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 have recently participated in a discussion at a Norwegian aquarium forum, Nettakvariet. There is a person in there who was bragging about shooting a protected species of herron which helped itself to the koi in his pond. Well, he didn't actually say he shot it, I believe he said something along the lines of 'the bird lay down and died on my property after it ate the fish' and he posted a photo of the dead bird. The other members then asked if he had shot it, because it looked like it from the photo, but they didn't really get a proper reply. Most of the members in there, including most of the moderators, seem to find it really funny that he might have shot this bird.

I don't find it funny at all. Instead of going through the trouble of securing his pond which has fish worth thousands of dollars in it, he blames the herron for eating the fish?!

The herron is completely innocent, it only did what it was programmed to do. It's the responsibility of the owner of the pond to secure it, otherwise he has to expect predators to help themselves to the fish in it. Just like farmers have to expect their sheep to be killed by predators when they let their sheep out in the mountains with no form of protection whatsoever in the form of guard dogs or shepherds.

But when I pointed this out to all the pond owners in the forum who were defending that someone shot a protected species, I was told 'it's not easy securing a pond this big'. First of all, it's very easy. Just put some kind of mesh over it. Would hardly cost a thing. Second, if the pond is sooo difficult to secure, maybe they should have thought twice before they put expensive fish in there??

Because no one else in the forum seems to be taking this seriously, I felt obliged to send an email to the police where the person lives and ask them to check it out.

For as long as I can remember I've had en extreme craving for a snack after eating dinner. Every single night, without exception. Even when I've had a big dinner and feel absolutely stuffed, I would start to crave a chocolate a few minutes after I finished my meal. I figured it was just a habit I formed somewhere along the way, and all I've needed to get rid of the craving is a very small chocolate bar.

I have now been on my mostly raw diet for about a week, and have had my own salad every night for dinner, which has heaps of different veggies in it. And what's interesting is that after I've had all these veggies for dinner I don't feel like having a snack afterwards. Sometimes even the thought of chocolate makes me feel slightly nauseous.

I find that quite interesting.

It has now been researched and proven - having kids does not make people happy.

I knew it all along.

A few days ago one of my friends called me to talk to me about some issues she was having with her boyfriend. I've had my doubts about him for some time, but I had no proof of anything and you can't talk people out of liking someone, so I've been keeping out of it.

My friend told me she's been hearing from mutual friends how her boyfriend has been telling everyone how bad their relationship is, that he's sick of her and is considering breaking up. But to her he says it's all good and sweet and he loves her and wants to marry her etc.

Alarm bells were going off all over the place at this point, and I told her if that's what he's telling everyone else then that is most likely the case. She then started telling me about all the other stuff he's been doing or not doing, and it is obvious to me now that my friend is in the exact same position as I was a few years ago. It's fascinating and a bit creepy how her boyfriend is showing the exact same signs of being manipulating, lying and cheating as my ex did.

There seems to be certain signs that they all have in common:

• Being ridiculously possessive and jealous, to the point where he threatens to break up if you so much as say hi to another man (he suspects that you are cheating because he is).
• Threatening to break up when he doesn't get his way.
• Threatening to cheat on you when he doesn't get his way.
• Deleting all text messages and emails so you can't read them.
• When you call him he doesn't answer, or turns off his phone.
• When he does answer he makes lame excuses as to why he didn't answer, such as 'Yeah I... er.... umm.... you know.... I was busy'.
• If you live in different cities/areas you are always the one who visits him. When asked when he will visit you he will say that he's busy, can't get time off work etc, or promise to visit at a certain time, only to cancel at the last minute and not having a good excuse for cancelling.
• Telling you he's sick of you and wants to break up.
• Every time you get upset with him and says maybe you shouldn't be together anymore, he will say all the right things ('I love you', 'I can't live without you', 'I would never do anything to hurt you', 'I want to marry you', 'You're beautiful'), so you'll feel good and think 'maybe it can work, maybe he will change'. For a few days he will be nice and do the right things, only to go back to his old habits a week later.

