After getting home from Brussels there were at least one good thing waiting for me at home, a delivery slip saying that my DSL-modem had arrived! Finally I could start really using the net again, as opposed to just doing the most basic things over my 3G cellphone-connection. And then on Tuesday some guys showed up to install a wall-mounted oven in my bathroom as the floor-heating was broken when I moved in. About time I say, as winter is just around the corner and a ground-level apartment without gets really chilly along the floors, so now I've gotten everything in the apartment in order, just in time for the Wednesday arrival of Øystein and Carina from Gründerskolen, who will be staying at my place over the weekend during the Gründerskolen Fall Seminar, the completion of my days as a student!

This weekend was the annual company fall-excursion, but I was instead going to back to Belgium to visit my girlfriend Carina. Most of the others left the office for the excursion just after lunch on Friday, so there were only a few people besides me there for the rest of the day. However we still managed to gather a small group to have a game of CX Darts, a weekly dart-competition with bottles of wine for the winners, and with so few contestants it was 50/50 odds, so I managed to take home a bottle before having to catch my flight to Brussels.

With our final examination and the delivery of our business plan due this Tuesday, and after prioritizing most of last week to new experiences and parties, it was really about time to put in some serious work on the plan so we could get it ready in time. So Sunday morning at 10a.m, just after a short detour to drop of mine and Øysteins rented diving equipment, the Automaton Industries team met up in the offices of PeerMe to finish up the plan that we have been working on all summer.

Unlike most Tuesdays, Arthur, Marthe and myself didn't have today off to study as our internship company Searchforce was having a booth at the annual Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose. In addition to us almost half the company (4 people) went with us so that we could pitch our product to visitors and maybe also locate some potential corporate partners. To "help out" during the conference the company had also hired a booth-babe, one Australian girl who was visiting the states to see her boyfriend. The conference was pretty fun with lots of interesting companies attending, plenty of more or less useful give-aways and even a few games as well, so even while I didn't go to any of the sessions I had a good time there. However that was nothing compared to what came next... and I'm not talking about this weeks lecture, which actually finished up around 6p.m after a volunteer group did their business plan presentation early for a bit of feedback from the group.

After putting in a lot of long hours towards studying lately, this week looks like it might become the complete opposite and maybe the most intensive week of parties so far this summer.
It all started out last Friday when Øystein called me just after I got back from work and asked if I wanted to join him and some of the other PeerMe people at Cascals for finger food and drinks. When I got over there a few of the others had been sitting there for a while already, and some others were just coming. We ended up spending six straight hours there, drinking the bar empty of our chosen brand of wine and enjoying various kinds of tapas for a final tab of more than $400 USD (!), which Tom picked up himself, as he always does whenever we go out with him.

Until now we have mostly been spending the summer going on various trips and events in smaller groups, but that changed this week with a Wine&Cheese party first, and then a Tapas-night tool Then in between this and the pressure from our work and studies which is really building up now, we also found the time to see some movies, visit Gloria and to go clubbing in San Francisco!

The day after the rodeo it was back to work as usual, but since thursday nights are quite good in downtown Mountain View we squeezed in an eventful night out. For once it was not an indication of how the coming weekend would turn out, as we instead played it cool by the pool and had ourselves some nice dinners.

This weekend it was time for another roadtrip, this time to see more of the Californian national parks and great trees, and perhaps even a redneck or two. We headed out early on friday afternoon with Øystein, Carina, Alex and myself in one car and Martin and Camilla (M's danish girlfriend) in another. We had booked accomodation at the Sequoia Motel in a small town called Three Rivers just outside the Sequoia National Park, about a 5 hour drive from the Bay Area.

Since we got back from Vegas the realities of everyday life has really caught up with us, so we've had to put in quite a few hours with the books lest we'd fall too far behind on the study materials. Besides this and the internship work we have not done much lately deserving of mention, other than catching the premiere of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest up in the Century Cinema multiplex at Shoreline on friday night. It was a good movie, but it didn't even close to the first one in any aspects, but it is one of those that you just have to see.

