Chinese Visa – Check! februar 16, 2008

Earlier this week, I went to Vinderen in Oslo get my visa at embassy of China. So… I got my ass over there and after talking to this chinese woman behind the counter, I realized that there’s a pretty good chanse that my future in Beijing will be filled with communication problems and misunderstandings… I asked the her to get my visa, and what she did was to charge the double amount of what I thought was normal to pay – but I was thinking like “what the heck, maybe the price has increased or I’ve been misinformed…”, but hell no! After paying, she gave me an envelope, and when I looked into it I discovered that she had actually given me both mine and my brothers visa, and made me pay for both! (do’h!) This wasn’t really part of my plan, but it’ll work out… my brother’s just gonna have to pay me back, then it’s all ok I mean… HE BETTER!

iPhone februar 13, 2008

I’ve tested the iPhone a bit now, and decided to get my hands on one myself. When moving to Beijing, an iPhone would be genious to have. My plan is to install Skype on it even though it’s just open for web-skype – but a SDK will be released soon, so I guess it wont be long til a real Skype application can be installed. Also, chinese prices on mobile data is almost free – unlimited use for 15$ a month!  Or thats what I’ve read…

Well, the PayPal account is up’n running, only need to get it properly activated ang send some money to a friend of mine in the states and boom! iPhone on the way

NOT joining the Norwegian Military februar 12, 2008

To even have a military should be uneccessary, but since we just cant get a grip and stop killing eachother, even I am doomed to serve my duty… so here’s what I did.

One of my biggest concerns in the time before moving to Beijing has been the military. I got called in for first time duty 26. March 2008, 16 days after planting my feet on Chinese ground, so I applied for delayed duty for at least a year. This I did for several month ago, so yesterday I sent an e-mail to find out whats going on. The answer had tremendous YAY-factor. My first time duty is terminated, and my application for delayed duty was approved!

Getting ready, counting days… februar 4, 2008

Allrighty, it’s now 34 days 10 hours and 38 minutes to the 10th of March 2008. My estimated date of evacuating this country. A couple of days ago I was at the Chinese embassy in Norway to search for a Visa, but before that I had to take some new passport photos for them. Easier said than done!

For some reason, my card got refused when trying to cash out some money, even though it got money on it. Joakim’s card was almost broken in two and didn’t work and the company card just had a bad day. How difficult should it be to get 60NOK for a passport photo? After arguing with some people pretending to follow each and every strict rules of their bosses, we tricked one lady to fix a neat way to get money out of 7-Eleven’s moneybag. Return of bought item with money refund or something, I’m not sure (dirty business is more Joakim’s table…)..

After this stressed up adventure, we rushed over to the photobox and almost broke the buttons on that slow-ass piece of junk called photobox. 160 seconds later, it spit out the photos disappointing me with low mugshot-factor ;-( But ok, no time for gangster-makeover in Photoshop here.

The Visa application has now been delivered. Here’s the low mugshot-factor photo..

 Joakim was jerking around right next to me,
so this is 0.2 seconds before i started smiling,
which would end up with a catastrophically low
bad-ass mugshot-factor.