April 2007

Last night as we were enjoying one of those ridiculously delicious meals that EPI and I enjoy on a regular basis* we had a conversation about the latest Paul Auster novel, which EPI gave me for Christmas and which he is now reading. First.

EPI: I don’t know about that opening line, though: “I was looking for a quiet place to die. Someone recommended Brooklyn …” - it’s so cliché. It sounds like he’s taken too many creative writing classes.

YT: I know. It’s pretentious. [Pause] You have sauce on your chin.

EPI: “He had sauce on his chin.” Think how much more interesting that would be for an opening line.

YT: True.

EPI: “He had sauce on his chin. He will not appear in this story again.” Think if the whole book was like that.

YT: Yeah, all different characters who passed through in one sentence and then weren’t mentioned in the whole book again… “A woman ran for the bus, her scarf flying behind her. She caught the bus and will not be mentioned in this story again.”

EPI: Totally. Three hundred pages of it. Very avant-garde. Everyone would go on about what an original concept it was.

YT: Sauceman.

EPI: It would get made into a movie …

YT: In three parts. Sauceman I, II and III.

EPI: Awesome. We should totally write that book.

AND SO, WHILE WE WERE DELVING INTO THE PROFOUNDNESS OF IT ALL
Records were being set in temperatures all over Niceland. I kid you not! Yesterday we had highs of 16-point-something °C in lovely Stykkishólmur, which is a record high in April in Niceland. Today we’re set for yet another record, they say. Trouble is, it’s been exceedingly windy, which kind of cools things down a bit, not to mention makes everything very sandy and dusty. Yesterday it was all misty and humid - something we hardly ever experience in Niceland - and you could barely see the mountains on account of the mist and the sand dust being whipped up. Right now we’re looking at 14°C [57F] and the sun came up at 5.08 this morning and is due to go down at 9.44 this evening.

* By virtue of EPI being the most superexcellent cook ever conceived. By anyone. Anywhere.

Hey, so, last week I get this email, right? And it’s from this guy named Andrew with this email address that starts with ‘wellhungover’ and then the @ and I’ll saynomore. And he works for, like, this big London newspaper, and I won’t name any names? But it’s a broadsheet and it starts with an ‘I’ and it’s got this magazine on Sundays called the ‘I’ on Sunday. And he’s all, like, “Hi Alda, my name’s Andrew, and guess what? I’m coming to Iceland next week to do a feature on the cultural impact of the island on music and movies and I’d really like to interview you because I found you via your blog and I like your interests and I would greatly appreciate if you would liket o [sic] be interviewed for my feature on the young people of Iceland. I am also arranging some meeting [sic] with actors/actresses, musicians, models, chefs, you name it.” [blahblahblah] “Look forward to hearing from you soon, Andrew. PS Feel free to google me to see my usual celebrity interviewees.”

So I write him back and I’m all, like, “Hi Andrew, you know, I’d be really happy to meet up but, you know, the cultural impact of the island on music and movies … like, raise the eyebrow… And anyway, Andrew? I’m not even that young. I’m, like, 44. But hey, if you think I have something to contribute, I mean, just say the word.”

The part I left out? “Andrew? I might just be old enough to be your mother.”

I think Andrew probably figured that out all by himself, though, because – guess what? I never heard from him again.

OH, AND ANDREW? I HOPE YOU BROUGHT YOUR WELLIES
Because it has been raining here, incessantly, since you arrived. It’s been windy too, so I hope you packed your windproofs. Oh, and good luck with those models an’all. You know, those Icelandic girls are totally easy … alls you gotta do is look at them sideways and just a minute later? They’re all over you. Just ask Oprah Winfrey. It’s drizzling out there right now and 10°C, which means it’s 50°F. And tomorrow the sun will come up at 5:15 am and set at 9:37 pm.

So I’m getting all restless to start traveling around Iceland this summer, partly exacerbated by this assignment I’m working on that describes various Nicelandic locations in the most glowing terms.

I remarked on this to EPI at dinner.

EPI: I heard an interview with Björk this morning where she described herself as a singer and a housewife.

YT: […]

EPI: Just a housewife. And a singer.

YT: And…?

EPI: She says one of the best things she does to unwind is go camping all by herself out in the middle of nowhere.

YT: Oh, I see. So if we go camping we might run into Björk.

EPI: Yeah, Björk everywhere, Björk up on some heath somewhere alone in a tent [makes scribbling gestures] We are the Earth intraiters we are the Earth intraiters …

YT: Intruders.

