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Gustav Vigeland's sculpture park

Gustav Vigeland’s sculpture park in Frognerparken is without doubt my favourite part of Oslo. It’s “simply” a collection of sculptures of people doing different things, but ever since the first time I saw it I fell in love with the park. I have been there many times and I have taken many pictures of the sculptures, and when I went there again about a week ago I remembered how much I like it and decided it was about time I wrote about it and made my personal “ode” to it.

The most famous sculpture is the “Angry Boy”, a sculpture of a little boy crying. While it’s expressive, funny and original, I think it’s a pity that many visitors seem to only pay attention to that one, and miss the dozens of amazing sculptures around it.

The reason why I like these sculptures so much is that, in my view, they represent the essence of what is being human. They are completely stripped down, timeless and lacking unnecessary elements. Adding clothes to these sculptures wouldn’t work because they would make them belong to a concrete time and culture, and thus lose their expressive power. I also like the nakedness because it reminds me of how clothes and many other social conventions often hide how similar we all are, and how we often forget what really matters and what doesn’t. Thus, it’s no surprise I get annoyed when people refer to it as the “park with the naked sculptures” :-) They’re indeed naked, but that’s missing the point of the park miserably.

When I think about why I like these sculptures so much, I can’t help thinking about the book “Technopoly” and the book (and movie) “The Road”. I see all three as being about being human and about stopping for a second, forgetting about all the things you assume (as part of your everyday life in whatever society you live in) and considering what you think is actually important; what is “essentially human” and what is simply a detail of the current culture and time; what is strictly necessary and what “needs” are artificial.

If you have never been in the park, here’s a collection of pictures I have taken (the one above is by Dion Hinchcliffe). You can see the full version of these pictures and more on Flickr:

[portfolio_slideshow]

• art
• oslo
• sculptures
• vigeland

by:Larm 2011

Last Saturday I went to by:Larm, one of the annual music festivals in Oslo. The festival is actually three days, but I only went on Saturday, the last day. There were a lot of bands playing in many different stages at once, so I’m sure I missed some very good stuff (not to mention the bands playing all those days I didn’t go at all!), but in general I liked the stuff I saw:

• The first band we saw (only for around 10 minutes, though) was Nidingr, a black metal band. I have to say I didn’t really like them, and I didn’t even expect to like them that much, but there wasn’t anything else that I liked at that time slot, and the drummer playing in that band was Jan Axel Blomberg, Arcturus drummer. I really like how he played in Arcturus, but with Nidingr it was just very fast, uninteresting metal drumming. Oh well.

• Then we went to Victoria Jazzscene for something completely different: Chili Vanilla. This band is the weirdest jazz trio I’ve ever seen, comprised of voice, drums… and tuba. No piano, no guitar, no bass, no horns… just tuba and drums supporting the voice. It sounded quite interesting, possibly the best of the night.

• Then we checked the Danish punk-rock band Black City for a moment (just a few songs), but although they didn’t sound band, it wasn’t all that interesting and there were other bands we wanted to see…

• …so we went to see 22, a really glam-looking rock band. Some songs reminded me of Red Hot Chili Peppers (from relatively long time ago, that is), and other reminded me of Placebo. Although the whole paraphernalia and “marketing” was a bit teenage for my taste, they were quite fun to listen to and see live.

• After that we went to see Mary Me Young, a band I had already seen in Øyafestivalen. Although maybe their music has to evolve a bit, they reminded me of Veruca Salt, a band I used to like a lot (if you don’t know VS, check out Seether or Number One Blind). Cool band, and the bar had Havana 7 :-P

• And the end for us was Kommode, Eirik Glambek Bøe’s (of Kings of Convenience fame) new project. I think I like KoC better (their concert last year was amazing), but it was a pretty cool concert too.

All in all a fun night.

• concerts
• festivals
• music
• oslo

Life in Oslo

WARNING: This is basically a rant. If you don’t agree with me, take my opinion with a grain of salt or send your trolls to /dev/null.

Today I read an article, linked by vrruiz on Twitter, called We’re Rich, You’re Not. End of Story.. My first read felt weird, but then I read it again, hours later, and I really had to write about it. I have to say that, although many things it says are true, the way it portraits Oslo feels so unreal I couldn’t just leave it at that. My best guess is that the portrait feels so weird because of cultural differences and difference in values. My worst guess has to be that it’s some sort of neoliberal propaganda :-)

First of all, I don’t even understand the point of trying to make Oslo or Norway look “poor”. Unless of course you take into account the constant mentions to “social welfare”, “regulated economies” and related crap… but let’s not get started with that. I’ve been living here for close to three years now and the last thing that crosses my mind when I think of Oslo, is “poor”. Let’s comment on a couple of concrete points:

1. “News reports describe serious shortages of police officers and school supplies. When my mother-in-law went to an emergency room recently, the hospital was out of cough medicine. Drug addicts crowd downtown Oslo streets […]”. I’d be really surprised if the first one was any common. And in Norway kids get school supplies from the school, they don’t have to buy anything. The cough medicine, it seems he wants to make it sound like “they don’t have money for it”. Are you kidding me? I’d just blame it on poor organisation (yes, despite the stereotype, some Norwegian things, particularly in the public sector, can be disorganised). And about the drug addicts, what? Sure, there are “a lot” of drug addicts in “downtown Oslo” (in one or two squares near the central station… which is unfortunate, but it sounds like a different world in the article), but again that sounds just wrong.

