Stavanger – Norway
Oct 1, 2007 Photography, Technology, Travel
Norway was my next travel destiny after Gwalior trip this April. I have been waiting for a long time to run-away from this tengshn-filled IT world. No trips in May, June and July meant that I have been waiting for something big to happen, never thought that I would end up travelling to the top end of the hemisphere.
This one was to a place called “Stavanger” in southern Norway, a small city with the Size of 1/17th of Chennai and a population of 120 K. Stavanger houses the Global Headquarters of Corporater AS, where I am designated to work for a couple of weeks. Stavanger is a beautiful place to live in, its lush green everywhere cold air blowing all the times, the place is quite windy, but you can manage if you are not as thin as me.
When I first got the info that I will need to travel to Norway, I was kinda worried, I thought is this some sort of punishment for not doing the work right , I thought Norway is completely filled with ice and I will shiver to death if I had to go there. But only when i m there I came to know that Norway is not that bad (at least Stavanger is not that bad). I never got a chance to see the ice. It doesn’t mean that it doesn’t snow in Stavanger. It jus means that you are reading an august-posted-blog in December (wake up ? ). The good climate in Stavanger is because of the hot winds from the Atlantic Ocean. So if you end up in this beautiful place in the end of august you have 2 choices to call yourself, Lucky or Extremely Lucky.
Technology and Norway
Norway has a lack of human density, for a city which can be called as one by global standards (back in India, Stavanger will not even qualify for town-status) there are very few people to live in. If you walk on the road you won’t see a human being for miles. And this is a country which tries to compensate its lack of human resources with technology. Almost every shop in Stavanger has a website (bolia.com, kvadrat, deal.no, datakjeden, it goes on…). Wherever we go you will end-up finding a wide amount of automation in systems that were otherwise considered to be manual. I suppose there are very few police (I am even afraid if there are any), becoz I have never seen a police guy during my whole trip, other than the guy who was diverting traffic towards airport on the last day. It seems that all traffic violations will be billed at you residential address. Hotel check-in and check-out is automated and you are debited on your credit-card (I don’t know about others, but at smarthotel.no it is the case). It s really funny that you don’t find these designations in Norway which we consider to be assumed as default in India, I have listed some of there
- Lift Operator
- Bus Conductor – (I am from Chennai, yes)
- A guy issuing tickets for parked vehicles
- Traffic Constables
- Room Boy
- Security (Other than the guys with big guns at NATO office)
Norway and India are at two different ends when it comes to population, one is suffering from decrease other by increase.
Prices and Lifestyle
“Norway is Expensive”, there is nothing much you can do about it. So don’t try be creative to find best deals. The best thing to do in Norway with prices is to forget about it , stop converting NOK2INR or stop going out. I did the first two and it did really worked out well.
Here is a small indicative of prices in Stavanger
- Coffee = 20 NOK (140 INR vs 5~10 INR)
- Coke(1/2 lt) = 32 NOK ( 224 INR vs 20 INR)
- Cigarattes = 80 NOK (560 INR vs 40 INR)
- Beer = 60 NOK (420INR vs 63 INR)
- Mentos = 15 NOK ( 105 INR vs 15 INR)
- Bus Ticket (Stavanger to Sandes in a Volvo) = 27 NOK (200 INR vs 20 INR in Chennai, 40 INR in Banagore)
The prices are relatively 10 times of what they cost in India, Its infact quite simple to manage, just assume you are spending Rupees instead of Kronas, 20 Rs for a coffee: ok, 27 rs for bus ticket : ok
About the people, Norwegians are shy and nationalistic. They are not open to talk to strangers, but they are helpful. If you ask them a route to some place, they wont say ” I am shy i wont talk to you”,instead they do help you 
. One strange think about Norwegians is their proud feeling about their country, they are always kind of asking you about Norway, well thats funny.
To be honest, the strangest thing about Norwegians is their insatiable appetite for acknowledgment:
“What do you think of Norway?”
“What do you think of Norway’s nature, athletes, politicians, musicians and (yes, I really heard
this one:) women?”
“why one earth someone expects me to comment about Norwegian politics in 3 days”
I’m not going to claim to be in possession of any facts or statistics, and perhaps the fact that I’m not a Norwegian and that I personally knew very little about Norway before travelling here, colors my impression. However, I do think the truth of the matter is that the vast majority of the Earth’s inhabitants do not like or dislike Norway. Quite frankly, it’s not that they don’t think much of Norway—it’s that they don’t think much about Norway.
And, to be honest, I’m envious by this kind of proud feeling among people.
Nature
Fjords
Fjords are crazy formations of sea that you will find only in Norway. Fjord looks like a river but it has the source at the other end. They are a formation of sea towards the land. The complete western coastline of Norway is covered by fjords and they are beautiful.