EPI: Hahahaha … what?

YT: Intruders.

EPI: What’s the difference?

YT: Intraiters isn’t a word.

EPI: [philosophical] Intraiter, intruder … *

YT: Well you know, Jóhannes Kjarval slept in a tent.

EPI: Actually he didn’t even sleep in the tent half the time. He slept outside and when it rained he took shelter under earth ledges, like the sheep. And since he painted in oils it didn’t matter if it rained, he just kept right on painting, and sometimes he didn’t even take the painting away with him, he just hid it in a crack in the lava. It’s amazing he was able to find them all again, really.

YT: Wouldn’t it be hilarious if Björk hid her songs in the lava and couldn’t find them again?

IF BJÖRK HAD BEEN OUT IN A TENT YESTERDAY IT WOULD HAVE BLOWN OUT TO SEA
Because it was bloody windy. Gusts of up to 20 m/h if that means anything to you. Also, it’s been really insane kind of weather. Yesterday I kept meaning to go outside for a walk in the sunshine, but by the time I finished the paragraph I was working on and stood up, it was raining again. I sat down, translated a page, and it was sunny again. I finished the paragraph, stood up, and it was raining. Rain and shine, rain and shine, all day long. Right now it’s raining buckets and blowing a bit, and thankfully it won’t be sunny when I finish this because it’s evening.Temps 6°C. Sunrise at 5:22 am and sunset at 9:31 pm.

* There are some sounds in English that Icelandic people have a really hard time differentiating. One of those is the difference between v and w. Nicelanders think their country is wery wery nice. Wery nice.

[I’m not going to ask.]

IN OTHER NEWS:
I’m sure many of you will be thrilled to know that Polly the cockatiel has laid another two hazelnuts, bringing her clutch to four. She sits on them very diligently and at this rate they are sure to hatch any day now.

AND BECAUSE I KNOW YOU’RE HERE FOR THE NICELANDIC WEATHER…
It’s all windy and overcast now. Not terribly exciting from the window, but mild. I’ve hardly been out today at all save for a quick run at lunchtime [honestly I don’t recall being so busy with work ever] and it was ok but a bit rough going on the way back. On account of the wind. Currently we have 10°C [50F] [Woo!] and the sun came up at 5:29 am, sunset at 9:25 pm. Staying light really late now, which is great.

So, The Iceland Weather Report has been the focus of considerable attention over the past few days. Thursday we had just over 1,400 hits to the site in one day, mostly to this post, and this. [Although this would probably have provided better information.]

Basically, the matter revolves around one Paul Nikolov, who just over a year ago appeared in the IWR comment box with a nasty, degrading comment penned in response to this post, under the name ‘Paul’ but with no email or website address. In fact, it was so nasty that I deleted it on the spot … I felt quite sullied, having those words dripping with bile in my comments. Of course now I wish I’d showed more restraint – it would have been quite interesting for the world at large to have that comment as evidence.

‘Paul’ was careful not to leave an email or website address with that comment. However, as there are not many ‘Pauls’ in Iceland, particularly not who had aired similar views in a public forum, I was pretty sure I knew who it was. I put my money on a certain staff writer at alternative newspaper The Grapevine, the aforementioned Paul Nikolov, who had strongly expressed his views about Aron Pálmi Ágústsson which were very similar [albeit more controlled] to the view expressed in that comment. So after deleting it, I wrote a comment in response, in which I embedded a link to The Grapevine website, of which said Paul was editor at the time [and thus, I reasoned, presumably checked the site meter]. Sure enough, a few days later Paul appeared in my comments again. This time he didn’t even leave his name, but wrote an anonymous comment in response to mine, see here.

Then out of the blue a year later, I received in my comment box this little missive: Aron Pálmi should rot in jail [signed] Aron Pálmi. This time I was the one to check my site meter, and followed a link back to a site called cruel.com. There, someone writing under the name ‘Jadetree’ had left a message urging people to flame the Iceland Weather Report, to wit:

If you want to have some fun with this self-important twat, post a comment on her blog saying, “Aron Palmi should rot in jail!” She will delete your comment, and then hold forth at length about what a poor victim of brutal American justice he is. Repeat as often as desired.

Lovely, wouldn’t you agree? Or perhaps a little psychopathic? After all, I had done nothing but post an opinion on my own website, and had certainly done nothing to warrant such an underhanded and sleazy attack.

