Location_Flims, Switzerland.
Reading_A Game of Thrones, by George R R Martin
Listening to_Maria Mena – Mitt Lille Land // Jamie xx – Beat For // Frank Ocean – There Will Be Tears.
Watching_BBC, NRK online and other news channels.
Working on_improving my orienteering skills, getting some decent sleep and various aspects involving the whole “moving to Hawaii”-thing. ( smiley face )
Eating_scrambled eggs and bacon.
Drinking_black coffee & pepsi max.
Should be_blogging/writing articles.
Will be_ running orienteering in Switzerland the next 7 days.
Looking forward to_3 days in Milan next week with Rikke, where we will be spending our time drinking coffee and sleeping outside one of the cafés in the area around our hotel. This boot camp I am currently attending is making every part of my body ache.

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I still haven’t come to terms with what happened last Friday, and right now I am trying to focus on my vacation as much as possible while I am here in Söderhamn. It wont help anyone to stay cooped up in my hotel room day in and day out, and while I do sink into pits of gloom at times, I know that I the full realization of what has happened wont hit me until I am back in Oslo in two weeks. The love and solidarity I have seen in pictures, videos, facebook updates and text messages the last couple of days has completely blown me away, and I am impressed and proud of the way most Norwegians are handling this horrible and unnatural event. One of the survivors at Utøya put it like this: “If one man can show this much hate, think how much love we can show together”, and that is really what Norway has shown the last couple of days. Nordahl Grieg put it quite right as well (and has been quoted a lot the last couple of days) when he said:

War is contempt for life.
Peace is to create.
If we create respect for life
we create peace.

We will overcome this tragedy, and grow stronger as a result of it. Political parties all over the country have received hundreds of new members the last few days, democracy and multiculturalism is more important than ever and like one twitter user put it: “The tragedies in Norway, Syria and Libya show one thing: Evil is done by Man, and is not limited to faith or race.“

Take care of each other <3

BTW, just to clear things up: I am against death penalty. Not because I don’t think the world would be a better place if we could just finish off the bastard, but because  I don’t want anyone to become a murderer just to get rid of one despicable soul. He will rot in jail and that will be the end of that.

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Today something happened that should not happen. Something that should not be allowed to happen by the laws of nature and everything that humanity stands for. I am not able to describe how violated, shocked and terrified I am after the attacks on Oslo today. I am both glad and frustrated that I am not in Oslo right now, frustrated because I want to be there with all my friends, to see that they are all OK, to make sure that everything will be alright. Oslo is supposed to be safe, Norway is supposed to be safe. I know it is naive to think that nothing would ever happen to us, but when nothing ever does it is easy to fall into that trap. We are not very radical in any way, we don’t shout out big political manifests or engage in countless wars (unless NATO or FN asks us to supply soldiers to keep the peace at bay and to help civilians), we are just a small state in the far north with less inhabitants overall than the city of New York (just under 5 million to be semi-precice). On days like this one I wish we had death penalty, torture or life-time in isolation as possible forms of punishment in Norway, because butchering innocent kids and blowing up people is not OK.

My thoughts go out to everyone who’s lost someone today, and to every wounded person. I am not sure what to write, and looking at what I have just written it all looks stupid and sentimental and it really doesn’t describe how I have been feeling all day. It is just hard to describe this feeling, this fear that has been stuck in my lungs ever since we first got the news, it is just a ridiculous, out-of-this-world experience.

But liker our prime minister said on TV earlier tonight: “We are a small but proud country. No one will bomb us to silence … Our answer to violence is even more democracy. More humanity.“

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“Home is where you can say anything you please, because nobody pays any attention to you anyway” – Joe Moore. I recently rediscovered the beauty of black and white photography. It is quite soothing and ethereal, and posting these make me feel intellectual and complex. No kidding. Ego tripping big time. Then again I sort of spoiled it by telling you guys that, now all I am left with is a feeling that you might look at me like some sort of douche. Ego-sentric in any case. But anyways, back to the black and white editing: you can never go wrong with black/white, it makes every subject look ten times more flattering and fantastic, even my worn-out silver-colored bag from 55DSL. Right now I am listening to Veronica Maggio – Vi Kommer Alltid Ha Paris, drinking tea to prevent another go at the flu and packing my bag for the adventures I am going to partake in the next 3 weeks.

Do you like black&white photos?

Pictures from my childhood home in Kristiansand.
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“I drink it when I’m happy and when I’m sad.
Sometimes I drink it when I’m alone.
When I have company I consider it obligatory.
I trifle with it if I’m not hungry and I drink it when I am.
Otherwise I never touch it, unless I’m thirsty.”

Madame Lilly Bollinger on Champagne. (via jhfresh)

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Some of my travel companions this summer. Beautiful lot aren’t they ? 1) me in my favorite t-shirt from Leash, 2) Pia, with her awesome fedora 3) Karsten, 4) Sofie, my biggest fan, 5) my dad, 6) Benedicte, my youngest sister, 7) Anneke, oldest younger sister, 8) Rikke, my miscellaneous partner in crime, and 9) me myself and I again. These pictures make me wish that summer would never end. We do look happy, don’t we?

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Packing and unpacking unearths a lot of forgotten memories; memories from my childhood, high school and things that happened just last month but that for some reason is removed from the temporary memory bank quite quickly. Browsed through pictures from Roskilde in 2008 (where I met a guy from Nepal and rediscovered Robyn as she started her comeback into stardom), vacations at our summer house in Mandal (including pictures of 7 year old me fishing from the pier), the school pictures from high school (I looked like a royal mess back then) and my old diaries. OH, what joy it is to read through old diaries. Life was really hard to live back in the days obviously, I hated (and loved) everything and everyone, and I was really your stereotypical emo kid before that ever existed (such a hipster). Life sucked, teachers sucked, everyone else were “phonies” and all I really could do about was sit in my room listening to Linkin Park, Massive Attack and Nirvana while reading Lord of the Rings and try to learn Quenya.

