The following is an extract from the well known medical sciences textbook, Gray’s Atlas of Productivity. It describes some of the most common productivity-related conditions experienced by students during their days at university.
Condition: Lastminitus
Symptoms:
The student can regularly be heard uttering phrases like “Oh, it’ll be fine. It’s not due until the day after tomorrow!” and “Not now! I’ve got loads of time!”
I guess everyone kind of waits for it to happen. No one wants it to, but everyone expects it. Perhaps in a year, perhaps in ten years. All anyone can do is hope the damage will be limited when it does happen.
Then it happened in Norway.
Myself and all other Norwegians saw terror in a light we have never seen it before. It didn’t strike us close to home. It struck us in our home. And it struck us hard.
What most Norwegians experienced on and after the 22nd of July is, of course, nothing compared to the experiences of so many other Norwegians. Everyone has read and heard accounts from those who survived the shooting on Utøya. The victims and their families have gone through an ordeal very few can even imagine, much less understand. I was lucky enough to be far away from the terror, safe and sound in my living room. Yet I felt terrified. I felt like I was also being attacked.
On a piece of cloth, or a scrap of paper. Painted onto a cheek, or made up by a bunch of pixels on a computer-screen. If it happens to be a flag, it means something special to someone. But does a national flag necessarily represent nationalism?
I have now been fortunate enough to have lived in Edinburgh for two and a half years. During that time, and annoyingly in the middle of an exam-period, I was fortunate enough to witness a UK general election. I have never been extremely engaged in politics, however, I do take an interest in them. This is not a political post. It is a post containing some of my personal thoughts on UK politics as a whole.
Stavanger domkirkes guttekor betyr mye for mange. Det har kommet tydelig frem på Aftenbladet sine debatt-sider i det siste. Det som ikke kommer frem i debatten er hvor mye guttekoret betyr for guttene som synger og har sunget i det.
Milan Cathedral. Picture by Jiuguang Wang.
Don’t tell my insurance-company, but sometimes I engage in one of these hazardous new-age activities known as “thinking”. When I get around to doing this, I often find myself thinking about how great the internet is. After all, it is so young, contains just about all the information anyone would ever want, and allows almost everyone to communicate with anyone regardless of where or who they are. An idea can be turned into a million dollars in a week, the barrier of entry is so low that a 13 year old with an idea, some skills and the willingness to put in the effort has the opportunity to create the new Facebook or Google. However, the other day something weird happened. I started thinking about something else. I started thinking about everything that isn’t the internet.
As I mentioned in the previous post, this summer I am employed as a summer intern at Opera Software in the department of Quality Assurance on mobile devices. This post is about the first four of my eight weeks there.
I’m lucky. Very lucky. Before summer I applied for a summer internship doing Quality Assurance in the mobile devices department at Opera Software. I had no real expectations about actually getting the job, but to make a long story short, I got it. Now, a week into it, I am happier than ever that I did.
This is a continuation of part 2.
This will be the final post in this series of Denmark-posts, I promise. I didn’t want to make the other posts too long, for the sake of the few of you who will have read them. This post will be about the choir-competition, the amazing people I’ve sung with, and how I feel singing in choirs is an experience no one will understand until they have tried.
Music, heat and hens – Denmark, part 2
This is a continuation of part 1.
Having arrived and settled in, it was time to delve into the many charms of festival life. While the previous-post was more or less a chronological description of events, this post will be disjointed, discussing general aspects of the afore mentioned festival life in Denmark.
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