Men will lie and manipulate women even after they are sick of them and don't want to be in a relationship with them anymore, because it strokes their ego when someone likes them. Some men will say anything to make you like them and stay with them. As soon as you agree to stay they will become distant and make excuses to get out of seeing you, and every time you get upset because they are not spending as much time with you as they should, they will become all sweet and caring and suck you back in.

Be strong. Break up if someone is cheating on you, or even if you just suspect he is. Female intuition is strong, if something doesn't feel right, it usually isn't. If you have been sucked back in over and over, don't confront him and don't tell him you're cutting him out of your life. It's just another opportunity for him to manipulate you into staying.

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In September last year I went to my favourite clothing store Giordano, and found the new global warming range. It consisted of several ladies shirts with global warming related prints on them. I immediately fell in love with one of them. It had a crying bear on it and the text 'where will we live now'. The only problem was that the shirts were really low cut, but I liked it so much I tried it on anyway. As expected, it was much too low for my taste. I don't make a habit of displaying all of my chest and half of my breasts in public, so I ended up not getting it.

I really liked it tho, so I decided to write Giordano an email and ask them if they had any plans of putting these prints on normal ladies t-shirts, because I didn't like to expose myself like that, and also told them how fabulous I found the global warming range and how much I loved it.

Their reply was that they were happy I liked the range as much as they did, and that they had plans of putting all the prints on unisex t-shirts in October. Yay, I thought.

I few days later I got another email from them, where they said they were so happy I liked their new range that they had decided to custom make a ladies t-shirt with the print I liked, and send it my nearest store where I could pick it up. Yay:) So I told them where my nearest store is, and waited eagerly.

A few weeks went by with no word. Then they emailed me again and apologised for how long it was taking, and because it had taken so long they wanted to send the shirt in the mail to my house - for free. I couldn't believe my luck. I thanked them profusely and gave them my address.

A few days later my shirt arrived.

On Friday we made an impulse decision to drive down to Emu Plains the next day, which is near Sydney. R's parents live there, and R's sister Zara and niece Rhiannon were visiting for Rhiannon's b-day, so we thought it might be fun. The drive is 1000 km and takes about 12 hours normally.

We got up at 5:30 am on Saturday, and left at 6:30. The first few hours R kept microsleeping, which was rather annoying, beause I had to keep shouting at him and slapping him. But then about half way we stopped and I got out to stretch my legs, and when I got back in the car I found R asleep. He slept for about 10 minutes and after that he was fine. So what they say about powernaps keeping you alive seems to be true.

We arrived in Emu Plains at 7:30, and were served salad for dinner. It was a mix of my recipe and R's mum's recipe. Quite good.

I met R's dad for the first time, and also got to meet their cat, Jadie. She's a funny little thing. She refuses to eat white and red meat. She will not eat any cheap cat food. She gets Royal Canin dry food which is the most expensive, and the most expensive wet food, which I can't remember the name of now. She's a little princess. And she deserves it all. They adopted her 2 years ago from a cat shelter, and she was very badly treated before that.

Anyway, having been up at 5:30 we got sleepy very early, and ended up going to bed at 10. That's when I discovered the wonders of the electric blanket. They warm your bed for you, so when it's cold in winter, you don't need to get into a cold bed and lie there shivering until it warms up. It's warm when you lie down, which is just wonderful when your feet and legs are cold. Everyone has them here so they don't have to get into a cold bed in winter. You'd think everyone in Norway's arctic climate would have them, but yet I have never met a Norwegian who does. Weird. I made R promise that we would get one when we get home.

Today we checked into our motel, because Zara and Rhiannon arrived in the evening, and R's parents only have 2 spare beds. It's a cute little motel. Very basic.

After we checked in went back to R's parents' place and hung out there and tried to get online without much luck at first. My computer started misbehaving on Friday for some reason and refused to run pretty much anything except notepad and photoshop, but after R worked on it for a while it connected to the internet. We also went for a 50 minute walk along the river, which is just down the road from their place.

Photos from our trip will be posted on my photo site as soon as we sort out the ones worth keeping.

Today we will drive home to Brisbane. I made sure R got plenty of sleep last night, so his brain should be less inclined to let him fall asleep (hopefully). We are not leaving until around noon, which means we will be home around midnight.

