This is the blog of a Norwegian (Marianne, aka 'M') who moved to Australia in 2007 to be with Roger (aka R) and feels lucky to have escaped a comparatively communistic country with ridiculous weather!

I was under the impression that I wrote a blog entry last New Years Eve in my old blog, but it turns out I didn't, so let me sum up what I thought I wrote.

Last year around new years I was having some kind of emotional crisis. Another year had gone by and I hadn't done anything worth writing home about for the whole year, and my life basically hadn't changed at all for the last 3 years. I was freaking out cuz I felt that life was passing me by, and I'd grow old and die without ever having done something worth remembering. And I'm not talking about stuff that everyone would remember, like finding a cure for HIV. Just stuff that makes a person interesting.

I normally don't do new years resolutions. I'm quite happy with me the way I am. Last year I had one tho. And I tried half heartedly to keep it. Not hating men turns out to be very difficult tho, cuz they're not very likable. The great majority of them anyway.

This year I don't care that another year has gone by. It's been a good year. Despite hating most men, there is one I like (and had liked for 3 years before he finally realised we're soulmates).

I'm finally doing stuff that I wanna do. I quit uni and now have a job that I like and make lotsa money at. (The income is actually quite average, but having been a student and never having money means I have very few expenses.) This means I can save 1000s every month and that gives me the freedom to do stuff, like travelling. And I have. Last year alone I went to England several times, Bermuda and am now in Australia.

Life is good:)

I have become 100% Australian. Not only do I wear the Australian style clothes which I'd never wear at home, but the temp is perfect for me. Today it was 26 degrees and I felt cold and had goose bumps on my arms. Max temp so far has been 33 degrees and it suited me perfectly. Like a real Queenslander I have gone to the store and the city barefoot. I'm so sad that I have to go back to boring ole Norway soon:(

And I've figured out why Australians are so friendly. I was at the store today and the woman behind the counter started chatting to me, asking where I was from and stuff like that and she went out of her way to offer me an alternative when they didn't have what I wanted. When we left, R told me that that's perfectly normal behaviour here.

It put me in a good mood. So when you're already a friendly Australian, and you meet other friendly ppl, you'll get even friendlier and happier:)

Brisbane airport has been voted the most friendly in the world.

We went to Redcliffe, a peninsula a 15 min drive from R's. We had a look at the shops and the beach, and had Australian fish and chips for lunch. It's a lot like the Norwegian kind and much better and healthier than the English kind. R also showed me the 3 different houses he has lived in there and a kewl old shipwreck. Lotsa photos of that in the Redcliffe album.

We also went to Sea World a few days ago, which was kewl. We saw lotsa dolphins and other kewl stuff. After that we went to Surfers Paradise, which is only a short drive from SW. We had a look at Main Beach, which is a very wide and very long (10km) beach. Too bad it was mostly overcast.

The weather hasn't been too good. We had rain several days in a row and temperatures below 30 degrees. This has kinda limited what we could do. I still haven't gotten a tan:( It's ok tho, I'm with R. That it's in Australia is just a bonus:)

Today it was a nice sunny day and 32 degrees (back to what it should be) so we went north to the Sunshine Coast, an hours drive. First town we visited was Caloundra, were we got a good look at Kings Beach and had one of the best thickshakes ever. Then we went further north to Maroochydore and a shopping centre called Sunshine Plaza. Most shopping centres here don't have names, they are named after the place they're in followed by 'shopping centre', i.e. 'Chermside shopping centre'. Sunshine Plaza has a name tho, which was enough to make us wanna visit it.

After having a look around and a late lunch, we went to Alexandra Headlands and another beach. The sun was going down tho, and it was getting chilly.

And then we went home.

Photos have of course been posted at the photos site.

.. how fascinating.

On Monday we went to Tangalooma Wild Dolphin Resort on Moreton Island. The reason we decided to go is cuz they have wild dolphins who come to the beach every night for a snack. They let the public feed them, but not touch them, as they are wild animals and might not appreciate having their personal space invaded.

