Monday 25 October 1999
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Pic of the day: Finally, a picture from the new "mini-town" at Tangvall, Søgne. This picture from the pedestrian street goes to show how much the place has changed from the crossroads with a gas station and a hamburger kiosk. Well, I do exaggerate ... the place has been growing for quite a while, but the town feeling is brand new. Nicely done! ... I'm on sick leave today, sort of. What I actually did was visit Søgne Trygdekontor ... Trygdekontor is basically Social Security office, for my American friends. In Norway this is a more encompassing system, including what seems to be called Medicare and Medicaid and health insurances in the land of the free and the brave. (One need not be nearly so brave to get sick here, as it will not lead to starvation and homelessness, though there may be some extra expenses and loss of income, especially for those with higher earnings.) So I took the bus to Tangvall, the tentative center of our municipality. I have mentioned that I like the way they have built a small town-like center there, combining shops and offices with apartments, particularly well suited for the elderly. It makes sense that the Social Security office was also there. Basically my visit was about financing doctor visits and tests etc in my near future (if any). I now have an appointment with a doctor tomorrow at 10. Hopefully he will be able to find out if I harbor an infection or an allergy or if it's just a bad habit of coughing (particularly in the night).While waiting for the bus home, I looked around in the new places. I bought some groceries (was nearly out of yoghurt, for instance). Also discovered that the old hamburger kiosk, Kjesken, was still alive. It was now located in larger, modern locales in one of the large multi-use complexes, and had joined the MIX chain. But the choice of hamburger and similar meals was larger than ever. Now there were spring rolls and various chicken meals, including one with rice, bernaise sauce and some more. Complete meals, and a nice and practical place to eat. I felt my appetite coming on pretty strongly, but there was no time to satisfy its urges so I fought it back and took the bus home, there to eat bread with potato salad, mustard and curry powder. Not quite the same, but it did last me through the day and way into the evening. ... So I came home and wound down and finally got some sleep (this night wasn't particularly impressive either, though better than the last). Needless to say, at this point Staffman called from the office, where the Support Center had rebooted the network and someone had forgotten to save a largish document at all. Oh, had we but still used the quaint old text editing program that required you to give the document a name before you started to write. What was it called again? WordPerfect? Something like that. You see, he thought he was saving it as the network went down, but alas he did not know where. Probably he was too late. In all fairness, it wasn't Staffman who had been writing a lengthy text without saving. It was one of the management. And a fairly young and competent one too.Sometimes I just suspect that a hitherto unknown law of nature balances applied intelligence and income, so that the sum of the two do not get over a certain value. At extreme levels of income, such as that of some well known American gentlemen named Bill, the entire world will laugh at your pathetic toddler-like excuses. On a more normal CEO level, you will be unable to operate simple office machines without the assistance of a trained secretary, even when it would take less of your costly time to just do it alone. Of course, it could just be that it is humanoid to err, but nobody notice when we proletars do it. Basically nobody notice us proletars at all. :) ... Well, that's not entirely correct. Joe Shedlock responded to my plea about info on Judaism and sacrifice with a well-placed pointer into the fascinating site Judaism 101, a place to quickly and very readably bring readers of the Old Testament up to date on modern Judaism. (As I tentatively suspected, the animal sacrifices are out quite a while ago.) Thanks. And on this happy note, I wish myself and you all a good night. |