The Second Coming

He is back. When He first came we were not prepared. We did not know what to expect. For seven years He walked among us. For seven years He preformed miracles and blessed us with His presents. It has been nearly eleven years since He left us. For eleven years we have been in the Valley of Darkness, we have walked in the Shadow of Death. But just as night is darkest just before dawn so was also 2008 a year of misery before His return. Today He was back. With a miracle He returned. Against the three-time World Cup winner football superpower, the machine that is known as Germany, and on their own grass He led us to Victory. This is truly The Second Coming.

The Stig has been outed

The Stig, anonymus test driver for BBC's Top Gear, has his alleged identity revealed by a British newpaper according to Timesonline. Having for years been a devouted follower of Top Gear and the wits of presenter Jeremy Clarkson when I first saw the article i asked myself if I really wanted to know who The Stig was. Off record a BBC employee caracterises the revelation as "bloody enoying" adding with reference to the article "you wouldn't write a piece saying that Santa didn't exist." I can only follow in line behind these comments.

I will not tell you who The Stig (apparently) is, for that you will have to follow the link. I just know that watching Top Gear will not be the same again.

The Stig, I miss you.

We are not alone

We are not alone in the universe. NASA findings on Mars suggest the presens of alive micro-organisms. Yet helas, we've yet to find someone to play with. Next up is macro-organisms, or intelligent life. ET, we are waiting for you!

The lack of formality in norwegian

How do you introduce a formal letter or e-mail in norwegian? In english there's always Dear sir/madam, and the French have their Madame/Monsieur (la Directrice/le Directeur), but what do we have? Writing to the Prime Minister I can't start by Dear Prime Minister (Kjære Statsminister) which would be a missmatch in level of politeness and familiarity. I can't write Monsieur le Premier Ministre (Herr Statsminister) as the "Herr" is a relic of the fifties and an anachronism after 1968. Some would of course propose that I write Dear Jens (Kjære Jens), but as I (1) didn't vote for him, (2) is not very fond of him as a politician and (3) have never even met him nor communicated with him adressing him with "dear" and omitting his last name is slightly to cozy (or koselig) for my taste. Also I can't be properly polite any longer without sounding sarcastic. After we abandoned the "De", "Dem" and "Deres" (Vous and Votre) and replaced it with "du", "deg" and "ditt" (tu, toi and ton) I have a hard time adressing respectable people in a proper way. Just imagine adressing President Sarkozy with "Et toi, Nico, qu'est-ce que tu pense?" The only person(s) I can still talk to without feeling ashamed about my language are the royals, as they can be adressed in the third person. ("And how did Her Majesty find the exhibition?" "Oh, it was quite interesting. I especially liked the pictures by...")

The blessings of inter-state duty-free shopping

On my way home for Christmas I felt like doing my old man a favour and by him a bottle of Chivas Regal, his favourit whisky. In the airport shop the whisky shelf is filled with tempting goods, but no Chivas. I lift my head to see if there's more whisky to be found and in a distance, at the very far end of the liquor store at Brussels National Airport, hanging from the celing there's a sign with a Norwegian flag and a message stating, in Norwegian, that those flying to Norway still can enjoy duty-free shopping. Embarressed and with my head down in shame I walked over, picked up my father's whisky and got in line.
We're part of Schengen and we're part of the EU Inner Market, but we still have our own shelves at the airports equipped with big signs and arrows pointing us in the right direction.

Reflections on extra-brugoise vacation

I'm FREE! Finally FREE! The last exam is over, it's holiday and I feel soo... ...empty? I've got two weeks away from Bruges infront of me, two weeks without articles to read, papers to write, presentations to prepare and notes to revise. I've got two weeks with friends and family awaiting and yet there's a certain emptyness. Two weeks of holiday is also two weeks away from the people I've learned to know as friends over the last moths. It's two weeks without communal breakfast, lunch and dinner. Two weeks without coffee&cigarette breaks in the courtyard. Two weeks without nerdy Community-jokes, late night drinks at 't Potersgat, Bruges Zot, good and warm hugs from cute College-girls, linguistic schzophrenia and long days in the library. Luckily it's only two weeks. Come Monday 5 and everything will be back to normal. How I can't wait for that day to come!

Pre-holiday stress syndrome

It is (fairly) early in the morning of December 18th and in five hours I'll be outside some naked classroom waiting for the professor to invite me in for my final exam. With institutional community law, EU politics and policy and EU political economy off the way the only thing that separates me from two weeks of vacation is a 25m chat about how a/the european identity has been born, baptised and shaped throughout the last 7-800 years. Well, a short-version of the class is Europe from Plato to NATO so I'll probably have to say a word or two about Athens and Rome and how the Holy Roman Empire (which, according to Voltaire, was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire) was a continuation of the Roman Empire, and then a phrase or two about Westphalia and the creation of the modern nation state.

The pre-holiday stress syndrome isn't caused by my fear for the exam. I know my stuff, it's general knowledge and then some. What stresses me is the hours I have to kill before the exam. What to do? What to do?