Wordfeud

Don't start with it... It is dangerously addictive. Since my other half and I first downloaded it, we've hardly said a word to eachother...Only typed it on the board,-for points!

The art of growing up

You hand me the envelope that arrived in the mail today and sit down by the kitchen counter to play with your ipod. I look at the envelope and recognize the logo as one of several credit card companies. I open it slowly, with a knot in my stomach, just to discover that the amount is a tad higher than expected.
I sigh.
You look up from your 'angry birds'-game and ask; “is something wrong?”
I look at you, the piece of paper and then you again. I sigh.
-“Growing up sucks.”

There. I said it. It sucks. Simple as that. I think sometimes you just need to say it out loud. Get it out of your system… although saying it out loud tends to make people frown. They call it “whining”… and nobody likes that. To be honest with you, I don’t like whining either…

2011 was (and still is) the year I turned 30. 3-0… a combination of numbers that frighten me. The safe, comfortable “2” that used to be first, is now gone…

With the number thirty, comes great responsibility. There are certain expectations that follow the number. And I think it is those expectations more than the actual number that bothers me. ‘Cause lets face it; not turning 30 would be far worse.

You look up from your game, raise an eyebrow and ask what kind of expectations I am talking about. I look at you… still 29 and innocent…I shake my head and put the bill down on the counter.

In our society today, being 30 usually means that you should have fulfilled a certain list of tasks. If you have not fulfilled this list, you have, thanks to our wonderful society, reasons to be concerned. The list, which I admit may be different from community to community, usually comprises the following (to a minimum):
- A fulltime job
- A privately owned apartment or house
- A partner

Although I do currently possess all of these things, and thereby shouldn’t have to worry, I still dislike the word ‘expectations’. I disagree that you are falling behind on anything if you miss one or several points on the list. In fact; the freer you are from the list, the more you can truly live!
Let me explain.

A fulltime job is necessary to pay the bills. And more importantly, to pay back the humongous student loan you’ve built up. However, having a full time job makes it very hard to be spontaneous. Everything needs to be planned weeks and weeks ahead. There will be no sudden weekend getaways with cheap flight tickets, unless you have cleared it with your boss first…2-3 weeks ahead (when the flight tickets were expensive and out of question). The irony here is of course that when you were a student, and actually had the time and opportunity to be spontaneous, you had no money to go through with it…

An apartment or house is something that usually follows the fulltime job. Without the job you won’t afford the apartment. Nor will you get a loan to cover the expense. Owning your own home is also great in that you can do whatever you wish with the interior. Paint whatever needs to be painted, buy furniture that is meant to stay in the same spot for years to come. However…(of course there had to be one) with a home comes stress. Suddenly it is your and not your landlords problem if something goes wrong. Suddenly you need to take care of leaks, mold, cracks and whatever unforeseen problem that may arise. There will be worries, there will be large amounts in your bank accounts, written in a nasty red color with a minus in front. Don’t misinterpret me. I still think owning a home is wonderful…it just tends to be a little stressful sometimes.

A partner is something most people would like to have, regardless of sexual preference, religion and social status. I am not going to say anything bad about having a partner, since I do find not having one worse than the little annoyances that comes with having one. Besides, I think it is good to have another person around to relate to… whether it is a partner, a friend or family. Living all alone for too long makes people eccentric. The problem I have with this point on the list is not related to having one, but the stress that comes with not having one at this stage in life. People tend to get married and start families once they reach the end of their twenties and beginning of thirties. Not having a partner in all this mess, when everyone around you start popping babies and invite you to couples dinners, is a situation I do not wish upon my worst enemy. The horror of having to sit through an entire dinner with only one topic (babies, babies and more babies) without being able to relate to it, is like watching a foreign movie without subtitles.

Don’t get me wrong. Im pretty sure that when the day comes (if it comes) that I decide to breed I too will become obsessed with this tiny, wrinkled, drooling individual that is incapable of doing anything else than eating, sleeping and move bowels.

So what would be the alternative?

