March 19, 2010
Moose Cap Friday links
Happy Moose Cap Friday! (What's that? The answer is right here.) I have blog post drafts on "How to live in a basement closet", "Reasons to visit my blog" and "Blogging naked". We'll see if I ever have time to finish any of them.
In the meantime, here is a completely random list of links:
- I should own this table-cloth. My birthday is September 13th. I like how if you translate each part of the brand name into Norwegian separately, it means "beneath. drunk"
- AP wrote about people who come out after turning 60.
- "Why you should date nerds" really isn't a good title for this blog post. It should be "People should have passion or they will be just like cows who sit there and moo" And I agree so very, very much.
- Europe's public broadcasters are asing lawmakers to please make it easier to offer programs online - across national borders
Mandatory Moose Cap photo:
I was here the other day, and seriously people screamed when it started and continued to scream and sing along:
It sounds horrible in the video, but it didn't from where I was standing, because Mka has a nice voice, and he speaks the best kind of English. Mmmm... I loved every minute of this concert, except for the screaming teenagers that sounded like they were actually inside my ear. Yes, I am very old. When you can't bear the screaming anymore, just watch the video instead. The song fits the Oslo weather today, but I don't hate days like this. Days like this are Fridays, with too many fun things to do to have time for blogging. Moose Baby and I are off to celebrate!
(photo by Craig Woods, t-shirt design by Eivind B. Hackett, and yes, it's me)
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March 18, 2010
What's your tribe?
Exactitudes is fascinating. Ari Versluis and Ellie Uyttenbroek have taken on-the-street style photography a step further by collecting photos of people who dress alike. They've given each photo collection, or tribe, a name. And Norwegian D2 asks in this article's title: "What tribe do you belong to?"
In 1999, I looked kind of like these girls. My braces had just come off, but I had the pony-tail and the dark, fitted, denim jacket. In early 2008, I was a girl living in the seventh - literally a member of the filles du septieme tribe. I guess I did look like these girls - on a bad day. That came out kind of harsh. What I mean is, if two Dutch photographers had stopped me on the street while I was wearing jeans, an open cardigan, a plain top and minimal accessories and make-up, it would be the result of an early-morning class rather than a conscious style choice or an attempt to look like I have "the style of a tabloid actress". In late 2008, early 2009, I guess I kind of looked like these girls,only less Asian and with a cheaper bag. And now I don't know.
Which one are you?
(Parts of this is reposted from December 2008, but I rediscovered Exactitudes the other day, realized they had a new website and that I needed to update my links, and then spent a little too much time looking around at the tribes.It's even more fun now that they've added audio commentary.)
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March 15, 2010
LES DENNE BLOGGPOSTEN!!! - Hvordan klikkhoreri fungerer
Continue reading "LES DENNE BLOGGPOSTEN!!! - Hvordan klikkhoreri fungerer"
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March 10, 2010
Life is too short for bad coffee
Source: i can read
I'm glad someone created and published this photo version of one of my old life rules: Life is too short for bad coffee and half-hearted hugs.
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Mål: Middelmådighet
"Halvparten av studentene satser på å være like gode eller litt bedre enn gjennomsnittet," skriver Aftenposten. Resultatene av Stud.mag-undersøkelsen viser at 48 prosent av Norges studenter studerer i håp om å være som gjennomsnittet eller bedre. 31 prosent satser på å bli blant de beste. (Vil det si at resten satser på å være under gjennomsnittet?)
Det er mye å si om dette. For det første er det et godt eksempel på at journalister som skriver om resultater av en undersøkelse, også må skrive om metoden bak undersøkelsen. Til hvem (hvilket utvalg av studentene) ble spørsmålet stilt? Vil studentene være gjennomsnittlige i forhold til de andre studentene på sitt program i sitt år, eller i forhold til alle studenter verden over, eller en mellomting?
Jeg tror forøvrig det er vanskelig for ganske mange flinke norske studenter å innrømme, selv anonymt, at de har realistiske forventninger om å være blant de beste i klassen.
