gush gush

How long has it been since I’ve done a restaurant review? Ages! And it’s not that I’ve suddenly stopped eating in restaurants because of the kreppa. Truth be told, residents of the rock don’t go out for dinner that often, for one simple reason: it’s bloody expensive. For visitors, obviously, the price has dropped by about half since last year, but for those of us eking out a living here on the edge of the inhabitable world, not much has changed. Except that there has been this influx of foreign journos who have been so kind and generous as to invite me out for meals over the past few months [perhaps I was looking a bit emaciated]. You know who you are.

Anyway, that’s not what I’m here to talk about. It’s this: the other day, EPI and I decided to grab a quick bite before the Eurovision, er, playoffs. AAH had been granted permission to hold a party chez YT so we had to clear out pretty early. The plan was just to grab a quick burger somewhere, and it is generally agreed in the YT household that the best burgers in the city are to be found at American Style – a small chain of fast-food restaurants here in the capital.

So off we headed to American Style on Tryggvatata, a stone’s throw from the renowned Bæjarins beztu hot dog stand. The joint was pretty empty. On inspecting the menu [traditional fast-food style, located above the head of the person serving you at the counter] both of us decided that the fish and chips platter sounded like just the ticket. EPI had tried it on a prior visit, and gave it the thumbs-up. Sold.

The young guy serving us was incredibly friendly and likeable and swore that the fish was fresh. So we took a seat in a wiiiiide booth [probably fits eight] by the window and waited for our number to be called. While there I glanced around and was delighted to note that the place – which to be fair doesn’t have much of an atmosphere – was totally spotless and just generally exuded an air of good maintenance and care. There is a special playroom for kids with a glass partition and a TV showing cartoons, so perfect for families.

Our food arrived in a jiffy [the friendly server brought it to our table] and I have to say that it was the best fish and chips I’ve eaten in Iceland – definitely superior to the upscale fare at Icelandic Fish and Chips [which is OK for its hat*, as the Icelanders would say]. This was piping hot, the fries still sizzling, and the fish – halibut – fresh and tasty. It had more of a breaded covering than the traditional deep-fried batter, which no doubt is infinitely better for you and which was crispy and tasty. The clincher was a salad on the side, which was simple but really fresh and yummy – crisp iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, red onion and red pepper, with a light dressing.

Bottom line, this was the biggest restaurant-related surprise I’ve had in a very long time. Truth is I’ve been slightly prejudiced towards American Style because, you know, fast-food joint and all that [I’ve only had burgers there on two occasions in the past, and then at another location which was a bit more hectic]. But I’m glad I got past that because this was excellent food in an unpretentious atmosphere and – best of all – at a fabulous price. ISK 3,500 [USD 28 / EUR 20] for dinner for two, including a soft drink with unlimited refills. Two thumbs up.

And see? I wrote an entire post without once mentioning the tax hikes on alcohol, tobacco and gas and how they will increase household debt by ISK 8 billion. Sigh. Just like the old days.

UPDATE!! - Oh, dear, I’m forced to amend my review. Went again to American Style for fish & chips and it was practically inedible. See here [at the end of the post].

* Icelandic idiom – ágætt fyrir sinn hatt, which basically means: it’s ok.

A BLUSTERY DAY
With the occasional bouts of sunshine, but mostly overcast. It’s pretty windy out there right now and apparently showers are imminent. Currently 10°C [50F] and sunrise was at 3:31 am, sunset due for 11:22 pm.

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I’m going to hold myself back from applying the cheesy title “It is two!” or some variation thereof to the post, although I truly have to restrain myself  - because as many of you will already know, Niceland took second place in the Eurovision Song Contest last night with the song “Is it True“. And yes, it is THE best possible result because, well, it means we’re ALMOST at the top but we won’t have to spend gazillions of crowns to host the thing next year, thereby digging ourselves even deeper into the debt hole.

