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Some weeks ago, I shared with the world that I really want to learn backgammon. I got a lot of nice playdate offers, and I actually scheduled my first game to May 1st. This is the day I’m back in Oslo “visiting” my own home where Kjartan lives for some months. So Kjartan volunteered to be my board game teacher, but as he pointed out, that would be a difficult task without a backgammon board…

So now the not very fancy, but oh so magnetic and wonderfully pocket-sized board above is mine. But Eirik (one of my flatmates here in Bergen) and I could not wait to try it out, so my first backgammon game took place yesterday. Sort of. Considering that Eirik was just as new to the game as I was, our focus was more on reading and analysing the rules, than on the strategy. And still, we actually managed to overlook one rule while playing:

(WARNING! Backgammon nerdiness coming up!)

A player may not move any other checkers until all checkers on the bar belonging to that player have re-entered the game. Wikipedia: Backgammon

So we moved other checkers on the board while waiting for a good dice roll to free the checkers on the bar. Probably ruined the gameplay somewhat, but we actually had fun and tried to find good strategies at this point in the game. Later, when we were both at the bearing off part of the game, we felt there was no room for strategy. It ended up in a monotone “I roll the dice, remove two checkers, then you roll the dice and remove two checkers”, with only few exceptions where we were unable to bear off anything. Maybe we misinterpreted some rules there too? Oh well.

At least I have learned some concepts such as the home board, the outer board and the bar, and I do know in which direction I am supposed to move my checkers - although I easily forget. And no matter, we did have fun! My game version did not have a doubling cube “to provide an added dimension for strategy”. But I guess this dimension can wait until I learn to play the individual game according to the rules… Which hopefully will be with Kjartan tomorrow :)

Read more about Backgammon, the rules and common strategies at Wikipedia.

Track #2: Oxford Comma - Vampire Weekend
Listen to it on my mixtape!

Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma?
I’ve seen those English dramas too. They’re cruel.

This song by the Vampire Weekend is funny, weird and just perfect. And if you are wondering what an Oxford comma is, I will explain it to you in just a minute. First I have to tell you that I finally have finished my paper in the course Computer games and computer game culture! It’s called “Games Combatting the Dictatorship of Entertainment. A Study of the Newsgaming Phenomenon.”, and is about the development of the newsgaming genre, including an analysis of the game September 12th. I also look closer at the games Operation: Pedopriest, New York Defender, and Airport Security.

And I don’t care that much about Oxford commas (a.k.a. serial commas), but I do know that I just used one in the previous sentence. To keep the two games ‘New York Defender’ and ‘Airport Security’ apart in the list of the three games, I felt I had to use it. It helps you as a reader to put in the required pause in your head when reading. Read more about this kind of comma in Wikipedia.

Luckily, my sister cares a whole lot about such things, having studied translation and all. She devoted a night to reading through my paper, correcting my English errors with fancy color coding, using her word wisdom. Thank you! I am now confident that the language is delicious, so I guess it comes down to the content. I will publish the paper here as soon as I am allowed to. In the meantime, you can get as hung up on the band Vampire Weekend as I am.

Vampire Weekend: On my mixtape, MySpace, Last.fm
Oxford Comma: Wikipedia, strong feelings on the matter in the article “Serial Killer”
Newsgames worth a try: Airport Security, September 12th, Operation: Pedopriest, New York Defender, The McDonald’s Video Game, Faith Fighter.

…was the year to be a tourist in my own city.

…was the year to love Magnet.

…was the year to take the glass elevator to the top of Oslo’s highest building. And the year to wear glasses.

…was the year to learn Italian. Begin to learn, that is.

…was the year to have this view for a couple of months. (Borgo Pinti, Florence)

…was the year to choose between sleeping on a bench and hitchhiking.

…was the year to be locked in to my room while really having to pee.

…was the year to be a vegetarian involuntarily, learning about chickpeas and fennel.

…was the year to get bad excuses for stolen salt.

…was the year to see Non Ti Muovere (Don’t Move) at the cinema without subtitles.

…was the year to play kubb.

…was the year to move to Bergen.

…was the year to row a boat.

…was the year to eat a lot of Chaos pasta at Café Chaos, until I learned to make it myself.

…was the year to hang out with Ylva and David a lot.

…was the year to see these fellas everywhere.

…was the year to learn oral Italian in a week from two cats and their lovely owner in Modena.

Year 2004 was also the year when I got my beloved Pentax camera (R.I.P.) and started documenting everything. I got the idea for this nostalgia from the nice and inspirational blog Smosch.com by Sandra, and she probably got a nice camera way back in the year 2000.

Now that I have my own HappyBook, I am constantly looking for new activities to put in my Activities list. Activities that would make me happy to do, that is. Not that I have that much time on my hand, but if I have some hours to spare, I want to make sure that I do something I really want to do.

In my Twitter-feed, I suddenly discovered that Kars learned to play Backgammon this weekend. I have always felt that I was missing out on something in the tabletop game department since I have never tried to play this game. I don’t know why the opportunity to learn it never has occured. When twittering to the world that I would like to learn the game, however, I got some nice playdate offers from friends that know this mystic game. Is it better than Ludo? Better than Chess? Does it make me happy? I will report back later about how it went!

Are there other things I should try while we’re at it? My Activities list is very location based so far, considering that there are tons of things I need to do here in Bergen before I move back home to Oslo. I have some mountains to climb (Løvstakken, Damsgårdsfjellet and Vidden), a couple of cafes to visit, and I want to take a swim both at Sentralbadet and Nordnes. But what else? Suggestions for must-see movies or must-read books or even must-eat food also appreciated. But please, shut up about the sushi. I really want to like it, but I just don’t. But I do love steak tartare and carpaccio, so I guess I’m covered in the raw food department anyway.

