It has been a while since I blogged but I think I am gonna make a brief appearance in the blog world. This entry should explain why I say brief.

This month my life will change drastically as I will become a mom to a little mystery kicking creature that has been inhabiting my stomach for almost 9 months now.

It is such a strange thing to be pregnant and while you can feel it on your body all the time, you can't quite comprehend it. I still wake up every single morning and am surprised by the fact that I am pregnant. Sleep always seems to wipe away any clarity I have over the fact.

I never really thought I had the mommy gene in me which has worried me at times. While I started to want a kid few years ago there has always been this sneaking doubt that I would suck as a parent. I am still worried but not quite much as before. Pregnancy seems to do strange things to you. Who would have thought that the mediumgeek me could look at the same tiny little baby socks five hundred times and ”awww” every single time. Or that I would think the baby nail clippers are adorable.

Then there is that nesting instinct that has gotten me to go through literally every single box and drawer in the house to tidy things up. That gets me to climb up on cupboards to wash dust that I have been happily ignoring for years. That made me polish the outside of the refrigiator yesterday… Obviously very important for the baby’s arrival…

And lets not forget my new favorite past time activity: spending hours on end watching my stomach move and touching that leg that keeps sticking out of my side.

Lets hope I can channel this strange energy into taking good care of the baby when it arrives!

While I am quite fond of my stomach it isn't always very practical. Like when it comes to showering and you find that you can no longer hide in the corner of the shower while the water is getting warm * brrrr*. Navigating around with the stomach is also challenging at times. It actually amazes me that women are generally worse at geometry then men since we have to safe-keep those bumps.

To be fair to it, the stomach is great as a book rest and helps you avoid strain on your arms when sitting outside reading. A bit bouncy at times when the little one is doing his/her daily gymnastics but that just adds to the charm.

I have to admit though that even if I am extremely grateful that I am pregnant and can't wait to meet my little one I haven't particularly enjoyed being pregnant. I was quite fortunate in the beginning health wise but the last four months have been the longest of my life with some serious hips and back issues and constant (fake) contractions. So life has consisted of surviving work (and a little bit of nesting) and trying not to die of boredom stuck on the couch in too much pain and too drained to do anything fun.

But while I wrote that last complainy part the little one kicked my elbow and I couldn't help but smile and stroke the little foot bump on the left side of my stomach. I am almost wishing it would leave a permanent footprint there so I can remember the best part about being pregnant. I can't wait to meet you!

I find that I never stick to my goals and resolutions unless I tell someone about them. On that note, I am hereby publicly announcing what this year's resolution is.

My New Year's Resolution for 2010 is to read books from 26 countries and blog about it. I want to keep this blog for random stuff so I have created a brand new blog just for this goal. So if you like books, wanna support me, or just secretly follow and hope I fail, come and visit my ItsRoots Blog.

Happy New Year everyone!

It is a tradition to look at the year that is about to pass, isn't it? So I figured I would bombard you with some statistics...

• I exercised over 200 times this year. Not that it made me particularly fit but at least I am in better shape then ever before.
• I worked approx. 2 extra work months this year. Will I never become wiser?
• I finished 28 book. This is a record low and I blame the two items above.
• I read books from 13 countries. 16 written by men, 12 by women. And there I just exposed one of my obsessions...
• I visited 11 countries this year, 5 new ones, and Asia for the first time. Thumbs up for that one!
• I flew at least 73,859 km. I will go to environmental hell for sure!
• I got upgraded to business class three times (+ one upgraded hotel room) and made my "friends" hate me.
• I was away from home because of travel approx 68 days.
• I only passed 4 out of 10 New Year's Resolution.

But life isn't just statistics. To really figure out what I have been doing this year I decided to go through my Facebook profile and look at what I was doing when I wasn't working, exercising, or reading. This is what I found:

I started the year with "big" plans. In January I stated I had a new mission in life. Become rich enough to afford a personal shopper to take care of annoying clothes shopping! In February my plans grew into starting some evil money-making religion since the government seemed eager to protect religion from any criticism. In March it really took off and I decided to say yes to everything and wait for exciting things to happen. Oh man did that one come and bite me later...

April was quiet but I learned two important lessons: to not place my coffee cup under the automatic antibacterial soap dispenser and to always check the content of the web pages you use in a demo. Otherwise you might send out stuff about "man boobies" and such...

In May, saying yes to everything got me a trip to San Fransisco where I spent most of my time eating cold medicines and becoming addicted to Starbucks. In June I finished my exercise New Year's Resolution to exercise on average twice a week and got nickname together with the boyfriend at the gym as "the Sporty couple". How tacky is that?

