The Susanne

So far three epis­odes of the Nor­we­gian ver­sion of ‘Kitchen Nightmares’ have aired, and I must say my opin­ion is pretty much unchanged. Eyvind Hellstrøm is undoubtedly an excel­lent chef (and is the pres­id­ent of the Bocuse d’Or Europe), and as far as his abil­it­ies in the kit­chen I’m not going to go into any sort of com­par­ison to Gordon Ramsay. As far as his suit­ab­il­ity for host­ing a tv series like Kit­chen Night­mares, though, I’ve no scruples about com­par­ing them. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: what I love the most about Kit­chen Night­mares is Gordon’s pas­sion­ate reac­tions, his foul mouth which is so touch­ing because the des­per­a­tion which darkens his face makes his exclam­a­tions so very understandable.

Eyvind Hellstøm might be very pas­sion­ate about his food (actu­ally I’d be very sur­prised if he wasn’t) but he’s not very adept at express­ing that pas­sion. It all seems quite orches­trated and he comes off a little silly, exclaim­ing ‘I can’t eat this’ in his calm voice, usu­ally fol­lowed by an awk­ward pause. Maybe it’s all down to the pro­du­cers, maybe Ramsay’s tv crew is simply doing a better job than Hellstrøm’s… But the end result is still that I find myself every Thursday night in front of the tv — long­ing for Gordon’s pas­sion­ate exclam­a­tions of ‘Fuck Me!’ and feel­ing a little hope­less at the bland, though obvi­ously heart­felt per­form­ance of Norway’s own Hellstrøm. Bless him.

And, to end with a mem­or­able quote from epis­ode two of Hellstrøm Rydder Opp:

If you spend five minutes eating some­thing which isn’t that nice tast­ing, instead of a juicy roast beef or some­thing, then you’ll have more energy the rest of the day. If you’ve sac­ri­ficed those five minutes and eaten some­thing which tastes, well, not so good, then you’ve made an invest­ment in your future. That is my philo­sophy when it comes to food.

-Owner of veget­arian res­taur­ant in Oslo (and self-​proclaimed veget­arian missionary)

I am still in essay hell. This time, though, I’m fairly con­fid­ent as far as the ques­tion goes. My prob­lem now is the weather, which has changed into the glor­i­ous autumn I’ve been dream­ing of, long­ing for, lament­ing the lack of, for weeks now. And here I am, stuck inside, trying with all my might to con­cen­trate on Shakespeare’s King Richard II. I’m not doing too well. I know I can answer the ques­tion quite easily if only I get down to it. I just can’t seem to con­cen­trate! I long to be out­side in the warm sun­shine, and my gaze is con­stantly drawn away from the com­puter screen towards my window where the sun­light comes stream­ing in, teas­ing me, the clear blue sky vis­ible through my cur­tains and I can see flocks of birds frol­ick­ing about.

Need­less to say, my room is stifling hot. I’ve opened both win­dows as far as they go (which is only abuot 10cm at the top as appar­ently we, the res­id­ents of the stu­dent vil­lage, are to be kept from jump­ing or fall­ing out of open win­dows) yet I find myself com­pletely parched. The solu­tion? Well, it used to be pop­ping down to the super­mar­ket about twice a day to pick up a bottle of spark­ling water. I enjoy a nice cold glass of tap water, too, but not in Oslo. I sup­pose I’m spoiled in that depart­ment as the tap water where I grew up is pos­sibly the best in Norway (and the world?) — it tastes better than any bottled water I’ve ever had. Drink­ing water in Norway is incred­ibly clean, but the stuff in Oslo is prob­ably the least clean in the coun­try. I just think it tastes faintly of exhaust fumes. Today, though, I’ve a new gadget which has been on my wish list for a while. The Ex gave it me as an early birth­day present and I almost fain­ted with hap­pi­ness: a SodaStream machine! Yey! His reas­on­ing for giving it to me now, a good month-and-a-half before my birth­day, was ‘Imagine how much spark­ling water you can make between now and your birthday!’

-Yea, just ima­gine! I’ve already made (and drank) about six litres. Ahhh…delicious! He also let me pick out one fla­vour­ing, I chose lime, but I’m not really fussed. I really prefer plain spark­ling water, maybe with a slice of lemon in it but once you add arti­fi­cial fla­vour­ings it becomes too sweet for my taste.

So here I am, chained to my com­puter, long­ing to be out­side — and yet am not com­pletely unhappy. Because I’ve got end­less sup­plies of this:

Autumn came sud­denly this year. A month ago I returned from London laden with clothes suit­able for the first, warm month of autumn which I thought was ahead of me. What met me off the plane, was grey skies and freez­ing tem­per­at­ures. And rain. Loads and loads of rain. Very depress­ing, very wet. It took me about a week of daily soak­ings to learn that leav­ing the house without an umbrella is just plain stupid. I’m not used to this kind of weather — autumn is sup­posed to be lovely, sunny, slightly cooler than summer at first then gradu­ally pro­gress­ing toward winter. A day or two of rain, then snow. Cer­tainly noth­ing like what we’ve been exper­i­en­cing this year. This guy wasn’t very happy about his lot either:

When you’ve had sev­eral days of con­tinu­ous, pour­ing rain and feel like noth­ing will ever make you happy again, I’ve dis­covered there are a few things you can do to cheer you up:

– Buy some pink lilies!

– Make chicken breast bur­gers with rocket and real parmesan cheese and store bought home chips (the kind that takes only 5 minutes!)

– Go out for a couple of beers with a mate

– Warm up on some lovely rib-​eye steak with veget­ables and creole sauce. Feel the heat!