The area is beautiful, as you can see in the photos. The resort is crap tho. There are lots of little things wrong with the place. When we arrived we were treated like babies. We were told to wait for a buggy to transport us to the building we were staying in. We got sick of waiting so we decided to walk and after asking for directions found out that it was only a 100 metre walk.

We had to sign up for every activity you could possibly think of. It's like they don't want ppl to explore the area for themselves, but that's what R and I prefer to do, so we did.

They gave us the absolute minimum of towels they could possibly get away with. One hand towel, 2 bath towels and a bath mat. And it wouldn't have been that bad if they actually serviced the room every day, which they don't. And in addition to that they charge $4 for each extra towel!!

We searched the whole room for a remote control for the tv, and couldn't find one, so we went to reception the next day to ask for one. They then informed us that there is a $20 deposit for a remote control. That's fine, but why weren't we told that when we arrived?

The footpath around the pool is the most uncomfortable thing I have ever walked on. For some reason they decided to pave it with sharp rocks. And only around the pool area, no where else on the resort did we find the same kind of footpath. It's a pool area, ppl are gonna be barefoot!

There was no fly screen door for the balcony, and the island is full of a subspecies of mozzies which are immune to insect repellent, and I have around 30 mozzie bites on my legs.

We went through the trouble of bringing the laptop so we could post photos and I wanted to write an update, but 24 hour internet access cost $50, which is just ridiculous. You'd pay that much for 2 months normally. So we didn't bother with that.

Moving on.... We went to see the dolphin feeding the first night. The dolphins were late and when they finally showed up, the staff wasn't ready and we had to wait another 20 mins. The dolphins looked kewl tho... the 2 of them that bothered to show up.

On Tuesday we paid $58 each to go on the quad tour. The info thing said "It's time for the scenic part of the tour. You will follow the tracks around behind the resort and up onto the hills above. ...An easy 5 min ride will have you above the resort... Once you reach the top, you will be greeted by an awesome sight that will surely take your breath away, unsurpassed views across Moreton bay from Brisbane city to the Sunshine coast with the Glass House mountains being a definite Higlight..."

Well, it WOULD have been scenic if we had seen them, or even stopped for a chance to look around. All we did was do loops and figure 8's through a sand area, and a rubbish dump, over and over, the same area, then it was back down to the beach.

The brochure goes on to say "...Don't forget to take the camera as there will be plenty of time to photograph this truly beautiful panorama" - What a load of rubbish. We didnt stop once which meant there was NO time to even look around at where we were!!

The restaurants sucked. Half of them are open 3 hours a day and the menu very limited. One of the waitresses fancies R and I might have to kill her. Most of them had dress code too, and who ever brought good clothes to an island?!

We went back to see the dolphins in the evening and 7 of them decided to show up on time. The staff wasn't ready this time either tho. Everyone was taking flash photography, which hurts the dolphins' sensitive eyes, cuz there's no sign saying not to do it and the staff didn't say anything about it till about 10 mins into the program.

Check out is at 10am, but the boat didn't leave till 4pm for some reason, which left us with 6 hours to kill and 2 semi-heavy cases to carry around while we entertained ourselves.

I was so happy to get off the island.

My blog has been password protected to keep nosy exes and clients out. There is a 'remember me' option under construction so my readers won't need to type in the password every time.

I apologise for any inconvenience.

I left Australia at 5 pm on Sunday. Took me 7 hours to get to Singapore. I got a middle seat in the middle section of the plane, which is the worst seat one could ever get. I sat between some guy who was with his gf and an old guy. The old guy had the most digusting sore on his arm. It looked infected and had blood smeared around it, and they both kept elbowing me without apologising and on a few occasions just left their arm touching mine. I came so close to slamming my elbow into the old guy. I was so pissed off.