Then the weekend was mostly spent recouperating the lost sleep from last weekend and reading study-materials by the pool, as well as talking to my Carina at home on Skype. Arthur and I also dropped by a party at Ida's place on saturday night as she had bought lots of fruits and liquor and was mixing fancy tropical drinks for everyone! Around midnight everyone went down to the Buddah Lounge to check out the nightlife, but we didn't stay long and returned to Park Place for a nachspiel instead. A couple of the guys then brought guitars as well, so we were all having a great time singing and drinking.

Come monday this week turned into a deja vù of last week, with nothing happening but working long hours, studying and reading by the pool, only interchanged with business plan meetings, lectures on tuesday, and watching the Discovery channel. This made for a very boring week, but at least we are going on a great trip this weekend! In just a few hours we are leaving for Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks to stay in a real american trailer :-)

We had planned to leave on our roadtrip to Las Vegas at about 9a.m in the morning, but as usual with such plans they didn't quite happen the way we intended. Since both me and Carina were staying at Alex's place from the reception last night we had to get up and find our way back to Mountain View to pack our stuff before we could get on our way, so before everything were in order the clock was nearing 11a.m already, and then we also had to stop at SafeWay to stock up on food an water for the days in the desert.

Finally it was Tuesday again, and with that a day off to study and prepare for the classes with Nesheim, so I had a chance to sleep in and then call my Carina <3 in Norway on Skype before hitting the books and reviewing the lectures on video. I didn't have time to finish up everything before the lecture, but the test today was quite simple so it was all good, and afterwards a bunch of us headed to the Great Mall again where I got myself a couple of new O'Neil and Quicksilver t-shirts, and Øystein and I found a Asian/Cajun-fastfood crossover place at the Great Foodcourt and had dinner there before heading back home to get some more work done on the business plan.

Weekend once again, and this time it is the San Francisco gay pride weekend! This of course means that we had to go to downtown SF to check out the parties and watch all the crazies, and not to mention to take in the big Pride Parade on sunday morning!

And without warning our third week in Silicon Valley were upon us, and now we are starting to feel the combined pressure of work and classes mounting. After work on monday this meant that we had to get together our group and start working on our business plan, which again means that we had to get our act together and clean up the apartment as well since our group consists of Carina and Marthe in addition to Øystein, Arthur and myself who are sharing an apartment, and they were coming over to start working on the business plan for Øysteins idea, which I naturally can't discuss due to patent issues.

Yesterday half of the Norwegians here took a road trip north to visit a Napa valley, the most fameous winery-district in America. From Mountain View it is about a two hour drive to the city of Napa, so we arrived there just before noon. There we were advised at a bike rental-place to go a bit further into the valley and rent bikes in the township of a Yountville instead, as it was supposed to be a much nicer and more rural area compared to Napa itself, and that was good advice indeed!

And suddenly a second busy week in San Francisco has come and gone. By now we are starting to get settled in at work, but we found that the preparations required for the classes with Nesheim was quite extensive so we asked and got to have tuesdays off from work to study and prepare. Also we've been trying out a range of different lunch-places in the San Mateo area and have been trying to socialize a bit in the evenings as well.

To get out from the crowded bay area Øystein and I went down to from Monterey to go scuba-diving yesterday, and tonight we joined Martin from Øysteins internship company to go see a hippie festival in San Francisco.

Wow. The past weeks I have just been crazy busy! After turning in my master's thesis and completing my degree on monday the 22nd its all been about packing all my stuff, both what I will bring with me to California and everything else that had to be stashed in a garage in Trondheim over the summer. In addition we had to pack Carina's stuff and also clean out the entire apartment, meet up with my friends to say goodbye and get all of my other stuff in order before leaving.

I didn't get the apartment.. it turned out that someone else wanted it too and they were preprared to pay more than its fair value to get it. It's a bitch but at least I saved about two million norwegian kroner... and perhaps I'll find something thats even nicer when I get down to Oslo in person to search.
Also a small thing like that can't ruin my mood, because the dinner with the Fantasi-group at Emilies on friday was absolutely fabulous! 6 courses of high-class french cuisine and in addition a couple of appetizers and an extended wine-menu with the taste of heaven. It was without doubt one of the best meals I've ever had (and I've actually had quite a few that come close)!

