Toast

Hooray, I managed to get a job. As of Monday I will be a general skivvy at a mostly vegetarian café based in Kringlan, Reykjavík's horrible shopping mall. I mean, what's horrible about it is that it is a shopping mall. I'm sure it's fine if you like shopping malls, although for me they are like IKEA - I can feel my will to live ebbing from me as soon as I step inside. I'm sure I will get used to it, though! The café also has a premises on Laugavegur, but sadly it is no longer open and they are trying to sell it. 

I had a trial day yesterday, and after a while I got the hang of the cash register and the card-reading machine OK. It is not that hard, seriously I have no idea why advertisements for jobs in shops demand experience, you can learn it in less than an hour. I still don't know how to use the coffee machine, but I'm sure I am up to the task. Other things I will be doing include putting food on plates / in bowls, clearing tables and converting dirty cutlery/crockery that is in the wrong place into clean cutlery/crockery that is in the right place. And that's why you should go to university, kids, because it totally pays off. I know I sound like I have a massive entitlement complex and I'm sort of sorry, but it is only because all through my school days we were told: "Work hard in school, get good GCSEs, get good A-Levels, go to university, get a good degree and your reward will be a good job." Liars. I suppose they didn't count on the economic crash, though. 

No, but I am super pleased that I will be making some money and the job is fine, really. I get free lunch and cake, and I will be using my Icelandic a lot more than I am now (I am kind of slack about using it with my Icelandic friends, definitely not speaking it every day at this stage). It is my fault for learning to read poetry and conduct historical research instead of getting a marketable skill. Which incidentally I don't regret for one second - I love literature and history and I am really happy that I got to do that for four years. I just hope that one day in the future I will be lucky enough to work with what I love again. It's silly to expect these things to happen immediately, and nice to have a goal I suppose.

Anyway, to celebrate this important step on my journey to becoming a real human being, I went to Byko today and bought a toaster, because the house didn't have one and doing toast under the grill is stupid and takes ages.

The plug wouldn't work in the UK, so this toaster represents a big commitment to staying in Iceland.

Wisdom from the Days of Yore

One of my old university acquaintances posted something on Facebook today - his girlfriend was reading him extracts from the Hávamál and he wrote something about the bit where the slumbering wolf does not get the ham. It reminded me of all the excellent advice in there and I wondered if there was something that could help me with my current situation. If you don't know, Hávamál is a collection of little stanzas, each outlining some tip from Óðinn on how to live your life. The title translates to something like "Sayings of the High One" I think. It's extremely helpful stuff, a surprising amount still relevant today. Like:

Best is the banquet one looks back on after
And remembers all that happened.

So don't get so wasted that you forget the party, kids! Óðinn says so. In fact, some of the anti-binge-drinking stuff makes the Ancient Scandinavians look a bit less hardcore than they are usually depicted:

Drink your mead, but in moderation,

Talk sense or be silent:

No man is called discourteous who goes

To bed at an early hour.

But aside from maybe drinking more moderately, how can I benefit from Óðinn's wisdom in my daily life? I used to read my room-mate Emily this one all the time:

Foolish is he who frets at night,

And lies awake to worry,

A weary man when morning comes,

He finds all as bad as before.

That's not advice I need, though. I very, very rarely have trouble sleeping and even though I have a quite high level of worry at the moment you'll be pleased to hear I'm not losing sleep over it. But this might be a problem! Later in the poem, we find this stanza, which the translation I have back in England definitely rendered more amusingly, but never mind:

Early shall he rise who has designs

On another's land or life:
His prey escapes the prone wolf,

The sleeper is seldom victorious.

Now this might actually be something to think about. If I got up earlier, I could get more done, maybe be a bit more victorious in my life, maybe kill someone else and take their land.

There's also quite a lot of stuff about friendship, and that reminded me that I am super pleased that I am doing this whole depressing search for employment after having already lived in Iceland for a year. If I didn't have friends here I would be genuinely miserable, but luckily over the past year I've met some great people and they help me maintain my sanity and general will to go on, as well as being kind enough to encourage and support me in my quest to become a real person. If you're reading this and you're one of the people that I visit and exchange thoughts and gifts with, then thanks. You're a big help.

To a false friend the footpath winds
Though his house be on the highway.

To a sure friend there is a short cut,

Though he live a long way off.

[...]

If you find a friend you fully trust

And wish for his good-will,

Exchange thoughts, exchange gifts,

Go often to his house.

[...]

Young and alone on a long road,

Once I lost my way:

Rich I felt when I found another;

Man rejoices in man.

And if none of this had made me feel better, hey, at least I'm not dead! It's rubbish to be dead, because you can't keep cows or anything.

It is always better to be alive,

The living can keep a cow.

[...]

The halt can manage a horse,

The handless a flock,

The deaf be a doughty fighter,

To be blind is better than to burn on a pyre:

There is nothing the dead can do.

That last stanza doesn't have a line about the socially awkward still being able to do stuff as well, but I think it's implied. Anyway, say what you like about these people, they knew what was important: friends, not drinking yourself into oblivion and being alive.

