Hurtigruta

Some time ago I was lucky to be invited to a meeting with my new job at Hurtigruta. I could not say no to this opportunity to both get a better insight in what my job will be like and to travel with Hurtigruta and see the beautiful nature of northern Norway from the sea. We traveled from Trondheim at noon and arrived Bodø the following day at around the same time.

The meeting was really interesting and I learned a lot=) But it also confirmed what I already knew, I am starting working in a really man dominated business. 3 women out of 50 participant! Well, I should be glad I wasn't the only one=) That's not really a problem either, but being on a ship on the ocean, that can be a problem! Some dizziness has to be expected.

Hurtigruta lived up to my expectations. The cabin was nice and I had plenty of space and the service was splendid. Silly me had totally forgot to inform about my allergies beforehand, but that was no problem. Instead of getting the usual, you can eat bread and salad they made a dish in a few minutes. The view was also amazing. Unfortunately we passed most of Helgelandskysten during the night, but I got up insanely early to see the point where we passed the polar circle.

All in all a wonderful trip where I got to know new people, learn a lot and got to see beautiful nature. One of the highlights was of course when we passed a wind farm.

Not for eating, so it must be to show the tourists how it's done. follow the smell...

couldn't wait to leave the view in Trondheim behind...

Much better=)

Beautiful light, it lasted the whole night. Almost sun the whole day now:)

Houses showing up in the middle of nowhere, Norway in a nutshell.



Good morning and welcome to the mountains:)

The polar circle:)

Still winter in the north of Norway late in April

BDO-mila

In the typical Trondheim weather BDO-mila, a running competition, was arranged with more than 500 participants. That's many for a run on a weekday in Trondheim. Due to lack of shape, I did not run, but of course I went to cheer on the sporty people who did=)
The run was made up by six laps around a fortress on top of a hill (a bit like the fortress in Newcastle(Australia) making it a 10 km long run. The laps were pretty flat, but that also meant no breaks, and believing my friends who participated it was a tough run. I had a good time cheering with my friend Ragnhild and a friend of hers, and it was as always inspiring to see how fit people are. It makes me want to get that extra energy they seem to have. Especially the winner, no one even came close to beating him. As most sports events these days, this one also had their celebrities participating: Petter Northug and Eldar Rønning from the national team in cross country skiing. Eldar did best of the two as he was the third one to finish.

It was so much fun to see so many familiar faces participating and especially people I know are not runners, but do different kinds of sports. What I did miss was familiar female participants. I did not see one woman I know in the whole race; we have to get better at participating in competitions girls! Here are some photoes of sporty people=) I apologize for the poor quality, butthe cold made it difficult...

The start, rather crowded and at one point we worried they would run over some of the small children who started before them..

3 men ran from the rest already in the beginning



Audun, still with good spirit:)

Haakon(to the right) in deep concentration

Eldar runnig past Ola, but it didn't last long before Ola tried to pass him again and did so too!=)

Eivind with some energy left:)

Carpe Diem

Today something really sad happened: Alexander Dale Oen, a Norwegian swimmer, died a sudden death. First I got shocked. How can this happen? How can a healthy, young and fit man just die? Then I got sad. Why? Why is life so unfair?!? Dale Oen was working towards the Olympics in London, and he was one of the most promising athletes from Norway. And not only was he a great athlete, he had with several occasions shown what a great person he was too. He was of great inspiration to other athletes and truly gave of himself=) Then all of a sudden, he is gone. My thoughts go to his family and loved ones.