I'd tell you what was on the menu but everything was just so perfectly amazing that in my state of bliss I didn't remember to grab a copy, and remembering the fancy names of all the dishes and side-orders is completely beyond me. Also they change the menu every week, so you can't have it anyway. But go there to eat if you ever have the chance! It is without a doubt my favorite resturant in the Norway, bar none!

Also this weekend we had a party with a couple of my friends and Carina invited Lise to bring a couple of her friends as well. It was a smashing success and the best party I've been to recently! (And thats not because I've been so busy that I haven't been to very many...) During the night we also went to another party downtown with the owner of the Dolly Dimples resturant-chain before heading out to make a great ending to a good night at Club Savoy.

Last weekend I went back to Oslo again, this time driving with Carina to move lots of her stuff back to Lier. The reason for the trip was an interview at the american embassy to get my student visa as well as a weekend gathering with all of the students going to Gründerskolen (Norwegian School of Entrepreneurship) this year. The interview was scheduled on thursday morning, so Carina and I drove down from Trondheim early on wednesday the 29th of March.

When we left I still had a bit of the flu since eating at Szechuan, so to prevent my allergy to cats from making me worse, and since I had to meet up at the embassy early thursday morning, I spent the nights from wednesday to friday at Marlenes place in Oslo and only stopped shortly in Lier to unload the car and have dinner. In addtition I haven't seen Marlene since we were in Australia together two years ago, so it was nice to finally get a chance to catch up again too.

Wow, time really flies! Suddenly it is a month since the last time I posted to my blog, and I'm struggling to remember what I have been doing lately.
I know I've been to work quite a few times, and I've been writing a good deal on my masters thesis too.

And just like that, we're done with September and autumn is almost over. Like this summer I haven't had much time to blog now either... Maybe it has something to do with having a girlfriend? Seems like lots of couples slowly fade away from an active online existence after they move in together, but that's just life I guess.

Woops. It seems like the entire summer has passed by me and I haven't even had the time to blog once! Not that there has been a lot to write about since we got back from Rome anyways, as I've mostly only been working close to full-time and just relaxing in our apartment on my few days off. Few of the things on my ToDo list for the summer has been achieved as well, but stuff like editing video from Australia and sorting mp3's isn't really time-critical to get done so I'll just put it off until next summer or something :-)

Today is the Constitution Day of Norway, widely celebrated around the world. No actually it is, but mostly only by Norwegians living abroad, like I did last year when the day was spent in Brisbane.
This year we celebrated in a more traditional student-fashion, by just relaxing at home after the greatest party-day of the year, the night of May 16th! Carina and me had a vorspiel with a small group of our friends over at my place first, plenty of fun with music, wine and beer. We had originally planned a large outdoor BBQ-party, but with 4°C and light rain we decided to cancel and stay indoors. As the midnight hour drew close we packed up and went downtown to party on at Rio, the best latino-club in Trondheim. It was completely packed with people everywhere downtown and as expected it was great fun and we stayed until closing time, and today I have enjoyed myself richly by just beeing lazy. I even bought myself a full liter of strawberry-jelly with vanilla-custard to munch on! YuM! :-)

With my life beeing less than eventful lately I found it a great relief that my planned trip to Geilo was due this week. My mother attends an annual conference at Dr.Holms hotel at Geilo, and usually invites me and my sister to come along and stay with her so we can hit the slopes while she is attending lectures. I travelled on the night-train from Trondheim Monday night, which gave me most of Tuesday plus all of Wednesday and Thursday at Geilo before returning and arriving back in Trondheim at 7a.m Friday morning. Plenty of time for some great days out in the slopes with my Snowboard. The feeling of sliding down a mountainside on the steel edges of a board with the cold crisp air rushing by is just exhilarating! You've just got to try it for yourself!

After Carina left I've spent most of my time working on the intranet for Start NTNU as well as doing mandatory lab-exercises and course-readings as required to pass the classes I am enrolled in. Mostly they contenst are somewhat interesting but it's also really mundane stuff that'll bore your brains out.

