Capturing the clouds

We've had some exceptionally beautiful days here in Oslo during the past week. Today was one of them. While I was waiting for my husband to pick me up from work this evening, I snapped a few photos of the clouds and the blue sky; it was almost as though the clouds had been captured inside the walkway and inside the building. Love getting shots like these! Enjoy......

Three-year anniversary

A New Yorker in Oslo is three years old this month! I'm pleased to announce this, because as I wrote when I started my blog, this is a labor of love. I don't receive any money for writing the blog. I have a dedicated core group of followers, and a number of readers who comment on posts that interest them. I take this opportunity to thank you all for your support and feedback.

I plan to continue writing the blog as long as there are things to write about. And there are, in abundance. It's just that sometimes I experience writer's block--unsure of what to write about, unable to sit down and write about this or that, overwhelmed by the state of the world, overwhelmed by my lack of faith in my abilities at times. I hate the latter--when that dark cloud of lack of faith in myself hangs over my head and prevents me from expressing what I want to express. The little voices that tell me to forget about it, to slack off, to not care. But then something always happens to make me care again. It can be as simple as that someone read and commented on a post that touched them. Made them think, made them want to write to me. I've met some interesting people through this blog--students, Sherlock Holmes fans, business folk--and I'm thrilled that you reached out to talk to me.

You might wonder which posts are the most popular, after three years online. You'd be surprised. I know I was. But it's fun to see what interests readers the most. Here is a listing of the top 10 posts of all time (those which are the most-read):

Amsterdam coffee shops, head shops, sex shop and o... Sep 2, 2011, 2 comments
Recognizing passive-aggressive behavior in workpla... Dec 7, 2011, 10 comments
Dark Shadows and Collinwood mansion Sep 17, 2010
Ridley Scott's Prometheus Jun 1, 2012
A love poem by Ezra Pound in honor of Valentine's ... Feb 13, 2011
The Nighthawk Diner Jun 25, 2010, 3 comments
Berlin's East Side Gallery Jul 5, 2012
Christmas crèche in St.Olav's church Jan 9, 2011, 2 comments
Photos of Tarrytown Lakes and Hudson River Valley ... Jun 19, 2011, 2 comments
“There are no answers, only choices” Apr 30, 2011, 1 comment

Practice what you preach

Last night I attended a meeting of Christian women (of all religious denominations) as a guest of one of my friends. She and I have often attended such meetings once or twice a year when I first moved to Norway, but our attendance has been more infrequent during the past decade. The format of the meeting is simple—a few inspirational lectures, a light dinner, some songs, and a main lecture usually given by a person who has a specific message to share. Last night that message was the importance of love in the arena of relationships; how reaching out with love dispels the fear in ourselves and perhaps in those to whom we reach out. It was a very good talk and it brought to mind the message of Mother Theresa, who always talked about the importance of love and starting with those around you—loving your family and those closest to you before trying to make a difference in the world.

What struck me however last night, was the experience we had on the way into the hotel ballroom where the meeting was held. My friend, who is a retiree and a woman who works tirelessly helping the downtrodden and less fortunate in our society, had made reservations for the two of us several weeks ago. She had sent a text message as instructed by the newspaper announcement for the meeting; she had the text message on her phone as proof. When we got to the entrance door, the receptionist did not find her name on the list of registered attendees; she told us that she had to ‘speak to a leader’ about whether we could be allowed to enter or not. I found this behavior rather odd, but said nothing, until 'the leader' came over to us, a small woman with a bloated sense of her own importance, who reiterated not once, but at least five times, the necessity of having received a reply text message as confirmation for registering for the meeting. The confirmation text message apparently allowed you to enter. I could feel my annoyance starting to rear its head; my friend is not a person who will defend or assert herself unnecessarily. She patiently showed the text message she had sent, to the leader, but she had not received a confirmation text message. The leader obviously did not like this at all, but rather begrudgingly allowed us to pay for and gain entrance to the meeting. The explanation for her hesitation was that there might not be enough food to go around for all the attendees. I’ll come back to that. We found two places to sit at a table with several other women and sat down. Wouldn’t you know, but the little leader appeared yet again to inform us yet again of the necessity of having received a text message as confirmation for our registration. At which point, I essentially told her to back off. Told her that we had now heard her say this close to ten times, and that if we were not welcome, we could get our money back and leave. It wasn’t that important for us to be there. At which point she backed off, and extended a welcome greeting to us. But that was only because I got mad and spoke up.