In July, the "yes" thing really went downhill and July's Facebook status messages were mostly bitching about late night marathon telcos and not seeing the summer. Not that I learned from this. In August I said yet another yes which brought me to Japan. There I got to know gadget toilets, cubicle meeting rooms and girls that all wore shoes they couldn't walk on. Very interesting cultural experience.

In September, another yes brought me to Korea where I discovered the wonders of Korean cuisine and how frustrating it is that you can't easily scrape your plate with chopsticks. October was spent in a windy country where the waterfall would go upwards because of crazy weather and in room at a seminar with 500 other geeks and not feeling particularly unique. November was then spent joking about the swine flu which had spread like wildfire among all those geeks.

In December I was just cold. So cold that I contemplated risking burning to death rather then going outside when the fire alarm went off...

Eventful year huh? :)

And now I am gonna work on my New Year's Resolution! Stay tuned for the silly idea I got to keep myself insanely busy in 2010...

I used to live in the United States for a few years while going to University. There are many things that I miss from living there but there was one thing in particular that I kept missing a lot. My favorite Salsa.

On The Border was my favorite restaurant that served pretty good Mexican food and absolutely heavenly salsa. I used to go there and just buy a bag of chips and a big jar of fresh salsa and hog it down for dinner until my mouth was too injured from the chips to continue. After I moved to Norway (which was probably a blessing for my waistline) I found myself repeatedly craving for their salsa. After many disastrous attempts I had given up all hope of ever being able to make it on my own.

Until I came across a copycat recipe (which I unfortunately cannot find again) that put me on the right track. One of the tricks was to give up on using fresh tomatoes and go for canned. Maybe had something to do with the vampire tomatoes here in Norway. They are just to tasteless and boring to work.

I have applied a couple of other tricks of my own to the recipe so it isn't completely like the original and I have tried the real thing afterwards (in South-Korea of all places) and there is something still missing. But it is enough to get me through the days. As I have gotten couple of requests for it I thought I should hereby kick start my food blogging with my On The Border Copycat Salsa and maybe save some other tortured taste buds that have had to move away from their drug... uhummm I mean their favorite salsa.

I realized going through the list of books I have read this year that there simply haven't been any that "blew-me-away". Oh well, there is still few weeks left so one can hope for a little gemstone popping up somewhere. Last year was a bit different and I thought I should post a quick summary of worthwhile reads from 2008. In case you need a nice book to curl up with during Christmas.

First off: Silk by Alessandro Baricco was a beautifully written tale of a French silk merchant that develops a forbidden fascination for a Japanese woman. The writing is the kind that makes you beg for more as it is very simplistic yet so perfect. The story was heart-breaking love story which made me cry. This one was my absolute favorite last year!

Another gemstone was A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry. The sad story of four people struggling to survive in harsh time in India. If you like depressing and sad books about misery upon misery (like me) this might be something for you.

Jhumpa Lahiri did her magic yet again with Unaccustomed Earth. Melancholic short stories. Reading them is like eating a creamy caramel. You keep wanting it to last forever, yet you cannot stop yourself from reading onward. When near the end you start reading slower and slower because you don't want it to end. When you close the book you let out a sigh and hope she is hard at work at her next book.

A classic: Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. Clever story about a problem that is still relevant in todays society. Not necessarily the greatest book but one that keeps you nodding your head and uhumming to yourself "yeah I could see this happen if a certain political side got in power for too long".

Another excellent book was The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing. Extremely well written account of what effect poverty, loneliness, and racial tension can have on a person's life.

Oh and if you are a girl/women and want to get a serious literary crush (think Anne of Green Gable's Gilbert) you might give Twilight by Stephenie Meyer a try. On contrary to the other books above this is real TRASH but there is something very likable about them. Be warned though that if you post those books as a recommendation at the bottom of a "serious" book recommendation blog post you will probably not be taken very seriously... :) .

I was tagged in couple of those 25 things you don't know about me lists on Facebook a while back. I got a bit inspired by that and some other
people's interesting facts. I however never got around to posting my list. So since this has been a horribly boring day here are 25 boring things about me you might not have known, needed to know, or wanted to know :) .

1. I have irrational fear of rotating doors.

2. I am certified as an "Information System Security Officer".

3. I collect playing cards. One from each deck with a unique back side.

4. I have never smoked in my life despite living with a smoker for 8-9 years. Seriously, not a single puff!

5. I didn't just have imaginary friends when I was a kid, I had an entire imaginary scout division since I wasn't allowed to join one.