I've also been making a new personal homepage for myself that hopefully will be ready for publication within the week, and so in essence my life is a dull as an old butterknife, at least most of the time. There has been a couple of good parties during in the weekends to liven things up a bit, and thank god for that. A week ago Benjamin threw an awesome party at his place for mostly Start NTNU people, with dancing and drinking until the break of dawn, and then this weekend there was a small get-together at Alexanders place in honour of Gry-Hege who was on a weekend trip to Trondheim visiting him. Plenty of fun, and quite neccesary if I were to remain sane.
Well at least I get a lot of work done these days...

Santa was good to me this year! I got lots of stuff I needed and most of the rest was pretty good as well. I needed some new clothing and hence had written that on the wish-list I sent my parents, with the result beeing that my pile of gifts consisted almost exlusively of clothing after we finished the unwrapping. From one perspective it was great as I got gifts that I wanted and needed, but on the other hand it was a bit boring not having any cool stuff to assemble afterwards...
Memo for next year: Do *not* put clothes on the wish-list even if you need them.

Boxing day was my dads 50th birthday so we had a big dinner for my parents friends, and afterwards my sister and I went to some bars downtown for some fun along with all our friends that also were home for Christmas.

A change from normal this year was that I left for Egersund on the 27th to visit my girlfriends family there, and then went with her by train to Oslo to celebrate New Years Eve. However due to the quake and floodings in Asia we decided not to go to any parties this year, but to instead have a quiet evening at her house and giving the money we would have otherwise spent to charity.
The new year has begun anyways and in a couple of days we will return to Trondheim and everything will be back to normal with more work and studies...
Happy New Year everyone! :-)

This weekend the annual Start Forum was held. It is a national gathering of all the Start-groups at the various educational institutions in Norway.
The most important sessions held were probably the General Assembly for Start Norway and the national finale and award-ceremony in VentureCup, but there was plenty of other things going on as well!

To create better understanding between students and employers in Norway and Australia a subcommittee of ANSA was created to hold a career day / conference to allow for the creation of connections and to give the parties a chance to meet and learn from each other.
After a year of hard work by the ScanOZ commitee the conference finally took place yesterday, a full day with seminars, information-stands and food at QUT's School of Business.

Yesterday was Norways national-day, the 17th of May, celebrating our independence and the creation of our current constitution at Eidsvoll in 1814.
As Brisbane is a city with more than just a few norwegians there were heaps of people attending the more or less traditional celebrations. For many of the norwegians in the Spring Hill / Fortitude Valley area the day started out early with a 17th of May breakfast in the garden at Cathedral Place at 8a.m. After breakfast we all went down to QUT Gardens Point were I belive most of the Norwegians in Brisbane (and some others as well) gathered for the great 17th of May Parade through the city, the largest outside of Norway.

Work, work, and more work. There seems to be no end to it, but now I've at least completed most of my assignments, and gotten well underway with both my job and my project. I do however fear I don't have enough time to complete the latter, but I'll just have to keep at it and hope it all works out in the end.

I was hoping the worst workload would pass just after my last entry, but it appears I was wrong. There's been lots to do the last week-and-a-half as well with my both my project and my job, and I've got another mid-term coming up on saturday followed by an assignment due the 17th of May. It's all a bit boring and longwinded despite most of it beeing very interesting, but I guess I just have to hang in there and get it all done. In addition I'm almost out of money now, so thank god that the exhange-rate has finally dropped below 5:1 again! WooHoo!!

I didn't really get to do as much work on my assignments as planned last week, and ended up going out both thursday and friday, but after a bit of effort both yesterday and on saturday I'm more or less where I need to be with my work, which is good as I'm leaving for New Zealand in just a couple of hours!

The second of the big parties held by the Norwegian Student Club, namely the Rivercruise, was held last night. About 300 guests boarded the party-boat at 7:30 getting ready for a 3 hour cruise on the brisbane river, with heaps of free food and drinks all the way. There was a band playing as well, but I don't think anyone paid much attention to them. People were much to busy eating and drinking and having fun together!