After spending an hour in Singapore it then took 13 hours to get to Frankfurt. I got an aisle seat in the middle section and 2 empty seats next to me. At the end of the flight my feet were swollen and numb and I was so happy to get to Frankfurt, but even happier to leave it. The airport is a disaster. Terminal 2 is ok, cuz it had signs telling me where I needed to go. The problems started after trying to get to Terminal 1. I had to go by train, so I checked the board to see where I would get off the train. It said 'Oslo - hall A'. So I got on the train which had 2 stops in Terminal 1 - 'A' and 'B,C'. Obviously I went to A. It said 'Passengers Only', but that meant nuthin to me, since most ppl at an airport will be passengers. When I got there a woman told me I needed to go to hall B,C, as A was for checked-in passengers only.

Nice to be told. Especially since my flight from Singapore was an hour late and I was running out of time.

I got back on the train and went to the B,C area. When I got there I saw the check-in counters for various German and Asian airlines, but no signs of Lufthansa. I had to ask at the information desk and the man pointed me in the right direction. After walking for a while (the airport is huge and it takes forever to get anywhere), I found a Lufthansa check-in area, but it was for USA and Israel only. I walked along the whole check-in area, looking for one that didn't have a specified destination, with no luck. I had to ask again, and was told to keep walking and I would see it. I did, and I found it at last. Check-in took forever. I have no idea why, it just seemed to take ages to get each person checked in.

I took the longest tho, cuz I thought I had an electronic ticket, and the woman looked through the database for it cuz I didn't have a reference number, and then found out it was a pre-paid ticket and went to go and get it for me. She came back after about 10 mins and said she couldn't find it and told me to show her any ticket I might have or she couldn't let me on the plane. I got all my tickets and old boarding passes out and actually found the Frankfurt - Oslo ticket. I'd had it the whole time without realising it. She seemed annoyed by that, but considering the trouble I had finding her, I didn't feel too bad about it.

The 2 hour flight to Oslo was pretty boring. (Funny how the thick fog caused no delays in Germany, unlike what the same kinda fog did in London 3 weeks ago...) I sat next to an old South African woman. Half way through the flight the female captain made an announcement and the South African woman told me that after finding out a woman was flying the plane, she didn't feel quite as safe. I hadn't even given that a 2nd thought. Weird ppl.

I then waited 4 hours in Oslo for my flight to Ålesund. I think time moves slower in Oslo than the rest of the world.....

I arrived safely at Ålesund airport at 4:22 pm, 37 hours after leaving Brisbane. I met mum and got her car, and went to get the cats. They are happy to be home:)

I recently came home from Australia. It is the best country on the planet. Norway is #1 on the UN Ranking of Nations, and Australia is #3. Whoever made the list has examined the welfare system, level of education and life expectancy, but I'm pretty sure they never took climate and the ppl into consideration. Norway might have the best welfare system in the world, but the ppl are rather rude. We'd rather not speak to each other, and at the store you can complete the transaction without ever having said a word or been spoken to. The climate sucks. It's reasonably warm for about 3 months every year, the rest of the year it's dark, cold and wet.

I'm sure some ppl don't mind it, but it so doesn't work for me. About half way through every winter I get so pissed off with being permanently cold that I'll scream at ppl and tell them off for no good reason. Even if your house is warm, it doesn't really help. Once you've been outside and gotten cold, it will take hours to warm up again. And when you've finally gotten warm, it's time to go back outside. Your clothes get wet in the snow/rain and never really dry off before the next time you have to put them on.

And when I have to get up at 6am for work, it's still several hours of darkness left. Getting up when it's pitch black is so hard, cuz your body hasn't even started thinking about waking up. I'm not enjoying being home. Everything that's wrong with Norway is just that much more obvious to me now.

Which is why Australia is the best country on the planet. Not only does it have nearly the same welfare system as Norway, but it's sunny and warm all year round and the ppl are extremely friendly and polite.

