It's so easy!

Yesterday was an other exhausting day of reading so I really needed some exercise in the evening. In the exam period I really do not have time to care about how I look and therefore I do not feel really nice when I am outside the apartment. The feeling you get from sitting on your ass the whole day doesn't help either.
Feeling like this I ran into two friends at the gym and one of them says to me "you look really fit". It made my day! I felt so much better, and it is good to know that I do not look the way I feel:p

That was all it took to make my day so much better! Thank you very much Ragnhild=) I know I am not the one who gives the most compliments but I am trying to get better, and I hope to give someone the same experience I had.

Ragnhild, who is always nice, on the 17th of May in Sydney. We should learn from her:)

Exam period = no life

It is time for my last exam period EVER! I can not wait for it to be over with: 3 exams in 5 days. I am almost done preparing, and on Monday I will be finished. I try to keep the motivation up by keeping on telling myself that it is the last exam period: the last time I will be a zombie for 2 weeks, do nothing else but eat, sleep, study and sometimes exercise, the last time I forget how it is like to socialize and loose the knowledge of how to have a conversation.

We got these pills on an event I attended, of course before the exam period. They are called knowledge pills. I wish they could work and that I could get my life back. But until then it is back to my books:(
I do hope everyone else is having more of a life than me at the moment!=)

I'll just post some photos from the event before I start reading again. It was a "conference" about smart grid with a lot of interesting speakers:) For free at uni and afterward sushi and beverages:)

The knowledge pill

Trondheim voices started it all with nice singing.

The main speaker: Mozhi Habibi, Strategy Manager at IBM Global Energy & Utilities Strategy & Solutions

The programming/ control part of smart grid -interesting:)

Christmas table, dinner or party

Every year the ones who have sat in the board of the student union, EMIL, get together for a christmas table as we call it in Norwegian. This is something every working place and lots of other unions do too before Christmas. The idea is to eat a lot of food and drink a lot, have a good party and do embarrassing things. Of course we start the day with pre-drinking before going to the restaurant. This year, as every year, we visited an Italian restaurant Frati. The dinner was good, but the wine not so much. Since I am allergic to milk it is always exciting to see whether they have anything to give me or not. What I get is usually not nearly as good what others get, but what can I do? How hard can it be to buy a couple of soy products? Anyway it was the same this time, except from the potatoes. The cream au gratin potatoes were extremely salty. I suspect they tried to make us more thirsty so that we would drink more. This year we were lucky to have one of the first members of the boards at the dinner. He took part in starting the union so it was pretty cool to meet him even though we're still a young union.

Pretty nice=)

Lucy and Mari

An important ingredient

=)

The lead singer! Being a student union we have to sing student songs at most events=)

To the left: The face of someone who realizes he's been rude and taken the dessert before someone that is older.
To the right: The offended

The new one thanked the old ones for inviting them=) It was nice of them to join the part:)

"the oldest" held a speech about how it was when the union had just started up=)

I should also mention that a normal Christmas table involves the guys taking there tie and have it around their head instead. But since we are students and the exams are coming up we didn't get that far this year:-/

Family

This weekend I was lucky to have both my sister and brother visiting me. Norway is a tiny country, but it is long and therefore there might be long distances to travel to get to the people closest to you. My family live only 3 hours away so they can come visit me any time or I can go home whenever uni is to tough or I just feel like getting spoiled.
I was suppose to help my sister with her schoolwork, but since we hadn't seen each other for a while we mostly just enjoyed the weekend; baking, cooking, watching tv, playing board games and eating candy:) I love these kind of visits!
It was more of the same when my brother came. He's training for the skiing season and just stopped by on his way back from the mountains. Because of his training he is always hungry and I made a huge dinner for us. And then we had coffee. Of course I ended up feeling guilty after all the food I had eaten during the weekend while he can just eat as much as he want to and it is good for him! Not fair!

Here are some photoes of the happy family:)

My big kitchen... It's just big enough for baking something simple:)

My sister relaxes while I put all the good things on the table=)

Cosy:)

Yes, We got full after a while:p

Not snow yet, but frost. Really icy..:S

Idun with the uni the background. She calls it a castle while we call it the Harry Potter building=)

Note on the ticket machine: "If the ticket doesn't print, hit carefully above the ticket flap"
The National Railway in a nutshell..

My little brother Tarjei who eats a lot!

