Norway - Some Binding facts

Human development is about people, about expanding their choices to lead lives they value. Fundamental to enlarging human choices is building human capabilities: the range of things people can do or be.

Scandinavian countries usually do not contribute much to the daily news, thus, the level of awareness about these countries goes minimal in the Asian countries like India. It was while reading a report from United Nations Development Program (UNDP), I realized that Norway is actually the country, which enjoys the highest living standards in the world.

This perception many times wrongly goes for the countries like US & UK since the IT Services phenomena has taken place. Surprisingly these countries don't figure out in even top 5 entries but scale quite further down.

The study reveals the ranking based largely on following parameters: 1. Average levels of education 2. Income levels 3. Expected length of lifetime This report measured standards of living in over 177 countries around the world.

One of the surprising findings however is the life expectancy rate in Norway. It goes to 78 years, yes the men and women on an average live 78 damn odd years. This also means that the age of 90 & 100 is also common.

Norwegians themselves point very high to their country for the scenic beauty, recreational opportunities, clean water & fresh air. Besides I found out quite a blossoming cultural diversity, the public policies are aimed at integrating various ethnic groups, accepting different communities and promoting tolerance.

People might debate these sayings in particular cases though, however, overall this country scores much high on several parameters around the world. Only exception is the costliness of the country, compared to Asian countries, this makes anyone go crazy.

Here is a snapshot of the rankings from UNDP.

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.