Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Your questions answered, episode III

Alright, so where were we? ~ Yes...

From gkb:

As someone who lived in North America and returned to reside in Iceland, what differences do you notice most between the two places (both good and bad, of course)? Apropos of this, what commentary, suggestions, or advice might you have for someone who is considering moving to Iceland?

~ There are loads of differences, I couldn't even begin to list them all, so I'll mention the first that comes to mind: it's a lot easier to meet people and make friends in North America than here. Icelanders are notoriously reticent, they have very set social circles usually made up of people they went to school with, and they seem to sort of fall into an easy pattern of socializing with the same people all the time. It can be incredibly difficult to penetrate that; however, if you do manage to make friends with Icelanders they are generally your friends for life and incredibly loyal. So my advice - if you're serious about staying here, give it time. It takes ages to integrate.

From Ruth:

Just wondering about how much time you spend blogging daily (reading, commenting, and posting) and if you ever feel it takes away from the "real" things you have to do in life to the point where you have short-changed these more important things and must cut back on the blogging to gain a better balance.

~ It varies. Maybe an hour on average. Let's just say that I get the things done that I need to get done [e.g. I don't let blogging interfere with my deadlines], but when I do have surplus time or a slow day I do tend to fill it with surfing the web or reading posts from my fave bloggers, even though the time probably could be better spent elsewhere. Writing posts doesn't take me a very long time as a rule [I'm a fast typist and things just sort of spill out of my brain, although I do revise, at least once], and posting for me takes priority over reading and commenting elsewhere. These days, for example, I'm scrambling to finish various tasks and assignments, and while I do post regularly [which seems to be necessary for my mental health, incidentally] I don't have much time to read.

From Steve:

If we`re not limited to one question per customer, what tickles yer funnybone?

~
Googlies! And EPI. He's the funniest guy I know - everybody likes to be around him because he's got this great sense of humour. And I'm lucky because I get to live with him. We laugh a lot.

From Don in Seattle:

I have been visiting Iceland for over 30 years, and I have seen many changes within the economy there. But nothing quite like what has happened within the past month in the Icelandic financial markets. Has there been a dramatic change in the daily life there, or is life going on as before? How is the average Icelander weathering this financial storm?

~
You know, it's bizarre. Everybody outside of Iceland keeps talking about this serious financial crisis that has supposedly befallen us here, that our banks are going down the toilet, the króna is going the way of the dodo bird and whathaveyou. Yes, our currency has depreciated in value, yes share prices have gone down dramatically ... but the same has been happening almost everywhere. Call me naive, but I don't think it's that much worse here than in other parts of the world. We've been told that food prices will rise by 20 percent in the next few weeks, but that's because food prices are rising everywhere. And yes, we have pretty high inflation now, but Iceland has had high inflation before and survived. I expect that some people are in deep shit because they've taken massive loans and their property, cars or whatever have suddenly depreciated in value, or they have foreign debt which has suddenly increased. However, the Icelanders are remarkably sanguine when it comes to economic upsets. Their favourite phrase is "þetta reddast", which basically means "it will work out one way or another". And often it does. So [to get back to your question] essentially it's business as usual around here.

From Jay:

I imagine the diet of the average Icelander to be high in seafood. How safe would it be for me, as a person with serious fish allergies, to visit Iceland? Is fish everywhere on the menu?

~ Well, unless you are so allergic that you cannot breathe in the air of fish being cooked [which I'm told some people are] you should be OK. Just avoid anything that says fiskur on the menu. There will be other options, for sure.

From Jon [via email]:

I am sure you have addressed this before, but how do you survive the gloominess of winter?

~ Jon! You've just reminded me that I never did get back to my loyal readers on the subject of the SAD lamp and its effectiveness, even though I promised to. [So thank you.] ~ To be perfectly honest, the winters here are deadly. For me it's not really depression in the mental sense, but rather an extreme sluggishness that starts around the beginning of November and persists until, say, the end of January. Problems concentrating, lack of energy, and boy is it hard to drag my ass out of bed in the mornings. I used to take massive vitamin doses with ginseng but I stopped ... and finally this year EPI and I went out and got the SAD lamp. I have to say, it works wonders. Within three days I was back to my normal self. My father-in-law got one too, and felt like a newly-minted two-shilling piece*. ~ Oh, and I also take cod liver oil.

And the final one, from Runa [via email]:

When I was young my parents didn't put up our Christmas tree until Christmas Eve as it was 'tradition' not to put up decorations until the 24th in Iceland (my dad was Icelandic and adapted the tradition to fit in with 24th/25th thing). We loved it and the neighbours thought we were weird. My mum was frantically rushing about on Christmas Eve when we were in bed decorating the house, on top of everything else she had to do for our lovely Christmas morning surprise on the 25th. So you said in your blog all the houses were decorated earlier - is this true? Was my mum rushing about on Christmas eve giving herself a mind blowing work schedule for nothing?

~ It is tradition here to put up the tree very close to Christmas, on the 23rd or the 24th. However, the other decorations go up much earlier, like at the beginning of Advent [four Sundays before Christmas Eve]. So if your mother was putting up the tree AND all the other decorations, then yes, I'd say she was giving herself a mind-blowing schedule for nothing. Or that she thrived on stress.

Okay! That concludes our little Q&A session, thanks for your input everyone, I'm feeling so much better now as far as the mojo thing is concerned ...

EXCEPT THAT IT IS CURRENTLY SNOWING
I couldn't believe it, I looked out earlier and everything was white. And here I thought we'd left winter in the dust already. With any luck the white stuff will all be gone tomorrow; in fact if it isn't I'm filing a formal complaint. Today was a gorgeous day as seen from the window, very enticing, enough to have you believe that spring was here and that it was OK to go out running in shorts and a t-shirt [like one guy I saw today - you've gotta hand it to the Nicelanders, if there's sun they'll take their clothes off]. Right now we have -2°C [28F] and SNOW, and sunrise was at 6.20 am, sunset at 8.41 pm.

* Yet another Nicelandic idiom.

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