P.S. Quotations from the W. H. Auden and P. B. Taylor translation, in the public domain, since the only hard copy I have to hand is in Old Norse.

Mávahlátur

Hey, team. Sorry I haven't posted anything in ages. That is mostly because, confining myself to the categories that I am willing to write about on the internet, not much is happening in my life, unless you would like to hear about various parties which I have been to. Those are just stories about me drinking too much, talking rubbish and getting over-excited about songs I know. Or about me applying for jobs and not getting jobs, which is even less interesting because it's mostly filling in forms. So instead I thought I would tell you about what I'm reading.

Mávahlátur, or The Seagull's Laughter, is the name of my favourite Icelandic film. I once went to Bíó Paradís, the little cinema on Hverfisgata that shows old and slightly less mainstream films (and also the only cinema I've been to in Iceland that doesn't do intermissions), all by myself because Mávahlátur was on and I wanted to see it again. I was actually the only one there, and that's how cool I am. It is a great cinema, though, kind of like the Showroom in Sheffield for those of you who are familiar.

Anyway, this film was based on the novel of the same name by Kristín Marja Baldursdóttir, which I am currently about three quarters of the way through. I suppose essentially it's about women, more specifically Icelandic women in a little fishing town somewhere near Reykjavík in the 1950s. Of course there are male characters, but it's the women that run the show. Freyja comes back from America one Easter Day, where she emigrated after the war. Her US Army husband is now dead, and she moves into a little house that's already full of women: the orphaned Agga, her grandmother, two aunts and her grandfather's sister. Agga's grandfather is the only man in the house, and he's a fisherman, out to sea for long periods anyway. The expensively-dressed, purportedly vegetarian Freyja with her long hair and unnervingly pale eyes causes a bit of a sensation, especially when she gets involved with the son of the late doctor, a member of the town's upper class. This social drama / battle of the sexes takes place against a backdrop of post-war economic depression and male political unrest. So you've got class and politics and gender issues, all with a genuinely entertaining plot and some of the most beautifully drawn characters I've ever come across. It's a really excellent book - seriously the characterisation is so sharp and witty and it's brilliantly written. As far as I can judge such a thing, not being a native speaker of Icelandic. If you can read Icelandic (or I think it has been translated into Dutch and German), you should totally give it a go! Otherwise, you should try and get hold of the film, or simply wait many, many years for me to become an acclaimed literary translator, because this is a novel I would absolutely love to do.

Atvinnuleysi

I had a job interview last Wednesday, for a position in a play-school in 104 Reykjavík. I think it went all right. First impressions are not exactly my strong point, though. I tried my very hardest not to be super-awkward and socially weird, but it's difficult when you're not drunk, isn't it? I think turning up drunk to an interview for a job working with children would be a definite mistake, though. The stress had a fairly negative impact on my Icelandic. Hopefully they understood that I was kind of nervous and wouldn't normally say that I was samstundis when I meant stundvís. At any rate I understood what they were saying to me, and they appeared to understand what I was saying to them. If I were looking for a job in England, I suppose the simple matter of communication wouldn't be an issue, but here it seems like one of the biggest challenges. Or at least quite a major complication - the actual experience of being interviewed is quite bewildering all by itself.

The sort of artificial introversion required in such an exercise makes me quite uncomfortable. It's weird to be asked to say how fantastic you are. I mean, in my head, obviously I think I'm fantastic, but I come from a self-deprecating sort of culture and find it embarrassing to say positive things about myself. Of course that's a silly attitude in a job interview situation, but it's very ingrained. Being asked to explain how your personality makes you suitable, and what relevant qualities you have, is even worse. I would say that personality is largely just a word describing how you appear in the eyes of others, meaning that you yourself are in quite a bad position to say what sort of personality you have. It's like trying to describe your own accent, it's just the baseline, something you don't really notice or think about particularly. 

Maybe having been asked these things once I will be less startled next time. Haha, don't know what I was expecting really. Nah, but I think I said some good things - I'm portraying it as much worse than it was and probably overanalysing a bit. Just have to wait and see. I have applied for lots and lots of things, can't believe I won't get something sooner or later. Working in a play-school, although admittedly not a particular ambition of mine, would be a good, steady job and most likely more entertaining than office work. I still want to become a literary translator, but I was never under the impression that that would be happening any time soon. My most pressing concern is to get a salary and a job in a play-school is probably one of the best options open to me at this stage. The good news is that there are loads of these positions advertised, so there must be a fair amount of demand. Yeah, keep positive. 

Aside from wanting a wage, being unemployed is also really boring. When your friends are at work, and the most you are likely to achieve on any given day is making a nice dinner or doing some washing, morale can slip a bit. I did make an excellent dinner yesterday, though. I attempted Icelandic plokkfiskur (sort of mush made of white fish, potatoes and oniony béchamel sauce) and it turned out really well, except that I cut my finger with the potato peeler and kept bleeding all over the rest of the food preparation.

Also, apparently somebody nominated this blog for a thing. Thanks, whoever you are. Vote for me, I suppose!

