermans Salong, a hairdresser, donated a luxury car, a Bentley '56 model, and it was obviously too expensive for a pub auction. So the idea arouse of having a public competition, where participants bought the right to compete for the car. It ended up as an extreme competition in endurance. Contestants had to stand still, on a small mat, holding a rope to the car with both hands. There were only a minimum of 5-minute breaks, and the 62 brave men and women were soon dwindling down. After around 40 hours (!), they were down to two, Arild Edinsen (picture, with white sign on chest) and Thomas Hagen (far left). Just past the 48 hour line, 12 minutes past noon Saturday, Thomas Hagen could not manage standing still anymore, and Arild Edinsen could raise his hands in victory. So what kind of person can win a competition like this? Well, the winner Lt. Arild Edinsen is an instructor of the newly organised Norwegian navy marines (kystjegerne), a special command of soldiers trained for extreme defense tasks along Norway's unsheltered coastline as well as abroad. That figures. More than a hundred volunteers were involved in logistics, aid, refereeing and security for the arrangement. I was in security both nights, keeping drunks away from the contestants. We had no breaks of security. Actually, the whole arrangement was entirely flawless and a huge success that gave good money and massive publicity to the cause (e.g. BA, BT and Aftenposten had prominent articles about it). And all of us who worked with it had a great fun time. The winner, the runner-up (well, perhaps that is the wrong word) and several other contestants were on their feet and in a good mood at the celebration in the English Pub just a few hours later. 10:01:52 PM    comment []  trackback []

EFF wants to stop the RIAA EFF has a petition out to make Congress put an end to the RIAA's heavy handed legal bullying. 6:31:08 PM    comment []  trackback []

Man started fire to avoid sex "Svetin Gulisija, 26, from Seget in Croatia admitted starting a fire in woods just behind his house because he was too tired for sex with his wife." (Ananova) 7:32:14 AM    comment []  trackback []

Rotten Apple A former Apple employee says it was "a diseased and dysfunctional" company culture that lead to the fall of Apple and subsequently Microsoft's victory. Mac users have, in my experience, a lot in common with sect members. They are not pragmatic in searching for solutions to specific problems, but they defend the Mac cult for its own sake. Mostly, they spend their time demonising the opposition (first IBM, now Microsoft) and evangelising for their more and more irrelevant sect. A wintel PC is a tool for a purpose (and all workmen curse their tools a lot). A Mac is an altar of worship, that coincidentally can be used to perform certain tasks. 3:45:50 AM    comment []  trackback []

© Copyright 2003 Jan Haugland. Last update: 01.10.2003; 02:24:38.