Sent my father an e-mail yesterday, asking for advice on a second-hand 75-300 Sigma lens for the camera that I was sort of tempted to buy. Well, last night he phoned to suggest that as a thank you for this summer’s walk in the woods he’d pay part of the price if I wanted to get a brand new Canon 75-300 lens instead.
Don’t you just love parents?
Actually, my mother filed a protest. Not, she said, because she didn’t think I deserved it, but because he hadn’t offered to get her a thank you present, too…
As I said, don’t you just love parents?
Starting the photography course today. Very much looking forward to it. I’ve also signed up for a dark room introduction course, so maybe I will be doing a bit of b/w photography in addition to the slides soon. I’ll have to do at least one film in order to have something to practice on for the course, so that’s a start. Actually, I think I have an exposed, undeveloped b/w film in the fridge, so I suppose I could use that. I have no idea what sort of pictures are on it, but then I like surprises.
In other news, the tax lists are in (or out, or whatever). You gotta love a country where we figure that one aspect of “open government” (or “open society” possibly) is that all the tax lists are open to the public. Consequently, you can go to, for example, Bergens Tidene, and do a search on your colleague, your obnoxious neighbour, the bully from kindergarden, the guy who really wants to date you but you’re not quite sure you’re interested (you may be now, though… ;) ), basically whoever you like, and find out what their taxable income is and how much money they have in the bank after their debts have been subtracted (though BT seem to be rather busy – maybe because they offer the service for free and other papers charge you?). I’m not normally the gossiping sort and tend to leave other people’s private lives alone unless they want to tell me, but I must admit I think this is rather good fun. I suppose I must have a bit of the voyeur in me after all. Or maybe I’m just appalingly materialistic and revel in a chance to really judge people by what they earn? You’ll have to be the judge of that, I’m not going to offer any justifications. It’s fun. And FrP apparently want to stop this. Yet again I am left to marvel at their ability to come up with a standpoint which is the exact opposite of the one I would have chosen if it had occurred to me that there was a cause to fight at all. Why change it? So we can’t check how much the fat cats earn, or compare the fat cats’ official earnings with the actual amount of money they seem to spend (as with Røkke). Actually, it seems the data protection authorities agree with them, so maybe they have a better reason. Protection of privacy? Hm. Ok. I guess they’ve got a point, though I don’t mind people finding out how much I earn – and before you ask; the listing for me for last year is inaccurate, because I moved from Britain to Norway and only the Norwegian income is listed (the rest, of course, was taxed in Britain). In fact, next year’s list is also going to be an inaccurate reflection of my actual salary, because of the changing jobs and all.
Whohoo, I seem to be getting access to the tax-search page again after the server has been rejecting me a for a while. Obviuosly I’m not the only one who is of a curious nature (and too much of a cheapskate to pay for the service).
Yikes. Some people earn ridiculous amounts of money. Ok, so what else is new, you may ask. Well, it seems some people I actually know earn ridiculous amounts of money. Yikes. Well, in that case, they may feed me if they want (and I won’t say no to that glass of red wine, either).
Voice in my head: Madonna – Material Girl (rather appropriate, don’t you think?)