London - Day 6

Internet café @ Clink; Royalty; Lene @ Thornton's; Camilla suited up

Day 6 - Wednesday

Since today was our last day in London, we spent most of the morning packing and checking out, and thus we didn't wander about as much. We did, however, still have time to go to Oxford Street one final time. At Uniqlo, I was able to peer pressure Camilla into buying a suit. In all fairness, it did look amazing on her, though. Suit up! We also went to Thornton's, where we bought some Thornton's toffee and chocolate. After that we went back to the hostel to pick up our luggage and we just had to take some pictures with the Prince William and (at that time Princess-to-be) Kate Middleton cardboard cutouts in the reception. Then we headed off to the airport.

Taking the bus from King's Cross St.Pancras to Liverpool Street, from where the airport express bus would take us to the airport, was easier said than done. We had no trouble finding the right bus, but as we were seven people, with the luggage of at least seven people, it got a bit cramped. Even more so when two baby strollers entered the bus. Finding the bus stop at Liverpool Street was slightly harder, since there was some kind of construction work going on, making the bus take a new route. Fortunately, an old lady sitting next to me told us not to get off at the first stop named Liverpool Street, and even though it looked like we were going far and/or in circles, we did get there in the end.

Of course, when we finally got there, the bus was late. When it finally came, though, there was lots of space, and barely any passengers at all. We all got to the airport in one piece, and in one group, but by then we were a bit late, and were told to stand in a priority queue, so we'd make it to the plane. After checking in (and shopping at the duty free), we ran most of the way to the gate (which was surprisingly far away), and even though Margrethe fell behind, we all made it on time. As it was Ryanair, we did, however, have lots of time despite the fact that boarding was ending in five minutes. That's Ryanair for you.

Phew. That was all from my trip to London. From now on, there'll be sporadic posts about my dull student life (and my trip to Edinburgh in June).

DFTBA!

London - Day 5

Soho, Totoro, milk tea, scooter seats, Soho is watching you.

Day 5 - Tuesday

Today, we returned to Oxford Street, Soho and Lomography where I bought a Diana Flash for my film cameras. Then we walked to the end of Regent Street, almost to Piccadilly Circus and stopped by Lush to by some lotions. Luna tried to return a ring for a friend, but it turned out you had to go to the exact shop where you bought it, meaning we'd have to go to York. That being unlikely, we went to Camden Lock Market again, though unfortunately, I did not get the chance to look around the Horse Tunnel/Stables Market, since it was already quite late. I did however buy a delicious cup of milk tea, complete with tapioca. Yummy!

DFTBA!

London - Day 4

St. Paul's, Tate Modern, Niko, the TARDIS, the Clock Tower, Tower Bridge.

Day 4 - Monday

We started the day by all going to St. Paul's Cathedral, where only Knut was willing to pay the fee to enter. The rest of us sat down at a Starbucks nearby and had some coffee/tea. We bought some lunch at the shop next to it, and when Knut came back we started walking towards the Thames. We then split up, once again, and Nikoline, Lene, Margrethe and I continued on our quest to find a river bus/boat tour. After a bit of walking, reaching the river, crossing Blackfriars Bridge, and walking further down the river (past the Tate Modern and Shakespeare's Globe), we finally found a port that was open for business. We took the boat a bit downstream to the St. Katharine's Pier, and then up to Westminster Pier. On our way there we passed under Tower Bridge, London Bridge and Waterloo Bridge (among others) and sailed past the HMS Belfast and The London Eye, before ending up right below the Clock Tower (also mistakenly called Big Ben, which is in fact the bell within). We snapped some pictures and then set off to Leicester Square to find some cool shops and a purikuri machine near Chinatown.

We found a total of three cool and nerdy shops (Orbital Comics & Collectibles, The Cinema Store and Forbidden Planet), with a variety of fun stuff. My favourite was Forbidden Planet, simply because it had a TARDIS replica inside, and also a great selection of Doctor Who merch. I ended up only buying a TARDIS mug (no, it wasn't bigger on the inside), which made me giddy with excitement and also proud since I spent less than £15 in the shop.

After fulfilling our nerdy needs, we had a snack at a cupcake shop, and then went to look for the purikuri machine. It was well hidden, but at last we found it, and after a lot of talking from the Chinese lady in charge of the machine, we got to take some pictures and decorate them. When we had spent more than enough time editing our pictures, we headed downstairs to look at a very Chinese/Japanese shop, and I bought a tiny Totoro figurine. Finally, we walked into Chinatown, and had Japanese(!!!) curry for dinner. Great service, decent value for money and delicious food.

