First of all: Yum.

Then, finally, I have my own bank account. The funny thing is that it was "dead easy" (not compared to Norwegian banking, though) once I could actually prove that I have a job. Even a silly temp job like I have now. Well, maybe it's not that silly, and I do really like it, even though I have to get up before anyone notices a new day has begun. It could have helped my situation not to go to the local branch (where they asked me to come back some other day to actually get an appointment -- customer service isn't high on their agenda, apparently), of course, so now I have a completely different branch for the rest of my life...which is kind of stupid, since it's somewhere I'm highly unlikely to go to very often in the future, but who cares.

The funniest thing is that they gave me a lot of cheques. I can't believe they still use cheques here. It's so uncommon where I come from I even had to read the instructions to find out how to write one! The night before I got the cheque book I dreamt I went around writing cheques to everyone I met. Not quite sure if it was supposed to be a nightmare or not.

My personal banker, which she will be known as from now on, spent about 15-20 minutes scrutinising my passport, though, and on several occasions I was getting nervous and thinking maybe they wouldn't let me have a bank account because they didn't know how to tell a real passport from a fake one. After all, I did get the passport straight from my local police station in Oslo, and I don't really think they'd give out fake passports. When she told the verifying bank teller on the other end of the phone that 'it has a white mark that looks like Tippex...' I thought 'great, this is where I get arrested for having a fake passport'. It didn't happen, though. Turned out the "Tippex" was perfectly legit and even quite a sophisticated little piece of security measure.

I'm not going to get a credit card for a while, though (and why do they keep saying "credit card" when they actually mean "credit or debit card"? Confusing people. My biggest problem was when by personal banker ended the session with saying 'well, I don't know how they do banking in Norway...' and I wanted to say 'a lot easier than here, that's for sure, and with something called "modern technology"!' I didn't, though. I thought offending my personal banker before she'd actually sent the application would be fatal for my credit rating. But seriously, Norway is way, WAY ahead on so many levels, the British should feel ashamed of their general snottiness when it comes to "the continent".

OK, so the weekend has arrived and I am planning on doing very little. Perhaps we'll go and see a film or two; I saw the trailer for The Exorcism of Emily Rose today and wanted to see that one (also because it has Tom Wilkinson in it, which I didn't know or had forgotten), and of course we may have to see HP4 again. Bother. ;-)

Current track: Covenant - We Stand Alone

Labels: dreams, film, marton csokas, personal, technology, tom wilkinson