I'll be moving to Australia in May/June. Till then I'll be working as much as possible to save up money, having the cats vaccinated and chipped and everything else that needs to be done with them, and sorting out my visa.

I have compiled a list of things I like and dislike about Australia.

Things I like:

R is there - He is my soulmate and I need to be with him.

The climate - This one is obvious. During the summer in Brisbane it's usually around 35 degrees and sunny every day apart from the afternoon storm, and the winter is warmer than Ålesund's summer, and it's sunny all day every day and no snow.. ever.

The people - Australians are friendly and polite. When you walk into a store the staff will greet you and smile and maybe have a chat, and when you leave they'll wish you a nice day. If they don't have what you're looking for they'll go out of their way to find an alternative.

If you're taking a photo of something, ppl will stop or go around you, to not ruin your photo. If they think they might have ruined it, they'll apologise. If they've inconvenienced you in any way, or think they might have, they'll apologise.

If you're going for a walk and someone walks past you, they'll say hi.

And best of all - they don't do any of this to make an effort to be polite and friendly. It all comes to natural to them. If you point it out to them they'll think you're weird, cuz it's considered nothing more than normal behaviour. Not doing it would be considered rude and abnormal.

The whole nation hates USA - They all like to make fun of American stupidity. Realising that something is American will make them stop doing it. For example, Australia used to write harbour and neighbour the American way, that is 'harbor' and 'neighbor'. After realising it was American, the u was reinstated.

Supermarket checkouts - They have a screen where it says the name of the item and the price, and the operator puts everything straight in a bag for you, leaving you free to stand there and check that the price is correct. Long live laziness:D

Recycling is easy - Everything recyclable can be put in the recycling bin at home - cans, plastic bottles, paper, cardboard and glass.

Fences around houses for privacy and keeping dogs in/out - Most Norwegian houses don't have fences, which means no privacy. Your neighbours can look right in your window at night, or you could put up curtains and blinds and be deprived of your view.

The cute names and abbreviations - 'good day' is shortened to 'g'day', 'afternoon' to 'arvo', 'poker machines' to 'pokies', 'politician'to 'pollie', 'journalist' to 'journo' and 'barbecue' to 'barbie', among many many others. Australians love to shorten words. 

The size of drinks - You can get 3 litre bottles of chocolate milk, softdrink cans are 375 ml, and you can get 600 ml coke bottles.

Going barefoot to shops and feeling ok about it - No one will think you're weird or different. Everyone does it. Personally I prefer to wear shoes to grocery stores cuz the floor is cold, everywhere else I could go barefoot.

The beaches - Australia has lots and lots of beautiful beaches. And everyone takes their shoes off at the beach. If you don't everyone thinks you're a tourist.

Trees - There are trees everywhere. You can never have too many trees. Right in the middle of Brisbane City, inbetween skyscrapers, there'll be huge trees. How kewl is that?

Thickshakes - Australia has chocolate thickshakes that actually taste chocolate. Norway only has milkshakes, and even when they are kinda thick they are either tasteless or they taste more like caramel than chocolate.

Cadbury - Cadbury makes the best chocolate in the world and Australia has lots of different kinds of Cadbury chocolate. Black Forest is my personal favourite.

Things I dislike or things that are just inconvenient:

Chocolate milk - Australians can't make chocolate milk. Despite having at least a dozen different brands to choose from, I had great difficulty finding one I liked. They were all completely tasteless, or tasted completely wrong. Even the one I found that I kinda liked, still wasn't as good as Norwegian chocolate milk.

Travelling - Australia is so isolated and far from anything, that travelling abroad becomes a hassle. In Europe you can get on a plane and be in any other European country within 2 or 3 hours, and in 4 hours you can be in Asia or Africa.

