Photographic Self-Promotion #4, Another Fjord

Just one this time:

Ok, I'm certain this is the last night when it got dark now (I think...). I think I must've taken this one from indoors in "The Observatory" one of the many bars/lounges on the ship, it's also the plushest of them all. I wandered up there (it's on the uppermost 'proper' deck) after the late-night buffet ended (at midnight). There was a pianist (called Anne-Tina) playing various pieces of music as we swept majestically through the night along the fjord, past the lights of the small isolated cummunities. It really is a quite indescribable feeling to be sitting right at the front of the lounge, right by the huge wrap-around windows (overlooking the bow from practically the top of the ship), in a deep armchair with relaxing piano music, and the gentle vibration of the ship's engines as we just cut through the night, going north for the morning. Going past the lights on the shore just reminding you that people still live up here and we're just quietly passing by their homes.
Did I mention that I'm going again next year? so I can do it again.
That's all for this installment.

A mighty humourous incident

Hi-l-l-arious it was. On Sunday evening, I was sitting a bit awakwardly, because by back & legs were aching a bit (as they do from time to time) and my Mum asked me why this was (as I'd been unusually ache-free the day before) and I said that it was due to a variety of factors, including having spent several hours that day sat on pews. Mum asked me if they were ok, having been sat on for several hours and which one I'd been sitting on (Matt, Cathryn or Dan). A real wit, my Mum.
My! how we laughed!

Petty Grumble #2

The Queue at Ikea.
We were fourth in line behind a bunch of people (all with moderate amounts of shopping) and it took over half an hour to get to us (there were over a dozen people behind us before we got to the end). It seems the cashier was new (or incompetent) and was scanning things very slowly and also had no clue about how to use the tills, of which there were only four open (which didn't help). The twit infront of us had, rather cleverly, decided to pick up a cushion from in the store (For those of you not familiar with Ikea, what you do is nick a bunch of the free little pencils and then when you spot something you want to buy, you write it's product code down on a piece of paper which you haven't nicked because it's not worth the effort). So, back to the story, the woman infront of us had picked up a cushion from the store. Now, obviously they can't run the cushion through the till and sell it to her because they have to put it back on display. Eventually, the cashier figures this out and trys to imput the code for the cushion in to get one brought out that could be bought. He types it wrong and it comes up as £80 (which he manages to input twice). Much head-scratching and button pressing ensues, to no avail and he eventually decides to call his supervisor to take the item out of the sale. So, this bloke who looks like the outer piece of a set of Russian Dolls (except that he's not dressed like a Russian peasant woman) comes up, turns a key in the till and wipes the item out of the transaction. It still takes about another 10 minutes for the last few items to be run through. (By this point I'm sitting on a bench with my nieces at the other end of the checkout area, so don't see what's happening.) All in all, I spent far, far, too long in Ikea of Saturday night, partiularly because the only thing I came out with was another big lbue Ikea bag to there'd be one more available for when I get coerced into sorting my dirty washing out.

Grumble.

Photographic Self Promotion #3, A fjord... somewhere

It's terrible, I don't remember the name of this fjord, we passed through it on out way from Bergen to Olden. Here are some photos:

There's not a great deal to say about it, other than the fact that it was spec-tac-u-lar. It was the last night in which we had a sunset for about 10 days (I think) and we met our ship's sister ship, the Boudicca (that'll give you google-jockeys something to use to try and figure out what our ship was called).

More photos soon (lots more)

JJB Sports update

I got some trainers today! woohoo!
AND I was served by an enthusiastic man with a South African accent (I think). Hooray for £11.99 trainers.
Whilst queuing up for to pay (actually, I wasn't really queueing, I was just standing there) the person next to me drew my attention to something on the shelf behind the desk. A tiny, dinky, tinsy little pair of pink addidas trainers. Apparently going for the bargain price of £14.99. Yes, that's right, you can now buy (child) size 0 trainers, for £3 than I paid for my (adult) size 9's which they're going to grow out of within a month. I don't know what very small people are supposed to do with trainers either, play 5-a-side football perhaps, or run a marathon before they can walk.

The world is going crazy around me, why won't it let me take part?

Dumbing down

Nowadays, it's not uncommon to hear somebody railing against 'dumbing down', often of kids TV (everyone thinks the incarnation of Blue Peter from when they were a child is the best). However, I've found an exception ot the trend; the music that kids listen to. For instance, in the traditional children's song, 'Old King Cole', Old King Cole (in one of the later verses) calls for his pipe and he calls for his bowl and he calls for his fluters 3. Fluters! The term for people who play the flute is flautists. On the other hand, the kind of music that children listen to today, such as the Kaiser Chiefs exposes them to words like "Lairy", meaning (from wiktionary.org):
"Adjective
(Australian) vulgar and flashy
(English) aggressive, confrontational "
So, I think we can conclude that the future generation's intellectual development is not being stunted by the music they listen to.

