This post has been a long time coming, but I’ve moved to Oslo, Norway. Why a long time coming? Well, I’ve been here off and on since November of 2011.

How I got here is a rather long story, but let’s just say the opportunity arose, and I jumped on it.

Welcome to Norway…

I’ve grown up in various climates. When I was a kid, I lived in snowy Tonapah, Nevada. Then I moved to the very tropical and humid climate of the Philippines. From there, I moved to the rather dry heat of Las Vegas, Nevada, before eventually moving in with my dad to the uber-cold Fairbanks, Alaska.

From Fairbanks came Colorado, and then Colorado, to Phoenix, Arizona.

In summary, I’ve pretty much lived in every climate imaginable (aside from the horrid heat my sister described in Iraq).

So when I got to Norway, I assumed I could take it. And take it I did. It was frigid cold, and even the locals said, “Oh, this is the warmest winter we’ve had in recent memory.” Suck it. Seriously.

I was put up in a hotel for my first month, and hoped for the best.

Quality Hotel 33 in Oslo, Norway

I was so jet-lagged from my trip that my first day in the office, I actually fell asleep on one of their couches. I was then informed that I would have to figure out how to take the public transport from my hotel to the office.

The Public Transport

I’m not a true virgin of public transport. My entire time in Phoenix and Las Vegas, I rode the public busses religiously. What I wasn’t accustomed to was the overall breadth of the transportation system. Oslo has trams, busses, the metro (what we know as the subway or city train), and ferries.

The transportation system was so hard for me to learn at first because:

1. I wasn’t familiar with the language (I had about 4 days notice to coming to Norway initially)
2. I wasn’t familiar with the address system.
3. I wasn’t familiar with the city.

Add in the fact that I’m not that adventurous of a person and I hate getting lost… well, let’s just say my first day figuring out the transport system was a bit of trial and error. I eventually made it back to work, and that evening, I eventually made it back to the hotel.

One of the more memorable moments was when I reached my stop near the hotel and I tried to get off the metro. I just stood at the door and stared, waving my hands trying to get the door open. Finally, someone said, in English, “Press the button.” And push the button I did, followed by an awkward exit from the “tube”.

The Weather

As I mentioned previously, I’ve lived in all kinds of climates, so of course I thought Norway would be a piece of cake. Yeah, what I didn’t take into account was the amount of walking culture Norway (and probably all of Europe) has. When it’s cold and icy, it’s just common to hunker down and take some kind of vehicle to where you’re going. Not so here.

You walk to the transport. Wait. Freeze. Wait some more. Freeze some more. And then get on the transport. And freeze some more inside. And then when you get to your stop, you get off. Freeze further. And finally, when you get to your destination, it might be tolerable enough inside to not need a jacket. I don’t think I was ever warm the entire time I was in Norway in November/December.

I specifically remember when I went back to the states to visit my family in December, that the plane was uncomfortably warm. I thought to myself, “Hmmm, this is uncomfortable. But at least I’m not cold.”

That being said, I was very under-dressed when I initially came to Norway. In Norway, there’s a saying that more-or-less goes, “There’s never bad weather. Just inadequate clothing.” So true in my case. I had summer shoes, a fleece jacket, and a glorified rain coat. It kept me warm. Scratch that. It kept me from freezing to death.

When I came back in January, I came back with proper winter boots, ear muffs, a scarf, and a warm winter jacket. Problem solved.

Crossing this would be a bitch no matter what shoes I wore

Grocery Shopping

I did my first bit of grocery shopping a few days after I landed in Oslo in November. Stores in general are closed on Sunday, which I didn’t realize at first.

It’s a good idea to grocery shop because the restaurants are crazy expensive (think $20 for a cheap meal, and $60 for a reasonable one).

The stores are a lot smaller than American supermarkets, with a more conservative selection, and definitely no medical-related products (you have to go to a separate pharmacy for those).

I struggled for the loooongest time to find anything I might find edible. It was very difficult, and me being a rather picky eater, I would rather starve than be adventurous with my food. I also couldn’t force myself to spend $10 USD on a container of questionable peanut butter, but I eventually got over that (the peanut butter here is actually quite good).

Eventually I learned that you had to go to the more specialty shops to get the foods you wanted. Want produce? Go to a produce shop. Want asian food? Go to an asian shop. It’s just the way it works here.

Apartment Life

After returning in January, I moved into my first apartment with my flatmate Ryan (who is from New Zealand). The apartment was a lot bigger than I expected, but there were a few things that I wasn’t quite used to.

First, the restrooms (aka, the toilet). I’m not used to, nor do I think I will ever get used to, a shower that shares the same floor as the rest of the restroom. Think of a floor with a drain, and a water spout over the drain with a glass wall that semi-protects the rest of the floor from getting wet. Weird, right? Nope, that’s normal here.

