February 2005

I went to a very special bake sale yesterday afternoon.

It was organized by the parents’ association at AAH’s school. You paid a fee at the door and you got to eat at will from a long table laden heavy with cakes and other goodies. At 3 o’clock there was an exquisite puppet show, given by a German puppeteer who lives here in Iceland, followed by an auction of beautiful artwork donated by various artists and artisans.

All the proceeds went to a young boy in AAH’s school. This boy has had to contend with a tragedy more horrible than any of us would care to imagine. Nine months ago, in the middle of the night, his mother stabbed his sister to death and attempted to kill him, and herself. He managed to escape and to alert a neighbour. When police arrived his sister was fatally wounded, but his mother was alive.

You can believe that this dreadful tragedy shook our little nation to the core. Such events are most fortunately relatively uncommon here, and in such a small community everyone knows at least someone with a direct link to the family.

Some media coverage was inevitable, but fortunately it has been within the limits of decency. Until recently, that is, when daily paper DV – which a few months ago was resurrected as a trashy tabloid type of press, the likes of which Iceland has heretofore not seen – ran a story about the unfortunate mother, digging up something unseemly from her past.

The family’s pastor went on television and implored the press to please show some compassion and restraint. Behind the tragedy, he said, there were real people who were hurting. It was a very moving interview – quiet, serene, and went straight to the core of anyone with any semblance of empathy.

It’s no coincidence that the announcement of this particular bake sale should come so soon afterwards. It came via an email sent by the vice-principal of the school, and it was clearly stated that all media would be turned away and no cameras were permitted. The purpose, it said, was to provide the boy with both financial and moral support.

When we showed up yesterday at the little café run by the church, the place was packed. The woman collecting the money – an acquaintance of mine – told me that they had not expected nearly so many people: they’d counted on maybe 100 but this was close to 400. And people were not just paying the ISK 500 suggested – they were asking to donate up to 10 times as much.

It was an amazing afternoon. The church café – which just recently opened and is beautiful – airy and bright – was the perfect setting. The shadows of the tragedy that precipitated this event were far, far away. Instead the atmosphere was filled with joy, kindness, compassion. It was a remarkable thing to witness. And I, for one, felt privileged to take part. Because when something like that touches you, it’s so important to have an opportunity to do something. Even if it is just to show up and quietly demonstrate your support.

THE WEATHER
Is still calm and mild. Today we even had sunny patches. (And also some showers.) Temps are currently 4°C here in the capital. Set to get colder tonight and tomorrow. Sunrise was at Set to get colder tonight and tomorrow. Sunrise was at 8.42; sunset about 20 minutes ago at 18.40.

Loyal readers of this space will recall that a few weeks ago I had my first instance of a chunk of my blog being copied and pasted onto somebody else’s website. And now, dear readers, The Weather Report has experienced its first spam incident. And not just any spam incident either, oh no.

Infuriating enough are those that read something along the lines of: “Hi. My name is […] and I am an autistic child. My father has set up a blog for me and I was hoping you would come and visit…” blabla. But these pale next to the kind of spam received this evening.

It appeared harmless enough: simply a link to a certain Icelandic English-language publication that happened to have written an editorial-type-thing on a subject that I had mentioned in my blog. In other words, a certain individual had simply pasted the link to his version of the story into my comments box. Without so much as including a greeting, or any other comment. Clearly being above such trivialities as good spam manners.

NOW WHAT IS PARTICULARLY HILARIOUS IS…
That this particular publication and I have a wee bit of a history. What happened, precisely, is this: I picked up their [free] publication one day [in my pre-blog life] and saw that they were working to recruit English-language writers. Seems they needed people to review movies, plays, n’stuff, but were too alternative and underground and poverty-stricken to pay any money.

‘Hell, I can do that!’ thought I, ‘free tickets to the movies, write a snappy review [in line with their über-hip and snappy style] – everybody wins!’ So I fire off a missive to the editor. He replies almost instantly, albeit without a greeting, just a gruff line of ‘Whathaveyoudonebefore’… kind of crapola. So I tell him and a few emails are exchanged and he asks me for a sample review and I send him one and after reading that he sends another message saying he thinks I should get my butt down to their offices ASAP so we can talk. And all this he manages to do without ever deigning to write a greeting in his email and, as I recall, no salutation, either.

ANYWAY!
Off I go to meet with this person, who it must be said appeared somewhat challenged in the social graces as he 1) did not offer me a seat 2) mumbled into his shirt 3) never once met my eyes 4) proceeded immediately to critique my sample review, which he wished were more like the reviews he wrote for a third publication. He had to concede, though, that it was ‘quite good’. [Which it was]. [But I am not averse to having my work critiqued and kept my mind wide-open as to possible improvements to my writing style]. [But I digress]. So he pulled out two movie tickets and mumbled something about me going to see a movie, any movie, as long as it was opening this weekend, and then to send him the review.