– Go for a walk in the even­ing after the rain and enjoy the smell of wet apshalt…

I remem­ber when I first learned the expres­sion ‘playing hookie’. It was when I saw Huckle­berry Finn played by Elijah Wood, and I remem­ber con­fus­ing ‘hookie’ with ‘hooker’. Oh, to be young again!

Today, I needed a day off after my long house arrest (read: for­cing myself to work on my essay which never got any­where) so after a long, slow morn­ing of break­fast, two cof­fees and the entire morn­ing paper I left the house in search of the Museum of Con­tem­por­ary Art. I’ve never been there before and I didn’t look as closely at the map as I should have before I left: the museum is in the one part of Oslo where I always get lost. So I took a wrong turn of course, and found myself at Akershus Fort­ress. I quickly decided that as I was already there a walk around couldn’t hurt — I hadn’t been in years and years! When I got up to the castle a tour was just about to start — so obvi­ously I joined it. (if you’re inter­ested in seeing the photos from the tour of the castle, I’ve posted them here: Tour­ist in Oslo) And it was really quite inter­est­ing! I got to see the dun­geon — the only cell still there today is the ‘Witch-cell’ (or ‘Trollkjerringhølet’ as it’s called in Norwegian…)– but it was pretty cool, com­plete with witches and all:

The rest of the tour was also cool, espe­cially as there were only seven other people besides myself and the guide: an old couple and their two grand­daugh­ters, and three for­eign guys who didn’t com­plain once even though the entire tour was given in Nor­we­gian. The old lady kept but­ting in with extra inform­a­tion and her hus­band kept quizz­ing their grand­daugh­ters about events that had happened there, people who’d been imprisoned, kings and queens. I noticed that they didn’t always seem to hear him…

After the tour I decided to take a walk around the grounds. They are so gor­geous this time of year, when the foliage shows its pret­ti­est dress and even through the gray skies and the rain the per­sist­ent sun lights up the sur­round­ings. Abso­lutely beau­ti­ful! I decided to take a pic­ture of one of the poor guards, whom I feel deep sym­pathy for. I really do sup­port con­scrip­tion for young men as I think it builds char­ac­ter and teaches them to stop acting like the spoiled babies they are raised to be. But I pity the ones who join the Royal Guard. Ima­gine just having to stand there, for hours, in all weather, with no notice­able dif­fer­ence in uni­form whether it’s summer or winter. So tiring and so boring, so hot and so cold! Ah. My heart goes out to you boys.

Then I left the fort­ress and star­ted walk­ing back towards the city centre. On the way I found a stun­ning little park, and another girl pho­to­graph­ing her sur­round­ings (just like I was!) and then… the Museum of Con­tem­por­ary Art! Yey! I found it! I was only one block away of course. I’m going back soon — pos­sibly tomor­row, if not then def­in­itely this weekend!

As I got closer to the main street Karl Johans gate, rain was pour­ing stead­ily. I didn’t have an umbrella; mine was still hanging in its place on my ward­robe door where I’d left it this morn­ing because the sky was only a light gray and it didn’t look like it would rain. Yea. Silly me. I noticed this little guy and felt sorry for him:

Dead­line for the first draft of my essay was nine minutes ago. I handed in noth­ing like what I hope my fin­ished essay to be a month from now — in fact I have simply not been able to wrap my mind around the ques­tion. Either it must be ridicu­lously simple and only a matter of dis­cuss­ing how the char­ac­ters differ in their ruth­less self-​seeking, or it is as I think: much more com­plex and com­plic­ated. And I still haven’t figured out how to answer it. I have come up with an idea for a bril­liant essay on the dif­fi­culty of the ques­tion, but some­how I doubt that will get me that A…

I always feel strong dis­ap­point­ment in myself at times like this. I feel like a fail­ure, I feel like I have not put enough effort into it (although I have, of course!) I feel like I have no worth while thoughts at all and that I know noth­ing. Yea, I know. Sad. It’ll pass soon enough though. And when it does, hope­fully the veil that I know is hiding the answer I seek will lift and I will be able to finish my task!

In the mean time, I’ve got the layout job for Filo­lo­gen loom­ing. The first course night of the layout class was yes­ter­day and I found it inter­est­ing, if maybe a little dif­fi­cult and not com­pletely sat­is­fy­ing. There were ques­tions which I didn’t get answers to, and lots of stuff that is quite irrel­ev­ant to the type of pub­lic­a­tion we make. I’m going back for round two tomor­row and am excited about it: hope­fully things will fall a little into place and I’ll be able to learn most of what I’ll need so that when Monday rolls around and I have my meet­ing with the editor and the rest of the edit­or­ial staff I won’t be com­pletely clueless.

I must admit I eat quite well even when I’m busy with study­ing. The dis­trac­tion of cook­ing is the most wel­come to me of all dis­trac­tions, and I’m sure many of you can relate to my feel­ings on the sub­ject of dis­trac­tions and pro­cras­tin­a­tion: Yes please, no please, please leave me alone… So I allow myself the luxury of spend­ing an hour or two in the kit­chen cook­ing and eating. Yes­ter­day it was smoked saus­ages and sautéed veget­ables; today it was a lovely grilled tail piece of trout, with green beans and sugar snaps (as you know, my favour­ite combo), mush­rooms and a sweet bal­samic vin­egar glaze. Mmmm!  What I really love about cook­ing when I’m really sup­posed to be study­ing, is that I can ration­al­ise and tell myself that I must eat, I need brain food, I can’t very well starve to death over an essay! Plus the break is very refresh­ing and I always return to my work with renewed energy and much, much happier!