Of course I instantly recognized ‘Paul’. Indeed, this comment was a direct reference to our earlier exchange: I had deleted his comment, and had given him my reasons. A closer examination of the ‘Jadetree’ profile revealed that his home page was listed as www.grapevine.is. And, as if further proof was needed, a reader sent me this link in which a commenter named ‘Jadetree’ is identified as Paul F. Nikolov. Who, I repeat, had written angry diatribes about Aron Pálmi Ágústsson in The Grapevine. An open-and-shut case. Right?

Apparently not to Paul F. Nikolov. It didn’t take him long to find this post, and in the comments he wrote a saccharine little missive dotted with smileys in which he swore off all ties to ‘Jadetree’. His explanation: “I might’ve related the story of our last encounter to someone, and word got around. That happens in Iceland, as you know. One of these people, I imagine, decided to play a little joke by placing the comment about your blog on Cruel.Com.” [!] “For me to post such a comment in an online community, leaving myself wide open to scorn at a time when I’m trying to win over popular opinion, would be downright foolish, even for me. ”

Ah, yes. Here we come to the crux of the matter. Paul F. Nikolov is currently running for political office. And we’ve got parliamentary elections coming up in, oh, three weeks. He’s running for the Left-Green party, which espouses views that are in heavy contradiction to Paul’s fascist ones about Aron Pálmi [and, for that matter, ‘Jadetree’s’ comments about the disabled]. Unsurprisingly, Paul’s donned a halo and done a 180° turn on the Aron Pálmi issue.

The only problem is that someone dug up the little story of his former “disagreement” with the Iceland Weather Report and has posted it on a blog, which is linked to from the front page of the most popular website in Iceland. Thousands of people have now logged on to read about it. Many are outraged. Others are outraged on behalf of Paul F. Nikolov, who they see as a terrible victim in this “conspiracy”, where dark forces are trying to sabotage his political career by fabricating lies about him and linking him to some unknown, anonymous blogger named ‘Jadetree’ out there in the big bad world. Some have even gone so far as to maintain that the profile on cruel.com and blogger, including dates, are surely forged.

Which just goes to prove that people see not what is in front of them, but what they want to see.

Nikolov himself, predictably, has again sworn off any links to ‘Jadetree’ – “as I’ve done many times before”– [?] on his blog, claiming he is the victim of a “witch hunt”, rumours and fabrications.

Unfortunately, I’d say the greatest victim is the Left-Green party. Sadly, because they have a lot of good things in their manifesto, of which Paul F. Nikolov is not one. I’d probably have given them my vote, as I did last time; however, now I wouldn’t touch them with a ten-foot pole.

[Back to the weather tomorrow.]

So the First Day of Summer came and went yesterday and happily we had frost in the night. This guarantees that our summer will be superexcellent, in the same way that in modern American mythology the groundhog’s shadow guarantees another dreary six weeks of winter. As everyone knows, this is foolproof.

It started out freezing cold like most First Days of Summer but bright and clear as seen from the window. That was enough to put us in a good mood. Actually I’ve noticed that Nicelanders are generally in excellent spirts on the First Day of Summer, which attests strongly to the power of suggestion [’yesterday it was winter, but now it’s summer so you can be happy!’]. [Although it may also be because it’s a public holiday and the next day is a Friday and after that it’s the weekend.] People wish each other ‘Happy summer!’ left and right and give each other presents, like EPI who gave me a Bonnie Raitt concert CD/DVD with a bunch of the same people who played the concert with her that we saw in Toronto last year. I, meanwhile, failed to get anybody a present because as everyone knows I’m really a foreigner despite my Nicelandic name and am not used to frivolities like presents on the First Day of Summer, nor indeed First Days of Summer, period.

Even my father came by in the afternoon bearing gifts - from Cuba, where he spent Easter. AAH got perfume bought in the Duty Free, YT got Cuban coffee and EPI got a cigar to smoke on New Year’s Eve [the only time EPI smokes]. After he left, I headed downtown for an appointment and stopped by to check out the site of the big fire last Wednesday. It’s pretty awful - like a big gash in the downtown, and two of the destroyed buildings had great historic value. Very sad. I just hope they have the sense to build something attractive in their place and not more of those godawful 70s style steel-and-concrete buildings they’ve slapped up hither and thither over the past few decades [like that hideous green-and-white monstrosity here].

Today we’ve had wind and miserable driving rain, although I’m sure the weather gods are just getting it out of their system now in anticipation of the excellent summer we’re due to have. Our windows are getting a super-duper washing at this very moment. Temps are currently 6°C [43F] and sunrise was at 5:40 am, sunset at 9:15 pm.

