Heie Heie Heie

Despite numerous suspicions that I don’t actually work, I do. Okay, I don’t actually work, I’m just getting paid to learn right now. I’m in my 5th week now of START school, and life is actually taking the form of a “normal” life. I realized that these 8 weeks in Norway are the longest that I have been anywhere since I left Vietnam last June. I have a regular “work week”. I go to school at the Oslo Training Center which is in the same building as the Schlumberger / WesternGeco Oslo Technology Center, where they think up all the new technology to keep WesternGeco ahead of everyone else.

I’ve been learning a lot (a lot) about computers that is really useful no matter where I am. Unix and I are now much better friends, I understand networks, and I think I can set up, configure, run, and possibly even trouble shoot most of our software and hardware on board. This week we are focusing on our newest seismic technology, Q. It's special because using Q you can go back to reservoirs that are already in production, re-shoot seismic there, and monitor the well.

I also have exams every week, so I feel like Susan, my room mate from Princeton who is at medical school now and must take a massive exam every other week. I’m 100% sure her exams are much more difficult than mine, but I still spend a good part of Sunday studying (okay well not this past weekend, since it was my birthday, but hey).

Instead of studying this weekend I went to the world cup ski jumping event (backhoppning in Swedish). The day started with a blue sky. It had snowed and sleeted the night before, so the run was too slow, so they had to postpone the initial combined event and put chemicals on the jump. I realized that this was my first international sporting event that I had ever been to. The real event started though with a large marching band at the very top of the slope. I was just waiting for one of the band members to slip. Then skiers with each represented country’s flag skied down the slope and then it was time to start. The skiers jump from those with the worst standings to those with the best. Therefore, the American jumped first. I kid you not, after he jumped and landed everyone laughed because it was such a short jump. However soon I was surrounded by Norwegians shouting “heie heie heie” (cheer cheer cheer) and ringing their cow bells and Poles shouting “lec lec” (fly fly). Poles dominated the audience, because the current best ski jumper is a polish guy. Unfortunately he was last to jump and by that point the winds had picked up and he did pretty badly, which led to the canceling of the last round. A really cool way to spend my birthday weekend though.