Yeah, I was that girl. Also found pictures from me and Maja’s trip to Paris in April, and felt a sudden urge to board a plane and spend the weekend in Paris instead of here in Kristiansand with tons of bags and boxes that needs to be emptied. If I could just afford it, but then again I am also leaving for Sweden tomorrow (to Mohed, a 3 hours drive north of Stockholm), so there’s really no time to squeeze in a trip to Paris. One can always dream though, which I will continue doing while sorting through my memories.

Hope you are all enjoying your vacation, whatever you are doing !

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The last 4 days have been spent throwing away all the things I have managed to collect over the last 3 years. Papers, clothes, kitchen items, books, shoes, jewelry, more paper, and tons of other useless stuff. Well, the books aren’t useless, and having to throw them away hurt the quasi-intellectual part of my heart. I am keeping about 1/5 out of all the books I own, and tried to give away as many books as possible, but in the end I had to throw some of them off at the garbage dump, and it really made me feel like a bad person. Cruel. The apartment is starting to look strange as I strip it down, meatless and naked. It feels so weird to move. Not only am I moving from the place I’ve lived the past 3 years, but I am moving to the other side of the world. Literally.

I am not sure if I like this moving thing. But my gosh, I am moving to Hawaii. Haha. I can’t wait. Hope you’re all having a good time in the summer rain !

“Nobody likes being alone that much. I don’t go out of my way to make friends, that’s all. It just leads to disappointment. “

This summer’s big goal reading-wise is to read novels that are on my list of “Books You’ll Have To Read Before You Die”. This means everything from the most famous Norwegian writers, via world renowned classic to books I for so-and-so reason feel that needs to be on the list. And on the trip to Hungary, I stopped by my favorite airport bookstore in Amsterdam to pick up a copy of Murakami’s best-selling novel Norwegian Wood. If I was to write a summary of the book it would sound like your typical coming-off-age-novel, filled with love and loss, unrequited love, depression and sexual tension.

But while the plot and themes of the novel are very cliché, Murakami manages to create something different and heartfelt, a tender novel that feels real without falling into the sentimental trap. It’s pragmatic and sober presentation of at times erotic scenes, combined with a writing style inspired by American writers like Salinger and Fitzgerald. Toru Watanabe, the protagonist and narrator of the novel is a freshman at a private university in Tokyo who leads us through his life as he falls in love with two very different women. One, Naoko is the beautiful but clinically depressed girlfriend of his dead best-friend and the other, Midori, is a lively, sexually free-minded girl from his Drama class at the uni. As a back-drop you have the violent student strikes and calls for revolution of Japan in the 60s, with Toru commenting the situation from the sidelines, pointing out the hypocrisy of it’s most vocal members.

Beautifully written, this is really a most-read book. And as I am continuing my reading-project, feel free to give me more books to read. Right now I have just started on Leo Tolstoy’s War And Peace.

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Hawaii. In the end of August I am moving to Hawaii to study journalism at Hawaii Pacific University. As in, I am moving, on my own, alone, to the other side of the world. 3 years. Somewhere between super excited and scared to the bone at the moment. Will fill you in later, right now I need to nurse my head and body as I have gotten a serious case of the flu.

You can find the answers to the crossword right here.

crossword_me (obviously)

I received some very good news 3 days ago, concerning my future, but instead of just telling you I thought I would give you a chance to use your brain in the summer heat. Not the best crossword ever, but making small crosswords has been a little hobby of mine the last two weeks. So if you want to find out what I’ll be doing this Fall, you can solve this, or wait for me to post the answer later. ;)

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Back home in Kristiansand again, packing and unpacking and trying to figure out where I left my brain in the mess that is luggage from Oslo, Hove and Hungary. My room at my parents’ house looks like every cliché of a teenage mum’s nightmare (minus the rotten food, I don’t have any of that as far as I know) but I just found my way out of facebook and email-land, so hopefully it’ll look a lot better in half an hour or so. Just stopped by here to tell you that I am featured in the newest edition of DET NYE (norwegian magazine), which means that you can now buy the magazine, cut out the pictures of me and hang them on your wall if you want to.  Or just read it. #iknowyouwantto

In the meantime I will pack my bags and retreat to my summer house in Søgne, to read books and warm up for the next dose of traveling (Sweden – Switzerland – Italy) in less than two weeks. A lot of traveling this summer in other words, and currently I am loving it.

How has your summer been so far, and do you have a lot of free time, or is it all work and no play ?

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The wonderfully talented Solveig Selj has made this video from this year’s Hove Festival, and watching it makes want to go back to Tromøya right now. Not that I am complaining, the weather forecast has set the temperature at 38 degrees celsius today, and the sun feels like a warm blanket where I am seated on the balcony with a glass of ice cold mineral water. I will probably pass out from the heat wave when we’re going to compete later, but that’s something we can worry about later.

film_Solveig Selj // music_Mayflower Madame “Hot Blood Shivering”

One lonely sunflower growing in the sun
Wants to play and have some fun
Then Whoooosh went the wind
and scattered all the seeds
and now there’s lots of sunflowers
playing in the breeze.

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MMMMmmm. Found the picture of these bags over at Eva’s blog, and am already deeply and passionately in love with both of them. The color combinations, style and the size is perfect as my everyday bag. Not to big but not tiny either. Enough room to hold my phone, money, keys and camera. And a chocolate bar. ;) Both bags are from Marc By Marc Jacobs’ resort 2011 collection, and I hope to acquire one when they’re in stores come fall (October, if I remember correctly).

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