A walk down memory lane

I am A New Yorker in England at present, in Cambridge to be specific. My husband and I are on vacation, and this year, we decided to return to the place where we first met twenty-six years ago. We met at a scientific (flow cytometry) conference that was held at Cambridge University (scroll down to end photo). The majority of the lectures and parallel sessions were held at Trinity College. It was my first time in Europe, and my first opportunity to attend an international conference. I arrived alone in London a few days before the conference, and made my way to the Belgravia section of London where I had booked a room at a small boarding house run by an immigrant Italian couple. I spent those days touring London, Bath, and Stonehenge on my own before heading north to Cambridge by train from King’s Cross station. It was an exciting time—making my way around London and taking day trips from London by bus at a time when internet, cell phones and social media were non-existent. 

The first time I was in Cambridge, I became completely captivated by the city and the university. I soaked in the university atmosphere. What made the experience complete was being able to live in a dorm room for the week of the conference. The room was austere, fit for a monk, containing a bed and a desk and chair, and not much else. The bathroom was down the hall, to be shared by the inhabitants of the dorm rooms on that floor. The dorm building was a stone’s throw from Trinity College, so it was a pleasure to wake up and to walk across the street to get breakfast in one of the main dining rooms with long tables (think Harry Potter at Hogwarts where he and his friends sat at those long tables, and you’ll get the idea). This is where we ate breakfasts and dinners—formal affairs where the food was served from the head of the table and passed along down to each diner. I remember some really good dinners—roast beef and roast lamb with different sauces. The organizers of the conference made sure that we experienced real university life. I spent some time wandering around the city’s many bookstores; the end result was that my luggage became much heavier, and I ended up having to ship the many books I bought back to New York as I could not haul them around for the rest of my stay in England. After the conference was over, a colleague and I took the overnight train from London to Edinburgh and toured Scotland for several days, before returning to London for the trip back to New York. I met my husband a few days before we left Cambridge, and we managed to spend some time together wandering around the city and getting to know each other before we returned to our respective countries. The rest, as they say, is history.

Yesterday, we wandered down the same streets as we did when we first met. We discovered that some of our memories of what transpired many years ago were faulty, whereas the walk through the city brought back other memories that had been buried. We stood on one bridge overlooking the river Cam and watched the amateur punters trying to steer their boats in the right direction in order to avoid crashing into other boats. It brought back memories of punting with my colleagues from Memorial Sloan-Kettering; my former boss was the designated punter, and he did his level best to keep from falling into the water and ruining his leather jacket and shoes. He managed that amidst our laughter and teasing. My colleagues also joined me for a traditional English tea with scones and clotted cream at a tea house in the city center; my two wishes upon landing in England, both of which were fulfilled, were to experience a traditional English teatime and to eat fish and chips. We also enjoyed a beer together at the Eagle pub that Watson and Crick (of DNA fame) frequented.

Today, we met an old friend, Judith, whom we both know from the time when she did her doctorate in Norway; she and Charlie kindly made the trip from London to Cambridge, and we met at the Fort St. George pub/restaurant on the Midsummer Common for lunch. It was a beautiful warm sunny day and three hours passed in pleasant conversation. On parting, we made plans to keep in touch and hopefully they will visit us in Norway at some future point.

One of my ‘bucket list’ wishes is to take a summer literature course at Cambridge University. I have already found some online information about the different courses available. It would be a real privilege to study at Cambridge, even if only for a few weeks, and I hope it comes to pass.

These photos of Cambridge University are from 1987, and were taken from the tower of Great St. Mary's Church, which provided me with wonderful views of the university buildings and city. The photos of the Bridge of Sighs were taken during our punting trip on the river Cam. 

notice the beautiful lawns 

King's College

Bridge of Sighs, St. John's College

Bridge of Sighs

The island of Gressholmen

This past Tuesday was another warm summer day in Oslo; blue skies with some clouds, even rather hazy toward the early evening. Perfect boating weather. My husband and I ended up out on the Oslo fjord for a few hours, first sailing past Tjuvholmen and Aker Brygge, then Rådhusplassen, and then around the island of Hovedøya where we sometimes end up if we’re in the mood for a really good seafood dinner. But this time we had taken dinner with us to eat on the boat—shrimp, a loaf of bread, and mayonnaise. We ended up docking at the guest marina on the small island of Gressholmen. It didn’t take the ducks and geese very long to discover that we had bread on the boat; they swam up to the boat to get some handouts shortly after we docked.