But this also got me thinking (it is hard to concentrate about a master thesis once you let this under your skin). Life is extremely fragile and can be taken away in seconds, no matter what you do to take care of yourself. I, myself, must admit that I could make more of every day. What about you? Could you have made more out of this day then you did? Do you grab the opportunities life gives you? Do you dare to take chances? It is so easy to just go along instead of making life extraordinary. You get where I am going with this so:  Seize the day!=) And do make the best out of whatever happens:)

Akerdagen: Yet another way to recruit students

Akerdagen (the Aker day) was arranged at uni with a nice range of lectures regarding training, training and of course it all ended with a competition. Aker had brought with them Åga Skinstad, Eldar Rønning and other celebrities from the cross country skiing environment in Norway. Even though it had been a busy few weeks and I was quite tired from all the physical activities lately I got tempted to attend one of the training sessions. Eldar Rønning who is an awesome skier, was the trainer of the session. The training was announced to be mainly intervals, but apparently they had changed their minds and it ended up being an agility session. That is, it was both harder and I got sore then I had planned. But, indeed it was fun and I got to freshen up on how to do that kind of training.
Later that day they arranged a relay in two parts; First it was a relay with 600 meters running and second a 500 meter rowing pursuit. Several groups from the students sports club had teams attending, but I felt sure the rowers would win this competition. Even though it was a close race, I was right=) Congrats! It was a really fun competition to watch too and I think Aker has found a nice way to get to know students. Instead of the usual beer, we got free fruit at this event=) Sweet!

Notice the nice facial expressions=)



Eldar Rønning(in red) had to step in as a substitute in one of the teams

Everyone is doing their best:)

Technoport

Last week the Technoport conference was held in Trondheim. It was two and a half days filled with interesting lectures, debates, mingeling and culture. The theme of the conference was Sharing possibilities, and the importance of doing just that is indeed what I was left with.
It all started with mr. Hiroyuki Yoshikawa from Japan who emphasized the importance of collaborating across different areas of science to able to find new sollutions that might help us on the way of fighting climate change. His ideas were both inspiring and educational.

Hiroyuki Yoshikawa

 Due to snow in Oslo one of the politician who was going to open the session was late, but she came and held her speech. I am surprised that even thoug she was several hours late, it appeared as if she had never seen the words on the sheet of paper in front of her. As if that was not bad enough, I really wish someone could send our Minister of Education and Research a Cambridge pronunciation dictionary. ASAP!


Kristin Halvorsen as we know her...

One of most fun things to attend at this conference was when friends of mine kept lectures about there thesis:)


Tor Martin giving a speech about his lecture

 After a short break the conference continued with dinner at Lian, a really nice place outside Trondheim. Dressing up, having a nice dinner and company is not bad for a monday..=)

Lian

Live feel-good music at the dinner:) sweet!

 The next day the most interesting part was the debate, even though the panel that was put together was a bit too homogeneous to be my cup of tea.
And in the evening the highlight of the whole conference found place. I was so lucky that a professor emeritus sat down next to me. He had so much interesting things to talk about, and it is so fascinating to listen to everything he has experienced. He went from working with eletronic to physics and wave power as early as in the 70's. So he also gave an example of how fruitfull it can be to bring indeas from one science to an other. When he said he had worked with wave power I had to ask if he knew my supervisor. Indeed he did, he had even been his supervisor when he was working on his doctor degree. Once again: It's a small world we're living in!

Rita Ottervik, the mayor of Trondheim. Got to love the glas:)

The principal at NTNU holding a speech asking the new generation to clean up the mess that they had made:p

Extraordinary good company at the table:)

 The evening ended with Technoport awards were 6 awards were given in different catagories. It gave a good insight in what is happening in different areas and also that the specter is very broad. (It is way to easy to get narrow minded while studying and especially while writing on once thesis). Apart from the awards there were several musical performances. It all started with a very geeky piece of music. The composer described how he had worked when writing the piece using Newton's laws of motion and the Fibonacci numbers. Really cool, but I think one has to be a bit geeky to appreciate it.

A really cool band that combined traditional joik with jazz:) awesome!

A new challenge: learning to row

I spent this weekend in Ålesund, a beautiful town on the coast of Norway. It is famous for its buildings in Art Nouveau architecture. But this time I was not in the city to enjoy it and what it has to offer, but to learn a new sport: rowing.