Next blog post (day 5) soon.
DFTBA!

London - Day 3

Hyde Park x2, Chinatown, Hyde Park x2 and the Natural History Museum.

Day 3 - Sunday

Since Sunday was Easter Sunday, and all the big shops were closed, we decided to all go to Hyde park and then to the Natural History Museum. We walked through the park, past The Royal Albert Hall, and continued for quite a while, before we ended up at the museum. We walked around for an hour or two before going back to Hyde park again, but this time we took a bus. We ended up on the east side of the park (while we had walked north to south earlier), and being a bit tired from all the walking, we found a nice spot and sat down. We sat there for long time, basking in the sun.

In the late afternoon Camilla, Luna, Knut and I went to Leicester Square, hoping we would find Chinatown, which Luna claimed was near the station. Luna was, in fact, right, and the four of us shared a Chinese combo meal (or whatever it's called). Both the food and the price was a good contrast to the bad experience we had had in the Indian restaurant the night before, and we left Chinatown happy.

London - Day 2

Day 2 - Saturday

King's Cross, Regent Street, Morris dancers? and Regent's Canal in Camden

On our first full day in London, we decided to split up. We were, after all, seven people travelling together. Luna, Lene, Margrethe and I went to Oxford Street to check out the shopping possibilities. We ended up spending most of our time off Oxford street, wandering the smaller streets of Soho, and among other things checking out a camera shop that Margrethe knew. She had shown us one of her cool little analogue cameras, and I was intrigueg, so when we entered the shop I fell completely in love with Lomography (the name of the shop). I ended up buying two cameras, the Fisheye 2 and the Diana Mini, as well as two packs of films (3 rolls of 400 ISO for cloudy days and 3 rolls of 100 ISO for sunny days). Luna also bought the Fisheye 2.

When we walked out of the shop, we found ourselves next to a crowd who were watching some dancers. I'm not completely sure what kind of dance they were doing, but it looked like a traditional dance, and since it was St. George's Day, my guess is they were Morris dancers (not that I have a clue).

After watching some dancing, we took the tube up to Camden and walked through the market. Lene and I got separated from Luna and Margrethe, and when they got tired and went home, we decided to go check out the Camden Lock Market, which Lene had been to once before.

In the evening we had Indian food, which was not only overpriced, but also billed us for the bread we got before the meal (which they didn't tell us wasn't free). (Meanwhile, Nikoline, Knut and Camilla had been to a micro brewery, and when we met them again they were quite tipsy.)

Tomorrow: Day 3 in London.

DFTBA!

London

Picture courtesy of Lene (borrowing my Canon 450D).

This easter I went to London with some friends. It's the first time I haven't been with my family during easter, just like this New Year's Eve (2010-2011) was the first one with friends rather than family. I am a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to celebrating holidays, so it was weird not being with my family both at the start of the year and this Easter. It was a lot of fun though.
So, as I said, I went to London, which was quite different from my previous Easters in the mountains, when I've been skiing. The weather was a bit better than in Oslo. Most notably temperature-wise, as it was more summer-y with around 20 degrees centigrade (compared to 15 in Oslo).
I will try to blog about one day at a time, so that there won't be one massive post today, and none tomorrow and the day after and so on. Today you'll have a short intro to the trip, and then my first day in London.

Day 1 - Friday
The first day was the day we left Oslo, and arrived in London. Not a lot happened, since we landed at 23.00. But we did ride a classic London cab from Liverpool Street station to our hostel Clink78 close to King's Cross station. And when we came into our room, someone had taken one of the beds we were given (yes, they had given us certain beds, rather than letting us choose).

Tomorrow's post (Tuesday) will be about my second day in London.

DFTBA!

Rice

So, as I was saying in my last post (or rather writing in my last post), I was doing a bit of cleaning. While hoovering the floor, I managed to knock over my rice cooker, and it fell down from the kitchen counter. At first it seemed like the only damage was a dent in the bowl, which made it near impossible to insert it into the cooker "body", but when I decided to make sushi last night it didn't work. I turned it on, and started slicing cucumber, avocado and salmon, but it just didn't get hot. So I looked at it, moved it round and wiggled the plug and it worked! But when I turned it back round it stopped working.. In the end, I put the handle of a knife under the plug to support it, and even though there was a gap between the bowl and the lid, the rice got cooked.

I <3 sushi!

DFTBA!

Easter

Easter means spring is (almost) here. At least in Oslo. It also means the end of my fast/lent.

