My First Winter

A few days ago I returned from my first "real" winter experience in Norway. "Real" to distinguish it from my first snowfall which I caught last November while walking from the shuttle to an airplane about to take off from Budapest, where I stood on the airplane runway trying to catch snowflakes on my face like a crazy promdi fool. This time it was the end of February in Scandinavia, with miles and miles of snow. I had to suit up everyt ime I left the cozy warm indoors and I never felt I was wearing enough. My Zara sale coat performed quite well with a wool inner layer, but I think I'll be buying one of those puffy down-filled waterproof jackets with the fur trim sometime in the future.

In fairness, walking in the snowy outdoors was not as bad as I imagined. I thought that a tropical girl such as myself would freeze and keel over soon as I hit the outdoors but I was walking every day much like the other Norwegians (some of whom were jogging in - 2 degrees Celcius!). My face and hands got numb after awhile, and everyone kept telling me I was lucky to be experiencing such a mild bout of weather (the week before it was - 15 C), but then I thought, hey I can handle this!

That seems like a good sign.

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Am I Noisy?

Situation #1 - I live alone in a 2-bedroom condo and when I arrived from my Bangkok trip 2 weeks ago, I got a note from my neighbor directly below me claiming that I keep him awake watching TV in my bedroom. He cites an instance where I watched TV until 2:30am and it interfered with him "performing (my) regular duties" in his hectic 12-14 hour workday. Having been traveling mostly over the past 3 weeks, I could only remember one night where I stayed up watching Die Hard 4. This neighbor then requested that I cease watching TV in my bedroom since the walls were so thin that he could even hear me "walking about, taking a bath, and flushing the toilet".

Situation #2 - A week ago I had 4 friends come over to hang out til midnight, and since I don't have a cool sound system I was just playing my iTunes at half-volume over my IBM Thinkpad speakers (which everyone knows are quite crappy). The next day the guard stopped me at the gate to say that the same neighbor complained of me playing loud music...and he could hear the scraping of the chairs on the floor.

Now I've tried to listen to my neighbors to check how much I can hear but all I can make out is the hum of the airconditioning, and sometimes the sound of light switches being turned off/on so I figure the walls must not be that thin! I just bought Altec Lansing speakers for my iPod which I feel I can't play and now I can't even watch my pirated DVDs til I fall asleep. So am I noisy or is the neighbor just a freak?