Why do I bring this up today? It struck me last night that there was very little Christian spirit in this little leader’s behavior. She was stuck on the ‘rules’, on following them to the letter, and she obviously needed to appear important to us. No confirmation text message, no entrance. She was worried about there not being enough food; you would have thought she was talking about a full dinner plate per person, which I might have had more understanding for. Not the case. When dinner time came, it was a simple buffet table—egg salads, bread, cold cuts, some fruit and a few cakes—nothing fancy and certainly enough to go around. As it was, there was more than enough food to go around; there were in fact enough leftovers that could have been given to the homeless and the poor who sat right outside the door of the hotel last night, in one of the richest countries in the world. I wonder what happened to the leftovers.

Here’s how the scenario should have played out. This is a Christian organization whose membership decreases for each year that passes, since it mostly consists of middle-aged and elderly women. They are not attracting younger women into the organization. They should be welcoming attendees with open arms, not pushing them away. They should have said immediately at the door, when they saw my friend's text message to them, 'Welcome'. And if there had not been enough food, they should just have said, ‘we’ll manage’, or ‘we can share’. Christ would have done that; he wouldn’t denied people entrance for lack of food. But what struck me the most was the utter lack of hospitality in this little leader; a less hospitable person I have yet to meet. It was disappointing, and it reminds me of how many times I have been disappointed when I have met people who call themselves Christians, yet who do not behave like Christ at all. I don’t care how many times you stand up and talk about the importance of loving others, of being kind to others. If you don’t practice what you preach, your message is not worth a dime in my book. Luckily, the rest of the evening turned out to be enjoyable and more in the spirit of Christianity, so that made up for their little pharisee of a leader. And that was a good thing, because I was moving toward a non-forgiving state of mind after our encounter with her. That’s certainly not the goal of attending such a meeting. 

Limiting the power of self-limiting beliefs over us

Is being happy an emotional option, something we can choose to be in our daily lives? If so, why don’t we choose to be happy more often? The answer may be a bit more surprising than you might think. How we choose to respond to a specific situation that happens to us or around us has to do with our belief system--about ourselves and the world around us. We may not even be fully aware of these beliefs (conscious of their presence) or of the impact they have on our lives. That is the premise of a short and unassuming book I read last week that led me to start thinking about the beliefs that I grew up with and that may still affect my present life and the choices I make. It is not the events of ordinary life per se that make us unhappy or that cause our unhappiness, rather it is how we choose to respond to them based on the beliefs that we have about ourselves that lead to un-happiness, as the author of Emotional Options, Mandy Evans, puts it. Un-happiness is the opposite of happiness--the state of not being happy. This definition suggests the idea of choice or the idea of a switch; that one could perhaps choose to switch on happiness and switch off un-happiness. It suggests that happiness is an option, a choice that we exercise to use or not to use. So that much of what happens in our ordinary lives—love, friendships, workplace interactions, and so forth—do not in and of themselves make us happy or unhappy. Yes, love can disappear or end; yes, friendships can disintegrate or we can be betrayed or deeply disappointed; yes, workplace interactions can be difficult or downright impossible leading us to feel like failures. The author’s point is that bad things happen to good people; you cannot escape or prevent that fact. Sickness and death happen, for example, betrayal and divorce likewise. The list goes on. How we respond to the bad things that happen to us is a choice that we make, even if we are not really aware of the fact that we are choosing. Our choices will make us happy or un-happy. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? When I first read this, I thought, I’ve heard this before in various guises. It’s not uncommon to hear from the self-help world that you can choose to be happy. But after thinking about it, I realized that it’s not very common to hear that un-happiness, or the state of being un-happy, is the result of some rather limiting beliefs we have about ourselves and the world around us. And it is those beliefs that are difficult to confront and subsequently change or root out. Some of those beliefs have seeped into our subconscious minds after years of hearing them repeated—by parents, teachers, authority figures, sometimes even partners/friends, and finally by ourselves to ourselves.

