Advarsler
Det er advarsler strødd rundt overalt mot alt mulig rart. Min personlige favoritt er denne – plassert inne på ethvert toalett på kafeer og restauranter:

Som om ikke det er en selvfølge? Synes det forstyrrer matopplevelsen en smule at jeg skal bli minnet på at kokker og servitører muligens kan glemme noe så essensielt før de tafser på maten til gjestene…

Organic low-fat diet vegan burger
Og når vi er inne på mat. Jeg er vant til å kjøpe “normal” mat i Norge. Lightprodukter holder jeg meg som regel unna. Her er imidlertid det som tilsynelatende er normal mat, så søt og feit at det nok ikke er så rart at folk blir nødt til å vike unna det “normale”. Organic food, og ikke minst vegan food er hot her borte. Så hot at man kan bestille en salat med bacon som hovedingrediens i det grønne, og servitøren vil likevel si “There’s bacon in that one. Are you SURE you want bacon?”

Sikkerhet
I en del tilfeller liker altså amerikanerne å være på den sikre siden. Mulig det er derfor de er pliktige å behandle melken så mye at den dunken jeg har i kjøleskapet varer helt til påske. Eller i alle fall til langt ut i oktober. Samtidig bor jeg i en leilighet uten noe særlig sikring med tanke på brann. Jeg kan dessuten klatre opp en ynkelig stige for å komme opp på taket av det tre etasjer høye bygget jeg bor i – og kaste meg rett utfor taket om jeg skulle være i det humøret. Vi hadde 30 mennesker og mengder med øl oppå taket her forleden i mørke natten uten inngjerding. Samtidig er stiene i parkene godt gjerdet inn så folk ikke skal forville seg ut i “the wilderness” – altså litt busker og trær langsmed veien.

En liten flik av takterrassen til leiligheten min i Williamsburg. Fritt frem for å hoppe ned fra taket på hvilken side du vil :/

Dyr
Apropos parker, så kryr det av hunder i dem, og ellers i byen i og for seg. Mange har også flere hunder. Litt merkelig med tanke på hvor dyrt bolig er her, og hvor små leiligheter de fleste her bor i. Samtidig er det stas for meg med litt hunder rundt om, med tanke på at jeg for tiden bare skyper med fine hunden til mamma og pappa:

Et av de siste bildene jeg har av Lotta – den fineste hunden i manns minne. Fra Nordstrand bad, Oslo. Nå sosialiserer vi via Skype.

Mennesker
Mulig hunder også er en del av nøkkelen til en slank, veltrent kropp. Jeg vil nemlig ikke si fedmen er særlig utbredt her. New York city består av en god dose freaks, men også en mengde pene, vellykkede, hippe mennesker. I tillegg er de aller fleste veldig hjelpsomme, imøtekommende og høflige. Der vi i Norge skygger unna, ser sjenert ned i bakken og er klønete i situasjoner med fremmede mennesker, ser amerikanerne med det samme om du er litt lost, trenger en hjelpende hånd, en guided tour eller en drink, for den saks skyld. Folk er rett og slett litt mer laidback her. Samtidig har jeg endt opp i en del merkelige samtaler som har en tendens til å gå i ring grunnet noens mer avslappede forhold til røyking av sterkere saker. Samtaler i sjangeren:

- Hi, i’m xxxx. What’s your name?
- Hi, i’m Kristin.
- Do you smoke weeeed?
- …

…har faktisk forekommet opptil flere ganger. Om det er jeg som tiltrekker meg denne mennesketypen, eller om det er så utbredt at det ikke er snakk om en type mennesker, er ikke godt å si ennå. Har inntrykk av at mine kommende klassekamerater er hakket mer oppegående i alle fall, og hurra for det!

Tilbake til mat og sånn
Ellers er jeg jo over gjennomsnittet opptatt av mat, og jublet litt inni meg da min fantastiske samboer inviterte tre venner over – hvorav én av dem er kokk på en fancy restaurant på Manhattan. Han kokkelerte en deilig pastarett med kjærlighet, god tid og kylling som viktige ingredienser. Vi andre stod rundt og fjaset og glante for det meste. Da jeg hadde inntrykk av at maten nærmet seg ferdig, ymtet jeg frempå at det kanskje var på tide å dekke bordet. Jeg ble møtt med skuldertrekk i hovedsak, og forstod at jeg skulle roe ned etter et par forsøk på å rydde plass ved kjøkkenbordet. Vi endte med å forsyne oss av den diggeste pastaen i hver vår dype tallerken, og snafset så opp herligheten med gaffel i hånd – noen stående, andre sittende litt strødd utover kjøkkengulvet. Jeg følte jeg var uhøflig både mot mat og mot kokk, og kjente dessuten en trang til å kombinere kniv med gaffel under inntakelsen av måltidet. Jeg var tydeligvis alene om det… Å sitte ned, tenne noen stearinlys og virkelig kose seg med maten, er visst ikke helt kotymen. Heldigvis har jeg et fint lite IKEA-bord på rommet mitt der jeg kan hylle fremtidige måltider som seg hør og bør :)

Det var vel det viktigste for nå. Når undervisningen kommer i gang på skolen skal man ikke se bort i fra at bloggen vil preges av mindre mat og mer faglig innhold. For nå avslutter jeg med hva samboeren og jeg ler mest av for tiden:

Sjalabais!

The day is finally here. I leave for New York City this morning to start my 2 year Master’s degree in interaction design. I bring a ton of stuff even though I really have been trying to restrain myself. But my globe will stay here in Oslo – looking out on the rainy weather. And yay for the rain! Much easier to leave my hometown when it’s all grayish and wet. Which reminds me of the last decision I need to make: should I bring my fancy yellow Hunter boots? I think they will love New York.

My Mom is worried that I will get fat in the US. So she decided to teach me how to make some healthy crisp bread the other day. The first thing I suggested was to put some honey in the dough to make it yummier. I am definitely getting fat over there. However, these initially surprisingly-easy-to-make crisp breads end up being not-so-easy-to-separate-from-the-baking-sheet if you add the honey. My advice – DO NOT EXPERIMENT. Do as Tone (my Mom’s colleague) says. If you understand Norwegian, that is. I am lazy today, so I simply won’t bother translating all these seeds and weird flour types into English. I won’t even type the recipe. I think my photos will do. Now go make these crispy delights:

Back then I thought I would need this degree to get into the field professionally. When I signed the contract with Logica’s UX department a year later, I understood that this was not the case – and I have been calling myself an interaction designer since that very day.

I am moving from my beloved garden city house to live with my parents now. Renting out my apartment is one of many necessary steps to remove the red numbers from my “Student in New York budget”… I am trying really hard to put stuff in boxes tonight, but stumbled upon these colorful notes I made when taking a class at the University called ‘User Interface’, and got all nostalgic:

I put the word interaction design in the middle, and tried my best to get a better understanding of principles, processes, methods, tools and approaches to the field – just by reading this boring book about it. I guess I’ve got the hang of many of the things at this sheet now. It’s in my guts. But I am ready to explore interaction design in another way than you get to as a consultant. I want to both get inspired, and to inspire through design. I want to read long articles without feeling guilty. I want to write, write, write. I want to be able to blog about anything again – to be open. With a brain focused on things that I am not allowed to tell anyone, the blog has almost died a sloooowly death.

I can’t wait to be student again, to get to know my fellow students, to get to know New York, a new neighborhood and a new home! In September it’s getting real.

PS! I have no idea where this new home will be yet. Let me know if you have any tips on living in New York, know of a room that will be available from September, want to go apartment hunting with me, or can let me stay a couple of nights at your place while I find my future home :)

PPS! If you want to live in my beautiful house with garden and parking lot and furnitures and everything at Valle in Oslo for NOK 10500 a month, say so. To me.