6. I am slightly prejudice against people that claim shopping as their hobby. Seriously, that is like stating vacuuming is your hobby!

7. I once completed a 4 year school in 3 years because I was in a hurry.

8. One of my dreams is to own a pillow with a electric cooler in it so I don't have to keep rotating my pillow when my head gets too warm at night.

9. I find it extremely hard to listen to lyrics in songs as the music always seem to take over and the voice just becomes one of the instruments.

10. I once won an award in an invention contest for inventing a backpack that could be turned into a tent and sleeping bag.

11. Caroway seeds are about the only thing that I have serious problems eating. They make me gag. Runner up, rotten shark.

12. I have managed to get rid of almost any irrational belief I grew up with. This includes Santa Claus, Christianity, Tarot Card reading, elves, astrology etc. I however still struggle with not knocking on wood and wishing upon an eye brow...

13. The hardest thing for me to accept in life is that to succeed you need to spend more time talking to the right people and not actually getting things done.

14. I started programming web browsers for mobile phones before I ever owned a mobile phone.

15. Oh and did I mention that I have serious phone phobia. I will go to great lengths to avoid picking up the phone... well except when I wanna browse.

16. If I had just one wish (that couldn't be used to wish for world peace), I would wish I could sing.

17. It annoys me at great lengths that my job title is incomprehensible to a large part the population (interaction designer). Seriously, I don't think my family has a clue what I do.

18. My great great great great great great great great great grandmother was captured by Algerian slave hunters in Iceland and she spent almost a decade in slavery in Algeria.

19. I regularly force myself to read women magazines to try to get in touch with my feminine side despite thinking they must be written by dust bunnies without a brain.

20. I no longer have a TV at home and I love it. Only few years ago I thought people that didn't have a TV were just plain weird...

21. I love sad books and know nothing better than the rare occasion when a book makes me weep!

22. The most relaxing thing I can do is to spend hours in the kitchen cooking a really complicated meal.

23. I used to secretly play with Legos well into my teenage year.

24. I keep a devil costume in my office just in case...

25. And despite of all of these things I still often wonder why I am so normal :) .

As someone mildly obsessed with food, I cannot deny that I have had secret fantasies about starting my own food blog. I however find it a real handicap to live in Norway. I get the feeling that to be able to write a nice food blog, you need to live in a strategic spot in California and have plenty of time on your hand. Being a busy mediumgeek, traveling mostly on bike, and with a pathetic selection of grocery stores such as Rema just doesn't make for interesting food blog material.

I subscribe to the news feed from 101 Cookbooks. A beautifully written blog with nice photography. I tend to like the recipes mostly for their aesthetic appeal as the ones I have tried have been a bit too bland for my liking. The real treat is really the mental images I get. Just imagine the tranquility and charm of this trip to the farmers' market.

My version would be more like this...
There is this little grocery store not far from my apartment. I hate it. I usually visit it on my way home from work. After sweating my way up the hill from work I park my bike outside the store and wobble in on tired feat. I then walk along the isles between cardboard boxes and shelfs that belong more to a storage area than a grocery store dragging the little worn plastic shopping chart after me and trying not to notice how dirty it is. I pick out the things I want while trying not to hit down things with my overstuffed backpack full of computer equipment and exercise clothes and my bike helmet. Then there is the short ride home trying to balance the plastic bags on my bike and getting my bike, the shopping bags, and myself through two heavy door.

Doesn't sound quite as appealing as it does to stroll out your door with a basket under your arm...

Then there is an issues with the selection and freshness of things. 101 Cookbooks repeatedly writes things like:

There are no vibrant colors in my neighborhood supermarket. If there is anything pink in there it is for sure an artificially colored plastic container. Even the tomatoes are some type of pale vampire tomatoes competing with the zombie paleness of the carrots, and the emo look of the oranges. What should be fresh sprigs of herbs are usually some half dead plants that instantly commit a suicide when they hit your window sill. There isn't much variation in what is available either. To get anything special you need to visit few different immigrant stores that have much to learn about display and tidiness.

Norway has the excuse that almost everything needs to be imported. But one would think that during harvest season you might see some fresh and colorful shades of vibrant orange, yellow and green. But no, instead of displaying the various types of vegetables that are actually grown locally the stores usually just end up with giant cardboard boxes full of bleak-green cabbage heads. All to make Norway's traditional fall dish. The extremely exotic and complex Fårikål which literally means mutton in cabbage. And it really is just that: Mutton and cabbage with some black pepper...

