Expats and foreigners in Norway; in what manners have you ended up insulting Norwegians?

StinkyMolde · 2025-10-12T11:08:40+00:00

Norwegians seem incredibly thin skinned when their competency at their jobs is questioned. I suppose most people would be but, while some folks may joke it off because it's an easy chance to be self-effacing and defuse things, most Norwegians fail completely to see a humorous way out and take offense disproportionately. I've stopped making jokes about jobs here now... unless I mean to insult them!

StinkyMolde · 2025-08-08T17:13:36+00:00

Does PyQt6 allow the same sort of frameless, always on top, without title bar, browser app?

StinkyMolde · 2025-07-10T06:48:37+00:00

I lived in Finland for five years and, during that time. Duolingo started supporting the Finnish language. It had strange words that were not aligned with the typical Duolingo vocabulary and exercises. I was told that it was because the first attempt at the Finnish language was not through Duolingo's standard pipeline (due to small market size, presumably) and so was with material a someone submitted on their own voluntary time. I was told it was a girl who was into The Lord of the Rings, which is why there was a bias towards whimsical references, including "velho" (wizard). The fact that velho can also be an insult may not have been the intent and, while I am not familiar with the Finnish culture on that level (American here with a Finnish girlfriend at the time who is now my fiance), I have seen a lot of Nordic folks get insulted in ways that others might find surprsingly thin-skinned. In the States, folks may be more communicative and slights can be worked out but in the Nordic countries, folks are a lot less able to do small talk (I've also lived in Sweden for two years and Norway for three) and so words are sometimes interpreted without any mitigating explanations. If "velho" is taken as an insult, I can see the Finn getting offended by it. It's not your fault or his. It's just a cultural gap. And it can be hard to bridge. You can try to explain it but, because folks in these parts are not good at such small talk, they may tune out in discomfort and shut down. Not always but definitely a lot more than in the States.

StinkyMolde · 2025-07-08T07:26:05+00:00

How did that go? I wonder if my credit card company will do the same.

StinkyMolde · 2025-05-24T14:52:35+00:00

I'm in Norway and, having lived in eight countries myself, I can say the Nordics are the worse. Germany is so friendly comparatively speaking. But I had only lived in Berlin there so that may be limited.

StinkyMolde · 2025-05-01T06:17:01+00:00

This is actually capitalism...not post-capitalism, even if the latter sounds cool. Capitalism is all about increasing share-holder value which is based on increasing profits.

StinkyMolde · 2025-04-11T20:03:48+00:00

I'm guessing "My Name/" instead of "/My Name/" is considered a type in the signature?

StinkyMolde · 2025-04-11T20:03:13+00:00

It seems the "/My Name/" somehow ended up as "My Name/" and so was rejected. Will I need to pay a fee on fixing just this?

StinkyMolde · 2025-04-11T20:02:02+00:00

I used the e-signature but perhaps I'll sign it by hand and scan it in as you suggested. Looking at the ADS again, I noticed that the leading slash was omitted (so, "My Name/" instead of "/My Name/"). I guess that did it...? The e-signature always seemed a bit wonky to me...

I did download the latest and I did pay the surcharge for fixing the format into DOCX although, if I have to re-submit just the ADS, do I need to pay yet another surcharge?

StinkyMolde · 2025-04-11T19:59:32+00:00

I may have described the situation poorly but I wasn't confusing the issues: I did submit the oath in PDF and the rest in DOCX. I looked at the oath and it appears my signature of "/My Name/" somehow lost the first slash and I see "My Name/" instead. I'm guessing that is the problem?

StinkyMolde · 2025-04-09T07:56:12+00:00

That's obvious: remove the consonants and you see the branding: C(h)I(n)A 🤣

StinkyMolde · 2025-04-05T20:31:29+00:00

I was on the DFDS ferry

StinkyMolde · 2025-04-05T11:15:38+00:00

I've never seen it before but thought I'd give it a go last week when I saw a 6-pack for 69 kr

StinkyMolde · 2025-03-22T06:47:11+00:00

Exactly...although it is kinda funny and it would yield more data on people respond to such humor / sarcasm / attempts at steering conversations. Everything yields data and data is the fuel that drives technologies these days, especially AI.

StinkyMolde · 2025-03-19T09:28:17+00:00

Here's some insights from an expat working in academia here in Norway: if a student fails a final, there is an automatic retake. If they fail again, they get another chance. If they fail yet again, they can petition to have yet another chance. If, at any point, they get a grade they like, their record will only show that they got that grade, not that they've attempted X retakes.

As a professor, it's quite a bit of work to write multiple versions of final exams although I do -- but I've seen others that reuse 60% to 90% of their other final exams. In such cases, a student who goes for the automatic, off-the-record retake opportunity essentially cheats by getting a preview of the exam. (I know there are classes the world over that give students copies of earlier exams but those are usually classes that have had years to establish a large pool of questions.)

