He is amazing, folks! I just have to tell you that he really provides, it's the dead honest truth. I am filled with so much love for him. He's the best. He is so personal and so full of grace and forgiveness. And the best thing is that he really cares, for each and every one who believes in him. Learn to trust God and you will never regret giving things to him!
I am a total control freak, and I always want to do things my way, but recently God has shown me again and again that after I have done my part all I should do is trust in Him to do his. That has NOT been easy for me, especially during exam times. However, he has pulled me through and all I can do now is thank him for the incredible work he has done in me and praise him for his glory.
It suddenly dawned on me that I have yet to introduce someone quite important to me. And since it's such a nice day for it, I decided that in stead of finishing my lab report I want to tell you about Mr. X:
The Mysterious Mr. X
The Mysterious Mr. XFirst of all, the pseudonym "X" was introduced in the earlier stages of our acquaintance and has stuck with the gentleman to this day. He is my greatest comforter and supporter. He makes my days brighter and my life happier. He reads, plays the drums like a pro and listens to tons of good music. Nearly every day he tells me a random fact about the world. He likes history and wants to travel. He knows two languages and is 2 years older than me. Most importantly - he is a passionate believer who constantly encourages and helps me on my walk with God. To me, he is perfect :)
I am one of those people who very often has "special" moments. Moments where I make a complete idiot of myself and if no one is around to see it I enjoy telling people about it afterward. It becomes my little story and it makes them smile, so I am just happy to tell anyone who will listen about my great stupidities :D
Here is an brilliant example of one such moment:
I was sitting on my bed this afternoon, talking to my friend Jamie. He had to wake up really early today because of lectures and I was emphasizing with his great pain. To me getting up before 11 seems like torture no one man should endure, but alas he was forced into it by necessity. Anyway, while I was emphasizing I thought it would be a great idea to get some breakfast (about time too, it was 1 pm after all), so I got off my bed, stretched out while still thinking how lucky I was for having my lie in and...
I woke up on the floor from an emerging panic-filled thought: "Where are the muffins?"
Then, calming down a series of other thoughts followed: "Wait, what muffins? And why am I on the floor? My head hurts :( !!! Ooooh"
Everything came back to me within seconds. I had gotten dizzy and fallen on the floor hittin my head twice. Laughing hysterically at this incident I explained all of it to Jamie, whereupon this conversation followed:
Jamie
wow lol!! That sounds exactly like something that would happen to me.
Here is an brilliant example of one such moment:
I was sitting on my bed this afternoon, talking to my friend Jamie. He had to wake up really early today because of lectures and I was emphasizing with his great pain. To me getting up before 11 seems like torture no one man should endure, but alas he was forced into it by necessity. Anyway, while I was emphasizing I thought it would be a great idea to get some breakfast (about time too, it was 1 pm after all), so I got off my bed, stretched out while still thinking how lucky I was for having my lie in and...
I woke up on the floor from an emerging panic-filled thought: "Where are the muffins?"
Then, calming down a series of other thoughts followed: "Wait, what muffins? And why am I on the floor? My head hurts :( !!! Ooooh"
Everything came back to me within seconds. I had gotten dizzy and fallen on the floor hittin my head twice. Laughing hysterically at this incident I explained all of it to Jamie, whereupon this conversation followed:
Jamie
wow lol!! That sounds exactly like something that would happen to me.
I liked the muffin part in particular, that's kind of how i think when i wake up
Me
same here, just completely random thoughts that are either left overs from a dream or just something my head creates to smooth the transition from sleep to awake
Jamie
yep, although i never thought about them that logically
Me
it just came to me, must have been the hit to my head :P
Jamie
haha, sounds great! Who needs drugs?
Me
yh, just hit your head on the wall and you'll go to muffin land in no time
We are indeed a weird bunch :P
Porcupine Tree - Shallow
I don't remember
Did something in my past create a hole?
Don't use your gender
To drive a stake right through my soul
I live to function
On my own is all I know
No friends to mention
No distraction, nowhere to go
Shallow, shallow Give it to me
Scissors cutting out your anger
Shallow, shallow No good to me, not if you bleed
Bite your tongue, ignore the splinter
This city drains me
Well maybe it's the smell of gasoline
The millions pain me
It's easier to talk to my PC
Shallow, shallow Give it to me
Scissors cutting out your anger
Shallow, shallow No good to me, not if you bleed
Bite your tongue, ignore the splinter
I don't remember
Did something in my past create a hole?
