As I was saying in the previous entry, my friend Nina was staying with us before catching her plane(s) to go back to school in Grand Forks, ND.

Thursday morning, we stopped by the supermarket to get some Norwegian chocolate for some of her friends, before going to Eidsvoll to catch the train to Oslo Airport Gardermoen. After checking in, we went to get an ice cream each, and chatted for a while. Then, it was time for me to get back home, to clean up the house, and to go shopping.

Saturday, in the late afternoon or evening, we are having a friend of Sylvain from France over for dinner, along with his family, and another family. For the past week, the seven of them have been driving around Norway, admiring Norwegian mountains and fjords, etc.

For the occasion, we’re serving "fårikål" (lit. "mutton in cabage"), one of Norway’s national dishes, so they will at least have tasted a small part of my country’s "culinary tradition".

Anyways, back at the house after grocery shopping, I get a call from K, a guy I’ve known since before he was born (I’m born in April, he’s born in August of 1983), because K’s parents came to visit us while he was still in his mother’s tummy. I hadn’t seen him in a little over two years, when I’d brought Sylvain to Homme for the first time.

Coincidently, he was staying at Gardermoen between flights, because he works part time as an air steward, and because his next flight would go from Oslo the next morning.

After all this time, I wouldn’t pass up the occasion to see him, and he ended up eating dinner at the house, before I drove him back to the hotel.

Wednesday was my first official day back to university after summer vacation. When I woke up that morning, I knew I would have a busy day ahead of me:

Before getting on the train to go to Oslo, I was supposed to give my house keys to my friend Nina. She was going to spend the night at our house, because she was flying back to Grand Forks, ND, to start her last year of college.

In all the excitement, I’d forgotten to remind her of the name of the station, and so she didn’t get off when she was supposed to (Eidsvoll verk stasjon). Fortunately, the train turns around and goes back only one stop after (Eidsvoll), but I was getting on, and so I only had about 30 seconds to give her my keys before going to Oslo.

On campus, I was meeting one school friend for coffee - the coffee shop there makes the best white moccachino ever! - before she was going to the airport to get her kid. After that, I was having lunch - home made chicken salad by yours truly! - with two other school friends, before meeting with my MA thesis adviser.

I ended my day at the university with the first lecture of the semester...

July 31 - August 3, I volunteered at the Oslo Science Fiction Festival, mostly as a "door woman", but also performing other miscellaneous tasks.

It all started last summer, when I read a newspaper article about the festival in the national newspaper Aftenposten. At the time, I thought, "That might be fun!", but didn’t think about it much before I came over it again a few months ago.

The festival is a merger between Norcon and ShadowCon, two former annual Norwegian sci-fi conventions, and has been in its current form for the past two years.

After I showed my interest for volunteering at the festival, I participated at one initial meeting, where I got to know the (faces of the) people running the show. I wasn’t able to participate at the second meeting, however, because I was in the south of Norway at the time.

When I showed up at the festival last Thursday, I expected to be only working at the festival, and not participating in any of the events. My boss, however, encouraged me to find thing of interest, and we would work my shifts around these. And so, I was able, amongst other things, to watch some segments with the Scottish author Iain (M.) Banks, one of the guests of honor, including a book signing, where I got one "mainstream" (his word, not mine) fiction novel dedicated to myself, and one sci-fi novel to my dad.

The volunteers compensation was one "credit" per hour, which could be used for buying food in the cafeteria, a festival t-shirt and a reusable water bottle.  We also had access to the "Ranger room", where we could relax between shifts, and make sandwiches if we were hungry. Those of us working late afternoons and evenings, were given dinners made by the "volunteer uncle" (a guy whose responsibility was the wellbeing of the volunteers).

At the festival’s closing ceremony, there’s a lottery, where the winners can choose amongst a certain number of prizes. Those who win first get the best ones, etc... Personally, I found nothing of interest amongst the prizes, so I didn’t buy any tickets, but some went a bit overboard, and bought entire lottery books... And of course, they won lots of things...

All in all, a good experience, despite the random train schedule, an the fact that the national train company NSB chose this period to start working on the rails going north from Oslo...