At the Base

YWAM…! Where else does a bunch of tweens dance their harts out to to LMFAO's "Sexy and I know it" barefoot in the snow outside the living room where there's a Hawaii party on? -and all are sold out for Jesus Christ, that's why they're there in the first place! Sexy? Yeah, I know it! ;x

Italian Beer, Memories and Music

Went to town to pick up the last Christmas gift today. Ran into so many familiar faces that it was like a Christmas party on its own. Some radio station played Coldplay’s “Fix you” yesterday. I don’t have the record, didn’t wanna go online to get the track but wanted to listen to them… so I found an old copy of “Parachutes” instead. It had to be that record or Norwegian Madrugada. Man, it brought a feeling I hadn’t had for ten years! In the evening I was out shopping for another Christmas gift when I suddenly remembered that I should have been at a party right then! I returned to base, changed clothes and drove off, but first I managed to get myself a new set of Derwent sketching pencils before I left the shop. Party! –I haven’t laughed that much in a long while! Great to see those old peeps again. Just like ten years ago! People are getting older, getting married, getting more settled… memories of “those days.” We were out all the time. Out in the mountains. The woods were reserved for weekday training. The mountains were reserved for life. –Both the verb and the noun.

I was out to get some chocolate for some people I cherish today. And since I cherish myself I got a couple of exciting looking bottles of beer that I had with dinner while indulging in some lovely and stupid fast driving on Top Gear. One of the bottles was from Italy. It had a dude in a suit and a hat on the label. I thought he looked like a Mafioso; mom upgraded him to Mafia-boss. Had to have a cigar afterwards. It was amazing. It reminded me about ten years ago… Those days… when we were still allowed to smoke cigars with our coffee in fancy little coffee shops, before smoking became so dangerous that they had to cover the shelves in the shops where cigars are kept, so that no one be tempted to by some. Those days…

Afterwards I stood outside the house in a big down jacket, having met with a rather large collection of great people within the last 24 hours, had exciting Mafia-beer and watched fast cars for dinner; I could hear Coldplay through the wall from my stereo and feel the Monte Christo and the crisp air and hear the snow. I came back in and as I sat down by my desk I felt the characteristic smell of old-school sketching pencils.

Sometimes we dream about the past. Future or past; I’m as guilty as anyone, but this one is different. It’s one of those full-circle, sensing the start of something new, I’ve been here before but this is just a short stay. You’ve gotta collect all of your experiences to pack the most power into the next punch. I’m a decade older, I’ve learned more but am re-visiting past excitements. New excitements.

So I got this book by Henry Kissinger called “On China.” I remember when Kamer in Seinfeld was gonna try to act scary, “I know Henry Kissinger!” The text on the back of the cover starts like this: “Forty years ago almost to the day, President Richard Nixon did me the honor of sending me to Beijing…” One of my good friends commented on a controversial post I placed on Facebook, “Harald, supporting controversy since 1979!” I’d write that in Kissinger’s comment box for that opening-line! You just know it’s gonna be a good read! –And you’ve gotta admire Kissinger’s honour-culture in how he speaks about his former boss.

Had a look at a book about one of my great heroes in the bookshop today. His name is Fridtjof Nansen. He was the first to lead a skiing expedition across the Greenland ice-cap in the late 19th Century, and he won the Nobel Peace Price for his impressive humanitarian efforts. A great explorer, a great statesman, a great scientist, a great writer an illustrator, a great communicator; a great inspiration! The book said that he had a hard time finding meaning in the triviality of society. I guess his dreams were bigger. –Dreams for eternity, while here in time. We share the same birthday, many of the same passions; and I’m starting to understand, presumably a whole lot mor

I love being back in 2001, re-charged and excited! Now, a toast for 2012 and the rest of eternity!

无聊!

So, we've had this old house since 1930. It'll be the base for the next 100 also.

Sis got married in 2008. She married one of my old friends. He's great!

I've been in and out of the country the last couple of years. When I've been home I have been staying at the old room. At the room with my book cases, most of my record collection, the stereo and the huge battle sword standing right by my bed.

Sister's room next door is empty. Well that is, I'm filling it up with books to become a library.

Since I've been mostly abroad since 2005 I haven't really noticed properly till lately… How boring it is when Sis is not around!



Sorry, not our house but similar colour...
(Villa di Medici, Tuscany, ca. 1470)

Telephone Terror

“Rrrrriiing!”
Picking up my phone I can see that it’s an Oslo number I’m not familiar with.
“Hello?”

Let’s stop there for a moment!

* * *

We were well trained! Our extended family and our parents’ friends used to commend mom and dad for having children with such pristine telephone manners. It happened often, and the comments were proudly passed on to us by our parents.