My sister Ásdís and her hubby Stefán [takkfyrirsíðast!] already had a party planned last night to celebrate their seventh wedding anniversary and when it transpired that Eurovision was on the same evening, it quickly morphed into a Eurovision party. Wery wery convenient for EPI and myself because AAH was holding a party of her own at our place [a belated birthday celebration] so we had to make ourselves scarce.

The actual airing of the songs was the usual camp-fest accompanied by the armchair critiques of those in attendance - the operating word being ‘critiques’, although there were also surges of enthusiasm for the occasional song [Norway, Moldova, Portugal spring to mind]. About halfway through the scoring it became clear that Norway would win by a wide margin. For a while Iceland and Turkey battled it out for second place, then Azerbaijan replaced Turkey as our main rival for the spot. The last country to vote - Norway - gave Azerbaijan ten points, which placed them above Iceland, and for a few brief seconds it looked as though they’d take second place. Those lovely Norwegians, however, ended the evening by giving us “douze points”, meaning the order was once again reversed and Niceland landed in second place - to nationwide jubilation.

It was actually quite amazing to see how Jóhanna [who goes by the name of Yohanna abroad, bleh] rose to the test. The truth is that before she got on that stage last Thursday [for the preliminaries - which, incidentally, Iceland was the winner of, having received the highest number of votes that night] most of us knew her as a rather dull performer, fairly lacking in charisma. Yes, it’s true! [Just check out the video to the song.] Last Thursday in the preliminaries was the first time many of us had witnessed the sort of radiant, self-assured stage presence that she quite obviously possesses. Even in interviews she seems fairly muted and lacking in charisma. So it was a very pleasant surprise.

The Norwegian song that won was totally charming. It got my vote. It was this little ditty with the word “fairytale” in the title, sung by this young guy who seems like an absolute sweetheart and who clearly won over most of Europe, irrespective of borders or cultures. As someone remarked last night, this should put to rest all allegations of vote-swapping and behind-the-scenes wrangling. Although this year a decision was made to have a jury give points alongside the televoting [50-50, I believe] in response to the nepotism that has prevailed in the past. I think that made for a much more fair result. EPI remarked that the two top songs bore witness to the current state of the world - both were light, charming and sincere, suggestive of innocence and simpler times, which is probably what the world [or Europe, at least] hankers after right now.

Just one more tid-bit before I go: much was made of the fact that Germany had Dita von Teese doing a little burlesque act in the background during their song [has that girl had ribs removed?? her waist is minuscule] and predictably many of us were curious to know just what she’d get up to. However, when Germany’s song was performed the camera seems to totally avoid old Dita, panning away from her at every available opportunity, and having a close-up on the singer and two dancers. All of us were, like, WTF! - don’t they realize this is Germany’s big trump card?? - Later that evening I read that there had been all this controversy about old Dita’s act over at Eurovision headquarters - apparently she’d been flashing a bit too much flesh for the comfort of the conservatives in the crowd. Good old Germans - they’re so blasé about nudity. Clearly much of the rest of Europe is slightly more hung up.

AND NOW I MUST GO AND TAKE ADVANTAGE
Of this stunning weather!! It’s beautiful outside, hardly a cloud in the sky. The kind of weather one has to take full advantage of because these days are so rare here in Iceland. Right now a sweltering 16°C [61F]. Sunrise at 4.06 am, sunset at 10.44.

PS - I damn well hope Jóhanna gets the Order of the Falcon when she comes home, just like the handball team after they took silver at the Olympics. Although once I found out a couple of days ago that Sigurður Einarsson, former CEO of freaking Kaupthing bank [who ran the thing into the ground] got the Order of the Falcon from the prezident I’ve totally lost all respect for that stupid medal.

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From today until next Sunday, Iceland’s main drag Laugavegur, which sadly is showing too many signs of dilapidation and neglect in the kreppa [all those empty storefronts] will be the venue for an unusual exhibition: old love letters displayed in the store windows [the stores that remain, that is].

The letters are from a collection of such letters launched at the beginning of March by a Master’s student in Applied Cultural Communications [Hagnýtri menningamiðlun - my translation, I have no idea if it's right] in conjunction with the National and University Library.

