norwegian = really old english
I learned from my first Norwegian teacher that the English and Norwegian languages used to be very much the same, but then went divergent ways over the centuries. Today I found on my bookshelf (it must be G’s) a book called The Mother Tongue: English & How It Got That Way by Bill Bryson–and while skimming through it I found … Read More
chinglish: tender grass
Fāng cǎo yīn yīn Tà zhī hé rěn (near the Water Cube in Beijing)
landskampen billboard
one last battle for the nation’s honour! LANDSKAMPEN premieres Thursday the most important is to beat the swedes! (tv3.no)
mala xiangguo (麻辣香锅)
Mala xiangguo is a new dish I discovered on my last trip to China; and I’m hoping someone just recently invented this, because I don’t know how I could not have tried it before! After seeing people line up for this dish at different food courts, we finally tried it at a sit-down place called… yep, the name of the … Read More
mega transit sign in Oslo!
Today I happened to pass by just as Trafikanten was installing a brand new transit sign at Oslo’s busiest interchange, Jernbanetorget. This totally made my day! Since every single bus/tram/subway/train in Oslo passes through this station, all their different platforms are spread over a few blocks, both above and underground. Which can be annoying when, like last week, I was … Read More
advertising toronto
It’s shopping season on Oslo’s most famous street (Karl Johan), and the stores are filled with images of Christmas and… Toronto? I did a double take when I first walked past this display window: I’m not sure what the aim of this ad is, other than to thoroughly confuse any Canadians that happen to be walking by… but what do … Read More
a day at the beach… in Dalian
Since it’s December and minus 15°C out, I thought I’d write about the beach. Or at least about the last time I’d been to a beach, which was in Dalian on China’s Northeast coast. Dalian was rated China’s most livable city in 2006–a fact that kept popping up everywhere we went (or maybe we were just watching too many CCTV … Read More
look what I found at the grocery store
…because Norway is one of the few countries (along with Japan and Iceland) that still practise commercial whaling.