Which I did. The movie was A Shark Tale. The review was the exact right length [300 words as I recall – and, I mean, what a feat to write anything in 300 words…] and it was quite witty and fun and just as he would have liked it I thought, so off it went to him.

And I received no reply. Not a one. Not a confirmation of receipt, not a ‘this review is crap can you please write another one’, nada. It was as though my review had been swallowed up by a big black cyberspace hole.

So I thought, Pah! Let them stew in their own ridiculousness. I mean, come on, they were getting the bloody review for free. You’d have thought they could have at least had the manners to say ‘thank you’.

And then, about three weeks later, an email arrives.

No greeting. Just a RE: Shark Tale in the subject line, with the words ‘Not bad. Do you want to go again this weekend?’

Now, to my credit, I did not write ‘Why don’t you go fuck yourself you socially-inept little wiener!’ but simply, ‘No thank you.’ ‘Cause I have manners. However, now that they’re spamming my frigging blog, they are hereby sent the virtual finger. And the other one, too. And advised that any spams or comments – with or without greeting – will henceforth be deleted without delay, as has already been done with their ill-advised attempt this evening.

THE WEATHER…
On the other hand, is lovely. Mild and still, temps currently 4°C in the capital, no wind. Sunrise was at 8.49 and sunset at 18.34.

Ugh! Feeling really sluggish and icky and under the proverbial weather. AAH was sick for the last three days and obviously I’ve caught what she had. Hoping it doesn’t manage to wrestle me down into bed – I don’t have the patience to be sick. Especially right now.

My bleh! feeling was compounded by getting sucked into the Kringlan Mall earlier this evening. How is it that I never manage to just ‘pop into’ shopping malls? For milk, say, or ‘cosmetics’? Instead I have this tendency to lose my bearings and revolve around and around like something on a carousel before being spat out through some exit, frayed and worn. Ostensibly our purpose was to go to The Body Shop because AAH needed ‘cosmetics’ for the dance she’s going to tomorrow evening [the girl has such an active social life, one wonders how she ever has time for anything remotely mundane, like school or homework or cleaning her room]. This soon morphed into a hunt for clothes for her to wear to her upcoming confirmation [oh the Dreaded Confirmation – expect a long, drawn out, excruciating post on the subject sometime soon, it being one of those huge Icelandic events that exerts a megaton of pressure to conform, particularly on those who have not been fully indoctrinated by this society, as is the case with YT, but-I-digress] and ended with AAH buying nothing but YT buying a new blazer [well, it was on sale. And may be worn to said confirmation]. And then dragging my butt home, completely wiped by the nasty viral presence in the general corpus, and now I’m sitting here typing with no idea whether I’m making Any Damn Sense but it doesn’t matter, I have an excuse, I’m coming down with a cold.

AND THE WEATHER IS
It was back to semi-fog today, with further disruptions to domestic flight traffic. Incidentally, if you have not checked out Maria’s site, Iceland Eyes, do! Her photographs are just drop-dead gorgeous and right now she has a fabulous shot up on her site taken one recent foggy evening. Anyway, it drizzled a whole lot today. I decided to take a hike this morning out bakery-way [although not to buy bread but to pick up some dry cleaning] and, thinking it was ‘ah, just drizzle’ didn’t bother to put on proper rain gear. And arrived home with my trousers soaked through and a slight tingly feeling in my throat. [Do I need to ask why I’m coming down with a cold? No I do not.] Temps are currently 4°C. The sun came up at 8.52 and went down again at 18.31 while I was rotating around the Kringlan Mall.

SOME MORE USELESS TRIVIA
Around 95% of Icelanders aged 16-75 own cell phones. According to a report in today’s Fréttablaðið, there are around 255,000 cell phone numbers in use in Iceland as we, ahem, speak. Meanwhile, the population of Iceland is around 290,000. Unsurprisingly, telephone costs for the average Icelandic family have risen by 70% over the past ten years and now account for an increasing share of household expenses. A campaign is now being launched to make Icelanders aware that using a cell phone is a lot more expensive than using your home phone because for some reason this small bit of information does not seem to stick in the mind of the average Icelander.

There. I bet you’re glad you learned that.

SEE? THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS…
When you feel you don’t have anything important to blog about. Which reminds me: What the hell is happening out there in Blogland?? Stalwart bloggers are closing up shop without the least bit of warning, others that are practically National Institutions announce they’re going on hiatus, others stop putting up proper posts and just do silly things like just show off their blogroll and a nifty banner, still others complain that people have stopped leaving comments on their site… and YT has definitely noticed that her site traffic has been in a bit of a slump of late.

Is everybody just SICK and TIRED?? Is there a collective sense of ENNUI out there in the Blogsphere?? Or is there SOMETHING in the [global] AIR??

If you know, please inform the Iceland Weather Report!

