The game is probably great entertainment as well.

In other news; we’ve moved to the new apartment and are about half-way done painting the old one. It’s been an exciting month…

Related to this: If you know someone who is looking to rent a one bedroom (63 sqaure meters) apartment in Oslo (south of the river), please let me know.

I have now more or less moved into the new apartment. All the boxes have finally been emptied, but there are still a lot of things that need to be done. The first thing that comes to mind is to get rid of all the garbage.

I’ve bought some new furniture at IKEA and other stores and everything comes packed in cardboard boxes. Now, after its all unpacked and assembled, there is a mountain of cardboard in my kitchen, which is generally just in the way.

Also, there is a lot of stuff that needs to be attached to the walls. I have a power drill, but not the time to get it done. Hopefully this weekend, though.

As for the house warming party people are asking about: It will probably take a while. The sofa I wanted will not arrive in another eight to ten weeks, and until then I have four kitchen chairs for you guys to share.

Can’t those kids work any faster?

#89. Own an apartment or a house.

I’ve now got the keys to the apartment. Quite the anti-climax, to be honest. You can see how well I’m doing with the moving in thing right here:

Show’s over! The cam is offline.

Don’t expect too much action until tomorrow evening, though. If you see the place catch on fire, please call the fire department.

If all goes according to plan there will already be a working internet connection there so I plan to install a webcam right away so can all peep in on me moving in.

I’ll use tomorrow and Friday after noon to pack my stuff in boxes and Saturday to go out and buy necessary furniture, like a sofa, and appliances, like a washing machine. It’s such a hassle to have to walk down to the river to wash my clothes.

On Sunday me and Gine grabbed our bikes and went to Vålerenga, where my new apartment is located. The motivation for the trip was to scout the area and check what kind of services and facilities were available. As it turned out, I’ve got all I really need up there, and I’m downtown at work almost every of the week so if anything I can’t get done at Vålerenga, I can do it on my way home from work.

The neighborhood was awfully quiet and that suits me very well. That it was Sunday probably helped a lot, though, but I can’t imagine that noise will ever be a problem unless it turns out my close neighbors are all members of the same marching band. One of the minor concerns about the apartment has been the railway tracks that lie pretty close to the apartment building. Well, actually, the concern has not been the railway tracks per se (oh, look at that, I used a sophisticated expression in an everyday situation), but the trains that usually run on the railway tracks.

But I very much doubt that it will be a problem: A train passed at high speed when we were outside the apartment building, so there is little chance I will ever hear it when I’m inside.

Now I’ve started to check the online IKEA store for furniture. I need a few things, for instance a sofa. The best thing is probably that I know what I’m getting instead of having to decide in a packed warehouse on a Saturday.

To be honest, it didn’t work out very well because having a high quality dedicated review section requires a lot of effort. As you know, I tend to be a little off an on with the site updates.

The problem is, however, that I have this urge to tell the world what I think about movies, books, games, gadgets and other material things, whether they (you) like it or not. So now I’ve decided to make the reviews an integrated part of the…eh…blog.

Please excuse me while I shiver violently.

Anyway, reviews might start to pop up any minute now. I’m also thinking about merging the Moblog with the entries, because does it really need its own section? I think not.

In other news, the tenant-owner’s association – and after a while the real estate agent – contacted me today to let me know that no one in the association had exercised their right to buy the apartment from the seller at my bid. This means that there I’m only a few signatures away from becoming a home owner for real.

I’m not sure about the lineup, the only names I remember is Seigmen – a band that in my eyes lost most of their musical integrity when they decided that performing at the Norwegian Top 20 season final show was a good idea – and Imogen Heap, who you probably know from Frou Frou. I wonder what she sounds like on stage.

Today I met with the real estate agen and the current owner of the apartment to sign the sales papers. It feels a bit strange to do it even before I know if I get the apartment or not. Even weirder is it that I have to pay 10% of the money up front now, with the risk that someone from the tenant-owner’s association can easily sabotage the whole process. If it wasn’t for the facts that this is the usual way to do it (it seems) and that the real estate agency is well known, I would be tempted to suspect they were trying to rip me off.

Here are some pictures taken by the real estate agent:

The apartment is not available until the end of August, hopefully I haven’t forgotten about it then.

In a completely different matter; I’m looking for a simple graphics application for OS X where I can do quick web site mockups. Any suggestions? PhotoShop is way to expensive and GIMP is just annoying.

*Given that no one in the tenant-owners association decides to use their right to mess up and buy the apartment from the seller at the same price as my offer. I’m not sure if these rules apply to tenant-owners associations all around the world, but that’s what it’s like here. There is only a slight possibility that it will happen, but as long as there is a possibility you never know. We’ll see.

Yesterday I also had a look at another apartment, this one wasn’t crooked and it had a proper bathroom. The only downside is that it’s not as close to downtown Oslo as I’d like, but it’s still something I can live with. Going from home to work will take about fifteen minutes on my bike, which is more than acceptable.

I think I’ll end this week of posting with another gem from Engrish.com. It’s basic, but hilarious: