Thursday 26 August 1999
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Pic of the day: Into the unknown... (Actually, this is where you take off from the main road to walk to the Chaos Node, so it isn't unknown to me. Still, the woods are almost like a different world sometimes.) We start at McDonalds, as is good and proper. I'm not a vegetarian, even though most of my childhood friends were animals. I do usually eat some small piece of meat several times a week, but preferably it should be changed beyond recognition. Today it was a McFeast burger. As I stood in line, waiting, there were a couple of young female students behind me. There were students almost everywhere, which is significant later on. They were muttering about there being too few cash registers in use. I was able to see behind the counter and noticed that the workers had divided themselves pretty much optimally beween food preparation and customer handling. There was a steadily growing surplus of cheeseburgers, but that was it. Still, there had definitely been room for more workers in the large locale. And I was sooo close to commenting aloud that there would have been more workers had there been competition. There just ain't anything close to McDonalds in town. And Kristiansand is an education center. The college here is steadily growing towards becoming a university - it is mainly a political question by now. And young people want fast food. They do not want to wait till evening and then shell out a lot of cash for food. They want it now, and they want it cheap. They want burgers or pizza. (There are too few fast pizza joints too.) The university in Oslo is bursting at its seams: There are close to double the number of students it was built for. So it is likely that some of the larger colleges will be upgraded to universities within a few years. The ugly new buildings of HiA, our district college, will probably house a university within a few years. (It helps that Kristiansand grows by 1000 inhabitants a year, too.) From here on, my train of thoughts visited the right-wing Progress Party of Norway, which launched the idea of making room for the students by expelling immigrants. This again reminded me of the Norwegian treatment of the Jews during the Nazi occupation, and how we only now are coming to terms with the truth about that. I've wondered for a long time why so few Jews returned to our country after the war. Perhaps they had their reasons.
From this, it was a short jump to reflecting on the
attitudes towards nazism and racism in years between the
world wars. From our attitude towards fascism, my thoughts
jumped to our medieval history and how it has formed us
as a people. From there, my thoughts jumped to the
beautiful girl that passed in front of me. My train of
thoughts derailed, I was suddenly back in McDonalds in
Kristiansand.
I did not get much sympathy from my coworker when I later complained about the lack of competing burger chains. "You might try bread" was the advice.
Yes, Norwegians eat slices of bread for lunch, typically with cheese.
I would dearly like to go on and on about the Norwegian lunch, but
I have to stop before I start writing BOOKS each day. |
July is now in the archives (Diary Farm). I have not proofread it fully so there may be the occasional missing link. |