Don't use your gender
To drive a stake right through my soul
I live to function
On my own is all I know
No friends to mention
No distraction, nowhere to go
Shallow, shallow Give it to me
Scissors cutting out your anger
Shallow, shallow No good to me, not if you bleed
Bite your tongue, ignore the splinter
This city drains me
Well maybe it's the smell of gasoline
The millions pain me
It's easier to talk to my PC
Shallow, shallow Give it to me
Scissors cutting out your anger
Shallow, shallow No good to me, not if you bleed
Bite your tongue, ignore the splinter
As you all very well know, I've been trying to read through a list of books that have long been recommended to me by both friends and family (and BBC) as books you "have to read before you die". There are many great titles in that list, but only a few jewels that I would keep reading again and again. One of these jewels is "The five people you meet in Heaven" by Mitch 
Albom.
The book starts with the end. A strange place to start a story, perhaps, but as Albom says "All endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time." The story tells us about Eddie - an old maintenance worker at Ruby Pier, an amusement park near the ocean, who dies on his eighty-third birthday while trying to save a young girl from a falling cart. Eddie awakens in the afterlife remembering nothing from his last seconds on Earth except that he felt two small hands in is. He has no idea whether he managed to save the girl or not and thoughts of whether his life was worth anything in the end torment him throughout the whole story. He soon realizes that Heaven is not at all like the Eden he had imagined it to be, but rather a place where your earthly life is explained to you by five people who were in it. Five people who's path you changed forever, or who might have changed yours likewise. Strangers and loved ones who wait for you in their own version of Heaven to tell you their story and give you a lesson to learn.
Throughout the book Eddie starts understanding what his life meant to those around him. Seeing more than one incident from another point of view helps him accept the things he could not come to terms with before and see things, and people, in a different light. In the end he realizes that the ordinary life he thought he had settled for was the one he was meant to lead all along.
I believe this book is one of the most powerful stories I have ever read. An ordinary man leading an ordinary life that touched so many others whom he never knew. It' s a story that inspires, a story that comforts and a one that stays with you for the rest of your life. I highly recommend reading this book. It's good one for the soul.
Albom.The book starts with the end. A strange place to start a story, perhaps, but as Albom says "All endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time." The story tells us about Eddie - an old maintenance worker at Ruby Pier, an amusement park near the ocean, who dies on his eighty-third birthday while trying to save a young girl from a falling cart. Eddie awakens in the afterlife remembering nothing from his last seconds on Earth except that he felt two small hands in is. He has no idea whether he managed to save the girl or not and thoughts of whether his life was worth anything in the end torment him throughout the whole story. He soon realizes that Heaven is not at all like the Eden he had imagined it to be, but rather a place where your earthly life is explained to you by five people who were in it. Five people who's path you changed forever, or who might have changed yours likewise. Strangers and loved ones who wait for you in their own version of Heaven to tell you their story and give you a lesson to learn.
Throughout the book Eddie starts understanding what his life meant to those around him. Seeing more than one incident from another point of view helps him accept the things he could not come to terms with before and see things, and people, in a different light. In the end he realizes that the ordinary life he thought he had settled for was the one he was meant to lead all along.
I believe this book is one of the most powerful stories I have ever read. An ordinary man leading an ordinary life that touched so many others whom he never knew. It' s a story that inspires, a story that comforts and a one that stays with you for the rest of your life. I highly recommend reading this book. It's good one for the soul.
Ok, so I have attempted to read this book online but failed miserably as the copy they have doesn't actually correspond to the real book. It jumps over chapters and there are misspellings and misprints everywhere, half of the sentences don't have endings and there are letters in some that just don't belong. So I went to my favorite bookstore to seek a hard copy, yet the only one they had had a Twilight-styled cover that said "Bella and Edward's favorite book, read the original now", and as I could not get myself to buy a book that has anything to do with Twilight I ordered a different copy which will hopefully arrive within a week. Meanwhile I have watched 3 different film adaptations of the book and can say right now that I much preferred the 1998 version to the 1992 and 2009 versions. I also found a song about it sung by Kate Bush. Never heard of her before but the song is good and I guess it helped her earn some money. Well well, as I remarked earlier she is not the only one taking advantage of this book's popularity.
My gosh how quickly the time goes by. Today I woke up and realised that so many things have changed just in a matter of days. Funny how that can happen, right? It's no longer March, I'm no longer in England, I've finished reading 1984 and my holiday will end in just 3 weeks. Everything is changing and I'm not sure whether it's for the best or for the worst. I'm in a state of in-between where nothing is certain, but I'm not even sure I want it to be certain because somehow it seems that as soon as I find out what the future holds it will lose some of the air of mystery around itself. It will be like the past - familiar and safe, but also boring in a sense. Yet there is a need inside for something...constant...something I can depend on so that if everything else fails and falls to a million bits and pieces, like it has done so many times before, that I will still have something left to hold on to. Wow that sounds so melancholy but I guess that's what happens when you've suddenly got so many hours a day to think about stuff like this.