The time zone - Queensland is in the wrong one. It should be 1 or 2 hours ahead of what it is. Sunrise is between 4 and 5 am and sunset around 7 pm. This means you sleep for about 3 or 4 hours after the sun is up and can't do any outdoor activities in the evening, cuz it's dark. The good thing about it is that it's easy to wake up and get up and it's already nice and warm when you do.

I love smarties. The look and taste vary in different countries, so I did a test to see which country has the best ones - Norway, UK or Australia. Colour, shape, taste and amount was taken into consideration. For Norway and UK I bought hexatubes of 38 grams each. Australia doesn't have hexatubes of smarties, so I bought a rectangular box of 50 grams.

First out are the Brits. The box says 'no artifical colours', and it shows. It doesn't have blue or purple ones, and the colour of the others look dirty. 38 grams of UK smarties is 40 pieces. They are tasteless, and the chocolate is bitter. Definitely the loser in this test.

On to Norwegian smarties, and my personal favourite. The colour is good, and so is the taste. 38 grams is 32 pieces - they are slightly bigger than the UK smarties, and slightly rounder than the Aussie ones.

Lastly, we have the Aussie smarties. The colour is slightly better than the Norry ones, and they taste nearly the same. A 50 gram box contains 52 smarties. This is R's favourite, and when I don't have Norry ones to compare them to, they'll suit me just fine.

R and I first talked in a Yahoo chat room nearly 4 years ago. It was a bit of a fluke, cuz R hardly ever uses Yahoo Messenger and it's even rarer for him to go into a chat room, and there are 100s of chat rooms at Yahoo. Yet there we were in the same chat room at the same time. But it doesn't end there. We didn't add each other to our buddy lists for some reason, but a week later, we just happened to be in the same room at the same time again. And that's when we added each other and start chatting regularly.

When I first met R I was coming out of a really bad relationship, which had done absolutely nothing to improve my life or mental health. On the contrary it had ruined my trust and faith in men. (4 years later I still find nothing remotely likable or charming about men (the exception being men I already knew from before I started hating men.))

R was so refreshingly different. I immediately took a liking to him. And in the last 4 years, R is the only guy I could imagine being with. The thought of being with any other man disgusted me and made me never wanna speak to any man ever again.

And there R was, being perfect without even knowing it. We always had a special connection. I never told him when I went on a date with someone (which happened twice in 3 years) cuz I knew he would get jealous.

It took 3 years for anything serious to happen. The lovely island of Bermuda came up in conversation one day, and I informed R I had wanted to go there for a really long time. And what did he do? He decided to take me there on holiday, just cuz it was my dream. We went there in june 2006 and R came back to Norway with me afterwards and stayed 3 weeks. He's even more lovable in person than online, and there was never any question about whether or not we would meet again. And we did. I went to England (where he was staying at the time) and he came to Norway again in September.

Then he got homesick and went back to Australia and I didn't see him again till December, when I went to see him.

R is so good to me. He's lovely. He's so strong and fearless and I so admire him. I love that he loves cats and chocolate as much as I do, and that he knows everything there is to know about computers, that he's taken complete control of his life and how when he decides to do something he refuses to stop and till he's found a way to do it, even if it's just something small and non life changing.

He knows all kinds of disgusting things about me and it doesn't matter to him at all. I know I don't have to hide anything cuz nothing would change how he feels about me. He would go out of his way to make me happy. I've no idea what I've done to deserve him.

I can't imagine ever wanting to be with anyone else. Being apart from him is so difficult and depressing, and I can't wait to move to Australia to be with him. He'll never get rid of me then:)

26 January is Australia Day. I have not seen nor heard any mention of it anywhere. I kinda thought someone would at least mention it. But nope. Nothing.

It's kinda funny, cuz if it was 4 July (American independence day) it would be talked about, and even make the news.

Why? Because Norway is a bit behind the rest of the world and is still a nation full of America lovers. I'm ashamed to even say it. Norway loves the USA *cringe*.

After the bombings in London, the journalists first interviewed George W. Bush about how he felt about it, then they asked Tony Blair. At least Bush's speech was shown first on the news. Weird much?

