10/22: Dinner at Bjørnsletta.
I left the city briefly, at least out of downtown, taking the subway to dine at the home of Alan Tiecher, IT consultant for SEKKK Corp., a consulting firm with 300 employees here in Oslo.
We had met in Berkeley, at a Carbon Sequestration workshop last year and kept in contact over email. Alan invited me to dinner, to meet his wife and family and to provide tips on Norwegian interpersonal relationships as I begin my Fulbright research. We discussed my upcoming meeting the following morning with Tomvon, see later post.
Over several beers and a traditional Norwegian meal (cutlet, potatoes, lingonberry sauce), we discussed our different career paths. Alan and his wife, Christina, along with two small children, had travel extensively, having lived in Berkeley, in Chile, visiting South Africa frequently. Alan had spent four years in the United Kingdom, at university near the city of Bath.
Christina holds an IT senior position as analyst with a firm in downtown Oslo but was considering a change in careers.
As Alan walked me back to the elevated subway stop, I seem to have surprised him by pointing out that a change in careers is difficult, especially successful ones as in cases such as his wife. Only through great conviction, I said, is it possible to remain relevant thereby neutralizing the power of currency. My surprise came when he responded that I indeed thought money was relevant.
10/19: I gave a talk at DNV today and will post my impressions shortly.
The Guard House outside of Det Norske Veritas (DNV), an architectural blend of panopticon security and kiosk disney.
10/18: I swooped into Oslo last night, arriving late from Tromsø and taking the train into town. The entirety of University of Tromsø it seemed, was working over night to complete proposals for the Research Council Norway, myself no exception, and was exhausted on the flight over.
It was a fury of efforts. I was the North American in town at that moment and thus, was thrown on to proposals other than mine, to meet the international requirements of the call, subsequently finding myself competing against myself.
I awoke in a different climate entirely, Oslo far south from Tromsø, and began putting together my talk for DNV, invited by Brad Libby, for friday. Early evening, I met up with Torild Nissen Lie, also of DNV, with whom I shared a few drinks and spoked about work and life in general. Torild has a fascinating career at DNV, a huge company involved in oil and gas development. She hired 20 folks over the past 2 years, and it was interesting to hear about employment practices of high end professionals.
Without going into details, we had a good laugh over the differences between academic and entrepreneurial affiliations.
Here is a quick video of Torild and Bradd, along side Emma Wilson on the left, when we were all together not too long ago at the Arctic Frontiers conference in Tromsø.
I had Torild laughing over a point about the importance we place on the body in relation to knowledge. In my paper tomorrow, for example, I point out that posture and thinking are linked to either magical causality or rational techo-economic causality — that, when giving thought to multi billion dollar West African offshore oil and gas development, kneeling with palms held tightly together in the form of prayer would unlikely be considered an appropriate form for contemplating success.
Paparazzi Ethnography 