This is where we have reached the main issue with getting older. There is no alternative. You will get older. You do eventually need a fulltime job. You will need a home, although it is perfectly ok to rent and not buy, you will save a whole lot of dough by actually buying. - And the older you get, the stronger the needs become. You are expected to be responsible. If you wish to have kids at some point in your life, you need to start thinking about it…the clock (which I have heard so much about and never paid attention to) is actually ticking! Suddenly it becomes apparent that if you want more than one child before you reach 40 (when the chances of complications increase) you better get busy! Can you hear the clock? Tick…tick...tick. I want to smash it.- With a Barbie-pink bat covered in rhinestones and glitter.

It is starting to dawn on me why earlier generations always claim the twenties as the best years of their lives. They were years filled with no expectations and reckless living. Although I’ve always been aware that life happens today and not tomorrow, I’ve still found myself twisted up in the web of maturity…thinking ahead, dreaming of having a fulltime job (instead of being a poor student), owing my own place (instead of living in a mold-infested closet sized dump). And I worry that the years of dreaming is now behind me. I worry that I soon will start looking backwards instead of ahead. I worry about things I didn’t know you could worry about. And I realize that ‘worry’ and ‘mature’ are two words that go hand in hand.

The way I see it; I can do one of two things. I can be miserable and long for the carefree years of being a student, being poor but being free. Or I can embrace the future. I can continue to look ahead and dream of things that will be instead of what was. I can remind myself how stressful exams, grades and uncertainties were and embrace the comfort of a steady income.

And most importantly; I can take advantage of every opportunity I get to experience something new. ‘Cause lets face it. Opportunity knocks on everyone’s door, regardless of sex, nationality and not to forget; age.

Bring it on sister! Im ready for my thirties.

In the Wake of Terror, Oslo 22th of July.

The past week, Ive been wanting to write something about the recent terror attacks in Oslo, Norway. I’ve sat down a couple of times, reached for the computer and opened Microsoft Word just to stare at an empty, white page…

It is not that I don’t know what to write about, it is more a question of how to write. How do you express and put into words an emotion you’ve never had before?

I realize that alone is a testament to my protected way of living. The very fact that I now feel in ways I’ve never felt before, is a proof of the comfort of the society I’ve grown up in. I imagine that if you are from the US or the UK, and especially London, you may look at the photos from Oslo that has been circulating the media lately and wonder what is different from Oslo to what keeps happening all over the world? You may look at images of people crying, dust covering destroyed buildings and pieces of paper caught in the wind from the explosion and think that this…this is no worse than September 11th. This is no worse than terror attacks in London. And you are right.

Any act that takes the lives of innocent people is equally atrocious.

I think part of the reason why Norwegians are so consumed of what has happened, why we are so shocked by this particular incident, and why every TV station is running 24/7 on news from Oslo and Utøya, is the very fact that this has never happened before. Not only has it not happened before, we never in our wildest dreams thought it could happen. Not in Norway. Not in our small, somewhat naïve society.

To those of you who are not familiar with Norwegian customs and law, I can give a few pinpoints into our governmental system regarding crime and safety.

• In Norway the justice system is based on integration rather than punishment. This usually means short (in international standards) jail sentences in apartments rather than prison cells.


• Our police officers are not allowed to carry firearms on a regular basis.


• Governmental buildings are rarely fenced in and thereby accessible to the public.

In fact, the last time I was in Oslo, the only building I can remember being surrounded by guards and fences, was the US embassy! The royal palace on the other hand, the very neighbour to the US embassy, has no fences. This is just the way our society works. It is to a very high degree based on trust.

So when I sat on the bus on my way home from work, Friday July 22nd, and a young woman in front turned and asked whether any of us in the back had heard of “the bomb that went off in Oslo”, we looked at her with a frown wondering who this crazy person was. I got up to get off at the next stop and she looked at me and asked me if I had internet access. I shook my head and got off the bus. But the terror in her eyes worried me, and I made a phone call to my boyfriend, who was still at work, and asked him to check the online news. Words like “Al Qaeda”, “terrorist attack” and “car bomb” intertwined with “Oslo” filled the online media. The knot that grew in my stomach is indescribable. I told my boyfriend to use other means of transportation home rather than the new, much profiled and hyped, light rail he would normally use. I couldn’t help thinking that if this was in deed a terrorist attack, Bergen could be next.

Obviously, as the evening went on and new reports of shootings at Utøya ticked in, it became apparent that all of this was the result of, not extreme islamists, not Al Qaeda, but an ethnical, blonde Norwegian.