Gressholmen is a nature reserve with many types of wild flowers and plants; up until 2007 it was also home to thousands of rabbits, but they were unfortunately done away with so as to preserve the natural vegetation. The reason given for killing the rabbits was that they decimated the vegetation. I’m not sure this was the only reason, but who can argue with the nameless authorities and bureaucrats who make these decisions? The rabbits weren’t hurting anyone; in fact, they were one of the main attractions of the island. Cute, and tame enough so that they would hop right up to you as you walked along the island’s many narrow dirt paths. That happened to us any number of times. These days the island feels rather empty without them.

I took a lot of photos that evening, as the lighting and the weather were perfect. Some are of the island’s flower and plant life, some of the bird life, and one photo is of the summer restaurant, Gressholmen Kro (http://www.gressholmen.no/index.html), that we frequented much more often during the 1990s. It’s possible to get dinner here; we drank our after-dinner coffee here that evening, walking up from the boat to the kro and along the way stopping to look at the many wildflowers. And then back to the boat to greet more of the ever-present bird life.

Geese near the boat

Dirt path on the way to the restaurant, where we would often meet the rabbits when they were still alive

Wild rose bush

Wild rose

View of Oslo from Gressholmen

Wild roses

A twig that looked like a snake

Gressholmen Kro

Beautiful song and video

I heard this song by INXS on the radio the other day, after many years of not hearing it played. What a beautiful song! And the video is also, having been filmed in Prague, which is a lovely city. 

I love the lines:  'Cause we all have wings, But some of us don't know why'. There's something to reflect on--the knowledge and awareness of having been given great talents and gifts that should be used, but not knowing exactly why they were given to you. I love the vulnerability and honesty in those lines. That's how I choose to interpret them. 

"Never Tear Us Apart" by INXS

Don't ask me
What you know is true
Don't have to tell you
I love your precious heart

I
I was standing
You were there
Two worlds collided
And they could never tear us apart

We could live
For a thousand years
But if I hurt you
I'd make wine from your tears

I told you
That we could fly
'Cause we all have wings
But some of us don't know why

I
I was standing
You were there
Two worlds collided
And they could never ever tear us apart

In praise of fathers

I am reminded of my father at different moments in my life; I can be reading a good book or watching a movie, and suddenly I’ll think of him and want to talk to him about the book or the movie I know he would have liked. I remember our long walks on hot summer evenings when I was a teenager, just him and me, ambling slowly along Broadway in Tarrytown, down as far as the Sunnyside estate and then back. We always had something to talk about. Or I’ll remember him toward the end of his life, when illness had weakened him and he had become a fragile man. Those are the ‘memories that bless and burn’, as my mother used to say. I am reminded of him and of all of the elderly fathers in his generation who are still alive, today on Father’s Day. Some of them (like my friend Jean’s father whom I look forward to seeing each year on my annual trip to NY) are sick and struggling to get well; I send my best wishes for a good recovery from across the ocean. They are always in my thoughts and prayers, but especially today. They are a part of a generation that is fast fading away; many of them served valiantly in WWII and that experience shaped the rest of their lives. They might have married and had families, but they also shared camaraderie with their fellow soldiers, the depth of which none of us will ever really understand. Most of them were sparse with details concerning their wartime experiences. My father was no exception; we knew he was stationed in England and that he helped load bombs onto planes (the reason for his chronic back problems), but that was the extent of it. There are some photos to that effect. What he mostly imparted to us was his feelings about England--how much he loved the country and the British people. That’s what he talked about, and that’s what stayed with him many years after the war. He kept in touch with an older married couple he met there, and they would write him long letters telling him about what was going on in their little neck of England. Sometimes they sent pictures of their son and his friends. I remember the letters he received; they were always on blue airmail paper (still available at Amazon, of course: http://www.amazon.com/Kikkerland-Mailblok-Airmail-Paper-Block/dp/B004VNAOT4). I remember that paper, having written a number of airmail letters, and I can remember the excitement I felt about receiving an airmail letter in the post.