So I really think serious food blogging is out for me. And I will blame it all on the fact that I live in Norway instead of any lack of skills in the cooking, writing, and photography department :) .

At the fear of making too many English mistakes I will let the photos speak for themselves...

Chinese furniture packaging

Don't let the trail do what?

Ok, get it, kinda...

Wtf? Fuertaventura really needs a new translator!

Is that a dating service for brain dead people or a burger shop?

Too much confusion. Oh well, a coupon that lets you buy a glass of win will fix it!

Why would anyone want beer when they can get a glass of win?

When I travel I usually pick up something for my kitchen. A special
spice or something along those lines. My kitchen cupboard is bulging with various exotic food products and I fear that I wont be able to use it all up before it goes bad.

There is no doubt that we live in a society of excessiveness. We simply
have too much money to spend on things that we don't really need. Who suffers from all of this? Mother nature! Most of the things we buy need to be produced, transported, packaged, and if we then end up throwing them without first using them it was a waste from start.

I hadn't really thought that much about how excessive we are until I stood
one day in Meny (grocery store) next to my house. I had managed to forget my keys on a rainy day and with some time to spare until rescue arrived I started exploring the shelves. When standing in front of the spice shelve I noticed something odd and started counting. I realized it was possible to buy no less than 20 different types and sizes of salt...

The spice shelf with 20 different types/sizes of salt

Ok, so salt is quite basic. I remember a fairy tale when I was a kid which
recounted a story about a king that said salt was more important than his daughter. Everyone thought he was cruel until they were served meat without salt and understood...

I wont try to claim that the only spice we had when I was a kid was salt (though it would have made a better story). It was however the most prominent spice in my mom's kitchen. I can clearly picture before me my moms kitchen table with cooked lamb meat, potatoes, and a lonely worn white and blue salt shaker. On some other days the meat was substituted with some fish but those were the three basics.

Not the original salt shaker but one very similar

Salt is quite basic indeed but do we really need all these different types of salt? I will admit that having one fine and one coarse is quite handy. But buying some special White Flake salt for 665 NOK/80 EUR a kilo feels pretty wasteful. How much taste difference can there really be?

Fancy smancy White Flake Salt

If you think this salt excessiveness must have been a special case at Meny I dare you to count the types of salts in your regular grocery store. I have been making a habit of that lately and trying to remind myself that at least I don't need to have many types of the same thing no matter how tempting it is :) .

Note: this woe of mine excludes chili as it is quite essential to buy and try every type there is...

Being at home has started feeling like being on vacation... it is so rare these days. I have been traveling a lot for work and yesterday I got back home from Iceland where I was visiting my family. Right now I am enjoying the fact that I have nothing that I have to do! This is rare. I am trying to forget the fact that I soon have to pack my bag again and go to Sweden for an Engineering seminar :(

Some statistics. In the last 2 months I have been in 9 different countries (Norway, USA, Japan, South-Korea, Germany, Switzerland, Lichtenstein, Austria, and Iceland).
Total of 11 this year (Sweden and Spain). A mixture of work and vacation.

I remember always dreaming of traveling a lot. Let me tell you traveling for work is not traveling and especially not when traveling out side of Europe. A typical one week travel consists of 70-80 hours of work/travel time, one kilo lost, and a truckload of follow-up work when I get back. Then you usually try to squeeze in a little bit of sightseeing since that you travel so far you simply cannot go back without being able to say you have been there. Try to do that with a 80 hour work week and "some" sleep! I have dragged myself jetlagged infront of half of the palaces in Seoul and half run in front of famous landmarks such as the Chrysler building. Oh yeah and I vaguely remember seeing the Golden Gate bridge in San Fransisco high on cold medicine...

So what have I learned during all this travel?
* You have Starbucks everywhere except in Norway and Iceland :(
* Korean food rocks (and helps you fend of any vampires in 100 km range...)
* All fashionable Korean men seem to wear glasses... designer glasses
* Being lucky and being upgraded on flights few times in a row makes your friends very jealous... ;)
* Lichtenstein has very good beer and extremely nice and helpful people
* Japanese girls like shoes they cannot walk on
* Korea and Japan have weird toilets designed for gadget freaks
* Iceland has weird toilet signs...

Women's toilet with a peeping tom?

* Trying to walk upon a Liechtensteinian mountain and depending on a bus back down is not very smart without first checking the schedule.
* Hitler is reincarnated in South Korea....

The Hitler cat