Life begins in Oslo

I'm now in the, slightly difficult to sustain, position of needing to get a job, but ALSO needing the threat of impending homelessness and doom to make the blog worth reading.

If the blog becomes a happy description of a perfect life in Norway with skis and ice-cream and friends and my own oil rig it'll be boring. Eventually I'll probably revert to discussions about zombies again and nobody wants that (Although you really all should because talking about it is the only way to prepare for it).

Lucikly, for this post at least, I'm still unemployed and therefore my life and dreams hang in the balance and if that's not enough to interest you then what the hell?!

This morning I woke up early to go and stand in the very long immigration queue. At the front of the queue I was told I could have stood in the much shorter immigration queue in some other building that I'd missed on the way to their building. But the joke was on them! I had seen the other queue but I didn't want a short queue. I was feeling homesick, I wanted a long queue. A queue with forms to fill out and then further forms to fill out because you'd filled them out slightly incorrectly. I was not disappointed.

I was disappointed at the treatment my British Passport received. My passport, like the passport of all British citizens was issued to my directly, along with a kiss on the cheek, by the Queen herself. She spends most of her time (when not on Royal display) nipping around the country in a van delivering peoples passports personally.

So when they gave it a bit of a funny look and then started prodding it and then holding it under ultra violet light and then picking at the corners of the personal information page and then calling another person over, and then asking to see my drivers license and then looking at my face and the picture in the passport about FIFTY times I felt compelled to ask them if there was a problem. They said my passport looked old. But I like my old passport, I'm trying to fill it with stamps. So? So it doesn't have any of the fancy iris technology or easy to use scanning things that one of your new-fangled passports has. It's retro. Retro is cool. Everyone knows that (apart from Norwegian immigration control).

Anyway, they recommended that I get a new one. You hear that Queen? One new passport over here please. Best get that van on a ferry sharpish.

In other - someone I vaguely know moved to Norway and insists on telling me all about it - news: This week I made a new front disc break on a mountain bike and made some curtains from actual material cloth to hang in the kitchen.