I remember trying out an old phone at a museum when I was a kid. I must still have been in kindergarten. It was the kind where you’d spin a handle, talk into a sort of funnel, hold another one by your ear and speak a manual operator before getting the correct line. At home we had a dial with numbers behind, I was good at dialling fast! Then the 90’s took the last charm of the industrial revolution away and we got a white phone with a keyboard. It was really practical though and I used it a lot. Phone manners were for those days. Before you could see who called and while all who called still had somewhat noble intentions.

“Haltvik, vær så god!”

Your own surname to identify that the operator or caller had gotten the right line. Vær så god: please proceed, the word is yours or however you want to translate it.

Our little children voices must have sounded tiny! I can remember my little sister using the same phrase. In fact, I believe it must have been the same phrase my grandparents once taught dad. He used the same phrase and must once have sounded as tiny as sis and I.

Then the displays came and you could go, “yo dude!” –Nothing wrong with that, just a new way of expressing friendliness!

But as time passed past us we started getting calls from numbers that didn’t show up on the screen, and when you picked up the phone you’d hear the slight hum of an office in the background. “Am I speaking to Mr. so-and-so?” (Where are your bloody manners!? I tell you who I am, you tell me who you are! –you don’t ask who I am when you’re calling me, and at least not before you have identified yourself!)
“Yes, speaking!”
“I am so glad I caught you in Mr… (–fill in as appropriate). You see I have this wonderful offer for you where you stand to win a cruise for two if you just give us your e-mail address and order a book –free of charge off course; well in fact, I’ll throw in a second book just to show our appreciation for your first order with us in this order-to-win-a-cruise offer we would like to give you just because we can see from our records that two years ago… (–fill in as appropriate something totally un appropriate; or at least something unrelated).

Dad started using a suspicious “Hello…!?” if he couldn’t see who it was. My “hello” started to border on the militant. Then dad stopped picking up the phone if there was no number on the display. And I chose a meaner version of “hello” if I didn’t know who it was.

Then the punks figured the good people out and stopped hiding their numbers. And so it was today, that I got a number up on my screen that had the same effect on me as a blank screen. I was pretty sure I knew what it was. –but if it was indeed something important I would have to pick it up anyway.

It’s been easy as long as I live abroad. “Dude, I live in England!” “Ok, heheh… sorry, have a nice day!” Laugh’s on you dude! Once the police authorities from a little town North of here called me while I lived in Singapore.
“Hello Sir, I would just like to reassure you that we have now found your wife’s purse!”
–well if you’ve found my wife I’m curious cause “I’m not married! I live on East Coast in Singapore and haven’t been in Norway for months!”
“Ehhh…!”

* * *

“Hello!”
(You can hear the office in the background)
“Hello!”
“Who is this?”
“I am calling from…” (–insert name of random electricity company.)

* * *

When I was a kid, municipal counsels and the likes owned electric production plants. Then, spurred by the socialists (!) we were told that it would be more effective for the government and cheaper for the customers if it was privatised. (What they didn’t tell you was that they just signed a deal with the devil (EU and the EEA) to gain more cred for themselves internationally and possibly give them great positions to retire to after leaving Norwegian politics) and the devil answered back that: “cool, you can be down with me if you sell all your belongings to the private sector and follow me. –Long story short: ever since we’ve had unstable energy prices and particularly high prices when it’s cold (Adam Smith could have told you that before electricity was put into wires); and cold it gets in this country! Welcome to Norway! Additionally, it brought about a fair share of telephone-terror as well.

* * *

“So you are calling to sell me something then?”

“No, I’m not calling to sell you something (slightly frantic). I’m calling to give you an offer to switch electricity supplier. May I know which electricity company you are using?”

* * *

Answering "no" to my initial question is straight forward lying!

The truth would be that we live in the same family villa as we have done since 1930. And my father who has spent an entire career as a distinguished engineer in the hydroelectric power production sector in Norway and Northern Europe finds the best deals to supply our electrical wires. I don’t care who sells it, but I’m sad the proceeds are no longer used to maintain schools, public transport and hospitals. Some of you may be surprised by this, due to my stands on social economy and politics. But it’s all about tangible outcomes of policies. If it “benefits both the sovereign and the people” it’s Adam Smith. Our current policies benefit just a few people, which ironically sounds more like Marx to me.

Tell him the truth…? Previously I was that mannered. I would tell him how the situation was and that I was not interested in his services, and I would do it in a kind way.

* * *

“Goodbye!”
“Huh?”
“Goodbye!”
(Hang up!)

The only one more foolish than a fool is the one who quarrels with a fool…

* * *

It felt good! We (family and friends) had joked about what to say to these sales people several times. I had suggested a procedure that would sound something like this:

“Hello?”
“Hello! Is Mr. Harald Haltvik in at the moment?”
(Answer in breaking voice on the brink of crying…)
“No! (...) He… he died in a motorcycle accident yesterday!”