So today I spent at least 5 hours trying to understand these 2 chapters in the Bible that were just difficult to grasp. These were Judges, chapters 11 and 12. Can't say it was time wasted, but it was definitely very challenging and somewhat frustrating. When your Bible is a New-Norwegian translation and you are reading the old testament, things become very complicated in a matter of seconds. 
The language is just a bit...tricky, to say the least. Luckily I did not have to despair for long because of the great invention of the Internet!!! I googled the NIV version and read the chapters, but then a new problem arose. I just did not get it. Have you ever had that happen to you - one minute you are reading something and you understand everything and all is fine, and the next you're just lost and you can't seem to grasp anything? It's like you kind of know what it's saying but then again something isn't quite adding up and there seems to be a deeper meaning with all of it that you just don't get. Well, that's what happened to me anyway. Never mind all the people and places that have oh so difficult names (which I often seem to confuse...I always confuse city names with people names :S), but the random vow and the brutal sacrifice just don't fit in let alone make any sense.
Luckily the Internet had some answers for me. As did my pastor who happened so conveniently to be online when I was stuck with all these questions. At the end of the day I finally grasped some valuables from these chapters and here is what I learned:
1) Never make rash decisions or vow's. And whatever you do don't treat God as a vending machine saying if you give me this then I will... God knows what he wants from you and he will tell/ask whenever and whatever he sees fit
2) All can serve God, no matter what background you come from, what your relatives and family have done you are not them and it is up to you whether you are going to choose to serve God or not. He has a plan for everyone and he never puts anyone in "booths" of useful and useless. Therefore neither should we put each other in those booths, for none of us are better than others
3) If you are in a quarrel with someone, do not attack them with aguments and anger, you are then stooping to their level. In stead, try to show the other party their unreasonableness by calm explanation of your point of view, if the other person hears you then you can resolve the issue calmly and no one will come to harm.
4) Trust in God in all you do and ask for His advice. Only He knows all and will tell you what the right thing is. Doing it your way without consulting God is very silly and often you end up in a situation you could have easily avoided if you had just sought God's word and listened to Him in the first place.
The language is just a bit...tricky, to say the least. Luckily I did not have to despair for long because of the great invention of the Internet!!! I googled the NIV version and read the chapters, but then a new problem arose. I just did not get it. Have you ever had that happen to you - one minute you are reading something and you understand everything and all is fine, and the next you're just lost and you can't seem to grasp anything? It's like you kind of know what it's saying but then again something isn't quite adding up and there seems to be a deeper meaning with all of it that you just don't get. Well, that's what happened to me anyway. Never mind all the people and places that have oh so difficult names (which I often seem to confuse...I always confuse city names with people names :S), but the random vow and the brutal sacrifice just don't fit in let alone make any sense.Luckily the Internet had some answers for me. As did my pastor who happened so conveniently to be online when I was stuck with all these questions. At the end of the day I finally grasped some valuables from these chapters and here is what I learned:
1) Never make rash decisions or vow's. And whatever you do don't treat God as a vending machine saying if you give me this then I will... God knows what he wants from you and he will tell/ask whenever and whatever he sees fit
2) All can serve God, no matter what background you come from, what your relatives and family have done you are not them and it is up to you whether you are going to choose to serve God or not. He has a plan for everyone and he never puts anyone in "booths" of useful and useless. Therefore neither should we put each other in those booths, for none of us are better than others
3) If you are in a quarrel with someone, do not attack them with aguments and anger, you are then stooping to their level. In stead, try to show the other party their unreasonableness by calm explanation of your point of view, if the other person hears you then you can resolve the issue calmly and no one will come to harm.
4) Trust in God in all you do and ask for His advice. Only He knows all and will tell you what the right thing is. Doing it your way without consulting God is very silly and often you end up in a situation you could have easily avoided if you had just sought God's word and listened to Him in the first place.
Just came back home for Easter holidays. Already met up with two of my friends, which is better than expected (no
offence). Is good to be back but every time I visit there seems to be so much news I need to catch up on. Relationships ending, relationships starting, people who start working, people who quit working and start school in stead, and also people who stop talking to each other for some obscure reasons. Sometimes it feels like I've fallen so far behind I can never catch up. It's like I exist in a different world and when I come back to this one I am an alien who has to accommodate to new rules and customs. It can be quite annoying sometimes. It's good to have my friends there to make the transition go smoother, but I wish I could be better at keeping in contact with them while I'm away. That is something I definitely need to improve on, specially since I have every opportunity to do so as they are all frequent facebook visitors.