Well, bring it on! Fill my HappyBook - and your own for that matter :)

Track #1: Jack Johnson - Banana Pancakes.
Listen to it on my mixtape!

This song is meant to keep you
From doing what you’re supposed to

The song is about waking up slowly, staying in bed all day - and a bit about banana pancakes. I’ve been staying in bed since I woke up some hours ago. I’ve got everything I need right here, and everything I need is indeed enough. You see, I have been out in the kitchen for a moment to make a cup of tea and bread with banana on it (banana pancakes sounded a bit too heavy for a breakfast). Now I’m going to do what I’m supposed to do while still in bed - read the rest of the very interesting book about persuasive games: Persuasive Games. The Expressive Power of Videogames by Ian Bogost.

Lurk \Lûrk\ (v) To exist unobserved or unsuspected. To read but not contribute to the discussion in a newsgroup, chat room, or other online forum.

One of these lurkers approached me today when I was having a lunch pause in the HF Library Café. Having read this blog since my Studblogg-days, she knew an awful lot about me, my house, my job and so on. All I knew at first was that a stranger came talking to me while I had bread crumbs stuck in my teeth. I got rid of the bread crumbs and got to know some more about this cute girl. Hardly as much as she knows about me, but enough to know that I easily could talk to her again sometime, and that she definitely won’t harm me in the future(!).

You see my Mom keeps giving me these signals. It seems she wants me to close this blog down. Or at least password protect it. This easter she gave me a criminal novel about this innocent little girl that had fun surfing the Internet and then all of a sudden she was dead. Probably something more happened in between the surfing and the dead girl, and some cool detective most definitely must have found the solution afterwards, but I haven’t actually read the book. I judged it by its cover. And by my Mom’s serious face as she gave it to me. Happy birthday, sort of…

Yes, indeed, there are freaks out there. I’ve talked about them before[N]. I might be naive, but I just refuse to believe that it’s better to shut up, than to be a part of this.

It takes some courage to walk up to strangers like the lurking girl did. I rarely dare to, but I want to get better at it. But I guess blogging has some similarities to it anyway (though blogging might also be about exhibitionism). I’m thinking about openness and about sharing. And those are good things.

I love portraits, but I never dare to ask strangers if I can take their photo. I always end up with these sneaky shoot-from-the-hip photos instead (like this one and this one). This weekend, I was on a short trip to Copenhagen with my friend Marit. Now that I’ve transferred all my photos to the computer, all I can see in the digital album is Marit on various funky backgrounds. And food. Check out the photos on my Flickr account if you like.

When checking my bank account, clearly, what we did the most was shopping. But when trying to avoid more of this expensive business, we hung out in cafes for as long as we could, or got to know the city by bike with our cameras ready for whatever came our way. Surprisingly, Marit came my way quite often. Inspired by the photographer Jon Huck, I combined people (Marit and me) with some of the food we ate.

1. Marit likes her coffee black, and I liked the table. Zirup café in Læderstræde.
2. I suddenly remembered that I love hummus. Darling café at Enghave plads. They actually played Sublime there. And Westlife - but that was quickly turned off when the hip bartender realised her mistake.
3. We both enjoyed our hotel’s breakfast. Fruit is definitely a good thing when it’s already sliced.
4. We were quite fan of the brie sandwich too. Can’t remember the name of that café, but it was right next to a café that was called XS, which was too small for us anyway. Both of them in Store Kongensgade.

But check out Jon Huck’s photos of people and their breakfast, or his cute couples project. I wonder if he has taken pictures of real couples, or if he has mixed and matched people who look good together just for fun. If they aren’t together already, they should be :)

Finally I’ve redesigned my blog after spending 2 years stuck in a green bottle. I’m no graphic designer, but by surfing the very nice site ffffound.com* for inspiration, and mixing it with a sneaky shoot-from-the-hip photo session I had while slumbering in a park in Bologna last summer, I think I’ve managed to create something that I’ll be able to live with for a while. I’ll be tweaking it some more though.
*Does anyone have a ffffound invitation to spare?

The old Prisma book above gave me the color palette, and I got the style of the pictures from a quilting fabrics shop called Volksfaden. The Volksfaden picture is better viewed in its natural environment where you’ll also find a bunch of other beautiful pictures and fabrics. I have also been quite inspired by a design blog I just discovered by Scott Hansen, ISO50. Any Californian guy who likes The Whitest Boy Alive / Erlend Øye is a friend of mine.

When it comes to the photo I’ve used as an illustration, it’s a part of a series of photos from Bologna where I spied (sorry!) on some cute kids playing in a public park. The footer picture shows how one girl tries to distract the girl in the red (blue) dress, while another one drops an apple on her head. A classic! The original photo was this:

As some may have noticed, I’ve started writing in English now. Hard decision to make, and I actually don’t know if I want to quit writing in Norwegian all together. We’ll see how it goes. The framework for the blog will be in English no matter - I’ve already updated the About page with some delightful lines about myself. The CV page might need some extra work though. As I still will link to Norwegian sites and my own earlier posts, I’ll mark them with an [N] so you’ll now the language is changing. Not the perfect solution, but it’ll do for now.

I know I haven’t been the eager blogger I once was. Now that I’ve kicked that awful bottle out of the sidebar, at least you can follow my life through Twitter (microblogging) if nothing much has happened in the main column. And it won’t until next week, anyway. Tomorrow, I’ll be on my way to Copenhagen for the weekend, leaving my Mac behind, but including my camera and my HappyBook[N].