A few things have changed around here...

So. Several news items to report.

By far the most important - I finally beat my Venezuelan friend at squash! Now, he had a head start on me (had played for a year or two, while I was a rank beginner), but you really would think that I should have beaten him by now. We've been playing for at least three months, and I hadn't beaten him until tonight. I'm normally not that competitive, but having a guy that works with you (in fact, I supervise his work, often) beat you three or four games per night, twice a week gets to even me, eventually. So, tonight, celebration! (While remembering that he still beat me 3 games out of 4, even tonight).

We have now officially passed the average-coldest day of the year (January 25th, here in our area). It was 4 degrees and raining. Hardly difficult to take. While we certainly won't get away without a few more cold snaps, winter here really has been quite manageable, weather-wise. People here seem surprised when I tell them that I'm really happy with how warm and dry it is. Then I explain that the last place I lived was St. John's, Newfoundland.

We have been skiing twice since our return, and will go again this weekend. In fact, there hasn't been as much snow as many of the mountains here would like, but the cabin we'll be at this weekend has both a sauna and a hot tub, so we expect that we'll be able to last out the snow shortage quite handily, should it happen to continue.

The CEO of the Ulstein Group, Gunvor Ulstein, had a baby early in January. This is big news in a town where she's the largest employer (and overwhelmingly the largest employer of local people.) For whatever reason, this got me to thinking about baby names (she named the new girl "Tora" - I'm guessing that her brother's name, Tore, and her partner's, Torunn, had something to do with it). In Norway, because you have to register with the government whenever you move anywhere, and thus the government basically has a constantly-running census, all the time, with basic information on every citizen (where they live, what their name is, when they were born), there are all sorts of neat bits and pieces available on the internet.

For example, the Central Statistics Office, via this link: http://www.ssb.no/navn/, allows you to find out all sorts of interesting things, like the fact that there are 37 Ashleys in Norway, though only 12 are men. There 48 Kathryns in Norway, though none are men.

The most popular baby names last year were Lucas (or Lukas) for boys, and Linnea for girls. The second is a Swedish name that has something to do with Lime flowers ("Lind" in Swedish). What's probably more interesting is that, in Oslo, the most common name for boys was "Mohammad", with 2.3% of all boys born in Oslo called that.

Relevant to that kind of discussion is the fact that "Mohammad" didn't even make it onto the top 20 list of baby names anywhere else in the country (stats are available for every fylke, so that's 23 different lists). This division between Oslo and "everywhere else" is reinforced by the fact that Oslo had a net international migration of over 8,000 people in the first 9 months of this year, while it had a net internal migration of 18. That's not a typo - it's the largest city in the country, but people from here don't want to go there. Or at least, almost as many want to get out!

I really hope, for the social health of the country, that perhaps what is happening is this: Immigrants "get off the boat" in Oslo but, within a few years, many move on to other places in Norway. However, I fear that that's not the case. As a result, I think that there is a starker and starker division building between "Norway" and "Oslo". As someone who's grown up in Canada, and seen the real benefit that immigration can have to a country, I worry a bit - I feel like Norway's not getting as lucky as Canada was. Sure, in Canada, the majority of immigrants go to our large cities. Still, there are very significant immigrant communities in every major city in Canada, not just one. This is part of why it works, I think. Almost everyone, on both sides of the immigration storyline (and, of course, over time, every immigrant eventually moves to the other side!) ends up interacting with those on the other side.

Well, anyway, that's enough of a political, or at least demographic, discussion for this evening.

I will leave you with a link - www.ulsteinlab.com This is where my company puts up its "cool stuff", the primary among these being the videos patched together when a ship is built, showing the engineers hard at work, the empty hull being floated in, the various pieces being welded, painted, etc., cable being pulled, and eventually the finished product.

Well, that, and you can download a ringtone based on the music that features in one of the videos. But I'm not sure anyone's actually done that for real, though we considered doing it to the guy down the hall's phone when the site first went live.

Oh, geez, and I almost forgot! There's been more bar ownership drama! First, our favourite place went bankrupt (clearly, we're not hard enough drinkers, I guess!), but now it is being resurrected by a trio of owners, two of whom are folks we know. They say that it will be a real pub, which Ulsteinvik lacks at the moment. Here's hoping they're successful!

Cheers,

Ashley

This could become regular (but don't hold your breath...)

Two days in a row. Cool.

We're getting back into the swing of things here. Many of our friends took an extra week of vacation, so are only back now. Kes is going to be starting a Norwegian course this week. We're still sorting out the details of what level, and when she will be going, but I'm sure that will be sorted out within the week.

