wired

I'm back!

How cool is this? Courtesy of wordle.net 

Á lágnætti

Ég er að lesa svo góða bók. Það er lágnætti í júní og golan leikur við trjágreinarnar fyrir utan húsið mitt og ég geri bara stutt hlé fré lestrinum. Endrum og sinnum. Undanfarna tvo daga hef ég verið samferðakona Karitasar listmálara um íslenskan samtíma, evrópska sögu og böndin sem binda konur saman.

Þvílíkt ferðalag.

Hún fær mig til að hlæja og gráta, drekka stoðmjólk í kaffið mitt, borða engan hádegismat nema súkkulaðikex. Lesa búta fyrir Matta, þann sem er næstum með ofnæmi fyrir bókum, hugsa um konur og tengsl og skyldur og húsverk og köllun. Fer með mig í ferðalag og ég kvíði endinum. Kvíði því að kveðja Karitas.

Minn innri feministi ólgar.

Ekki bara vegna Karitasar og hlutskiptis hennar heldur líka vegna heimskulegra ráða 24 stunda um hvernig konur eiga að koma eins og fegurðardísir úr flugi og þess þá heldur vegna pistils um hvernig útvarpsfávitar í þættinum Zúúúber á FM 957 skelltu á "húsmóður úr Vesturbænum" þegar hún hringdi inn og benti á að börn hlustuðu á þáttinn. Umræðuefnið, illa snyrtar konur í sundi, þróaðist út í munngælur og konunni ofbauð. Snillingarnir sem stýra þessum þætti skelltu þá á konuna og sögðu henni að hlusta á aðra stöð.

Hvers konar dómadagshálfviti skrifar um aðra eins mannfyrirlitningu og lágkúru?

Hvað í ósköpunum er frásagnarvert við þetta? Finnst "blaðamanninum" umsjónarmenn þáttarins vera yst á jaðrinum og ofsalega svalir að ræða kantskurð kvenna í sundi og að þessi kona sem hringdi inn hafi verið hræðilega forpokuð og þröngsýn að mótmæla þessu hljóðmengandi bulli?

Eimuð niður í öreindir eru skilaboðin, hvort sem horft er á útvarpsaumingjana eða "blaðamanninn" þessi: "Haltu kjafti og vertu sæt!

Kristín Marja Baldursdóttir, höfundur Karitasar án titils og Óreiðu á striga kann að lýsa þessum viðhorfum og öðrum af sama sauðahúsi miklu betur og í mun meiri blæbrigðum en ég. Ég ætla hins vegar að halda áfram að lesa.

Fávitar!

Back to work and other news

I've been back at my desk at CCP for just over a week now. It feels weird but good. Weird because in my absence, a whole new floor has been added to the building and a zillion new people have started. Good because I like the crazy energy flowing through this place and I do like my job.

Funny, I just added a category called work to the categories list this instance. I thought that every other post touched on work in some way and I surely had this category.

Our current apartment is starting to feel a little claustrophobic at the moment, so Matti and I have found one twice as big on Grundarstígur, close to Litli kassinn^tm where I used to live by myself. We're renting it for a year at least and then we'll see what options we have. We'll therefore be renting this apartment out as well as the basement room since Stebbi is moving to Atlanta soon. Sounds like I have paperwork on the menu...

Next Thursday and Friday will be spent in the company of fabulous women at Tengslanet 2008 at Bifröst. My sister and several of my friends are joining me and I'm looking forward to it, at the same time I'm anxious about leaving Emma over night for the first time.

Good times, I guess.

A fragmented experience

Today's menu:

• A fussy Emma refuses to nap for long, thus preventing her mother's shower until one o'clock
• A meeting at prosthetics powerhouse Össur, discussing their project plan template in order to be able to use the DSM method to possibly suggest a different template
• Watching a lot of Heroes season 2 - in order to broaden the sci fi spectrum consumed
• Getting Emma used to sleeping through the night so I can return to work having had a decent night's sleep
• Having the PS3 fixed and watching Matti and Stebbi giddy with excitement about playing GTA IV

It's not an atypical day in the residence and I'm thinking once more about what I call my historical and geographical fortune.

I'm born in a country with one of the highest standards of living in the world at a time when gender equality is mandated by law and we're, despite some stinging examples to the contrary, slowly getting there.

I'm loving the fact that my industrial engineering background and love for most things nerdy perfectly equips me for a career at a gaming company. I'm amazed at the fact that Iceland has one company like that and that I'm comfortably positioned there. I'm starting to experience the juggle between career and motherhood and it doesn't feel forced or uncomfortable. Yet...?

And to end this, one picture of Emma from Morocco for your viewing pleasure :)

Morocco and the Geek Elite

Tomorrow, Matti and Emma and I, along with the my colleagues at CCP will leave for Marrakech in Morrocco for four days of festivities. Of course Emma's first trip abroad is to Africa at the age of four months. She's so cosmopolitan.

I've written up a looooong list of things to bring and piled most of them onto the dining table. Traveling with a baby will be interesting...

While Matti watches It's always sunny in Philadelphia, I'm reading Fast Company, specifically an article about the Geek Elite, high powered producers and creators of shows such as Heroes, Lost and Battlestar Galactica. The gist of the article is how these shows are transmedial, since they use a variety of mediums such as graphic novels, novels, computer games and the internet to create sideplots and fill the holes left in the TV shows.

Most of these men tip their hats to George Lucas and the consensus is that Star Wars and Star Trek are the pioneers of transmedial sci fi experiences. Read the article if this seems interesting to you - for me it elaborates on an idea which is central to my job.

Yes - life's so tough...

The Inconvenient Truth*

*or Lína has a change of heart.

