Iced-tee: Tania's adventures in Iceland

Iceland-Denmark-Melbourne-Sydney-SanFrancisco-LakeTahoe-Sydney

2011-09-18T19:30:00.000+10:00

I know I've been incommunicado for ages, and loads has been happening that I really should be telling my nearest and dearest about (yes, I'm talking specifically to you Mother, Dad, Elisabeth and Tönchen). I'm writing this on the train, so I should be able to get a few words down.

So, as everyone knows I went to Iceland again in May, and came home at the end of July to start my new job in Sydney. While in Iceland I did work for the linguistic crew over there at the University of Iceland, different to what I was doing before (which was a postdoc), but in the same place and with the same people. Basically I was transferring some Icelandic and Faroese data from pieces of paper in boxes and hidden on computers in Iceland only to a more communal, online space that all the linguists in Scandinavia are contributing to, and it needed to be tidied up and sorted through a bit first. I didn't have time to get it all done while over there, but I just this weekend finished off the last things I needed to do :D I haven't finished with all of my academic work yet, but at least that job is complete now.

While in Iceland I also danced - tangó and salsa rueda (as lead) as usual, but also learnt more bachata. I lived with Beggi, and we went on hikes and rode our bikes and danced and cooked dinners together, all very domestic and nice.

I came back to Australia at the end of July, via a few days in Denmark with my friends Anne and Steen out at their country home on Langeland. I went straight to Melbourne, spending a couple of days talking to Luce and packing a car load of stuff to bring to Sydney. I spent two days driving up, leaving Friday evening, stopping after four hours and camping in a truck stop by the side of the road. There was frost overnight, but my trusty tent and Norwegian winter doona kept me toasty :)

I arrived in Sydney, getting horribly lost once I entered the suburbs - sometimes you have to turn right from the left lane and sometimes you have to turn left from the right lane, and whenever I missed my turnoff like this, there would be several kilometres of divided road... I drove over bridges and along by the waterfront and made all kinds of detours to get to the place I now live at in Eastwood.

I started work at Appen on the first of August, Beggi arrived on the Friday of that week, and we've been living with Hui Ling, who I've known for many years now. My work is really interesting and the people are great, so that is making my days pass very quickly.

At the end of August, Beggi, Brent and I headed over to San Francisco (left Sydney at 9am Sunday morning, arrived at SF at 10am!) and then Lake Tahoe for Dan and Kellea's wedding. We used airbnb.com to find a place to stay for the first few nights, and stayed with a lovely woman in San Rafael, about half an hour's drive north of SF. We took the ferry past Alcatraz into SF, saw the Golden Gate Bridge in seven different kinds of fog, went to the Castro, rode a trolley car, went up Lombard St and had lunch at Boudin's at Fisherman's Wharf. We had lunch on another day in the Muir Woods among the Coastal Redwoods. Photos forthcoming!

Then we drove to Nevada City and splashed about in the river with the family, then headed to Kellea's sister's farm to pick fresh vegetables and flowers for the wedding, then drove out to Lake Tahoe. There were several days of getting to know the family, playing on the jetski (Brent drove madly enough to turf the two of us off, then I threw me and Beggi off), kayaks (depending on whose interpretation you use, I either won or came second in the kayak competition. Brent won his heat, but chose a different, 'faster' kayak for his semi-final, which he couldn't get a purchase on and was subsequently a no-started in that race!), and paddle-boats, lazing about the back-yard, going for runs up the hills/ski-area behind our motel and going for a drive around the lake. Brent and Dan went to the casino (gambling is legal in Nevada, which was only a couple of miles up the road - Lake Tahoe has foreshore in both California and Nevada), and Beggi and I did a little bit of dancing. The wedding was well populated, it was good to have several days to get to know Dan's new family, and there was karaoke in the night-time. Hannah arrived from London for the weekend too, so we had a few of the crew on board supporting Dan :)

Finally we drove back to SF via Palo Alto. All the Americans thought we were crazy and wouldn't have time to catch our flight, but we had our GPS on our phone, I had downloaded the free MapDroyd for California, and, with stops at cafes to use the wifi and Google Maps, we muddled our way through. We found Google, and wandered around there for a bit, updating our Facebook statuses on the Google Guest Wifi using our Android phones. We also tried, and after three attempts, found a sports shoe shop that was having a sale. We spent about $150, buying 3 pairs of shoes and lots of socks, laughing all the way to the bank with the exchange rate finally the way we want it :D

We made it home on Thursday, I went back to work on Friday. That weekend I finished a journal I was editing, sending it off and ticking one more academic thing off my list. I still have a couple of papers to complete - the next one on my list is to translate a short paper into Icelandic. Having Beggi around should make that slightly easier... I hope!

Sydney is very big, I'm finding it slightly intimidating. It's probably okay if you grew up here, but there are so many things to learn about the place - where to find the best food, the best route to get to work, etc. I'm riding my bike to work each day, exactly 14 kms, I just discovered. This takes me from just under an hour on Mondays to just over an hour on Fridays and rainy days, from when I leave to when I'm showered, changed and at my desk. It's been nice to discover that Sydney drivers are nowhere near as rabid about bikes on the road as I thought they were. I do stick to quiet roads and the bike path beside Epping Road as much as I can, but I am happy to report that they have been nearly 100% courteous, giving me my space, not cutting me off, and allowing me to be there. I feel like they're not quite sure what to do with me, so I'm very pleased to learn that they seem patient. I think the 40km/hr speed limits in the mornings really help too, people are not as rushed as they would be if they thought they could be driving much faster if I wasn't on the road too.

I'm looking forward to the weather warming up, it feels like it's been forever since it's been hot. The BoM threatened us with 30 degrees today, but if it got there at all it was only momentary, and it sat closer to 20 all afternoon. Bah! I want summer!

That's all for now, sorry for massive time between updates and this huge update. Sydney is treating me well, Brent will be coming up for his birthday on Wednesday, so the cousins and at least one aunty are getting together for the occasion. We're looking at coming to Melbourne for Christmas, not to mention the Prom for Australia Day week, so we'll see people soon!

Starting new job in Sydney

2011-08-01T21:01:00.000+10:00

Well, my first day at my new job in Sydney went swimmingly. I feel like I met a billion people and spent the day just chatting. Read a little bit about how the company works and how linux works. I'm going to be working in the Lexicons group, or the TransLex group, which might be the same thing. I'll be starting working on languages I know nothing about, but that rather excites me - it's time for me to learn something other than Germanic languages for a change!

I'm already sick of the travel - to get to work this morning, I walked to Eastwood train station (the suburb I live in), took 21 mins, just like Google said! Took exactly 9 mins to wait in line and buy my train ticket cos I had a few questions to ask, which meant that I arrived on the platform exactly as the doors to my train were closing. Oh well, that's why I aimed at the earlier train, right?! Waited 14 mins for the next train to Epping, got off there and was wondering where to go for my connecting train to Chatswood, when the very helpful voiceover said, "For trains to Chatswood, take the escalator down to platform 5." Seriously, it was like the voice of God, reading my mind and answering my question perfectly!

Had to wait 9 mins at Epping for my train, and when it arrived, I got a seat, and 15 mins (not 18 mins as advertised) later we emerged from the new tunnel in Chatswood. It took a few wild guesses and hopeful sign reading to get out of the labyrinth that is the Chatswood train station/bus interchange/mall, but I successfully navigated to my building and made it into the office at 8:58, perfect timing for a 9am start :)

As soon as I can get my bike tyre pumped up I'll be riding directly to Epping station I think, since it'll cut out at least 9 mins of waiting around, and it's not that far, give me a bit of exercise and allow me to get home earlier too, I think. I also think I'll need to work out a good route to ride to work, since that is seriously on the cards too - I have a spot for my bike right by my desk, cos I'm right at the end of the row of desks up against the wall and window, looking out to the coast I believe (but all I see is high-rise buildings, trees and smog), and there's a shower on our floor that no-one uses before work, but apparently gets full after lunchtime soccer, which I have been roped into already. Training on Thursday, grand final on Monday. I tried to tell them that I'm an ex-basketballer, ie I have learnt to use my hands and not my feet to connect with balls, but no-one seemed put off by this in the slightest. Oh, and I've been enlisted in the choir, too, which will rehearse at Friday lunchtimes I think. I did warn them that I'm more enthusiastic than talented, but again, no-one seemed put off by this.

Chatted with Brent all lunchtime, seems like everyone I know is job-hunting or starting new work - Ási just started in Akureyri and Linda is trying to work up there too. Like I said - practically everyone I know is job-hunting or starting new work at the moment. Hey wow, I'm finally doing what everyone else is doing - I'm in fashion for once!

Everyone I spoke with today seemed really nice, and even through all of the politeness (so many 'welcome aboard's and 'nice to meet you's today!) I felt like I genuinely liked about half of them, rather than just a couple seeming to have personalities in there somewhere. My supervisor seems very motherly and really really lovely, and I think she'll take good care of me.

Apparently there are drinks on Thursday evening, I can't remember if they're in my honour or not. The head of something or other told me I could drink as much as I could hold, so I think it might be. I hope they serve chocolate non-dairy milkshakes!!

Got home at about 6:15pm, so a 10.5 hour day for my first day at work. Worked 8 hours, but only need to work 7.5 hours a day. Learnt how to log my hours, looks like it will be easy to be a bit flexible with times (I promise to be as unflexible as possible in the beginning!). Made a yummy beef stroganoff for dinner, the recipe from the Women's Weekly basic cookbook. It had lemon juice in it, which provided a super yummy tang, I highly recommend it. I need to work on cooking the meat though - it wasn't as tender as it should have been. Maybe I didn't sear it quickly enough, or let it simmer on low for long enough - anyone know anything about this?

I know this is no longer about me in Iceland, but I'm the Icelandic representative at work now, so I'm still Iced T :p

Going home again

2011-07-21T11:19:00.000+10:00

Okay, that's it, there's getting to be an almost-completely-dark nighttime here now, I've had enough! It's no longer summer when it's neither hot nor light - I'm going back to Australia! Seeing as how my new job starts in 10 days, it's probably just about time, too :) Bye, Iceland, once again.

PS, finished watching the Harry Potter movies tonight (number 7 this afternoon). They were fun to watch, apparently they work as movies separately from the books, but the last movie in particular reminded me of how much interesting detail about wands and so on was in the book, quite different from the movies. 19 years later in the movie was fun, the kid playing Albus Severus was cute as, and solemn, just like he was meant to be :)

Midnight run 2011, Miðnæturhlaupið

2011-06-24T20:48:00.002+10:00

Hahaaaa! I won third place in the Midnight Run last night, and WON the 19-39 year old age group, with a time of 22:17 for 5 kms. I spent the first three k thinking, "Oh God, I started too fast!", then rested a little for most of the fourth k, then just let my legs stride out for the whole downhill final k, passing lots of people. The last 80m or so are on the driveway to the Laugardalslaug/Laugardals swimming pool, and one guy I passed swore and muttered, "No way!" I said, "C' mon, let's finish it!", and we sprinted flat out towards and across the finish line, giving each other a high five at the end. He turned out to be from my running group, so that was extra cool that we finished together :) [Edit: I have found the official results, here they are below. No pic yet :p ]

overview of winners
5km overall times, men and women
5km overall times, women
5km times per age group

VIM in Eclipse

2011-02-28T15:29:00.000+11:00

Okay, so this blog is morphing (for the time being) into a log of my dramas and achievements in Android developing. Today I added a VIM wrapper to Eclipse, to allow VIM-like editing in the text editor in Eclipse. It's a little button that you can toggle on and off (also accessible under the Edit menu). You can get it from http://vrapper.sourceforge.net/update-site/stable/
*like* :)

Hello World!!

2011-02-27T11:54:00.003+11:00

Yep, I have arrived in the Android "programming" world!! Click on the title of this blog to download my first Android app :)

Flashing Samsung Galaxy S to 2.2.1

2011-02-26T17:55:00.000+11:00

Okay, this will be very boring for most people, but I bought a new android phone (Samsung Galaxy S), which I love, and here's how I went about flashing it from 2.1 Eclair to 2.2.1 Froyo, from the point-of-view of someone who feels tough typing things in VIM :p

1.

I firstly followed instructions on http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=785201 to fix the 3-button combo to be able to enter download and recovery modes. This is crucial, cos while you can enter download mode using software, if the phone hangs, you need another way to get the hell out of there!!

## copied from that forum:
Preparations: Make sure you have the drivers installed (i.e Kies is recognizing the phone), adb [android development something] available and "USB Debugging" turned on in "Settings -> Applications -> Development" menu. Type *#0228# in the dialer and check Voltage value (without USB plugged in) is at least 3800(mV).

1. Unplug the phone from the computer (if connected)
2. Kill all Kies related software (tray agent, etc)
3. Start Odin3 v1.3 Downloader
4. Plug in the phone to the computer
5. Start a new command prompt and navigate to the folder / drive where adb is located.
If you haven't downloaded adb yet, get it here.
6. Type "adb reboot download" to the command prompt and press enter.
7. Move to Odin3 v1.3 downloader and select the "Aries_P-SBL.tar.md5" as PDA file. Make sure "Phone Bootloader Update" is ticked and re-partition is unticked. Do not select any other files but "Aries_P-SBL.tar.md5".
8. Press "Start" button to launch the update process. It will take around three seconds to complete. After the update phone will reboot automatically.

Download the fix: GT-I9000_P-SBL_RCVDL_FIX_ODIN.7z
##

That all worked a dream, was very exciting to see the yellow men-at-work triangle appear finally on the volumedown-home-power hold combo! :)

2.
Then I used the JPO_JPO_U_JPP.tar file on second flashing, in order to update OS to froyo (2.2). I followed instructions on http://www.pathikshah.com/blog/install-android-2-2-froyo-galaxy-s/ but not completely - I actually only flashed the PDA (ie the Os), not the PHONE (ie wireless chipset) nor the CSC (customer specific customisation), because I read on some forums that these would probably work with each other, and I was scared of messing with my phone and wifi etc which all seemed to be working perfectly. But this was a very bad idea, it turns out, don't do this! Instead, just follow all of these instructions, cos they work :) (ie, do follow step 2 instructions properly, else you'll land in the quagmire of step 3 like I did, which was NOT fun).

