Jeez people, that was one great party last night!! Plenty of excellent food and drinks, sunny weather (!), a house and veranda full of great people. Thanks everyone for making our first party in Norway really special!
PS. the famous ‘day after the night before’ has been nice and quiet. đ
We’ve got a lot to celebrate; both my Birthday in April and Kristels Birthday in October, we’re (almost) one year in Norway and haven’t had a proper housewarming…nuff said, this means Party time!!
Around 30-40 people will come for our norwegian ‘grillfest’ (aka bbq), with a slight dutch touch to it though; drinks and food are included!
Party starts at 17:00, I just created a cool iTunes playlist for the night, so, we’re ready…let’s ROCK!
My WordPress Dashboard shows me that THIS entry is my 1000th post on the weblog!! Wow, that’s worth mentioning, eh? đ
My first post was published on February 10 2005; it was a standard test-post coming from my blogging tool at the time, Pivot. I only started to blog more frequently from June 2005, not coincidentally the period when my baby went to Canada for three months (I guess that I got some time to spare).
By publishing on a daily basis in the last 366 days the counter went up quite rapidly…I enjoy doing it, so expect another 1000!
June 12th last year I decided to create a blogpost on each day of the week, *including* the weekend days. For some odd reason I skipped the weekend before?!? One year later it’s time to see if I lived up to my promise; well, I can conclude that I do…I wrote 355 posts in the past 366 days! The missing 11 days were due to lack of internet while I was on vacation. Or, uhhmm, did I mean lack of an iPhone in 2007 đ and lack of a native WordPress application for the iPhone in 2008? I *did* Twitter on the missing days though…it seems I’m always connected, eh?
For everyone who wants to see a master in presenting at work; check out Steve Jobs in his Keynote last Monday at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, now online via apple.com.
If you don’t have the time (not an excuse really! ;)), then at least check out the 60 second version on Mahalo Daily:
Normally I would say that no one could have missed Apple’s iPhone 3G announcement yesterday…the brilliant Euro2008 match between The Netherlands and Italy might have caused some (dutch) people to miss it though:
Apple.com: ‘Apple Introduces the New iPhone 3G – Twice as Fast at Half the Price’.
Finally, the highly anticipated and long time rumored new iPhone is officially announced, *with* 3G networking speed, built-in GPS, longer battery life, a slightly changed design *and* a cheaper price. It will be available in 22 countries from July 11, and those countries include The Netherlands and Norway!
Hmm, Apple did it again…despite the fact I have an iPhone, I want the new iPhone 3G!! (how do they do it? ;))
Tonight the Euro2008 soccer championships starts for the dutch! Our first match is against the current worldchampions, Italy, so it should be an easy one! ;).
I decorated the office this morning (all orange)…just hope I don’t have to take it down tomorrow…;)
We’ll watch the game with fellow cheeseheads in Oslo, in a restaurant owned by a dutch guy. He will have a big screen, dutch food and drinks…and there’ll obviously be shitloads of people dressed up in orange!!
I just watched Formula One history being created; Robert Kubica became a hero in his home country Poland by winning the Canadian Grand Prix!
It was an absurd race, like so many this season…Hamilton ran into Raikonen in the pitlane, the BMW team took the opportunity to win their first Grand Prix. Even better; they did it with a 1-2 victory, Heidfeld came in 2nd.
I have to say, this seasons Formula One is fun again, which has been some years ago (back in the days when Jos Verstappen was racing and made fans of true racing go crazy!).
After working in NL for the week, I try use the Saturday to visit some friends and take care of stuff…today is not any different; so…I visited my mother in law, went shopping for some typical dutch things (items not available in Norway and useful for the ‘grillfest’ we give next week), saw some friends and am able to go to the Birthday party of Wendy, my ex-neighbor, tonight!
Busy day, but a lot of fun!!
The next version of THE browser of choice, Firefox, is expected some time next week…try it! (especially if you’re still on some crappy version of IE…uuhhh, that would be any version really ;)). Safari is still a good alternative for the Mac though (to be honest, I haven’t tried it on the PC)
And besides…if Robert Scoble goes bananas about Firefox, you should too, ah? đ
Some might have noticed, the .nl domain is now being redirected to my .com domain. The setup is still not perfect (I used a plain html re-direct) and older blog entries are not redirected at the moment, so still some work to do…
I don’t want to skip the .nl completely yet, first need to make sure that the Technorati authority as well as site visits are moving more towards the .com domain.
It’s great to be in Amsterdam!! Tonight I saw this guy doing freaky stuff with a soccerball. Apparently he does this for years already…hehe, clearly had enough practice, AMAZING!!
