Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Friday, June 22, 2007
Monday, June 18, 2007
Snapshots
I´ve tried to avoid the tourist stuff.. it does little for me. I have had a lovely time in Montréal, reading my book, enjoying the sunshine and the parks, taking shelter from the heat of the sun in cafes and shops. I´d like to stay longer. I even feel like I made some friends.
Cafe life..
Tourist wanderings
The best bits .. the green bits next to the multiple coloured houses.
Friday, June 15, 2007
Montreal colour
I am sat in a rocking chair by the window listening to reels and jigs played on a fiddle wafting from across the street, the music dancing through the leaves of the trees and landing softly on the windowsill beside me.
It has been a warm day, okay, rephrase that .. very hot .. my head hurt from forgetting to drink enough and not been covered up. It is still warm at 7pm-ish, warmer than it ever gets in Iceland. I have wandered, in and out of streets, shops, cafes, watched salsa dancers dancing in the street and sat in the park under the shade of a big maple where the ground was cool and the grass fresh-smelling.
It has been a day of green tea. I started the day by ruining my first cup by automatically, sleepily putting milk in first.. then the second cup was better and accompanied by interesting conversation from E my host about immigration and multiculturalism. She is a port in a storm or in a lost at sea feeling anyway for Brazilians visiting or moving to Montreal which I think is such an excellent purpose for a guesthouse. A home from home really, and a lovely one at that. I'm not sure how intelligent it is possible to be at breakfast for me .. but I was awake from 5am thinking I had slept in (slept out) in Iceland! Cups two, three, four, five, six and probably also seven were served with delicate tea service and beautiful wooden implements, a clay teapot and the tiniest little cups.. hence the number. I am waiting to meeting a Montrealler from Montreal .. so far everyone is at least one generation or less away from being an immigrant.. it is fascinating. An Iranian-Canadian geography masters graduate drove the taxi from the airport to my guesthouse, the lady who runs Chez Brasil where I am staying is a psychologist from Brazil (obviously) and the Taiwanese tea fan who treated me to tea and Taiwanese shortbread (really) was a Scottish Canadian.
I am relaxing now listening to Irish fiddle music, snacking on cherries and black olive bread and feeling very comfortable and happy. Maybe after two years of being different it is nice to be somewhere where everyone is so different. I do believe it is easy to fall in love with Montreal. Still, I know at night I will lie in bed, sniff the city air, and hear the buzz of night here and remember my Icelandic home with a gentle, fond thought.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
For tango lovers everywhere
Sisilly has made the most beautiful, stylish pack of notecards and t-shirts with her uplifting sketches. They remind me of winter nights in Cafe Cultura with beautiful M and many friendly people and candlelit elegant dances .. and tangoing in obscure places .. which I like best.
Monday, June 11, 2007
Heart in flight
Spot the heart.. it escaped in the wind and soared across the bay towards the summit of Snæfellsjökull, for once clear and magestic. I am up passed my ears in photos and diagrams in preparation for presenting my research in Canada next week. I came across this en route through the folders, piles of papers and notebooks covered in muddy smears.
Note to hint droppers!
The Iceland Weather Report (thoughts, observations and a look out the window to note cloud patterns) says:
"She and her boyfriend finally tied the knot after living together for about ten years and producing three gorgeous children. This tends to be the Nicelandic way ... first move in together, then get pregnant [or vice-versa] and if things are still OK, then get married. Kinda like EPI and YT, who got hitched last year after a ten-year courtship. It's a fairly sensible length of time - by then you generally know if the proverbial toilet seat is going to drive you to distraction, or not. And if you're going to stay madly in love for the rest of your life, or not."
On hearing of a British couple enlisting a small niece as a flower girl and a friends' cute little boy in top hat and tails as paige boy, Ó and B were horrified .. it spoils things if the little cute children are not the children of the happy couple!