##
How to Install/Upgrade To Android 2.2 Froyo on Samsung Galaxy S: Instructions

1. Remove the battery, SIM card and MicroSD card from your phone and reinsert the battery.
2. Hold down the Home + Volume Down buttons and press the Power On button.
3. You should now see a download screen
4. Open Odin 3 v1.0
5. Click on the PIT button and load the “s1_odin_20100512.pit” file
6. Click on the PDA button and load the “I9000XXJP2-REV03-PDA-CL464213.tar” inside the I9000XXJP2 RAR file.
7. Click on the PHONE button and load the “MODEM_I9000XXJP2.tar”inside the I9000XXJP2 RAR file.
8. Click on the CSC button and load the “GT-I9000-CSC-MULTI-OXAJP2.tar”inside the I9000XXJP2 RAR file.
9. Click on the “Re-Partition” checkbox
10. Connect your Galaxy S to your PC with the USB cable and set USB Debugging On (System > Applications > Development > USB Debugging.)
11. Click on the Start button in Odin and your Galaxy S will be upgraded to Android 2.2 Froyo.
##

Not happy Jan! It seems that I do need to do it all - I thought my phone and GPS settings etc wouldn't be stuffed with if I didn't flash PHONE, but it's all gone to shit :( Lots of processes don't run, everything takes aaaages to respond, and I managed to make a single phone call to Luce only - it was pretty stressful. I actually put my sim back in belle, in case toby took days to recover.

Not happy at the mo! And it looks like I'm dl'ing I9000XXJPU.rar again, which I thought was the 2.2.1 kernel. Hmm...

3.
Faffed about a bit, got cocky thinking I could just reflash with the 512 pit or something, dunno really what I did. But whatever it was, it did NOT work! I managed to get stuck on 'Downloading... Do not turn off Target!!!' screen for bloody ages, closed Odin, and was still stuck. Freaked out a bit, did some restarts, then got stuck on a phone - ! - computer little icon. Reconnected to jason, but no cigar. Started to freak out, people with this problem on forums were being advised to send the phone back to Samsung - nei!! But then someone said 'no problem, just do the volumedown-home-power combo anyway, and lo and behold, it worked!

4.
So now I have just flashed following instructions on http://www.pathikshah.com/blog/install-android-2-2-froyo-galaxy-s/ this time using all of the files to flash the PDA, the PHONE and the CSC. Toby is playing Samsung music to me as I type this! :D Odin is giving me the green 'pass' light :) Just reinserted sim and sd card again. Toby wasn't impressed with how I did it, and asked me to remove the battery to insert the sim. I removed the battery, and waited for a bit. Then long-pressed the power button again and toby rebooted.

And oooh! New background picture - wow, where the hell is that, Venice? And SOOOO responsive!! WOW! Let's hope this is the new toby, and those few hours of unpleasantness will have been worth it! Yes, I love the world! :D

5.
Yes, so in the midst of all the celebrations, I thought I'd see if I could use MiniDiary again. Couldn't seem to find the backup using MyFiles on toby, but when I usb'ed in to jason, I found it as a .gz file (easier to see on the bigger screen - hahaha, jason has a bigger screen than another device!!!). So I knew it was there, but toby had 'no program to open the file'. It *finally* clicked that I needed to restore the MD stuff with Titanium Backup, ie the program that made the backup in the first place. No worries, except TB needs su access, and flashing to 2.2.1 unrooted toby. I'd been reading that 2.2 was hard to root, but those messages are a few months old. Finally found SuperOneClick, that supposedly works with all kinds of phones, cos it's based on the ADB rather than some other thingy. Anyhow, people reported successful roots with it, so I gave it a burl. Had to do a bit of USB debugging/undebugging/debugging, which meant I had to unplug toby from jason and reconnect them several times, but it worked! Well, I thought it did, until I went to open TB and it couldn't get root access! D'oh! But then I remembered that I hadn't restarted toby, so I did that, and ta-daa :) Opened TB, restored MD files (it deleted the entry I made today, but that's fine), and I'm good to go :D

I AM all-powerful, I AM superuser! >:)

5a. So, must-have apps, once the phone is rooted: Titanium Backup, AdFree Android, ShootMe for screenshots >:) , Universal Password Manager,

Other apps I think I like: Skype, facebook (while the hell not?!), Note Everything, OI Shopping for lists, Multiling keyboard and Icelandic language pack, SlideIT demo keyboard and Norwegian language pack, BOM weather from the guy at monash.

6. NEXT: þarf að færa swype fyrir norsku á toby - passa á að ég sé búin að gera það rétt!

melbourne

2011-02-07T17:25:00.000+11:00

Yep, it's been quite a while. Did a lot of dancing and travelling in Iceland, and am now back in Melbourne. Have a massive backlog of photos from May 2010 onwards still to process, but am in the process of finding a job, so may not have oodles of time to do this too rapidly. Am enjoying the warmth of summer again, although one does run rather more slowly in the heat than in the cool air of Reykavík!

happy and exhausted on the penultimate of august...

2010-08-30T23:14:00.000+10:00

Sorry to misquote The Lucksmiths like that, but it's true. Tango on ICEland ended last night, it was a whole weekend of tango lessons, milongas/dances, meeting new people, listening and dancing to both live music and the old stuff, and finishing with a roadtrip to the Blue Lagoon (where we also tried our hand at AquaTango ;) ). Wow, I am one happy (but exhausted) little camper! I literally danced until I could no longer stand, like the princesses in the fairy tales :) and the main result has been that I REALLY want to dance and learn more! 'Nice' is the word I have used most often about the feeling of dancing tango, but, as you might know if you've ever tangoed, 'nice' really doesn't begin to cover it...

And I'm also still reeling from how different tango is to what I thought it would be - it feels NOTHING like it looks. Or rather, I thought that tango was the kind of thing 'other people' did, not me. Wow, how wrong could I be! The person who convinced me to learn to tango, Helge the German who I met dancing salsa, was back here for the festival, it was great to see him and tango with him :D Yay for learning how to dance! And yay for tango nuevo music, and yay for the Icelanders who love to dance too and are willing to dance with me. YAY!!!

running training coming along nicely

2010-07-20T06:01:00.000+10:00

Huh. Luce thinks we're 'not running for competitive reasons'. Whatever. I finally looked up my time for the midnight run this year - 5km in 23:52. Which puts me equal 13th, in a field of 454, but 21st according to gun time. Maybe I shouldn't be so shy and keep thinking that I'm a slow runner, and just start closer to the front. (Luce ran 23:55, cos he started earlier, but waited for me, putting him approx. 43rd.)

Anyhow, I'm aiming to run the 10km in the Reykjavíkur Marathon on the 21st of August in under 50 mins. Just did a practice 10km and made 49 mins, so I'm looking forward to a good time in the actual run! I was pretty tired today - did a 50 min swim on Saturday, which made me pretty tired. :) The glorious weather is having a most excellent effect on my training!

Oh, and I mustn't forget to mention that our first guests in our new flat have been and gone - Elisabeth and Ingrid. I didn't blog while they were here, I was just flat out loving having both of them around!

A quick stopover in Reykjavík

2010-06-06T05:44:00.000+10:00

Well, New York was actually pretty awesome. The people were lovely, our friends and acquaintances were lovely, and I had a frozen yoghurt or soy or almond milk drink every day. Until I started reading about the weird non-foods they add to food in the US. Apparently all milk in the US has lactating hormones in it, 'high fructose corn syrup' really IS the first listed ingredient in many 'foods', and the stuff that makes drinks and icecream lovely and creamy is indigestible gum made from seaweed. Great. Eating actual food in the US seems even harder than in Iceland!

Oh, and Eyjafjalljökull seems to be erupting again. Health regulations say that 50 micrograms of particles per cubic metre is described as 'bad air'. We had 136 here in Reykjavík yesterday, and people with asthma and other lung problems were advised to stay indoors and not do too much. Not a good day to let the fresh air in from outside. Our roof windows were literally caked with ash:

Icelandic lesson

2010-04-30T08:34:00.000+10:00

OMG!! Rósa and I nearly died laughing at the dinner table tonight!! Okay, here's what happened. Daughter #2 Helga (18 y.o.) had 2 friends over. Rósa had made brauðsúpa 'bread-soup' for dessert, which is Traditional Icelandic Food, so Tolli started asking the guests about other TIF they'd had. Not much, it turns out. "I think TIF is going to die out with our generation," quipped the talkative one. Apparently young Icelanders are just as enamoured of TIF as most foreigners are!

The discussion turned to particulars, covering hrutspungur ('ram's testicles') before getting stuck on hákarl ('rotten shark'). Daughter #3 Goya (14 y.o., confirmed 2 weeks ago) was asked whether she'd had hákarl before, to which she replied in the affirmative, to general shrieks of 'No way!' and 'WHY?!' In answer to the 'why' question, and here beginneth the Icelandic lesson, she replied Ég var í einhverju herbergi... ég var ein... which means, word-for-word 'I was in some room... I was alone...' HAHAHAH!!! It was at this point that Rósa and I lost all sense of propriety and dissolved into belly-wrenching hysterics. 'Oh, poor Goya, she was lonely, so she ate some rotten shark to feel better!!!' "Are you lonely? -No, I've gotten some rotten shark, so I'm okay now!" hahaha.

But anyway, what she ACTUALLY tried to say was: Ég var ein í hópi meaning 'I was single/alone-female in a group [of guys]'. ein means 'one-singular-female', and it contrasts with e.g. einn meaning 'one-singular-male'. (If you're wondering, which I know you are, if there are plural forms, since I'm specifying 'singular' here, you're right.) The word for 'alone' and 'single/one' is the same word, and cos Goya didn't spit out her sentence quickly enough, we interpreted ein as 'alone' instead of 'the only female/one'.

Morals of the story: Icelanders can be ein or einn without being bereft of company, so pay attention to all of what they say before offering a shoulder to lean/cry on. Alternatively, if you're ever ein or einn, try some rotten shark to cheer you up. It cheered us up!!

Update on life

2010-04-24T04:54:00.003+10:00

So, sorry for the long post, but I've been getting loads of emails from friends and family about how things are going, so I thought I'd try to summarise it definitively here.

As you all know, Iceland is busy having volcanic eruptions at the moment. I missed the first two on Fimmvörðuháls, which splashed lava about in a photogenic fashion. Then when an eruption started under the Eyjafjallajökull glacier, it was deemed by the relevant authorities to be both boring and dangerous to get a close-up view of. Ash spewed up, blanketing southern Iceland, wreaking havoc on farms, their livestock and crops. The ash also proceeded to smother most of Europe. This happened right when Einar and I were supposed to go to Norway to do fieldwork.

Our flights were cancelled, and new ones invented. Ordinarily, flights to Europe leave between 6-8am, with flights to the US in the evening. Flights to Norway go to Oslo, and to Bergen in the summer. Our flights were due to leave Saturday at 8am. However, all of Norwegian airspace was closed on Saturday, so Einar and I attended Vigdís's conference instead. Then on Sunday, while southern Norway (ie Gardemoen/Oslo) remained closed, Iceland started shipping people directly to Trondheim. A flight at 1pm, 2 at 2pm, then every half hour or so after that, for 6 flights. Thus, instead of flying Keflavík-Oslo-Trondheim, a journey of about 5+ hrs, it was a 2-hr hop to Værnes. We all disembarked and squished into the carousel area to collect our bags - and found out why we don't normally fly lots of people to Trondheim all at once!

I did manage to take some photos of the eruption on the way over, but they're a bit hazy :(

Fieldwork was great, Einar and I only missed the orientation day. We were 12 linguists, mainly Norwegian, interrogating the locals this time. I thought I was finding only negative results (which are still 'results'...), until the second last evening when we were discussing how our data collection was going, and I discovered that what I had semi-dismissed as just some individuals' funny pronunciations was actually exactly what I had come to Norway to find! This is why I think group fieldwork trips are so useful - the off-the-cuff comments over dinner or coffee by people who know what they're talking about can make all the difference to what we think we've found!

I go for a run each morning when on fieldwork and at conferences, and I've been running in my toe-shoes. I found out that it can be quite cold on the toes to run on snow, but so long as it's not wet, it's not too bad. Einar and I did a couple of self-guided whip-round walking tours of Trondheim, then we headed back to Iceland, this time via Oslo. I was on the wrong side of the plane to see the steam eruption this time :( but a very friendly Norwegian woman took what turned out to be a series of awesome photos when I handed her my camera! :) They'll be up on Picasa in a week or so.

Finally, European airspace has opened up again today, because the wind has changed - it's now blowing the ash over us! Par consequent, Keflavík and Reykjavík airports are closed. This morning on my bike-ride, the air was actually really clear, and the rising columnn of steam was clearly visible. Unfortunately your intrepid photographer didn't have her camera :( and by lunchtime the winds had caught us, and made the air in Reykjavík all hazy. It smells a little bit like camp-fire. I can't smell any sulphur, thankfully! I promise to keep my camera on me until I get some good pictures!

I'm due to get the keys to our flat this weekend, but I won't move in straight away. I was at The Good Shepherd (like the Salvos) this evening, and bought a chest of drawers and a pot to cook with... I also managed to buy <mumble> ski boots </mumble>. Not snowboarding boots. But honestly, they fit PERfectly, much better than any of the snowboard boots I tried on in Norway, they're exactly the colours I would choose were I give complete freedom in my choice (white, purple and pink), and they were 500isk. Which is not very much at all. I though there was a 0 or two missing at first :D

So, things are going well, Luce arrives in less than 2 weeks!!! I'm working now on resumptive pronouns in Northern Norwegian. We'll be going to New York at the end of May. I think Luce is going to book us a flight to Svalbard in June!! :D Brent, Dan and I are recording songs again, and maybe even writing again. Life is hectic, intense, and great.

PS, some links that might be interesting (Icelandic Review): pic of new craters, How to pronounce Eyjafjallajökull

Be careful what you wish for...

2010-04-16T10:15:00.000+10:00

So I didn't get out to see either of the first two volcanic eruptions, so I wished for another one. Unfortunately, the next eruption is no tourist-friendly gentle spurt of magma. Instead it's an ash-spewing, Europe-suffocating monster. Satellite images show that the Faroe Islands are completely engulfed, they are directly in the middle of the huge black cloud of ash streaming from Iceland towards Europe. The funny part is the tiny little finger that branches off to smother the UK. The not so funny part is that the whole of northern Europe is now closed to air traffic. Some meteorologist/vulcanologists are talking about it remaining this way for several years! Gah! I have a fieldwork trip in Norway this week, I'm supposed to leave on Saturday, but whole of Norway is closed! Not want!

Apparently some wits in Holland and Britain are already making jokes: 'We asked for CASH, not ASH' and so on (they were the main players in the Icesave debacle). I just hope Luce can get here in 2 weeks from now...

