Category: Grab Bag

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Frogner Park

The Frogner Park is a public park in the west-end borough of Frogner in the Norwegian capital of Oslo. It is part of the Frogner Manor, and belonged to rich families like Anker and Wegner in the 19th century, before being acquired by the city of Oslo.

It is famous for housing the Vigeland Sculpture Park, which was created by Gustav Vigeland in the 20th century. The 212 sculptures are, essentially, the adult work of Vigeland. The massive works represent various ages, moods, and stages in lives of people culminating in the famous Monolith with its 121 figures struggling to reach the top of the sculpture. Of the sculptures that are on hand, the most famous one is of a crying baby that attracts attention from all over the world.

To view photos from Frogner Park, please visit Frogner Park Photos.

– ABG From OSL

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ABG From Norway

Greetings from Norway!

I’ll have more updates later but I’m here until the end of the month and hopefully these next 10 days are fantastic here. Stayed tuned to find out if my sister bothered me on the airplane ride again or not, how the food was, and anything else out of the blue that might have happened between Newark and Oslo.

Anyways, here are some random pieces of information regarding the country:

Population: 4,644,457 (July 2008 est.)

Religions: (2004)
Church of Norway 85.7%,
Pentecostal 1%,
Roman Catholic 1%,
Other Christian 2.4%,
Muslim 1.8%,
Other 8.1%

Literacy:
definition: age 15 and over can read and write
total population: 100%
male: 100%
female: 100%

Government Type: Constitutional Monarchy

International Disputes: Norway asserts a territorial claim in Antarctica (Queen Maud Land and its continental shelf); despite dialogue, Russia and Norway continue to dispute their maritime limits in the Barents Sea and Russia’s fishing rights beyond Svalbard’s territorial limits within the Svalbard Treaty zone.

All of this information is courtesy of the very friendly CIA: The World Factbook.

– ABG From OSL

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Gas Troubles?

So I’m coming back from ShopRite last night and at the intersection by Route 1, there is a guy who has his car just parked in the middle of the road which hazard lights on and his trunk wide open. As we got closer, turns out there is a guy who is adding gas into his tank… Go figure. I wonder what else he was up to considering there was a gas station to his immediate left and right on either side of the street.

Pictures are below…

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Ignorance Is Not Just Bliss…

Just a quick post before I head out to a couple of classes. An interesting op/ed piece from the New York Times’ columnist Bob Herbert that I saw on reddit earlier today. Totally coincidentally, my roommate earlier mentioned that there are dumb people everywhere and that the American ones are just magnified in the media nowadays. Point well taken. Another sarcastically remarked “dude, the dumb kids make me look good, don’t ruin it.” You can take that for what it’s worth.

I’ll share a small piece of it below, but the link is provided above.

An American kid drops out of high school every 26 seconds. That’s more than a million every year, a sign of big trouble for these largely clueless youngsters in an era in which a college education is crucial to maintaining a middle-class quality of life — and for the country as a whole in a world that is becoming more hotly competitive every day.

Ignorance in the United States is not just bliss, it’s widespread. A recent survey of teenagers by the education advocacy group Common Core found that a quarter could not identify Adolf Hitler, a third did not know that the Bill of Rights guaranteed freedom of speech and religion, and fewer than half knew that the Civil War took place between 1850 and 1900.

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Slow Monday…

Not sure what to make of the day today. Only had one class and there isn’t even a Yankee game on tonight. The first time in 21 days I believe (Yanks went 10-10 in the 20 games played so far). Played some Halo, racquetball and probably some Smash later on tonight.

I woke up much earlier than anticipated on a day where my only class (Differential Geometry) was at 2 PM. Shipped out a couple of books this morning that I had sold but didn’t make any money really cause the shipping and the relative cheap price for those books don’t really make it seem worth it at times. Oh well, it’s done now. Differential Geometry probably had its best class of the year. All the hype leading up for this class and not having to take a “math” final finally happened today. We have to know about 24 of these terms and definitions where the lowest grade for the class will be B (you can choose not to take a final and walk out with a grade of B). With success in the final, you can get B+, A- or an A… hopefully it won’t be very difficult. Not a bad deal if you ask me considering we were told today what will be on the final next Monday.

Played some racquetball with Joe, Krishna and Will Walker after class (with plenty of pleading from my mother to avoid getting hit in the face or having another injury). I played a majority of the day with my left that which I think has gotten much better in the past week or two. Krishna’s got a pretty mean serve which I can’t handle at all when playing righty but left handed I can handle it pretty good I guess cause it natually puts my racket in line with the wall. Joe for being a pretty big guy can move around and pulls out ridiculous shots out of no where and finds a way to win points and even sustain long rallies. I had a pretty long rally with Joe even though we were playing 2v2 which consisted of mostly us two running around and hitting shots to each other. I ended up losing the point, getting a gym burn on my arm but ultimately won the game. I must say it does give you quite a workout once you do start running around and avoid getting hit by the ball

On another random note, old school Gatorade just does not taste the same anymore once you’ve had some G2 or Gatorade Tiger (GT). I tried my favorite Fruit Punch which hands down would beat any other drink but since I’ve tried the G2 Fruit Punch or the GT one, the original just doesn’t do it for me.

Anyways, expect a random Facebook rant soon cause I’ve almost hit the threshold on that as well and maybe a Yankee post about Joba’s role in the pitching staff. Long day tomorrow, so probably no update but we’ll see how things go.