Flamin' Nora

According to the Central Statistics Office, the most popular baby names in Norway in 2009 were Emma & Lukas. Aaah. That was 597 Emmas and 556 Lukases in case you're into such details.

In Oslo though, the trend was quite different. Top girls' name was the very Ibsenesque NORA. I have yet to meet a baby called Nora, which when I think about it is a lovely name but as I associate it with my childhood friend's Auntie Nora, I'm prejudiced against it.

On the other hand, I've no prejudice whatsoever against the top boy's name. No sirree. No preconceived notions about it at all. Nothing wrong with a bit of tradition in the old naming game, and Norwegians are as entitled as any to keep certain names in the family. I myself was named after my Granny who died the week before I was conceived - I was a honeymoon baby after a wedding after a funeral.

Anyway. Tradition and conformity is very much alive in the Oslo baby-naming game. The most popular name for baby boys born in Oslo in 2008 was MOHAMMAD.

And this week, Ireland looks like paradise

HIM: So last night I emailed that guy in the US about job opportunities.

ME: Oh good.

HIM: He got back to me immediately.

ME: Oh yeah?

HIM: Yeah.

ME: And?

HIM: Well there's a a really great job going...

ME: It's in Nigeria isn't it?

HIM: It's an engineering manager role.

ME It's in Nigeria isn't it?

HIM: A great job with a promotion.

ME: It's in Nigeria isn't it?

HIM: Yep Lagos, Nigeria

To those who think we're adventurous, we're not really that adventurous. Ever since I married, the word 'Nigeria' has struck fear in my heart (and every other bit of me). I've met people who've lived there and while all have survived with interesting tales to tell at dinner parties, every single one of them took up golf while living there.

I mean Manila was no picnic, but with Nigeria I think of the chances of kidnapping, malaria, golf addiction and nervous breakdown (mine) as infinitely higher whilst living amid poverty, corruption, a very depressing outlook for the country and a generally low value on life. They don't like journalists over there either.

I am of course open to any positive comments any reader might have on life in Lagos with three young children. Honest I am. I await the deluge.

p.s. My daughter had her appendix removed last Friday. But really, surgery on a child in a clean hospital where you trust the staff and are treated with care, patience, a private room and, most importantly, competence, all of it paid for out of one's income taxes is boring compared to the threat of Nigeria. Isn't it?

Not an Irish Nomad in Ireland

So we're not moving to Ireland. My husband turned down the job in the hope that something else nearer our expectations will come up over the next few months. This means that we have recently turned down opportunities to move to both Denmark and Ireland, effectively rejecting our homelands - for the time being. The Copenhagen opportunity was easy to turn away from as the job required my husband to move companies and to be in the US for one month at a time. As tempted as I was by living in a city as cosmopolitan and culturally-rich as Copenhagen, and the chance to exchange my bad Norwegian accent for an even worse Danish one, doing this while not being able to live together as a family, wasn't an option.

The reasons we're not packing all our worldly possessions and labeling them for shipment to 'Ireland' are many, both emotional and practical. I won't go into the practical here. Suffice to say, that we tried to picture ourselves living in a small town in the west coast, almost as far from our families as we are now, adjusting to a very different schooling system for a couple of years, feeling foreign where we should feel at home, and complaining constantly about the weather. We tried to view Ireland as a challenge in the same way we viewed the Philippines back in 2001. The trouble with Ireland is that we could picture it and it wasn't a pretty picture. When leaving the comfort of our lives in Norway, we'd ideally like to move somewhere very different that will be difficult to compare directly, that will be new and exciting, making the move defendable to the three children that will have to adjust to it too. Somewhere in South Asia or the Middle East perhaps. We know Ireland too well. We know that other than the people themselves, at the moment, schooling, healthcare, transport and yes, even the bloody weather, would be several steps down from what we have here. It was only fear of the absence of an alternative that would have prompted us to accept that at this juncture.