Olivia (the business partner and old friend) called R yesterday morning to say our house had not had electricity since Saturday night. She first assumed it was because of the storm that night, but when she got there yesterday morning to find the power still gone she knew it couldn't be. With R's help she isolated the problem to R's office, and it turned out one of our cats decided to pee on a powerboard which triggered the safety switch which took the power out.

Not a problem for the cats, but it means my aquariums have been without power for about 36 hours. That means all the bacteria in the filters will be dead, which means toxins will build up in the water unless some water is changed every day until the bacteria build up again. Lovely.

After we sorted that out we drove to R's parents' place and then we went with R's mum, sister and niece to the Penrith Plaza during the day to do some shopping. Penrith is a town right next to Emu Plains, only seperated by a river. (You drive through Emu Plains, you cross the bridge and then you are in Penrith. Funny that.) R got a b-day present for his dad and a new monitor for his mum's computer which he surprised her with later in the day. He couldn't tell her he was getting her a new monitor because then she would have stopped him. Isn't he sweet:)

In the evening we went to a leagues club for Rhiannon's (the niece's) b-day. We were originally going to a place just up the road from R's parents' place, but Zara (Rhiannon's mum) protested and demanded we go somewhere else. So we ended up at this über-snobby leagues club where they demand that you sign yourself in and show your ID to let you in. I didn't have a valid driver's licence, which seemed like a problem until the not so nice lady told us if one of use became a member they could sign the rest of us in, and it wouldn't be a prob. So R's dad became a member.

We got into the 'restaurant' only to find that it was more like a cheap cafe where you had to order at the counter and order drinks somewhere else and then go and sit down to wait for the food, and then get up and go and get it when it was finished. I dunno about other people, but for a b-day dinner I would prefer a nice restaurant where the staff waits on us. Oh well.

Today we slept in until 9:30, then left the motel at 10. We'll prolly just sit around and do stuff on our computers until it's time to leave.

We got home just before midnight last night, a few minutes ahead of schedule. Because R got enough sleep the night before, and most of the drive was in darkness, he wasn't falling asleep, so we only made 3 stops - 2 to fill up with fuel and once to go to the toilet and eat. R doesn't fall asleep while driving in the dark for some reason. He says it's the bright sun in daytime which makes him fall asleep. He's nocturnal:)

It was a fun little trip. R's family is really nice and they wait on me more than my own family does. I kept getting offered drinks, food and snacks. Emu Plains is a very cute little town, but it gets too cold for my liking in winter. The temp got down to 4.5 at night, and was around 17 to 19 during the day. It's nice and warm in the sun during the day, but if you wanna go out at night it's a bit chilly and everyone wears big thick coats.

So for all the Europeans who wanna go to Sydney in their summer holiday: Don't. Go to Brisbane instead.

We got home last night to find the house smelling of cat poo, so the first thing I did was to empty their tray. I then checked on all the fish which now don't have filters which work properly. In my big tank everyone was fine. I did a big water change. I then went to check on my betta in the small tank in my room. He wasn't there. The tank is pretty small with only one place to hide, so I figured he was just hiding. I did a water change and checked the tank again. Still nowhere to be seen. I left it over night and checked again this morning. Still not there.

So I asked in the forum if they had any theories, and they all seem to think it's weird too. The most likely theory seems to be that the water went bad because of the non working filter, the fish died, and was then eaten by the mystery snail. I still find that unlikely because it was only 3 days from the filter stopped working until the fish was gone, and I don't see how the water could go that bad that quickly. But it's the only theory that seems likely. The other theories are that he jumped out of the tank and died, or the cats got him, neither of which would have happened because the tank has a hood so he can't jump out, and the door was closed so the cats didn't have access to the tank.

Weird.

As I mentioned in a previous blog entry, my laptop is messed up. It all started on Friday when I tried to save an image from IE, and it told me it couldn't find the specified file. I restarted, as that normally fixes just about everything. Then the real problems started. The laptop went into ultra slow mode, and attempting to run any program made everything freeze up. It also rejected any USB device which was plugged into it, so the mouse wasn't working. Try fixing a computer using a touchpad. Yeah, frustrating.