I decided to take a hotel in the lovely city of Amsterdam during this weeks visit to NL (instead of the great hotel in the middle of nowhere, BUT closer to the office)…I apparently didn’t learn from previous experiences and chose a hotel with WiFi in the room, thinking it was ok, but forgot to check HOW the friggin’ WiFi is made available for hotelguests.
Well, it turns out to be a T-Mobile HotSpot. đ …I am stuck to the stupid scratch-cards system again, for a premium price! Sjeez, all I ask for is a room including easy internet access, is that too much to ask for?
May 31 2007: “everything fell on its placeâŠI signed up for a job *and* a house, all in one day!”
It is amazing to realize that it has been one year already since I decided to go for adventure and change The Netherlands for Norway…I didn’t regret it one single moment!
Following a splendid company teambuilding event, today moves on to ‘KISS day’…I have tickets for their concert tonight!!
I have a company teambuilding event the coming two days!
We’ll be with almost 90 colleagues, coming from Norway, The Netherlands and Slovakia…it will be great to catch up with some people I haven’t seen for over a year. The event is held at the historical and beautiful island of Bolerne in the Oslo fjord. Weather is supposed to be brilliant, so trust me; it’ll be HEAPS of fun!
I got my norwegian bankaccount last year while I ‘only’ had a temporary personal number, awaiting the further processing of my application of moving into Norway. Everything was cool and I had an account on which my salary could be paid. The internet banking worked fine (and started off my language course, since the site is all in norwegian ;)).
After receiving my permanent norwegian personal number I informed the bank who told me that my bankcard needed to be changed. Easy enough, but it caused a problem with my creditcard in the internet banking system; I couldn’t check the transactions, balance and invoices online! Lemme tell you, when you are used to arranging all banking stuff online, this really sucks…the solution according to the bank would be to change my creditcard too. It meant I was without a card for a week, since the card would be blocked from the moment a new card is requested. Not convenient, but I went for it anyway…only to find out that the new card didn’t solve the problem, and I still didn’t have access to any creditcard details online!!
What is up with that?? How difficult can it be? I mean, the account stayed the same when I changed the temporary for the permanent personal number…anyway, todays good news is that after several months my bank finally got their act together and got things working!
Yay, my banking life is good again!
A press release today: “TeliaSonera today announced it has signed an agreement with Apple to bring the iPhone to Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia later this year”.
Damn, this means that the national operator in Norway, Telenor, did not (yet?) cut a deal with Apple and I won’t be able to use the iPhone in its native, non SIM unlocked, way. In itself there is not that much difference, since I can use my iPhone just fine, but it would open up some features like visual voicemail.
Hmm, I hope the TeliaSonera deal is non-exclusive and Telenor will be able to to support the iPhone too, at least in Norway.
I’m a huge Guitar Hero fan (despite that I don’t have the game myself!)…jamming the guitar is just funFUNfun! This year Guitar Hero IV will be released and that means band time! Besides the guitar, a drumkit and microphone will be part of the game, yay…drummin’ till you drop and singin’ coz you can’t stop! Hehe, even more funFUNfun.
The big question; is the Guitar Hero alternative, Rock Band, any better/more fun?? Any tips?
Someone lately said to me that I should learn Norways national anthem since I decided to stay for some while longer. Then, I realized yesterday after feeling so happy when Finland AND Sweden gave their 12 points to Norway in the Eurovision Song Contest yesterday, I’d better start practicing the lyrics to Norways national anthem…So, here we go:
(the full lyrics and background are to be found on Wikipedia, as always ;). Also since the 1st, 7th and 8th verses are normally used as the anthem, I limited it to those).
Ja, vi elsker dette landet,
Som det stiger frem,
Furet, vĂŠrbitt, over vannet,
Med de tusen hjem.
Elsker, elsker det og tenker
PÄ vÄr far og mor
Og den saganatt som senker
DrÞmme pÄ vÄr jord,
Og den saganatt som senker
Senker drÞmme pÄ vÄr jord,
Norske mann i hus og hytte,
Takk din store Gud!
Landet ville han beskytte
SkjÞnt det mÞrkt sÄ ut.
Alt hva fedrene har kjempet,
MĂždrene har grett,
Har den Herre stille lempet,
SÄ vi vant vÄr rett,
Har den Herre stille lempet,
SÄ vi vant, vi vant vÄr rett.
Ja, vi elsker dette landet,
Som det stiger frem,
Furet, vĂŠrbitt over vannet,
Med de tusen hjem!
Og som fedres kamp har hevet
Det fra nĂžd til seier
OgsÄ vi nÄr det blir krevet,
For dets fred slÄr leir,
OgsÄ vi nÄr det blir krevet,
For dets fred, dets fred slÄr leir.
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