There's a 3-day celebration for Vigdís Finnbogardóttir's 80th birthday. I was at the opening ceremony, and went to ask her if I could have a photo with her. When I was saying who I was, she said, 'Yes, I remember you.' !!! The first democratically elected female president in the world knows who I am! :)

Her birthday conference is this weekend. I'm planning to be in Norway for it, but, well... we'll just have to wait and see!

OMG, Icelandic food

2010-03-24T09:28:00.000+11:00

Sometimes it really doesn't pay to let the bloke do the shopping for dinner. Tolli came home with hrogn and lifur - roe and liver. The roe was still all wrapped up in the sacks it was in when it was inside the fish - all veiny and looking like brains, that spilled out into pale red sandy stuff. The liver was like lumps of yoghurt that had been left outside for a year and gone all grey and shapeless. It's sooo mushy *shivers*. Okay, so in their defence, they were both pretty tasteless, pure texture-food. I imagine if you did something with them, like mush the liver up into a sauce and have something with them to hide the lack of flavour and weird-arse consistencies, they'd be edible. I did eat some, together with fish and potatoes, which was more than Rósa or Helga did, but still! I think my poor tummy is still churning, and dinner was 5 hours ago!

Back in the land of ice and snow

2010-03-04T05:43:00.000+11:00

Yes, it's still winter here. The ski season starts this weekend, and it's snowing as I write this. My flights here were a bit of a schermozzle (? sorry, I have NO idea how that word is spelt!), the Airbus from Melbourne had to wait for a part to come from Singapore - computer problems apparently. So we all missed our connections, I had to fly to Copenhagen via Frankfurt, and I missed spending the day and evening with friends, as I didn't get to their place until midnight (scheduled was 8am at their place).

So, I got most of my work done at Tulla, rather than during the flights, which means I think I'm totally up-to-date with my movies now! I really liked: Up in the air, Whip it, Astroboy, The break up, and that's all I remember. :)

It's 6:40pm here now, and I'm knackered. Shower, clean teeth and bed for me! Finish my conference paper tomorrow. (As in, the conference is the day after that, so I really do have to finish it tomorrow!)

Sweet chess victory

2010-01-12T22:18:00.000+11:00

So, in tonight's game, Luce took back a couple of moves early on, which I thought were pretty important moves, but I let them slide, because we're trying to be nice, and it sort of relaxes me because then it doesn't feel like a real game or something, if Luce wins I can always say it's cos he took back moves he didn't like. Then I overlooked that my pawn could take his queen, and he didn't let me take it back! The pressure was on because it looked like he could now take my queen for free. World War III nearly broke out, Luce starting packing up his bat and ball and was going home (he had the drawer out and was replacing pieces!!), we shouted that we loved each other and both liked to play chess, so CAN'T WE JUST BE ADULTS ABOUT THIS???

The position turned out not to be as dire as I'd thought, a queen swap, so I gave in and thought that if Luce beat me then I totally didn't need to take it personally, and that if I won that that would show that my chess practice was actually paying off. I won a couple of exchanges, which put me up a rook as our pawns were racing towards the king-line, and I was able to get a queen and then sacrifice my rook to prevent him from reciprocating. We had one 'take-back point', to see if Luce could stop me, but no way jose! :)

I'm definitely improving, I see more pretty patterns on the chessboard each time I look at it :D

A chess victory

2010-01-08T19:34:00.000+11:00

At the start of November, Luce & I finally started using the chess board my dad made for us for Christmas last year. I won the first game, then Luce promptly won every game for the rest of the month. Being the competitive types we both are, I obviously cracked it with him and we didn't play for about a month. For Christmas this year, I requested that my dad play a game against Luce, just for the satisfaction of seeing him beaten by anyone (seeing as how I seemed unable to repeat the feat).

However, we started playing again after New Year's, and I am thrilled to be able to report my first victory! A clear checkmate, still in the relatively early stages of the game :) (I'm ignoring the fact that he was reading stuff on his computer the whole time cos I take so long to move and he gets bored!)

In the next game I made a couple of bad errors and resigned, so we 'undid' a few moves and continued. I then mated him, we undid the last few moves, he mated me, we undid the last few moves, and then I got the next 6 mates, ie, even with undos, he was still unable to recover. :D This is the major reason I'm looking forward to going back to Iceland: to be able to practice with Ási and then completely whup Luce on a regular basis. Or at least to make him pay attention to our games... ;)

Things accomplished while in Melbourne

2009-12-21T14:40:00.000+11:00

I'm going to use this blog post to keep track of the work-related tasks that I accomplish while I'm in Melbourne instead of Iceland. I'm planning on being very productive, and so far so good :)

got my author's final changes done, including making her English nice and idiomatic, for the Nordlyd volume on Faroese.
made final changes on Faroese vs Icelandic LDR paper, sent to Nordlyd editors for publication.
made final changes on my LFG paper, including fixing f-structures and some argumentation, ready for publication. Editors great, and I'm very happy with this paper :)
finished transcribing interviews done in Fosen, Norway. Added this data to LDR database that I'm making for the tekstlab. [Still todo: mini-writeup of this data].
sent off PDs + relative clauses paper to friendly reader.
perspective study: 800 examples coded for whether the subject of say is the same as the subject of its complement clause or is different. Mini-writeup completed, including having statistics checked by Steph. [Might need to do this for an adjunct clause too... This mini-writeup will go somewhere when I talk about perspective in more detail]

I'll add to this as I go. By the end of Feb, I'm aiming to have

the papers for the journal I'm editing reviewed and getting closer to publication
some idea of how to describe my EPs (expletive/dummy/correlative pronouns) theoretically, and be ready for the Humanities conference (Hugvísindaþing) at the start of March
all my interviews transcribed (Faroes 2008, Faroes 2009, Inner Scandinavia to go)
mini-writeups of as many fieldwork trips as possible ready

By the end of my postdoc, I'm aiming to have:

mini-writeups of all fieldwork places completed (Vestjysk Danish, Inner Scandinavian, Fosenmål)
self-paced reading task comparing Icelandic and Faroese data collection completed, and mini-writeup completed.
a second LFG paper [EPs]
at least one paper published in Icelandic [HVÞ 2008]

There we go!

RIP Francoise

2009-12-18T23:27:00.002+11:00

Well, our first little embryo didn't make it :( And she was even at the 7-cell stage when she was squirted in. Poor little Francoise. I will forever wonder what you would have been like.

Wrapping up again

2009-10-30T04:40:00.000+11:00

Okay, I'm packing up my office again, coming back to Melbourne for a few months. I've got all my papers to write up, although I don't have all the data I'd like. It turns out 25 people responded to an email I sent out requesting help from Icelanders to participate in my research, but only 3 of these forwarded to my gmail. I only found this out when I started asking random staff members at uni if they had time to do the test, and someone said 'Oh, yes, I replied to your email last Monday'. What the-? I could have doubled the number of people in the study! So now I have to either get Luce to work out how to do it online, or wait until March when I come back again. Grrr!

Aaaand it's all wet and dark outside, although it's really warm (was lovely at the beach last night). The setting sun is reflecting all gold and lovely off the houses in front of Hallgrímskyrkjuna, and I don't have my camera with me. Sigh.

I finally wrote a song over here, I think I like it. I think it's called 'Home is where you are', but that's a bit soppy, so I'm calling that its working title. We can jam on it when Hannah comes over with Brent and Dan. I think I want to inflict some of my songs on people, maybe I'll post them here slowly or on youtube or something.

See youse next week. It's going to take me all weekend to get home, but I'm on way. Just about. (Yay, only 3 weeks til Beth and I go see New Moon!)

I attribute this to insane Americans, whether or not it's a warranted accusation

2009-10-23T05:28:00.002+11:00

http://xkcd.com/651/
My God, I have to put up with this crap aaaall the time, and think things like this each and every time. Stupid airlines.

15 seconds of fame

2009-10-19T03:46:00.003+11:00

hehe, I'm famous :)

Faroes Fieldwork 2009

2009-10-19T02:30:00.000+11:00

omg, this was so funny: I'm in the Faroe Islands with 6 other linguists, on fieldwork. We leave on Monday. Last night we were trying to work out what time our flight is. We spent, I kid you not, about 20 minutes trying to remember, discussing it from every angle imaginable, the time difference between here and Iceland and so on. At the end of 20 mins when we decided we weren't sure and would probably actually need to check, Einar tuned into the conversation when someone decided to ask him if he knew when our flight was. He answered all innocently and completely without hesitation "ten past four". Like, dude, your body's been here the whole time we were discussing it, but where the hell was your brain?! Hahaha!!

It's getting darker...

2009-10-06T06:58:00.004+11:00

Wow, so much has happened since my last blog post. In brief: came back to Iceland, now living in Kópavogur instead of Reykjavík :( No, it's actually lovely here, and less than a 1km from where I used to live! Went on a fieldwork trip to Norway, and for the first time ever, found exactly what I was looking for! Omg! (Old people have LDR, young people don't. That's pretty fast language change, which is actually sad.)

Came back to Iceland and got the uni to buy me a nice new Lenovo ThinkPad, which is an absolute monster. I've named him Egill, after Egill Skallagrímsson, an Icelandic hero from the sagas. He was stupendously ugly, killed his first enemy at age 6 (a 10 year old who wouldn't let him play ball with them), but wrote incredibly beautiful poetry. My Egill is like that. Really nothing to look at, but very powerful and a great worker. Except my Egill hasn't killed anyone. Yet. My Egill's full name is Egill Ljótur, Egill the Ugly. Which is actually a fully legitimate Icelandic name. Icelanders are a bit mental when it comes to names I reckon!

I'm off to the Faroes again in a week, and I've finally got this mad experiment to work, although it's going to be a race against time to get the test sentences translated while I'm there as well as running the experiments. Well, we just do the best we can. It's a self-paced reading test, which should give me insight into how the Faroese process sentences, exactly where they have trouble and so on. Cheaper than sticking their heads in an MRI scanner, and should give me similar results :)

And, finally, it's snowing! There's been a dusting on Esja and the hills around us for a while, but it looks like winter has finally come to Reykjavík!

Back in Iceland

2009-09-13T02:32:00.002+10:00

Hello world, I'm back in Iceland! Took around 37 hours door-to-door, which included 3 hours of skyping Luce and you-tubing New Moon and Rob Pattinson in general in Singapore, and 5 hours of sitting in Copenhagen recharging my batteries and drinking chocolate milks. The whole flight from CPH to KEF I could see the plane's shadow on the clouds (and sometimes the ocean) below us, surrounded by a rainbow halo. It was gorgeous, but I don't recall ever seeing that before. Has anyone else ever seen that before? I'm guessing we must have been below some clouds, and that was the refraction through them, but I'm not sure. Very cool though :)

Bye Tom, Hi Jason; MS Office 2007 first impressions

2009-08-28T08:27:00.005+10:00

Well, Tom lasted almost 24 hours before his guts got ripped out and replaced with bigger (500GB hdd!) and faster (2gb ram!) insides. (Still only an Atom processor though, can't wait to get a decent-speed, real-sized laptop that won't take ages to do anything, when I get back to Iceland!) Luce took ages learning how to use 'migrate' and 'grow' and 'shrink' tools in a usb-key-bootable version of linux called 'damn small linux' or something, aka 'knoppix', so I could install stuff on tom (160gb hdd) and not have to reinstall it when my computer became jason. But it didn't work. So I've spent days researching, buying, installing, reinstalling and coming to terms with MS Office 2007 (in particular Word, Excel, Access and some Powerpoint).

[Start Review of Office 2007, after 5 days intense usage]:

There are some things about Office 2007 that seem really good - the fact there's no title bar taking up screen real estate is a bonus when you have a 10" screen, and that the 'quick access' buttons can be moved above the menu bar. Both of these are 'half-size', so you only lose the space of the old title bar, no more (the title gets squished along to the right). You also lose the screen-space taken up by the half-line-sized status bar at the bottom, but it seems useful enough so I'm not complaining (about that) just yet. Thank Christ the ribbon can be minimised!

What I don't like about Office 2007 is that the Quick Access Buttons bar can't be undocked (that I can find), so I can't put it on the screen where it will be closest to my mouse for a couple of repetitive actions (that aren't worth recording a macro for). On the other hand, the styles pane doesn't seem to dock at all, which means that it covers up part of my page. To see all of my text, I have to zoom out, and this leaves a blank, unused area on the opposite side of the page to the style pane. This is pretty annoying, I hope they change this back to how it was in Office 2003.

The rulers are easy to turn on and off with a button at the top of the vertical scroll bar, just under the split screen button, so it takes up no room at all, and gives more room to my page. Again, good-o.

The hardest thing at the moment is working out where things I've used menu commands for for ages now (open styles pane, insert comment, insert (first) caption in document, insert header/footer, change AutoCorrect options, change preferences/tools-options, macro stuff), are, since they are no longer where they were. I think at least some of these have been moved to more logical places, eg the styles pane is opened by selecting the style button, and scrolling down to the 'More...' selection. That took a long time and some lateral thinking to find!

Finally, since I tend to have 3 or 4 Office programs opened at the same time, I'd like to be able to change the background colour of each independently. But when you go to 'Change Access options' and select 'black', it actually changes this in all of the Office programs. *sigh* Hopefully this can be changed soon too.

Woops, sorry for that launch into a review! But this is a blog, and this is part of my Icelandic adventure, even if it happened in Melbourne.

Farewell daisy, hello tom!

2009-08-22T19:51:00.003+10:00

My poor darling daisy, a 4 and a half year old Acer Travelmate 3000, suffered a few heart attacks earlier this weeks, and finally, on Thursday morning, completely carked :( I had just gotten back into full swing of work, which may have contributed to her demise. So I spent a panicked 14 hours on Thursday researching new laptops, and found NOTHING that exactly suited me. So instead, I've opted for a netbook for all my travels, and the uni in Iceland is going to get me a workhorse computer for my proper work. So, this is my first blogpost from tom, an acer aspire one d250 10.1" black netbook. Tom had to be black, cos my dad already got the blue one! Great minds... (Except his won't be specced up with twice the RAM and three times the hard disk space ;) .) I am so skypable now - tom's inbuilt webcam and speakers are truly impressive!