It’s been ages since I reported on the escapades of Polly the cockatiel – so long in fact that many of my readers probably have no idea that Polly the tiel even exists and is an integral part of the YT household.

As some readers may recall [has anyone been reading that long?] Polly entered the YT household pretending to be a boy cockatiel, and was given the name Polli. Four years later, Polli outed himself as a girl by depositing an egg on the bottom of her cage. Polli was quickly renamed Polly [convenient!] and embraced femalehood by becoming completely obsessed with propagating the species – although sadly alone and unsupported. Polly has with great regularity laid a clutch of eggs at the bottom of her cage and sat on them for weeks on end – basically until they became so dry and brittle that they broke into tiny pieces.

[Incidentally, this behaviour seems less about propagating species than having something to cuddle. Cockatiels normally sit on unfertilized eggs for three weeks or so before they catch on that no baby tiels are about to emerge, at which time they lose interest. Polly, however, cuddled with her last clutch of eggs for over two months, or until they were cuddled past all repair.]

All this would be good and fine if it weren’t for one small problem: laying eggs puts such a strain on the wee cockatiel metabolism that Polly almost dies every time [see here – and no, she’s not sleeping]. Which is why it is sometimes a full-time job trying to stop her from nesting – and a futile one at that.

Anyway, for the past few weeks Polly’s become increasingly broody and a few days ago it appeared that the time was nigh. Instead of going up on her perch during the night, Polly spent two consecutive nights on the bottom of her cage – a surefire sign. Plus she hardly came out of her cage at all during the day, and when she went down onto the bottom she started scratching around as though she were looking for eggs to stick under her belly.

Which is when YT hatched [badum tish!] a brilliant plan: I went to the kitchen cupboard and got out two hazelnuts. Sticking my hand in the cage was predictably a risky business – as affectionate as Polly is on a regular basis, she becomes absolutely fierce when defending her nesting place. I managed to drop the two nuts just before she lunged for my hand, which I quickly withdrew. She then turned her wrath upon the nuts – for about a second, until she figured out that they were small and round and somewhat egg-like – at least close enough so that they would do nicely as surrogates. A moment later she had them tucked all nice and cosy under her belly and was grinding her beak happily.

Since then, Polly has barely left the bottom of the cage, and appears happy as a clam with her two hazelnuts, which she defends like a tiger anytime anyone goes near. Whether it will actually stop her from laying any eggs of her own remains to be seen – I do hope so because it would save us a lot of grief and worry, not to mention efforts at resuscitation and revival [see above]. Not to mention that hazelnuts are exceedingly durable – I bet she could cuddle with them for years and they still wouldn’t break.

IT LOOKS GREAT FROM THE WINDOW BUT IT’S REALLY WINDS FROM THE NORTH
… Which means it’s cold, even though the sun is out. However the weatherman promises that it will be short-lived and that soon we’ll be into glorious spring [it’s taking forever]. Good thing, because tomorrow is actually the First Day of Summer according to the old Icelandic calendar. That’s right, in the old days there were only two seasons here, winter and summer, and the first day of summer was on the third Thursday in April. As an indication of how important this day was to the Icelandic nation, it is still a public holiday … so today feels a bit like Friday [although being self-employed with lots of assignments it won’t be much of a holiday for me tomorrow, sigh]. Children are traditionally given presents on that day – something to remind of summer, like a ball or a skipping rope – and there are parades and fun events all over the country. Yep. First Day of Summer, with temps right now being 3°C [37F]. Sunrise this morning was at 5:47 am and sunset is due for 9:09 pm.

[PS for those who know Reykjavík and are interested, there’s a major fire downtown right now. The buildings with the Kebab House and Pravda nightclub are affected, as well as others nearby. Very sad, because the corner building is a beautiful old timber house. Nobody has been hurt, though, which is good.]

Those crafty beauty conoisseurs up in the West Fjords are at it again. First, they gave the world the ram groping contest - now, there is the Untamed Beauty contest in which cellulite, wrinkles, baldness, sagging boobs, etc. actually count as assets.

Among the 14 contestants in the pageant - which will be held Wednesday night - are one Australian, an Icelander living in Norway and a guy from Jamaica with dreads down past his waist. The rules to qualify are simple: contestants must be at least 20 years old and must not have had plastic surgery. Period. Oh, and - get this - they will be judged on the basis of how fully they have lived their lives. How perfect is that?!