Pub Quiz

So I thought I'd write something about the English Pub Quiz in Reykjavík, because it's been a fun thing in my life pretty much ever since I got here, but I don't think I've ever mentioned it on here before. This post will largely be a collection of anecdotes from my life, set in pubs, which I am sure you will all find fascinating, but let's open with a bit of introductory information about the quiz. It is generally on once a month, although not a set time every month. When I first came to Reykjavík, it was held in Den Danske Kro on Ingólfsstræti, which had a nice atmosphere but was far too small with not enough chairs. These days the quiz is held in Oliver on Laugavegur, which is a bit shiny, but at least everyone can sit down and there's a good two for one drinks offer. Currently it appears to be undergoing renovations, though, which meant the January quiz was sadly cancelled. 

I am generally a fan of pub quizzes, although I have yet to be on a winning team. Probably my best result was in Sheffield, when me and my friends Tim and Sam won eight pints between us, largely thanks to Sam's masterful ability to guess the number of pages in the barmaid's copy of a John Steinbeck novel. The heady thrill of winning free beer when we were already a bit drunk left such a positive impression that we went back to the same quiz every week afterwards. We never won anything again, but there were always free cheese and pickle sandwiches afterwards, and it was just generally a really nice pub, one of the few in Sheffield with real cider on tap. The Cobden View, if you're ever up in Crookes. I actually went to this quiz on the saddest birthday of my life so far. Sad because I spent most of the day working in lonely desperation on my masters thesis, and it really cheered me up and the boys fed me a nice dinner and Tim had made me a cake, so the birthday was saved.

Questions wise, though, the Reykjavík quiz definitely has the edge. Rounds are organised loosely by themes, not so much subjects, so you never get bored listening to loads of sports questions in a row; you can also take the theme as a bit of a clue about the answer. The first time I went, I was with Brynna and we didn't have a team, so we trailed around the bar trying to find someone who'd have us. We ended up with some Scots who seemed to be personally offended by my nationality, and just generally a bit aggressive. So it was kind of awkward, and the next time we made sure to have a better plan in place. By now I know enough people here that it's usually pretty easy to make up a team.

Sometimes, though, if you turn up without a whole team planned, it can be pretty good. Once Ahmad and I went and ended up being joined by an American journalist who was here for a few days doing an article about Jews in Iceland. Which seems like quite a small topic, to be honest, but he had some interesting things to say on the subject. Anyway, we took him out the next night to show him a bit of Reykjavík. We started off with an evening trip to Laugardalslaug (a swimming pool) and then went to a few bars (Kaffibarinn, Hressó and Bakkús as I recall), before finishing up at Barbara. We drank beer and danced to pop music until our new American friend abruptly left with a young, young Icelander, who kept insisting that he was "nineteen on Sunday", so that was all right. I have shared this anecdote with people before, and it seems not be as funny in the telling as I found it at the time. The alcohol may have been a factor.

But back to the pub quiz. Once my team actually came second, which earned us a third of the entry money taken! This was a very exciting development and there were calls to immediately spend all of our winnings on more beer. In the end, though, most of us went back to Bjarni and Ewelina's flat to drink their beer instead (and eat their beetroot soup, which was incredible). The next month hopes of continuing our upward trajectory were sadly dashed, but I remain convinced that we definitely could win. The secret of success, aside from generally having people who know a lot of things, is having people on your team from as many different places as possible. Lack of an American has caused trouble for me in the past.

If you're an English-speaking visitor to Reykjavík, I would definitely recommend checking the facebook group to see if the quiz is happening whilst you're there. If you like that sort of thing.

Eurovision again?

Isn't it too early to be thinking about Eurovision just yet? Yes, it is. But the Icelanders would apparently not agree - they are already voting on who will get to be their 2012 entry. I saw a few of the acts competing for this honour, and I wasn't very impressed, but I suppose they can't do much worse than last year. Probably.

Barbecue Weather

Happy Australia Day! It was actually a few days ago, but I went to a celebratory beach barbecue today, down by the Viðey ferry. It's an event organised by my Australian friend, Kalli - this is the fifth year he's done it. During the time that I was there, only three of those in attendance were actually Australian, but for Iceland that seems like a good turnout. Especially considering the weather, which was cold and grey, with the wind and the drizzle getting steadily stronger. With a plastic cup of Kalli's home-brewed beer, home-made lamingtons (Australian cake thing), some pylsur on the grill and a little Australian flag stuck in my glove, though, the weather didn't matter too much. Despite the downsides of barbecuing in January in the northern hemisphere, it seems like a really fun tradition. Apparently somebody Kalli knows from Kastljós (sort of current affairs programme) said they might come down and film a bit of it. There's not a lot of news in Iceland. If they did come, though, it was after I left, so I will not be on the television either way.

Eventually I did become too cold to function, and Ahmad and I made our escape to Seltjarnarnes pool to warm up in the hot pot for an hour or so. Now I think I will have a restorative nap, before heading round to Stacey's this evening for drinks and Thai food. I would vote this a good Saturday.