There are those who note the soft white toilet paper now in use at Stawki, in lieu of the grey corrugated kind of old*, and ask: is this the best use of taxpayer monies/tuition payments? Others have no questions.

* last month

I think the past few months have led me to the conclusion that I am really not looking just for someone to brush my teeth next to every night. I guess I like being alone more/am more selfish than the average person.

You know sometimes You meet someone, and it feels like they are a reward for all the tedium and suffering and work You've done on Yourself, and all the sacrifice and the delay of gratification, and all the whatever kinds of costs we incur by being the best people we can be. You meet someone and it feels like You deserve this person, and You would not have the benefit of this person if You hadn't given so much of Yourself in the past, and now it all turns out to have been worth it. It makes sense, in a long-term developmental sort of way, and it's comforting.

And then there are other people You sometimes meet. And these people feel, they feel like miracles. They don't feel like a reward, or like You deserve them, or that they are in any way connected to anything You may have done in the past, they feel like a windfall, unexpected and glorious, and it's disconcerting, because nothing in Your meritocratic (or even karmic) philosophy has led You to believe that human connection, or anything else, works this way. It's not comforting; it's shocking. Like any miracle.

The UiT boligkontor answered my prayers and put in a narrow but long desk by the window of the visiting-scientist-apartment where I am staying for the next 3 weeks. I know You might tire of my repeating this, but I LOVE IT HERE! Aaaaahwhwhhahahwhahhahhahahaaaaaa!

I have to admit, ever since my dreams didn't come true, I have been a lot less tense. I vacillate between interpreting this as my having lost all hope, because nothing actually really matters anymore, and as a healthy embracing of my not-quite-dreamlike-but-also-not-a-nightmare status quo.

The elderly woman I walked back from the voting place this evening not only at length expounded the benefits of singledom ("Men just add work. They're like a second job. Now you can go home, eat what you want, listen to what you want, go to bed when you want. It's better."); she was also radically classist ("there are hardly any Varsovians in Warsaw anymore! It wasn't like this in the old days! They came here, to the schools, where they got special treatment, because, you know, they were 'disadvantaged', and they stayed. You really can't count on anyone with a sense of community anymore. No one helps anyone.") as well as shockingly straightforward regarding abortion ("She has 10 kids. Her husband, he didn't let her terminate any of her pregnancies. Her breasts are a disaster, of course she breastfed all of them.").

My seatmate on the flight from Oslo to Tromsø, an engineer on his way to Hammerfest for work, asked me about my Norwegian, and when I said I could usually understand some of what was going on and achieve most basic survival goals he said, "Ah! Just enough to get into trouble, but not enough to get out of it!" Precisely, Dear Sir.