Ifølge seniorforsker Vibeke Opheim ved Nifustep er det ikke forsket noe særlig på norske studenters ambisjonsnivå sammenlignet med studenter i andre land. Det kan godt være vi er ganske like resten av verden. Det vi vet om Norge er at de mest ambisiøse og de minst ambisiøse studerer ved de samme fakultetene. I USA, for å nevne ett eksempel, er det i stedet forskjell på gode og dårlige skoler.
Rent statistisk kan ikke alle være best i klassen. Innenfor hver klasse må ganske mange av studentene ha forventninger om å være blant gjennomsnittet, ellers vil de aller fleste bli skuffet. Og har man krevende vurderingsformer, gode medstudenter og høye inntakskrav til studiet, kan et mål om å være litt over gjennomsnittet være et amisiøst mål i seg selv. Nå har vi imidlertid ikke elitestudier i Norge. Vi har et system der de aller fleste kan ta høyere utdanning hvis de vil. Og å ha som mål å være gjennomsnittlig i befolkningen som helhet er ikke så imponerende.
- Du hopper ikke høyere enn listen som er lagt. (...) vi regner med å få jobb om vi ligger på gjennomsnittet eller litt bedre, sier Mikal Erga (23), fjerdeårsstudent på allmennlærerutdanningen i Oslo.
- Det at Norge er et rikt land med relativt små lønnsforskjeller og lav arbeidsledighet gjør kanskje at kampen om de beste jobbene ikke er like hard i Norge som i en del andre land, sier seniorforsker Vibeke Opheim ved Nifustep.
Ja, ok, du får jobb i Norge hvis du er gjennomsnittlig i Norge. Og begge studiene artikkelen skriver spesifikt om, lærerutdanningen og jusutdanningen, er rettet mot studenter som skal jobbe i Norge. Men å satse på middelmådighet på norsk forbereder deg overhodet ikke på et internasjonalt arbeidsmarked eller for videre studier utenfor Norge. Og det er det som virkelig bekymrer meg med norske studenters ambisjoner: Alle kan studere, alle kan bestå og de fleste har ikke ambisjoner om å klare mer enn det alle andre også klarer. Jeg håper bare vi klarer å holde disse latmannsholdningene hemmelig for utenlandske arbeidsgivere og resten av verdens universiteter.
Posted by Julie at 6:57 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
March 4, 2010
I want to live in English
For every language you learn, you live another life. Apparently people who live in Czech say that. I think I want to live in English now.
Most Norwegians understand English, but worldwide practically no one understands Norwegian. This makes Norwegian an inside joke I share with a selection of the people I know.
Growing up, Norwegian was the language I used with the three people who knew me best, the people with whom I barely needed spoken words to communicate with at all. Even though I talked non-stop (still do) in both languages, my parents and my sister could usually understand my face and tone of voice well enough regardless of vocabulary. My mom could tell how happy I was by the way I opened the front door when I came home in the afternoon. So Norwegian was our somewhat unneccessary secret code. American friends thought Norwegian was an angry language, because they only heard it when my parents yelled at me. I preferred English, but my parents insisted I speak Norwegian, because I would need it someday.
These days, communicating in Norwegian is my job. Since moving back to Norway two years ago, I have studied and worked in Norwegian full time. I consider both Norwegian and English first languages, meaning I'm completely bilingual.
Despite all that, after giving Norwegian a serious try, I have realized something:
English is just better. I'm better in English. I like other people better in English.
I'm more open and heartfelt and honest in English. Norwegians are so direct it borders on insensitivity, both in culture and in language. We won't tell you to have a nice day unless we ourselves would really feel happier if you did. We won't say "I love you" to people we just like. We won't thank you if we don't feel genuinely grateful. Any expression of sentiment in Norwegian feels like I'm exposing some secret part of my mind, usually only accessible to Norwegians when we're drunk.
In English I'm more polite, although I might come off as relatively rude due to Norwegian bad habits. It feels easier to be sincere and emotional in English without feeling like I'm crossing the line into inappropriate. I'm more outgoing and animated, especially when I meet Americans. If I'm in a room full of Norwegians and one American, I might look like I'm giving the American much more attention, smiling and gesticulating more.
