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!

Roger is the man of my dreams.

He's completely loyal and faithful. Roger is the only man I trust completely. I don't think he's capable of cheating on me. It would be completely out of character and against his nature.

In public he will back me up in any discussion, it doesn't matter if he thinks I'm wrong. If people get rude with me, he will let me sort them out, but if I need help dealing with them, he will always back me up and make the other person feel like an idiot.

He's not afraid to go against the flow. It doesn't matter what society has decided to think or feel about something, Roger will think it all through logically and decide what makes the most sense. Most of the time he will decide to do the opposite of what the rest of society does, just because he doesn't want to be a sheep.

He hates tradition. If tradition makes sense, he will do it. But if people are only doing traditional things because everyone else is doing it, he will reject it. Such as getting married or have kids.

He makes make me feel appreciated, even if it's just for the little things. He's completely honest. If he thinks I look like shit one day, he will tell me. So I know when he tells me I'm beautiful, he means it. He doesn't tell me he loves me all the time, he will only say it when he feels it. That way it doesn't become a meaningless phrase.

If he's feeling grumpy because he has to deal with stupid clients who frustrate him, he might get grumpy with me, but he will always apologise and hug me and make me feel special again within an hour.

He treats women as equals, and respects both men and women equally. He's not one of those guys who are completely in love with themselves and think they are God's gift to women, and who see women mainly as something to satisfy their sexual urges. These men will of course speak to women as if they respect them, but when it's just the guys, they will talk about women as if they are sex toys.

Roger could do that if he wanted. He's hot and has women falling over themselves to be with him, but he's just not interested in being that kinda guy.

He loves cats as much as I do. I've never met any guy who loves cats. I've met men who don't mind them, but they all prefer dogs. Roger prefers cats and doesn't want a dog because he feels no need to be in control of another creature. And not only does he love cats as much as I do, but he respects all animals and will defend any animal if he sees one being abused.

So Roger is perfect, and I adore him.

And it was his birthday yesterday. Happy b-day hunni:)

xxxx 

I've repeatedly said that men are pervs who will perv at any female skin. Most of the time I tell women this I'm met with disbelief and comments like 'well I don't get turned on if I see some guys penis, so why would they care if they see a bit of breast?' Yeah, cuz it's just impossible that men are programmed differently than women....

Anyway, I've been saying it, and here is more proof:

[Article]

What exactly do women think is going to happen when they lie around topless? That men will show no interest in them whatsoever? I know men who go to the beach just to perv at girls in bikinis, and if they are topless that just gives guys something to think about when they have a pull later on.

I've even seen women who walk around in low cut tops and most of their breasts hang out, but as soon as a guy comments on their breasts, they get offended. Why? They must want men to notice their breasts, otherwise they wouldn't have them hanging out.

When R and I were in Norway in January this year, we bought a traditional Norwegian cheese slicer, because in Australia people cut their cheese with a knife, and I have never mastered that skill. I also don't like the thick slices you get when you cut it with a knife.

R has been telling me the whole time that the cheese slicer is dangerous, and an accident waiting to happen, because of the way you have to put your thumb behind it when you cut the cheese. My reply has always been 'don't be retarded, I've never heard of anyone in my entire life who has cut themselves on a cheese slicer. It's perfectly safe'.

Well, today I was proven wrong. I was making lunch for R, and someone hadn't covered up the cheese properly, so it had gone hard. When I attempted to slice it, the slicer slipped and sliced my thumb instead. It was a blood bath.

R had a nice little gloat about it.

I still refuse to cut cheese with a knife tho.

I while back I told R my hay fever is at the point where I wouldn't know if I got a cold or not. My nose is always runny and itchy, I'm always sneezing and coughing and my nose is always sore from sneezing.

And now I think I might be sick, but there's no way of telling. I feel sick, but I don't know if I am. My throat has been sore and itchy the last couple of days, but it's just as likely to be because of the sneezing as because of a cold.

I'm feeling stuffier and sleepier than normal tho, so I'm guessing it's a cold, but apart from that it's no different from normal. That's kinda sad isn't it.

To my great surprise, Vista has not been annoying me much this time around. Probably because I expected it to be very annoying. But just when I start to think Vista isn't too bad, something happens to show how inferior it is to XP.

I wanted to print something yesterday, and because it's the first time I've needed to print anything since I bought my new computer, I had not yet added the shared printer to my computer.

So I tried to add it, but got this:

For some unknown reason, Vista cannot add a printer which every XP computer in the house is using.

Vista always has a problem sharing anything.