And I made an excuse
You found another way to tell the truth
I put no one else above us
We’ll still be best friends when all turns to dust
Excuses by The Morning Benders

A quote from the song I keep on repeat at the moment, Excuses by The Morning Benders. It’s so nice walking around in the sunny spring weather humming to the tune. Check out the video from the recording of the song below, where one big happy San Fran-family sing and play in the studio. You can download the mp3 of Excuses for free from the band site, www.themorningsbenders.com, and you can purchase their wonderful album Bic Echo there too :)

Tonight I am going to a live album recording concert session here in Oslo with Heartfelt & The Music Population Orchestra. Hopefully it will be just as magical!

A Prophet (FR) is also an excellent gangster movie – but this time we get a story from within the prison walls. The film is not dark and funny. It’s just daaaark. No laughing out loud, but I was close to vomiting once. Just 2.5 hours plain tragedy including the worst scene ever. Keywords: razor blade, battle, blood, blood, blood. Ugh. What I learned from the movie? Take a language course. Do not look other people in the eye. And STAY AWAY FROM PRISON.

Sentence drawing for On the Road by Kerouac.

The “doodle” above explained.

Various authors’ writing styles emerge from these weird abstract doodles when she visualize the first chapters of their books.

Another kind of visualization of On the Road using a tree structure. The tree divides Part One into chapters, then into paragraphs, then into sentences, and finally sentences are divided into words.

Some of the hard work Posavec did in On the Road by Kerouac to structure the content.

By Posavecs’ systematic approach, she has made a lot of different visualizations, and I admire both the idea and the excellent design work. Luckily, I can put a poster on my wall to remind me of what great ideas and hard work can lead to. Check out Stefanie Posavec’s Writing Without Words project:

• on her own site
• on NotCot where the images are in higher resolution
• put a poster on your wall

The menu:
- Salmon carpaccio
- Pasta with pumpkin or amatriciana (tomato, bacon, chili++) sauce
- Panna cotta with raspberries

Some of my friends came early to help out (thankyouthankyou!!). But I made the dessert all by myself the night before. A nervous dessert-making session. I am not good at baking or making desserts – probably because I generally prefer eating a starter rather than digging in to this sweet stuff. But panna cotta is the exception that proves the rule. Not when it comes to the making of it, but when it comes to the eating. I simply LOVE panna cotta, and figured that I just had to try to make my favorite dish although my last attempt did not work out at all. After all, every recipe I looked up would mark this as an “Easy” dish to make. And this time it actually was!

PANNA COTTA WITH YOGURT
3 sheets of gelatine
3 dl whipping cream
2 dl plain yogurt
1 dl sugar
1 vanilla beam

RASPBERRY SAUCE
5 tablespoons of sugar
1 dl water
250 g rasberries
1 vanilla beam
Limejuice

Split the vanilla beam lengthwise, Scrape out the seeds with a knife. Put both beam and seeds in a pan with the cream and sugar. Heat it while stirring, but do not bring to boil. Remove from heat for 20 minutes. Put sheets of gelatin in cold water for about 3 minutes. Put the pan back on the stove on medium heat. Remove the vanilla beam. Take the sheets of gelatin out of the water, and squeeze them gently to remove any water before adding them to the pan. Stir until the gelatin is completely dissolved. Turn off the heat, and add the yogurt gently while stirring. Pour the panna cotta mixture into 4 glasses. Put in fridge for about 4 hours.

The raspberry sauce is just one of many ways to add flavor to the panna cotta. But rasberry sauce – how to: put water and sugar in a pan, stir while bringing to boil. Remove the pan from the heat, add a split vanilla beam, the seeds, the berries and some drops of lime juice to enhance the taste. Let the mixture rest for an hour before removing the vanilla beam and put the whole berrysaucethingy in a blender or something. Add some tablespoons of sauce to the panna cotta before serving – just to cover it. Too much sauce will ruin the delicious yogurt/vanilla flavour of the panna cotta. So. Less than on the crappy iphone photo above, then :)

Yummy!