I don’t know how aesthetically pleasing the exhibition is, but there’s just something about love letters lining Laugavegur in these troubled times that makes me happy.

ALSO MAKING ME HAPPY
This live webcam from an eagle’s nest in Gilsfjörður, northwest Iceland.There’s one mama eagle and one chick and, well, their lives are pretty uneventful. But that’s not the point. The point is that it’s very cool to have a live webcam overlooking their nest. Plus the little chick is so darn good looking [I was gonna say 'pretty' but after all, this is an eagle we're talking about and 'pretty' is a little under-dignified].

[UPDATE: just realized that what I thought was the chick is, of course, the mommy bird. The one that comes and goes is the daddy. Duh!! - Which of course means that we have some little chicks to look forward to.]

I logged on earlier this evening and it was in technicolor, but now - mysteriously - it’s in black and white. Maybe because the sun’s gone down. Anyway, watching them consistently is probably about as much fun as watching your toenails grow, but logging on every now and again is great. Because, let’s face it, you’ll probably never get this close to an eagle in real life.

MEH WIND MEH
I don’t want to talk about this wind ANY MORE. It’s downright claustrophobic around here because it’s impossible to open any windows without securing all objects weighing more than 1.5 kg in a five-metre radius. It’s10°c [50F], sunrise was at 4:19 am, sunset at 10.31.

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Y’okay, so Niceland made it through to the finals in the Eurovision Song Contest this evening - the sappy, campy contest that everybody here pretends to be totally indifferent about but EVERYBODY watches.

It’s the epitome of Iceland’s small-nation complex. Each year we wait with bated breath to see if our song makes it through to the finals, and if we do, everyone gets all teary-eyed and patriotic. If we don’t, it’s because of the East European mafia.

It was pretty tense there, tonight. The delivery of the song was flawless [although it's hard to judge objectively - it's like watching your kids in a talent contest ... they're always going to be the most talented of all], and when those excruciatingly annoying Russian announcers [EPI actually had his fingers in his ears; YT just wanted to strangle them] pressed that button to open them electronic envelopes, the vast majority of this nation was on the edge of their seats. Eighteen songs, ten finalists. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine … and none of them was for Niceland. OHNO!

And just as I was about to mumble my grumpy remark about the stupid old East European mafia, the final envelope turned, and it was for us! wOOt!!

The finals are on Saturday, but you better pray that we don’t win. [European friends: please do not send us your pity votes.] If we were bankrupt now, we’ll be a few billion more in the hole if we have to hold that damn contest next year. Unless, of course, we come up with creative ways to do Eurovision on a budget. Kreppa Eurovision - wonder what that would look like?

YOU WOULDN’T BELIEVE THE WIND
… we’ve had today. I went out to the golf course for some fresh air and had serious problems keeping my feet planted on the ground. Something’s happening around here - we’ve had gale-force winds day after day after day. It’s warm, though. Right now 9°C [48F], 4:22 am sunrise, 10:28 pm sunset.

* Kidding. Please do.

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So, here I was, all ready to write a serious post about some gravely serious subject, until I remembered what day it was and realized that serious subjects are not allowed on April 1. Well, not on this blog, anyway.

Everyone totally gets into April Fool’s Day here in Iceland. The objective is to get someone to “hlaupa Apríl” - literally to “run April” - which in  practice means that the hapless fool has to cross a threshold for the gag to be fully valid.

I’ve been checking out the local media to try to spot their April Fool’s gags and I must say that mbl.is has me slightly confounded. The first time I checked I was SURE the gag was this news item about the resolution committees of the banks [the committees responsible for settling accounts, debts, etc.] selling off the furnishings of the banks’ overseas offices. Supposedly there are all these designer items being sold at a specified location in Reykjavík [BT in Skeifan] and the sale started at 10 am this morning. First come, first served. [heheh]

HOWEVER, when I went back to check the site, I spotted something else: a report that an agreement had been reached between the government parties to allow for the election of individuals, as opposed to parties, in the upcoming elections. According to the report, the public can set up their own ballots through mbl.is and thereby influence the list of candidates. People are invited to register their email address to receive a ballot [which obviously I have not done, because I am not a fool].