Photographic Self-Promotion #2, Bergen2

This is another photo of bergen. These are the buildings facing along the front of the harbour. They're built of wood and are about 150 years old.
As well as being build from wood, they're effectively built ON wood as well. Over single one of these buildings is built on a giant sort of raft of logs, all of which have been submerged in the harbour of Bergen for about 150 years. The reason that the buildings aren't just falling into the sea is that the harbour water is sea water and as such is salt water. Apparently, the salt preserves the logs rather than rotting them. Clever.
One of the buildings (which is currently undergoing restoration work) is, rather unfortunately, in rather a bad state; it spent about 20 years as a fishmongers. Fishmongers use a lot of freshwater ice (and just a lot of fresh water), this was allowed to flow freely through the floor (hey, it's water falling into the sea, what could possibly go wrong?). Freshwater does rot wood and so large parts of the fountations of that particularly building are literally rotting away, which is obviously not good for that building and probably not good for the surrounding buildings either. But, they seem to know what's going on and are working on it, so the old building ought to stay standing.
Yeah, ok, not all that interesting a story really, but I needed some text to go with the picture.

Photographic Self-Promotion #1, Bergen

Some of you may know that I went cruising around Norway and to Spitzbergen (Svalbard) this summer. I don't have many interesting anecdotes to tell, but I do have lots of photos (1,215 to be precise). So, over the next few weeks I shall show off a selection of photos.
Our first stop is Bergen:

This was also our first port of call. This photo was taken from one of the hills (or possibly mountains, I'm not entirely sure how high they are) overlooking the city. The focus was deliberately on the leaves on the right, but clearly the aperture was too wide to get good focus on the rest of the frame.
Anyway, two interesting points the make about Bergen in general. Firstly, during the Second World War, the Germans managed to take Bergen without a shot being fired, they just snuck in at 5am, raised their flag on the ancient fortress in the town and then a few hours later the townspeople woke to find themselves under occupation.
The other interesting point is not so dark (I deliberately put them in this order). Grieg (of Hall of The Mountain King fame) lived in Bergen, you can even go and see his house (but we didn't because we wanted to go on the coach tour and see the whole town and couldn't do both). An interesting point about the hall of the mountain king is that it was one piece that was written in full orchestra score from the incidental music that Grieg was asked to write for a friend's play. Grieg wrote quite a bit more music to go with the play than the 8 pieces in the Peer Gynt Suites, which are also not in any kind of order with respect to the storyline.
If you zoom into the centre of the picture really closely, there's a white blob, that is our ship.

More to come.

Petty Grumble #1

This will hopefully become a series.
Today's grumble: JJB Sports.
I need some new trainers. I even managed to pry some money out of my parents to get some. Today, after uni, I went into JJB to buy some trainers. After sitting around for half an hour trying on a few of the pairs that were in the stacks of boxes (not the ones actually 'on display' you're not allowed to try those) and failing to find a single member of staff to help me. JJB either doesn't employ staff, or deliberately disguises them as customers so that the real customers won't approach them.
Three people sudenly appear and their attention is snapped up by a woman in a baby-pink tracksuit and a schoolboy in a shirt undone (by at least 2 buttons) at the neck and no tie (shock, horror). Finally, open-shirt seems satisified and moves off with his mother in tow to pay for the trainers and I attempt to subtley catch the eye of the assistant now departing with the other pair of trainers that open-shirt tried. Subtletey doesn't work with the minimum-wage slaves at JJB.
So, I explicitly ask the obviously apathetic member of staff in two huge hoop earings and a neckless that have both clearly come from the bargain bin at Chavs 'R' Us. "Have you got any Silver Shadows in size nine?" I ask, motioning towards the area of the shelf where is situated a trainer with "Silver Shadow" emblazoned across the side. I just recieve a blank look and realise that I'll have to try again, "these things" I say, pointing directly to the shoe in question.
"oh, er, I'll have a look" she says with a suprised tone. I don't know what she's suprised about. The fact that someone wants to buy a pair of trainers (wouldn't think that would be a suprise to a member of staff in the shoe department of a sports store, but you never know), the fact that a porky blob like me wants to buy a pair of trainers, or the fact that interest has been shown in a pair of silver saddos, a style of trainer at least four years old (I know because I had a pair about four years ago).
So, after sitting around for a good five minutes waiting for her to come back, she finally appears at the other end of the store, mouths "we haven't got any" to me, then turns around and walks away. Clearly the induction training at JJB does not teach the staff that people who come in and express interest in buying a pair of trainers probably want to buy some trainers. So, without a member of staff nearby to help me and still no closer to finding a pair of trainers than when I came in, I left. Without trainers and with fourty minutes of my day missing.

Grumble

She's Firin' on all Cylinders, Cap'n!

It was suggested to me that I create a new blog through which to unleash my creative outlets upon the poor, unsuspecting, sitting-duck that is the world. (Since my old blog had a silly name, silly content, was rarely updated and had a readership consisting solely of me).
So, er, here I am and ready to ramble at to you. Sadly, it's now nearly midnight and I'm not feeling very witty. What I am feeling is tired.
Anyone, something quick to talk about. Scientific papers. My tutor gave me a few to peruse today (first day of term, by the way) and they seem to be written witht he express intention of not being understood by anyone. Least of all me! So, (yeah, yeah, bad style to start a sentence like that, but it's a presposition you should never end a sentence with.) So, I decided to go through the paper phrase-by-phrase and put it in language that the common man (i.e. me) can understand. It took me twenty minutes to go through the first four lines of the abstract - what I wrote out was two thirds of a page long, still not particularly easy to understand and not really a translation of very much. I then came up against a sentence that I couldn't get my head around and simultaneously ground to a halt & realised the flaw in my plan - I can't write it out in my own words to help me understand it if I don't understand it in the first place. Frankly, being outsmarted by a piece of paper is quite hard to stomach.

I shall now retire.