I remember Rashpal's kind thoughtfulness and VERY generous smile.
I remember early EDge rehearsals, watching parts of Wayne McGregor's choreography "Phase Space" transferring itself from a person in a video onto Rashpal's very different body. Rashpal had a big solo in that piece, and the movement came across with a beautifully effortless sincerity. I probably never expressed my admiration for the work you were doing, assuming you knew its quality - and all of a sudden, you left the group. I never saw you struggle, Rashpal - this is an apology! I never saw that. I never knew why you left us, but I really wish I had found those words back then - now the words of admiration finally came but you are gone.
We were never what you might call close friends - but somehow I knew that you were a person I would not hesitate to trust. That says a lot about you.
Now you have suddenly left us, once more. Rest peacefully, Rashpal. Yet the memories of you won't rest in peace - they will dance, move and inspire us.
(Sun, 16 Aug 2009 23:59:24 +0200). ->>
Cooking in somebody else's kitchen can be scary. You have no idea what ingredients are available and where tools are - it's a good lesson in how much you know without being aware of it when in your own kitchen. However, Martin and Tali had a stack of superb ingredients and usable tools to when we took on the task of preparing the dinner for my grandmother's 83rd birthday there was no reason to panick.
Chicken fillets were turned in melted butter with plenty of tarragon and a few drops of balsamico vinegar. Then we half-wrapped them in thin slices of ham and baked/grilled them in the oven.
For lemon-glaced wegetables we cut thin slices of red onions, and thin rectangular pieces of carrots and apples. This gorgeously coloured mix was fried in sugar and lemon juice. It's important to pay attention and stir often, it's also a good idea to be careful with the sugar because it easily becomes too sweet.
Finally we made a spring-green, creamy sauce: first heating cream, milk and slices of leek, after a while adding small bouquets of broccoli.
Worked pretty well, I think.
(Mon, 11 May 2009 00:07:50 +0200). ->>
If you found my thoughts regarding views on advertising directed at children in Norway and Japan interesting, you will most likely also be interested in the kids and advertising site which contains articles and in-depth information.
(Sun, 01 Mar 2009 01:10:00 +0100). ->>
Today's menu: cod in basil and nettle sauce, baked potato boats with herbs, caramelised vegetables with lime and grated carrot with grapes.
Dessert: homemade sorbet with strawberry, banana, melon and mango.
I cut the potatos in 8 and scattered the pieces on a baking tray with some oil. While I used thyme, oregano and dillweed almost any herb will be delicious with baked potato. Make sure the pieces are moved/turned some time while being baked - perhaps add some butter and more herbs while at it.
The main course was based on a recipe from the food magazine Nord. Starting from a fish stock, reduced somewhat with lots of basil, some nettle (not in the original recipe) and pressed garlic. Add creme and use a food processor or mixer to smoothen. Add frozen peas and cod fillet, keep warm until fish is ready to eat.
For the caramelised vegetables, I melted some brown sugar in a pot, squeezed over some lime juice and added finely chopped onion (we used both red and yellow) and carrot. Stir often.
Finally we grated some organic carrots and threw in a bunch of grapes while grating. It turned out to be a wonderful Sunday dinner - basil and nettle with cod was a real treat.
(Mon, 09 Feb 2009 00:00:18 +0100). ->>
We've recently started a "family blog" - not open to the general public, only family and friends. So, why didn't I just use a social networking site?
Of course there are lots of places where you can do photo sharing/social networking sort of things - Facebook, live.com, Friendster, Flickr, Picasaweb, Orkut, Yahoo 360, my.opera.com - many more local ones I'm not even really aware of like Spain's Tuenti.com, Japan's Mixi.jp and Russia's vkontakte.ru. Pretty much all of them will have some "privacy controls" where you can decide if the information can be found with Google / Anyone / Registered contacts / you only etc.
Even while struggling with tweaking my site I would sometimes wonder why I wasn't simply using Facebook. (I became quite a fan of Facebook when I joined and re-discovered all those people..) But for me, ultimately, it has to do with both privacy and ownership of the information. What Facebook does or will do with the information one gives it is to monetise it, somehow - use it for targeted advertising, usually. This is of course pretty much what GMail already very successfully does with your E-mail but I don't mind that so much. However, Facebook is about letting some third-party's commercial interest "piggyback" on my relationships with others and that I find completely upsetting and disgusting. So my personal Facebook usage policy is that I will still be registered so that people can find me easily, I'll update status and look up information about friends and such - but I will try to avoid feeding it further data like pictures and writings.
Privacy-wise, people are very different!! Some people post photos of their children everywhere for anyone to see (and pour out their innermost feelings in blogs..), and for most people I don't think they really risk anything whatsoever doing so. It's not really like paedophiles are searching the Internet for children's pictures to come to your home and abduct them, that's just media scaremongering. But I still worry about more local and low-level threats - such as, if somebody wants to bully my children at school I don't want to provide that bully a treasure trove of information about the family, pictures they could print out and abuse and so on.
I'm controlling information on behalf of my children - they can't protect themselves and the Internet has no real Undo button once information is released. So I'm certainly trying to be even more careful with their private information that I would be with my own.
