1. Driving on the wrong side of the road – GOSH, we thought we knew how tricky it was going to be. I mean, we knew it was a left-hand drive country. To put it mildly, it woke both of us up from a 20 hour flight with me, trying not to scream “DRIVE ON MYYY SSIIDDEEE, MY SIDEEEEE!!” all the time and him trying NOT to hit onto on-coming traffic. Word of advice: If you can’t practice driving on the other side of the road BEFORE you do it, please at least have enough sleep. If not, ask someone to drive you.
2. Taxes – another GOSH. We knew about income tax, where we come from, we had one of the lowest income taxes around. SO we were braced for that one. The one that hit me, and I’m still reeling from it, is even when you shop online, thinking you’ve got the cheapest deal ever, you have to think again. Unless you’re buying and shipping books, even if it’s a whole container of them yet there's one, just one thin piece of CD, you will be taxed for the whole container. Not talking about 5%, 7%, we’re talking about a tiered rate from around 10 to 25%. I’m still trying to figure things out as I understand magazines are taxed too but at the moment, I am restricting myself to only Norwegian sites. (Fordi these sites have already incorporated those taxes J ) For the savvy ones, I'm sure you've found the official site to the tax rates or do check out this cool site - Duty Calculators
3. Cold & High Fibered meals – back at home, you have to pay a premium for a salad meal or a sandwich but here, more often than not, it is always bread with what the locals call pålegg. These can be ham slices, cheese - you get the idea. They also have a favorite where you squeeze a cream textured ingredient on breads or crispbreads - Wasabröd. The creamy stuff seems to be made of or flavored after a type of seafood like caviar, crab or for example, egg mayo. Our tummies are definitely still trying to adapt to the hi-fiber meals - the noises they make at the most inappropriate times utterly embarrass us, to say the least.
4. Family Oriented culture – we hear about this all the time, everywhere, especially in the big cities. “We have work-life balance” “ It’s all about the family” …. People here actually do it. It’s their lives. It’s not what they seek for or putting measures or steps to enforce that saying. It’s just natural for them, as natural as breathing. Local working hours tend to be anywhere between 7am till 4pm unless one's on shift work. So after work, people do tend to spend more time with their families. In this aspect, it probably is similar in a lot of small-town areas around the world.
5. Schooling system – children are enrolled into the education system starting from 1 years old, which back at home, we only do so at the age of 3-4 years old.
6. Parenting – the biggest thing that struck me was the locals tell me it is illegal to use any form of physical punishment (refer to wiki ). No smacking the backs, no “put your hand out” and out come the cane - absolutely no caning. I’m also used to parents being all hawk-eyed, watching their children's every move through the corner of their eyes – before the kid even has a chance to fall, the parent is there in a flash to catch them. Now, I believe in instilling the fear of God and learning through necessary discipline - that's how I grew up and when I do become a parent here, I'll have to take on a different method from my parents. Parents here seem to trust their children from a really young age, I’ve seen a 3-year-old donning his own rain gear to play with his toy truck in the garden for half an hour. But I have to say, this 3-year-old may be an exception. He is by far THE coolest 3-year-old I’ve met in my life – he loves outdoors, laughs and lights up the room like a ray of sunshine, when the family goes on hiking, he walks by himself. Doesn’t matter how many times he tripped or fell, the only time he cried was because the father wanted to carry him. Go Figure. I kept imagining if it were to be any of the 3-year-olds back at home, most of them would have cried even before the get-go.
Boys here receive a knife of their own as a sign of growing up at the age of 9 as part of the tradition. Most of them seem to grow up with the nature, it is in their blood. Nature of this nature (excuse the pun) is at least a car trip for most metropolitans, much less having a stream at their doorstep or a forest hike at the backdoor. Thus, the next thing..
