Some words in the English language are a lot of fun to say or look at or both. Skedaddle, poppycock, aviation, jiffy, moron. Today’s Daily Prompt (I’m obviously not doing them daily) is Jiffy. I am a person who walks fast and likes to get things done quickly, but I never say I’ll get things […]
Pest. Another “false friend“. A pest in English can be a bug or a rat, or a very annoying person. But “pest” as used in Norwegian changed the destiny of Bergen. “Pest” in Norwegian means the plague. The plague or Black Death (in Norwegian, Svartedauden) was first registered in Norway in Oslo 1348, and the […]
Living in Norway means living with all kinds of traditions, some ancient, like bonfires on Midsummer’s Eve, and some much newer, like Valentine’s Day. Here in Bergen, the joke is that if you do something twice, you’ve created a tradition. Celebrating Halloween is becoming a tradition, one for the 21st century, and has been supplanting […]
Of all the life advice I’ve ever been given or heard, the only one I’ve ever faithfully followed is the admonishment to stop and smell the roses. I did that last when I was visiting the museum garden at the university of Bergen earlier this month, even thinking to myself, “Roses. Stop and smell.” When […]
“Gate” is one of those words that linguists call “false friends”. The word looks alike in two different languages but does not have the same meaning. So a movable barrier in a fence in English is a street in Norwegian (pronounced as GAH-teh). I’m bilingual, equally comfortable with my mother tongue English, and with Norwegian. […]
Disastrous: Causing great damage. Fortunately (heh, see what I did there?), I have never experienced a disaster. Neither of the natural kind, nor the personal kind. And that leads me to the word’s origin: From “disaster” which means “ill-starred” or to be ill-fated because of the stars. Modern astrology is more psychological and less about […]
I sometimes wonder if I’m able to savor. I seem not to have passions, things or feelings or beliefs that grab me with all my being and all my fiber and that I cannot and will not let go of. So I let go, perhaps a little too fast, denying myself the opportunity to savor. […]
I’m one of those people who covers her refrigerator in magnets, as seen on part of my fridge door: Typical me: An empty to-do list because I forget I have it Some are functional, meaning they actually hold something in place, like temperatures and times for a couple of favorite dishes. Quite a few are […]
Bergen just broke a weather record from 1952: The number of consecutive days with precipitation in June. In 1952 it was 24. This year it was 26; we had rain every day from June 1 through June 26. I pity those who will go through breaking this year’s record because clouds and wet every single […]
I was asked by a foreign-looking gentleman today, who spoke broken Norwegian, if I knew the area. And I do. He wondered if any of the buses at the bus stop we were at went to the bus station. Perhaps oddly, they don’t. It used to be that all buses eventually ended up at the […]
A Roll in the Universe 