..so that's generally why I decided to use software running on a website I own, and spend the time on making it work the way I want, rather than using some of the excellent and simple to use solutions that already exist.
(Sun, 08 Feb 2009 23:33:34 +0100). ->>
"Remember, Peer, a wealthy woman! Heir to the farm, keep that in mind!" (Mor Aase's line, translated by me)
It struck me that the relationship between Peer and Ingrid is an arranged marriage of sorts. And with the materialistic focus his mother arranges the relationship with in mind, perhaps it's not surprising how quickly he lost interest in her?
(Sat, 31 Jan 2009 05:00:16 +0100). ->>
Alf-Eivind loves listening to stories and fairy tales - at least those that aren't considered "too scary". Just slightly older than three years old he has no problems following longwinded, complex stories like Den grønne votten (by Alf Prøysen), Thumbelina, Grantreet - and even the fairy tale above all other tales: The snow queen (all by H. C. Andersen). Even his father was impressed by the latter.
One day he was just below three and a half years old (my sound file is dated March 6 2008) I heard him tell a long, elaborate story about a drawing with many lines and squiggles. It was about Vesle Hans (a children's poem by Henrik Wergeland which he has seen as puppet theatre) and as the tale progressed many other fairy tale and fantasy characters emerged. I sort of got him to repeat the story for a recording - perhaps not told with the same flow and momentum as the initial version, but still an amazing glimpse of rich, story-telling-nourished child imagination at work. I have made a transcription and translated it into English. You can also listen to the recording (though it is naturally in Norwegian). Regrettably, some things are inevitably lost in translation - especially his erratic grammar and sometimes peculiar wording.
For an international audience, I should probably start with a brief summary of the Vesle-Hans poem: Hans is a young boy walking into the woods to find firewood for his grandmother. He worries that she will be cold and hungry when she can't light a fire. In the wood, he is scared by thoughts of bears and wolves but gathers a pile of branches. He realises that he has become lost but a squirrel helps him find his way home. When his grandmother welcomes him she notices that the dead branches have leaves and flowers despite it being mid-winter, a miracle that expresses the boy's love for her.
Now, the transcript of Alf-Eivin's Vesle-Hans tale (he's constantly referring to his drawing):
- Here it says Vesle-Hans, and there it says Vesle-Hans's wife. This is my letter.
- So, what did Vesle-Hans do?
- He found a small baby bear, and a small baby bear-lion.
- Baby-bear-lion?
-Yes!
- Wow. Was he scared?
- No. It was.. the baby bear said... the baby bear said.. the baby bear said NOTHING!
- He said nothing?
- No, the baby bear said nothing. So he heard nothing. But he was a bit more.. he had to go to the forest and find branches, and the ugly duckling.
- He found the ugly duckling too in the forest?
- Yes. And he found branches for granny. They flew down. But then he came to the fox. And then he came to the small baby bear, and then he came to the small bear lion.
- Did he meet even more animals?
- Yes. But he met a kantsasse.
- Kantsasse?
- It's called kantsasse.
- Is kantsasse an animal?
- No. I'm going to write this at right, right. Like that. Then he met a kantsasse which was for playing with. He plays with many toys. Then he walked again. Then he called to the ugly ducking, you know. So the ugly duckling became happy when he called to the ugly duckling. But the ugly duckling had to go to granny's house. Here it says granny's house and here it says granny and here it says Vesle-Hans and here it says the small bear and there it says the lion which fell down the stairs which was big. And Thumbelina was scared when the small baby bear - it said it was nice. So it was the small baby bear which fell down the small stair case which was made to slide down. Thumbelina joined him too. So Thumbelina is sliding down the stairs again and again. And there was an old kind Santa who was also sliding down.
And the entire wood was full of trees, on the snow on the branches. He met a small wife. It was an old one, it was Vesle-Hans's wife. She also lives there at Vesle-Hans's house. And she lives in her house. There it says granny's house for Vesle-Hans. And there it says to.. to auntie Matja Dise. To Olafur Gunnar. To Matja Dise. That's right. Now I have to fold it.
I guess we read quite a lot more for him than many other families do, and more advanced literature - but it sort of sounds like we're doing something right ;).
(Sat, 19 Jul 2008 01:33:48 +0200). ->>
In the feature comment Wergeland for hvermann in the Norwegian newspaper Vårt Land, Liv Riiser writes:
The nice thing about the Wergeland year celebrations until now is that it gets Wergeland out of the Suttung movement's embrace. Those idealists deserve respect for having kept him warm when nobody else cared, but they also patented him and dressed him in home-made costumes and anatomically correct shoes - which doesn't suit him well.
Well, it's always interesting when other people happen to reveal their prejudices... A Suttung emphasis on home-made clothes and anatomical shoes is news to me!
Yet, what she says is that this year even a journalist observes an interest in Wergeland that reaches beyond the Suttung movement. That's of course very positive, so I guess we'll just keep wondering where the home-made clothes came in and what costume Liv Riiser's Wergeland is wearing.
(Mon, 02 Jun 2008 00:39:18 +0200). ->>
Julekorg, a Christmas decoration
