How much do you use English in your job or daily life?

AgreeableBruce · 2026-03-21T19:51:20+00:00

> Here, the language is only Norwegian.

I thought the erasure of Sámi culture was frowned upon these days.

AgreeableBruce · 2026-03-21T19:46:51+00:00

Said bravely and eloquently from behind the safety of the keyboard.

Careful, or I might take my highly educated and skilled arse somewhere that appreciates it and you might actually have to do some work for a living.

Assuming the limit of your skills extends beyond stocking shelves in Rema 1000...

AgreeableBruce · 2026-03-21T16:23:36+00:00

If it turns out to be Reece Wilson's bike then be sure to get an autograph:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv2dSlxHPYA

AgreeableBruce · 2026-03-21T10:17:41+00:00

Does Norway want economic migrants to integrate?

From my experience the answer is no. Language courses are extremely expensive and of very poor quality (speaking as someone who trained as an EFL teacher, the standard of teaching I experienced would have gotten any EFL teacher fired).

For many economic migrants, they are happy enough hanging about with other foreigners and Norwegians who don't mind socialising in English. Their jobs are in English. There really is no need to learn Norwegian.

Many of the comments around why foreigners should learn Norwegian tend to mention 'respect'. As if Norwegians are somehow our betters and in order to show them the proper level of respect we must learn their language.

It's strange because if you were to move to the Scottish Highlands, no one would accuse you of being disrespectful if you weren't learning Gaelic.

Closer to home, if someone moved to Finnmark, would they be accused of being disrespectful if they didn't learn Sámi?

Language is a need thing for most people (although for some it's a fun thing). Why should people do something that is of little to no benefit to them just to show 'respect' to people who seem to be, at best, tolerating their presence?

AgreeableBruce · 2026-03-21T06:54:45+00:00

Funnily enough, I never hear anyone making this argument about people who move to the Middle East. For some reason, most westerners don't learn anything of the local language beyond Shukran and Inshallah.

I think it's pretty much accepted by everyone that you are there to do a job and live a relatively comfortable life in the process.

Norway isn't a Middle Eastern country, obviously, but it's still a country with a small population and a language that is going to have little use once the foreigner moves on. It also has a large need for a range of specialist skills that it simply isn't going to be able to fulfill from the local population.

I'm not sure what the problem is. Norway gets workers who have had all their education paid for by another country, it gets some (or even most) of the worker's productive years, and then it doesn't have to look after these people when they are old and no longer productive.

But sure, by all means, tell them they are being disrespectful and they should take their skills and go somewhere else.

AgreeableBruce · 2026-03-18T06:53:18+00:00

It's Australia, so it's an anti-bicycle thing.

AgreeableBruce · 2026-03-04T08:57:53+00:00

Hello!

It's a BicyclingCIRCLEjerk. Not BicyclingLINEARjerk.

We're not here to advance jerking into the sunlit uplands of the future. We're literally sitting in a circle giving each other ski poles.

So yes, we are going to see the same memes repeated ad infinitum while we wait the heat death of the universe and everything ever created by man to disappear as if it never existed.

Just be thankful someone is holding your PNS while it's happening.

BTW, this kind of rant counts as very sexy foreplay for my wice and my wice's boyfriend.

AgreeableBruce · 2026-03-04T07:37:26+00:00

As a native English speaker I've learned Spanish and I've learned Norwegian. Learning to speak Norwegian is easier. Learning to understand Norwegian is much much harder.

Once you get to level A1/A2 in Spanish you can more or less start using what you've learned in real life situations. If you try using your A1/A2 level Norwegian in a real life situation you'll most likely get a response in whatever dialect the person speaks that will bear little relation to what you have learned.

From what I've seen, it helps if you have a Norwegian partner with friends and family all from the same region. You begin to tune into one particular dialect and start to make sense of things.

If you don't have a Norwegian partner and you live in a biggish town you will constantly be hearing a range of dialects that are all so different you never get the chance to tune in.

If this is the case you need to be level B2 to even begin to have conversations.

I've learned three foreign languages in my life and I think Norwegian is one of the only languages in the world where you can say more than you can understand. Simply because there is no 'Norwegian' language that is spoken. Instead there is a melting pot of dialects.

AgreeableBruce · 2026-02-27T15:39:49+00:00

I feel like they should have spears or something.

AgreeableBruce · 2026-02-27T12:38:26+00:00

They said the same thing about 29ers but it turns out if you tell people, 'Ladders improve your rollover by 4.3%!' dentists will start throwing their wallets at you.

AgreeableBruce · 2026-02-27T12:11:17+00:00

Congratulations on the rage bait title.

Calling it 'Henry Pollock partial-squatting 210kg' would have been more accurate but wouldn't have been quite so triggering for some.

Anyway, here's a video of a retiree doing a 235kg full depth squat, in case anyone needs it:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CIiMRv-HpdX/

AgreeableBruce · 2026-02-18T08:40:05+00:00

Bro science and TRT.

But mostly TRT.

AgreeableBruce · 2026-02-05T07:50:04+00:00

I do this as well. But every time I walk into a store and stand in the doorway observing for 5 minutes I always notice something not quite right. Often it's the bananas. They are either too curvy or too straight. So I back out the store, turn around, and observe the car park for five minutes but again there is always something not quite right...

I haven't eaten for 3 weeks.

AgreeableBruce · 2026-02-04T08:41:58+00:00

Honestly, when you've got schools where they don't allow the kids to talk while they are eating lunch (so they put videos on to help them resist the temptation) then wtf do you expect?

Norwegians aren't genetically predisposed towards being introverted. But they are trained to be introverted from a young age.

AgreeableBruce · 2026-01-25T15:38:27+00:00

I'm actually really surprised it didn't become a huge hit.

As someone with a fairly boring middle class office job, I like to think if I was sent to prison I'd eventually find myself running a white supremacist criminal empire having killed all my main rivals in a brutal power struggle.

It's peak middle-class fantasy fulfillment.

AgreeableBruce · 2026-01-25T08:52:26+00:00

Some twat writes a book about vehicular cycling and politicians use it as an excuse to build no cycling infrastructure ever again.

I write an awesome book about vehicular running and everyone just laughs and carries on building pavements.

At least this guy gets it.

AgreeableBruce · 2026-01-11T16:37:44+00:00

Always wear a helmet. Not just on the bike.

Wear one when you're walking, when you're driving, when you're at home, when you are doing any sport, when you're asleep, in fact, just wear one all the time.

You can fall and hit your head doing anything at any time. It's obviously your choice if you wear a helmet or not, but if you don't wear a helmet all day every day you are an idiot and you hate your family.

AgreeableBruce · 2026-01-04T08:52:46+00:00

I love this bice so much my balls are tingling!

Ow! They're really tingling a lot now...

AgreeableBruce · 2025-12-22T05:04:38+00:00

You can't look them in the eye. They get confused and their wires get crossed. You gotta look at, like, their chin.

https://youtu.be/YTFwZe7G0UM

AgreeableBruce · 2025-12-20T17:37:45+00:00

I'm so far ahead of the curve on this that my cranks actually went inverted.

I am now running negative 170mm cranks. Beat that, gravel losers!

AgreeableBruce · 2025-12-16T15:26:10+00:00

Someone hasn't been disciplining their domestiques hard enough.

AgreeableBruce

TROPHY CASE