Both look like gags, but as far as I know, the media has not until now been known for publishing more than one April Fool’s gag at a time. Incidentally, I really, really wish the second one were true, but very much doubt that it is. Sigh.

Meanwhile [heheheh] RÚV has just run a report on the midday news that the resolution committee of Glitnir has seized a number of expensive cars owned by [Baugur boss] Jón Ásgeir Jóhannesson and [financial charlatan] Hannes Smárason. They will be auctioned off at a specified location later today [the cars, that is]. RÚV even had an [real] interview with the Minister of Commerce, who denied any suggestion that the resolution committees had gone too far in seizing the vehicles. The cars allegedly include a Hummer jeep, a Jaguar, [a bunch more that I can't remember] and two electric two-wheeled scooters [a dead giveaway]. Plus the news reporter sounded like she was about to crack up at any moment.

Incidentally, I also really, really wish that news item were true, but alas … sigh.

A bit closer to home, EPI called me about an hour ago to announce that he had noticed something red on the headlight of my car this morning - perhaps I should go out and have a look? - Ah me. Silly, silly EPI. How many years will it take him to realize that I am his absolute superior when it comes to April Fool’s gags? Still, we give him props for trying.

All that aside, one news item I really, really wish wasn’t true is the main item in Fréttablaðið this morning, a report that the heads of Landsbanki sucked billions of kronur out of the bank just before it collapsed. This appears to echo the trend at the other three big banks, where loans in the hundreds of billions were given to the owners or related parties in the months or even days preceding the banks’ collapse. It is STAGGERING that these handful of “moguls” used the banks they had purchased here as their own private little wellsprings of capital - with the funds we, the little people of Iceland [and beyond] deposited in good faith. Eva Joly, we are setting our hopes on you!

IT’S SPRINGTIME
The nasty subzero temps of the last few days have given way to something altogether more delightful - mild, rainy, refreshing weather. There is some wind, and it is wet out there, but who cares - spring is in the air! Right now 6°C [43F], the sun came up at 6.45 am and will set at 8.19 pm.

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The SKUP conference I attended last weekend was just excellent. It was held in the small town of Tønsberg about 100 km south of Oslo and was attended by around 600 journalists and reporters, mostly from Norway but also from abroad. Most people stayed at the hotel where the conference was held and everything about the planning and execution of the event was amazing. Great food [everything on their extensive breakfast buffet was organic, for example], and plenty of it: not only was there a lavish breakfast, lunch and dinner but throughout the day there were snacks in the lobby – fresh fruit, cakes, popcorn [from a machine] and soft ice cream [also from a machine – with toppings] – pretty much anything the heart [or stomach, natch] desired.

But those were merely the trappings – the real substance was in the content. The conference started on Friday at 4 pm and went through until noon on Sunday. During that time there were ongoing seminars, panels and presentations starting at various times – usually several at the same time, which was difficult because they were all so tempting. Not that I personally had many to choose from since most were in Norwegian – I would have liked to have seen a number of the English language ones, but for some reason most of them were at the same time – or just after – my own seminar [which if you’ve just joined us was all about the meltdown of the Icelandic economy – what else!].

On our panel there was, in addition to YT, an Icelandic reporter named Sigurjón M. Egilson, and a Norwegian reporter named Morten Hofstad, who talked about the different stories that were written in the Norwegian media as early as 2005, warning about the collapse of the Icelandic economy. Our seminar was well-attended and my feeling was that we could easily have talked on for another hour [or at least YT could have …] but there was a rather pressing event right after ours that everyone needed to get to, namely: lunch. In any case, I came away feeling like it had gone quite well [and indeed later learned that it had generated a fair bit of buzz] which was very satisfying.

