Do you know those situations when you move too fast to reflect upon your? It feels like I’m trying to do that right now. Just looking at the time span between Thursday evening and until now (Saturday morning)…

Thursday:
partying and planning until 3 Am,

Friday 7 AM:
putting up a huge banner “vote for the Red Voting Alliance” on the student house I live in with young Red Votng Alliance activists.

7:40 AM – 8:10 AM: wrapping red cloth around the trees at Olav Rye’s Square to “paint the city red”

8:10 AM – 9:00 AM: writing one typed page for my pedagogy course (part of group work)

9:00 AM – 9:30 AM: riding my bike around inner Oslo to pick up some important papers for the university board’s study commitee and out to the university

9:30 AM – 10:00 AM: meeting with the other two student representatives that also sit in the commitee. They are very concerned about “students” as a general category with no concerns to their income, believe or subejct. I tell them that I might vote against some points. The conservative representative wonders what I feel about the low amount of new math students. I tell him we have a split view on it in the Left Alliance based on variants of Marxism – Benjamin having a productivity centered view and me having a student desire based view. The

10:11 AM: sending put spell checked version of pedagogy paper

10:15 AM – 12 noon: obligatory pedagogy course (else I wouldn’t be there). We spend 2 lessons on discussing within groups (we’re 3 as #4 is missing today) how to make a lesson plan for a single lesson in which we combien two subecjt. Ou group combines English and math, so we teach math in English, and we all think that’s very smart as English language math books are a lot cheaper than the Norwegian ones.

12:15 PM – 3:00 PM: meeting in the university board’s study commitee. The other two student representatives seem to be afraid that I’ll call for an armed revolution during the meeting. I get a note from them: “It is custom that you present suggestions orally, and if you don’t get support, you don’t make people vote on it.” I present my first suggestion and get accepting nods and grunts from several at the table. Half a minute later I get another note: “And if you get support, the suggestion is automatically added to the original text.” well, I got that! I probably seem a bit rough and probably quite a bit like the odd foreigner, but I get both my changes through, and the closest I come to calling out for a revolution is when I make a point that I don’t think any high gloss brochure to enhance the populairity of the mathematical and natural sciences (they filled only 68% of their classes this semester) will be able to gloss over the fact that Norwegian private companies, that recruite from those sceinces, are building parts of the Guantanamo prison and that Norway is the 6th biggest weapon exporter (points I have made before).
Before the meeting started, the math representative started chatting with me. First question: “Are you Dutch or German?” After explaning where I was from once upon a time, she tells of her experiences of fishing in Kiel and Kappeln. When people are already told to hush, she tells about a friend’s friend who apparantly is working at Flensborg Avis: “He was German but he somehow chose to be part of the Danish minority.” … I’m getting sick of this world here everybody has this national affiliation that one hasn’t even chosen.

3:00 PM – 7:00 PM: hanging around the university, chatting with people, planning more actions (nothing turned out), eating at Frederikke, finding the odontological library, and a bunch of other small tasks

7:00 PM – 10:00 PM: audience in tv party leader debate. Torstein Dahle (RV) did rather well, as did the other three left parties. However, I have seen no poll suggesting new majorities.

10:20 PM – 11:30 PM: hanging around “Cafe Sara” with the Voting Alliance people.

11:45 PM: receiving call on “housing action”. I end up sleeping in front of the Norwegian parliament in my tent with a bunch of Norwegian activists around.

Saturday:
7:00 AM: woke up by old Danish man wanting to open my tent. I answered in Danish. He: “Are you Danish?” I: “hmm… yes!” He: “From where?” I: “From Flensburg” He: “Oh! Then you’re half-Danish!” Outside there were a bunch of German punks discussing a girl called “Cordula.” The Dane started walking around a bit and started asking me about my connections. “Why the hell would you study anthropology in Norway?,” was his response to my initial explanation, so I had to add some stuff about being sick of Denmark as well. Other than that there was a guy abotu 50-70 years old telling me: “I’m not a language scientist; I’m a gramatician,” while he was explaining the difference of Korean and Chinese signs, and what the historical origins are for that. After a while I rode my bike back home and I’ll go back to pick up my tent in a little while after having picked up a book from the odontological library, as it was closed when I was there yesterday.

Of course now I didn’t say anything about what I am trying to not reflect on. Well, it’s lots. Lots and lots. Or rather one issue that is just very big… right now, I feel like I’m just building up an ever growing shield around myself. I can’t figure people out. I can’t trust my own judgement of them, so I end up going for the “worst case scenario” in what they want to tell me by what they’re doing. And sometimes not. And those tend to be the wrong times. outch.