Back in Melbourne for some winter loving

2009-08-03T21:29:00.003+10:00

Okay, so I've arrived back in Melbourne, but I'll be back in Iceland in September and October. July was spent: hosting visiting LFG scholar Ash Asudeh in Reykjavik (which turned out even better than I had hoped!), travelling to Cambridge to present at the LFG conference (which went really well, Mary Dalrymple spent ages with me working out how to formalise what I said in my talk, and I met a guy who had actually met Isaac Asimov, and written to Robert Heinlein!), met up with friends in Copenhagen (I have a new favourite saying: "Hvor det er hjerterom er det husrom" - 'Where there's room in your heart, there's room in your home' - I stayed in a 3 bedroom flat with a family of 5! Thanks Anne and family!), visited the butterfly enclosure and tried out the (heavenly) foot massage machine in Changi, and went snowboarding at Perisher in NSW for a week. I had the best instructors, each day they said, "What do you want to work on today?" So I have now ticked off everything that was on my list: bumps, jumps, tricks and t-bars :) I officially feel comfortable on a snowboard, and can't wait to get up to Buller to practice on some harder runs - Perisher is 60% blue :/

My first priority back in Melbourne (apart from finishing some writeups of conference papers and getting prepared for the next round of fieldwork in September) is to get insulation in the house - happily the government is offering $1,600 rebates for exactly this. Next priority is to get the hot water system, and the bathroom in general, fixed, and happily the government is offering rebates on solar hot water systems at the moment! #3 priority is rain water tanks, and I hope the government rebates for them are still in effect. Yay for good timing of rebates!

bye-bye Víðihlíð

2009-06-30T03:16:00.003+10:00

This is my last post from Víðihlíð, tonight I'll be sleeping in Kópavogi! The shame of it! No, actually it's quite a lovely area :) Oh, and I finally got to go to Þórsmörk, and it was definitely as beautiful and special as everyone has said. Not to mention lovely and warm - I shocked the hell out of the Icelanders after our 22km hike by lying down for a few minutes in the icy cold river beside the campsite to cool off and wash, while they only lasted a few seconds each :D Photos forthcoming.

June summer holiday

2009-06-22T04:41:00.004+10:00

Phew! I've just returned from my 3-week trip to Europe, which is why I haven't been replying to emails. Will work on the photos when I have spare time from moving house and working. Here's a summary of my June so far:

1-6 June: NORMS Linguistics workshop, Hotel Fefor, Gudbrandsdalen in Norway. Highlights:

Swimming in a mountain lake, fed by snowmelt from the highest mountains in Norway, at 1158 metres above sea level
Playing Cat's Cradle (you know, that string game) for about 4 hours with Gísli on the last night
Finding out that some Dutch dialects have subject-complementiser agreeement in embedded clauses, as well as subject-verb agreement (eg 'I know dat she is coming', vs 'I know dan they are coming'.)

6 June: Mark and Susana's wedding just outside of Rome. Highlights:

Navigating from the airport to the reception in Italian, where my Italian consists of a few songs about Dario from the textbook Avanti! (Non sono Dario, sono Pino. Sono piccolo fratello di Dario. Dario e i gabinetto.)
The bright green kilts worn by Mark, Luce and Matt. First time I've seen groomsmen more eye-catching than bridemaids
Susana's family. First time I met them. I'm already disappointed that they don't live in Melbourne.

After that, coupla days: Rome. Highlights:

The crazily thin Roman pizzas.
The stupendously yummy chilli chocolate gelati near some church near the river.
The insane, people-everywhere, churches-everywhere, mopeds-everywhere pace.
The Colosseum. I could totally visualise Asterix and Obelix charging and sneaking about there!

After that, 3 days: Naples/Napoli. Highlights:

Rosemary (Luce's mum)'s beaming face as she threw herself heart and soul into the pure insanity that is Naples
Tango dancing in the posh part of Naples (thank god there was one!)
Visiting the ruins of Pompei and seeing Mt Vesuvius
The gum trees :D
The yummy focaccia-based pizzas

After that, one night: Rome again. Highlights:

How truly PEACEFUL the city was. In comparison with Napoli.
Gelati

After that, 1 week: Rethymno on Crete, in Greece. Highlights:

The totally bizarre driving style. Basically, you can overtake at pretty much any time, which means you drive on the shoulder wherever possible, to allow people behind you room to squeeze past, and to avoid oncoming overtakers on your side of the double lines.
The Palace at Phaistos, and the Phaistos Disk
Knossos
BA-KLA-VA
Kafaiti (it's the hairy one, my new favourite)
Samaria Gorge - 17kms of white rocks, pink oleanders, orange cliffs, clear streams and the beautiful green of gum trees, starting 1km in the sky, finishing in the super-inviting mild waters of the Mediterranean Sea
Down-time, where we could all just kick back and read our books, and continue to regain our sense of self after Napoli

Last 2 nights: Agia Pelagia, on Crete. Highlights:

Finally having Luce all to myself!!
Snorkelling several times a day
The freshly-squeezed blend of pineapple and orange juice, despite the skepticism of the restaurant guy

Reykjavik again. Highlights:

It was still light when the plane landed at 11:30pm, and it was still light when I got to bed at 1:30am
The tap water is not only drinkable, but it is decidedly yummy
High-speed internet on-tap
Super-comfy bed and pillows
Endless supply of scaldingly hot water at a good pressure
The toasty warm inside, refreshingly cool outside
I can finally recognise an Icelandic accent on someone's English, and it's beautiful!
It's home. And only 4 weeks til I'm back in Melbourne, at my other beautiful home.

Creative in Reykjavík

2009-05-30T08:39:00.005+10:00

Righto, I just wrote a poem. It's not even a sentence, just a very long noun phrase, and it's certainly horribly clichéed, plus it changes referent/topic halfway through without proper notice, but I think it fits what I can see right now. Sitting in my living room right now, with only candles and evening daylight outside to see by, is truly beautiful. :)

Reykjavík, sumarið 2009

The pink light
at half past ten at night,
like the world is lit by a sea of candles
stronger than the stars,
muted by the rain -
polishing the short-lived green
of the world outside my window.

Salsa dancing

2009-05-25T08:51:00.002+10:00

My friends dancing salsa! On Kastljós (hahah!)

http://dagskra.ruv.is/sjonvarpid/4431388/2009/05/20/4/
Salsa á Hverfisgötunni með Tepokanum

A windy tale to rule them all

2009-05-15T11:47:00.004+10:00

Okay, so I've had some stories to tell about the wild wind here in Iceland before, like trying to jump in a puddle, but getting blown off-course and missing, being unable to walk under a bridge because the wind just blew me backwards across the ice, being blown sideways off the bike-path, and 2 weeks ago getting caught in a particularly forceful gust at the wrong moment in a pedal (one up, one down), and being blown backwards on my bike. (Okay, that was my own fault for trying to take a short cut over the top of the Perlan hill instead of going around the cemetery)... But this just takes the cake. Fair dinkum, surely this will drive home to you just how ferocious the wind here can be: So, our uni foreigners' 'coffee meeting' group went on a walk about Reykjavík with a guide today. So that I could see the statues and so on, I tied my hair back out of my eyes. And... wait for it... THE WIND BLEW THE HAIR ELASTIC OUT OF MY HAIR!!!! Seriously, that can't be in the rules! I say, that's simply not cricket!!

twilight and twilight fans

2009-05-13T08:32:00.001+10:00

Okay, so the more I read about the Twilight series, the more I realise I'm so not alone in being obsessed by it - the books, the movies, the audiobooks, edward, rob, jacob, bella, alice... I even read comments about the actors. But seriously, it seems like people with all levels of education are totally into Twilight - I laughed out loud at one fan's defense of the actors, about how they're real people with real lives, and about how we should stop expecting them to actually be like their characters, and all the celeb palaver, etc.

"People need to stop putting actors on pedal stools".

HA HA HA HA! ROTFL! Is that like some kind of shroom that makes you rush instead of hallucinate? Or like a racing rocking chair? AbsolUTEly LMAO!!!

RtR done

2009-04-27T03:13:00.000+10:00

Well, the conference I was organising on 'Relating to Reflexives' in Reykjavík went swimmingly. 2 days of people yabbering about reflexives from all sorts of angles, including long-distance reflexives, logophoricity, methodologies, possession without overt reflexives, how to differentiate between core syntactic binding and non-syntactic coference, pronouns with local antecedents and more :D

We then headed around the Golden Circle (photos), with me acting as tour guide. Lots of hand-flapping during my retelling of the sagas, which I had neglected to brush up on. Dinner of steinbítur (world's ugliest fish = world's yummiest fish) down at the Hafið Bláa 'The blue sea' country restaurant on the south coast, near Selfoss I think. HIGHLY recommended! Food and views were exquisite!! (A seal and loads of birds watched us eat, through the floor-to-ceiling windows.)

I was very happy that my outside-in approach to binding for both Icelandic and Faroese was well received, since this is what I'm going to try to talk about at the LFG conference in July. Lots to do now!!

Good Friday, I'm miles away and missing you already...

2009-04-11T20:33:00.004+10:00

I tell you guys what, I just had a MASSIVE Good Friday - I don't think I stopped smiling all day! It all started early, had to finish making the 2 batches of hot cross buns - one wheat and sugar free. Guests (Björn the Kraut from Icelandic class, Karl the Yank from salsa/beach going, and Linda, Auður and Björk who need no introduction) started arriving at 10am (yes, my god, I did a 'brunch'!). The hot cross buns went down a treat, special dietary needs and everything :D Woo-hoo, I entertained ALL on my own! And breakfast too, no less!

Björn, Auður, Björk and I then went to the beach (Linda went for a run), and it was blue skaaaies and sunshaaaine the whole time. 10 degrees! And 5 degree water! Even with the first day of summer still 2 weeks away!!

Then Linda, Auður, Björk and I went and had a lovely lunch (roast lamb, which the Ási's had had for dinner the night before, with me and Linda's uncle as guests, so I guess my Easter holiday started early). Me, Auður and Björk had to drive to FOUR shops before we found one open to buy bread, tomato and sláttur. It was very small-town, but also a nice little adventure :) (cos it had a happy ending you know).

Then the four of us ladies went and played some basketball (although we only found an open petrol station to pump up the ball at the SEVENTH place we checked!), which was really, really nice. Me and Björk vs Auður and Linda. I was pretty impressed with all of them, and the mini-rings was a good idea for Björk. It's really cool the way kids learn - I could actually put Björk's hands in the right positions for her to shoot, and she had a very nice shot when I did this.

Then the four of us watched Twilight together. Linda and I sighed together at Edward (he is SO lovely. and weird still. but still...), while Björk looked at us all funny throughout most of it, and Auður kept asking 'what's going on?' in every suspenseful bit, and checking how much time was left. (Björk is 10 and Auður is 14!)

Then Linda and I rushed out to Selja Church to see Bach's St Matthew's Passion or something, some Good Friday tradition. Of course we got lost on the way, even stopping in at the wrong church (there's no such thing as a Melways in Reykjavík, so everyone just points themselves in the general direction of the suburb and hopes - it does lead to a lot of driving in circles, but at least we had an excuse for being late to Karl's choir, that meant we didn't have to mention Twilight...). Karl the Yank was actually outside the church having a coffee when we arrived, we waited for a break between pieces, then went and listened to some really lovely music. One of the singers was Ási's cousin, naturally. At interval I met up with a lady from one of my Icelandic classes, a very happy, easy-to-laugh Dane, and we've arranged to go hiking.

So, that was my massive Good Friday. Just received an email from Tolli asking if I want to come over tonight, should be fun :) I'm going for a run in a bit, and I'm reading my Icelandic book at the moment. Tomorrow is chocolate day, I've bought an easter egg for myself from Luce, at 11am another one of Karl's choirs is singing in Hallgríms Church, and we saw last night that there still appears to be snow at Bláfjall :D

I don't think I stopped smiling all day yesterday, I had SUCH a lovely time. And it wasn't a so-insane-I'm-going-to-explode/i'm-feeling-bipolar kind of happy, I just had a really nice, balanced, SATISFIED kind of day. Luce is in Adelaide, with people I really like, and I know he'll be having a really lovely time too (assuming they didn't bring any viruses with them!), and that is also making me very satisfied and content. Only 8 weeks til I see Luce, it hardly seems like anything, a mere blip.

Woo-hoo, we should have sunny holidays with our friends more often!

(PS, we had a bit of a 'religion' discussion, which I think prompted every paragraph starting with 'And theeeeen...' Sorry!)

So much, yet so little has happened

2009-03-24T11:26:00.004+11:00

Okay, so I've been back in Iceland since the end of January. I went straight up to Akureyri to play 2 games of basketball, both nail-biters (against the bottom team!), but we won both. Then I've been to 2 conferences, with the next one being the one I'm organising here in Reykjavík, and which is shaping up to be much bigger than I thought!

The basketball season ends this Thursday, which hopefully means my dancing season can start again. I've been to the beach nearly every week at least once, and I've even bought some neoprene boots and gloves to help deal with the 2 degree sea water (it helps enormously!).

Life without Luce here is a lot quieter at home than it was. I'm working up to having a party on my birthday on Friday, but it's a lot of effort on one's own, so we'll just have to see.

Just over 2 weeks ago I became addicted to Twilight, and read the books over this weekend. The strange thing is, while I am totally in love with Edward, rather than be WITH him, I'd like to just BE him. I think. Cos I think I'd rather be WITH Jacob. Hmm, maybe I am spending too much time on my own!

Finally, my abstract to the LFG conference just got accepted! Gah! That's supposed to be quite hard to get in! FOUR reviewers!! So that's in July - I'll be coming back to Australia straight after that, although I'm actually here in Iceland until June 2010. I'll just be commuting ;)

Áfram Jóhanna!

2009-02-05T21:02:00.001+11:00

As the only Aussie in Iceland, this makes me *the* on-the-ground, live-as-it-happens Australian expert on Icelandic politics. Hahaha. Yes, if you have any questions about the new Prime Minister of Iceland Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, you can ask me. Mind you, you could just listen to this 7 minute or so interview on the Radio Adelaide breakfast program and hear absolutely everything I was able to remember about her...
Radio Adelaide podcasts, "Iceland's New Prime Minister"

more iceland

2009-01-28T12:55:00.003+11:00

So, I've just had a lovely 5 weeks or so back in Melbourne, and am heading back to Iceland today for another 6 months. Aaaand, I've just gotten another 12 month extension! My performance over my first year was called 'exemplary' :D Woo-hoo! But I've already gotten permission to do the second extension partly in Australia, so I'll be back in July before heading over again. So all those who haven't yet made it to Iceland, get your calendars out and see if you can't squeeze in a visit.

At home, heading home again

2009-01-11T20:55:00.004+11:00

I've just bought my return flights back to Iceland. I'm leaving Melbourne on Wed 28th of Jan (after the Australia Day long weekend at the Prom), on the 5pm Singapore flight. Haven't decided yet whether I'll go straight to Reykjavik from Copenhagen, or fly the next day straight to Akureyri for my basketball games. But I've booked my home flight from CPH for Tuesday 21st of July. It was going to cost $8,000 more to leave on the Saturday or Sunday, so I decided I could cope with a couple of extra days summer in 2009.