Pulpit Rock
Pulpit rock is the destination point for any traveller to Stavanger. its a view of a fjord from a cliff top 600 mts above the sea level and a near 8 km mountain climbing track.
Its sheer fun to be on top of cliff to view the fjord, with a fear of being blown away by air.
DalsNuten
Dalsnuten is near Sandes (* a twin town of Stavanger), its a small mountain( i am not used to the word “hill”, otherwise i would have called it a hill). this is a place where my mountain climbing skills are put to test and certified a “fit”. Its a easy climb, i was shivering in the beginning but i was able to catchup and do it with ease later on.
Cricket for Brazillians
We found friends with the two brazillian guys Christien and Roberto who had come into stavanger to wind-up a business deal with us. We were discussing about lifestyles in our countries, prices and a wide range of things. Finally we went to a restaurant to have pizza, and we were discussing about sports, thats when Roberto quoted about cricket saying
“Oh that strange game where you hit the ball with some kind of a stick instead of kicking it…” I just managed to imagine some batsman kicking the cricket ball to boundary… ha ha ha . Then it was hard time for both of us (maddy and me) to explain the game with little references to baseball. I was really amazed when someone asked about cricket to me, in here its a part of your daily lifestyle that you can’t imagine a person not knowing about cricket.
One more amazing fact about the people there is, many of them know about “Vishwanathan Anand” more than “Sachin Tendulkar”, well that hurts me badly.
Beach
Our team mates had planned a team outing on a friday . This is the funniest one, from the morning everyone were talking about this team outing at the beach, I am from chennai, this is where marina beach and few other big beaches are located and I frequently travel to the arabian coastline too, So the moment someone says the word beach , the only thing that comes to my mind is open sea with atleast a 180 degree view of the horizon. But when we went 2 the team outing at stavanger i came to see the smallest beach i have ever seen in my life, i think it should be termed as backwater rather than a beach.
Way back home
Tor Inge, our CEO was grateful enough to pick us up from the hotel and drop us at the airport at 4:00AM in the morning, just when he has a flight to catch at 8:00AM in the morning. Well i got only one word to say “Great”.
I was a nice morning flight from Stavanger to Frankfurt. Back at Frankfurt we had a nice time shopping with the euros left with us. The flight back from Frankfurt was really empty , there was so much space inside. Maddy told me that its quite rare to find flights being so empty. There was a nice looking air-hostess. You can find beautiful girls anywhere on earth but these airhostess are just awesome. They look soo confident but still listen soo patiently to whatever stupid things we say. They smile a lot. There was one beautiful indian-look-alike ,who came to me asking for drinks, i ordered a coffee. She gave me a make-
yourself-coffee kit comprising of cream, coffee and sugar. Just when i thought of protesting over such unconventional way of serving coffee she smiled at me broadly and moved on to the next row. Again who wants to waste the short interaction time with a beautiful girl complaining ? Damn these airline guyz might have been recruiting psycology phds.
Landing back in india was really a happy moment, and i reached home by some 12:30 am
Tags: Brazil, Corporater, Krishna, Madhavan, Norway, Stavenger, Travel Blogs
Tok.. Tok.. Tok..
Mar 10, 2007 Uncategorized
Tok.. Tok.. Tok.. I am knocking the door at home my home… its 3 am in the morning and its shivering like anything…. i m not able to remove the socks off my foot…. i m extremely tired. my mom will wake up in a couple of mins to open the door. Its been the third consecutive week of resultless work for me since i have started fiddling with that stupid software…. Yesterday evening i was training someone on the same damn thing… (Hilarious right… you don’t know something and train someone on it…. )
Day by day this new assignment is growing in size. and you know what life was much easier and comfortable a couple of months ago. now its like i am running in a race, which doesn’t have a deadline , neither an end point…… and the race is only with yourself… (its exactly the same…i don’t find any kinda help anywhere on earth.)
College life was fun……. you know… you don’t care a shit about anyone else on earth. you do a lot of things but all of them end up in no use… its like you mess up so much with everyone and walk away cool saying…..” Final year eanna appidithan….” . You cant say that now….if you do they will say…. “Fresher nna ippidithan….:-(” …. you got a brand name for yourself……
Those were the days when you thought … i should be punctual to office…. i will go to office sharp at 9 and leave exactly at 5:30. and once you joined you came to know that you will never reach office by 9 and will never leave before 9.
Life has taken a u-turn. that IT-Krishna has gone missing …. he is probably doing his engineering somewhere … You know the better part of the joke…. i never studied in engineering… never did i carry a book to college…. but now… you will find user manuals… advanced configuration guides…. ajax research papers…. all of them in My Bag…. I don’t know how i call it my bag… since all these things are here, i cant term it as my bag any more…. say its the bag of the web-server-guy. life sucks …. you cant help it…
This IT life has changed my life miserably in the past 9 months… i very much miss the days of college…..