After landfall we got into some buses and were driven over to Fridays for a great afterparty. Once again, heaps of fun despite the drinks not beeing free anymore :) I think I ended up going home around 4a.m, but only after getting one of the amazing hot-dogs they sell from a small shack just outside Fridays, definatly the best in the city!

Last night the biannual Scandinavian Pub Crawl took place, and despite a record high of attendees last time there was even more partygoers this year!

As usual we all started out at the Port Office, had the first couple of drinks and was split into groups by our nametag colours. Each group then went on a pubcrawl to three different clubs, for me this included Pig'n'Whistle Riverside, Gilhooleys Riverside and Jorge, before everyone met up again at City Rovers for an awesome afterparty. The crawl itself was really great, but City Rovers wasn't quite big enough for that many people, which made it overcrowded and difficult to find people. A great night proven by my headache this morning o_O

But the parties are not over yet! Tonight a pair of famous norwegian comedians, the Team Antonsen, are going to have a stand-up show here in Brisbane as part of their Australian Tour. The show however is in norwegian, which some might find a bit strange for a show held in Australia, but despite this more than 300 advance tickets have been sold just in Brisbane, so they even had to schedule an extra sitting! I really hope this will be fun, but if not there always is the afterparty at Jorge :-D

Like last semester, the International Students Section held a welcoming party at the Student Guild Bar, and as it was a great party last year a bunch of us decided we would go. It's always good to get to know some of the new arrivals in Brisbane as we'll most likely be hanging out with some of them the next couple of months. Also like last semster there was about 70% norwegians attending the party, which really wasn't surprising at all...
I went over there around 8p.m and met up with Thomas, Tommy, Kim and several other old friends, and then chatted up a lot of new ones! I really enjoyed myself as there was a good crowd of nice people and everyone wanted a good time. There wasn't as much games and competitions happening as last year, and instead of beeing bussed to the GPO, the afterparty were held at the Port Office Hotel. It's not very far away, so most of us walked down there around midnight for more fun and good times :)

So to summarize I had a great time last night, and even woke up early this morning without feeling any after effects of the alcohol, and that is always a good thing. Especially since I needed to do a bit of studing today, and had to answer heaps of questions about diving as the theory part of my PADI course starts tomorrow morning at 08:30. Since I have to get up really early I'll be going to bed very soon. But first, I'm gonna watch the latest episode of Enterprise!

As my parents have now left I could finally spend some time with friends again, so this friday I had my first real party in the Valley since I moved here. Runar and Karianne had a vorspiel in their apartment here at cathedral first, and we then checked out several cool places elsewhere. Later in the night I ended up at the Family, Brisbanes only real club, and I must say the change in music was extremely welcome, despite the $10 covercharge. Everywhere else in Brisbane they only play Top40 or R'n'B music of which most fall into both categories, and I'm quite frankly getting a bit tired of it. It really wouldn't hurt them to do something different once in a while...

The last couple of days have been really great, and chrismas eve was even better than expected! I got up early and went over to Courtneys place where Benedicte and Cathrine had made christmas-rice-porridge, including the almond and a marzipan-pig for the finder. Then we spent some hours walking around in the city doing the last of the chrismas shopping before I dressed up and went to Christine and Mariannes christmas-party.
Christines brother was visiting from Norway, and as he is a chef he was put in charge of the food, and what a meal that was! We got all the traditional norwegian christmas dinners with the required side-dishes, then we socialised and drank Aquavit and Cognac before 'Santa' showed up with gifts for everyone! We ended a great party by watching "Flåklypa Grand Prix" on a big screen tv. It really was a great norwegian christmas in Australia :-)

With no school and no work my days are filled with fun and lazyness. I just got in after spending some hours by the pool, the best hangover-cure there is :-)
And hangover-cures is good to have these days as all of this semesters exams are over so the last week has been filled with various end-of-semester and going-away parties. The largest party yet was last nights official end-of-semester and graduation party by the Norwegian Student Klub. Me and Are first joined a vorspiel/birthdayparty at a house out in Sunnybank where Marlene, Hanne, Mette, Silje and ... lives. Around midnight we taxied back to the city to meet up with the other NorSK people at the Port Office Hotel. The place was completely packed when we arrived, and there were lots and lots of familiar faces, so it all became a great night out!

