Tales of ordinary freezing.

Yesterday for the first time i felt i was getting really tired of this weather.
Minus 13 degrees in November is really too hard for me and it will still get worse.(-20, -25).
I try to compare it to the 50 degrees in Cairo in Ramadan (sweat + more religious strictness so you have to dress more+ no open shops in the daytime+ no drinks and food in the streets+ pissed off taxi and microbus drivers) or to the khamsin which spreads red dust all over your face, to remind myself that I've have already experienced bad weather conditions and still...I survived.
But -13 + cold wind + snow over you face + slippery floor, that's really too much for me. "We are humans", says S., my Franco-Algerian friend who study Physiology. "We cannot live in this temperature."
I have a massive jacket with feathers padding and fur inside the hood (when i wear it i feel like the vacuum packed ham), boots with wool inside, 3 pairs of socks, 2 pairs of gloves, hat, 2 scarfs, wool all over my body and still when I am outside I feel so cold that i can't speak. I haven't smoked an entire sigarette for three days, cause after two minutes my fingers get frozen and I have to run inside.
So yesterday i got really sad. Or tired. For the first time I experienced how this weather can put you down. All bad thoughts came back. I missed my friends in Cairo. I tried with sigarette, but I was not brave enough. I tried with Lindt chocolate. Nothing, still depressed. I tried with SMS. Too short. I tried with music. I had to choose a neutral music, not linked to any memory. PJ Harvey was definitely not the solution.Tania Saleh neither. The Knife helped a little bit. The pains of being pure at heart forced me to switch off the computer. I went to bed. Khalas. Fuck, if the cheese is kept at 3, 4 degrees, why I should be kept at -13. I woke up at 9 pm, I had a boiling shower, put on a nice dress and I went out again.
If you can't escape from the problem, then just face it.

Hoppe på banan!

Let's talk now about my vanngym classes, that is water gym, or better aerobic in the swimming pool.
So, what do you imagine when you generally think of water gym?  fiftie-sh or pregnant women who wake up at 7 in the morning, during their holiday week at the beach resort to warm up their muscles? desperate housewives who send their children to school, make the beds and run to the gym to spend some hours in the morning? 

Well in Oslo you have to imagine a dozen of fatti-sh, ugly mature women who happily jump like a bunch of elephants in the water. And if you consider that in Norway the standard of female beauty is pretty high, and the gym belongs to the university thus it' supposed to be attended by students...then I think the problem is the watergym itself!
The main point is the instructor. In all the other classes you have beautiful, super-fit blonde young women who are so happy and hyper that I'm sure they take cocaine before the class. (But in Norway people do lot of sports in the winter also to react to the depressing effect of the dark, so I guess instructors have to look always very encouraging and inspiring). This instructor, Farah (she's Arab, I don't know from where) is fat, definitely bored to do this job,  very lazy: she sits all the time outside  the swimming pool and shows us what we have to do to...staying seated on a bench. She is not inspiring at all but still, we are so happy!!!!
Every lesson she wants us to dance "papapapa L'americano" in the water and laughs.(!!!) Then, she starts throwing some tools in the water, we have to catch it and do strange exercises. My favourite moment is when she throws this kind of long banana and she says: Hoppe på banan (Jump on the banana) or Sykles på banan, (cycle on the banana)! And all the people laugh, they are so excited, and me too I laugh, and we throw each other water in the faces, and we jump on the banana, and dance, like bunch of elephants!
Then we all run from the fucking cold swimming pool to the baby swimming pool (50 cm.) with hot water. There we relax our muscles and we loose our fats . And after 15 minutes we all run to have a cold shower... and then...all naked in the sauna!Frrrrrrr.
Vanngym class: a dozen of happy elephants who plays with bananas and jump in the water to forget that outside is freezy and dark.

Parental skype-ing

My parents landed on skype-planet. I mean, they've been using it for the last year, but since in Egypt I was always far from my computer, they were just using it to call me on my mobile.
Now they discovered the skype-to-skype call, the SMS and above all the smiles/icons options.

So, first of all, as soon as I press the green button to answer, i can hear them fighting about who should handle the headphones. (Which sounds like scratching noises (??), grumbles and "Alfre', famm parla' a me che so' a' mamm - Alfre', I should talk because I am the mother!) Then, since they discovered that calling skype-to-skype is free of charge, they like talking to me for at least half an hour. I've never talked so much about my friends abroad as this time. Now they know all the names and what they are doing. On the other hand, I have never been so informed about my home town neighbours, the hairdressers prices and my mother's shopping. When my father is home alone in the morning, we chat about guys and love. He gives me advices about flirting and encourages me to dress nicely and to make eyes to handsome guys, especially if they are working at university.