As yet, the organizers are unwilling to reveal what first prize will be, but secondary prizes include free snow removal from a parking lot, a free change from winter to summer tires at a tire workshop, and a free blessing by a local minister. Also, it’s kind of fun to note that one of the judges is a well-known ex-model who was one of the founders of the Miss Iceland.is beauty pageant years ago, but who has since turned her attention to worthier pursuits, such as chairing the Icelandic V-day committee. And judging the Untamed Beauty contest, of course.

The majority of proceeds from the pageant will go to the newly-founded Sólstafir centre in Ísafjörður [pop. 4,500, on the West Fjords, where the contest is being held], which is a counselling centre for survivors of incest and sexual violence. Since it opened, demand for its services has exceeded capacity and it is very much in need of funding; hence the idea to throw this unconventional fund-raiser. Incidentally, the pageant has generated attention far and wide - apparently the BBC did a report on it recently and other foreign media has followed suit.

Right then: you can go ahead and pick your favourite contestant … just don’t expect to see them walking down a runway in a tiara.

WEATHER!
We’re finally starting to get a hint of spring … went on an errand downtown today and actually saw some weeeeee buds on the trees. Plus a crocus or two poking up out of the soil. For once it was mostly dry, with some sunny spells; current temps here in Reykjavík are 3°C [37F] [up in Ísafjörður-2°C brrr] and sunrise was at 5:54 am [yes! when I woke up at five this morning it was already light out] and sunset at 21.03.

You know what gives me great satisfaction? Taking off a worn-out pair of socks and throwing them directly into the garbage because they have a hole in them. Disposable socks. What a great feeling that is.

[Yawn.]

Now, if you’ve surmised that the above means that my life is excruciatingly dull right now, you are correct. It seems all I do right now is work. Work work work. Interrupted only to taxi AAH to any of the varying places she needs to go, like school, singing lessons, private tutoring, parties, orthodontist, solarium studio, or all of the above. In fact if it weren’t for AAH I probably wouldn’t get out at all. I’d be sitting at the kitchen table all day long with my head stuffed full of concepts like ‘net cash flow from operations’, ‘expenses excluding depreciation and financial items’, ‘operating income on a cash basis, ‘working capital provided by operating activities’ … until it exploded and spewed ‘cash’ and ‘dividends’ all over the kitchen.

It’s annual report season, you understand. And if you are a semi-large Icelandic corporation, want to be listed on the Iceland Stock Exchange and indeed want to be taken seriously at all, you are required to have your annual report in English and not only in English but in fairly decent English. Enter YT and her ilk.

I didn’t work over Easter at all [and felt very smug about it], but both before and after it’s been fairly hectic and this weekend both Saturday and Sunday are being treated as normal working days because I’ve got deadlines next week. Which makes me a fairly normal Nicelander, because over here people tend to treat weekends like working days anyway [if you gotta work, you gotta work] and YT tends to be an anomaly for clinging to her foreign ways and insisting on having weekends off. See, the ‘fishing society’ is so ingrained in the people here that the old days in which everybody worked their asses off when the trawlers came in so as to process and preserve the catch - and then took time off when the trawlers were out at sea - is still very much present in the national psyche. Only - people fail to realize the fact that the financial services industry and suchlike has very little to do with trawlers and fish, and working like mad on weekends and holidays really doesn’t deliver very much in terms of salvaging valuables.

Why am I telling you this? I do not know. It’s late - and EPI just had a good laugh in the living room which has incited my curiosity. Turns out he was flicking through the TV channels and the porno movie currently being shown on Blue Hustler is called ‘Desperate Housewhores #03′. HAR! Too bad we don’t buy that station, I’m sure the pornographic versions of Bree, Susan, Gaby et al are something to behold and might even be more interesting than the originals.

OKAY OKAY, DON’T YOU HAVE ANYTHING TO SAY ABOUT THE WEATHER?
Oh man it has been dreadful lately, which in turn has been very good for YT’s sitting at the kitchen table working. The only drawback has been that I’ve been afflicted with severe endorphin withdrawal several times because it’s been too rainy/stormy to venture outside. Believe me, I’m getting it down to a science, the skill of going for a run in between low pressure areas. You have to pick just the right moment, when it slows down every so slightly and before it starts to blow hard again. Someday I may be able to teach a class on it. We’re about to be hit with another low pressure area right now [I can hear it with mine finely-tuned ear] and temps are currently 7°C [45F], sunrise will be at 06.01 and sunset at 20.57. Yowsa.