Don't get me started.... It's a numbers game, I guess. There are only about 5 million people in this country, which is also vast in length and contains more peaks and valleys than most others. Thus you get all the disadvantages of small scale operations: higher prices, fewer products/services etc. Because of the geographical placement, Norway is pretty isolated from the rest of the world. Why should anyone care about a few million people way up north? The real problem is corruption, though. The problem of "friends" helping "friends" is quite substantial, more so than outright bribery. Starting new businesses might be hard, grants unattainable etc.... You have a few billionaires that blatantly trades on inside information time and time again. But the SEC only makes an example out of a few pikers on a sporadic basis. It is also a problem that journalists might be friends politicians, which might hinder objective news. In short, we have a so-called elite that know each other both professionally and personally, and all the problems derived from that... "So, it's like any other place on earth", you say? Yes, but we probably have the most complacent citizenry in the world. I guess we have it too good, and so people do not care about anything. This is what provokes me; We have a terrible, uncritical press, terrible infrastructure and a vast number of other problems. But ask anyone, and they would claim that Norway is the best country on earth. It is delusional. If you were to raise awareness on such problems, you would be clubbed down relatively fast, though. You can attribute that to the Jante Law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jante_Law). It basically says: "don't think you are somebody". The funny thing is that on a national level, you get the opposite. You cannot bring attention to your own achievements, but uncritical praise of the nation is quite accepted. It is nationalism almost as unsound as you get in the US. What else? The education system is poor. We have no programs for gifted children e.g. The universities barely make it on the top 200 list. We are intellectually dead as a nation. And the translated editions of everything are much worse than what you would find in English. But again, it's a numbers game. We have too few people on the right side of the Bell Curve. What can you do? It's simple statistics... The positive? It is probably the best country to be on unemployment or social security. It is a quite beautiful country, albeit cold.. In short, it is like most places on earth. Except for the fact that we have about $600 bln in our national fund. That should allow for a much better society than we currently have. But it now mostly operates to hide the ineptness of our politicians. I guess it's easy to buy oneself out of everything.... It sure doesn't help our nation in the long run, though... And the idiotic citizenry is still blissfully complacent. People are more concerned of what is on TV than the problems at hand. I am seriously doubting the validity of democracy.... Thankfully, as a successful trader, I am disconnected from the rest of society. That is the best thing about this vocation... (Please excuse any grammatical errors; it has been a long night. Some of us actually has English as a second language. It is the greatest regret of my life; I should have chosen another womb!)
12 years? Ya got me beat. I struggled for about 8 years. 6-1 was his birthday, then I had to deal with the Fathers day issue and he died in the month fo June. Does it get easier? Without a doubt, one day......The rest of the family said get over it, I basically said, yeah, okay if you say so. Doesn't work like that. Our loss is pretty much for selfish reasons. Oh well.. As they say, don't be sad because it is over, be glad it happened. My Dad and I became great friends, and had a mutual understanding of the world, we could communicate with a nod and an "Ummm", cool as hell.
A rear view camera mounted on a train that went through a tornado. http://d.yimg.com/kq/groups/7769081/124862335/name/Tornado1.wmv