OH, AND SOMEBODY PASS ME THE BARF BAG, PLEASE
America’s Next Top Model has started up again. AAH is glued to the screen. Meanwhile, YT stares in stunned disbelief at what passes for television entertainment these days. Has a more inane show ever been conceived? I fear not.

AH! THE WEATHER
Fog has left us, temps are nice and mild [5°C, 41F] and there’s hardly any wind. OK, so we don’t have sun but hey, who are we to complain? Sunrise was at 8.55; sunset at 18.28.

I blogged about bóndadagur [otherwise known as feed-your-man-putrid-shark-day] and I blogged about bleedin’ Valentine’s Day, but did I blog about my special day? No! And why not? Because I was Too Damn Busy!

My Special Day [otherwise known as konudagur, or woman’s day] was last Sunday. [For some reason man’s day always falls on a Friday, while woman’s day always falls on a Sunday. Coincidence? - Er, probably not.]

Anyway, EPI did not bring me breakfast in bed. This is because I feel that beds are not for eating breakfast in. Unless you’re an invalid, which I am not. I prefer the good old kitchen table for eating breakfast – although I don’t mind in the least somebody preparing the breakfast for me. In any case, there was no breakfast in bed because when I woke up [around 10 o’clock] EPI was already in the other room, busily painting the ceiling that I had so dreaded having to paint [on account of having a whiplash injury, which makes painting ceilings even more painful than having a mammogram.]

BUT after we’d gone for a run together, EPI did make breakfast. And then he went off to work. [Yes, work. On a Sunday. Welcome to Iceland.] And then he came home from work bearing long-stemmed roses. And made dinner. And was his usual wonderful, warm, loving, funny self [gush gush] and so it was all good.

OK now I’ve blogged about this and can turn to other more pressing matters, such as:

FAMOUS PEOPLE ALERT!
Eddie Izzard is coming to Iceland and tickets went on sale today at 10 am. The show sold out eight minutes later, with all 800 tickets sold. [That’s 100 a minute, in case you don’t have a calculator handy.] Is this man popular?

Oh, and the Icelandic government has decided to award Bobby Fisher a special sort of “foreigners’ passport” [which for all I know they’ve made up for this occasion, ‘cause I’ve never before heard of such a thing]. His cheering section is flying off to Japan this weekend to try to Bring Him Home. We shall see how that goes [the Japanese have been just a little short of cooperative until now] and start bracing ourselves for Bobby’s rants and insults in advance.

MEANWHILE, WE HAD WEATHER
And still have. The megawatt brightness of a few days ago has been obliterated by THICK FOG that has enveloped the city for the past three days. Domestic flights are all in a muddle with Reykjavík airport closed for the better part of this period. Which is a Good Thing, because we sure wouldn’t want any miscalculations there. Seeing as how the airport is right smack dab in the middle of the city and bordered by residential areas. Currently temps are 2 degrees Celsius [36.5 F]. Sunrise was at 8.59 and sunset at 18.25. [Although this makes little difference ‘cause we can’t see much anyway.]

Those nice people over at Sigh Club are running a little contest to garner participation for their Featured Site effort. [That’s right, they feature someone’s blog for a few days - The Weather Report being a previous grateful recipient of that honour]. If the blog you nominate is featured, they will send you a FREE PRINT OF YOUR CHOICE from SOMEWHERE IN ICELAND!

The contest ends TOMORROW so hurry and go there NOW to participate. [GO!!]

This afternoon - very shortly, in fact - YT will don a power suit and go spend the afternoon in the Corporate World. Some enterprising companies need advice on how to present their products on the International Stage and consider YT the perfect person to advise on such matters.

Now, power suits are not my preferred working garb, nor is the Corporate World my favourite working venue. [Velour tracksuits and my little home office are.] However - and this I have always considered very curious indeed - for some reason ample financial remuneration almost always seems to involve power suits. And performing.

RANDOM FACTOID:
Did you know that the Icelandic word for ‘goodbye’ is ‘Bless’? S’true.

MEANWHILE THE WEATHER IS
Really Foggy. Totally grey. But mild! And with an absence of wind! Current temps 5 degrees Centigrade; sunrise was at 9.02 and sunset at 18.22.

… Guess who’s got her work cut out this weekend??

On waking up this morning, I looked out the window to see these adorning the sky. Sadly, the photograph hardly does them justice. The name says it all: Iridescent clouds.* One of those stunning natural phenomena, like the aurora borealis, that absolutely fills you with awe.

It’s been an exceedingly beautiful sun-filled day, with that megawatt brightness and clarity that one gets up here in the north. I do believe that one of the main reasons Icelanders are the happiest people on earth [according to various surveys] is due to the extraordinary beauty of the light we get up here. And while the winter can swallow up much of it with its darkest days, in the summer we have it around the clock in all its splendiferous glory.

Sunrise was at 9.12 and sunset is at 18.12. [Daybreak was at 8.22; nightfall will be at 19.02].

* In case you’re interested, the phenomena is very well explained here.