A while ago I had a convo with R which went something like this:

Me: I wonder why men don't cry in a situation where a woman would. I'd be interested to know if it's just because women are brought up differently, or if it's an actual physiological difference between the genders.
R: You can stop yourself from crying. You don't have to cry, you let yourself.
Me: I can't stop myself from crying. When I cry, it's because I have to.
R: Really? Wow...
Me: So men never need to cry, whenever they cry it's because they let themselves?
R: Pretty much.

Today I followed up on this conversation:

Me: I've figured out why men can stop themselves from crying when women can't.
R: Why?
Me: Men's feelings are inferior to women's feelings.
R: ?
Me: Up to a certain level of sadness, I can stop myself from crying. So women reach the level of sadness where they need to cry more easily than men, because men are incapable of feeling that sad.  So men's capability to feel is inferior to women's.
R: Makes sense. That would explain why men often feel that women overreact.
Me: Yep. 

There's one thing about Australia that absolutely shits me.

Australia has this thing where they don't like people who brag and think they are really good, and they like underdogs. Which is fine. It's just when they take it too far that it gets stupid.

There's this current affairs show, called 'A current affair' where recently there was a story about a family who had put themselves in debt because one of the big credit card companies had offered them a credit card. They had accepted it and spent a stupid amount of money, which they were having huge problems repaying. They then blamed the credit card company for offering them a credit card.

Even more recently, they had a story about an old man who was at the airport with his family. He couldn't move around very easily, so the fam wanted a wheel chair for him. The airline was understaffed, and unable to provide one. The fam then tried to check in for him, but was told he had to check in in person. So the family put him on the escalator, resulting in the guy falling down the escalator and being seriously injured. The family then went on the current affairs show and blamed the airline for failing to provide the wheel chair.

And the current affairs show took their side. Not once did they ask 'but don't you think you're responsible for how much money you spend?' or 'why didn't you take the lift down, instead of putting a man who can hardly walk on the escalator?'

To me it's glaringly obvious that these people acted stupidly, and are now facing the consequences. Everyone else seems to think 'awww poor them, they got screwed over by a big powerful company'.

Thai started having 'accidents' after about a week. We ignored it at first, because we figured it's a big house and she might not be able to find the tray in time. She only had accidents when she was allowed to wander freely around the whole house, while when she was confined to the bedroom and outside area she would always use the tray. Pet Rescue also told us they noticed she does seem to get confused when she has to keep track of a larger area, but she's fine when she's confined to a small area.

But then she kept going into R's office to pee on the floor, pretty much every morning. Whenever something scared her, she would run back to the bedroom where she felt safe. So it was obvious that she knew where everything was, she just chose to pee in R's office.

In addition to the peeing, she also showed some aggressive tendencies. Most the time she would be fine, but whenever she was doing something wrong and we would try to correct her behaviour, she would scream at us and try to attack us. We then decided it was time to try the anti-anxiety/anti-OCD medication Pet Rescue recommended.

She will only eat dry food, and only out of her bowl, so I just put the tiny pill in with her food in the evening and it would be eaten along with the rest of the food. At least for the first few days. Then for some reason she started leaving it. Because she's not very trusting to begin with, we didn't wanna grab her and force it down her throat. She didn't have any accidents while she was on the medication, but that could also be because she was being watched closely whenever she was wandering around the house, and the amount of time she was allowed out of the bedroom was reduced at that time because we were busy with other stuff.

She seems to be trusting us more lately, and will come and greet us and has started telling us when she wants something. But she's still going into R's office to pee in the morning, and if we close the door to the office, she will go to the lounge instead. We follow her around these days and tell her off if she looks like she's about to pee and pick her up and put her on the tray. She protests wildly to being carried and will hiss and growl.

I see no good reason for her to still be having accidents tho.

We have also realised we will need to keep her, as she's just settling in. We think it would be cruel to allow her to settle in only to have her rehomed. And even if she stops peeing everywhere while she's here, the whole thing will start over once she moves to a new house, and Pet Rescue has told me they doubt they'll be able to find someone understanding enough to adopt a cat who will pee on the floor regularly for the first few weeks/months.

Edit: Just had a long chat with the person from Pet Rescue, because I sent them an email saying that I wanted to take Thai to the vet to rule out a medical problem. She had asked her vet about it, and the vet said it definitely doesn't sound like a medical problem. If I wanna take her to the vet for my own peace of mind I can, but she doesn't think it's needed. She also thinks Thai needs to go back on the medication, as it needs at least a month to take full effect. She gave me some advice on how to get Thai to eat her pill, so we will try that and see how she is in a month.