"She and her boyfriend finally tied the knot after living together for about ten years and producing three gorgeous children. This tends to be the Nicelandic way ... first move in together, then get pregnant [or vice-versa] and if things are still OK, then get married. Kinda like EPI and YT, who got hitched last year after a ten-year courtship. It's a fairly sensible length of time - by then you generally know if the proverbial toilet seat is going to drive you to distraction, or not. And if you're going to stay madly in love for the rest of your life, or not."
On hearing of a British couple enlisting a small niece as a flower girl and a friends' cute little boy in top hat and tails as paige boy, Ó and B were horrified .. it spoils things if the little cute children are not the children of the happy couple!
Sunday, June 10, 2007
10,000 more clinical psychologists in UK?
I sit listening BBC radio over the internet, particularly Woman's Hour, when I am doing some repetitive task at work, washing the dishes or when the flat is too quiet without fiddle rehearsals of frantic reels and jigs. Usually it is a wonderful mix of ladies making jam and cakes for the village fair, intensely earnest discussions of women´s rights and blushing discussions of gynaecology and sexual technique! It blends up-beat recipes for sticky toffee pudding with perhaps a little too much negative news about the state of the world and male dominance in business.
Today, I heard on trusty Radio 4 that there is a suggestion that clinical psychology centres for "talking therapies" may be opened across the UK, up to 125 centres, and 10,000 more clinical psychologists will be trained over the next 7 years. The decision will be made in October. This is interesting to me.. that cognitive behavioural therapy might become a mainstream approach to depression and many other psychological problems. Where on earth will the 10,000 psychologists come from?
I wonder how this "talking therapy" could help people in Britain, and how it could change the UK. There is something more personal about life in Iceland where you can really focus on getting the best from life. A friend of mine recently who is also a foreigner here said that Iceland acts life a magnifying glass on his life and feelings .. when things are good they are really really good and when things are bad they are horrid! I think this is true .. but I´d add that it is possible to swing more quickly between these two states, that is more possible to get help out of those dark times and that particularly in the winter there is widespread, nationwide recognition that life is a little harder, more subdued and sometimes more sad in the darkness and it is easier to talk about it, easier to reach out a hand and help and to accept the hand of help.
The helping hand even drops by in unsuspected ways. In my first summer here I was living in a small flat about my landlord and landlady. I was homesick and sad being away from friends and was thinking of going back to Scotland. My landlord at that time started being woken around 3am by someone knocking at the door to his flat. Nobody apart from me and his wife could be knocking and his wife was asleep in bed. I knew nothing of it until later in the week. Each night he got up and went to the door but opened it to find nobody was there. He wasn´t scared, just puzzled, particularly since it occurred for a few nights in a row. Eventually he asked a friend who was in touch with spiritual issues about it and she told him it was me .. although I was sound asleep .. something, someone or some thought was alerting him to my distress. He promptly invited me to dinner and discussed meditation with me and I decided to stay!
There can be a fear of psychological problems, depression and sadness. The UK seems to thrive on shame of this.. on shame in general .. to distribute it widely.. single mothers, mental health problems .. I am so glad that shame is less popular here! Why is that?
I also wonder if the lifestyle in western Europe, particularly the UK is the problem? Is life so stressful and depression so prevalent all over the world? I love the idea of slow living, developed particularly in Italy along with the slow food phenomenon.. taking time to enjoy things, access good quality produce and skills from local sources rather than from the other side of the world, supporting small, local and creative businesses. But can we live in a slow way in the modern western world and still be able to earn enough to survive? To pay those high mortgage and rental prices? Wow, the property prices in Reykjavík are mad! Maybe the idea of slow living sounds lazy but isn´t it worth taking time to enjoy life?
Well, for those interested, the radio program I heard was called "All in the Mind". A good book that is not too glib and shallow is David Burns´"Feeling Good". If you look at the website, try to ignore the polished smiling face .. read the book instead. More on the slow movement is to be found in an article by the BBC, the slow food movement site and also Carl Honoré´s excellent, though sometimes repetitive book "The Art of Slow" and his website and blog.