This Easter I have great plans to actually finish planning my inter rail trip for this summer. I need to look up ways for us to get to our first destination, order all the tickets and hostels etc., and look up recommended tourist attractions in each country we're going to. It will be a challenge to find all the places we want to see and ways to get there, but I think it'll be alright because both Ingrid and I can be very organised at times and so hopefully together we can plan something that will end up being a wonderful trip :) I also want to get in shape for Hadrian's wall as it now seems that I am coming along to that as well.
Don't even fully know what Hadrian's wall is or where it is but apparently 8 days will be enough to see it. Those 8 days have been promised to me to be filled with a lot of walking, so I kind of need to prepare for that in advance, so that I don't collapse on the first day and have to go home immediately. That is why I plan to start running 3 times a week. Hopefully I'll stick to my plan this time.
Somewhere in between all of the jogging and planning I also have to work and revise for my exams. All of my exams are crammed into 2 weeks so once again I will have to resume to living in the library. Seems like it's my permanent habitat, that place. Oh and I have to write a lab report while I'm home too, man this is going to be a busy holiday. Life is never easy, is it?!
offence). Is good to be back but every time I visit there seems to be so much news I need to catch up on. Relationships ending, relationships starting, people who start working, people who quit working and start school in stead, and also people who stop talking to each other for some obscure reasons. Sometimes it feels like I've fallen so far behind I can never catch up. It's like I exist in a different world and when I come back to this one I am an alien who has to accommodate to new rules and customs. It can be quite annoying sometimes. It's good to have my friends there to make the transition go smoother, but I wish I could be better at keeping in contact with them while I'm away. That is something I definitely need to improve on, specially since I have every opportunity to do so as they are all frequent facebook visitors.This Easter I have great plans to actually finish planning my inter rail trip for this summer. I need to look up ways for us to get to our first destination, order all the tickets and hostels etc., and look up recommended tourist attractions in each country we're going to. It will be a challenge to find all the places we want to see and ways to get there, but I think it'll be alright because both Ingrid and I can be very organised at times and so hopefully together we can plan something that will end up being a wonderful trip :) I also want to get in shape for Hadrian's wall as it now seems that I am coming along to that as well.
Don't even fully know what Hadrian's wall is or where it is but apparently 8 days will be enough to see it. Those 8 days have been promised to me to be filled with a lot of walking, so I kind of need to prepare for that in advance, so that I don't collapse on the first day and have to go home immediately. That is why I plan to start running 3 times a week. Hopefully I'll stick to my plan this time.Somewhere in between all of the jogging and planning I also have to work and revise for my exams. All of my exams are crammed into 2 weeks so once again I will have to resume to living in the library. Seems like it's my permanent habitat, that place. Oh and I have to write a lab report while I'm home too, man this is going to be a busy holiday. Life is never easy, is it?!
Lately I've been a bit absent...to say the least. Work has been crazy and being a Vice President in a society takes some time as well. Sometimes I lose focus, and even a bit of faith in myself and in the world. At those times it's nice to know that it's not up to me, but up to God. He is the glue that holds the whole world together. He also holds me together, all of me, all my life and even all the little pieces that make me, well....me. Wanna know how I know this? It's all about Laminin!
"For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together"
- Colossians 1:16-17, The Bible
"For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together"
- Colossians 1:16-17, The Bible
Books I'm in posession of
Books I need to buy/borrow
Complete Works of Shakespeare
Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
Middlemarch - George Eliot
The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
Dune - Frank Herbert
Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
Moby Dick - Herman Melville
The Inferno – Dante
Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
The Thorn Birds – Colleen McCullough
Идиот – Ф. Достоевский
Ревизор – Н. В. Гоголь
Золотой Телёнок – Ильф и Петров
A Farewell to Arms – E. Hemingway
Three Comrades – Erich Maria Remarque
The Splendors and Miseries of Courtesans - Honoré de Balzac
Hatter's Castle – A. J. Cronin
I have returned at last back to my beloved little "wreck" of a house that is always falling apart in one way or another. I'd get another place, but...I love it here and so do my housemates :D It's a house where nothing matches and no one is normal. Where the freaks and the geeks occupy the living room with their laptops and Ipods and sit there talking to each other on facebook chat while simultaneously watching Friends on tellie. It's a house of board games and music nights, of tea cups and all-year tinsel. I love it here :D
Well, just 2 days left and then I'm off to England again. And this time I'll have Internet so I'll keep you a bit more updated :)
For now I'm just packing all my belongings wondering how in the world I'm supposed to both fit it all in one suitcase and fail to exceed the 15 kg weight limit. It is mission impossible!