Right after the seminar I was approached by a Norwegian reporter from NRK radio who asked Sigurjón and myself if we would be willing to do an interview; we retired to a conference room to do so and by the time we emerged some of the events I wanted to attend had already started. I did manage to get to one, though – an hour-long live interview with Guardian reporter Nick Davies, which mostly focused on the theories presented in his book Flat Earth News, about “distortion and falsehood in the media”. Thought-provoking stuff and a great interview that kept the focus and the audience’s attention for the full hour.

Nick ended up next to me at the gala dinner that evening – a dinner that included entertainment and also the awarding of prizes and grants for investigative reporting. The tables at the front of the large dining hall were reserved for international guests and, believe me, there was some stimulating conversation over dinner. [More on that later, perhaps.]

Conversation was equally stimulating and delightful the following morning at breakfast, when I wound up at a table with some incredible women – whose seminars I unfortunately missed [for reasons stated above]. There was Lisa, a Canadian-Israeli writer, translator and blogger [sound familiar?], who writes an excellent – critical – blog from Israel. She was on a panel with the award-winning New York Times’ Palestinian correspondent Taghreed El-Khodary, who reports from Gaza. Taghreed was also there at breakfast and I just caught the tail end of her description of how she filed her stories by phone to the NY Times during power outages – which were predictably frequent during the recent war – and how she’d go to the local hospital to charge her laptop, because the hospitals were allocated electricity.

Also at the table was Ayse Onal, a Turkish journalist and author, who recently wrote a book entitled Honour Killing: Stories of Men Who Killed. In the book [which I plan to order as soon as I press ‘publish’] she discusses honour killings and the men who committed them – she actually spent many months interviewing these men in prison, until they trusted her and began to open up about their crimes. Stunning. With her was her daughter Safak Pavey, who works for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Switzerland and who had organized some meetings in Norway to coincide with the conference so she could meet up with her mama. While I found all of them amazing, Safak was an absolute revelation. We talked for almost two hours, got in a cab, went to the train station [she and her mother and I] – and only then did I realize that she was missing two limbs – an arm and a leg. In short, I have seldom met such an incredibly positive person with such generosity of spirit – I’m sure I could not adequately do justice to my impressions here, so I’ll let this article do the talking for me.

The three of us wound up taking the train back to Oslo together and just absolutely hit it off. We talked like a house on fire about everything and anything and by the end of that train ride I felt equal parts awe and adoration for the both of them and wanted most of all to take them home with me, but instead made them promise to come visit me in Iceland.

Anyway, here’s a couple of pics:

Left to right: Lisa [from Israel], Safak [from Turkey, lives in Switzerland], Taghreed [from Gaza], Ayse [from Turkey]

Lisa, YT and Ayse

Bob [yeah, I don't know him either but he lives in Tønsberg]

MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE RANCH …

A sunny but WINDY day in old Reykjavík today, the sort of wind that makes its way in through your clothes and freezes your butt. Currently -2°C [28F] but feels a lot colder I bet. Sunrise at 7.14, sunset due for 7.55.

So, EPI the Photoshop guru and YT the Look-Over-the-Shoulder-and-Pontificate guru have been busy little beavers all weekend, creating a selection of products to load on the shelves of our Cafepress Online Store.

[wOOt!]

Mindful of the enthusiasm that so many of you expressed about the Helvítis Fokking Fokk!! slogan, we’ve created a number of items featuring those immortal words that so succinctly sum up the mood of so many of us up here on this barren rock. The words that Morgunblaðið saw reason to dissect thus in its cultural supplement this weekend: “Behind them is a complex mood. No political demand is at the forefront, no technical implementation of the catastrophe, just a rank indignation: How could I stand by and just let the insanity happen?” Cor, and here we just thought it was a good slogan.

Anyway, our merchandise featuring this rank indignation includes, but is not limited to:

Men’s basic T-shirt, USD 24.99*

Sassy women’s tee, with short or long sleeves, from USD 24.99*

Helvítis Fokking Fokk red on black tees, women’s or men’s, from USD 24.99

Helvítis Fokking Fokk hooded sweat, white or gray, USD 47.99*

Helvítis Fokking Fokk messenger bag, fits your laptop! USD 24.99

And because, well, we just couldn’t stop, we also give you a selection of T-shirts with our [current] winter banner which features a painting by EPI. Including, but not limited to:

Women’s tank top, USD 21.99*

And finally…

A canvas tote bag with our autumn banner, USD 17.99*

Okay, then! Do make sure you check out the other items in our store … and make no mistake, we had so much fun with this, we’ll soon be adding more stuff!