Today, I heard on trusty Radio 4 that there is a suggestion that clinical psychology centres for "talking therapies" may be opened across the UK, up to 125 centres, and 10,000 more clinical psychologists will be trained over the next 7 years. The decision will be made in October. This is interesting to me.. that cognitive behavioural therapy might become a mainstream approach to depression and many other psychological problems. Where on earth will the 10,000 psychologists come from?
I wonder how this "talking therapy" could help people in Britain, and how it could change the UK. There is something more personal about life in Iceland where you can really focus on getting the best from life. A friend of mine recently who is also a foreigner here said that Iceland acts life a magnifying glass on his life and feelings .. when things are good they are really really good and when things are bad they are horrid! I think this is true .. but I´d add that it is possible to swing more quickly between these two states, that is more possible to get help out of those dark times and that particularly in the winter there is widespread, nationwide recognition that life is a little harder, more subdued and sometimes more sad in the darkness and it is easier to talk about it, easier to reach out a hand and help and to accept the hand of help.
The helping hand even drops by in unsuspected ways. In my first summer here I was living in a small flat about my landlord and landlady. I was homesick and sad being away from friends and was thinking of going back to Scotland. My landlord at that time started being woken around 3am by someone knocking at the door to his flat. Nobody apart from me and his wife could be knocking and his wife was asleep in bed. I knew nothing of it until later in the week. Each night he got up and went to the door but opened it to find nobody was there. He wasn´t scared, just puzzled, particularly since it occurred for a few nights in a row. Eventually he asked a friend who was in touch with spiritual issues about it and she told him it was me .. although I was sound asleep .. something, someone or some thought was alerting him to my distress. He promptly invited me to dinner and discussed meditation with me and I decided to stay!
There can be a fear of psychological problems, depression and sadness. The UK seems to thrive on shame of this.. on shame in general .. to distribute it widely.. single mothers, mental health problems .. I am so glad that shame is less popular here! Why is that?
I also wonder if the lifestyle in western Europe, particularly the UK is the problem? Is life so stressful and depression so prevalent all over the world? I love the idea of slow living, developed particularly in Italy along with the slow food phenomenon.. taking time to enjoy things, access good quality produce and skills from local sources rather than from the other side of the world, supporting small, local and creative businesses. But can we live in a slow way in the modern western world and still be able to earn enough to survive? To pay those high mortgage and rental prices? Wow, the property prices in Reykjavík are mad! Maybe the idea of slow living sounds lazy but isn´t it worth taking time to enjoy life?Well, for those interested, the radio program I heard was called "All in the Mind". A good book that is not too glib and shallow is David Burns´"Feeling Good". If you look at the website, try to ignore the polished smiling face .. read the book instead. More on the slow movement is to be found in an article by the BBC, the slow food movement site and also Carl Honoré´s excellent, though sometimes repetitive book "The Art of Slow" and his website and blog.
Friday, June 08, 2007
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Wind
There has been sunshine for weeks. Blue skies. I even got a pink nose one day doing fieldwork in Þingvellir.. which means it is summer. Yesterday things changed... which means it is Iceland.
The wind started to whistle through the ventilator in the bathroom and our open windows created a pressure difference between the flat and the hallway which sucks the door shut behind you if you step out for a minute. That is pretty spooky. The door to the cleaning room in the communal area bangs as if a little child is playing in there. The blinds are rattling and I can hear the trees swirling around. Still the wind is warm. It is ten degrees C outside, raining and there is an 10 metres per second wind (22.4 miles per hour). It is also almost 00.30 and you can still the weather on the webcam from Veðurstofnun.
Although the house makes spooky sounds I find it rather friendly. It reminds me of lying in bed in the wood-clad bedroom I shared with my sister and hearing the little window rattling in the wind. The swirling trees outside sound bigger than they are and that is nice .. it is like being back home with proper big trees in motion. The odd sucking of the door also reminds me of home and opening the curtains one morning after a storm to find that the wind had taken the slates off the roof of the little byre and stacked them neatly at the foot of the wall.