Here's the tune helping me:
For now I'm just packing all my belongings wondering how in the world I'm supposed to both fit it all in one suitcase and fail to exceed the 15 kg weight limit. It is mission impossible!
Here's the tune helping me:
Grossly overdue, but still. For New years I visited my best friend and her family. I was there for a total of 5 days.
This time there wasn't alot happening. The trip took longer then it should because of various delays (specially on the way back, it was due to our bus hitting another car. No one got hurt but the car driver wouldn't let it go even though it was his fault), but I got there and back safely.
The coming of the new decade was celebrated with our youth group "Gnisten", and the only eventful thing was the traditional "running like the wind and diving into the snow because the fireworks have fallen are are shooting in your direction".
Other than that, we played a few board games (which I lost at....all of them). And we did a bit more planning for our Interrail xD It's going to be the best thing ever!
After coming home it was back to work for me - gotta earn some money for my big trip!
This time there wasn't alot happening. The trip took longer then it should because of various delays (specially on the way back, it was due to our bus hitting another car. No one got hurt but the car driver wouldn't let it go even though it was his fault), but I got there and back safely.
The coming of the new decade was celebrated with our youth group "Gnisten", and the only eventful thing was the traditional "running like the wind and diving into the snow because the fireworks have fallen are are shooting in your direction".
Other than that, we played a few board games (which I lost at....all of them). And we did a bit more planning for our Interrail xD It's going to be the best thing ever!
After coming home it was back to work for me - gotta earn some money for my big trip!
Gay as in happy. Christmas is finally upon us, our saviour is born and all the world can rejoice for his coming. First of all I want to wish you all a Merry Christmas, I hope that wherever you are and whomever you're with you will enjoy this day to the fullest.For me Christmas day was a boring one, but only because Norwegian customs call us to celebrate Christmas eve in stead. So after work I came home, helped my mother pack the last present for our cat and put it underneath our tree, before I started on the turkey (I am the only one who knows how to stuff it right, so they just let me do it ;p). After dinner we gathered round the beautiful tree and opened our presents.
I got everything I wished for with a few surprises as well. For example, this year Santa gave me a potato peeler :D I think he's trying to send me a message, but I'm not sure whether it's "you've been a naughty girl this year so get started on those potatoes to redeem" or "you're such a good girl and you're cooking is wonderful - here's something to make it easier". Oh, and did I mention that the it peels the potatoes itself? No? Well it does, and that's why I absolutely LOVE it :D No more potato peeling for me, weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. Gonna turn Irish and have potatoes every night ;)
What did you guys get? Anything fun?
Anyways, gotta go....potatoes are waiting for me :P
First day back at work. I felt like I'd never worked there before, everything seemed so unfamiliar and strange and I hoped against all hope that the day would go by effortlessly so that I could have some time to get back into my routine. But of course - all hell broke loose.
There were tons of customers all whom were buying a million things, getting through each one took ages and that created a long cue, plus I was extra slow today because I'd forgotten every code I once knew. People were getting frustrated and I was getting stressed. When one customer had exceeded her credit card limit and wouldn't give back the groceries saying it was a system failure on my side, I thought it was just bad luck, but when the scales on my counter broke I knew that this just had to be one of those days. I was right, as more crappy situations came my way, and I didn't even get to have a proper lunch even though I'd had to wait for it for ages. I also had to work overtime because loads of people came in 5 min before closing time and I had to stay there until everyone had left :(
I'm so thankful that this horrible day is finally over...more work at 8 tomorrow, goodie :(
There were tons of customers all whom were buying a million things, getting through each one took ages and that created a long cue, plus I was extra slow today because I'd forgotten every code I once knew. People were getting frustrated and I was getting stressed. When one customer had exceeded her credit card limit and wouldn't give back the groceries saying it was a system failure on my side, I thought it was just bad luck, but when the scales on my counter broke I knew that this just had to be one of those days. I was right, as more crappy situations came my way, and I didn't even get to have a proper lunch even though I'd had to wait for it for ages. I also had to work overtime because loads of people came in 5 min before closing time and I had to stay there until everyone had left :(
I'm so thankful that this horrible day is finally over...more work at 8 tomorrow, goodie :(
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