* Please note that the products listed above marked with an asterisk have the Weather Report website address printed on the back. You can preview both front and back views of the products in the store.

WE DID TAKE TIME TO GO OUT IN THE WEATHER
Including the Saturday demonstration yesterday, on Austurvöllur, which was great. Three electrifying speeches, all very different, all very good. From now on the number of demonstrations will be increased and will take place outside the parliament building while parliament is in session. More citizens’ meetings are also in the pipelines, including one tomorrow evening at the Háskólabíó Cinema, where there will be two foreign speakers: Robert Wade, professor of economics at London School of Economics, and Raffaella Tenconi, an economist with Straumur Investment Bank in London. No doubt it will be good. This is history in the making, my friends, and being part of it feels momentous. The only thing I can equate it with is when I was living in Germany during the collapse of the Berlin Wall. But, yes, the weather: yesterday it got rapidly colder, and today we had temps just below the freezing mark. Not that it mattered: it was calm, and therefore beautiful. Currently -1°C [30F] and the days are getting noticeably longer - sunrise this morning was at 11.03 and sunset this afternoon at 4.09.

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As you’ve probably seen, I’m turning out to be quite rubbish at the headlines thing. Putting them up in the sidebar every day just felt too binding, and - as it turns out - so does putting them in a post every day. Because some days I just don’t feel like blogging about headlines, I feel like blogging about inane stuff like googlies or the sleeping man in Room 13 at the Hotel Highland, or the superexcellent Yule Platter at Jómfrúin [where we went last night *swoon*] …

OR!!

Emiliana Torrini’s latest CD Me and Armini which I have just downloaded and listened to [it actually came out in September - I am so behind] and which has totally flung my eyes open as to Emiliana’s exceptional talents. Like most Icelanders I have followed her career since she started out about 14 years ago playing a flower child in a stage version of Hair at the Icelandic Opera, and have seen her grow from record to record. However, with this one she has moved forward in leaps and bounds from the last one, Fisherman’s Woman, which I gushed about a couple of years ago. I thought that one was very good and still do, but it’s a lot more mellow [her boyfriend was killed in a freak accident in New York City and this was her method of processing her loss] than Me and Armini, which is just a rollercoaster ride of styles and beats and rhythms and joie de vivre, all underpinned by her beautiful vocals. It’s very rare that a record captivates me on the very first listen, but with this one it felt like my head was Reykjavík on New Year’s Eve and the sounds were the firecrackers going off at midnight. In other words: va va voom!! So if you’re stuck for a Christmas prezzie, or just want to treat yourself, that one comes highly recommended.

IT JUST KEEPS SNOWING AND SNOWING AND SNOWING AND
It’s all just too beautiful. Seriously, I don’t think we’ve had it this gorgeous in December for years and years. The layer of snow keeps thickening and now most of the coloured lights are sort of enveloped by it and cast a hue on the white crystals all around. Sooo beautiful. Alas, it is not to last - apparently we’re in for rain on Christmas Eve. Sniff. Right now it’s -2°C [28F]. The sun came up at 11:21 am, set at 3:29 pm. Two more days until the solstice!

PS - Víkingsson [a.k.a. Don S.] is doing an excellent job of describing the Yule Lads in daily installments over on the Facebook group site. Check it out!

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… continued from last post

YT and the Nicelandic Consumers Union [Neytendasamtökin] go back a long way. Or - well - a few years. We first became acquainted about seven years ago when I owned a dud of a computer that had broken down about six times in two years. I happened to relate the story to EPI’s niece, who was working there at the time as a lawyer. She promptly put me in touch with a co-worker who was, and is, a serious force to be reckoned with. About a month later my computer dud was back with its [not-too-happy] seller, whereas in its place I had a new high-end laptop that turned out to be an absolute workhorse and ran non-stop for about five years without so much as a hiccup. I’ve been a Consumers Union member ever since and am a big fan because they kick ass up there.

