Life is tough these days

Well where do I start???

A month ago my washing machine stopped working and needed a new part which was so expensive we had to wait till hubby got paid again.

Washing by hand is by far the most energy draining exercise I have been forced to do this month and still am doing...it takes time to order a part...I am hoping tomorrow might be the day i will get that phone call" we have the part!"...My hands would be thrilled:)

OK last week, Friday morning at 1 am it started raining in our hallway...pouring down. In fact I thought hell broke loose in there. Nah all it was, was a valve that had snapped off the water cylinder...so since 3pm Friday last week we have been drying out our house with special gear from the insurance company. FUN, not really as they make a dreadful noise and those fans, man they are powerful enough to dry you laundry on it.

It's been tough financially, having two kids to feed makes it even worse...but we get by, with less money this month to buy essential things such as a rubbish bin for my bathroom...lol and all the clothes i want from my favourite shops needs to stay in the shop for now...sad, very sad.

I need to be greatful for having healthy kids, a semi-healthy body myself...and an awsome hubby that pretends to listen to all my worries...

Well now i need to retire to bed as my eyes are stuggeling to stay open...

Good Night world

Congo

There are 2 Norwegians sitting in trial in Congo for a murder charge, espionage, and what have you...anyways...

These guys were shooting themselves in the leg when they even thought Congo would be a great place to start a so-called 'EVENT FIRM' where their clients would be rich and demand a certain 'background' to their days, which would often consist on 'war games' in countries that were more 'realistic'. Congo would definitely be one of those countries that would fit that description...

Everything they were planning towards went terribly wrong when their driver allegedly got killed by local militants, sadly the militants may have been a 'major part' of the Congiligan defense case to get the 2 Norwegians framed, then make sure the witnesses were also a part of this scheme and get as much money out of the oil nation Norway as possible...

The 2 Norwegians were accused of killing their driver, they also had a photo on their phone which showed how one one the accused cleaned blood from their car.. well as these guys were trained back in the day by the Norwegian army to react a certain way to blood and gory they happened to react somewhat differently then the normal everyday person would.

The trial has just finished, this week we will get the sentences, which would most likely end up being execution...

The military court in Congo only showed off one thing and that would be the poorest court proceeding people in the western world have come across. The so-called proofs where of a person pointing at a photo of Africa in 2006 which the accused had nothing to do with, the person himself almost choked on his breakfast when learning his image appeared in a court far away, in DR Congo...

To be found having gps and a cell phone with them, they were in addition accused of espionage as well...as everyone can tell, Congo is backwards and makes the whole thing look stupid. WAKE UP CONGO, we are approaching 2010 soon....

I am not shocked over the practices over there as the whole country is corrupt and have no real leadership, and I would not recommend anyone, rich or poor to go there for pleasure either as this is a dodgy country to put your foot into...

I can only hope for my fellow Norwegians to come home soon and have a good laugh about this as to be honest this has been one big joke so far.

http://www.vg.no/nyheter/utenriks/artikkel.php?artid=573617

Tjostolv Moland and Joshua French are being marched throught the streets of Kisangani by military forces.

To every ones disappointment this case has NO international interest so not much stuff in English here...pure Norwegian...

Their fate will be revealed this week...

StarGate Studios and Mikkel Eriksen

My blog today will take a look at the studio that we were involved with throughout my time being with Trondheim Gospel Choir. This consisted of a gentleman Mikkel Eriksen. Mikkel is today one of the most successful Norwegians living in the states running his own business within music production. He has been working with Beyonce Knowles amongst many other artists, and co-wrote and produced her song Irreplaceable.













Back to my days as a singer in a choir only known by people in my city Trondheim. We were often in Mikkel's studio chorusing. I sensed back then he would go far, in 2006 he did indeed do so. USA loved him and so did many A-list artists, and Micheal Jackson was looking at using Stargate before he died. And they still will work with him as they got a mission to make a good remix of his songs, requested by Motown, which is a High Class Studio as well. (On the photo is Tor Erik Hermansen and Mikkel Eriksen, photo was taken from the VGNETT's website)

I am so Proud of these guys, another fellow whom i recall worked with Mikkel was Hallgeir Rustan was also a very talented man that i assumed would follow Mikkel to the States, but instead it was Tor Erik Hermansen that became his future partner, never met him though.

Regardless, Mikkel and his team are now overloaded with new projects everyday, I am looking forward to the MJ Remix to come out so i can listen to Mikkel's work of art.

Mikkel, if you ever read my blog, I love your work, you rock!!
And i wish you all the best!!

Norwegian Fur Farms

I am as I have mentioned earlier a Norwegian living in NZ. I have always had a soft spot for animals, even whales, sharks and crocodiles. It hurts me to read about animal mistreat, neglect, and of course the fur trade, I have always believed the fur farms in my country of origin treated their animals by the book. Cause if such trade is to be around one has to do things right and with as little pain as possible for those poor wee foxes, ferrets etc...but recently it came to every ones attention this was not the case at all, in fact many animals were legless, and had injuries beyond belief! Some were ear less, some were dead, others had open wounds, it was abhorrent! At one of the farms the Norwegian television station NRK managed to talk to the farmer and he was unaware of the condition of the animals as he claimed it was hard to see them as some where blocking the view of others...HELLO??!! So, he had to physically take one animal out out of time to find the injured ones, this questions only one thing to me...do the farmers sit on their ass all day long??? Do they never attend to their animals??? Do they even have the time to feed them??? Lazy farmers are ruining things for the active ones, but sadly there are not many of the active farmers left, so animals are suffering needlessly!! Even though the injuries sustained was not directly done by the farmer, in fact a predator animal, it is still the farmers responsibility to check, prevent such attacks to happen! The cages the animals were sitting in had large holes in them like the ones used for birds...birds have smaller feet and can sit on one wire at a time, an animal of the size of a fox can't and often the legs gets stuck or goes through the wires, that's when the accidents occurs in the first place so the farmers needs to stop using wire cages, they are NOT meant for large animals, not even ferrets!

http://www.vgtv.no/?id=23928 be aware, this link shows the true life of animals in Norwegian fur farms.

Above is the link to the video taken when the animal origanisation illegally visited several farms throughout Norway.

Now is the 'talk' about perhaps abandoning the fur trade for good under the spotlight and I can't say this trade is needed anyways, it's just another way of making money, however animals are hurt whilst money is being made here, Norway i must say apart from this did sedate their animals before they killed and skinned them, so in compare to countries such as China where they beat them to death and skin them alive whilst they are still conscious fighting for their lives, Norway is doing way better i think! BUT it's still wrong and cruel regardless, it's humans being selfish again!


This image was taken from VGNett's website and is a white fox with a missing ear.

I don't want to add too many of these images here as it will just make people cry...I really hope Norway will end the fur trade for good as there's clearly no justification to continue this anymore, here in NZ there's no fur trade except from sheepskin, but the skin is taken AFTER the animal has been humanely slaughtered for meat(I have issues with that too, not so much as the actual fur trade though)...

I hope I could give some more insight through my blog about this and i will use it more now to write about other things that are absurd and meaningless as well. So watch this space as they say!


The Animal welfare Organisation that made the headlines about the animals being abused and neglected on the farms across Norway have now been accused of faking the photo's by taking away healthy foxes and replaced them with legless ones and heavily injured ones, so my above blog is possibly a waste of time from my end...but it makes me sick that people who are suppose to care for animals' welfare would hurt them in order to get their point across, to me that is disgusting!! And I feel for the animals involved and I still wish the fur industry to be abandoned for good as there's no place for fur in our world, let the animals live as they were meant to, in the bush hunting etc...no for us to wear, not for our amusement!

The Flu

I must be out of my mind blogging about the flu, haha...well a week ago I got sick, with runny nose, fever, cough, just in general in bad shape. My hubby gave it to me, but what is odd about this is how he only experienced a very bad cold. When I got sick it was like a very bad flu, VERY bad flu.

We still despite not feeling well went for a weekend trip to Hanmer with friends, still not in the best shape, however only mild fever and cough and sore throat was happening so nothing major. However when we came home Sunday, things got allot worse for me, a sudden high fever appeared in the middle of the night, it sucked. I had a very sore throat, sore neck that was quite disturbing so went to see the doc and he said it's the flu, gave me antibiotics and told me to drink lots of water.

Now to the point of my blog...how did i get so sick and not my man? He is physically very fit, works as a courierdriver and eats alright. I on the other hand is not so fit, and don't eat that well...my doc asked me: "so do you eat fruits and vegies every day?" I sensed an urge to dissappear, lol to be honest I have avoided fruit like the plague for some reason...so when I got home i decided to try it out, eat lots of fruit, apples especially, and started feeling better just after a couple of hours...woke up with mild fever last night, took som pamol and tried to sleep again, didn't work, so got up and grabbed myself an apple, went back to the bedroom to eat it...lol whilst hubby was asleep...anyways I woke up feeling refreshed, however still not right, ate some more apples and voila! My headaches and sore neck was nearly gone, it must be nature's super food after all, huh?

Anyways...my today's blog was about the power of apples...LOL very interesting, haha, but very true...