When I told my grandmother that I was taking up rowing, she instantly called my crazy. In some way I think she is right: learning a new sport at my age is not the same as learning it when you're child. First of all one is not as fearless and second  one is more conscious about what one is doing and whether it is right or not. But I had to give it a go. And man it was hard! First of all I had to overcome my fear of falling into the water, then I had to start working on a getting it right. As it is a lot of new things to think about, it was very exhausting to concentrate about every movement I did. But in the end, when I managed to relax a bit, it got better and started to be fun=) A big thanks to everyone who tried to make me understand what rowing is! And for being patient.

Apart from the training, I got to know a lot a nice people and I ended up having a really nice weekend. The rowing is through the student sports club, NTNUI. There are a lot of sports offered at the club, and every group is open for new members that either has or has not tried the sport before. During my time here as a student I have tried several other new sports for example tenshi tsume and boogie. To join a group is a great way to make new friends and this weekend two exchange students from the Netherlands joined us rowing.

Other highlights from the weekend was rowing just meters away from a killer whale family, rowing for are bare lifes to get away from a huge passenger boat and a walking trip up to Fjellstua which gave a beautiful view of the city. As we were on top of Fjelltstua we also got to experience how fast the weather in this part of Norway changes. Luckily we managed to get back to our cars before it started hailing.

Sadly I don't have any photoes of the actual rowing as I was occupied holding on to my oar the whole time, but I can assure you the scenery was indeed very nice:)

My traditional Easter holiday

I, as many other Norwegians, associate the Easter with skiing, preferably somewhere in the mountains, it is supposed to be sunny and warm, a lot of chocolate and marzipan and spending quality time with family at the cottage. This Easter was almost perfect. The weather was on and off, but well enough to go skiing every day. My family may be a bit more active than most families; while the usual skiing trip doesn't end to far from where it started and one sits down to make a fire to eat sausages and marshmallows, we go on long trips and high up. But one of the days we actually stopped on our way down from the mountain in our backyard, Tovenfjellet, and had a nice lunch outside.

Oh, I almost forgot. For many people, and indeed for my family, the holidays are all about traditions. And it seems like the amount of traditions just keepon increasing every year, and we are about to reach a point where there will be no room to be impulsive:S Traditions are good, but not too many!

The first tradition is a skiing competition up a mountain, a race I have participated in since I was 4 years old. I am sad every year I miss it. A new tradition that was started last year is afterski after the race. Nothing like alcohol after an exhausting race:p My brother brought tequila. As he had never drunk it before, he had no idea how it tasted and thought it tasted good. He was in for an unpleasant surprise...

I love tequila!:p

Really? Do I have to take an other one?

Here are some photoes from our skiing trips:)

The mountain in my backyear, Tovenfjellet:)

The view to the fjord...

One get a good view of the mountain, Luktind

The track home=)

My dad being very determined to reach the top. Where is the better way to reach the top?

My sister, Idun, with Syv Søstre in the background

The master of making a fire

My sister can be a bit too optimistic...

Every wednesday in the easter we drive a terrible road to get to a skiing race, Harvassdalsrennet. It is very hard to get up, the weather is usually very bad and some times not even enough snow. But because it is tradition and because it is a very social event we always make the trip:)

Nice to meet relatives:)

The wather changes fast up north!

Thursday is the day for the easterparty! It is a public party where everyone over 15 can attend. The music is allways good and it is a good opportunity to dance swing=) Really good atmoshere, but from time to time some people might drink a bit to much and do silly or stupid things. Common things are not being able to stand and ones feet and fall over all the time, getting undressed and of course getting into a fight.

Trying to get rid of the tequila at the preparty:)

My cousin was sober:( she was in the arranging committe and that means she violated a tradition!:-o

Crazy on the dancefloor

My parents are allways dancing at these parties=)

Happy sisters

And we're back to the main goal of the easter: skiing every day!

On the way up to Kveldtuva

A bit freezing on the top!

The start of a new tradition?

This easter we did something new: going out on Saturday too, to check out the pubs in the nearest town. We have to wait untill next year to see if is a new tradition or not.