The thing that strikes me about my father now, when I think of him, was how willing he was to share his life with us. He was not a selfish man when it came to his feelings and thoughts. That is what I remember about him today, on Father’s Day, how his willingness to share his feelings and thoughts helped to create a family life that I remember to this day. Because the latter is not possible if its participants shut down, close themselves off, make themselves remote to those around them. It is not possible to be fully private and to be an active family member. I think my father found a good balance; he was a reserved man in many ways, but he was also a social one who looked forward to gathering the family at the dinner table in the evenings when we were growing up, to good conversation, and to holidays when his brother and sister would come to visit. Ours was not a perfect family; there were the requisite family dramas and squabbles as in most families. My parents didn’t always tackle them as well as they should have. But that’s not what I remember all these years later. What I remember is my father coming home from work and us children rushing to greet him at the door. Or his taking us to the Westchester County stamp fairs so that we could get interested in stamp collecting (his hobby that eventually spurred the rest of us to start our own collections). Or his taking us to the Sunday afternoon classical music concerts at the Washington Irving junior high school—classical music was another love of his. Or his willingness to discuss nearly any book you might want to discuss with him; if he hadn’t read it, he would read it so as to form an opinion about it. He left this world far too early, but what he shared with his family remains with me forever. Happy Father's Day to him and to all the fathers I know who take the chance and are willing to share their thoughts, feelings, and pastimes with their families.   

A blue-sky day

This past Tuesday, I left work early in order to enjoy the sunshine, the warmth, and the gorgeous blue sky. I was apparently not the only one who had that idea; there were many people who left early that day. It was an exceptionally nice summer day in Oslo, even though it's not officially summer yet. I was lying out in the sun, looking at the sky and the life around me. The colors of the green trees and the lilac bushes in the yard where we live against the blue-sky backdrop were vivid and lovely, and as usual, I took some pictures. Enjoy......

Loving movies

I’ve been a movie-goer for what seems like forever. I can remember the wonderful feelings associated with going to see films as a child; the anticipation, excitement, the experience of sitting in the theater waiting for the film to start—all of those feelings are still with me now whenever I enter the movie theater, many years later. I love sitting in the dark watching the big screen, waiting for the magic to start; no matter how many possibilities exist for watching films in other formats, nothing will ever replace the wonder of the big screen for me. The first two films I can remember seeing as a young child were Snow White, a Disney animated classic, and That Darn Cat starring Hayley Mills, whom we all wanted to be at that time—cute and adventurous. My mother took us to see both films at The Music Hall in Tarrytown. I can remember the long line to buy tickets that stretched around the corner onto Broadway—parents with their children. Hayley Mills also starred in a film called The Moon-Spinners, another favorite of ours from 1964, but one that we saw as a two-part television series several years later on ‘The Wonderful World of Disney’ that ran on NBC if I remember correctly, at least at the time when we were children. As a family, we went to see Oliver! (1968) and The Twelve Chairs (1970); my parents wanted to see these films and I remember struggling to understand the latter film, an early Mel Brooks comedy about the search for jewels hidden in one of twelve dining chairs. But understanding Oliver Twist’s life situation was not so difficult—you could relate to his misery as a fellow child or at least imagine how it must feel to be orphaned and alone in the world. Understanding the brutality of the relationship between Nancy and Bill Sikes was more problematic; not surprising since violence between lovers was not something we knew much about or had seen as children. I wanted to see Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet, which came out in 1968, but my parents would not take us to see it, probably because it had to do with young love (and sex) and my parents did not want us getting ideas in our heads about such things. So I didn’t get a chance to see it until I was in my early 20s. Getting a chance to see a film that you had waited to see for a long time wasn’t like today where you could just rent a film from Netflix or download it from iTunes. If you knew that a film was going to be shown for a limited amount of time, either in the theater or on TV, you made plans to see it, because you never knew when you would be able to catch it again.