Surprisingly, it was our family that found it hilarious and our family friends that found it too morbid. Most people there were laughing so the dinging room was shaking. –Anything to get back at those telephone terrorist bastards, ey?

But it didn’t feel all good. It felt bad interrupting the guy and hanging up in its own way. Something from our childhood has been dying for a while and it’s not being substituted with something better or more advanced. Mom has almost lost it, dad has lost it, sis has lost it and I’ve lost it; the true unwritten courtesy that governed how telephone conversations were carried out. The remnants of the days when gentlemen lifted their hats when you passed by, when you nodded in acknowledgement if meeting a complete stranger on an otherwise empty street (I still sometimes do, to both the fright and delight of my by-passers.) –The days when the telephone was still something relatively novel and had not been intruded by everyone and everything, and had not intruded “everywhere” itself.

Great neo-soul, better computers, cheaper flights, exciting cigars from new markets and fabulous cuisine from the whole world, accessible everywhere!

But still… some things used to be better before!

On Suicide and the Incredible Gift of Life

I couldn’t sleep and started reading a book I had recently ordered from the US. ‘The Longevity Project.’

I skipped the introduction and went straight to the chapters I was most curious about. The book is built on a life-span study of a large number of people that were born in the early 20th century. –on how they lived, how they thought and how they died. ‘Comprehensive’ is the word!

The book aims to find keys to a long and healthy life, but in the process it also deals with the negative image. Darkness of the mind, timidity, self pity and self destruction; early and violent deaths and the inevitable, suicide.

The book makes reference to a brilliant suicidologist, Dr. Shneidman. Dr. Shneidman did not think too highly about chemical instabilities in the brain as a general explanation to suicide, but was with staggering (and almost spooky) accuracy able to predict personality traits and thought patterns that would culminate in a self-staged goodbye. The chapter went on to describe poison-pills and people who blew their brains out; but also people who lived long and relatively happy lives with few regrets, and who’s only real regret was not to cease more opportunities while they had them.

1 a.m. in the morning this may not be the average choice literature, but whatever you think about it, it is very captivating. Many years ago it would have probably have scared me in the dark of the night, but this time around it’s different.

I have seen enough dark sides of life myself and also through others, to distinguish some of these patterns and personality traits when I come across them. Very briefly we could categorize suiciders into the emotionally motivated and the rationally motivated. There is always an element of emotion; and if we agree that action requires thought, one could even argue that there is also always a rational–or if you will–pseudorational precursor to a suicide.

I used to quarrel a lot years ago with people that claimed suicide to be fundamentally selfish. I still believe that ending yourself is so desperately destructive that one cannot talk about a general rule of self-enhancing selfishness, but with time I have managed to see become aware of some of the grey-zones. There are incidents when I believe a certain degree of selfishness can be claimed if you leave behind strong obligations you have chosen not to complete, but leave to others. But even in these situations the core element of the decision is usually not to pain someone else.

Emotional. Rational.

Emotional can be swift. Something happens and the consequences seems too dire. I heard about a guy who crashed a very expensive car his family owned, plus did a few other small things. His friend who heard the shot told me about it. I am sure his parents would rather want a messed-up son, than one who couldn’t face the bill and ended it. It is strictly not rational and the time-frame it all happened within confirms it. I would call it emotional.

The rational I find easier to understand the mechanics of. It–I believe–is more predictable. It poses as intellectual, but often isn’t. It is like highly selective reading to undergird a very subjective argument in an essay. I know a man who says: “you can always find evidence for what you believe in!” There’s an emotional direction to such thoughts, but the thoughts claim loud and clear: “My name is reason!”

What really struck me tonight was something new.

When you see through the fog you don’t know what the lines on the horizon are; hills, mountains, canyons, valleys? But if you stand there and study every little glimpse of light and shadow the fog gives up, your mind can eventually draw a map of the terrain ahead of you. I have done this myself, after sundown in the winter to match my surroundings to the map when I’ve been lost in the mountains. It works.

What could be more different than emotion and rationale? And do the two have anything in common in a dark and self-destructive mind? I think the fog has let go of so many glimpses of light by now that I’m starting to sense what’s out there. You survive long enough, you watch long enough, you pay attention long enough and you’ll start to see a face–a will. One very determined, tangible evil who once poses as emotion and other times as reason. Gripping the same fundamental weaknesses and lonely parts of the human soul–however different they are–and leading them to the very same place: Life => End, full stop.

Whatever potentials you had left just ran out.

