Starting at the end of the day, we just finished watching A Beautiful Mind with Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connelly. (Did you realize they played husband and wife in the movie Noah too?)
So, when I opened up my blog page, the “dashboard” has a graphic showing how many visitors per day over the last 2.5 or so weeks. I pointed out that Saturdays are the low days (which will be you folks). Now this became funny as John Nash’s schizophrenia in A Beautiful Mind is represented by his obsession with finding patterns. She’s not concerned yet, but I may be loosing a bit of touch with reality on this PhD journey. Good thing that Anya is here to keep me sane, obligating me to get out and about.
So, we did today. We walked to town and had lunch at McDonalds for $28. Norway is second place on the Big Mac Index at $6.30. It was #1 until the Swiss Franc was unpegged from the Euro in January. But if you are in Ukraine, you can get a Big Mag for $1.20.
http://www.economist.com/content/big-mac-index?fsrc=PS/cemea/ggl/gen/big-mac-index
Our walk about led to us discovering several shopping areas that are connected by skywalks. We did a bit of grocery shopping, as I need to keep a steady supply of small groceries that can fit in my backpack on the way home. Anya won in her appeal, and I bought Kinder Eggs, which are banned in the USA.
Lastly, we figured out how to recycle “pante” plastic bottles. It is estimated that Norway recycles 93% of all plastic bottles. A 1.5 litre bottle has a $.33 deposit on it, which is paid and then either refunded or donated to the Red Cross (and entered into a lottery). We donated to the Red Cross this time, but we didn’t win the lottery. (Is it really a lottery if you didn’t by a ticket, but were given a ticket as an incentive to donate to the Red Cross?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFxy1TgXMz8