The toilets are designed differently as well, which isn’t really a bad thing. They never get stopped up like the ones in the states. It’s hard to find anyone here that even knows what a plunger is. “Isn’t that something a plumber uses?”

The second thing I noticed was the lack of a clothes dryer. Most people I know here hang their clothes up to dry on what my flatmate calls a “clothes horse”.

When him and I bought one at a local mall, he nonchalantly said to me, “I’ll call you retarded if you can’t figure this out.”

And after calling me retarded, he patiently showed me how to hang up my clothes properly on the contraption.

The last thing I had to get used to was the hardwood floors. No carpet, as I am used to in the states through my apartment living. I never realized how dirty a floor could get, which makes you wonder how much shit is actually in a carpet. Gross.

Work Culture

Work culture was something, thankfully, that I didn’t have too much culture shock from. The people at my work are very laid back, very hardworking, and very intelligent people.

My work is the reason I’m here, so I better like it, right?

We usually have beer-Friday’s, where we sit around sometimes after work and enjoy a few beers from the beer fridge.

And now that spring/summer is here, my co-workers and I hang out and have a few beers in the park on occasion.

The Culture

I come from a southern hospitality region of the United States. It’s where everyone talks to everyone, people open doors for others, people smile and greet each other in the streets, etc.

If you smile at someone in the street here, you’ll get a dirty look at best. It’s just not that type of culture. People are trying to get from point a to point b, especially when it’s butt-ass cold outside.

It’s definitely not one of my strengths to be able to break into conversation with anyone, even in English, so it’s been a challenge for me to try to engage in conversations with Norwegians, who may or may not speak English very well (for the most part, however, Norwegians do speak very good English).

Norwegians love the weather, good or bad. In the winter, they’re cross-country skiing, running (on ice!), skating, sledding, skiing, camping, climbing, and various other activities you wouldn’t catch me dead doing (seriously, if I tried skating, I might as well bring a coffin with me). In the summer, it’s swimming, barbecuing in the park, sitting in the sun having a beer (which I thought was stupid at first, but really awesome), and otherwise just enjoying the nice and rare moments of blissful weather.

I still have a lot to learn as far as the culture and language goes, but I’m always pleasantly surprised.

Overall Impressions

I’ve only been to Oslo, honestly, but so far, my impression of Norway is very warm (no weather reference intended). I’ve been debating how long I’ll be here ever since I got here (the cold ass weather will do that to you), but I’ve really grown to like the culture, people, country, and (gasp), climate.

No related posts.

Article originally published: I’m in Norway

In life, we make mistakes. They’re as concrete as paying taxes and dying.

I often quote a saying: “If people supposedly learn from their mistakes, why are we not all geniuses?”

Regardless if mistakes make a person smarter, I do think mistakes in life are an absolute necessity.

There are the dumb redneck mistakes that make up the joke, “How do you know a redneck is about to die?” “He turns around to his peers and yells, ‘Hey, watch this!’”

Then there are the genuine mistakes where you hurt yourself or others, whether emotionally or physically.

A Mistake as a Child

I have definitely made my fair share of mistakes in life. One I made as a kid. I was climbing up a concrete waterside in the Philippines and someone happened to be coming down the slide at the same time. The person caught my legs and I landed face first on the concrete, sliding all the way down. As a consequence, my teeth were pretty much destroyed. It also didn’t help that soon after, I attempted to jump into a pool backwards and smacked those already-mangled teeth into the side of the pool.

“Snaggletooth” or “Buck-tooth Beaver” were names I often heard on the playground. As I grew older, people who genuinely didn’t like me would suggest, “I bet someone slammed a baseball bat in your face for talking shit.” People can be cruel.

It wasn’t until high school when an extremely kind lady (whom I hope she doesn’t mind me sharing her name) named Luann Gale offered to help fix my teeth. What followed were several surgeries and what seemed an endless amount of dental work. When I tell people I know how it “feels” to have root canals, teeth pulled, etc., I mean every word of it.

By the way Luann, if you ever read this, I am eternally indebted and thankful to you. You taught me how to smile again.

Mistakes Out of Your Control

But I was a kid when I made those mistakes. Why should I have to pay for them now and until the day I die? “That’s life”, some would say.

And they’re right. That is life. I can’t help but remember a quote from one of my favorite war movies Black Hawk Down. In the context of the movie, the quote is regarding war. However, it’s easily applicable to life in general.

See you’re thinking. Don’t. ‘Cause Sergeant, you can’t control who gets hit or who doesn’t or who falls out of a chopper or why. It ain’t up to you. It’s just war.

I can easily change this quote to reflect life and apply it to myself.

