På hotellet Le Meridien er dei travelt opptekne med å montere opp juledekorasjonen sin. Den består av eit isslott, ein Tysk-Austeriksk alpelandsby og ein skog av plasttre med falsk snø.

Det kan vere verd å stanse og tenkje seg om i religionsdebatten heime i Noreg når ein ser dette. Midt i eit strengt muslimsk land køyrer dei på med Jesuskrubber, julefeiring og alt som høyrer høgtida til. I Noreg undrar vi om vi ikkje burde avvikle kristendomsundervisning i skulen for å unngå å krenkje folk som tilhøyrer andre religionar.

Dagens ord: sameksistens!

Ski Dubai: meiningsløysa i innandørs skibakkar når ein vurderar dei oppimot miljøkostnadene er ikkje ubetydeleg. Det kostar å kjøle ned ein skibakke frå 40 varmegrader utandørs til -2 innandørs.

Likevel er vel kanskje ikkje konseptet så mykje meir meiningslaust enn norske badeland som til eksempel Tropicana på Gol. Folk har ein underleg trong til det dei ikkje naturleg har tilgong på.

I StumbledUpon (the only way to surf the web) a site on famous ghost photos today, go have a look at photos that haven’t been explained to date:

Famous Ghost Photos

For most people this eccentricity would not be significant as the number of collectibles would be limited by the amount of space available and the size of the individual collectible would be limited by the capacity of the transport available to the collector.

My father however, used to run a logistics company. That meant near unlimited transport capacity. Once he scaled down operations to only one lorry he also freed up an abundance of space for storage, previously occupied by his vehicle fleet.

Please join me on a safari of my fathers garage:

We start off with a look at the high security door that keeps unwanted visitors out of the garage. The door is secured with a rusty padlock for which my father has never had a key. In fact, the bolt to which the padlock is attached is screwed through the hole in the hinge and into the wooden beam with the lock already attached to it. In order to open the door, remove the wing-nut that secures the hinge to the door.

My father tends to get mad whenever someone visits the garage without putting back the wing-nut, claiming that someone might steal something. Yeah, right!

Well inside we start to get an overview and immediately see such diverse items as broken ladders (on the left), stolen road-signs (top, center), house-insulation (bottom, center). Other indistinguishable material also abounds. Please notice a nice detail: the coat-hanger with a jacket on it, hanging from the ladder, giving the impression of a well-organised garage-owner.

Though the garage overall is nothing but a mess, a lot of tiny, tiny sub-systems exist to organise screws (like the bucket in the box near the centre of the photo) or the bolts that are stored in a container, custom-made from a plastic bottle that has been cut open. I call it micro order.

Though all things aren’t organised into containers, areas or regions of the garage are reserved for clusters of specific types of objects; here from the area where arbitrary cables and wires can be found in the unlikely event that they shall ever again be needed.

All space is potentially useful. Therefore my father has exploited the storage potential to the full, stuffing old drain-pipes and plastic plumbing pipes with scrap-metal and lead-pipes.

Old, worn-out tyres make out part of the foundation of complex shelve-constructions such as is shown in this photo where pallets (designated to store something else) are laid out on top of the tyres which in turn are standing in a semi-upright position on top of some grid iron.

On a set of discarded store shelves that are mounted four meters up on the wall of the garage is the department for old sinks and wooden lists. A collection of old skis, where only one remain, the other one being broken or having vanished, can be spotted below the shelves.

Although it may seem like a minor detail to externals, I personally find the set of car-keys for our old Volvo 240 from the early ’80s to be one of the novelties. The car passed into oblivion more than 20 years ago.

And possibly an even smaller step for man-kind. My foot on its way to do something its owner will surely regret at Linlithgow castle near Edinburgh. Photo: Mike Bell.

Eitt av dei store vegvala i livet: gudsteneste (til høgre) eller flakedans (til venstre) – frelse eller fortaping? Teke under friluftshelga i Hyen, sommaren 2007. Foto: Asgjerd Bergheim (http://asgjerd.bergheim.dk).

The Melkevoll glacier at the far end of the Oldevatnet lake

The river from the valley of Bødalen pouring into the beautifully green Lodalsvatnet lake

Autumn colors by the Lodalsvatnet lake

A scene from the Oldedalen valley

Burning yellow forest on the hillside of the local witch-mountain, Vora, parallell to the Bloksberg in Germany

If you enjoyed the photos you can find both these and many others from similar landscapes in higher resolution (1024 x 768) in the gallery section of my web site.

All photos are taken by me, (Stein) Runar Bergheim, feel free to use them, credits would be appreciated.

The character Doc Wilson in the film State and Maine introduced the world to the ill-forged statement: “never trust a man in a bow tie”. This entirely baseless statement has since been embraced by all those who due to lack of ability are forced to wear regular neck ties or, worse still, cannot even manage that knot and avoid neck ties altogether.

The bow tie is a garment suitable for gentlemen only. Not only does it look dashingly good, it also demonstrates to the world that the wearer is in fact capable of tying a knot with a personal touch. The bow tie lends eccentricity to its wearer and earns lots of justified attention from women while at the same time it stimulates hatred and envy in the wearers male peers.

I buy most of my bow ties while traveling but have recently become aware of the Bow Tie Club, an e-commerce web-site with an excellent selection of bow ties and matching pocket squares for that final touch.

Go ahead and become a bow tie wearer!!!

Please read this article for instructions on how to tie a bow tie…

Novelty: A wonderfully sad brazilian frog with the text alegria (happiness in portuguese) carved into its base.

Poor quality photo taken at a Brighton mall in the pre-digital camera era. On the right: Worn-out father contemplating poster at pharmacy wall while heir is screaming her lungs out. — On the left: couple more likely to be practicing safe sex.