Labour day in Lillehammer

1st May - Labour day

Indeed yet another holiday for many of us. But in Lillehammer it was a little different story. People heartily remembered the labor unions, who fought for the rights of labors with the Judiciary for a long time, eventually got almost an equal status across all kinds of work and bringing salaries more or less on to the same platform.

Monday I decided not to go home instead stayed at Pramod's Apartment that night. He had witnessed some practices happening near the citi-center two days ago. So we were expecting some thing to happen on the streets on Tuesday (1st of May).

On inquiring we got to know that processions will be held at around 1.00 p.m. After about a wait for 2 hours at Lillehammer Kommune (Lillehammer Municipality) open ground, there came these little girls dressed up in white skirts marching elegantly on Størgata streets.

The lead or the anchor showed fantastic skills in whirling the flag around in all the directions he held. I tried capturing a front close view but with the crowd around it seemed not easy but difficult.

This group marched through complete city, we even tried following for quite a distance to get a better glimpse of the lead girl as she portrayed skillful hand at sophisticated sword exercises.

The next procession held at around 4.00 pm where several people held banners & posters written 'Boikott Israel' (Boycott Israel) and several such slogans which were out of our understanding range. Ladies prominently took part in the procession, it was no less than mesmerizing to see so many aged people taking this active part in a social event.

This group was led by a music band, dressed up in Black. All of them finally settled down at the Citi-Center, followed by two speeches for about 15 minutes (again out of our understanding range) but we enjoyed the ambiance and the thrill of so many people around for the first time in this city.

It looked so energizing to see young guys & girls hugging each other after the speech & Band music was over. It felt as if something has been achieved by them today, their active participation in such a social activity was indeed heart warming. Why these guys & girls were happy? Yes there's a reason behind that as well, which I shall cover in the next post.

an evening walk ... (2)

contd. an evening walk ...(1)

Engulfed in his own thoughts, he is exploring the place looking here and there. It is while observing these big trees, standing naked all alone makes him feel welcoming to this place and in their world of silence and loneliness. Suddenly his emotions are spurting up to embrace these trees and he feels like spending some time talking to them, asking them how do they preserve themselves so silently?

I know him, this loneliness caused to him is not coz of the absence of other human bodies around but the loneliness of being a lost single note in the intense noise everywhere around. Sometimes he is not been able to identify as to why has he been granted this big human life? Has there been some special reasons that God created him for? If it is then why doesn’t he let us know clearly?

Wake up everyday with a fresh neutral mind to face these worldly infinite diverse possibilities that the end of the day is still the same, ‘you do not know what best thing & which is the best way to go for?’

“But I remember discussing with him once about the house, when I read RichDadPoorDad to which he responded as a place for emotional needs, quite away from any materialistic requirement! Yet he is leaving this home! Wouldn’t it pain him at all? When I can sense the pain without having at all a share there, how could he pass a thought of selling it away completely, having spent several years there, having seen complete construction in front of the eyes? May be money, may be opportunities, may be prejudicial thoughts about the new place, may be …”

He is now lost among several may be(s) and is still not getting ready to believe that he wouldn’t find that place again where he landed up the first in this Bangalore city, he wouldn’t be able to see the faces he is now obsessed with and takes for granted, he won’t have any reason to come to the area where he drove the most in this city or would he be able to drive back again in those areas at all? How would it feel visiting the vicinity of that place and finding that No, there’s nobody here now, there's no home, there's no kid you can play around with, there's nobody to recognize you, you have to return back to your rented room! Despite several attempts to fathom the depth of this hollowness which is getting deeper and deeper, he is just as good as the ant who is trying to escape out of the dish which has boiling water inside and kept on the stove which is red hot outside. There's no escape out!

“How everything around you sometimes steals your mood to give you exactly the view you want to see.” Looking at the deserted road in front, the road looks so silent that he finds easy to map approximately every thought in his mind with an object he could visualize with the eyes.

“I think this is why they say that college or school days are the best bet in life, quite true, you know you have crowd around but you can visualize it, you still can manage to make a way out for you but how about the crowd you just can’t imagine?” Ummm even am little confused as to what is he trying to relate with what now but it seems that his thoughts are jumping in several directions together at a time.

“Durdamya Jijivisha – Yes, this was what written in that chapter in Alok Bharti, however hard it is but human still desires to live in every damn possible situation. See the people here, they too survive in extreme climates of several degrees below zero and similarly above. How does that matter if the standards of living are high, Isn’t it also an example of durdamya jijivisha?”

Probably an extremely aged lady struggling with heavy woolens on her with the chilly wind blowing provoked this thought in him. But to see her wish to live despite any situation, inspires him for something, something unknown!