There will be a bit of a speed bump for her, because she will be changing from Bokmål to Nynorsk. If she intended to use it academically, or even "just" professionally, that would be a problem, because she would end up spelling many things wrong, and probably be permanently confused about spelling. However, we've agreed that since she works in academia, where all the formality is conducted in English (and only the water-cooler conversations are really in Norwegian), it isn't so much formal spelling and grammar that she needs, but rather generally greater exposure. Thus some confusionion over whether her present tense verbs end in "-ar" or "-er" isn't such a big deal.

The shipyard (well, really, the Ulstein Group, not just the yard) announced just before Christmas that they will be funding a professorship at the Ålesund University College (Høgskole i Ålesund, or HiÅ). This is really good news for the area, because it will allow the HiÅ to drive towards a second full master's degree program (at the moment, they teach only Bachelor's degrees, and one Master's program.) Eventually, this could lead to them being upgraded to full University status, but that's some distance away. At the moment, it helps to pull them out of the lowest tier of University Colleges. There's no explicit "tier" system, but when every student simply attends for 3 years and gets out, and your professors have no graduate students to build proper research laboratories with, there's only so far that your school can go. The existing Master's program is in Product and System Design, and the new one will be in Ship Design.

Also in the news, the company is buying a new, BIG crane. This may seem a bit minor to care about, but there are two things that really caught my attention.

First - it's really really big. Even though it's mobile (has treads, like a tank), it has 600 tonnes (1.32 million pounds) lifting capacity, and cost us 5 million euros (C$ 8 million). It will get here in December next year, in time to help finish off my boat!

Second - it shows how Ulstein is clearly not letting the global economic downturn spook them. All their fundamentals are good, they have cash available (and credit is cheap), so why shouldn't they make some forward-looking investments?

Finally, in local news (selection from today's Vikebladet):

-Local students may have to cancel their trip to Poland, due to an official from the fylke saying that that's not what the "gratisprinsippet" ("free principle" - the welfare state, as applied to education) was meant to be used for.

-Local woman makes model of Notre Dame cathedral from gingerbread.

-The kommune intends to withdraw funding from the boat that runs from Ulsteinvik out to the little island in our harbour called Hatløya. There are only five people who still live there.

-Local furniture manufacturer from nearby kommune moves to new factory.

-Record-large cod caught by man with harpoon (27.53 kg - 61 lbs).

-And, of course, training has started for the region's local 5th division soccer clubs, including mine, Flø IL (reporting on the spring training for three local 5th division soccer clubs took up almost half a page).

Sun Report - 5 hours, 51 minutes from sunrise to sunset today!

Cheers,

Ashley

Just a quick one. Don't want to start the week on too little sleep!

We're back from the holidays, and a week into rediscovering life here in Ulsteinvik. The cats survived their sojourn at "Pusenfryd", and we survived the nine different flights that brought us to, and then home from, Canada. It was good to be back home for a while, even if it's always a bit odd when the visit is so short, because you're never really settled.

This week, we're pulling together the first meeting of our new "Rugby Klubb". We're going to be working with some folks from Ålesund, just to increase numbers. In a magic future, we could have clubs in both Ålesund and Ulsteinvik, but I think that's some time and struggle down the road.

Work is continuing apace. I really feel like the next 3-6 months will be the most important ones that I have on my project. Earlier, we laid the ground work. Late enough, and the success of the project is really in others' hands. This chunch of time is when our (the electrical design folks) rubber really hits the road. Here's hoping it goes well!

We went skiing at a nearby ski hill (Bondalseidet, or the Ørsta Ski Senter) on our first weekend back. The weather was fantastic (-10, but sunny), and our new skis (Christmas presents) did everything we wanted them to. Since then, however, the weather's really warmed up, and it's been above 4 degrees, even at night, for 5 straight days now.

Time between sunrise and sunset today: 5 hours, 47 minutes. ...but moving in the right direction.

I've decided to take the Norwegian level 3 test in February. It is the highest test that is given out as part of the "train immigrants to speak Norwegian" system. It will be challenging, but the prospect has helped to keep me focussed on learning. There is a test beyond that, but it's more for those who want to get a job that actually requires the professional, written use of Norwegian. I doubt that I will shoot for that. In addition, this "Level 3" test allows me to get a permanent resident visa, should I decide that I want that. At the moment, I'm here on a regular work visa for professionals that will expire in April 2011.

Okay, off to bed.

Cheers,

Ashley