After doing 2 system restores, first one to 1st of May and the second one to 1st of April, R concluded that it's not a software problem, it's a hardware problem, and we will need to have it repaired. Luckily it's still under warranty, as it's only a year old.

And that means that I'm now on the computer which used to be the old media centre, which is heaps better than my laptop. It's a bit strange being on a desktop computer again, it's a lot noisier, but the extra power feels nice. It also means I no longer have a Norwegian keyboard, so I will either be typing funny in the Norry forums, or I'll have to learn the codes for the Norry characters.

Well. I'm back on my laptop again. I somehow managed to break the media centre after using it for only 2 days. Or so R says. I claim I did nothing to make it happen.

I was having a look in some forums as usual this morning, when all of a sudden everything froze up for no good reason. Nothing responded to anything I did, so I rebooted. It froze immediatety after startup. I then tried rebooting several times, and every time it froze up before I could even get into Windows. I then decided this was a case for R, as he rarely comes across a computer he can't fix in a matter of minutes. But he couldn't get it to boot either. And that's where we've left it for now.

Because my computer was doing the same kinda thing, and I transferred all my stuff to the media centre, R suspected a virus. He told me to go to my laptop and download anti virus software and update it and then scan the laptop. I downloaded the newest free version of AVG, but as I tried to install it, it told me it couldn't, because I didn't have service pack 2 installed. I have previously refused to install SP2 because I find security stuff on my computer annoying, like it tells me what I can and cannot do on my own computer. But this time I figured why not, and installed it.

During installation R said 'would be funny if this fixes your USB issue'. So after I installed it, I decided to plug in my USB stick to see if it would show up in My Computer. And it did! So what does that mean? Is there some kind of Microsoft conspiracy where they mess up people's computers to force them to install SP2? I reckon.

So after all the hassle of setting up the media centre, I don't need it anymore.

Edit 24/05: I take it back. The laptop is still messed up. The USB ports stopped working again last night, and today startup has been extremely slow. After logging into Windows, it takes about 10 minutes to load everything. While it's loading, it will freeze if I click anything. If I wait the 10 minutes until everything has finished loading, it will work fine for about 30-45 minutes before freezing up and it has to be restarted again. So I've restarted about 5 times today. I'm going to format it now..

Edit25/05: After formatting last night, it's still messed up. It now can't find some important system file which is needed to run Windows. R reckons the hard drive is dead or dying and needs to be replaced. He also reckons the hard drive in the media centre is dead, but is currently reinstalling Windows on it. If that doesn't work, he has a spare hard drive he can put in it.

It's Julie's 7th birthday today. I can't believe I've had her that long. I was looking at old photos of her the other day and couldn't believe how young she looked. She's my pride and joy and the apple of my eye<3

Here's a photo of the b-day girl:

And because we weren't home for Thomas' 6th in March, here's a photo of him too:

It's a really bad photo because it was taken with my phone, but his expression is so cute I had to post it:)

The laptop and media centre completely died, leaving me computerless. So today we went out and got me a basic desktop computer. It cost $600 (3000 kr) and is actually pretty good. I paid about $2000 for my Dell with almost the same specs 3-4 years ago.

R bought it for me, just like he bought me the laptop a little over a year ago, because he's the best and most generous boyfriend ever. How many people can say their boyfriend has bought them 2 computers in 15 months? (Thank you hunnipuff xxx)

The computer came with Vista, which kinda sucks, but I have decided to give it another go. If I stay with Vista, it has some benefits for R's business. If I absolutely hate it and can't tolerate it, I can always install XP on it.

But so far so good, R has helped me turn off most of the annoying security stuff, and the rest I guess I'll get used to. We all have to upgrade to Vista eventually anyway.

It's always fun setting up a new computer:)

The photos from our trip to Emu Plains have been posted here.

I also realised I forgot to post the photos from when we were in Melbourne, so they've been posted here, and the photos from when we were at the Alma Park Zoo are here.

Enjoy.