“Where will I go on Diwali this year? How about Jua? What about Rasika & Sneha? They too must be feeling little bad about this. In fact none of us will be able to get together the way we did! There won’t be any comments on each other, no lunches, no dinners, no tea at Infinitea, no shopping together, no reasons to go to Corner house, no reason to go to Nagarjuna or probably no exploration of new places around & what about Arushi? Probably it won't matter much for her, she is too young to realize all this.” It is something which can't be defined, No I do not have anything absolute to comment on his feelings. I'm surprised how has he been able to bring such feelings out of himself for the first time. May be he's trying to change himself a bit.

To break his line of thoughts he stood up and is now forwarding back to his house again, he has just taken the rest but somehow the far placed bench on roadside again is trying to prompt him to sit for a while, telling him to take some deep breathes & rest. This isn’t the way you should be thinking! How can you be so rudimentary? How do these thoughts make it any better? And why do you forget that everything is the part of life?

This has been happening since … you know it better than anyone. Is it a bigger blow than you have had in the past? You became normal then and you again will! Its not you, it applies to every normal human. I understand that it pains to see everybody you find attached to leaving you every time again. But probably harder the lessons, better is the knowledge gained. Keep your patience up! There’s always a brighter side to everything.

He just reached the bench to sit for a while that he notices the sign board besides.

“God what a nice bus stand it is! How neat and pleasing”

He couldn’t contain himself with a sudden excitement of seeing such a peaceful bus stand. All it takes a bench and a board, isn’t it like something back in India? All you need just a few people to stand, thats it :).

“Icepeak guy must be waiting for the reply, I have to respond him back with some answer soon. Sweden eh!”

Its been very dark, he too is feeling little exhausted not physically but emotionally. It was a long walk covering approx. whole of the city yet its only the thoughts that made him feel tired. True. There's nothing beyond this mind. Control this one thing, probably that will solve almost every problem like situation.

Lillehammer

Its just a few days ago I landed up here at a small town in Norway called Lillehammer. Talk to anyone about the city, the first impression you get is that its the place of 1994 Winter Olympic games (which was around 12 of February back in 94). My office is located at Fakkelgården (seems to be the hub of sports athletes during Olympics).

The other attraction attached to this place is the Lake Mjøsa (read myosa), which is the biggest lake in whole Norway. Lillehammer is actually located on the northernmost part of this lake. One day over a lunch discussion got to know quite strange things about this lake. During winters, this lake freezes to a depth that the surface is hard enough to drive a car or to land a helicopter quite easily on it. It was back in ancient times when Germans tried intruding Norway through to Lillehammer, Norwegians broke down an important bridge to prevent the intrusion but the winter season preferred the Germans, as they could easily land their air vehicles on this lake mjøsa. I saw this lake while driving from Oslo to Lillehammer from within the car, no one can believe that its a lake looking at its size, it certainly looks like a big river!

I can compare this city to a small hill station in India like Nainital or Dehradun. It is a hilly region, surrounded by mountains but displays the efficient infrastructure and magnificent architecture. The wooden houses look quite solemn and beautiful, it is in fact said that lillehammer preserves the beautiful wooden houses of even as late as 19th century. The city has one main street which is like a main market or a place where you can go for shopping, which is as big as the Brigade road in Bangalore but damn neat and beautiful displaying a traditional look quite opposed to the modern visual noise which we encounter in almost every big city today be it anywhere in the world for that matter.

Another observation which mesmerizes me is the presence of the small candles at the restaurants everywhere. They say that the burning candle makes the ambiance livelier, which I myself felt to be quite true, you actually feel good to see all the tables with a small lit candle. Whole room gains immense energy from so many lighted candles around. You can even encounter a big candle burning outside the shops, which signifies that the shop is still open, which are blown off only while closing the shop.

My accommodation has been arranged at Nedre Lundebekken; inside a small beautiful wooden house (completely engulfed with snow outside) about a Km and half distant from office, this place is actually the hostel for the college students here. And am sure its worth a sight for the people who haven't seen wooden houses and snow in life, it simply looks ecstatic.

Another concept of having your garbage sorted out at home in three different containers certainly needs attention. At home everyone maintains three different dustbins. A blue in color, to collect the paper garbage, a brown one should be used for the organic waste and the white one should be used for rest everything. And there are bigger dump baskets in a housing colony for different garbage. It’s every week that the govt. vehicles collect the garbage and dumps different kind of garbage at different places, which ensures that the plastic and paper can go for recycling easily and extra labor can be avoided for the same. Looking at the packaged content growing in its reputation, the disposal of plastic garbage certainly is becoming a global issue today and such simple efforts are worth an attention.