It was someone who had grown up in our society. Someone who had grown up and spent his life in the better neighbourhoods of Oslo, with a normal, Norwegian, standard education. Someone with a deranged mind. Someone who believes that by blowing up buildings and gunning down innocent children, will prevent Norway and its government from welcoming new citizens from other parts of the world.

I do not feel like mentioning his name. I do not want to take part in making this individual immortal. But he claims to be anti-Islamic. He is against multicultural regimes and “Muslims taking over Europe” and his delusional way of showing that, is by doing exactly what Al Qaeda is known for doing; car bombs, terror and mayhem. By being against them, he becomes them.

It makes no sense to me.

Someone who could very well have been my neighbour, anyone’s neighbour, has caused the biggest loss of innocent lives since World War II in Norway. In a country with 4.6 million people, nearly 100 lives is a very large number. It causes a sense of grief in the whole population. Everyone knows someone who has been, directly or indirectly, involved in this.

It is then a great comfort to see how everyone cares. To see the flowers that decorate Oslo and every other major city in Norway, in remembrance of the victims. To see people hugging each other in the streets and lighting candles. And to see Norwegian embassies all over the world decorated in flowers. People care.

In the wake of the terror that was meant to frighten us from being democratic and open minded, to make us build fences and close our hearts to others, the people of Norway, both Christian and Muslims alike, have done the exact opposite.

It makes me proud and very hopeful for the future of our open, free society that we love so much.

An Ode to Evolution and Microbiology

I feel bad. I feel terrible to be honest. This poor blog has been gravely neglected. And there is no one to blame but myself.

Ive been over-worked and low on energy...and no energy creates bad writing. So to spare the few souls of you who might be reading what I write from time to time, Ive stayed away.

But today I had to write something.

I recently visited my old laboratory at the university. The building in which I used to do all my nerdy microbiology-stuff, is now an abandoned building. If you dont know me, you are probably wondering "how damn old is this person?" I can ease your mind by telling you that the building was abondoned already towards the end of my studies due to the rise of a new and better (read: modern) building.

Anyway... We, my significant other and myself, still have a keycard to enter the building, and used it to to leave our bikes there (dry and safe). Now, ofcourse we had to take a little look around the building. There is something very sexy about an abandoned, large, dark building... And to my big surprise I found one of my favorite poems still hanging where I last saw it. All alone... totally abandoned. (I am so sorry to those of you who now expected this post to be of the naughty, sexy kind...I am a nerd. Get over it.) And I took it with me (yes I stole it) and would like to share it with you. So to the biologists out there (and those of you who find science interesting) this is for you:

To the photosynthetical prokaryotes

In the beginning the earth was all wet-
We hadn't got life - or ecology yet.
There were lava and rocks - quite a lot of them both -
And oceans and nutrient Oparin broth.
But then there arose, at the edge of the sea,
Where sugars and organic acids were free,
A sort of a blob in a kind of a coat -
The earliest protero-prokaryote.
It grew and divided: it flourished and fed;
From puddle to puddle it rapidly spread.
Until it depleted the oceans's store.
And nary an acid was found any more.

Now, if one considered that terrible trend,
One might have predicted that that was the end -
But no! In some sunny wee lochean or slought
appared a new creature - we cannot say how:
By some strange transition that nobody knows,
a photosynthetical alga arose.
It grew and it flourished where nothing had been
Till much of the land was a blue shade of green.
And bubbles of oxygen started to rise
Throughout the world's oceans, and filled up the skies;
While, off in the antediluvian mists,
Arose a few species with heterocyst
Which, by a procedure which no-one can tell,
Fixed gaseous nitrogen into the cell.

As the gases turned on and the gases turned off,
There emerged a respiring young heterothroph.
It grew in its turn, and it lived and it throved,
Creating fine structure, genetics and love,
And, using its enzymes and oxygen-2,
Produced such fine creatures as coli and you.

This, then, is the story of life's evolution
From Oparin broth to the final solution.
So, prokaryologist, dinna forget:
We've come a long way since the world was all wet.

We owe a great deal - you can see from your notes -
To photosynthetical prokaryotes...

Ralph A. Lewin

Happy summer!

BlogWriter Lite...

...any good? Not sure yet, but i will let you know once Ive figured out how to use it properly!