See, Ron, you’re thinking. Don’t. You can’t control what happens to you or others or why. It’s not up to you. It’s just life.”

So Who’s in Control?

The above quote easily reminds me of the dreaded topic of religion. If it’s not up to me, then who the hell is it up to? God? God is an easy fixture to place blame upon, but some mistakes I must simply own up to. God isn’t responsible for everything, right? At some point, assuming there is a heaven, I will have to account for the things I have or have not done.

So if God, or Jesus, or whoever, asks me, “Ron, what the heck have you been up to in life?”, I’ll probably laugh and say, “Read my fucking blog.”

Kidding aside, I’ll own up to my mistakes. I’ll own up to my regrets. And at the same time, I’ll tell the things I’m glad I have done, even if they were considered by others to be mistakes.

As a person, I don’t believe you are defined by the mistakes you have made. Mistakes are, in a sense, subjective. What may seem like a big mistake to you may seem like nothing to someone else. You might even get the dreaded “one-upper” who says, “Oh, you think that was bad? I once burned my father’s house down with my mother tied to the bed and ended up in a state correctional facility until I was 22.” And once you flee from that person, you can calm down and say, “Well, I guess I didn’t really have it that bad.”

Victims of Mistakes

And people often pay for mistakes made by others. Think politics and history. How much of the human race has fallen victim to a dictatorship or some bad policy made at the highest of levels?

What about children? The consequences of divorce weigh heavily upon them when their parents make the decision that getting married was a mistake. Or how about when a single mother is thrown into prison making her children wards of the state? In both cases, neither the parents or the single mother wanted to harm their children (yes, these examples are from personal experience).

Thankfully, mistakes of these sort can be repaired. In politics, it’s called damage control.

Is it a Mistake?

The good and bad thing about mistakes is that a person rarely knows it’s a mistake until after the event has occurred. And even then, what may seem like a mistake in the short-term eventually turns out to be the right thing to do.

Examples of these types of mistakes are:

• Getting divorced or ending a relationship
• Quitting your job
• Having children
• Moving to a foreign country
• Moving to a new city
• Going bankrupt

I have entertained all of these, and have acted on several (I’m not telling which ones). But in every single one of those I did act on, all seemed like mistakes at the beginning. Some were proven not to be mistakes right away, while others, I eventually warmed up to.

And yet, some, did end up being mistakes.

Recovering From a Mistake

So what’s Mr. Ronald to do now that he’s admitted something is a mistake? Besides talk in the third person, Ronald curses the heavens and proclaims, “Dammit, I was right all along! What the fuck?!”

Once I’ve realized I’ve made a mistake, I attempt to own up to it. I’m a stubborn bastard. I think I’m smarter than most people. I’ve also done some stupid fucking shit (I almost feel a Tarantino quote coming on).

What helps me move on is probably learned from life experience and from an unlikely source. This quote makes most people quiver, but it actually helps me. The quote is from Fight Club:

First you have to give up, first you have to *know*… not fear… *know*… that someday you’re gonna die.

The quote is blunt and straight to the point. You will die. However, it’s an empowering thought. It means that you’re expendable. It means you’re temporary. While many perceive that as a negative, I turn it around.

It means others are expendable. It means others are temporary. What it means is that nobody is special. We may all be unique snowflakes, but we all end up in the same gutter when the snow melts.

There are many mistakes in which you can make a quick recovery. An example is a late night drinking and the morning-after-plea, “God, please make this headache go away! I promise to never do it again!”

Other mistakes you live with and are haunted with for the rest of your life. Will I always regret being suicidal? Yes. Will I always regret leaving the Army? Yes. Do I feel I did everything I could have in my marriage to keep my wife? No.

However, as much as I will admit I made the mistakes, there’s nothing I can do to correct them except to keep living as best I can. If I live a life of regret, I honestly don’t feel like I’m doing myself any good. So I shrug, am honest if people ask about it, and move on.

And moving on is sometimes the only thing you can do. There’s not always recovery. There’s not always hope. But there is life. I want to live it.

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2. Life is a Blog – Respect
3. Life is a Blog – Specialties
4. Life is a Blog – Do Unto Others
5. Two Months

Article originally published: Mistakes

This song requires A LOT of breathing, and it’s something my voice coach has been helping me with.

This video was taken yesterday at the Martini Lounge in OKC.

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Article originally published: Karaoke – In the Still of the Night

Intrinsic,
As a flame.
A fool.
A losing game.

There she is,
Gracefully,
Amongst the stars,
And I see…

The shining light,
Years ahead.
To naked eyes,
She is dead.

But the star,
No others see,
Intrigues,
Exquisitely.

The bright light,
Illuminates.
Never-ending coma.
Supernova.

