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