I am one of those people who enjoy doing post-mortems on films I’ve seen—dissecting the plot, the symbolism, the movie’s philosophy, what it all meant, the characters, the acting—all of it. Very few people I know enjoy doing this to the degree I do; you come out of the theater and ask, ‘What did you think of the film?’, and people will respond, ‘I liked it’ or ‘It was very good’, or some such comment. But it’s hard to get most folks involved in a long discussion about the movie. And that has to suffice, because not everyone likes doing movie analyses like I do. I’ve tried, and there are few takers. My father was one of those people who enjoyed discussing movies in detail; he was my conversational partner when it came to the arts—literature, movies, plays, music. Movies are entertainment for most people; they are for me as well, but I like being jolted out of my comfort zone by a movie, and I like finding out why. I want to know why some films provoke me, why others intrigue me or make me sad, how symbolism in one movie reminds me of another movie or of a book I’ve read or a song I’ve heard. I like how film music can trigger nostalgic feelings that remind me of people from my past or a book from long ago. I like the interconnectedness of different art forms, and the fact that I can make the connections if I want to. I want to connect the dots—it seems important to me to do so.  

Stoker and the secrets families keep

The best thing about the recently-released film Stoker is Mia Wasikowska as India Stoker. A glitteringly wild-eyed and intense Matthew Goode as her uncle Charlie Stoker and a befuddled and repressed Nicole Kidman as her mother Evelyn Stoker are very good, but Mia owns the role of India Stoker. I’ve seen her in Alice in Wonderland and in Jane Eyre. I loved the latter film; she was a perfect Jane Eyre in my book. Stoker is about the coming of age of India Stoker, a peculiar teenage girl and only child whose eighteenth birthday celebration is marred by the tragic death of her father Richard Stoker (played by Dermot Mulroney) in a car accident. India as deftly played by Mia Wasikowska is a non-emotional, brooding teenage girl who does not like to be touched and who cannot seem to find her exact place in the world until she meets her uncle Charlie, whose existence she was unaware of until he shows up at her father’s funeral. And then all hell breaks loose. I didn’t find Stoker as shocking as many reviewers have described it, although its cruelty is provocative. It’s not a film for everyone, not a crowd pleaser, and that was clear to me last night when I was at the cinema. It was screened for viewing in one of the smaller auditoriums that ended up half-empty on a Saturday night. Its narrative form reminded me of psychological horror films from the 1970s, where you knew something bad was coming already from the first few minutes of the films and you dreaded it, dreaded watching what gradually unfolded onscreen. I found Stoker rather restrained, detached, and slow-moving but deliberately-paced, almost as though it was an investigation into how murderers are born. On looking back at it, I would guess that this has to do with that most of the story takes place from the perspective of India, whose coming of age and emergence from her cocoon of teenage moodiness as a full-blooded killer are gradual. She responds slowly to the evil and madness in her uncle Charlie, whose attempts to seduce her are not just sexually-motivated; her uncle is turned on by the evil he somehow sees or senses inside of her, and he wants to be the one to bring it out. He is what she needs to turn the screw inside of her, to force her to ‘become herself’, to acknowledge who and what she really is. It’s as though India knew he existed all along, and was just waiting for him to come and release her; this is never more clear than when she reads the letters her uncle has sent to her during her growing-up, which have been hidden from her by her father in a locked box. It is the first time you see her excited and happy, because she understands that someone really understands how she feels, a scenario not unlike what could happen to most normal teenagers. The deliberate pace reflects her own confusion—it’s as though she cannot believe that she really is a killer, and spends most of the film coming to terms with that unpleasant fact. The film is about the making of a killer and the acknowledgment that one is a killer, how to internalize that knowledge and move on with life. India does show some remorse, when she cries in the shower remembering the boy Whip who tried to rape her and who was killed by her uncle. It’s unclear if she’s crying for him or for herself. But once stoked and excited by her newfound feelings, she is a quick learner. In truth, she has already been well taught (stoked) by her father, who took her hunting from a very young age. The movie presents her father as a hero type, one who took care of his brothers and who protected Evelyn and India from uncle Charlie, who ended up in a mental institution after the cold-blooded murder of his little brother when they were children. And you find out along the way who really was responsible for India’s father’s death and why. But you have to wonder why a father would take his daughter hunting for hours at a time, teaching her to be silent, to wait, and then to go in for the kill when the prey makes itself visible. It’s a brutal way to spend hours of time with a child; I could think of so many other pastimes that would have been more appropriate for a father and daughter. It made me wonder if her father had sensed or seen in her some of the traits he had seen in his brother Charlie, and hoped that by teaching her to hunt that he would ward off coming misery. If so, his plan backfired, since he sets his daughter up for the life she eventually chooses. And did her mother sense something odd about India as well, and tried to repress the knowledge? It’s unclear. That is perhaps one weakness in the plot; Evelyn Stoker’s character could have been developed more fully, in order to give us some insight into how the relationship between mother and daughter became so dysfunctional. It is intimated that perhaps Richard loved his daughter more than he loved his wife; it is also fairly clear that Evelyn did not really look forward to having children. The film becomes more imbued with real emotion, becomes less detached and more real, when Evelyn finally begins to wake up and to say how she feels, but by then it is too late for her relationship with India.