While the 'summer' here in Melbourne has been rather pissweak, I have been pretty thrilled that all my friends have called me and organised to meet up with me - I feel like I've been flat out since mid-November and couldn't have organised a pissup in a brewery if left to my own devices (eg NYE on the couch, bed at 12:30). It's been great to feel I have friends who make the effort to call me - thanks everyone! XOXO :)

Canada, and HOME!!

2008-12-22T15:44:00.001+11:00

So, it turns out that -35°C is too cold to go skiing or snowboarding with a large degree of comfort, and that -14°C feels positively warm in comparison. Hooray for the person who invented the little active carbon sachets that keep toes and fingers warm all day long! And hooray for snow-making, since even Whistler doesn’t always have oodles of snow.

So, Luce and I are now level 3 skier/rider respectively (where 6 is beginner and 1 is highest). I never really believed that I would ever have control over turns on a snowboard, so I am pretty impressed with myself. I can even negotiate moguls (slowly, and not very elegantly YET), so long as they’re not too massive, and there aren’t too many people. I am definitely go to continue ‘riding’, especially since it means Luce and I are now perfectly matched to hit the slopes together :)

So, 4 days at Whistler. The Peak-to-Peak gondola opened the day we arrived, and we went both ways on it, including a go on one of the gondolas with a glass bottom :) 440m above Fitzsimmon’s Creek between the Blackcomb and Whistler peaks, the whole trip of 4.4kms takes 11mins. Because I was wearing a helmet (as did about half of everyone I saw, even adults!), I planned that if something ‘happened’, I would hug Luce’s head to my chest and protect him. It turned out I didn’t need to do this, thankfully. Although it was a little weird, when, 2 hours later, we found out that the Blackcomb gondola tower #4 had snapped, and the only injury was a guy who whacked his head on the roof as his gondola fell. He should have worn a helmet, like me. Or had someone ready to hug him tightly, in case of emergency!

Finally, we’re home. I love Melbourne. The light is bright white, the sun is hot, my car is AWESOME (I have a volume control on my steering wheel!), my bike is EVEN AWESOMER (soft seat, smooooth gears, easy braking, COMFORTABLE angles, stiff frame, pannier, and there are new and newly paved bike paths going from my house to the shops in 2 directions), there are TREES absolutely EVERYWHERE, and they are all so beautiful with their slender trunks and blue leaves, and there is a strong feeling of connection with people, even those who are pushing trolleys around a carpark, because they make eye contact, they smile, they SPEAK (okay, we both mumble something no-one can hear, but you can tell we’re being friendly!), my clothes were washed and dried in a matter of hours, there is extra vintage extra tasty cheddar cheese OMG!, and I’ve eaten a month’s worth of nectarines, peaches (omg, so yummy!) and apricots in the 3 sleeps we’ve been home. Oh, and did I mention how COMFORTABLE my bed is? With 1,000 thread-count sheets, a firm futon mattress, just the right number of pillows that are just the right sizes, and Luce within hand-splatting distance for snuggles and reassurance in the middle of the night. And I have already borrowed two new audiobooks from the library. For free. And it's always daylight here, apparently ;) I love Melbourne.

on the road again...

2008-12-12T10:04:00.007+11:00

So, we thought going home via Canada would be good - to go skiing, and to go 'with the sun' and all that. BUT. FIRST up our flight Keflavík-Halifax (Canada east coast) got diverted via Boston, because it's winter. Fine, we found this out 2 months ago. But THEN Air Canada changed the time of our Boston-Halifax connecting flight, so we had to spend the night in Boston. Again, fine, this happened weeks ago, and Luce persuaded them to put us up at the Hyatt for the night.

But THEN, our Boston-Halifax flight this morning got cancelled, so we got diverted via Toronto, and our planned 2 days in Halifax has dwindled to a single night. And seeing as how it gets dark at 16:30 here (in Halifax), there's no 'sight' to be 'seeing' even out of the aeroplane window.

We did try to skip Halifax and fly directly Toronto-Vancouver, where we're going skiing for a few days. It was very difficut trying to explain this to the Air Canada staff: "Why are you going to Halifax from Toronto if you want to end up in Vancouver?" -Precisely! Can you change our ticket. "Um, no. No. No, no. No." FINE.

Show bigger map

It turns out we have made about 5 friends here already, including a lovely couple who were about to tell their parents they were about to be grandparents. Wait for it... As they were hugging, the guy was going to say "Careful, you might squish your grandchild!" And... he did! Hahaha, nerd! I like Canadians :)

Perlan, oh Perlan

2008-12-04T09:29:00.006+11:00

Well, Luce and I finally made it up to Perlan for a lovely buffet meal. Our friends Ási and Björk came all the way from Cambridge to join us, and we all munched happily on smoked salmon, turkey, prawns, rye bread, smoked salmon, rye bread, ice-cream, creme brulee, rye bread, smoked salmon and much much more :)

Perlan rotates slowly, and we did the usual lose our coats because they were resting on rails that our table left behind, and I have to say that, when we went to get our entrees and then headed back to our table, the expression on Ási's face at not finding our table where we left it was priceless! Hahaha :D

Yoko Ono's Tower of Peace moved slowly around us, as did the National Hospital, the under-construction Uni of Reykjavík, Öskjuhlíð forest, the airport and the Háskóli Íslands, all under an apparently starry sky (even if the stars were tiny lights on the inside of the domed windowed ceiling of Perlan!).

At Björk's insistence, we went for an after-dinner walk around the balcony of Perlan, which turned into a bit of a jog and then a run as the wind stripped all warmth from our bodies, even on just a single loop. Ah, Christmas in Reykjavík.

PS, Our party on Saturday went brilliantly. Luce made loads of lovely food and there were plenty of people. I was a little concerned we wouldn't be able to chill our drinks, there being no snow at the moment, but it turned out that the -5 degrees was enough after all to turn our fizzy drinks into slushies :)

This time next week, we'll be in Boston!

Precipitation

2008-11-15T02:48:00.003+11:00

Hahaha! It's like, 2 degrees (positive), and it's snowing - the biggest snow 'flakes' I have ever seen! They're all the size of golf-balls, and I swear I saw one nearly tennis-ball size a minute ago! It's so funny - cos they're so big, you can see them dropping down for miles up in the sky. Where ARE they coming from?! :D

snúa og snua, og bremsa og bremsa, ...

2008-11-06T07:53:00.002+11:00

(Sorry for double-posting on the good newz blog...)

HAH! I've been taking Swing/Rock'n'Roll dance classes at the Háskóli, and cos I'm sick of Icelandic guys not dancing, I've been learning to lead. And tonight we were learning to dance with 2 girls!! Aaaughhh!! Actually, it's not THAT hard, if they're dancing in time/together. But THEN the teacher said, oh, now let's see what happens when you turn one girl twice and one girl once, and continue on with other moves we've learnt to dance one-on-one ... Chaos! Mayhem! But *I* mananged to do it in the end, even doing the 'turn the other girl twice' to get them back in step!! Woo-hoo! OMG!!

Oh, we also got all of our passports, work permits and residency permits renewed, til October 2009. Should be home before then though! Luce looks pretty similar in both his residency permit photos, but I don't look like the same person at all (first photo straight hair, overexposed, second photo bed hair and enough contrast to see my freckles). Funny.

October update

2008-10-23T07:57:00.005+11:00

Yes, yes, Iceland's in a financial crisis, or an efnahagskreppa as it appears on the front page of every newspaper every day. And every single Icelander I have spoken to about it has been disconcertingly positive about it: 'Oh, yeah, it was bound to happen sooner or later. Maybe now Icelanders will learn to curb their spending a bit, and stop living entirely on credit'. Maybe.

Anyhow, France with The Wining Sysprogs was great, pics coming at some stage. The French were LOVELY - people seemed to go out of their way to be helpful and nice and to understand my French. Like, I had complete strangers beep and wave and almost hang out the window of their car in order to say 'Bonjour!' to me! Admittedly we were in the middle of nowhere (or, as much in the middle of nowhere as one can be when one is in the region 'where it all began' - Clan of the Cave Bear country and all!).

The Brits also seem to have redefined themselves since my last visit - random strangers and even service desk people were helpful, friendly, smiled and knew the answers to my questions! Now, I must admit here that I had VERY low expectations of their behaviour, but even so, they seem to be a much happier and friendlier bunch than I have experienced before. So, another win :) Oh, and we can't forget visiting the Ási's, and the Abba song (and dance!) night we had. Mamma Mia, here I go again... I have decided that one of the prerequisites on a parenting licence should be the ability to play a musical instrument, preferably guitar or piano, in order to allow for family singalongs. Oh, and I nearly died laughing at Spamalot the Monty Python musical. It's one thing to watch a stupid film and quote from it, it's quite another to see adult human beings prancing around being ludicrous when they're within spitting distance of you. It lends a certain air of respectability to the daft jokes me and my friends try to tell!

Sweden was aces - I used a groovy graphing program linked to Google Earth, so I clearly had the most exciting presentation at the conference. Furthermore, I had a super lovely time with all of my NORMS friends, and I (had) learnt to count to 10 in Polish, although I get a little muddled with 8, 9 and 10, and my poor tongue tip doesn't quite move fast enough to deal well with the retroflex fricative followed rapidly by the pre-palatalish fricative in the number '6'. Does make you wonder a little about the kind of tongue-tip control that native Poles must have. Like one wonders about the transferability of the digital and lingual dexterity of clarinet players... Doesn't one?

And it snowed last night, and everythings is bright and clean and white. Well, it was when it wasn't dark...

Lost ... and Found

2008-09-11T04:26:00.003+10:00

So, despite my steadfast refusal to admit that I ever lose anything, and my firm conviction that it's only Luce who never puts anything away and who is thus the only candidate in our household for never being able to find anything, I've been having a rather rough time of it of late. Over the past week alone, I have lost my favourite purple fleece top, my favourite blue leggings that perfectly keep the bits of me between the bottoms of my thermal underwear and the tops of my shoes warm, my sparkly and practical flat dancing shoes and my keys which includes the special electronic key to get into my building at uni.

After a massive search which entailed me cleaning (not just 'putting things away') all of the kitchen, all of the laundry and part of the living room, Luce cracked it and refused to let me stay at home in his office any longer. He insisted upon yet another search of my bag, which I had pre-packed the night before to go to uni, and, lo and behold, my keys turned up in the very bottom. So, they weren't *really* lost, after all... Just nobody knew where they were.

And then, when I had decided that my purple fleece, my leg warmers and my dancing shoes must all be lost together, in the land where all lost tops, leg warmers and dancing shoes sneak off together to when your back is turned, I went to basketball training, and one of the other girls said, "Oh, you left your purple top at training last week - here it is." And then I went home, and in the process of putting things away for when Elisabeth arrives, my leg warmers magically appeared from the depths of a small pile of clothes - concealed by a jumper and pair of tracksuit pants. And THEN, my dancing shoes turned out to still be at the last place I had dancing! So, everything is now accounted for!! Luce wants to attach all of my personal items to me with a long piece of string, but I think that's highly unnecessary. After all, it's not ME who loses stuff...

But the last word in this story must be saved to say how much we like Reykjavík. How many capital cities around the world can you leave things behind at public venues, and have them waiting for you when you return several days later? (Compare Tönchen's D's hat which blew into the harbour, then was fished out by a stranger, and we found it sitting on the bench waiting for us 2 days later!) I love Iceland :)

What happened in August?

2008-09-03T00:21:00.007+10:00

Wow, that was a busy August! Spent 10 days in the Faroe Islands, where I discovered that there is dialectal variation in their LDR use, from being way more liberal than Icelandic, in the Norwegian/Vestjylland Danish direction, to being more conservative than both Norwegian and Icelandic, although there is always a person restriction, in both complement and non-complement clauses, which I haven't found in any other Scandinavian language. Cool! We also made the news :) (Höski/Höskuldur Þráinsson is my supervisor, and he's the person you see most often in this clip. If you look closely, you'll see quite a few people you might recognise from photos and other places!)

Piotr and I went running all over Tórshavn, and Höski joined us one morning - photos are forthcoming, hopefully by next week on picasa. Luce came down for a couple of days, and I have to say that I really want to have a holiday on the Faroes - take a stack of books, and hit some isolated island (I'd like to go to Nolsoy - not too far from Havn) for a quiet week or two. Just thinking about it makes me yearn to go back! Also did a sea-swim with Ási, Theódóra and her husband Emil. Nearly killed me & T, while Ási and Emil just laughed. *sigh* at least we did it! (Photographic evidence forthcoming :) .) Oh, and the food was awesome, when they were able to find a vegetarian option...

Then Luce & I did the 10km run in the Reykjavik marathon, Luce around 45mins, me just under 54mins. I'm going to see if I can beat 50mins in the next one.

Then I went to Denmark for a conference - the NORMS Grand Meeting. Piotr and I went running each morning with Rakul, our Faroese friend who's a total legend. Höski and another Icelander joined us one morning, and the 3 of us went for a sea-swim on the last run. My talk went well, but I've now seen some of the people who are presenting at the conference I've big-mouthed my way on to in Lund in October, and I'm feeling rather intimidated!

On a lighter note, I got to catch up with a penfriend I've had since I was 15 or 16, who lives in country Jylland (Denmark) and who I last met 13 years ago. Her parents drove an hour and a half to meet me too (good effort by her 79 year old dad, who also lived in Reykjavik 50 years ago!), and I had a very lovely evening/night there. It was strange seeing someone I remember as a teenager looking like a woman, and with a full family, house, etc. She's got 2 kids the same ages as Tali and Ella, and the younger one had the same facial expressions and tummy-sticking-out as Ella, too! But it was also inspiring to meet up again with someone who is living how they want to live, helping run her community activities, and who I have a history with, even if how we met was completely accidental! (She was friends with a pen-friend of one of my friends in high-school!)

Then I went to København and met up with Anne and Steen and their kids, our friends from Iceland who recently moved back home. We went to the Tivoli, and saw a modern ballet of The Little Match Girl, which is one of my all-time favourite stories, and it was very very well done. I managed not to cry at the end, only just. We also went on as many rides as we could, and I went on the giant dropping ride again, scaring the pants off myself. It was great. I suspect I would really enjoy sky-diving :D I shook and giggled for about 5 minutes after the ride finished!

Oh, I think I forgot to mention that we had about a hundred visitors (Tönchen from Melbourne, Thomas and Katrin the Swiss Cheeses, Rosemary Luce's mum, Betty family friend from UK, JC and Jee from Melbourne Uni), with more on their way in a couple of weeks!