Although the Norwegians too have advanced and supposed to be quite well-to-do in monetary terms compared to the global standards. The divide between the rich and poor is like negligible (doesn’t mean that they don’t have riches and poor), the middle class here rules the society with a major share, I am impressed to see the perseverance towards their customs, traditions and culture, which is very much reflected in every small activity of their daily routine life.

Although it’s the winter season here, there is no way any activity is restrained on account of this snow. In fact Norwegians I believe get more enthusiastic during winters with their skii(s).

The kind of hospitality I’ve received so far is again euphoric and I indeed have several things to mention about. Usually the floor at my room gets so cold that it’s not possible to even stand on it and I didn’t have any slippers also in place, about which I mentioned to a colleague on Friday. On Monday before I could connect my laptop, I was presented with the warm woolen shoes by Kari. I came to know through her that these shoes are by the courtesy of Hilda. I was amazed to hear this because I don’t have anything to do with her except that we work in the same office and we even sit way apart. Somehow she got to know about the problem, she purchased these shoes especially for me. I was out of words about this enlivening experience, since she is not keeping well, I’ve still not been able to thank her. But while writing this blog, just today I realized that I could have at least called her up to ask about her health and thanked her for the same. Gosh! I shall do it tomorrow as the first activity.

Last Thursday I chopped my finger with knife, which let some 50ml blood ooze out of my finger. I kept sucking my finger whole night, pain was literally bad, and blood wasn’t stopping at all, after about 2 hours I even kept the finger inside the freezer to allow the blood to freeze, couldn’t even sleep whole night. But next morning the care and the concern shown by everyone was once again thrilling. A colleague (Bent) drove me all the way to office then to hospital then back to office and then to home inspite of the fact that, he was one of the key player in the delivery which was due in a few days and he was already short of time. Saturday I kept receiving the calls from colleagues, asking about the finger’s status. Another colleague who was on leave on Friday, showed a great amount of disappointment.

Simply overwhelmed.

For some pictures of lillehammer click here.

How good are these online surveys?

That certainly means that I too got a digicam in my wardrobe. I never thought that I’ll do the research on the model of digicam after getting it purchased.

Alright, now I have an Olympus FE-170 model (also known as X-760) which I chose over all other brands & models on the display, solely for the reason that it was the cheapest available then but yes it did look good too. This camera looks very much like any other digicam(s) available in the market.

According to the Flickr survey done across a brand of cameras available in the market, this model ranks 17^th among the different models available within Olympus brand, which went some way to convince me that it wasn't a big mistake purchasing this one with the budget in hand.

There is also an exceptional growth seen in the user base of this camera over last year. The graph below should make this rather more clear.

FE170 Usage this year

no. of users

It so happened that I had to move to lillehammer next morning and my senior manager asked me to complete the basic shopping in Oslo itself coz Lillehammer is not a big or even a happening town. But since it is a small place, I anticipated better sight seeing there compared to the urbanized look at Oslo, hence, a digicam was quite inevitable in the pocket.

Since my Visa card was still inactive, therefore, this camera is by the courtesy of my manager again. That evening he picked me up to visit a shopping mall named “Lefdal”, which claims to sell the stuff the cheapest in Oslo, having found the price cheaper compared to them elsewhere, be sure to receive the 150% of the amount you pay for the item.

Cost of Camera - 1495 Kroners (10.5K INR)

256 MB memory card - 399 Kroners (2.8K INR)

Camera Cover - 99 Kroners (700 INR)

A total deal within 2000 Kroners (14K INR)

But many a times things aren't they way as they look. I went through several links finding about the model but most of the description were quite amateurish. Its was only after reading CNET's insider view, I understood how several of these surveys can actually be misguiding.

What CNET Says: FE180 is much better a choice with just a $30 differences between the models. Lets look over at the major differences.

1. While both are automated, the FE-180 uses Olympus's TruePic Turbo image processor. The FE-170's unbranded image processor is the main cause of its performance woes.

2. The camera takes 5.7 seconds from power-on to first shot and every shot thereafter suffers a wait of 4.8 seconds without flash. With the onboard flash enabled, that wait becomes an even-longer 5.5 seconds. Shutter lag was almost as painful, taking a full 1.3 seconds from shutter release to shot. These numbers are more than double when compared to FE-180, which offered a 1.6-second shot-to-shot time and a shutter lag of just 0.6 second.

3. While the FE-180 displayed very good white balance with tungsten lights, the FE-170's tungsten shots looked almost like old-time sepia prints.

4. Also FE180 comes with two rechargeable batteries and a wall charger against the alkaline batteries with 170.

Thus, the lesson to be learnt here is that sometimes spending a little extra can go a long way and never research on whatever you have done already, it only leads to disappointment. Had I purchased FE180, I'd have read the comparisons with its daughter versions, hence, disappointment is inevitable.