If I swear, it's in Norwegian. If I ever swear in English, I'm just pretending. The one exception is if I say skitt (the Norwegian word for dirt, the sk is pronounced sh) when I really want to swear in secret and I'm in Norway. (Swearing in French doesn't work at all.) This might be because I used to be American, and as a child I had no reason to swear.
Privately, I think that all the words I know, in English, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, French, German, Dutch, Khmer, Thai, Italian, Spanish, are all one big vocabulary. Sometimes I can use all my words, sometimes only a few, depending on who I'm talking to. Most of my close friends here in Norway are people who are also fluent in English. I don’t specifically search for bilingual people to befriend, but it’s obvious why it works for us: We have a shared vocabulary, and we often mix up our two languages in conversations.
But despite the fact that most Norwegians speak English, they don't speak the whole English language. English has more words than Norwegian. So I think in English with an occasional Norwegian expression, not vice versa. And when I speak English, the connection between what I think and what I say is less complicated. So in English I'm more honest, more polite and I swear less.
And you know that scene in Love Actually about American girls who love British men because they speak British? I know American girls like that, but it wouldn't be too much of an exaggeration to say that English in general - British, American, Australian, Canadian, any version of perfectly pronounced, flawless, this-is-clearly-your-first-language English - works for me. Hearing someone speak English really well just makes me relax. Compared to hearing Norwegians speak English as a second language, it's like hearing a singer with perfect pitch and realizing I've been listening to off-key music for years.
When I go through old notebooks and crumpled-up napkins at the bottom of my purse, I find quotes from novels I've read in English. Paragraphs I had to write down, because they made me shiver a little bit, because they were so well-written. Sometimes they become blog posts. I never feel that way about Norwegian.
Just listen to Stephen Fry talk about anything. Even when he's making fun of the very topic of language, I just love it.
Sure, there are plenty of wonderful things you can say in Norwegian as well. You can say koselig, nydelig, jeg er glad i deg. And as a journalist, I love the intricacies and possibilities of the Norwegian language. But I love the English language more. Half the time when I'm writing in Norwegian, I am quietly wishing that I could write the same text in English.
So what do I do with this? Move? Try to find writing work in English? I don't know.
Image: icanread
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Love in any language
We have different words because we have differents concepts, but sometimes I wonder if we have different concepts because we have different words. This is especially true when it comes to ideas that are hard to define. Take love for example.
Americans say I love you for all sorts of reasons to many different people in their lives. It’s the same verb for loving ice cream and loving the person you’re married to. Norwegians have two completely different ways of expressing love.
We say Jeg er glad i deg to close friends and family. This sentence means more to me than the English I love you normally does, but it's still not that one specific you're-the-one kind of I love you that people make a big deal about saying or not saying. Because for Norwegians that’s a sentence we expect to only say to a very few people during our lives, maybe just one. The Norwegian words for that are almost taboo; even writing them out without a specific person in mind feels wrong. When I was ten, an American wanted to learn how to say I love you in as many languages as possible, but I refused to teach the Norwegian version.
The difference between the two isn't as simple as one being romantic and the other platonic. Jeg er glad i deg can be romantic, only less so. And because Norwegians are more direct in their way of using language than English-speaking people usually are, we don't say Jeg er glad i deg to just anyone. Except for teenagers who (used to? I'm older now) finish texts with the abbreviation GID. But this Norwegian, less scary version of I love you is closer to I am fond of you, which I would barely take as a compliment in English. Glad means happy, just like in English, so I suppose there is an element of Your existence makes me happy. We can also be glad i things, but I seldom use the term for anyone or anything I'm not at least a little bit emotional about. I like (liker) my furniture, but I love (glad i) my apartment.
Even after years and years of living among Americans who use I love you as a general greeting with people they just like, it still feels weird to me. I have to stop myself from flinching when I hear an American finish an angry-sounding phone call to a family member with an angry I love you and I automatically translate it in my head. But speaking two languages fluently gives me twice as many ways to think about everything. There are some feelings I can only express in English and some I can only express in Norwegian, but in my own thoughts, I can sort out my emotions using my whole vocabulary. And I'm glad I can.