And finally, Iceland has night-time again. Not entirely sure I approve, but at least I've got one more summer solstice to look forward to up here...

That's all for now!

Hottest day on record!

2008-08-01T00:49:00.003+10:00

Reykjavík and Iceland continued the heatwave that is this summer, by smashing all previous temperature records across the country. Reykjavík's 26.2 degrees yesterday broke 2004's record, while at Þingvellir Parliament Plains it soared to nearly 30°!!! (Read the Icelandic Review's article here.) Thankfully it's back to a pleasant 16° or so again now, although it might gear up again for this weekend's National Holiday Weekend or whatever it's called.

Training for the 10km in the Reykjavík Maraþon* is going well, especially since I just found the results of the 5km Midnight Run - in my age/sex group I came 9th out of 106, while Luce, who admittedly ran half the run by my side, came 24th out of 63. So, I'm really rather pumped to keep training and beat at least the 2 women who were only 6 seconds in front of me!!

We're about half-way through guest-season, and are doing quite well. We're taking all our guests on hikes up different mountains, so we've been ticking them off as well, putting increasingly more terrible poems and limericks in the guestbooks on each peak. It's fun looking at the hills around Reykjavík now, and being able to think, "Done it, yes, been there, doing it tomorrow..." :) So far we've ticked off: Esja, Vífilsfell, Grímannsfell (with the midnight waterfall swim at the end), Húsfell and Móskarðahnúkar, with Helgafell over Mosfellbær this weekend. Photos will appear on Picasa very soon!

*hehe, how many of you read 'maraþon' as 'marapon' instead of 'marathon'? ;)

unexplained injuries...

2008-07-18T21:09:00.004+10:00

So, I woke yesterday with a strange ache in my shin, that I needed to ice by the evening. Funny, I didn't remember having a sore shin the night before, even though I do remember going for a walk. Then some strange scratches appeared on the palm of my left hand, and this morning there was a definite bruise on my left elbow. It felt like a case of The Morning After The Night Before, especially when I seemed to remember disrobing and shrieking and splashing around in a waterfall lagoon at midnight towards the end of our evening hike with Luce, Ási and Auður... It seems you don't need to hit the town to end up running around in your underpants at midnight in Iceland! (I'm guessing the cold water numbed the injuries at the time :) .)

June update

2008-06-29T23:28:00.006+10:00

Well, June was fairly hectic, as it was always going to be. Luce and I went to Helsinki for a conference, Luce went to Edinburgh for the weekend with Mark, Iceland had its national day and I helped with the Salsa demonstration part of the celebrations, Tönchen came to visit us in Iceland for 2 weeks and we all drove around the entire country together (I've whittled the photos down to around 2,000, still working on it!). Luce and Ási have gone sea-swimming twice so far, l & t climbed Vífilsfell mountain with Heimir, l & t went in the Midnight Run on Jónsmesse night, t & tönch visited the Blue Lagoon, I had my second and third meetings with Faroese speaking people and it turns out that I can mostly understand Faroese! :) Oh yes, and last night we saw Ólöf Arnalds (go on, guess whether Ólöf is a man or a woman!), Björk and Sigur Rós at a free outdoor concert in Laugardal (where we go swimming). Hooray for crazy Björk music that you can dance like a raw prawn to and fend off the threat of frozen toes without looking *too* out of place!

July promises to be a lot calmer, with only 3 papers (Grand meeting postdoc report; Subjects & antecedents; write-up of Humanities conference paper) and some fieldwork (in the Faroes) to prepare for/have done by the start of August - no visitors (until the very end of the month I think). So, it's work on the weekends for me! Oh, and Luce & I have found an organised running group that's training for the Reykjavík marathon in August, I want to do the 10km only, but Luce seems like he's going to be up for at least the 21km! Thank Christ for the perpetual daylight still!!!!

Earthquake!

2008-05-30T05:45:00.004+10:00

Just had our first biggish earthquake, about 6.1, epicentre about 100km away. It is certainly a strange feeling watching the building you're in sway and jump about! My first thought was to press control-s to save my current document (only afterwards did I realise I had forgotten the 14 other open documents!), while Luce sped out of the house just in case the two upstairs floors also became ground floors. As for me, if the upstairs became the downstairs, I was just going down with it.
link to news article (in English)

Spring

2008-05-12T03:29:00.007+10:00

I've been trying for a couple of days now to work out how to say this, and I really don't know of a good way. Basically, the rain has had two rather significant effects in the world. The first is kind of obvious - everything has turned green. The second, however, was less expected, and considerably more disagreeable. Due, I suspect, to the ground everywhere being thoroughly waterlogged, and, I believe, the fact that worms need air, not water, to breathe, they've all migrated out of their lovely underground abodes, and have decided to camp out on the footpaths everywhere. I kid you not, on my walk to (and from) the bus-stop on Friday, in some places I had no choice but to squish the worms strung out all over the footpath, because there was simply no other way through or around. UGGGGHHHH!!!

On a happier note, I got to go dancing TWICE yesterday, and have two new spins, plus some styling to practice :) And today I went horse-riding (ooh - tolting) :D AND luce lands in 4 hours - YAY!

Off to Norway tomorrow to give a talk, and to celebrate the 17th of May - more adventures coming right up!

Ert þú íslending?

2008-05-01T05:55:00.003+10:00

Okay, so maybe it was rude to laugh, especially since the person who asked if I was Icelandic waited patiently until I said 'no'... Okay, so that took 4 months and 29 days. And so it seems I've reached that very dangerous point in language learning where my accent is passably Icelandic and my mumblings are heard as the proper forms of nouns, adjective, numbers, demonstratives, god everything... This is a dangerous point to be at, cos I still have lots to learn, but I now know why people have been talking faster and faster at and around me - they're assuming that if I can sound Icelandic, then I can understand it too. Oh dear.

Went in the Háskólahlaup (uni fun run - 60th anniversary of the Sports Centre) today. Did the 7km jobbie, in a shade under 40mins. Why so slow you ask? Well, for about a K there was one of those winds that you have to bend into, and when it stops suddenly you nearly fall over, and for about 3 K the wind came from the side and so my legs kept hitting each other. The kind of wind one avoids when one can, like in trainings...

Had guests on Monday night, a friend from uni and his Dutch girlfriend. Every time I opened my mouth to speak Dutch it came out in Icelandic, and every time Heimir looked at his girlfriend his English switched to Dutch. Luce and Yolanda were the only ones who could speak a Dutch-only sentence from one end to the other, and it made for very entertaining facial expressions and cries of exasperation - the kind of entertainment that one doesn't get in Australia very often at all!

So, tomorrow's another public holiday and I'm hooking up with Erla & son for a parade, I made a friend to go running with today, I bumped into several salsa people after my seminar yesterday (a couple of whom actually CAME to my talk on Australian English!) and have started getting email addresses to go dancing more often, and it's all feeling like home. Except that Luce went to Switzerland yesterday and I watched December Boys and Brent sent pictures from Arapiles and the Grampians and so I'm also all wistful and yearning for TREES and kookaburras and magpies and proper sunshine, not this woossie stuff... *sigh* Comments and emails gratefully accepted!!

oh wow oh wow oh wow

2008-04-08T23:36:00.004+10:00

Faroese is CRAZY! It's totally like Icelandic, but as pronounced by someone from where Elisabeth is from with a speech impodiment. Or should that be speech impodooiment. (Their 'ee' sounds come out like 'ooee' - it's hilarious!)

Well, in more newsy news, We (as in me mostly) had a massive weekend. On Friday and Saturday I had the Humanities conference (Hugvísindaþing). My talk went well, I got to talk for longer than I should have cos the next speaker was sick. And then I got to tag-team answering questions about LDR with Höskuldur Þráinsson. OMG. HIGHlight of my day let me tell you!!

And then I went out with people from the conference, and we had pizza and icecream and I got to ask everyone about how they fly in their dreams. This is totally my favourite question to ask a bunch of people. In my basketball team only one other person flew at all, which surprised the hell out of me cos it had never occurred to me that someone wouldn't fly in their dreams. But at dinner the other night all five of us flew. What's so interesting about this, is how everyone flies differently. We had 3 arm-flappers in our group (like swimming), and 2 no-control at all fliers, with one of these not really flying but doing more sort of massive jumps. He was also the only one who found it easy to get up in the air, for the rest of us the take-off is the hardest part, being easiest with a roller-coaster or something to shoot us up in the air. Only 2 of us fliers with some control over our direction experience gravity as being much stronger the closer we are to the ground, the other finds take-off and low flying relatively straightforward.

I've spoken with people who fly by projecting a force from their heart, chest or belly/belt down against the ground. These people often can't fly over water, as it provides no resistance. In the linguists group the other night I think I was the only one who could definitely fly over water (but I have to be pretty high up to do so), the others weren't sure or definitely couldn't. So: how do you fly? Special pose, force field, manipulating gravity, like treading water, special suit? Where does the energy/ability come from? Is it harder closer to the ground? How do you take off? Do you have control over where you fly? Can you fly over anything - water, buildings, mountains? How fast can you fly (I often find it much quicker in my dreams to fly than to run, with running too often being like Alice in Wonderland!)? Are you aware when you're flying that it's impossible? If so, does this make you unable to fly, or does it make you realise you're dreaming? What does it feel like? Do you always know you can fly, or do you only remember it once you're flying? Aaah, I want to go to bed now!!!

Okay, so then on Sunday was Auður's confirmation - I'll post photos soon. There was a ceremony at the church, then a lovely feast afterwards (oddly no pickled testicles or sheep's heads, but with food that made Luce and I look at it, go "Huh? What the-? Is that-? Oh!!" at the same time, which confused the people around us who were eavesdropping on the English I think!! Basically, you can buy loaves of bread at the supermarket which are sliced horizontally lengthwise instead of vertically in small squares as usual. It turns out they make these massive club sandwiches and rolled sandwiches with the massive slices of bread...), with 120 family members and close friends. (I really don't understand how Iceland has such a small population, when everyone has a million relatives!)

Watched the latest episode of Torchwood - I'm hooked on the AO Dr Who. I love Gwen's facial expressions and I wish Jack and Ianto would be more tender, I loved the episode Jack Harkness with the other Captain JH. *sigh*

Had my lecture on Australian English on Monday morning and got a round of applause - yay! The students reminded me of La Trobe and Monash students, very lovely and definitely willing to ask and answer questions. Interested in linguistics, which makes taking the class like having a sumptuous meal when you've been doing physical work. Replenishes you and makes the air taste sweet...

And at dancing last night a friend from the Háskóli came, his first time, but I think he's going to pick it up quickly. He's coming next time too. And there was a workshop on the weekend, and the guys were all dancing really well, with a couple of very cool new moves that are really energetic. It took me a bit to pick up on the leads, but I go there in the end. And with their better leads, my turns were far more balanced than usual, and I even did a couple of triple and quadruple turns, most importantly without even looking like falling over - woohoo!

And now I've just collected my last bits of data for my NJL paper, which I hope gets accepted. It's due next week, and I'm not finished! But at least now I know a bit about Faroese. I can't wait to get over there, it's going to be so cool!

And then I got to skype with Tönchen this morning, and Beth and Brent this arvo. When people sneeze, Ella apparently doesn't say 'God bless you' or 'Bless you', she says 'I bless you' :D Go Ellachen - you are God!! Hahahah :D

Easter

2008-03-27T10:54:00.019+11:00

So, I went snow-boarding on Easter Day this year. What did YOU do??

heheh
Oh yeah, I also went swimming...

... where 'swimming' includes doing laps, plopping in hot pots, and whizzing down the waterslide as fast as I could.

Swimming!

2008-03-21T07:24:00.005+11:00

Wow, 2 posts in 2 days. Well, I just went to Laugardalslaug (Swimming Pool Valley swimming pool), and it was awesome, I cannot believe I didn't go earlier! Something to do with never having anyone to go with, so I finally gave up looking for a swimming buddy and decided I could do it alone. I met a Russian woman, because she wondered where I was from that I was swimming in the wrong side of the lane :) And then I met a Newfoundland woman and 3 guys from Longbeach, California, and we went down the waterslide 3 times learning how to go faster each time except when the Canadian followed me and the water stopped so I also came to a complete halt, then we cooked ourselves in the 44 degree hotpot, then finished off in the normal, not-too-hot hotpot. Aah, Reykjavík - I love it here! (Especially when you get to drive to the pool...)

have car, will travel

2008-03-20T09:29:00.004+11:00

So, we acquired a car today - suburu legasy ('legacy' really, but that's how the icelander owner spelt it!) We're hiring it off a colleague at my work (whose parents live in Wonga Park :) ), so it costs the same per month as to hire a car for 2 days. So now we can say 'Við erum með bíl sko' - 'we've got a car'. I'm trying to learn to say 'sko' at the end of everything I say, cos then it sounds more Icelandic!

Nothing much else to report - had an abstract rejected and another one accepted, have a paper for a special issue of a journal due in 3 weeks, and a talk to give at the uni here at the same time, plus another talk at the uni just before I go to Switzerland with Luce & Meg and then off to Norway.

Icelandic easter eggs are discussed in terms of numbers, 2 and 3 are kind of normal, but 6 is really rather impressive, to judge from the conversation my basketball team had last night.

Oh, and there's a tv show here called 'Næturvaktin', about the nightwatch at the Shell petrol station up on Laugarvegur (the street where the big swimming pool and sports complex is, and where Luce and I train basketball). Anyway, the point is, with a few pauses now and then to look words up, I can pretty much understand everything they say. Yippee! Now if only I could speak this accursed medieval tongue, I'd be well pleased.

buses: the saga continues

2008-02-28T05:56:00.005+11:00

So, today I added another item to the list of 'Oh my god, let me tell you about my bus trip today' things. My bus route changed today. Not in a 'Please note, we're announcing a change to bus route #1, and it'll now travel down Vatnsmýrarvegur instead of Njarðargata' kind of way, but in a 'I'm sick of sitting behind these cars waiting for the green left-turn arrow at these traffic lights at Njarðargata, when the straight ahead people get to go, I want to go that way too' kind of way. I'm completely serious. We *were* waiting in line, to turn left. You know, to follow the usual route home. But then suddenly, out we pulled, and off we tootled down the Hringbraut, to the next set of lights instead, where there were no cars waiting to turn.

