Today for lunch we went to a newly opened Max restaurant in Oslo. For all of you who don't know, Max is a Swedish burger joint that makes the best burgers in the world. The restaurant in Oslo is the first one outside of Sweden. There me and my friend both ordered the plus-sized kiddie meal. When my friend got his meal he realized that there was no gift in it. (The kiddie meal always have a little gift, like a frisbee or something.) He complains about it, making us look like overgrown children and the guy at the register apologizes and tells us that they have ran out of toys. (The people at this place are seriously so utterly unorganized, every time we have been here somethings gone wrong.)

 

“But if you want you can have some ice-cream instead.” And we stopped complaining. Thinking about it, we probably just are overgrown children.

So we got our meals + free vanilla ice-cream with delicious chocolate sauce. Actually my friend managed to get one and a half as he had already eaten half of it when the dude managing the station realized he'd forgotten the chocolate and gave him a new one.

(And later found out they screwed up again by giving me a cheeseburger instead of a regular one.)

 

 

Before I was gonna start working my friend had a new appointment to fix his dreads again. Long story short:

We went.

We rang.

Nobody was there.

We sat and waited.

Nobody came.

We broke into the building next door.

Climbed over to the actual building we were going to.

And this was the vision that greeted us:

 

 

Yeah, pretty sure nobody's home...

 

 

 

This past two weeks I have been counting down the excruciatingly slow days, hour by hour, congratulating myself every night before going to sleep for surviving another day.

“Just eight work-days and ten days in total to go, just seven work-days...”

Last night I kept repeating: “Just one more day and then it's the weekend and I can lie down and die a little. Then it's just four days left and then I will be in Sweden.” But nooo...

This morning some woman (I have no idea who the hell she is) came in for the third time this week and asked if anybody could work this weekend. I thought: “Hmm...I can work, right? It's not like I do anything special with my free time here. (I can't even watch TV! I, Dena, have survived almost two months without TV. I'm so proud over my self.) And I could really need the money...”

“I can work!” The woman whose name I could care less about turns to me. “Really? What's your name, I will put you on the list...blablabla...”

 

ALL WORK AND NO TV MAKES DENA AN INSANE GIRL

 

Now I'm suppose to work tomorrow from 16:00 to 23:30. Damn it people, don't speak to me so early in the morning. You make me do stupid things!

On the upside I already make a lot of money working regular days (I'm in Norway, remember?), now I will get extra for not only working on a Saturday but for working the evening shift, that ironically is said to be much easier.

 

So my own parents forgot me. First they call and disturb me at work and promise to call back later at around 8 p.m. my time. They were suppose to call my brother as well to make sure he will be able to get payed for the work he has done this summer. He hasn't gotten a call either.

It's almost 11 o'clock. It is safe to say we have been forgotten.

Guess they are partying to hard...



*Sad face*

 

They. Wont. Stop. Touching. Me!

 

Not inappropriately, but when you are born and raised in Sweden, where the simplest “Hello” has to be pressed forward and every hug turns out awkward, then random, complete strangers putting their arms around your shoulders and pulling you forward to kiss your cheeks is beyond your comfort zone.

 

Hugs and kissed from people you don't know isn't something strange and unfamiliar, I am from Iran after all (although, their hugs are TORTURE. I swear, I've heard my ribs crack more times that I can count). But it's the fact that it's so unexpected. Second week I was here, my friend was getting his dreads fixed at a place called “Dreads i Oslo” (Dreads in Oslo) yeah, they had about as much imagination as I did. Anyway when there, the owner shakes my friend's hand and I raise my hand when, then all of a sudden he grabs it and pulls me close and kiss both my cheeks.

 

He could have punched me and I would have been less surprised. Afterwards I wave it away as him being a foreigner (I'm guessing Barcelona by the I  Barcelona t-shirt and the dubbed spanish daytime TV blaring in the background). But nooo. I have seriously had people walking up to me on the street clapping me on the shoulder and running their hand down my arm.

 

What the fuck Norway? What the fuck?

For those of you who don't know, I'm currently in Oslo trying to make shitloads of money to pay for the school tuition in Japan. If by now you haven't heard of what happened, then you're really behind considering it's on the news 24/7 everywhere (even in a country like Iran where they are a little more shall we say, selective, with their new. As well as slow.) After the incident, facebook and skype were full of concerned people asking if I were alright. Except for my parents. Two days later on a early sunday morning my dad calls me at 9 a.m., wakes me up and asks me if I'm alive. No I was not. He then proceeds to ask why I sound so horrible. “Because 2 minutes ago I was blissfully asleep, dad.”

“A sleep? At 1 p.m?!”

“Dad, it's 9 a.m. here. When you are in Iran the time difference is the other way around.”

“...I forgot.” No shit!

 

The mood in Oslo is heavy. Not surprising. There are people placing flowers and candles everywhere. Stores close early so people can gather and meet and grieve. I have been to the spot where the bomb went of, well as close as you can get. There is glass all over the place. But the worst about the shooting is that everybody knows somebody that was there. Which make everybody involved. If you are Norwegian it's not just something bad that has happened in/to your country, it's a lot more personal.

 

 

This is a song they keep playing everywhere, to give Norway some much needed courage, it's really pretty:

 

I can honestly say I didn't really spend a lot of time or effort on the name for this blog, but I felt a little explanation for it could be fun.

 

My complete name is Dena Foroutan Rad. First name, no middle name, two last names. So far in my 19 years of life nobody has been able to pronounce it correctly. For some reason even most Iranians have problem with it. (It's a Persian name, for crying out loud!). While I'm not very fond of nicknames, I no longer react to all the different ways people call on me. Feel free to say it however you want.

 

So in honor of my overly complicated name I mashed all of them together to make up a blog name even I have no clue how to pronounce. And that is the boring unimaginative reason this blog is called www.defora.blogg.se.

 

P.S. No, you Swedes don't say it right either.

 

 

So this is my blog. It's about my life. Yeah.