...
Inspired by Even in English, A Language Gap, in which Jennifer Percy writes for the New York Times:
"He speaks Serbo-Croatian, German and English. Two languages separate us.
I don’t speak German but I’ve said “ich liebe dich” plenty of times and it never does feel like a contract the way saying “I love you” feels like a contract. He, too, has said ich liebe dich to me. When we first started dating, this should have been a comfort to me, but it wasn’t. German sounded strange and ich liebe dich sounded ugly to my ear compared to “I love you.” It bounced off of me, it didn’t stay, didn’t embed itself like “I love you.”
I once tried saying “volim te” — “I love you” in Serbo-Croatian — and he didn’t respond. I asked if I’d said it right and he said I had. Then he repeated it quietly.
That’s the one, I thought: volim te. That’s the “I love you” that works for me, the one that is honest."
Image: xkcd
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March 2, 2010
Norwegian media - Free, but dependent
I'm spending the first part of this week writing up to ten pages on how the Norwegian government is supposed to afford journalists in the future. Norway subsidizes its media, or should I say part of its media, mainly the media that provides daily news on paper. The media that I think is dying. News sites get no government funding or tax breaks, and the current system of funding provides very little incentive for experimenting with more efficient, modern ways of delivering news.
Writing about this for school means I will probably have to use my own earlier writings as academic references. That makes me feel old and silly, but I have been writing about Norwegian press subsidies for as long as I have been writing journalism at all - which I admit is not that long. My first feature article, back in early 2008, was about the Norwegian system of government-supported journalism. My American journalism professor at The American University of Paris sent me back to Oslo so I could explain to him how Norwegian newspapers could be government-funded and still be an independent fourth estate.
I wrote about how Norwegian journalists considered themselves loyal mouthpieces for politicians up until the 1970s, about the controversy (or should I say controversial lack of controversy in many cases) surrounding the current press subsidy system and about the general Norwegian mentality of trusting the government to provide solutions to everything. After a week of interviewing editors and media experts, I had learned most of the things that would later be on the syllabus of the course for which I'm currently writing an exam.
But I never got around to publishing the article, until now. So here it is, complete with the footnotes I added to further explain Norwegian weirdness to Americans:
Norwegian Media - Free, but dependent (pdf)
Image: Madewell
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February 28, 2010
Hibernating
A Post Secret I relate to right now. Oslo is cold, dark and wet. There will be more blogging when I'm inspired again.
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February 10, 2010
Sjokktall fra Norsk Kaffeinformasjon
Mennesker som meg "svikter" kaffen.
Bildebevis for at svart kaffe gjør denne unge kvinnen glad. Foto: Julie Balise
Hørt på E24 på morgenvakt:
Julie: Jeg er fortsatt i sjokk over tallene fra Norsk Kaffeinformasjon. De påstår at stadig flere unge nordmenn ikke drikker kaffe, men jeg kjenner nesten ingen som ikke drikker kaffe. Det kan være fordi jeg ikke helt vet hva jeg skal finne på med disse menneskene. Man kan jo ikke gå på café med dem. Da bestiller de te, og te fra café er en så dårlig økonomisk investering at jeg ikke klarer å ta tekjøperne seriøst.
Ikke-kaffedrikkende journalist*: Hva? Hæ? Påstår du at kaffe er en bedre investering? Er det ikke mer økonomisk fornuftig å ikke drikke kaffe i det hele tatt?
Julie: Kanskje, men det er et annet spørsmål. Jeg sier bare at det er dumt å betale 25 kroner for at noen skal legge teblader i kokt vann for deg. Kjøper du kaffe på café, betaler du i hvert fall for bruk av baristaferdigheter og kaffemaskin som du ikke selv har fra før.
Kaffedrikkende nyhetssjef: Men ikke begynn å tenke på hva du betaler for at noen skal sjenke øl i glass for deg. I hvert fall ikke mens du er student.
Julie: Poeng. Og apropos, kanskje jeg skal jobbe litt. Men jeg må nok blogge om kaffe når jeg kommer hjem.