Vis større kart

Yes, we did join back up with our route, and no, I don't *think* we missed any stops, but that's not to say we wouldn't have if there had been a queue at the lights at Vatnsmýrarvegur too. I'm wondering now if this is one reason why I had trouble the first few weeks working out where I was on the bus. And I'm also wondering if this has ever happened to anyone else?

a first time for lots of things

2008-02-06T00:09:00.000+11:00

Just had my first official Icelandic lesson, and it was brilliant - exactly the right level :) I feel like such a cheat, already having West Norwegian to help me (especially when I look at the poor souls who have been learning Icelandic for years, but only have English, or English and Polish to help; although the Swedish speakers fare a little better).

As you probably know if you've seen the photos, we had an awesome weekend up in Akureyri with a mate's dad: first time swimming outdoors, first time skiing, first symphony orchestra concert, first shovelling of snow, first taste of traditional Icelandic food (dried fish, sheep's head bits, sheep's testicles, cod-liver oil), first crepes (next lot tonight at a mate's place - it's Pancake Tuesday), first museum visit, first Chinese take-away (ask Luce how much it cost, I can't bear to think about it), first domestic flight, aaaaaaaand we got to see the northern lights for the first time, on our walk home from the airport (also another first for me) in Reykjavík.

Workwise, I've finished transcribing the recordings I made in Denmark, and can now start entering the data to have a good look at it. While it's taken a billion years to sort through, it's been worth it, because there are a few occasions where I realise that I've misheard something, or got the wrong impression about the dialect, the first time round. I've sent off my first abstract for a conference in June in Edinburgh. And we had our first Icelandic Syntax Discussion Group meeting last week, and it was seriously fun - just playing around trying to understand someone's tricky theoretical analysis of an obscure fact in a couple of obscure Norwegian dialects. *bliss*

I love it here!

Crazy old people and snow play

2008-01-20T04:57:00.001+11:00

Well, I was accosted by my first crazy old person last night, who told me that I shouldn't leave it too late to have kids, and that I'll get cancer if I spend too long on the internet. :) love it. Also, this follows the preceding night where I actually got to roll around in the snow for a quarter of an hour. It's much harder work than you'd think, because there was about a foot of snow, and you just sink into it, meaning no matter which way you want to roll, it's a steep upwards journey. Just so as you know.

chip, chip, chipping away

2008-01-18T01:32:00.000+11:00

it's one of those days when my head feels like it's going to explode. Transcription of the recordings I made in Denmark is going well, much faster than I had thought, but it's so hard to hear what the Vestjyske people are saying - just bunches of vowels interspersed with glottal stops. A famous sentence in this dialect is: "A æ u å æ ø i æ å, æ a", meaning ‘I'm out on the isle in the river, am I’. Go figure. There's lots of snow outside, plus some sunshine today, and we're having our first guests for dinner on Saturday night, and I should hear about playing basketball with a women's team soon (instead of the blokes I've been training with...) So, just regular life for a bit. Missing everyone lots, and starting to appreciate the extra effort required to start up a new life in a new country!

from a little place at the edge of danmark...

2008-01-10T08:49:00.000+11:00

I'm now sitting in my hotel room in Danmark, after two days of fieldwork together with other NORMS linguists. It was an exciting trip over, with the other Icelander here (Ási, where the Á is pronounced 'ow' as in 'how', so it sounds like 'mousey' without the 'm') picking me up from home, running 2 red lights on our way to the flybus down to the plane (first time for early-morning Icelandic ever - not a complete debacle, but there's 'room for improvement' :D); listening to a lovely selection of Icelandic music from Ási's ipod (Björk sounds really great singing weirdo Icelandic jazz!, and others just sound a bit mental singing crazy folk songs :) ) and chatting in Icelandic (apparently I have a vague Norwegian accent); having an hour to kill in Copenhagen before our train left and using the time to sprint, in a steady drizzle, with (very full) wheely suitcase in tow, across town to a Chinese restaurant, and back again, where Ási listened to my directions (yes, in Icelandic!) 3 times in a row, even though I continued to suggest dead-ends (this is the person teaching me Icelandic at the moment - he has to be THE most patient person I have ever met!!); getting on board the train and discovering that the [insert eye-rolling type adjective here] ticket guy had given us seats that were not only not next to each other, but in entirely separate carriages!!, which we just ignored and sat in the 'non-reserved' seats for the 3 hour trip, while I knitted and we conversed in Icelandic; arrived an hour later than we were supposed to at the pickup point, and my phone doesn't get any signal here, thank goodness Ási's did; got picked up from Århus train station in a minibus for the 2 hour trip to the other side of Denmark, during which time we ate too much chocolate but continued to speak loads of Icelandic... Yes, I have spoken more Icelandic on this fieldwork trip than I have in the entire time I've been in Iceland!!

Arrived, got assigned a room, had dinner (thank goodness I remembered to order vegetarian - I can face meat sometimes, but not in the quantities it gets served in here!!), skyped luce, discovered I didn't bring toothpaste and had to borrow some, got my gear ready for the next day, then crashed.

Day 1 started with an introduction by a sociolinguist to the Vestjysk dialect, followed by lunch and then our first trip into the field. About 40 people were gathered at a school, plied with cake and coffee, and us linguists were set loose among them: "Hi, you look like a nice person. I'm from Australia. Would you like to answer some questions about your dialect?" So far I've only had one rejection, so that's nice :) I had to talk Danish to the Vestjyske people, so I'm somewhat 'language blanded' with Icelandic, Danish, Norwegian (there are 4 others who speak Norwegian here), English and German. It turns out that, of the 13 of us, we speak regularly (number after / indicates not often): Icelandic (5/6), Norwegian (5, of which 3 Østlandsk, and 3 not-Østlandsk, since 1 seems bidialectal), Danish (3), Swedish (2), English (2/4 - I'm counted post-slash!), German (2/3), Faroese (1/2), Finnish (1/2), 'Nordic' (2). In other words, I'm having an absolute ball!!

Came home, had dinner, had a debriefing session which I found very useful, went for a run in the dark (only ran off the road once!) with the supernatural-sounding zhooming of the windmills for accompaniment, and one of those 'you know you're in the country' smells at one paddock, and went to bed.

Alarm didn't go off on Day 2, but it turns out Ási was looking out for me, so I got a phone call saying 'We're in the bus! Get dressed!' at 8:45. Luckily I'd prepared everything the night before, so I grabbed some bread and cheese and sped outside. Since I was still cozy-warm from bed, I didn't put my jacket on, just a short-sleeved shirt. Øystein was a little worried I'd be cold, which got me worried we were going to be outside all day, because both he and Ási were rugged up with beanies on like they were going for a hike in the mountains! (Don't know where Pål thought they'd get the mountains from actually...) Drove through Paris and Rom to get to the data collection place, apparently we go through London tomorrow. Data collection went really well, I think I've found stuff out, only wish I had more time. Ási and I tried to buy toothpaste and postcards, but the country store 'didn't take foreign cards'. Sorry guys!

Just one more collection tomorrow, then a bit of an outing to the museum. Hopefully I get up in time tomorrow, and can have more exciting linguistic adventures, as opposed to the not-waking-up-in-time kind.

Sorry for the super-long post, but this feels like a massive adventure, and adventures need to be documented in detail!!

Happy New Year from Reykjavík!!

2008-01-02T05:09:00.000+11:00

This video shows just how mental the Reykjavikians are :) ... (Sorry, the camera work is not fantastic).

and that just about wraps it up for Christmas

2007-12-27T06:38:00.000+11:00

Well, that was Christmas. Yes, I ate too much, but more important- ly, I took waaaay too many photos. Some are up on Picasa, one is my current desktop, and another is here.

Luce and I have nearly finished reading all the poems about the Yuletide Lads, their mother & her husbands, and the Christmas Cat. I am also working my way steadily through Luce's After Dinner Mints (he told me I had to be careful not to close the drawer too loudly so that I could eat them with impunity - I'm not sure if this means I'm allowed to eat as many as I like so long as he doesn't hear...)

And it's back to work tomorrow - Christmas here is a long weekend, not a month-long holiday!

Christmas Bread

2007-12-22T10:53:00.000+11:00

We made some traditional Icelandic Christmas bread the other day, you may have seen the photos on picasa. Here's a video of the cooking process.

In other news, we have now passed The Shortest Day, and I'm expecting to be woken by the daylight 7 minutes earlier tomorrow. Hopefully by the new year I can get up before 10am...

What do we think of Reykjavik? She's alright!

2007-12-17T04:32:00.001+11:00

Bliss! Icelanders have their own brunost!! It's called Rjóma Mysuostur, and it's a lot like my favourite Norwegian brunost. Hagkoop (the local Coles) also has Tine brand Gudbrandsdalost brunost, but at $20 for a 500g block, Luce wasn't very encouraging when I expressed my interest in purchasing some. Thankfully the local stuff is only about $6.

I've been collecting 'odd things about Iceland/ers/Reykjavik' in my head, and I thought it was time to post them:

1. The bus drivers here are ab-so-lute-ly insane. They accelerate up to red lights, roundabouts and bus stops before slamming on the brakes, they accelerate far more ferociously than any bus I've been in before has been capable of, they take corners like they're on rails (which they're not - snow or ice is more like it), and I've yet to have a bus trip where at least one person didn't get thrown out of their seat on one of these manoeveurs. Think Harry Potter on the Knight Bus, and that's pretty much what it's like, except here the chairs are bolted down, and there is a mysterious heat that warms your back and toes, and for which I've yet to find its actual source. They also don't open the back door until they've completely stopped, which always leaves me worried whether I'll be let out at all!

2. Icelanders don't seem to say 'hello', 'goodbye', 'excuse me' or 'please'. They also don't mind bumping into you and pretending it didn't happen (personal space in a queue extends only as far as your bones). This contrasts massively with boarding a bus, where everyone stands back to let everyone go on first - no pushing whatsoever.

3. The Wind is quite extraordinary. It can blow strongly enough so that if I jump in the air, I land somewhere different to where I took off from. This is quite fun when it's blowing in a direction you want to walk in, but I got a bit of a shock once when a sudden side-ways gust nearly landed me in a massive puddle (that I had thought I was a safe distance from!). It's also scary near roads, where you can never be sure that you won't get pushed into oncoming traffic... or that oncoming traffic won't be blown into you. I stand well back from the gutter now when I'm waiting to cross the road, ever since I found tyres tracks 2 foot into the footpath one snowy & icy evening. And heard the stories about the cars blown off the roads, and my office buddy's skylight that got blown off at 2 o'clock in the morning.

4. Icelanders totally don't 'get' Christmas. There's no Santa, only 13 elf things that come and lick pots and bowls, slam doors, peep through windows, eat your skyr and sausages, and chase your sheep. Oh, and their mother who's a troll, along with her latest husband. And the Christmas Cat of course, who eats children who don't wear new clothes at Christmas. I think Gryla the troll also eats children. (Actually, nowadays the 'Yule lads' (the elves) leave a present each night for the kids in their shoes, and if you're naughty you just get a raw potato. None of which really sounds like the Christmas I knew as a kid.) Luce and I were talking about this today, and really, Christmas here sounds like it's run by bunyips and drop-bears - there's rather a lack of Americanisation in this part of Icelandic life at least.

5. Icelanders have a love affair with cars that I imagine is only matched in America. For example: it's a 10 minute walk (if that) to the shops. Our landlord thinks that that's too far to walk (okay, so a big shop is somewhat out of the question). But there's a general perception that anything more than 2 minutes is driving distance (one uni building to another for example - I kid you not). I had assumed that this was because the weather was so bad that no-one could tolerate it. But it's really quite warm here. When it rains, the temperature goes up to about 8 or 9 (which feels like about 20). It's MILD. It's far less extreme than what I've experienced in Norway (or Melbourne for that matter), where everyone gets about in the outdoors, and they have a saying 'Det er ikkje dårleg ver, bare dårleg kle' (there's no such thing as bad weather, there's just bad clothers). People who I've mentioned this to here have just looked confused.

Sorry for the long post! We took the camera to Ikea yesterday, and we're making Christmas bread on Tuesday, so more photos then!

Tales from the Binding Workshop

2007-12-09T23:39:00.000+11:00

Gave my talk yesterday, looking at differences in the acceptability of long-distance binding of seg and sin in Norwegian, which fitted in very nicely with the preceding talk, AND I was cited (different works too!) by two people in their papers :) (the two I most wanted to meet, and not only do I like their work, but they are both lovely people, and we're going to arrange me going to Oslo in May or so).

Us foreigners were then taken to the Blue Lagoon this evening, where we paddled about in bath-warm/hot water, covered ourselves in beneficial white mud (silica mud) in the lava pools created in the run-off from a power station down near Keflavik, I turned into Beetroot Face in the saunas and longed for snow to roll in, and then we had dinner. Somehow the conversation turned to people falling asleep in lectures, and we had a bit of a 'that's NOTHin'!' competition:

I told about my student who didn't take notes, but would sit up straight watching me, and so was very obvious when he slept;
Ken told about a small class where two students side by side listed to the same side as they slept, and the rest of the class tried to work out if there was a strange gravity effect there;
I told about my first years, and the guy down the front who I used to lecture specifically for, trying to keep awake;
Ken told about a postdoc's job application talk, where 5 of the 9 panel member audience fell asleep in one guy's talk, and then how he fell asleep in the most recent job talk where he was a panel member, and that person got the job;
someone (Øystein?) told about a class with 3 students, one of whom was a maths student who used to read the newspaper and then fall asleep in class, until a maths topic arose;
Helge told about a guy who had one student in his class, who fell asleep, and mentioned later that he didn't know whether he should keep talking or not;
and Höski told about a guy giving a lecture, who was so tired he actually dozed off himself in the middle of his own talk!!

HAHAHAH!!!

Hello Reykjavík!

2007-12-04T22:31:00.000+11:00

I've actually been badgered for details, details and more details, and for photos too. I've uploaded several albums to Picasa now, if you didn't get an invite, then I probably don't have your email address (I'm not convinced I want my photos public, so they're all password protected).

Basically, I've started work, it's cold but not stupendously so, the hot water smells, it's dark lots but not always, mandarins come from spain and bananas come from brazil, L nearly faints every time he sees the price of anything (but still manages to overcome his fear and spend up anyway...) and Icelanders seem to like it if you try to speak Icelandic. Oh, and I think I've found somewhere to dance salsa :D

Visas schmeezers

2007-11-27T23:29:00.000+11:00

Get this: You apply for a residence permit once you arrive in Iceland, NOT while you're still in Australia!! So, "The 90 day visa you have received [...] gives you 90 days to travel to Iceland." Weird, cos I thought Australians could spend 3 months in Iceland without a visa! [update: the special 'D-visas' that we got allow us to apply for residency. If you squint at it, it sort of makes sense. Sort of...]