The last week, temperatures have been up to approximately 16 degrees centigrade, or "t-shirt weather" as I like to call it. The next step is "shorts weather" btw. Seeing the sun high in the sky, and being able to go outside without a jacket, and also the fact that it's light out longer than 6pm has lightened my mood. The fact that I'm almost done with all my obligatory assignments this semester also helps, even though I feel far from prepared for my exams in May/June, but I won't worry about those yet.

Since spring is here, I've done a bit of spring cleaning, even though I should probably do about three times as much. Hopefully my flat won't look too bad for Good Friday, but I'm not promising myself anything. Hehe.

So, lent ends 22./23. April, I'm not exactly sure which day, but it doesn't really matter, as I don't mind waiting until after I've seen the first episode of the new series of Doctor Who on the 23rd. I'm not watching it just anywhere either. I'm actually in London at the time, and will for the first time ever see an episode as it is being aired on BBC1. And then, I'll have a pint. Yeah!

Me and 6 of my friends are going to London this Easter, and will be staying there for a few days. I hope, since we are so many, that we'll do more sightseeing than me and my friends did in Edinburgh and Berlin last year. But of course we're not going to avoid shops at all costs. I for one really want to find a shop with Doctor Who merch (and other geeky stuff), buy a ukulele and go to Camden Market. If I know my friends right, I won't be going alone to any of those places.

When it comes to sightseeing I'm not very picky (although I expect Madamme Tussauds to be severly over-priced), and I'd just like to walk around part of the city, looking at the builings and people. The only thing that is a must for me, is watching the musical Lion King, and I'm confident we will go see it one night.

DFTBA!

Youtube

Hi, my name is Maja, and I'm a youtubaholic.
It's true. I can't count all the youtubers I subscribe to anymore. And most of my friends don't follow any youtube channel. I do try to introduce people to the awesomeness of Youtube, but.. I'd really like to have more friends who are as fanatic about it as I am.
So, since I sometimes have people from other countries on my blog, and also Norwegians I don't know, I'd like to know if any of you are Youtube fans, and what channels you subscribe to.
My favourite Youtube channels are: ShaneDawsonTV, TheFineBros, Tobuscus, Vlogbrothers, RayWilliamJohnson, Charlieissocoollike and Wheezywaiter. And those are only a few of the ones I watch regularly.

I realise this post was pretty useless, and dull, but I'd like to get to know more Youtube lovers.
DFTBA!

Sunny

Norway is a funny place.. You never know what the weather's gonna be like, although that's probably the case other places too. I guess we just like complaining about the weather. I know a place where they wouldn't complain about the weather though. New Zealand.. Because they'd complain about the wether..(ba dum psh) Pun of the day! Oh my. I do love me a good (or bad) pun.
Back to the topic. It's sunny. The sun can't be trusted. It pops out some time in March, and I immediately think that spring might be here, but then I start thinking about it, and I realise that it's probably gonna snow again. This time, on the other hand, I think it might last. Spring may actually be here. I sure hope so. Even though I don't mind winter, by the end of February even I am getting sick of snow and ice.
Since today was sunny and I was downtown, I had a coffee and a scone in the sun, with a friend. It was great. I already feel my mood getting better because of all the vitamin D (or whatever it is that we get from the sun).

Today was another sunny day, and I'm listening to Belle & Sebastian.

PS: Gotta upload photos soon, and also give you a piece of my mind about the films I've seen recently. Mañana mañana.

Essays

It's been over half a month since my last blog entry. That's a bit long, innit? I guess it's time to start typing. I don't think my life is any more exciting than anyone else's, but recently I've just been too busy working on assignments for school. Well, in fact I've been more busy preocrastinating, but that's not the point. I've had three hand-ins the last two weeks, so I've just avoided my blog because I know that it would just make me feel bad for not doing anything constructive. Then again, I haven't really cut down on my facebook time, so I guess I'm a hypocrite.
Now I'm finally done with the first draft of my essay on Tom Stoppard's Arcadia, a translation of a text about consumerism (or something like that) and my essay on The Industrial Revolution in Britain (which I finished and handed in mere minutes ago). All that's left to do before Easter is wait for the result of the latter one, as the first one's just a first draft and the other is quite easy (and only 1/3 of the written work we have to hand in).
I might actually spend more time on my blog. Maybe even upload those photos I promised you weeks ago. Soon, I promise.
Right now I have to get my shoulders down to their regular position, because it's hard to hear anything with them covering my ears. And then I will write a few blog posts about what I've been doing lately, and possibly a short review of a film I watched a few weeks ago. First, though, I have to relax, and, as Frankie Goes to Hollywood says, 'Don't do it.' (Not sure what he was talking about, but I won't do much for the next few days.)
Night night.