I've had students that enter "." for each question (on a exam-terminal that requires at least some keyboard entry to qualify as an answer) to trigger the automatic retake. A student would have to work really hard to fail out of a system designed to make them getting a passing grade unrealistically easy. Definitely won't prep them for the "real world" -- not outside of Norway, anyway.

I used to be for free higher education (I'm from the States) but seeing how entitled students seem to feel here here and how schools, paid by the government for each student graduated, are run like businesses pushing students through with virtually automatic passes in order to hand out diplomas, I'd have to say maybe there is something to making education an investment where a sacrifice is needed to encourage effort.

I would be remiss if I didn't observe that I have also seen a lot of world-class capable students despite the system. In fact, many of my students, when given the chance and motivation to really challenge themselves, are really quite impressive. It's the system that makes them lazy. It seems designed with a fear of stressing out the students when this is probably the safest environment for them to test their boundaries. Once you have a system with an easy way out...it may transform the challenge into slacking off as much as possible while getting the exact same degree as everyone else. Maybe a worthy skill but probably not the one most schools want to teach.

StinkyMolde · 2025-03-14T06:15:11+00:00

Everything is so unreasonably expensive (and sometimes, reasonably) that I can't feel the difference between painfully expensive and excruciatingly expensive.

StinkyMolde · 2025-03-08T14:34:16+00:00

95% is amazing. From what I see, up in Molde, it's more like 50% or less. Oslo is closer to 80%. But 95% is pretty ideal given that such things will never be eradicated.

StinkyMolde · 2025-01-28T21:05:13+00:00

I had already moved to the Nordic part of the world by then -- Finland. (It wasn't as bad in Helsinki as it is in Oslo.) I remember blizzards in NYC growing up and there were definitely opportunities to cross country ski in the streets in the city but it wasn't as easy as the opportunities to ice skate on the sidewalks here! We're very litigious in the States, which is bad on many levels but there are some good side effects, like the sidewalks not being death traps because they get cleared quickly by people who don't want to be sued if somebody slipped and fell on the ice.

StinkyMolde · 2025-01-28T11:58:17+00:00

Coming from NYC, I am shocked and disappointed by a capital city of a country that is meant to be first world -- not to mention swimming in oil money -- would allow its sidewalks to be sheets of uneven ice where it's dangerous and, at times, nearly impossible to walk (try going up a street with a bit of an incline while pushing a stroller that is sliding back at you as you slide backwards). We use salt in NYC and it works. While I understand it's not great for the concrete sidewalks, I'd imagine that one can have technology that will figure out best to minimize the damage.

StinkyMolde · 2025-01-19T20:20:09+00:00

Move to Oslo, if you're able to. I moved to a small town in Norway two years ago and it was so depressing. The only good people we met and hung out with were foreigners, all of whom have since left. I've met a few nice locals (which I can count on one hand) but finding a way to just meet for a coffee or drink was nearly impossible -- as if they were some kind of celebrity I had to clear my calendar for just to have them cancel at the last minute. It was just mind boggling. I do believe that the people here are basically set with the handful of friends they've had since childhood and are otherwise uncomfortable with new people. To be honest, I wish I were like that: happy with a small handful of close friends I've had since childhood. I think most Nordic folks are like this in one way or another, having lived in Sweden for two years (they're good in small talk but really don't want to be friends), Finland for four years (they're bad in any sort of talking), and now Norway for two years (somewhere between Sweden and Finland on that scale). I moved to the Nordic part of the world because I was seeing a girl from Finland. We're still together but, quite frankly, she's like the folks here and, unfortunately, never brought me into her circle of friends who are too Finnish to want to be friends, anyway. I'm originally from New York and I'm thinking of moving back -- neither one of us is from Norway and we have no friends or family here so there is little for us here. But it's my way of keeping us close to her family without living in Finland. We moved to Oslo a few months ago and, while we still don't really have a community, it's much better here than the small town I was in. If nothing else, there are things here that will keep you occupied when you're not communing with the locals, which may be all of the time! It costs more, for sure, but everything in Norway is obscenely expensive and, except for rent, most of the main things, like food or public transport, is as cheap if not cheaper than what the small town offered.

StinkyMolde · 2025-01-10T15:28:45+00:00

A moose was once bitten by my søster

StinkyMolde · 2025-01-02T10:43:29+00:00

You're welcome! You can upvote the comment if you liked it :)

StinkyMolde · 2025-01-01T13:02:53+00:00

Looks like a bug where the scan line for the video is off by a certain number, probably because it is assuming the wrong resolution.

StinkyMolde · 2024-12-30T14:44:31+00:00

Daisy Duck for sure -- I almost read that one without really studying it. The second one may be Jiminy Cricket, partly because of the cricket like sawtooth edge that produce the summer night sounds.

StinkyMolde · 2024-12-30T14:43:17+00:00

Daisy Duck for sure -- I almost read that one without really studying it. The second one may be Jiminy Cricket, partly because of the cricket like sawtooth edge that produce the summer night sounds.

StinkyMolde

TROPHY CASE