As you start to see him your hair may rise, your pulse increase and fear may come upon you! But it shouldn’t. If you suddenly can distinguish enough of the mountain through the fog, you will know where you are on the map in an instant.

It is encouraging and reassuring! The long-living people in the control-group that were compared to the early suiciders had one regret; all the chances they did not take. The more I see the evil, the more tangible the devil becomes, and he loves hiding! But the stronger you see the shadow, the stronger you see the object who cast it and the light behind it.

Tonight, while not being able to sleep and randomly reading a book, I was reminded about the possibilities of life! –And how some of my own biggest regrets also were not taking more chances. –And that, if there’s a negative and dark image that imitates reason in your life, there’s an even greater God! –And that, when you chose to live, your hindsight will tell you in many years from now, that not living while living was a bigger crime than crashing cars, breaking up, being stupid, failing-while-trying and hoping for the best while the world came crashing down on your head.

15 years ago I spent a year in boarding school of a particular type we have in Scandinavia, while doing a backcountry and sports course. I was rather active. I led the student union, was steeply into the student politics of the school, used the dark-room regularly, sang in the choir, ran off to the nearest mountain for off-piste skiing whenever the snow was falling, had my own keys to the library to prepare work for the union… and distinctly remember regretting after the year was over–at age 17–not taking more chances and getting to know more people.

Seen on Twitter

Famous Last Words:

1. "Hold my beer...watch this!"

2. "What's the worst that could happen?"

The Eurozone, Solidarity for Sale and the Ghosts of Currencies Past

Last Summer I started writing on an essay I intended to put here on my blog. It was going to be a critique of the EU’s Eurozone. I picked my condensed copy of the Maastricht Treaty off the shelf for the first time in many years, and wrote around seven handwritten pages in preparation.

The arguments were going to be built against these points:
1. The Treaty states that the union works to promote “solidarity” between member states. That can for instance mean monetary aid.
2. I got my copy of the treaty in 1994 and it then stated that the member states should work towards a system of one currency. The Euro that we now have. The intellectual architect of the Euro, Robert Mundell, once famously said: “the optimal number of currencies in the world is an odd number, preferably less than three.” He doesn’t seem so clever now! –though I was never a fan before.

The arguments were going to be that:
1. True “solidarity” should monetarily speaking be helping your neighbour attain his best possible position in the marked. That is not done by feeding him with the surplus money from your own industrial production, in a large scale or on a regular basis. It is done by creating a system where he has access to every competitive advantage that every one else has access to!
2. Just think about the massive competitive advantage Greece would have right now if it still used the Drachmas! The country is, monetarily speaking, currently just worth a few buildings and antique monuments. The labour force is hardly employed, so there is very little work that creates monetary worth. Naturally, every high-fly industrialist in Germany wants to bail them out. At the moment, there are a lot of things that are slowing down the growth in the Eurozone, but Germany is not one of them! As it stands, Germany is earning lots on the Euro, combined with very clever politics of course; and Greece is bleeding because of the Euro, but would in spite of slightly bonkers politics still produce goods under private initiatives if it had a proper competitive advantage. That advantage would be called ‘Drachmas,’ and if they still existed they would be so cheap that you could sprinkle your ice-cream with the coins and decorate your sandwiches with the notes. Goods would sell, people would be employed, money would be earned and the people of Greece could get on with cleaning up some of its government offices. I’m not saying everything would be perfect, but they would be a lot better! –and more importantly, growth could eventually become sustainable! Germany would possibly have to work a little bit harder to compete, but Greece would be allowed a position to sell more… sorry, sell anything at all!

An investor and financial analyst was asked on a recent BBC programme if he thought investors would return to Greece if the planned bail-out package is received from Germany et al. He replied that the bail-out package would eventually run out and the willingness to provide credit to a country with close to no marked confidence would be very low. Spot on indeed!

The interviewer mumbled something about the feasibility to return to the Drachmas and the expert nodded and might have said something containing the word “possible.”

I have never liked the word “solidarity” and I think there are many other words that do a better job. It has become old and worn, and it has been applied in too many situations to make sense to any one situation in particular any more. But whatever specific and nice meaning we have been convinced or fooled into believing that it holds, we have learned another less flattering definition as of lately. You see, between nations in close alliance it can also mean: “Pay your neighbour so he forgets he is broke!” –But you should still keep him from employment.

I like that old word even less now!

So, I was going to write an essay as captivating as a thriller on the topic! And believe me, it was going to be grand! It would be flamboyant! It would be sharp and funny like Shakespeare! –Epic like a gothic knights’ tale! It was going to paint a picture of a scarily real farce; as frightening as your least favourite politician and as much a farce as the management at Fawlty Towers!

But I never got there, cause someone beat me to it! The EU beat me to it!


(Way to go!)