"Bare rundt´én av tre unge drakk kaffe siste syv dager, og unge jenter leder an i utviklingen. Det er en halvering på 20 år, viser tall fra en ny undersøkelse," skrev E24 i går morges. Andelen unge mellom 20 og 24 år som drikker kaffe er halvert de siste 20 årene. Kaffe er for gubber, sies det.
Det er papirutgaven av Dagens Næringsliv som i utgangspunktet skriver om dette, og her er en chai latte-drikkende 20-åring intervjuet. Hun mener unge dropper kaffe fordi kaffe er dyrt. Jeg skjønner ikke det. Har te på café blitt relativt billigere? Jeg tror heller flere har begynt å drikke god kaffe, og god kaffe er dyrere enn dårlig kaffe, og dermed har vi fått det for oss at kaffe generelt er blitt dyrere. Men dette er bare noe jeg tror.
Det neste hun sier er interessant (klippet fra DN):
Hun merker også en tendens til at unge får sitt kick gjennom en espresso om morgenen, men drikker annet gjennom dagen.
- Det er ikke en kultur for å drikke masse kaffe, sier hun.
Selv drikker jeg en dobbel espresso om morgenen og kanskje (stort sett ikke) en dobbel til senere. Vi kan si at mitt gjennomsnittlige daglige kaffekonsum er 2,5 espressoshots. Det er ganske lite sammenlignet med de fleste jeg vet om i generasjonen over meg, både i mengde og i koffein. Hadde undersøkelsen sagt "Vi drikker mindre kaffe enn før, og det er nok fordi unge har sluttet å drikke kaffe", kunne jeg sagt: "Tull! Vi bare velger kvalitet fremfor kvantitet."
Men jeg må ha kaffe hver dag. Det er tydeligvis færre som meg enn jeg var klar over.
Kaffen har uansett en spesiell stilling hos nordmenn. Det merkes når disse tallene omtales. De unge "svikter" kaffen, som om vi skylder den norske kaffebransjen å følge opp det høye nasjonale konsumet som Norge tradisjonelt har hatt siden midten av 1800-tallet.
Jeg liker å fortelle turister, spesielt tedrikkende briter, om kaffens historie i Norge. Nordmenn har drukket kaffe siden 1700-tallet, men da var det en cafédrikke for de rike og urbane (og det var ikke så mange av dem i Norge). I 1842 ble kaffen en folkedrikk. Da ble det nemlig forbudt å lage hjemmebrent.
Den sammenhengen bør vi imidlertid ikke snakke så mye om. For jeg vil ikke at ungdommens sjokkerende kaffesvik skal brukes som argument for strengere alkohollovgivning.
* Jeg vet! Utrolig, men sant. Jeg møtte min første ikke-kaffe-drikkende journalist forrige vår. Men han passet godt på redaksjonens kaffemaskiner, lagde ofte kaffe til meg og ga meg et fantastisk koselig kompliment i januar. Så han er godkjent likevel.
Posted by Julie at 10:40 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
February 8, 2010
Note to self
"By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail." - Benjamin Franklin
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February 5, 2010
Mad Men world
"Mad Men may be lauded for scratching at the dark underbelly of society in the 1960s, but its scratches are surface deep. Perhaps because if it dug any deeper, the audience would see their own reflections staring back at them." - Melissa Witkowski in The Guardian
I completely agree.
You would think Mad Men was my kind of series: writers in 60s clothes, history, men in suits - what's not to love? When I first started watching Mad Men, it made me deeply uncomfortable. Not because the supposedly misogynistic, racist 60s were so incredibly different and exotic and scary (a friend of mine said she watched Mad Men as a horror show), but because I could relate to it too much. I saw the first season as "proof" that people fail each other for no reason, and that women's worth is always related to the men in their lives.
Witkowski writes that Mad Men creates "an illusion of distance between our past and our present (...) through the erasure of real accomplishments by women and people of colour of the era, and by downplaying the institutional and systemic oppression in favour of presenting easier (and more salacious) targets such as sexual harassment and racist banter as the biggest obstacles facing women and people of colour in the workplace."
Posted by Julie at 5:28 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
