Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Insights into my life in Bjerke

Sorry for the period of non-existent updates..I guess the novelty of having a blog just started to wear off on me...haha.

Let me give you some idea of what i do in my studenthouse..which is pronounced as 'Biake'.
We took forever to find out how Bjerke was pronounced..properly! My friend Cindy thought it was pronounced ' Ber-jerk-ke '..heheh..imagine the locals hearing us say that!
In spite of our efforts, i believe the locals and other ang mohs still have difficulty understanding most of what we had to say. oh here's a dramatic story for you.

Me and my gang of 8 are split into 3 groups, so each group cooks dinner once a week. Other days we, or rather I, eat stuff like porridge, frozen pizza, or instant noodles. That's for lazy people =D
So one monday, me and mun were in the kitchen preparing our delicious dinner consisting of boiled carrots, broccoli, potatos, and fried fish with a creamy herb sauce (mMm..yummy..hey yy i CAN cook ok! haha.)

Suddenly, we heard someone along the corridoor crying quite horribly. ( i feel like i'm writing a compo) . The next moment, before we knew it, all of a sudden, in a twitch of an eye, Shuwei, our classmate from China, walked in totally pale and wailing her head off! Her hands were bloodied and held up away from her face, her clothes were stained with blood, and fresh red blood was flowing continuously from the left side of her head. Honestly, it was quite a scarey sight.
My first thought: " OMG, she was mugged! And hit on her head! In our hostel!! omg omg omg.."

While i was still in shock, Mun took charge of the situation and asked her what happened. Through her sobs, she managed to tell us that she knocked her head against the window edge.
Whew...though not a matter to be taken lightly, but still not as serious as getting robbed and attacked. The blood was still flowing . I gave her some kitchen towels while Mun checked on her wound. I didn't know what to do!

I happened to remember the emergency numbers 112 and 113, one was the polce and the other the ambulance. So Mun called 112, which turned out to be the police. They gave us a number to call for the nearest hospital. Noone picked up! What if someone died while they were busy holding the line?

Then i called 113. A woman picked up and said something in Norwegian.
I asked : " Is this the ambulance? "
Her : " yes it is, what is the problem? "
Me, frantically : " my friend hit her head and is bleeding, i need to get her to the nearest hospital. Which is the hospital nearest to Bjerke??"
Her : " i didn't understand A WORD you were saying, can u please repeat that? What is the problem? "

Sheesh!! I wanted to BOX her ok!!
She totally wasn't being nice or understanding at all.

Anyway, in the end she gave me an address, which is norwegian, and didn't bother spelling or saying slowly so i could catch it properly, and Mun had to bring Shuwei to go catch a cab with a mis-spelt address.

After they left, i channelled my focus into preparing the dinner so i didn't have to think about what just happened. i took awhile to get over the first image i saw of her! It was a rather traumatic evening.

Later we found out also that it is very normal for the head to bleed continuously and fervently when there is a cut, even if it was a small one. Another sigh of relief.

ok the main point is not the communications barrier of course, but it was meant to illustrate it somehow.

That's over and done with..how about some light-hearted and pretty pictures of views from my hostel.

My room


Views from my window










View from the kitchen, you can see the sea if you look close enough


Walao..blogspot totally only allows me to upload 5 pictures ok. And at ONE at a time.
I had to use photo bucket the other time to upload more. It's really too bad.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home