Mandy Evans points out that we all have a belief system—some of those beliefs we are aware of, others we are unaware of. Some of those beliefs are self-defeating beliefs (Mandy’s words), and take the following forms: waiting for happiness beliefs (many people experience this, I call it the IF ONLY way of living—I’ll be happy if only I become successful, rich, if I get even, get promoted, etc. Many people live for the future and if you asked them whether they are happy in the here and now, they wouldn’t know how to answer, because they are so focused on future happiness); events control your feelings beliefs; beliefs about anger; beliefs about changing circumstances; life-extinguishing beliefs; beliefs about punishment. And if a society believes in the value of punishment, we can find ourselves burdened with dealing with the following: the chiding inner monologue (you’re no good, you’re a fake, you don’t deserve success or happiness. How many of us can honestly say we don’t feel that way sometimes? Most women I know do, including myself, and believe me, it’s not easy to deliver a lecture about your work and feel that way when you step up to the podium); verbal abuse directed at someone else; physical abuse; torture and death. She defines happiness as emotional freedom. How do we get there? That’s what this book should help you with—getting there. And when you arrive there, it should be able to help you stay there, because there’s always the possibility of slipping backwards. We don’t live in a perfect world, so we will never achieve perfection of the self. But if we confront ourselves when we think in black and white rigid ways, or when we are afraid, anxious, depressed or defeatist, picking up this book, reading it through and asking ourselves the questions it poses can help. I bought a Kindle version of the book, and have already highlighted many passages. It will help me find those sections that I might want to re-read at a future point when I need a pep talk. Because I admit it, I need pep talks. My inner voices are not always kind to me. I wish I knew where they came from. I feel sure that some of them are a direct result of our upbringing in the 1970s: it was not a good thing to be proud, assertive, boastful, too smart, too good-looking, too free, too anything. Like the ‘jantelov’ in Norway (you should never think that you are ‘someone’ or that you are better than anyone else), some of the ways we woman were encouraged to behave when we were growing up were downright detrimental to our self-esteem and held many of us down, or kept us in our ‘places’. But isn’t it the case that we chose to stay in our places, or that it is easier to blame men or bad bosses or ungrateful friends for what has become of us in life? The fact remains that there are unenlightened men who want to hold women down or keep them out of the upper echelons of power, and there are bad bosses. What we do with these situations, how we respond to them, is what ultimately leads us to happiness or un-happiness. I don't have to be unkind or get angry in order to deal with them; it's a choice. I have to admit that I have reacted angrily to situations that may have worked out better had I not done so. Emotional freedom; for me--not wasting energy on people and issues that drain me and suck the life out of me (emotional vampirism). Not being angry at myself and others for things I haven't been clear about up until now. Who knew emotional freedom (how you yourself define it) could be so important for our well-being? The author states clearly that she doubts that beliefs govern all of our feelings. But she knows for certain that what you believe plays a strong and overlooked role in everything you feel. So if you ‘believe’ that you should listen yet once more to an emotional vampire, or accept psychological abuse at the hands of a bad boss—in other words, if you believe that you should be a victim—you will choose to be one. It makes sense to me.

Happy 17th of May to Norway

Today, May 17th, is Norway's Constitution Day and an official national holiday. In 1814, the Constitution of Norway, declaring Norway to be an independent nation, was signed on May 17th in the city of Eidsvoll. I've written a bit about the national holiday before; it is a day filled with celebrations of all kinds, from party breakfasts to parades to school events to barbecues to sit-down dinners. I don't think I've ever seen as many flags waving as fly on this day--on buses, taxis, balconies--overall.

And the Oslo downtown area around midday is packed with people all wanting to
see the parade that marches past the Royal Palace, where the King and Queen and other members of the royal family stand on the balcony and wave to the passing marchers. How they're dressed and what hats are worn (by the women and the men) are always commented upon in the media that day and the following day.

When I first came to Norway, my husband and I would often walk down into town to watch the parade, buy a hot-dog and an ice cream, and wander around for a few hours, especially if the weather was sunny and nice. It was always enjoyable to be among the groups of folk milling about. There was definitely a feeling of electricity and energy in the air. Nowadays we watch the parade on TV for a while, and then go out to eat an early dinner. This year, as in previous years, we will find our way to Morten's Kro, where the food (many traditional dishes) is always good. I wrote about Morten's Kro in this blog already three years ago (http://paulamdeangelis.blogspot.no/2010/05/independence-day.html).