The weather change is maybe because we are thinking about wind in the flat and Óli particularly has been dreaming of soaring on thermals. We both started paragliding classes today. It will be weeks probably before we even get the wing to sit above our heads and perhaps take a little foot-high hop off the ground, but it is step one. Unfortunately you can´t paraglide when the wind is more than 5 metres per second (11.2 miles per hour) or when there is rain.. so I wonder how often we´ll fly in Iceland?!
Some other useful info on the Icelandic weather situation:
Veðurstofnun´s nice new webpage,
BBC´s 5-day forecast for Reykjavík which is more reliable than Morgunblaðið´s veðurkort
and .. my favourite .. Do I need a jacket.. in Egilsstaðir.. I wonder how often the answer is "Yes".
The wind started to whistle through the ventilator in the bathroom and our open windows created a pressure difference between the flat and the hallway which sucks the door shut behind you if you step out for a minute. That is pretty spooky. The door to the cleaning room in the communal area bangs as if a little child is playing in there. The blinds are rattling and I can hear the trees swirling around. Still the wind is warm. It is ten degrees C outside, raining and there is an 10 metres per second wind (22.4 miles per hour). It is also almost 00.30 and you can still the weather on the webcam from Veðurstofnun.
Although the house makes spooky sounds I find it rather friendly. It reminds me of lying in bed in the wood-clad bedroom I shared with my sister and hearing the little window rattling in the wind. The swirling trees outside sound bigger than they are and that is nice .. it is like being back home with proper big trees in motion. The odd sucking of the door also reminds me of home and opening the curtains one morning after a storm to find that the wind had taken the slates off the roof of the little byre and stacked them neatly at the foot of the wall.
The weather change is maybe because we are thinking about wind in the flat and Óli particularly has been dreaming of soaring on thermals. We both started paragliding classes today. It will be weeks probably before we even get the wing to sit above our heads and perhaps take a little foot-high hop off the ground, but it is step one. Unfortunately you can´t paraglide when the wind is more than 5 metres per second (11.2 miles per hour) or when there is rain.. so I wonder how often we´ll fly in Iceland?!
Some other useful info on the Icelandic weather situation:
Veðurstofnun´s nice new webpage,
BBC´s 5-day forecast for Reykjavík which is more reliable than Morgunblaðið´s veðurkort
and .. my favourite .. Do I need a jacket.. in Egilsstaðir.. I wonder how often the answer is "Yes".
Sunday, June 03, 2007
All colours .. ert þú þessi Erlendur?
The International Women´s Rainbow Choir
Bellydancers from Kramhúsið - "Shams el amar": Fífí, Margrét and Solheir
This is a weekend of festivals .. the festival of the sea for sailor´s day at all ports, particularly in Reykjavík, bright days festival in Hafnarfjörður and today the Festival of Nations or Þjóðahátið in Hafnarfjörður, with participants from more than 40 countries. We Scots were there and had a popular stall .. we were giving away samples of whisky, fruit cake and cups of tea .. sang some Scottish songs and we went for a record breaking attempt at the longest strip the willow in Iceland .. 24 brave participants from Ghana, Germany, England, Japan, Iceland, Scotland, Hungary and Bulgaria .. perhaps more .. joined in and span and span and span across the hall. Pretty amazing for a two minute lesson beforehand and we are fairly sure that this may be the longest Orcadian Strip the Willow in Iceland so far and most certainly must be the most international Strip the Willow in Iceland! Next year we´ll aim for even more. Congratulations and thank you to all who joined in!
Whisky sampling!The best bit for me was seeing people and pictures from countries I knew nothing about - Bulgaria, Lithuania and Ghana particularly. And wow, Ghanans really love shortbread! The dancing was also so fun .. so many types of bellydancing, beautiful elegant Thai dancing and Carlos´ infectious high-spirited salsa. So much colour .. proud to be a foreigner .. and delighted to meet Icelanders with open eyes to the world! Takk fyrir daginn!
More pictures can be seen on the Bulgarian Community's (BG Islandia) web album.
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