7. Outdoor activities – Imagine: Its 5 degrees outside with no rays peeping through your curtains and seems to threaten to pour before you can say “Go”. You’d think staying indoors and snuggle under that warm, cozy fleece blanket with a good read is the plan. No way. Not here. It’s either hiking, jogging, fishing, hunting, camping, all sorts of sports and a sport that I remember seeing on TV for the Winter Olympics – where you ski within a mapped route and stop at a designated area to shoot, aiming for a bulls-eye as fast as you can. Frankly, when I was younger and had better stamina, I would hike to the nearest river and take a swim or play hours and hours of tennis but it was a tropical place. It’s sunshine often enough that most don’t go trekking in the rain. Here.. their famous saying is “There is no bad weather, just bad clothes” We are, by the way, still trying to psyche ourselves (and amping up the wardrobes) about this.
8. Safety. We’re talking about people having no second thoughts to leave their doors unlocked. I can’t. Period. I came from a place where you have triple locks in different varieties for the main door and any other entrances/openings that would be vulnerable to a break-in, plus an in-house security system and one must also have speed-dials to the neighborhood crime watch, nearest police station and closest neighbors. Just in case. Not to say, I can deck myself up in diamonds and prance around town now, I do have, to a certain extent, less concerns about walking down the street by myself. This I’m enjoying, cautiously.
9. Community-spirit - I have to say, I missed having this one. Once again, I came from a family that moved around a lot too. Not across the globe, just across states. When we lived in a small town with a population of 10,000, you have that close bond in the community. Everyone knows everyone, people would help each other i.e babysit for you on your date night, carpool with you to work, help fetch the kids to school or just gather together to catch a rouge snake in the drains. Here, it’s common to have dugnag – like a community based event, whether it’s just to clean up the playground or gather together for a barbeque.
10. Getting to know people – It was my daily routine to know someone new, whether through a contact or just introduce yourself. In our case here, we’ve been blessed as my other half knew a handful of people before we lugged ourselves here. Apparently, it is vital to know someone locally in order to know someone else – in other words, networking here is, especially more so here, all about the people you already know and getting them to introduce you to people they know. So far, all the people we’ve met are supremely nice, friendly and helpful. Although at first instance they may seem reserved but as always, over time and maybe a couple of beers, they warm up. We've found out through the warm introductions, it is much easier to say, locate a nice place to stay that is owned by nice owners.
11. Property. We’re sort of lucky that we’re not in one of the larger cities where rental is sky high. I.e for a two bedroom apartment here is about NOK4,500-6,000 per month (about USD780-1,000) depending on the condition, location & whether it’s furnished or unfurnished versus say, a two bedroom apartment in Stavanger would be about NOK10,000 to 12,000 - about USD1,700 to 2,000). Even compared to where we were (one of the top three most expensive Asian cities), the rental prices could be unnerving for the purse.
Amongst the things I picked up today during a viewing, is you have to make sure the house is on the right side of the hill. The aim is to get the most sun during summer. Now, being ethnically Chinese, we can be really particular about directions and placing because of Feng Shui, getting the right Chi and all but this, this was however thoroughly practical :)
Renting a place in a town like this is about asking people, friends who may know of someone who has a lower floor, extra apartment or a basement to rent, checking out stores' notice boards and the local community newspaper. Another thing to do is actually to advertise in the local paper that one is looking to rent and have owners respond to you.
If one is looking to own a house, one has to approach the town council and state the intentions to buy a piece of land and with the land, one can place an order for the type of house you’d like from a catalog or from designers/contractors – How cool is that? Back at home, the norm is you pick one out of a ready-made-developer constructed terrace houses, which all looked the same, unless you pay an enormous amount of money for a piece of land and build it from scratch.
Although from what we heard, it is not always a breezy process, i.e you have to get your house drawings approved by the council and neighbors before you can start building the house. Now, just imagine if you have a cheeky neighbor that would like to maximize the land and view in front of them regardless, what could you do then…
12. Language. Well, why is not high up in my list? It’s expected and honestly, food’s more important in my world :) I’ll have at least one post dedicated to this - language :)
And now I have to go to my language class – Har en god dag, har det bra!
Mumbling in Norsk,
ABE