Perhaps the most shocking thing in the film is that the emerging killer is a young woman. But the ultimate shocker by the end of the film is that no one is safe, not even uncle Charlie. By then, India has been witness to, and a silent partner in, one murder, and privy to the knowledge of three others committed by her uncle (her father, the housekeeper, and her aunt). Uncle Charlie is merely a liability at this point and she no longer needs him. The film ends with her leaving home; she has come into her own and embraced her own cold-blooded insanity, as exemplified by her deliberately-staged confrontation with the sheriff who suspects she has had something to do with Whip’s disappearance. She has learned to lie and how to throw people off her scent, or how to deal with those who track her. She is her uncle’s protégé, and she has learned her lessons well. 

Figuring out the Norwegian workplace

The job section of this past Sunday’s Aftenposten had an interesting article about Norwegian workplace culture entitled ‘How does the Norwegian boss think’? Foreigners who work in Norway often find themselves at a loss when it comes to figuring out how their bosses think and how to interpret what they say to you—what do they really mean by their comments and remarks, and have you understood the context of what was said? The importance of understanding your workplace and the signals given you by your bosses and colleagues cannot be overemphasized, especially where career advancement and salary are concerned. The article interviewed three Norwegian company directors/leaders who are Norwegian and who had worked internationally; they were asked to comment on what makes Norwegian workplaces different from workplaces in the rest of the world, since Norway’s workplace culture is quite unique (of course, why is this not surprising to me). Here are their thoughts:

• Leader #1 meant that Norwegian workplaces are ‘process-oriented’, not ‘solution-oriented’, and that a problem or an issue could be discussed ad nauseum before a decision is made
• Leader #2 had a similar opinion to leader #1, stating that many foreigners are simply not used to having the entire organization get involved before a decision can be made about a particular issue
• Leader #3 meant that Norwegian workplaces are relatively ‘flat structures’ where each individual employee has a high degree of authority to make his or her own decisions without having to consult a boss