All that's left is to wish my Norwegian family and friends a Happy 17th of May! I leave you with a photo of the flowers I bought yesterday--festive with their red, white and blue colors and a little flag ribbon, followed by a photo of the Norwegian flag that I found on internet.

Meetings--the socially acceptable alternative to working

Someone hung up a rather humorous poster on one of the bulletin boards at work; I found it too good not to share. The wording is in Norwegian, so I translated it, and it hasn’t lost any of its humor. Very fitting end to a busy work week. Enjoy. I don't know who the author is or who created the poster, but if and when I find out I will update this post.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Are you lonely?

Do you hate making decisions?

Would you rather talk than get things done?

Why not SCHEDULE A MEETING?

You can:

·         Meet other people

·         Doze off in familiar surroundings

·         Postpone decisions

·         Take copious amounts of useless notes

·         Feel important

·         Impress and/or bore your colleagues

Do all this on company time!

MEETINGS—The Socially Acceptable Alternative to Working

(Federal Public Service Information)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have to admit that I find this hysterically funny, mostly because it’s true. So many meetings are unproductive excuses to waste time. I prefer to avoid them as much as possible, unless there is a specific agenda, they are infrequent, and they last no longer than one hour. In my experience, only about twenty-five percent of workplace meetings actually end up being productive, in the sense that a question is asked/answered or a problem discussed/solved. Too often, meetings end with the agreement to schedule yet another meeting to discuss things further. To be fair, meetings are only as successful as the planning that goes into them.

Workplaces schedule meetings to discuss all sorts of things: who is entitled to an office and/or a higher salary, budget priorities, project planning, end-of-year meetings to discuss employee performance. The list is endless. Meeting leaders have to know when to rein in a discussion, when to tell those who enjoy digressing to cut it out, when to sum up what has been discussed and when to end a meeting. The worst types of meetings in my experience are those that are called to discuss how to proceed with large unwieldy projects that are too big for their own good. Meaning, too many people are involved in planning them and planning how other people are going to do the work; meanwhile, there are too few hands to do the work. In other words, too many chiefs and not enough Indians. Those types of projects inevitably ‘require’ progress reports. Is the project going somewhere? Has there been progression? The answer is often no, more times than not. These types of waste-of-time projects and associated meetings were more common a decade ago, and were tedious.

Workplaces these days are often complicated places, top-heavy with administrators who love meetings, or so it seems. It also seems to me that leaders spend most of their time going to meetings; that seems to be part of the job description. I often wonder how they stay awake, how they are able to follow the threads of discussions and how they are able to switch gears and go from one meeting to another. And then there are the meetings to discuss problems (e.g. with personnel) that are fruitless because the problems cannot be solved no matter how much they are discussed. Other times decisions are reversed because they were not good ones in the first place. Ironically, workplaces have become unstable environments in constant flux; the one constant is that you can look forward to a meeting being scheduled for tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. Count on it.

A new poem

Plato’s dream

Being born

From nothing

Taking form

Now something

Outside space and time

Perfection of the Forms

Acquiring a body

Changes rules and norms

Seeking back to birth

Time before in space

Seeking back to earth

Before the fall from grace

5 May 2013

copyright Paula Mary De Angelis

This poem is part of a collection that I will be publishing later on this year. 

The ever-growing world of apps and the QR Droid

The old idiom, ’you learn something new every day’, is true. The older I get, the more there is to learn every day, not less. The world of computers, smart phones, tablets, e-books and a myriad of other new gadgets ensure that this is the case. The advances and updates keep me quite occupied in my free time. The world of ‘apps’ by itself is overwhelming. I’m always rather surprised at how many apps there are out there whenever I use my smart phone to download yet another free app. New ones every day—some of them useful, others not. But I downloaded a rather useful app today, the QR Droid, after having been to the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art here in Oslo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrup_Fearnley_Museum_of_Modern_Art) for the first time since it opened in its new location at Tjuvholmen on the Oslo waterfront. My husband and I went to see an exhibition called Untitled Horrors by the American photographer Cindy Sherman. Fascinating exhibit, well-worth seeing, sometimes bizarre, often unsettling, overall mesmerizing. What I noticed as I was walking past the photos was that many of the photo descriptions included a quick response (QR) code, and that some spectators were using their smart phones to scan the codes that then connected them to an online site that provided information about the photographs. Very smart, as it obviated the need for museum headsets that provide the same thing; at least that is what I assume was the case, since I didn't have the necessary app on my smart phone to try this at the museum. The museum provided free Wifi and a passkey on the entrance tickets. I’ve seen these QR codes many times before, but somehow had not gotten around to wanting to understand their utility until now. Although I have registered that shopping discounts and coupons are available for those who can use this system. Perhaps not completely fair to unenlightened shoppers, but there will be fewer of them as time goes on. The QR Droid app, besides allowing your phone to read a QR code, also lets you create one. I’m not sure yet how that would be personally useful, but I’m sure it won’t take me long to find out. I just checked out some customer reviews of this app, and one of them mentioned using it to create a QR business card. Others mentioned using it for web links and contact details. I see the potential. As I said when I started today’s post, you learn something new every day. That’s what makes life interesting. 

