Thoughts and Musings: Being in Norway, my blog and more

My wife Nicole was just here for a visit, we had two weeks of holidays together and it was fantastic. We saw some great sights and most importantly, we spent time together in person.  Even with video and voice chat and nearly constant access to email, it is simply not the same as physically talking to each other.

It was amazing to me that when Nicole came here, the apartment where I am living for the rest of my stay suddenly felt so much more like home, like it was normal. Nicole said she noticed it too. It is hard to describe, it felt like home, it felt lived in, it felt full.  The opposite feeling is easier to describe and I think most people can relate.  As soon as Nicole left (about a week ago now) the apartment felt empty and very quiet, like it was missing something.

As the person who does most of the traveling in our relationship I do not notice this feeling often, the few times Nicole has gone somewhere without me, I have noticed this bit of quiet, but then I was in our home and it did not feel so bad.  Plus I had Jax, my dog with me, and well I can at least play with him, and heck even talk to him (if that makes me crazy, so be it, at least he doesn't answer me back).

Now don't get me wrong, it's not like I'm not having a good time here, I am, I love it here, I could easily live in Tromsø. It's beautiful, close to mountains, small and friendly. It just was very nice to have Nicole here.

On a more positive side, this weekend I will go to another Tromsø TIL football (soccer) match.  TIL is doing terrible in their league so in order to make sure they have fans at the game they have lowered the price of all tickets to 50 NOK (less than $10).  In contrast, tickets are usually between 150 and 300 NOK.
Also, Tromsø did make it into the UEFA Europa league this year, albeit on a technicality.  Another team from Turkey was removed because of match fixing, so TIL advanced. But this means we will have three international teams here in Tromsø to play, one from Russia, one from Moldova, and the Tottenham Hotspurs from the UK.  I splurged and bought a ticket pack for all three games.  The crazy thing to me is that right now it is getting cooler, highs are around 8-10C during the day and maybe 4C at night, and right now it gets dark pretty early.  The first UEFA game is next week, but the last one is at the end of November. It will be dark and cold, and everyone hopes for snow, as that is the game against Tottenham).

I still find Norway expensive, but have gotten over it a bit, at least in terms of just accepting that everything costs more here. I still don't have a good sense of standard of living in the sense that I don't know what salary bases are.  I hear a bit from fellow scientists that the wage curve flats out sharply at the PhD level, i.e. a post-doc will make the nearly the same as a permanent junior researcher.  PhD students also seem to be paid adequately.

I keep following the news from the U of A back home, and I am really wondering what kind of university I will return to.  Post secondary institutions in Alberta received an average of 11% cuts (once you factor in inflation and a promised 2% funding increase).  As a result, the University has to slash its budget and it has been doing a terrible job on explaining how that will happen.  Grad students and undergrads will definitely be affected, loss of TA positions, increases in tuition and fees are not out of the question.

And finally I have been musing about my blog.  I wonder how it is perceived.  I'd love to talk more about my science and my work, but really I find it hard to a) make the time to write a blog post (write now I'm waiting for the oven to warm up, it's 9pm and I just got home from working a 12+ hour day). I need to eat yet, and if I don't take a little me time, I won't sleep well. The blog is sometimes me time, but othertimes I feel like I need to post and I should post.
I also do want to post more about my work, but honestly, it can be a bit dull, do I show figures I'm working on? Do I try to talk about news in the science field? Do the people who read my blog actually want to see this stuff?  Mostly I think not, maybe a little or something big where I am involved, but otherwise, I think the answer is no.  The blog really was started for my family to follow my life a bit while I travel, and I think they make up my primary audience.  Though I seem to have friends from other countries who read as well (thank you Google for tracking the country of the people who visit my blog). I think it could be fun to do a more sciency blog, and I hope that once I am back in Edmonton and start playing with my arduino I can do that, I will scrap the separate blog and just make the posts here.

Well that is enough on my thoughts for now.  and just because that was a lot of text, here is a picture:

Johnston Canyon, Oct 2012.