My blog has a new design:)

R suggested to me a few weeks ago that it was time I renew my blog design, so I started working on one. I spent about a week on it, and then realised I didn't like it, and gave up on the whole thing. I figured if I wasn't able to come up with a new design, I didn't deserve to have my blog redesigned.

Then one day I was playing around in Photoshop and thought I'd try to make auroras digitally, seeing as I'd never seen any good digitally made auroras anywhere. I thought 'it must be really diffcult' but decided to try anyway. It took me about 10 minutes and 1 try to get it right. So it wasn't difficult at all, people who do them just don't know what auroras look like.

And after I'd made the auroras I thought 'wonder how it would look as the header image on a web page' so I just started putting together a web site to see what it would look like, and used my own site for reference, just for fun. But after I'd spent some time putting it all together I realised 'hey, this might be good enough to be my new blog design!'

So there it was. Completely unintentionally I designed my new blog.

It has also been changed to work with R's cms, which has a blog module that was built and integrated based on my blog in the first place. This means I get to discover any bugs in the blog side of his system before any clients start using it.

The navigation panel is gone too. There wasn't much point in having a photos page when I have a site entirely dedicated to photos, so that's gone. The drawings will also be moved to the photo site, and the dictionary has been abandoned completely.

Norwegians are a strange bunch.

If they pay someone to provide a service, they don't even stand up for themselves and demand to get what they pay for. If the person doesn't do the job properly, they will let them keep the money they paid them, and simply pay extra for someone else to do it.

I just read in a forum that someone paid a guy to measure up a saddle for her horse. When she got the saddle she thought it looked a bit big, but the guy said it fitted perfectly and she believed him. But after one ride using the new saddle, the horse had back pains and the saddle was also rubbing the fur off part of its back.

So the owner of the horse said 'well now it's gonna cost me extra. I have to go and buy a new saddle' instead of telling the guy who measured it all up to come back and do it again, because obviously he made a mistake. She could even ask for her money back, seeing as he didn't provide the service he was supposed to. But no, she's letting him get away with it, and will go and spend extra money on a new saddle.

And it's like Norwegians never expect any service from store staff.

There was another incident in the same forum a few weeks ago. A woman in there was telling everyone about the great service an online store had provided. She had ordered 2 things from their website. After she ordered they emailed her and said they'd stopped selling one of the products, but they could send the other thing she ordered. She then told them she needed both things for a competition, but that it was fine, she'd be happy if they just sent one item. The store then told her they had some left in stock, so they would send her both items anyway. And she thought this was really great and that they were awesome people.

I told her if the product was still listed on their website and they had it in stock, I would expect them to send it. If they don't wanna sell it they should remove it from their website.

Norwegians also seem to think they need to choose the most difficult way to do something, otherwise they don't deserve any reward for it.

Such as when someone in a forum complained that someone she knew had neutered their dog just because he was so difficult to train.

I asked 'so what? At least the dog got neutered, which is good. Who cares why he did it?'

And she said 'well I don't think it's right to neuter a dog just because it's a bit difficult to train'.

I couldn't see the problem. Obviously all dogs should be neutered, and if it makes him easier to train, what's the problem? It means a happier owner and a happier dog. But the person in the forum felt that if the owner wasn't willing to put extra time and effort into training a difficult hormonal dog, he didn't deserve to have a well trained dog.

And you can hardly find any automatic cars in Norway. Nearly everyone buys manuals. Even when you get a rental car it's a manual. While here in Australia, nearly everyone gets automatics. They cost about $2000 more than a manual here, just like in Norway, but everyone chooses to spend that much extra. You'd never get a manual rental either, unless you specifically asked for one. 

It's not the lack of money that stops Norwegians from getting automatic cars. I suspect it's because it would make driving 'too easy'.

It's weird. What's wrong with making life easier? As if most people don't have enough to worry about, without deliberately making life more difficult.

That's what this test called me:

So I'm not a geek like I thought I was and apparently I know a freakish amount about sci-fi and comics....

R is the nerd king:

Awwww my little geek<3

Take the test

On Saturday we went to our friend Olivia's karate grading. She was being graded for a black belt.

In the same group there were also kids and people in their 50s and 60s, and also a person in a wheel chair. All being graded for a black belt. The instructor said people are not graded on their actual karate ability, but on whether they are doing their best or not. So a 60 year old would not be expected to be able to do the same things as a 15 year old, and the person in the wheel chair just sat there doing hand movements the whole time. A lof the people there couldn't kick properly, or balance properly. A lot of them couldn't even do the stretching exercises.