So I've realized that the expat part of me is as dominant as the Irish part. That I love my country but don't want to live in a remote part of it. That may change as I get older and our family matures - and maybe if I get a novel published too - but for the moment, I'm not yet ready to become 'The Irish Nomad in Ireland'. Not yet.

Let's hope we've made the right decision. My mother, father and close friends are at least certain we have.

And the talk of moving begins

Over 80% of Norwegians consider Norway to be a near-perfect land to live in according to a survey discussed on NRK radio the other day. I imagine the small percentage that doesn’t see the relative Utopianism of the UN’s best country to live in, in the world, has never lived abroad. They’ve definitely never lived in Ireland, that’s for sure.

Every time I speak to my parents they recount tales of doom and gloom, and not just on the subject of the weather and the latest of their acquaintance they took to the church (my Dad’s euphemism for going to a funeral). No, the recession is biting hard over there, with unemployment soaring, public services failing and a property boom turned most emphatically bust. While there at Christmas I couldn’t believe the number of people I met casually who spoke of family and friends forced to work three-day weeks, something in Norway that is associated with quality of life and balancing work and family, not being forced to take pay cuts.

Novelist Anne Enright has written very eloquently on the topic of Ireland’s recession in an article entitled ‘Sinking by Inches’ in the London Review of Books here.

Coincidently after coming across Ms Enright’s piece yesterday, I received an email from a young Irish engineering graduate who has just arrived in Oslo with two friends in search of a better life*. ‘Our journey was motivated by a sense of hopelessness with the Irish economy, and a desire to check out the grass on the other side,’ he said, citing Norway’s low unemployment rate as one of the attractions here. I left Ireland 16 years ago with similar motivations and qualifications. There was no hint then to people like me that the Celtic Tiger was gestating for its short but dramatic life.

If this young man stays for the next year or so, I believe he won’t want to ever leave Norway. In my heart of hearts I now don’t want to either. But yet we are, as a family, committed to exploring other parts of the world and feel that there are other challenges ahead. We’d especially like the chance to live again in South East Asia where two of our children were born and where we would all benefit from exposure to very foreign cultures whilst enjoying a sense of adventure together.

My husband’s job finishes here in the summer and we expected that over the next few months he would get to consider his options in terms of location and job. What we didn’t expect was the phone call that came last Monday evening. His employer wants him to take up a position in …Ireland. Not only Ireland, but a very remote part of the west of Ireland; you could hardly move me further within the western world from a branch of H&M. And so on I joked as I coped with the shock.

We don’t want to go, for many reasons, some complex, some simple, both personal and professional. No matter where we move, leaving our near-perfect lives in Norway will be a wrench, but I have tried to console myself that in leaving we will resist the urge to 'play it safe' and open ourselves up to new possibilities and life-affirming experiences. What I didn’t bank on was going home. Will keep you posted.

*If by any chance someone reading is looking to employ an english-speaking Mechanical Engineering graduate, particularly if you have any connection with the bioengineering/biotech industries, I know a young man who'd love if you'd read his CV.

Is shopping the new Norwegian pastime?

My gym is located in Sandvika Storsenter, one of the largest shopping centres in Europe. In the weeks before Christmas, I had to give up on trying to get to a Saturday lunchtime class as the chances of getting a parking space in one of the two car parks was so small. The experience of even trying to park was very stressful. Honestly, people really play dirty in these car parks, beeping horns, cutting you off and staring at you menacingly; it is NOT for the feint or even kind-hearted. On several occasions, I drove down there only to return home 30 mins later, saying; 'Well at least I tried. Sorta.'

So you'd think now with Christmas over, people would be broke, fed up of shopping, and out enjoying the sunshine on their skiis. But oh no! Yesterday, I only managed to get a car space in the second car park I tried by sheer chance and the fact that there was nobody driving intimidatingly behind me. I was still in the car park when the class I planned to do started and then I had to walk several miles from one end of the Senter to the other; it was like walking through a theme park, complete with balloons, queues and claustrophobia. A theme park where the theme was shopping. WHY anyone would drag their kids into this hell hole on a saturday, I cannot figure out!