As for SMS, sometimes they send me things like Teruccia, mamma ti pensa sempre (Teruccia, your mum is always thinking of you", or Sisa, sei bella (Sisa, you are so charming") or Tesoro, che stai a fa (Darling, what are you doing - but in Roman dialect and my home town is three hour far from Rome) or also Amore, papa' vuole uscire con te in Norvegia ma ha paura del freddo perch' ha perz e capill (My love, your Dad wants to go out with in Norway- not Oslo, Norway-, but it might be too cold for me cause I almost got completely bald now). Please do note that they always write about themselves in third person, as if they were aware of the depersonalizing effect of new media techonolgy.

But let's come to smiles and icons. In the morning my father starts his skype and sends me the cup of coffee icon.  At lunch time, it's the turn of the sliced pizza.  Sometimes he adds the sun, the smile with sunglasses and than he writes the temperature in Oslo which he takes from google (-7, -8), so I feel he's kidding me. If it is raining in my hometown, he adds the rainy cloud, as a way to show his support to my weather adversities.
But his favourite icon is definitely the teddy bear. (please open you skype now to see it or check the full list here http://factoryjoe.com/projects/emoticons/ because you need to visualize it in order to understand).
Every day my father sends me a dozens of these fucking stupid teddy bears and if I don't reply at least with a ninja, or dancing icon, he calls me to say: "I sent you a teddy bear, why you didn't reply!!!" (Which literally sounds like: t'aggie mannat l'ors, pecche' nun m'e rispost!). And I have to answer things like "I'm sorry dad, I was working" (which might sound as an excuse for him!).

But I need to admit that this is so fucking funny, and I can't help laughing on my own in my office, so I wonder what my Norwegian office mate thinks about my office work...."Foreigners"!

Keep the sun on your face

I am trying to be always surrounded by people and doing lots of activities. I realise that the more I laugh, dance and talk, the more peolpe are happy with me and invite me to go out. When I am outside I try to push all the bad thoughts in the bottom of my stomach and to shake them up during my bellydance classes. A couple of sentences still echoes in my mind and hurt me very badly. I am sure i did not deserve them. I have lots of anger inside and I'm starting from it to recover. With this anger inside all the memories take a new shape. But maybe that's how it meant to be.

I love concerts. They are at the top of my wishlist, after necklaces and before sunbathing. They give me adrenalina. Olso is the perfect place to see concerts, as both internationally known  and gorgeous local bands play here in Olso and the venues are always packed with people. The day after you hail the the icy morning with an exciting motif in your mind and the drumbeat in your forehead. Concerts are the thing I mostly missed in Cairo or in my hometown, where either you had always the same band playing or the place was too far or my friends were often too lazy to come with me. Here I have friends who have the same musical tastes as I and I just need a ten minute-bus ride to reach the venue.

I don't like guys misunderstanding. They make me feel awkward. Playing with my hair, smiling, being "physical" as they say, is simply my way of being. I am transparent, hot-blooded and this is my way of shortening distances with people. The risk is encouraging people to say I love you but I have two children. Or, why you let me go home alone. Or, worse, we are on different levels.

But I don't want to restrain myself. My smile is simply my welcome. My tears are your embarassment. "When i saw you crying, i felt i was a beast", O. told me once. My dance is my release.

A friend advised me to take vitamins to supply the lack of sun. In addition to the anti-depression lamp.
I'll just follow the I Ching response that I got in September. "Be like the sun at midday" and push the storm away from you.

Norwegian gifts

It's time to introduce you to an important tool of Norwegian life: the website Finn.no.
On this website, unfortunately for us written completely in Norwegian,  people publish advertisement of every sort: from job offers to love datings, from travel arrangements to boat repairing.
However the most interesting part is the section "Torget" which means "square" and within it the section "gis bort", that is..."Gift". Gifts...free stuff that people don't use anymore and wants to give out. You just need to knock on their door and take your gift.
You might be shocked by all this largeness but actually Norwegian people are really keen on recycling. Last  week, for example,  I went to a flea market and that's what I discovered: here flea markets are usually held in schools and are aimed to support the music school-band, so every once in a while all the people from the neighbourhood collect their stuff and give it to the market for free. I was used to our flea markets, so when I saw two big loudspeakers I was ready to pronounce my successful sentence "you know, you want too much, once I bought it for xxx euros" when the guy told me: "Ehy, you look interested. You know, you can take it for free!" And I found myself replying: "no please, take 10 kr."(1.20 euro)..for the school band(???)!!! And the loudspeakers are perfectly working!!!
But let's go back to the gifts of finn.no, since I got really addicted to it. You can find every sort of gifts: from tables, to cupboards, televisions, clothes...but mainly....pianos and rabbits!!!
Please don't ask me why pianos and rabbits. I mean, the reproductive rate of rabbits is notoriuos, but why they're so popular on finn.no! And pianos, why people give pianos for free???
Please follow the link to admire these beautiful rabbits

