Vegetarian
For 14 years now I’ve been a vegetarian. At the time, it seemed it was only odd, washed-up hippies who were into it. Eating choices were more limited then, supermarket shelves did not offer a plethora of tofu varieties, and restaurants could only offer to pick out the bacon from a Caesar salad. That is, in Australia. Here in Norway the situation is pretty grim for vegetarians, although no doubt improving. It’s not yet at the stage of being able to find tofu at a normal supermarket, but luckily my local ethnic has it in stock.
During the Norwegian leg of my fantastic Scandy tour of 2006 I was at a dinner in a cabin in the far, far north. The others at the table chowed down on some kind of moose stew, while my hosts prepared a very tasty wild mushroom stew for The Difficult Eater1. The head chef, the father of a friend of mine, was sitting next to me and was quite befuddled by vegetarianism.
“So, why are you a vegetarian?” came the question shortly after starting. I gave my usual vague answer. “I see,” he replies, thinking for a bit and then earnestly adding, “but how?” He really couldn’t understand how I could physically bring myself to do it. To him it was as if I had chosen a life of celibacy. Conversation moved on to other matters, but after a few minutes he stopped eating, looked at me, and said with a sigh: “well, it’s your life.” In his eyes, not only was I celibate for life, but was now running off and joining an extremist Pakistani madras. Once again conversation moved on, but from what I remember on at least two more occasions he would stop and bring it up again. “But how? I don’t understand.” Shaking his head he would once again add, “well, it’s your life.”
I have met a few veggos here though, one of whom (bless her sweet, adorable soul) gave her life to vegetarianism thanks to Moby. Good to hear that licensing every track off Play was not his only life accomplishment. Oh, and dating Natalie Portman, that has to count for something.
I knew I hated Moby for a reason.
1 On the spectrum of difficult eaters, surely a plain ‘ol vegetarian rates pretty low these days. Try eating with a gluten-intolerant vegan.
17. July 2008More stuff in: drivel
Presentation Templates
At the TLA, we have company-mandated templates which we are required to use whenever PowerPoint must be inflicted upon an audience. There are some fine reasons to have the people in charge of corporate identity managing how employees project the image of the company out to customers. Particularly when the company in question is a massive, sprawling multinational. It’s good to present a uniform face and ‘story’.
The templates however are incredibly inadequate, managing to not only tacitly encourage poor presentation style, but also fail aesthetically. I’m not sure how this works for the company. The slides look ugly and amateurish, and surely cheapens the brand.
I have another bone to pick while I am up here, steady on my soapbox – Typefaces. This same company, with quite a lot of resources at its disposal can’t manage to license a real typeface for use in documents produced by employees. Thus, we must use Arial, in lieu of Helvetica, which is the official typeface for the company. Arial.
… Arial.
If Helvetica is too expensive to license, what’s wrong with commissioning a typeface? Why can’t a big company attend to its own appearance? To its credit however, TLA has a simply brilliant, ageless logo which works well in a multitude of contexts, which I dearly hope isn’t modernised into some meaningless swirl any time soon.
A positive example of attention to appearance which I’m seeing a lot of at the moment is StatoilHydro. They have commissioned a slight variant of a readable, modern typeface. You see it used in all communications from the very top all the way down to relatively informal notices posted around the workplace. Simple, clean presentation designs are used. In one, the only graphic element is the logo placed in the lower-right corner. No unnecessary embellishments, structural aides, gradients, fills or lines. Just the branding and the content with a good measure of whitespace. Winner.
25. June 2008Comment [3]
More stuff in: drivel
PhD thesis accepted
As of a few weeks ago, my PhD thesis was formally accepted by the university, after submission all the way back in November. Naturally, I’m tickled pink, proud as punch, and all of that. My life’s work from February 2004 to November 2007 all bound up into 200-odd pages.
It’s viewable online in fancy-pants Flash format or PDF.
Big thanks to my two esteemed reviewers who provided excellent notes and comments, and a great amount of inspiration to milk it for all it’s worth write up some more.
I am particularly proud of the typography and design of the document which easily added 20 days to the process as I tweaked and tweaked. I think I should like to moonlight as a thesis designer.
26. May 2008Comment [3]
More stuff in: drivel
Life in Norway so far
I’ve now been in Norway for about four months. So far so good. When I arrived it was wet, cold, and dark, now it’s wet, cool and light. I’ve actually found the weather to be quite agreeable, and not as miserable as I’ve been led to believe.
A rare day of sunshine in January, with an icy harbour
Norwegians take a keen interest in the weather, for they love the outdoors and positively gorge themselves on sun. When the sun is out it seems the city’s population trebles. We had the first weekend of sun a couple of weeks ago, and on the Monday the evidence was burnt on to many faces.
Ullevålseteren at Easter
Everyone is a-chatter about the coming Best Summer Ever, which is supposed to be hot and dry. It’s a stunningly beautiful country, so in a way it is a shame that there are not more days of sun for it to be enjoyed. Bergen, for example, is supposed to have on average only 60 sunny days a year. Perhaps it is just as well, because the fewer fine days drive people to make the most of it even more. Certainly coming from Brisbane I took the sun for granted. There, weather is a bit of a non-issue, and one would only really be concerned during the height of summer, whether it might be too hot that day. Now I find myself somewhat obsessing about weather.
Akershus Fortress
I’ve had a few firsts in Norway. I’ve finally fulfilled a life-long ambition to try curling, which is akin to lawn bowls, but on ice. Although infamous for it’s rotund, beer-swilling players there’s decidedly less beer involved than lawn bowls, regrettably. It’s quite a bit harder than bowls, and a lot of fun. I also travelled across my first frozen lake, which was nowhere near as exciting as I had hoped. Still to cross off my to-do list is to participate in a whale slaughter, eat a lamb’s head, hunt a moose and brew my own moonshine.
The curling battlefield
Enroute to Tjeldbergodden
Norway has a very high level of niceness about it. The people are nice. The cities are nice. The language is nice. Sometimes this general niceness can come across as blandness. But overall, the quality of life here is very high, and any complaints I can come up with are fairly trivial ones (like for example the price of booze).
Now to find some beach volleyball action in Oslo, and my life will be complete.
3. May 2008Comment [3]