Anyway, I called them up and they put me through to the same woman as before, who totally commiserated with my sad story about the phone and its hideous logo. When I got to the part about being stonewalled by the Vodafone manageress, she was indignant. “No. No. Of course she can refund you the money. They sold you a different phone from the display model. You should get your money back.” She asked me to send her an email relating the main points and she’d speak to them. Less than two hours later, she called me back. “Take the phone back to the store in Kringlan and they’ll give you a full refund.”

YES!!!

[Incidentally: this sort of thing NEVER happens in Iceland. The Icelanders can be assertive as hell, but they're LOUSY consumers - they're forever being handed wooden nickels and just taking them. Refunds for anything are practically unheard of here. One notable exception is the fabulous ZARA, which when it opened its first store here about six years ago started offering full refunds on clothes that were returned in the same condition as when bought, within a specific time frame. Hats off! - and now a few more stores have followed suit. But I digress.]

So later that day, I found myself in Kringlan, heading for old Vodafone. I had on my tough front, all prepared to be cross-examined or to have to go through the same shit as with the people on the phone, but lo! - nothing of that sort happened, the apathetic kid perched on his stool behind the counter just took the phone and mumbled something about not knowing how to do refunds [you don't say? ] and then asked someone else before just … opening the till and giving me the refund, in cash. Get that? - IN CASH. I was floored. Because if there’s one thing more outrageously surprising than getting a refund in an Icelandic store, it’s getting that refund in cold hard cash.

Truly, I could hardly believe my good fortune. So what I did was leave the store, walk exactly ten steps across the corridor, and straight into the store of the competition, which I happened to know had that very same phone but WITHOUT the branding on it. Heh heh. I knew this because I’d been there the previous day, but had due to some weird sense of obligation ended up buying from my phone provider, with the aforementioned disastrous results.

So the girl who had been serving me the previous day came up to me and we got chatting and I told her my little story and that I wanted the same phone, and did they have it in white. Alas, they did not. However, she suddenly got this mischievous little look on her face. “I have JUST the phone for you,” she said, and disappeared, only to return very conspiratorially with a little box that she opened. “There are only fourteen of these in the entire country,” she said, almost whispering. “They only ordered six of this colour; the buyers - who are all guys - thought it was a joke, that nobody would buy them.” She raised an eyebrow. “They sold out within an hour - to people in-house. I got one myself.” She pulled it out and proceeded to demonstrate, taking YT through the navigation menu and such. “They tried to order more, but there were only nine left. We don’t even have them on display. We keep them under the counter.”

Whell! With that kind of hard-sell, how could I possibly refuse?

[semi-nauseating gush ahead]

So I now have a gorgeous new phone, that I am absolutely smitten with. Seriously - this is a major departure for our YT. I’m more the classic subdued type, easy on the flash. Not only does my new phone have serious BLING, it’s also not a Nokia [gasp!] and was considerably more expensive than the phone I planned to buy. The screen is crystal clear, the navigation is genius [I much prefer it to any Nokia phone I have ever owned], the buttons are easy to push [i.e. aren't all jammed up against each other] and it knows intuitively what I want to do, before I do it. ["Do you want to copy your contacts from the SIM card?" - why, yes I do, little phone!] If you want, you can check it out here [it's the pink one - you can even try it out in their super-duper online virtual phone world].

[/semi-nauseating gush]

Okay then! So you see, all’s well that ends well. And now I must sign off because I’m heading off tomorrow to search for polar bears. Cheerio!

WE HAD A TROPICAL STORM TODAY
I kid you not. It’s what the weatherman said: “The remnants of a tropical storm will pass over the Land today.” Mostly what this meant was a lot of rain, and fairly warm temps - for us, at least. It’s no great shakes at the moment, 12°C [54F] and still raining, sunrise was at 4 am, and sunset at 11.05.

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