Our current visas allow us to travel to Iceland. When you arrive in Iceland, we then register our Icelandic address and have our mugshots taken at the Immigration office. THEN, the immigration office will issue your residence permit card. I'm glad (hope?) the immigration office knows what's going on...

Visa thrills and spills

2007-11-27T21:58:00.000+11:00

It's heart-pounding excitement here, as our visas appear to be for 90 days, instead of the full year they were supposed to be. No-one in Iceland appears to be at work yet, but L is frantically calling and emailing to find out what the story is. Stay tuned!!

visas nearly in hand!

2007-11-26T21:05:00.001+11:00

From the Royal Danish Consulate General in Sydney, who issue the Icelandic visas:
"I have received your passports today AND the permit from the Icelandic Directorate of Immigration. Your visas have been issued and I will return your passports with the visas in the Express envelope you enclosed tonight."

Happily, the race between the visas and the flights appears to have been won by the visas - but I'll confirm this once we have our passports back in hand!

Bought plane tickets!

2007-11-23T18:23:00.001+11:00

Wow, we're leaving on Friday, the 30th. Tulla-Bangkok-Copenhagen-Reykjavik. 6 hours in Copenhagen, but only 2 hours in Bangkok, so that L seems to have done a good job finding flights. Flying with Thai Airlines. Right, I'm off to go climbing - all this excitement has left me needing an escape. (Omg, I have a presentation to give in 2 weeks!) Have begun acclimatising to Iceland time - they're 11 hours behind us *sigh*.

we zijn dar biiiijnaar, we zijn dar biiiiijnaar....

2007-11-23T10:06:00.000+11:00

we're going to iiiiiiceland, we're going to iiiiiceland (sung to the tune of 'we zijn dar bijnaar', but you can imagine any annoyingly ear-wormy tune you like) - our visa applications have been approved! Now we just need to send our passports to the Danish Embassy in Sydney to get the visas stuck in, and we need to buy our tickets. Oh, and pack. we zijn dar biiiiijnaar, we zijn dar biiiijnaar... !!!

Cracking that whip

2007-11-22T12:32:00.000+11:00

My Icelandic Head of Department has now called the Iceland Directorate of Immigration on my behalf, explaining "the urgency and vital importance" of getting my visa SOON, and how important a person I am :) . He also told me he told them that "we had planned an international conference here in relation to your arrival on the scene and now everything was up in the air because you weren't here yet. She answered me back and promised to look at your case tomorrow." So, cop that, you unenlightened immigration officials you.

Going-away party

2007-11-20T10:01:00.000+11:00

Well, still no visas or plane tickets, but we've had our going-away bash now! The photos are up on picasa, but you need to be invited to see them, so drop me a line if you'd like viewing rights of our lovely friends at our take-over of Papa Gino's last night :)

visas next week?

2007-11-16T09:33:00.000+11:00

"Your application will be examined next week. Your representative will be informed if any further documents are required, or if your application is approved."

Plane tix update....

2007-11-10T10:08:00.000+11:00

Um, so, we didn't buy our plane tickets after all, since they would require payment within a couple of days anyway, which we don't want to do until we have our visas. But I have now heard from Iceland that they will be emailing the visa details to Sydney for us, so as soon as they're approved, we'll be gone in a few days.

Enquiries about our departure/arrival dates are becoming more insistent, from friends here, and from our landlords there, but sorry, we're still 'aiming at 21-22/11'. The linguists in Reykjavik, meanwhile, seem to have nothing to say at this stage.

Visa/dates update

2007-11-07T10:28:00.001+11:00

I've been getting lots of emails and requests for updates, and the bottom line is: no, we haven't bought our tickets yet, because we still don't have our visas!

I sent an email to every embassy and consulate remotely connected with us getting our visas, and received several replies, so I have some idea of the timeframe: Iceland (the Directorate of Immigration) received our visa applications on the 24/10. For a process that normally takes 3 months, they're 'working as quickly as they can', and I expect 3-4 weeks turnaround on that (so around the 17th). Iceland then informs Sydney that they can 'issue the visa'. This means that we send our passports to Sydney via registered mail, and the person there said that, depending on workload, it would probably take a couple of days to get our passports back, with the visa permits stuck in them (so around the 20th).

We're planning to book plane tickets this afternoon, for the 21st (I think), with STA, because if we need to reschedule our flights, it doesn't cost anything. Flight Centre were going to charge $100 per flight to change, and booking online is about the same. Since we're going to be cutting it fine with the visas, we really need movable tickets. And this means that, even we once we've booked our tickets, this doesn't mean we'll be leaving the country then!! But the 20th/21st of November is a good approximation, hopefully.

We're expecting to hold our going-away party on Monday the 19th, at a pizza place in town, so hopefully folks can bring kids and there won't be any clean up. But we'll send an official invite closer to the date (unless too many people say that date's no good beforehand).

Visas and workshop updates

2007-10-25T23:31:00.000+10:00

Our visas have been confirmed to be being processed (wow, look how convoluted a sentence can get if you remove all the agent NPs!), so any day now we'll be able to get our tickets! So we have person numbers, and Luce has paid his health insurance, while my work pays mine (gee, does Iceland have any ties with America I wonder).

Also, for the workshop, I have scoured my thesis for the 3 most cited folks, after those already in Reykjavik, and suggested their names as guests. Fingers crossed one of them can make it!

Oh yeah, our package arrived (obviously). It made for a happy little L for a few hours there :) .

Houston, we have a contract!

2007-10-16T21:27:00.001+10:00

My contract finally arrived stupendously late on Thursday night - a single A4 Word document with half a dozen of a dozen fields filled in. And that took 5 months to produce. We filled in and sent off 9 different forms, including contract, residency & work permit applications, health insurance forms and I don't even remember what the others were. Start date set for 26/11/2007, and apparently they expect me to work a 40 hour week. Actually, make that 48 40 hour weeks. Omg.

Sent off all the forms yesterday, and have been happily tracking the package online - it departed from the DHL facility in Singapore at 7:28 this morning, on its way to Reykjavik!

This is Australia calling...

2007-10-10T17:24:00.001+10:00

so, L actually *called up* Iceland last night! (He's on Skype, and he's not afraid to use it...) He tried to put a stick of dynamite up them with regards to getting the contract done, so we can apply for visas, etc, and the words he got back sounded positive. Apparently I'll be getting paid a bit more than what they thought earlier :), and they're just organising my contract now in English. So, any moment now, it should arrive!

I also found out that both of my requested people can probably come to my workshop (yay!), and that if I feel like inviting someone from outside of NORMS, that is also possible. Ie, the people I want to speak to aren't important enough - aim higher!! (And... choose a topic!)

everything but the visa...

2007-10-04T22:45:00.000+10:00

So, add Denmark to my list of places I might be able to collect data from :D "...West Jutland (Denmark) in February - and we'll try to get you there if you want to ;-)" Aaaaand, my name's down on the grant application for data collection in the Pharoe Islands (that spelling looks strange). "I took the liberty of putting your name in as somebody who would be able to and be interested in using this opportunity to collect (and make use of) some new data on Faroese reflexives. Hope that was OK." Ah, the liberties being taken... actually... I think I could get used to such liberties being taken... ;)

Contract? Visas?

2007-09-20T19:23:00.000+10:00

"we are working on this... a lot of paperwork!" Uhuh. It's a country of 300,000 people, and it sounds like 90% of them must be bureaucrats - how long can getting a contract sent out take?! It's now nearly 4 months and counting...

An address!

2007-09-14T11:46:00.000+10:00

We'll be living in/at/on Víðihlíð in Reykjavik. Yay! We'll have a spare room, so start preparing your visit now! Check out our street in GoogleEarth, or have a look on the maps:
A map of Reykjavík: http://www.backman.is/mapofrvk/
The University is here: http://www.backman.is/mapofrvk/part1.html

Flat #2

2007-09-13T11:40:00.000+10:00

I've just heard from Flat #2, and it sounds quite lovely - the owners (who live upstairs - it's one of those houses they have in Europe where each floor is self-contained, and when the teenage kids move out, the bottom floor gets rented out) both work at the uni too. I've accepted it ($2,000 per month, sounds cheap!), and hopefully hear back about it soon!

Flat #1 "not available"

2007-09-13T11:11:00.000+10:00

The close flat is no longer available! (Person decided not to move.) So House-elf Margrét said we should write personally to the owner of flat #2, and plead our case, saying what lovely, quiet, responsible, interesting people we are. Flat #2 is the fully furnished one - hopefully they respond soon. I started the email in Icelandic, because one of the few things I can do is say 'Hi! My name's Tania!' ;)

After the initial disappointment and some trawling on YouTube, L & I have decided that maybe it's better we're not right in town - we saw someone's video looking down from their balcony at 3am, where it's daylight, and the streets are chockers with cars & people, and the noise echoing up the street is like it's the middle of the day!

I'm looking forward to seeing what their words for 'day' and 'night' mean: in Norwegian 'dag' means ~6am-~7pm, (with 'ettermiddag' being around midday-7pm), 'kveld' means ~7pm-midnight, and 'natt' means midnight-6am. Daylight (or the lack of) doesn't change this. I remember coming home from a bbq dinner with E & her 5 year-old daughter, where Daughter was talking about the tv she was going to watch when we got home. E told her she was actually going to bed, because it was night-time. Daughter replied (shading her eyes from the glaring sun), "But I can see the sun right there!". The Viking's reply: "Yes, I know it's broad daylight. But it is nonetheless night!" ("Ja, men da e natt forda!")

We're not criminals

2007-09-01T18:54:00.000+10:00

Got our criminal record checks back a couple of days ago, and neither of us have a record. That the Australian Federal Police know about. :) L chucked a tanty when I said we'd probably have to send over the hard copies, because "the piece of paper is forgable in the hard copy, so why can't we just email a pdf scan of the things?!"

Applied for a flat

2007-09-01T18:51:00.000+10:00

okay, we've said we'd like to live in the small-but-close-to-everything flat, and we'll find out next week if it's still available. House-elf Margret has said she'll help us buy a bed and mattress before we get there, because the house is furnished with a washing machine only, which she said 'might be a bit uncomfortable'. Fingers crossed!

applications update

2007-08-27T11:20:00.000+10:00

It turns out that our employer is supposed to organise our person number for us, even though it's in the section of the work/residency permits that we have to fill in.

"housing"

2007-08-27T10:22:00.000+10:00

We've been offered a choice from 2 places to live in via House-elf Margret. Both are in houses with 2 flats, the owner lives in the other flat, and we would share the garden. #1 is very close to uni and shops, but only 60m2 and not fully furnished; ISK 70,000 per month (~ $1,400). #2 is fully furnished and around 100m2, but nowhere near uni, shops or public transport; ISK 99,000 (~ $2,000) per month! "This is a good flat for good price but rather bad location if you don't have a car." Um? I guess no-one likes walking or bike-riding when it's dark and icy...

Not sure if we'll get more offers, hope so!

A map of Reykjavík: http://www.backman.is/mapofrvk/
The University is here: http://www.backman.is/mapofrvk/part1.html

Flat 1: Bræðraborgarstígur, MAP 7
Flat 2: Víðihlíð, MAP 3

House-elf

2007-08-20T16:44:00.000+10:00

So, we now have a person who I've been picturing as a kind of elf for some reason, helping us to find a place to live in Reykjavik. We're requesting 2 bedrooms, because of the number of people who have said they're going to come for a visit. So, if you haven't already, you should look to see whether Iceland fits your idea of a good holiday destination in 2008!

Iceland Uni HR joins quest for visas

2007-08-14T17:48:00.000+10:00

Finally! An email about our visas from Admin Oskar at Iceland U, who states that "We know the process very well"! Excellent. So, we've sent off our criminal record check to the Federal Police of Australia, because that's the very first thing we need to do. In fact, we already sent it off, but I think L said we needed to include photocopies of our passports too. So, tomorrow then. :)

Admin Oskar also said that "'Place of residence' is the first issue to be solved", so it looks like we might have an address soon. Although L is moaning on and on about finding out my salary, so I've asked about that again too.

So, what will we find out first: whether we have a secret criminal record, who our landlord will be, or how much dosh we'll have to spend on touristing around Iceland... Stay tuned for the next exciting installment of ... Iced-Tee!

Icelandic visa application anyone?

2007-08-09T19:59:00.001+10:00

Good grief, the things these Icelanders want to know before they'll let you in the country: 'Registration of cohabitation'; who is 'the applicant's representative' in Iceland; 'opinion of a trade union'; whose house will you be renting while in Iceland?; insurance company (must be on a special list); *and* 'he' means 'she' (not in Australia it doesn't - I keep feeling like I'm filling in forms for L!)

Honestly, 'opinion of trade unions'!! Apparently it might mean something like 'is there a trade union who'll have you?', because being a member is compulsory. But, we need to know where we'll be living and everything, and every time I try to check an online renting site, I get the message 'sorry! Nothing available to rent at this time in Reykjavik! Try another area?' Gah!!

"No news is good news"

2007-08-02T10:22:00.000+10:00

So, yesterday being the first of August, I decided that folks in Iceland should have returned from holidays and sent me all the information I need to start applying for visas etc, so I emailed, and got the response that "no news is good news". Also, "23/11 is fine as a starting date". So now you know! Our next step is to apply for residency visas...

Icelandic in a week

2007-07-18T15:07:00.000+10:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Tammet,
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/26/60minutes/main2401846.shtml?source=search_story

Yep, apparently he did it! You can follow a link to see interviews of him, he sounds really normal, but I haven't heard him speaking Icelandic yet. If anyone knows a link to this, please let me know!

L confirmed work

2007-07-18T14:59:00.001+10:00

Hurrah! L's boss and L's boss's boss are of the opinion that, if everyone is so keen on the idea of telecommuting, then they should try it out! YAY!!! So now both of us have secure jobs in Iceland, and for exactly the same time :)

(PS, I still haven't heard back if Iceland was going to pay for a quick visit in August, so I guess that's a 'no'...)

Update to First Contact

2007-07-04T11:14:00.000+10:00

Have now sent off my updated CV to Iceland. Very pleased to note nearly 2 pages of publications :) Have also requested a start date of 23/11 instead of the 1/11. Oh goodness, it's starting to feel like I'm going to Iceland! Finally, I may be going over in August for a week, but I'm not sure if Iceland was offering to pay for me or not... Stay tuned!

subscribing

2007-07-03T14:06:00.000+10:00

well, i just learnt what that little orange icon at the end of the address bar is for - subscribing to my blog!! Click and you're away. Thanks for that Simon :)