It's weird how things work out, but now I'm in the US at my friends Jesper and Kianna (and their 2.3 kids). They have a huge house and Jesper's been nice to offer his office as temporary quarters for me.

The flight here went surprisingly quick, considering it was nine hours of doing nothing. The inflight films (worth watching) were "007 - Casino Royale" and "The Prestige" The first one was of a very poor quality and the other I've seen. So I ended up talking with Jean in the seat next to me for at few hours.

She was moving back from Denmark (some little village outside of Svendborg) where she's lived for a year with her husband who works for Mærsk. Anyway, she got fed up with small-town Denmark (and who can blame her :o) and needed to go back to the states for a couple of months to get some work done. She does a bit of web designing and often needs a hand with the back end, so by chance I got to do a bit of networking there :o)

In Seattle (Tacoma) airport things went smoother than I expected. Immigration was more or less a breeze (compared to getting into Bahrain) - identify luggage, re-check luggage and go to the gate. Half an hours wait and into the smallest commercial aircraft I ever saw. only three seats pr. row and only 10 rows. I was close to laughing out loud, when a few minutes after take-off the flight attendant said: "The 'fasten seat belts'-signs have now been switched off and you're free to move around in the cabin"

But the flight to Portland was quite fabulous scenery-wise. We flew right past Mount St. Helens in the sunset. It sort of stuck up in the middle of some low mountains, had snow on its sides and everything - just beautiful. I hope I get to take a picture of it when I go back, but my only camera is my phone .. which I'm "kindly asked to keep turned off for the entire duration of the flight". Maybe I should see if I can find a camera over here... hmm

In Portland baggage-claim is open to the public - anybody can walk in, get someone else's luggage and leave with it. Nobody took mine, and ten minutes later Jesper picked me up, and we were at his house at 4 AM on my clock. So I got a few beers and some dinner at went to bed at 9 AM (still my time) and 8 hours of sleep later, I'm on West Coast time and not jet lagged :o)

Today is supposed to be about relaxing a bit and the rest of the week should be spent working on our masters project. Next week we're going skiing, but I'll see if I can write a bit on that later.

How many sides are in a triangle? Who is Tony Blair? From which state does KFC come from? The answers to all these questions and more here:



I saw an edited version of this once, laughed 'til I got sick. This is even better!

It appears that Members of Parliament have been given free rides on public transportation - without being taxed for it. Now, some of the present and former MPs risk receiving quite a bill.

Kaj Ikast, former Minister of Transportation, had this to say:

The parliament never informed me, that I should pay taxes for this (free transport). So you can all go to Hell. I built Storebæltsbroen, and I built Øresundsbroen (the two bridges connecting Sealand to Funen and Sweden respectively). At least this should give me free transport when going to and from meetings at Christiansborg.

full story here

:o) I totally agree. And we should also erect a monument in his honour - and maybe introduce a national holiday - Kaj Ikast-day.

I've always been fascinated by how some people are able to convince you about just about anything. If it's credibility, persuasiveness or maybe just gullibility on behalf of the audience, I don't know, but some people can sell ice cubes in Greenland.

Now, I mentioned this German Muslim giving us the tour of the mosque in Bahrain. He's one of those people (which I guess is why he's giving the tours) and as Karina tells in her latest entry (yes, in the most recent quarterly post ;o), he was very convincing in his pointing out inconsistencies and just funny business about Christianity in general. But given some time to think about it, a lot of the stuff he said was maybe a little "tainted". I'm sure you could find similar stuff in the Qu'ran.

After the tour, I found some leaflets about Islam, one of them entitled "Why Pork is Prohibited in Islam". It's about 30 pages written by some Muslim scholar, Haji Ibrahim Tien-Ying Ma. Here are two excerpts that made me decide against reading the whole thing:

The abstention from eating pork is one of the steps taken by Islam to practice hygiene and to attain "purity of human nature"

Nature of a Pig

The pig is naturally lazy and indulgent in sex. It dislikes sunlight and lacks the spirit and will to 'fight'. The older it gets, the lazier it gets. It eats almost anything, be it faeces or anything dirty. It prefers dirty places to clean ones. It eats and sleeps only and hates moving around .. (etc.)

