I'm here!

I arrived in Trondheim on Oct 28, which already seems like a long time ago...

I started work on November 3rd at Nordic Semiconductor, so I have just started my 3rd week at work. The first week at work I didn't know anything, so now I know just a little more than nothing :) Fortunately there are lots of new people at work and we're all learning new things at the same time.

I found an apartment after about a week of looking around. Here is a couple of pictures of the inside. Not much furniture yet, so I'm working on that

The weather has been OK, so far, or else I'm getting used to being cold. I walk to work about a mile from my apartment and so far I haven't frozen to death. Yesterday we had a nice little snow storm but most of it melted already.

If anyone ever needs advice on how to assemble furniture from Ikea, I'm your man. So far the only thing that really stumped me was when they wanted me to pound some metal shelves together with a block of wood under the hammer. I didn't have any blocks of wood. I didn't even have a chair. I finally substituted a catalog from Clas Ohlson, which is kind of the Swedish equivalent of merging Radio Shack with Sears and taking out all the stupid stuff like clothes.

It's the only store I've ever seen where you could buy Disco lights, PC power-supplies, metal studded bicycle tires, frying pans and candles all in the same place. Anyway the catalog worked as far as the shelves are concerned. Suffered a bit of damage to the Sport/Friluftsliv section in the back however.

I'm sure that the neighbors downstairs will be glad when my metal pounding phase is over.

I've found that Norwegians have 4 basic food groups - fish, pizza, hamburgers, and Mexican food. I have tried the pizza, both fresh and frozen but I've skipped the fish and hamburgers and I'm actually afraid to try the Mexican food. Food in the grocery stores is fairly expensive here, food in restaurants is off the charts. I've paid as much as 230NOK for a medium sized pizza and a beer for dinner, which is the equivalant of about $40. Needless to say I don't eat out that often.

Anyway that's my report for now, more to come....

Miles