Whenever I read such articles, they trigger some interesting feelings and thoughts, so that I ‘feel a blog post coming on’. I can relate to the first two leader comments; specific issues are discussed over and over in multiple meetings over many months, perhaps years, before decisions are reached. Frustrating? Yes. My question is why this has to be the norm. However, and this is the crux of the matter, someone ultimately has to make the final decision. Whether it is a committee at the top of an organization, or one person, someone has to take the ultimate responsibility. An organization of several hundred individuals is not responsible for a final decision; some of them may come with input and advice toward a decision, but the responsibility lies ultimately with company leaders. Who makes the ultimate decision can often be a mystery, and whether or not employees are informed about a final decision rests with those who are responsible for communicating it. Information flow downwards can be a true exercise in frustration. There is no transparency at the top of huge public sector workplaces, in any case. And I disagree entirely with the third leader; it has not been my experience in my public sector workplace that each individual employee has a say concerning a decision to be made that will affect them. Simply not true. The third leader has simply not visited my workplace recently; the six or more levels of (administrative) leadership between the individual employee and the top echelons ensure that you as an individual employee have little to no authority to make decisions that affect your daily work life. You can individually be the most ‘solution-oriented’ employee in the world; it won’t matter. You are forced to deal with the top-heavy administrative levels above you. Take ordering a lab reagent or small piece of equipment, for example; before a necessary item can be ordered, at least six to eight people need to be involved in the process of ordering—the person who needs the product and who informs the relevant department person who then registers the order and passes it along in the system to the person (or persons) who actually order the product on the computer. But we’re not done yet. They may order or they may pass the order along to yet another office that will do the ordering. It all depends, on what I’m not sure. Project funds have to be checked to make sure there is enough money to order the product; that can involve the accounting department. And if the item is actually ordered, it is shipped to a central receiving department that then delivers the item to the person who registered the order, not to the person who needed the item. This means that the secretarial consultants who register the orders receive on average ten packages a day. They must check their files to find out who needed the product ordered and then chase down the relevant person who requested the item. The actual invoice goes to an unknown place; no one is really sure where it ends up or how it gets paid. If this was truly my call (if I had any real authority), I'd call, fax, or email the company myself with my order, cutting out the multiple middlemen, and have the item delivered directly to me. The current ordering process reminds me of the excellent film Brazil, about the tentacles of bureaucracy and how when they find you, they can destroy your life and peace of mind. My question is—why do we need all these people involved? This was not my decision, to make it so complicated. And perhaps more importantly—is there any one person who understands the system well enough to explain it to others? No one seems to have thought of that. 

My conclusion is that these three leaders espouse a politically-correct rhetoric. It makes employees feel good to read that they have some autonomy and can influence the decision process; in truth they have little autonomy and little influence, at least in the public sector. We may have had more of both back in the 1990s, but no more. 

According to the article, a number of companies have started to offer courses about understanding Norwegian workplace culture, to employees who come from other countries/cultures with a different way of doing things. Such courses, along with formal career guidance, were non-existent when I arrived in Norway. I don’t know if they would have helped or not, since I work in the public, not the private sector, and most of these newspaper job articles seem to deal with the private sector. But one thing is certain; communication with bosses in the public or private sector can be muddled, messages from them unclear, ditto for job tasks and definitions. How can you know for sure if your recent efforts on a particular project are praiseworthy or not? Are you being considered for advancement in your organization? Should you actively seek out career advancement, mentors and advocates? Will you be considered too aggressive if you do, or will it be considered appropriately professional to do so? No one really tells you what to do or how to behave, at least not directly to your face. You have to figure out most of these kinds of things on your own, because communication is often very indirect, and suggestions to employees as to how to go about doing things may be presented in a rather offhand informal manner. This is the art of thinking like a Norwegian in your workplace—figuring it all out for yourself, except that if you are Norwegian, you have understood this from the get-go. As a foreigner, you will miss the signals that tell you that what you’ve just been told is important, you will make a fair amount of mistakes before you understand how to respond or react, how to deal with your bosses, and how to understand their dealings and communication with you, and you will waste a fair amount of time trying to understand a system that cannot be understood (my impression). In that sense, I miss the directness and assertiveness of American workplaces; communication between boss and employee is often much clearer and easier to understand, perhaps more formal and professional, yes, but I prefer that to ambiguity and vague promises and suggestions.  

More Street Art in Oslo

I first published a post about street art in Oslo back in October 2012:  http://paulamdeangelis.blogspot.no/2012/10/street-art-in-oslo.html. I am always looking for more of it when I walk around the city, and every now and then I luck out. Like with these images--colorful and different. I don't know who the artists are, but they sure don't lack for imagination.

If you want to check out some really good street art sites on Facebook, try Street Art in the United States: https://www.facebook.com/streetartunitedstates and Street Art in Germany: https://www.facebook.com/StreetArtGermany.

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.

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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)

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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.