To me, that cheapens a black belt. When someone says they have a black belt in karate, you'd think they were really good, their karate skills should be perfect. But they're not. Anyone can get a black belt these days.

Instead of saying 'as long as you do your best, we'll give you a black belt', they should make a list of the stuff you have to be able to do to get a black belt. So if you're 60, you might be able to advance as far as the green belt, but that's it. A person in a wheel chair who can only do hand movements might get a yellow belt, at best.

That way you would know that a person with a black belt have perfect karate skills.

I know why they don't do it that way of course. They want everyone to be able to do karate, because they make more money that way.

Good for them, but sad for karate.

(Olivia did of course deserve the black belt she got:))

This weekend I decided to rearrange my fish tanks. I had been wanting to change from gravel to sand for some time, because all fish like sand, but not all of them like gravel. I have loaches, which prefer sand. I also find that sand looks more natural than gravel. Cuz, really, how often do you see a lake or river with a gravel bottom?

So I removed all the ornaments from the tank, and all the plants I didn't wanna keep. Most of them were cheap and did nothing to improve the look of the tank. I only kept one plant, which had grown to the size of a bush, and it looked really healthy and good. I let that float around in there while I worked to give the fish something to hide in to reduce stress. I then removed all the gravel, which took a while, and then added a thin layer of sand. I then put the fake log ornament back in because the loaches love to hide in it, but decided the ruin didn't fit with the natural look I was going for, so I left that out. The big plant was cut into 5 smaller pieces which were planted pretty much at random. They will look good and provide good hiding places for the fish when they get bigger. I also put the terracotta pot back in, because my red tailed shark has become attached to it, and will rest in it and swim back to it whenever something scares him.

Here's how the tank looked before (minus some plants which died off after this photo was taken).

And here's how it looks now:

What I didn't think of was that now all my fish are more obvious, which is good. They all kind of blended in with the dark gravel before.

Seeing as I got my tax money recently, I also decided to replace the plastic tank in my room with a proper glass one:

The killies have this tank to themselves now, because I decided I didn't want the snails in there. They have a nasty habit of eating the plants. That's why the plants look a bit sick, but they'll recover. It does leave the problem of what to do with the snails tho. I can either leave the plastic tank and keep it as a snail tank, or I can get rid of the old tank and get rid of the snails, or I can get rid of the plants and get some plants the snails don't like the taste of.

The yarn in this tank isn't permant by the way, that's just cuz the killies like to lay their eggs in them, and I'm trying to hatch some.

Vista just did something exceptionally stupid. I was having problems connecting to the internet, so I clicked 'diagnose the problem' and it then told me what was wrong. I wanted to read more about how to fix it so I clicked the 'help' button. And it popped up a message saying it couldn't show me the help for this problem because it couldn't connect to the internet.

I just noticed Undre tagged me a few days ago.

Man gør følgende:

1. Rækker ud efter den nærmeste bog
2. Slår op på side 123
3. Finder den femte sætning på siden
4. Lægger denne og de følgende to sætninger ud på webloggen (sammen med instruktionerne)
5. Kommenterer citatet
6. Sender legen videre til fem andre personer og krediterer den som sendte legen til en.

In English that means:

Here's what you do:

1. Grab your nearest book
2. Open page 123
3. Find the fifth sentence on the page
4. Post this and the following 2 sentences on your blog
5. Comment on this quote
6. Tag someone else and credit the person who tagged you

Well! I had 2 fictional books lying around until a few minutes ago when R implied that I'm a messy person and told me to put them in the book shelf. That makes the nearest book 'SEO - Search engine optimization - Bible' by Jerri L. Ledford:

And this is a big no-no when you're trying to optimise your website for search engines, because you will get listed very low, or banned altogether.

I'm reading this book because I'm getting into SEO, which is really good when you do it right, and very bad when you get it wrong. R allowed me to use his e-newsletter system to play with, and I'm about to optimise a website for one of his clients too. They've had their e-commerce site up and running for a year, but have not made a single sale. Because they are such nice people we have decided to optimise their site for free. Normally this service would cost about $350 per month.

Anyone who feels like it may consider themselves tagged.

This is the most adorable thing I have seen for a long time. These 2 English guys bought a lion cub from Harrods in the 60s, because you could buy pretty much any exotic animal there at the time, and raised him in London. When he became an adult they decided to take him to Africa to release him into the wild.

Read the whole story about Christian the lion.

And here's the video of when his previous owners went back 3 years later to see how he was doing: