6 weeks later

- and still relaxed :-)

Good music

After telling everyone again and again how happy I am with Skin Sofa, I think that Viktoria deserves a special feature here - especially because she managed to write a song that I can't get out of my head. This is the first time that I'm playing with someone whose music I also listen to at home, just for enjoyment! That song is (and Viktoria will not be surprised) ... "Without a reason"! You can listen to it on her myspace page. This is just Viktoria alone, playing piano and singing; hopefully we can also get to record a demo soon, as a band, with bass and drums.

Before I met Viktoria, I was in a phase of listening to Regina Spektor all the time, day and night, and dreamt of having a band in this style. Thanks, Viktoria, for taking this role! (and yet your style is unique, just the rough direction is the same). It's a real honor to play with you.

Well, and now Regina plays in Oslo, on 10th of December, and I just bought a ticket, to go there with Viktoria and her husband. How fitting! I'm excited!

Oh, and speaking of good music, I also enjoy playing along with LAMB again these days, they are really great... e.g. check out this great live version of "All in your hands", and don't miss the rhythmical displacement at 2:20, I think it's quite fascinating.

Katharina's first day of life

My daughter Katharina was born on Friday, 16th of October, at 22:45, healthy, quickly, and without any problems. The next morning, visitors came... so here are a few excerpts of her first day of life. These two pictures were shot at 8:40 (i.e. Katharina was approximately 10 hours old):


Here she's in her grandmother's arms:


9:42, trying to eat her hand:


12:16 - on her grandmother's shoulder, now 14 1/2 hours old:


Just got diapers changed, at 13:24:


17:12, sleeping happily, a bit more than 19 hours old:


Right now, as I'm writing this, she's spending her 6th day of life (currently sleeping). She's got quite an effect on people - one of the comments that I received in response to her pictures was: "I think I have to go home now and get pregnant straight away ;)".

Coming to Innsbruck for a while

Approximately 1 1/2 months, actually :-)

Up here in Oslo, things are going fine; while I'm looking forward to the Innsbruck trip for various reasons, I'll miss my two bands - Skin Sofa is really "taking off" now (to quote one of our "hits" :-) ), and playing with Viktoria (and Jostein on bass) is a lot of fun too...

Well - I guess I'll see many of you soon!

Gig announcement

I'll play with my punk band "Skin Sofa" on Friday 25 September 21:00, in Konows Gate 67B (motorcycle club room, in a big grey building which was once called "den gamle postgarasjen"), Oslo. To get there with public transport, take bus 34 or 70, e.g. from Jernbanetorget, to stop "Kværner". Don't be disappointed that we only play 6 songs - there will be around 4 bands playing this evening.

... and 5 of the songs will work really well because we just recorded them for a demo this weekend, in "bark studio"! Stay tuned for an update, we'll have music on our myspace page soon!

A general update

I've been a bit lazy with blog updates recently, but a lot of things happened - so I figured I'd just give a general quick update here: I moved to a new flat in Bogstadveien, Majorstuen (or -a), which is a nice but somewhat posh area. Frognerparken and Slotsparken with the royal castle are within 10 min walking distance, and it's another 10 minutes to the harbor. I spent some time with IKEA stuff, well, and also their staff, and got quite fed up with them. My living room looks like an IKEA show room now - all I need to make it perfect is one of these fake TV's. Seriously, I'm in urgent need of some contrast. Some plants and pictures maybe... Matthias (Erasmus student) helped me a lot with it all, thanks! He also showed me Sognsvann, which fascinates me - actually I think I can reach this place faster from my home here via subway than I can reach Lanser See from my home in Innsbruck (via car). As you can probably tell, I'm still extremely fond of Oslo - actually more and more, as I discover new things here all the time. And for everything I see and experience, I'm thinking about how our baby girl is going to like it all... well I'm sure she'll love it! Although she's going to see winter first, and watching "30 days of night" (on my iPod, in the subway) got me a bit scared about that :-)

There's some news on the musical front, too. I started to play with a punk rock band called "Skin Sofa", working towards a short gig on the last weekend of September (yeah, right, a gig already). That's good fun. I also jammed with Mark, which was great - I hope we can set something good up together, like a real band! and hopefully I'll get to play with Viktoria soon, too, her music sounds very interesting to me. Things are getting quite international, musically: a guy from Australia, a girl from Russia, and a truly Norwegian punk rock band (sure, I'm Norwegian too :-) but give me some more time to learn the language... btw, thanks to Matthias, I started to watch Norwegian movies with Norwegian subtitles now, and it takes me something like 2 1/2 hours to watch a 1 1/2 movie because I stop and rewind it all the time. Oh well... it's fun nevertheless).

Well, that's about it. Life's great, I'm happy, and I hope you're happy too!

Scandal! New employee poisons me!

It all begins as a nice afternoon on Gressholmen island. Not knowing what is ahead of me, I am working hard...



... and enjoying the sea - just look how vivid I still am!



But destiny awaits. The evil Italian finds mussels in the sea, and offers them to me (which was, as I later found out, an old Mafia trick; in retrospective, it's easy to see that he had an evil plan on his mind! Check out the picture). And I happily accept.



Later that day, he continues his evil plan, preparing the mussels, making them look good and harmless:



Delicious, huh? Wouldn't you also have fallen for this evil scheme? Here, he even looks as if he's having second thoughts about it all...



... yet he continues, and I eat:



Accidentally, he almost eats one too, without thinking, but his girlfriend stops him, shouting "ARE YOU CRAZY? DON'T TOUCH THEM!!!"



... but for me, it's all too late.

The next day, at the University, colleagues react shocked, ask me if I'm all right... (now, this part is true!) and point me to this website, which we should have checked before picking mussels. "Spis med måte", it says... eat in moderation ... reason: "Alexandrium close to danger limit". Reading on, and on, I learned that mussels can sometimes contain toxins from a special type of algae, with possible effects: diarrhea, paralysis, and memory loss!!!

Hm, where was I? Ah, yes:

Hi everyone, I have to tell you the most exciting story. My new employee tried to poison me! It all started with an afternoon on an island, I forgot which one, and then....