Christina Swan

I lost my watch on the train from Trondheim to Stavanger. That makes it the second time I've lost something nice that Ed gave me, around or on my birthday, from my front jeans' pocket, in a public place. On my 22nd birthday in Peru it was my diamond ring, and this time my watch. Sigh.

Time to get programmed into "African time" again. The only disadvantage is that meetings and work usually start "on time" in Norway. On the other hand, living life without a watch lets me:

- go to bed when I am tired, and not when the watch shows a certain time or way past a certain time

- eat when I am hungry and not when it is "lunch time" or "dinner time" etc.

Since all good things come in threes, I have to list yet another reason which has to do with the passage of time, but not in the same way: I have realised that about half my closet/selection of clothes have been lying around in my sofa and chairs for almost a season, which makes it more difficult to find clothes there that are warm enough for winter... all I find in my chairs are dirty summer clothes. When the season changes, you realise you've got to tidy up, because when one piece of clothing ends up in a chair, it becomes a parasite, infesting my whole room with more and more and more and more dirty clothes, an endless eternity of what other people would call a mess.

Well, I cleaned it up anyway (most of it at least), when at one point I couldn't find my earring, the other half of my pyjamas, my wallet and my mobile phone charger (you can't drive anywhere in Norway without your drivers' licence, which is in the wallet, and you can't contact many people outside of the house when your phone battery runs out! Could have been yet another interesting wannabe African or Saudi Arabian experience; confined to the house while needing desperately to go out and get to work and earn a living. In some ways that might be easier because perhaps if I lived in Africa I'd have fewer things and thus fewer things to lose). At one point in Norway though, you just want some order in your life. Scatterbrain. So you tidy up, and find your things. And life goes on and on. :-)

Christina

Ps. Ed and I had a great "mid-term" holiday in Trondheim recently! The northest we've been in Norway, which still isn't so north if you look at the Norwegian map. When we were up there, it didn't feel like we were "up north" though, interestingly enough, even though we went to the top of a rotating restaurant tower and saw the whole of the city... hehe.. had an amazing time with friends, extended family, checking out the universities, the cafés, etc etc.