I know it's cold outside folks but still; wouldn't staying home and reading a book or drinking yourself to oblivion, or both, be much healthier than navigating a shopping mall with thousands of other families? And what about your reputation for making the most of the great outdoors, whatever the weather? Why did you choose instead to queue for over-priced cups of coffee in cardboard cups, bribe your children into submission with balloons and Build-a-Bear boxes, and trudge around a crowded mall, away from the wonderful sun which shone so brightly?

Well, after a feeble attempt at using the treadmill, the only shopping I attempted was for ski wax. Having seen the queue in the sports shop, I was relieved to find the shelf with the wax suitable for the current temperatures was completly empty. Who bought it, I don't know because it sure looked to me like half the population of west Oslo was shopping not skiing yesterday. The other half seemed to be prowling around the car park or stuck at the roundabouts on the approach roads to the Senter. It was crazy!

A couple of hours later, we took to our skiis en familie and did not see one other skiier. The sun shone in a pure blue sky and the landscape looked stunning. So the question is: Have we become more Norwegian than the Norwegians? or are Norwegians now choosing shopping over skiiing as a way to spend their saturdays? It seems the answer may be 'yes' to both.

Who's that girl?

Madanna has stolen my hat! See? I'm not the only woman to have thrown style to the Siberian wind! Now I wonder where I can get hold of one of those mesh scarf things she's wearing on her face. Seriously. I need one. (Probably Louis Vuitton. Sigh)

Bet she's not getting through the cold spell - oh how innocent that sounds - by baking muffins the kids won't eat because she put apple in them (an attempt to make them healthy), so she's going to have to eat them all herself as anything else would be wasteful, in between stuffing her face with chocolates leftover from Christmas - a late gift, hence not already scoffed - and wondering if Tuesday is too early in the week to open a bottle of wine (it is by the way if you have to stand at the bus stop the next morning in the dark with the temperature at -22 degrees C).

Gosh these arctic temperatures are making me grumpy, frumpy and lumpy :( Glass of wine anyone?

My new hat and other winter essentials

We've just returned to Norway after two weeks in Ireland where the weather was the coldest in 28 years making snow and ice front page news. The media bandied about phrases such as 'bitterly cold', 'a cold snap', 'arctic conditions' and my personal favourite, 'gardai are advising motorists to stay at home' with abandon. Nothing like miserable weather to distract a nation from a miserable recession and rising unemployment. As we drove to the airport, I saw Irish snow-covered mountains for the first time - very pretty - and snow flying horizontally towards the car windscreen for the first time - strangely pretty. It may be cold back in Oslo, I thought, but at least they won't run out of grit over there. I've also got four pairs of snow boots in Oslo and a car with winter tyres on. They do help.

Then we sit ourselves in the car at Oslo Gardemoen airport and the reality of being back in real arctic conditions, as opposed to the damper Irish version, is obvious. Sitting in the car are a tube of skin creme and tube of Blistex. Frozen. Rock hard. In this kind of dry cold (-16 degrees C) these items, defrosted and regularly applied, are as essential as food and water.

In the car, my husband remarked on the fact that it was so cold his ears were stinging. I could hardly hear him through my new ridiculous deer stalker hat (seen above on a model who looks 1000 times better in it than I), but at least my ears were warm. Unlike my nose. There was a time I wouldn't have contemplated placing such an item on my head but now practicality wins; better look stupid now for a short time, than stupid forever with frost-bitten ears.

So we're back for our last winter in Norway (again) wondering if in another six months we'll get to move somewhere warmer. In one of the Christmas cards awaiting us on our return a friend tells us of their upcoming move to Singapore. Lucky buggers. No chance we'll get to relocate back there in 2010 but I'll settle for somewhere else in the region, for a place where I don't have to wear ridiculous headgear, and where my car doesn't double as a deep freeze.