2. “Norwegians live more frugally than Americans do”. Probably true, but so what? They have an insanely different culture, and that doesn’t mean they have to, they just do. I can’t really compare to Americans in particular, but for my standards people around here can afford pretty much whatever they want. And I don’t remember Americans complaining… except about the poor selection in supermarkets. But every foreigner complains about that ;-)

3. About the whole matpakke story: yes, preparing “matpakke” is a very Norwegian thing. But it’s not that people can’t afford eating out (although yes, it’s quite expensive); they’re just used to that, it’s the kind of lunch they’re used to, and probably they prefer saving money there to spend it in other things.

4. About the teacher salary and the pizza thing: AFAIK those wages are only for people without studies, and the minimum wages for any person with three years of studies are quite a bit higher. And the pizza price, that’s just a lousy example: first of all, for that price you can have dinner in a relatively expensive restaurant in Oslo; second, although I do believe the price, (1) that is for a large pizza (I assume more than one person), (2) in probably the most expensive pizza place in the city, and (3) with delivery, which is very expensive and I don’t think many people pay for that anyway. You have take-away places everywhere, so people would just go somewhere close instead of paying delivery.

5. “Every weekend, armies of Norwegians drive to Sweden to stock up at supermarkets that are a bargain only by Norwegian standards”. Sure, some people do that, but it’s not like you can’t afford buying at supermarkets in Norway. Going to Sweden is just cheap and convenient for a lot of people. Besides, there are other reasons why people go to Sweden, like generally broader selection of products.

6. “My own sense of things is that Spaniards live far better than Scandinavians”. That’s just hilarious. And the most hilarious thing is that his best argument seems to be that alcohol is much cheaper in Spain. Alcohol is expensive in Norway. It’s heavily regulated and has a lot of taxes. Sure it’s annoying, but get over it: that tells very little about how well a nation lives. And about the next paragraph, “adjusting for cost of living”… well, I might not be an average case, but those numbers just don't compute for me. And that doesn’t count that I have lunch for free every day or a lot of other advantages. Or that the wages are relatively low for Norway’s IT standards. Or the first comment below.

And other general comments:

1. It’s not fair comparing “wealth” by just comparing disposable income. Everyone knows that Norway has insanely high taxes, but it works. The government does a lot of things and you still have money for a lot of other things. And don’t get me started with that “taxes don’t do anything for me” crap, because you don’t pay taxes so you get things for free: you pay taxes so the society as a whole has all it needs, so people don’t have problems and you live in a peaceful place. E.g. kids/parents don’t pay for school material, you don’t have to pay for the university, you can ask for “student loans” so you don’t have to work while you study, there is money for when you’re old, the government fosters culture by paying everything school kids need to start music bands or whatever, etc. Sure I don’t get all those advantages myself, but I want the system to work like that so people are just relaxed and happy and there is less crime and less stress. I’m not saying you have to like that system, but you can’t compare it to others only based on disposable income. That makes you either an ignorant or a hypocrite.

2. This is of course completely subjective, but I don’t remember hearing people talking about money problems. Particularly compared to Spain, the country that supposedly lives much better than Norway, I find that to be a huge difference.

• articles
• news
• nyt
• oslo
• rant

Watchmen and the annoying ad

Phew! It has been a long time since I wrote. More than once already, hmmm….

I went to the movies to see Watchmen. I don’t want to spoil, but I think it was a very, very good adaptation of the comic book. Actually, I think it’s the best comic adaptation I have ever seen. And I don’t think Watchmen was particularly easy to get right. And I had just finished reading the comic for the second time just before watching the movie. And yet, I was impressed. The adaptation was really close to the book, and very, very good.

I admit I didn’t have huge expectations: after 300 (amazing book, silly-although-fun action movie), the “from the visionary director of 300” in the Watchmen trailer didn’t sound particularly encouraging. But I just love Watchmen-the-comic, so I figured it’d probably be fun to watch. And boy was I right. Not only fun, but very interesting, and even moving at moments (my favourite part of the movie is the story of Jon Osterman).

There are a couple of things I didn’t like (not spoilers, don’t worry!):

• The fights were a bit too superhero-ish (people “flying” around and such), which made it look a bit silly.

• It was a bit too crude and bloody.

• Adrian Veidt didn’t have the massive charisma from the comic. He felt more like an arrogant asshole.

Before actually watching the film, though, there were the typical commercials. One of them really upset me, and I thought it was worth a mention. The commercial showed three young lads waiting in a queue, about to enter the U.S. Someone was checking their passports and whatever. The first of them enters and waves at the other two, happy. The second one enters and looks at the last one. The person checking the passports takes a while with the last one… and finally says some bullshit like:

> > I'm sorry sir, I can't let you in > >

The first two look at him, confused, looking for an explanation, and the unlucky one looks back with a sad face, like regretting something. Then, the grand finale: some stupid text explains that he couldn’t enter because he had done something horrible, namely…. graffiti.

Give. me. a. fucking. break. I’m tired of all that biased bullshit. It’s not like Oslo has big problems or anything, but seriously: even fixing the crappy pavement around Grünnerløkka is like several orders of magnitude more important than the “graffiti problem”. Seriosly, politicians, get a life and do something useful.

Luckily, the film made me forget the ad quickly ;-)

• ad
• commercial
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• graffiti
• movies
• oslo
• rants
• silly
• watchmen

One Year!

Today I have been one year working in Oslo! Yay! So far the experience has been quite good, so I’m staying here for some more time still.

I’ve also slowly becoming kind of active again in Debian (especially helping dhelp), although I admit not being very active in any other software project (Haberdasher feels kind of abandoned, because I don’t have any urge for new features). Hopefully that will change…

• oslo
• Work