Author: Dag-Erling Smørgrav

Why is it that one hour after lunch, all the restrooms are occupied, so that I am forced to use the one normally reserved for the disabled?

OK, I didn’t really need to ask; I just need to remember to go earlier.

But more importantly, why are restrooms for the disabled so damned impractical? They’re supposed to make it easier for disabled people: you can fit a wheelchair through the door and into the room, there are adjustable handlebars to facilitate transfer from the wheelchair to the toilet seat and back, etc. All well and good.

So why the censored is the toilet paper dispenser always installed out of reach?

I haven’t seen Beowulf, but if you have, or if, like me, you are immune to spoilers, you may enjoy this review. It is absolutely hilarious, while at the same time ringing very true to anyone with a critical view of Hollywood’s usual treatment of literary classics.

Early this morning, I added an en tag to all existing posts, to make it possible to filter posts by language if I should ever decide to write something in French or Norwegian.

As a consequence, readers (or aggregators) using RSS instead of Atom will see everything I’ve ever written in this blog as if it had been written today, because RSS does not distinguish beteween and like Atom does.

I can only say two things: I’m sorry, and use Atom :-)

Don’t get me wrong, I love living in Norway, but there are certain things that really annoy me.

One of those is the pervasive nouveau riche mentality. Norway has only recently become a wealthy country—the vast North Sea oil fields on which that wealth was built were discovered less than forty years ago, and barely thirty years have passed since Norway became self-sufficient in oil and started to export it. Consequently, you get the feeling that Norwegians have too much money and no idea what to do with it except flaunt it.

What I wanted to write about was not wealth, however, but food. Continue reading “Watered down”