Japan

I'm guessing most people have heard about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, but I felt like writing a bit about it as well.
Japan is in a part of the world where natural disasters (like earthquakes) often occur, but the earthquake a few days ago was the strongest in a long time, measuring a staggering 8,9 on the richter scale. Not only did this cause great destruction in japan, it also caused a tsunami, which affected most of Japan and even other places nearby. In addition to this, the Japanese also had to deal with several strong afterquakes.
(Luckily) this quake was not as strong as the one near Sumatra (Indonesia) in December 2004, and the shores are much steeper, so the waves don't get as big or as strong as the ones in 2004. Still, it is horrible to think of the effect it has had on Japan, and especially the effect it has had on the Japanese people, and other people residing in Japan.
Now we have to wait for the earth to stop shaking, and do our best to support the people of Japan.
My thoughts go out to them.

Fast

Yesterday was International Women's Day and Fat Tuesday, also known as Shrove Tuesday and Mardi Gras. (Congratulations to all fat women out there!) This means that today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of the fast. Now, I'm not a dedicated Christian, but I would like to try some sort of fast. Since I live alone and don't know anyone who are fasting, I've decided (to try) to abstain from alcohol until fast ends on April 23rd (I think). I'm not a big drinker, so I don't think it will be too hard, but there's always peer pressure.. Wish me luck.

Weekend

Knut, me, Camilla, Maria, Luna, Erik.

<-Trondheim AKA Bartebyen (the Mustache Town).


As I said in my last post, I visited my family and some friends (or rather one friend) during the weekend.
8 hours on a bus is a long time to park your arse on a hard seat. Forgetting to bring ear phones doesn't really make the trip any better, but I pulled through, and finally arrived in Trondheim. My dad even picked me up at the bus stop, so I didn't have to suffer through another 30 minutes in a bus seat, but a soft car seat.

I hadn't seen my parents since right after Christmas, so it was good to see them again, even though I didn't stay at their house for more than one night. The main reason for my journey was after all to visit my friend who's studying in Trondheim, and the next day I took the bus into town. I got there a few hours before the rest of my friends, who drove from Oslo to Trondheim, so Camilla and I just relaxed. She was writing a report for school and I just watched TV, and distracted her with chit chat (not on purpose, sorry). After a while we made supper, and finally the road trippers arrived.

The next day we spent mainly watching the Skiing World Championship on the telly, 'cause apparently we had brought the bad weather with us from Oslo. Later we went bowling, and I scored a staggering 102. Yeah! (Sarcasm.) Then we went back to Camilla's flat, made waffles and watched Megamind. Not the best animated movie I've seen, but decent entertainment.

Saturday the "southerners" wanted to go siteseeing, and as we were going to eat dinner at my parents', I decided to go there before the rest, to help my mum cook (although she didn't really need any help, it turned out). We ate some delicious lamb with mashed potatoes and boiled vegetables, as well as berries with hot vanilla sauce/custard for dessert. Afterwards we went to a debate at the student society of NTNU (the university in Trondheim), which although sounded a bit dull, was very entertaining (due to both participants being quite funny). Then we had a few drinks (and an incredible burger) at a bar called Lyche, and at about 2am we went home.

On Sunday morning we woke up with varying degrees of hang overs, but departed from Trondheim at 11am, none the less. We stopped by Espa, where they sell buns famous for being the best in the world (according to them), and were back in Oslo at 7pm.

I must admit, with me forgetting my ear phones for the bus ride to Trondheim, the car ride back to Oslo was slightly more comfortable, albeit being a bit more cramped, mainly due to good mates being in the vicinity. I wouldn't hesitate to go on a road trip with them again.

Now I'm just tired from the travelling and what not, even though I've had a whole day to recuperate (since my seminar today, Monday, was cancelled). I think I'll just go to sleep before I bore you any more. Night night.

Bus

I'm 22. I'm a student. I'm on a bus.
It's almost 3 in the afternoon, and I've been on this bus for 4 hours already.
This is why I started blogging just now. A long bus ride. No earphones (ergo no videos). Boredom.
Why am I on this bus?
I wanted to visit my family.
I wanted to visit some friends.
It was cheap.
Getting car sick. Or bus sick. Air sick.
There's a 30 minute break soon.
I'll try to find a shop that sells earphones.