... And any comparison to the male part of the population will be frowned upon...

Basically he states that it's a natural advance in civilization to stay away from animals that are "gross" in some manner of way. In particular you shouldn't eat pork because its an unworthy animal. So are rats, goats, worms, snakes and the like. Wonder what Muslims say to the French cuisine with frogs' legs and escargot :o) At any rate I have to disagree with the notion, that the nature of an animal should affect the nature of it's eater. (Yes, mr. Ma argues that it's a blood thing)

Now, I get the part about food you probably shouldn't touch: I was once on a field trip to a Fish-sticks factory - haven't eaten the stuff since. But I think that's more a matter of choice of quality rather than species. Of course you wouldn't eat a pig that dropped dead on a heap of dung a week ago. A nice anti-biotic-laden pork chop on the other hand never killed anybody ... yet.

Yep. Back again in Denmark, from 5½ days in Bahrain. A bit of a close shave making the connecting flight in Frankfurt, and I think it was the trainee who landed us in Copenhagen. Worst landing I've ever experienced, and the poor guy next to me started the flight making the sign of the cross in front of him - don't think he appreciated it much :o) - even the stewardess greeting us sounded as if she got quite a scare, and she's supposed to be used to stuff like this.

I practically didn't sleep on the flight - can't sit up and sleep - so I'm sort of busted right now, and this post will end with a picture from our "Mikkel and Karina are finally leaving"-dinner Tuesday evening.

Today we were out visiting a huge mosque in Manama (capital of Bahrain). Room for some 5-7000 people praying there. A nice elderly German guy named Abdullah Borek (I assume his Roman-Catholic parents named him something else) took us for a guided tour, which really was very short (nothing much to see in a mosque) but he offered a lot of background information on the whats and whys of Islam.
For instance what is the guy yelling from the towers at prayer time, when is prayer, etc. He also offered the muslims explanation to Jesus' (alleged) coming back at Easter: Why should Judas kiss Jesus in order for the Romans to find him? Because no-one knew what he looked like! So how would you be sure, that Jesus was in fact the one who died on the cross?

The Mosque was very well air conditioned, so much in fact that I needed the sweater I had brought along because we weren't sure if we would be allowed in wearing t-shirts. The girls didn't have that problem as the rule was for women to dorn abayas to be allowed entrance :o)

Afterwards we took a drive into the new parts of Manama. In Bahrain the new part of town, is where there used to be ocean. They're actively increasing the size of the country much the same way they're doing it in Dubai: Rearranging the ocean floor sand. We went to visit one of Carsten's friends who lives in a new part of town called "the floating village". Very nice, guarded neighbourhood, brand new apartments and a patch of grass down to the water. Downside is all the construction going on right next door, but with the speed at which they're building here, that can't be a problem for long.

Having two weeks worth of vacation, I thought I would be spending in the Carribean, suddenly unspoken for, I got a ticket to Bahrain to visit Leah, and here I am now. Listening to some guy screaming his loungs out at the local mosque because the Sun just set.

Bahrain this time of year is pretty acceptable climate-wise: A nice 25 centigrade and sunny... and guess who forgot to bring his sun glasses. Oh well. Already got to work a bit on my tan and I am trying to jump-start my would-be carreer as a jogger at the gym, which is free for all at the compound. (though I haven't seen anybody else there)

Other than that, you can tell this place is heavily influenced by American Culture. Malls everywhere, big cars that go half a mile to the gallon - driven by lunatics btw. And then of course the obligatory white-clad arabs with the head-thing and their black-clad wives. After a while you don't really notice that fact, and actually everybody's very relaxed about .. well everything. It's not like at home, where it seems muslim women more or less are treated as beasts of burden. Here you see husbands and wives walking hand-in-hand ... with their filipino maid heaving their child(ren) behind them :o)

I'll see if I can find a way to easily extract some of the photos I've taken using my phone. Insh'Allah it wille happen sometime soon - down here that means "don't expect it to be anytime soon."

Just as short update: I am now the proud owner of a yellow belt with two stripes as I was graduated this afternoon - smooth sailing all the way. After that I was taught the form for green belt, which is a nice little exercise requiring a lot of high kicking. Hope I get to practice it a bit in Bahrain next week