As an addendum to this post, I just tried creating a QR code for my blog, A New Yorker in Oslo, and it worked. Here is the QR code for those of you who would like to try it:

Using social networks

I read an article the other day that indicated that Facebook's popularity was waning, especially among younger people. That doesn’t surprise me; what surprises me is that the level of interest in any social network is sustainable for more than five years, given the short attention spans we have developed for most things technological or IT-related. It’s the nature of the beast; something better is always going to come along eventually and supplant the king of the jungle. I suppose that’s the way it should be; at least that’s been the name of the game for as long as I can remember.

I use the social networks Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, and I use them for different purposes. I think most people might say the same. It’s a conscious decision on my part to keep them separate from each other. Facebook is my way of keeping in touch with friends and family in the USA, and to some extent, here in Europe. You’d be surprised at how difficult it’s become to get people who live only a town or two away from Oslo, together in one room for a social event. Planning an evening out with three or more people has become a major affair; it’s often easier to update each other on what’s going on via Facebook. So instead of writing five emails a week to friends, I update my status on Facebook several times per week, but not on a daily basis.  So Facebook is for personal use. I use Twitter for professional purposes; I follow most science-related sites; the list grows ever longer. I am now following sites that have to do with politics and government, and find them interesting as well. Not surprising perhaps, when you understand the importance of politics in the creation of policies for how science should be made understandable and relevant for the public (e.g. climate change, global warming, science education in schools, sustainable energy sources). When I started off using Twitter, I wasn’t sure what it might be good for, and I didn’t understand why people sang its praises. Now I know. It’s an amazing way of getting news as it happens. Science publishers like Nature and Science have discovered this; they need only post a short tweet as to what the new hot article is on their websites and in their journals and they’re guaranteed that interested readers will read their tweets and click on the relevant links. New scientific discoveries and interesting new articles spread like wildfire. So I use Twitter to stay updated on what is going on in my field, as well as in science generally. I even credit Twitter with getting me interested in astronomy. You need only follow NASA on Twitter (https://twitter.com/NASA) to understand why. If I had been better in math, I might have been an astronomer, the field is that interesting. Daily Science is another site I follow; you can find them here: https://twitter.com/DailyScienceUp. Guardian Science is another favorite; you can find them here: https://twitter.com/guardianscience. And if you’re interested in following me on Twitter, here is the link: https://twitter.com/paulamdeangelis.

Finally, LinkedIn; it doesn’t surprise me at all that potential employers/recruiters utilize this site frequently. I read an article the other day (courtesy of Twitter) that reported that LinkedIn was the social network that most recruiters use (http://www.livescience.com/29178-recruiters-find-job.html?cmpid=514645). What other platform provides CVs, references, and personal/professional interests for potential candidates for employment? Better yet, what other platform provides you with a candidate’s connections, that may be even more interesting (employable) than the actual candidate in question? This network, like Twitter, is reserved for my professional use, and I plan on keeping it that way. I am careful as to whom I include as a connection, as I want to build a network that can be valuable to me professionally. A nice touch is that your connections can write recommendations for you that are published on the site. Potential employers read such things. Your connections can also recommend specific skills, but I find this aspect less useful than an actual written recommendation.

How things have changed during the past ten years. In that sense, who knows what the next ten years will bring? One thing is certain; there is a new social network or platform just waiting in the wings, whether you like it or not, or whether the current social networks like it or not. That’s the nature of the beast.