And who likes to play with my facebook...:/

Courseday and Lohn

In order for us to get money from the faculty when we're traveling to Argentina on our class excursion, we have to arrange 4 days with academic contents. Since it has been difficult to arrange for us to visit companies in Argentina we had to have one of the days in Norway before we leave. I helped planing and arranging it. The first part of the day the class split in 3 and visited a company each. I went to Siemens and learned about what they do. It was really interesting and all of them were really committed to their work.But once again I was made aware of that I am going to work in a male dominated business. Out of the 9 speakers one were a woman and she worked in the HR department:p

The second part of the day we met back at uni where Statnett gave us a presentation. This presentation was really good and motivating. Since I am in my year, many of the people i knew at uni before I left for Australia has started working, but they all seem to come back when their company comes to Trondheim to recruit students. This time it was Pål I got to see again. It is always interesting to hear how it is like to start working, especially from someone you know:)

Statnett was also so kind that they hired some Spanish speaking to teach us something about both Argentina and the language. It was really helpful, but I've also realized I might have to spend the Christmas holiday studying Spanish.

After the academic part of the day was finished some of us went to Samfundet to listen to Lohn's concert. For every time I listen to their music I like it more=) The lyrics are in Norwegian and they have actual meaning and I think that is part of why I like it so much. Here's a link to some of their songs if you want to listen to it:
Lohn

We have all got our sponsor t-shirt on:)

Pål

Spanish, Argentinian, Argentinian=)

Lohn:)

EMIL's annual meeting

Since I was away last year I haven't had the opportunity to act old and bitter at the student union's, EMIL, annual meeting. That is the role the persons who have been in the board earlier have to play to make sure decisions are not made hasty and without consideration.
At the annual meeting new rules are made for the union, we look at the economy and the most important thing: Election of the new board!! It was so much fun to see that there were so many wanting to be in the board. It must mean that the union has done a good job welcoming the new students=)

Of course the meeting made me nostalgic, this is my last year at uni and I remember how much fun it was to be in the board. But been there, done that! Now new things have to be explored=)

After the meeting the new and old board and us that are old and bitter meet to celebrate. We start at our "office" and then we head for a pub, Naboen, where they have too much good beer. Unfortunately I couldn't go this year, but I think it was for the best. I might have ended up being sentimental after some beers:S
Luckily we're having a Christmas party for the old, present and new ones next week=) I can't wait!

This years leader

The ones running for leader

It is important with pizza in a long meeting=)

The ones running for the board with six seats:p

Celebration=)=)=)

to eat or not to eat carbohydrats?

That was the question that was discussed on Saturday when Samfundet invited to debate. Two experts with different opinions started the debate. The first one was a speaker for low-carb diets. He had a really good presentation and some of what he said really made sense, but it also seemed like he hid behind fancy words. He made it impossible to follow the presentation at times with his medical vocabulary and his use of abbreviations. The other, that is the speaker on behalf of the states suggested diet, kept it simple. During the debate I learned some new things about both diets, but I am still not convinced a low-carb diet is necessary for a normal person. I would never try it unless I had to. A lot of good questions were asked from the audience, but it seemed to me some of them did not have enough knowledge to be really critical. It is no wonder that people start feeling better when they start caring about what they put in their mouths and tries to be healthy is it?

Anyway, at the end of the debate it became obvious that the parts also agreed on several aspects: no sugar, good fat and salt and think about what you eat and drink:) It is a really interesting subject, but remember: we only live once so enjoy it!

Questions are being asked:)

The girls day

As a part of recruiting girls to study technical courses the university arranges "the girls day". They invite girls who are in there last year of high school to come visit the university. 250 girls came and so we just had to convince them that what we do is fun! I volunteered for the day and helped out in the lab. The girls were to make a sign with their name by soldering. Their sign was preprogrammed but they had to solder some components to a circuit board. Most of them had never done anything like it before, and they were very pleased when the sign worked; their name runs over a "screen". I too was pleased, since I hadn't done any soldering for two years I was anxious I couldn't be much help. Luckily we got the chance to make our own sign before the girls came, after a couple of minutes I got the hang of it again and remembered how much fun it is!=)

I hope the day was a success and that the girls had fun! I did:)

The girls got a 5 minute lecture before they started

You need to concentrate when you're soldering

Happy with the result=)

It is cold and dark

The cold and the dark is an excellent excuse for doing anything cosy. Both inside and outside. Of course this includes everything that is warm; cocoa, tea, coffee, red wine and also baking a lot. This time the cosy thing was to visit one of the many(!) cafés in Trondheim with a couple of my friends from back home. I rarely see them as they both work as teachers while I'm still studying. Even though I got a lot of new friends after I moved to Trondheim it is nice to get together with someone that knows where you're from and to talk about "old" days:) (it's a bit scary that we can do so, but that is just how life goes). Unfortunately it is more expensive to visit cafés in Norway than in Australia(or any other country I guess) so I can't do it as often as I want to:(

Elin and Linda=)