Of the other parties the last week we've been hanging out for beers at Murphys Irish Pub, sipping assorted vodkas at Chill and partying wild at the infamous Down Under Bar. This is how I enjoy life these days :-)

Last night the Swedish Society Halloween Party took place, and it was the coolest one ever! It started with everyone gathering outside of QUT to catch a bus out to Castle Rumble, a location especially made for events like this. Everyone had really worked on their costumes so it all looked really great! There was naturally lots of devils, zombies and vampires attending, but also some samurais, a couple of skeletons and some militia types. The price for best costume went to Kim dressed as Freddy Krüger, with Simen beeing runner up as a Were-wolf. After socializing and playing some games at the Castle the busses took us back to the city for a kick-ass afterparty at Hotel Orient. This was great fun and I hope there will be more parties like this to come :-D
Pictures will come in the gallery at Swedish Society!

This have been a weekend of real scandinavian partyfun!
On friday the Swedish Society held a Launch party for the newest product from Absolut Vodka, namely the Absolut Vanilia. As a launch party it wasn't anything special, but for a friday at the Port Office it was great! And it was made extra cool by having everyone wear white, which gave the entire function a kind of 'theme' in addition to the vodkathingie. It really makes the party stand out enough to make it memorable and extra fun! :)
The vanilia vodka was just that, vodka with vanilia taste which just as Vanilla Coke are not my preffered choice or taste. But I did discover that the Long Island Icetea served here is really great! It's $10 a drink, but then you get a big drink with 10cl alcohol, and its not like any of those pre-mixed LongIslands that you get most places in Norway.

Then on saturday there was another launch-party, this time celebrating the creation of a city-board for ANSA, the Association for Norwegian Students Abroad. It was held at Pig'n'Whistle Riverside with the entire biergarden reserved for us. Lots and lots of norwegians and swedes showed up, with some bringing american and australian friends as well! Again I had a great time at an excellent party with happy hour prices all night, norwegian party-music and the screening of the video from the Wineyard-excursion that took place earlier in the day. After Pig'n'Whistle closed at 3a.m most of the remaining partyers went over to Exchange, but by now people were starting to head home, and so did I. After all I do have lots of assignments to complete this week.

The german journalist, Florian, held a BBQ party last night with heaps of people. It was really great and there even was a bunch of australians attending, so all of us made lots of new friends!
Most of the people at the party talked about going to the Port Office, but as we left in groups noone seemed to appear there but us. The Thomas'es then went for a kebab and to bed while me and Tommy moved on to Embassy where we met some others norwegians, with whom we then went to Exchange when Embassy closed at 3.a.m. It wasn't the best night out, but when we afterwards went home to Tine and Bjørnars apartment at RiverPlace to have a nachspiel, and got to watch the sunrise from a balcony at 28th floor it was all wonderful :)

I *really* want to move to one of those apartments soon... especially since I won't be able to afford that level of luxery anytime soon back in Norway. We'll just have to see what happens after christmas when our lease expires :)

Tonight was the start of the annual Brisbane River Festival, with the greatest fireworks of the year taking place. Susanne invited me and Tommy to the River Place Apartments where Bjørnar lives, and it was a totally awesome show. Best of all was the serial fireworks from Story Bridge and the military jetfighters coming right at our building and then using afterburners and barely clearing the top. All of us were amazed! Bjørnar lives in the 28th floor, so we had almost the best view available and were totally enojying the best fireworks show ever! I'm still amazed at how they managed to synchronize the fireworks with the music played at Triple-M FM radio....

Afterwards everyone partied around in the building, amongst others with some colombians at 24th floor, omg those girls were nice :DD Later everybody went downtown, mostly to the Down Under Bar and Exchange, for more drinking and a wonderful night out. I just love the River Festival! :)

In most of my classes there are 2 compulsary grade-counting assingnments in addition to the final exam, the first ones were due now during week 5 and 6 of school, and the others in week 11 and 12. Yesterday I finally completed the last of the assignments I had due around now, and that begs for celebration!
As it w