In Norway, if you speak with a broad American accent, everyone will think you're good at English. If you speak with an English or Australian (or any other) accent, ppl will think you're weird, and a bit of a snob. I wanna know why, dammit!

The reason the American accent is so easy to understand, is cuz it's simple. Puritans in early USA used very simple words because they wanted to make themselves understood to as many ppl as possible. As a result, Americans today only know about 27 different words on average, and to make up for it every other word is 'like' or 'you know' or 'ummm'. And it sounds stupid. American is not impressive.

Norway is about a month behind the USA with American TV shows. We love American TV. In Australia they finish their seasons of Australian shows first. Then, when they need something to fill the void, they'll put a few American shows on. They don't have most of the American shows we have in Norway, cuz they're wildly unpopular in Australia.

Does anyone know that Australia invented the laser or that after the tsunami in south east Asia Australia donated more money than any other country in the world? No. Why? Australia doesn't feel the need to rub their superiority in the world's face.

Maybe the USA doesn't either, maybe their act of superiority is actually the result of a Napoleon complex...?

I've been looking into what kinda visa I would need to move to Australia. There are 100s of different visas to choose from, and yesterday I thought I'd found one I could use. It's called 'prospective marriage visa' and is for ppl travelling to Australia to marry their Australian bf/gf. I would have to marry R within 9 months of the visa being granted, and then I'd have to apply for the 'spouse visa' to be able to stay in Australia for the next 2 years.

So I looked into it, an found that I am eligible for it, but it's a lotta work. Apart from the two 15 page forms I have to fill out myself, there is one for R to fill out. I would also have to provide proof that our relationship is 'genuine and continuing', 'evidence that we intend to marry', and written statements from both of us explaining how our relationship has developed. I also need certified copies of both mine and R's passport and birth certificate + some other stuff.

In addition to all this, we also need to prove 'that you and your partner share financial commitments and responsibilities', 'that you and your partner share responsibilities within your household'. It also says 'how your relationship with your partner is seen by your friends and family will be considered' and we will need to show 'the nature of your commitment to each other'.

Sounds like fun eh? And it's not cheap either, the application fee is $820 (roughly 4000 kr).

Since R and I have been apart for most of our relationship, we don't have a joint bank account, we don't share responsebilities in the household and we don't have friends in common. We don't have records showing how we've kept in touch while we've been apart since we hardly ever talk on the phone, but mostly on MSN.

Camilla emailed me one day and told me I diss Norway too much, and that she wish I could say a few, or even one, nice thing(s) about Norway. So here it is.

The list of things I like about Norway.

1. It's home.

2. I can say I'm from Norway and that I speak Norwegian. How many ppl around the world get to say that?? (Norwegians make up 0.075% of the world's population. And I don't count the Americans that like to call themselves Norwegians.)

3. I can watch Norwegian movies and tv shows without subtitles.

4. I can say I understand Swedish and Danish (only the latter half is a lie).

5. We're not part of the EU.

6. A huge amount of Norway is unspoiled and breathtaking nature.

7. It's not full of fat ppl.

8. Nemi is funnier in Norwegian.

9. Once in a while I get to see northern lights (aurora borealis) and with 18 hours of darkness in winter the chances of seeing other kewl space stuff are pretty good.

10. Even when I get paid an average amount of money, I can go abroad and act rich.

11. 3 mm snow on the ground doesn't cause complete traffic chaos (like it would in England) and light snow isn't referred to as a 'blizzard' (also like it would in England).

12. Americans have never heard about it and that gives me an excellent opportunity to make fun of them.

13. The crime rate is one of the lowest in the entire world.

14. Our public restrooms give a certain amount of privacy. (Yeah, I thought this was a given too, but public restrooms in other countries have Huge gaps between the door and the thing, and ppl can look right in at you. Fun.)

15. I love my view.