Tags: Krishna
Lifeblog post
Feb 4, 2007 Uncategorized
Sun 04/02/2007 23:17 Hi guys i an writing this blog in my new nokia n72…
Tags: Krishna, mobile blogs, N72
Bangalore This Time
It has been long since i had posted any travel blogs. This one is for Bangalore TRIP, a relatively short one , and of course a miserable travel back. i don’t know how, but i have developed this weird affinity towards, facing hard times while traveling home, all the fun and enjoyment i get i traveling and visiting places gets lost in the way back home( Its like i m not happy to find my way home. )
This was in mid-December, i was already in between a hectic schedule. I was busy in some personal activities, new-site went live, was busy fixing up some new scripts that i wrote a couple of weeks back, etc… it was all busy times…. i really needed a desperate break and arun calls up one fine day saying that , he has an interview at some company in bangalore (*for those who dont know about Bangalore, more than
50% of the world’s blue chip companies run out of here…) and said like, he s moving alone and needed a company….. “why not, with pleasure….:-)” and here we go, i got the reason to slip outta chennai one more time….
I made it to the bus stand, very earlier than arun on that day, i was like waiting for this guy to come for close to an 30~40 mins…. i m very serious about timings…. i don’t like waiting for others, i will only make others wait…. he he , this guy made it very late…. we fortunately found some couple who were about to sell their tickets, got the tickets…. what next, board the bus…. it was close to 10:30 in the night… i thought we will reach comfortably by around 7/8…
ITs all old memories crepping in when the bus crossed Sastha Inst., ” College life was fun na…. ? i miss it badly …” it was around 11 odd then. I pulled on the bedsheet and went into sleep………………….damn,… . that driver halts the bus in 4:30 in the morning, 4:30 AM ….. :0….. imagine, i have never seen such a time in my life for more than 4 months…. and you are in Bangalore during december, just imagine the amount of chillness we would have felt…. i was shivering like anything .. my jaws were making a new music every time i tried to speak… We had to goto a place near kemp-fort, it was don’s brother’s home… so we called up don’s bro… he guided us to that place… we took an auto… we told the auto driver, not to go very fast as we were already shivering….. never in my life i have seen an auto driver flying through the city roads… he was cruising in 60’s and 70’s…. atlast he stopped near some kids shopping mall…. someone had opened a tea dhukaan outside… wow… tea… tea means fun…. and having a tea in that climate is like crazy. we went to that place… i slept for some time.. had some nice breakfast made by don’s anna… arun in the meanwhile slipped for the interview…. i ran through the streets a couple of times but did nothing….
Arun came back from the interview…. we headed to the shopping mall… did some jaldi-jaldi shopping…. i wont forget what arun asked for in the shopping mall…. I was desperatley searching for some toys for a 1 year old kid…. while .. he was searching the same for a 25 yr old kid ( what he calls as ‘boy’ ?)… amazing…. the salesman was stumped when we asked we need a toy to play for a 25 yr old….. then arun says ‘boy’ …. (I will give you the choice to guess who that 25 yr old kid is…?) …. forget it … kemp-kids reduced the thickness of my credit card by a few millimeters…..
Now its time to do some routine shopping…. we stepped out with don’s bro and his friends…. JP, kathir, etc… we ran thru… all city malls…. BG road… city center/…..lots of other places…. and the gud thing is … were never bought anything…. thats the spirit of shopping….
wat else… lets find our way home….. sweet home….. but how is the question… this is severely unplanned travel… i didn book any tickets, neither did arun…. i had to be in office the next day… i din have a choice…. We went to bus-stand… trying to find some unknown travels… jus to get them saying “NO TICKETS”… we were feeling very hungry… so we thought of having some food… and continue the ticket searching…. food …. one bad thing about karnatake… food is always worser than your least expectations…. nothing changes here… we managed to have what others called as food… and continued our ticket searching…
We found some guy who was selling tickets for some unknown travels company… i bought the tickets…. and we ended up walking some 5 kms to get to the place where the buses stop for that “unknown travel company”.,… arun is one guy , who worries about comfort, quality and brand… in my travel dictionary these words never exist…. “So no matter, what he says , or whatever i feel….. i was not gonna worry about it”… and that “Unknown-travels” guy…. takes so much time to bring out buses…. that u end up going pissed off by their service…. but theres’nt much of a choice either….
We ended up in chennai by some 5~6 am in the morning….. thats all for this edition of my travel blogs…. will catch u in some other place….
Tags: Arun, Bangalore, Krishna, Travel Blogs
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