http://www.finn.no/finn/torget/gisbort/resultat

but in the meanwhile...
I already decided which one will be my rabbit.....

On falling down

Falling down seems to be one of the main winter sports in this country. When it is so cold, the streets are covered with ice and the floor is very slippery. So, you might often happen to see someone falling down in front of you. Some people bump their face in the ice, others fall down on their bottom, others just slide on the ice for some metres waving their arms in air and then they start walking normally again, others combine the two actions, that is they fall down on the bottom and go on sliding for some metres with their bottom on the ice. However they always do it in a very delicate and artistic way, I mean, they get up immediately with nonchalance, without swearing any Virgin Mary or Jesus or mother fucker (walla kossommak ) and without accusing anyone around who is laughing, because noboby laughs when someone falls down. I guess because it is so normal! So if until now I had thought that Lucia was the world champion of falling down (one day she declared: "falling down is my favourite sport" and then she actually fell down!), I must admit that here people are much better than her. Sorry!
How to prevent it, then?
Well, get some spikes for your shoes. And, even if you have good shoes, stick your feet on the floor and concentrate on every step you make. Always grab to someone or something. And even if you fall down very badly, don't worry, it's normal, just get up, pull yourself together and start walking again.
And consider it as an advice for your life.

Photo-therapy

I put all my photos on the walls of my bedroom. Like in my old flat in Cairo, where everybody used to stare at wall to discover new details in the pictures every time. But this time I added new faces, new parties, new group-shots. On the front wall there are all the beautiful pictures, aesthetically speaking, portraying old times in Barcelona, Sicily, Cairo and Salento. On the side wall there are pictures made under extreme use of "forbidden substances" as G. would say, so you would see white faces, red eyes, trays of weed and piles of bottles in the background. On the other side of the wall I set up the corner of vanity, where you could admire Teresa "princess of Siwa" or "back from the eighties". Next to my bed there are "significant" pictures, historically speaking. Then there is the column of the happiness, where I put three pictures of funny faces, so when I watch them I can't help laughing.
I didn't want to exclude some pictures, because I can't reject the past. The pictures of the climax, the peak, before the fall to the bottom. However, I carefully decided to put them in an hidden corner, so I don't need to look at them. But this morning, after dreaming the same situation  for the umpteenth time, I realised that they're the first things I see when I open my eyes in the morning. 
Morning snapshot from by bed: a cozy bar, King Charles,  two coloured sofas, Radiohead stage in Dublin...and the park outside covered with snow!

Paris as it has to be

I had been dreaming of travelling to Paris for such a long time. And of course when you think of Paris, you imagine a romantic trip,two hearts and a bottle of wine, a kiss on the top of the Eiffel tower and other diabetes-causing stuff. 
For me Paris had a different taste. Walking with A. and his little armadillo was absolutely amazing. We've met in the corridors of our institute a couple of times and we ended up sharing the same room in Paris. And it was absolutely normal and familiar, even if he is Dutch and he studies Japanese religion and I am Italian and I study Arabic literature and we were travelling from Norway to Paris, I mean, globalized fashkh!
And then sharing Norwegian alchool culture abroad was absolutely fun (Let's drink cause it's cheap compared to Norway!) and I won't say any more that local people are not friendly! (They spoke English all the time,even if i was the only one not speaking Norwegian, and I guess I was much luckier than Kubra in Italy or Gianni in Egypt!).
And then, in a rainy afternoon, B. waited for me in a cafè next to the Pantheon. We had never met each other and we never spoked on the phone. Only common friends. But when we finally met he hugged me so strongly and he told me: I'll take you to a special place. The view from Sacre Coeur, the streets of Montmartre, we were already friends without knowing each other from before, and Paris was so romantic, but romantic in sense that I give to romancy. Paris was not diabetes-causing, rather Paris was made of dark chocolate, cause Paris was bitter but improved my mood and left a delicious taste in my mouth.