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Article originally published: Supernova

Not from a love lost,
Or a desire unfulfilled,
But from the hatred and hurt,
That will never be healed.

I seek forgiveness,
And perhaps restitution,
But while I ache,
There seems only one solution.

These five stages I know.
And it starts with denial.
But these lonely thoughts,
Can only lead to exile.

I must escape this hurt,
Else I’m forced into danger.
I just want to accept,
But I’m always led back to anger.

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Article originally published: Stages

I quickly chose Iris, who lives near the Phoenix area in Arizona. She obviously was/is a bigger fan than I was. I had already received my own swag at SXSW in March, so I just wanted to make sure Iris got everything she needed. Then SoS went on a major American and European tour, I had yet another mental episode, and things progressed from there.

I finally decided to give it one more shot and asked the band on Twitter for some help, which they were glad to provide.

Iris is a little shy, so she didn’t post any pictures of herself. But let’s just say, Sick of Sarah, as usual, over delivered (pun intended).

Here’s Iris’s own words when she received the package:

Ron I got this today, poster signed and cd included. Sorry I didn’t take a picture of myself opening it, I’m actually ready for bed and was half asleep when my husband told me I had received a package. I had no clue who could’ve sent me something since I didn’t remember buying anythin online! Haha! Seriously! Anyway, I opened the envelope and there it was!! Thanks so much!! Maybe I can take a picture tomorrow when I’m not wearing pjs and look more decent!! Haha! Thanks so much!!! Good night!

Iris, when you get out of your PJs, we want more pics

Signed SoS Poster with Brand New 2205 CD

Sick of Sarah Poster from their Self-Titled Album Released in 2008

To Sick of Sarah

Thank you GALS soooo much for helping out. I’m sure you made Iris’ year. And thanks Evan from Adamant Records for helping get everything sorted out.

About Sick of Sarah

• Official Site – http://www.sickofsarah.com
• MySpace – http://www.myspace.com/sickofsarah
• Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/sickofsarah
• Twitter – http://www.twitter.com/sickofsarah
• iTunes – http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/sick-of-sarah/id259327114
• Official Online Store – http://www.rockthreads.com/sickofsarah/index.php/

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5. Sick of Sarah – New Album – 2205

Article originally published: Sick of Sarah Winner – Iris!!!

The same with dancing. I’ve always been a terrible dancer, but my ex-wife forced me to take lessons. I learned proper form, how to lead, and how to “swang ‘dem hips.”

Most of you know by know I LOVE karaoke. I’ve always been told I’ve had a decent voice, but I never really had the confidence, or the range/stamina, to make a serious endeavor out of it.

To better my “craft”, I decided to take lessons from a Vocal Coach in OKC named Rob Keiter. I found him on Craigslist initially (not the ideal meeting ground), but after our first meeting, I talked him into having a dedicated website for his voice services.

The result is VoiceCoachOKC.com. You can check out a screenshot below:

I’ve only had two lessons with Rob so far, and I must say, I’ve already significantly improved in confidence, and that is the most important thing ever, whether it is dancing, singing, or speaking a foreign language to a stranger.

He already has me on breathing exercises, didn’t scold me for liking punk or top-40 music, and even said I can realize my full voice potential while smoking (I can’t currently quit smoking cigarettes, but that’s another blog post down the line).

If I’m brave, I’ll post a before, middle, and (when Rob tells me I’m ready) after video. My goal is to sing “The Gift” by Angels and Airwaves. Ever since I’ve heard the song, I’ve been wanting to serenade the right woman with the song.

Anyways, all this to say, if you are in the OKC area and are looking for someone to help improve or develop a singing voice, I’d recommend the voice training of Rob Keiter. He’s brand new to OKC, is currently undercharging by A LOT, and has available openings.

Take care and hope to make you cringe with my voice soon!

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Article originally published: I’m Taking Voice Lessons

About Sick of Sarah

• Official Site – http://www.sickofsarah.com
• MySpace – http://www.myspace.com/sickofsarah
• Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/sickofsarah
• Twitter – http://www.twitter.com/sickofsarah
• iTunes – http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/sick-of-sarah/id259327114
• Official Online Store – http://www.rockthreads.com/sickofsarah/index.php/

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1. Sick of Sarah Winner – Iris!!!
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Article originally published: Sick of Sarah Fan Video

Meet my new daughter Natalia. Although I miss Miata every single day, Natalia will help immensely with my grieving process that has never been resolved.

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Article originally published: Meet My New Cat Natalia

I would argue that the Karaoke there is the best I’ve ever seen. Check it out or call ahead.

Here are some pictures from last Saturday night. This wasn’t a special occasion. The crowd was just soooo pumped.

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Article originally published: Karaosync at AppleBees