This morning I had the opportunity to go with Matti to see Al Gore lecture at Háskólabíó. I mostly told everyone that I was going to an Al Gore concert this past week as I felt if I was going to see another one of the world's top entertainers. Like Matti said: "we're going to see the famous guy".

I hadn't seen more than the first half of An Inconvenient Truth before going to the lecture this morning and I'm glad since that was almost exactly the way his presentation was organized. This does not mean that it felt in any way like he was repeating himself for the hundredth time (although he probably was). It felt true and inspiring and very convincing. Mr.Gore as a lecturer makes sure to let the audience feel that he knows where he is and who his audience is, making references to Iceland's history and power plants throughout the talk. He is humble, immaculately prepared and obviously on the mission of his life. In short, a 21st century Messiah.

I'm not going to repeat the points he made but the essence is: "Global warming is real and we need to do something about it. Now."

Walking out of the auditorium into the dazzling spring morning awaiting us, Matti and I discussed getting rid of the gasguzzling babymobile and getting a hybrid and making sure that we recycle what can be recycled at our home. I just e-mailed Gámaþjónustan to ask them if they can empty our recycle bin twice a month instead of just once.

At the top of this post you can see my carbon footprint as calculated on www.carbonfootprint.com . Now I obviously need to make some changes ...

The night after Easter

It's late and Matti and Emma are asleep. Usually we all pile into bed at the same time but tonight I didn't feel tired when they retired. I've spent the past hour aimlessly wandering the interweb, listlessly checking out blogs I haven't read for a while, finding nothing of interest.

During my maternity leave I've spent very little time online. So much of my pre-Emma existence was online so it feels a little as if I've returned to my old stomping grounds only to find out they're not what they used to be. It's a little after midnight and it's quiet out there. I feel a little sad, for no apparent reason.

Perhaps it's just the underlying mood of society catching up to me. All of a sudden the króna has crashed, banks have apparently stopped all lending and foreign currency loan repayments have spiked monstrously. The mood is black. It's all a bit comical, except it's not, since I can't really tell what's different this month from the last. Sure, I know about the sub-prime loans in the US etc. but I can't really see what this has to do with the day to day business of the normal Icelandic family. Not so long ago things like drought and the absence of cod sparked recessions in different countries. Not so anymore in our superconnected societies...

My little family is safe for now - even though our babymobile is now one of the most expensive ones on the streets as it's bought with a foreign currency loan. I feel for people whose housing is bought the same way or who've stretched their pay to the limit pre-crash. I'm not sure the sub-prime explanation seems fair to them.

Work seems around the corner as I'll go back in May. Exciting times ahead but first more maternal bliss.

Yoga and the giant baby

Emma and yours truly started yoga class this week. The classes are intended for new mothers to "reconnect" with their bodies and the offspring are brought along. As a fresh batch of mothers joined the class this particular Monday, everyone introduced themselves and their little one. The baby's age was also announced. I knew Emma was big for her age before I got there, but I hadn't realized that she's as big as babies twice her age.

A part of the yoga class is doing certain exercises with the baby, such as rolling on your back holding the baby in the air. When that time came, Emma was sound asleep so her mother had to do the yoga-with-the-baby part without the baby. A bit embarrassing really. Two days later at the same point in the class I decided to skip the embarrassment and woke Emma to join the other moms with babies dancing in a circle. Then we did a few exercises holding the baby, hoisting it up in the air and lowering it to the floor. My back still hurts and she'll only get bigger...

Non baby stuff
These past few days have been strange, a mix of sadness and joy. Matti and I are thinking hard about relocating to a great looking apartment smack in the center of Reykjavík, but the current state of the housing market has us hesitating. We also confirmed our reservation for a three week holiday in Thailand in July. My brother is awaiting his firstborn son in the summer, bringing joy to the whole family.

I haven't really been blogging about what's happening outside the four walls of the nest but my friend Bryndís is more than doing her job of telling it like it is. Go Bryndís!

Hef lagt heilann á hilluna...

... or  in English: I've laid the brain on the shelf. I know, it doesn't have the same ring to it. This will be long. And rambling. Read at your own risk.

For the past two months I've been a stay at home mom. Instead of a gazillion e-mails, telephone calls, rushing between locations for meetings and extracurricular activities, I spend my days gazing into the eyes of my firstborn, changing diapers, watching crappy shows on dvd while breastfeeding, doing endless loads of laundry, strolling down Laugavegur with the pram. I'm loving every minute of it, knowing all too well that this time doesn't return.

As the proud mother of the smartest, funniest and most beautiful baby on the planet, I'm obligated to point my readers towards my flickr page where you can oooh and aaaah at your hearts content. I haven't yet dared to venture towards barnaland.is and I don't think I will. I reserve the right to change my mind at any point in the future though.

Matti and I have been blessed with a baby who hasn't yet caused us any worry or trouble or lack of sleep. She sleeps while we sleep, is happy to drink from either boob or bottle (but only her mother's milk), smiles and laughs and coos and is in every respect perfect. She hasn't started talking yet but I predict it'll be soon. Much like her father, she likes her milk and is growing at an unusually rapid rate, weighing over 6,5 kgs at 9 weeks.

Motherhood has definitely changed me and somehow not at all. I thought I'd become a different person overnight but instead I'm still me, albeit a little more humble and with a reshuffled set of values. When leaving the house for a course I took two weeks back, I was asked if I didn't feel strange leaving the baby. No, I didn't. I was happy to be out and about, seeing different people and confident about leaving Emma with a couple of bottles of milk with Matti, who incidentally is probably the greatest dad on the planet. This, I've been told, does not make me a horrible mother.

I've developed a slight allergy to the time sucking on the internet but vow to do more blogging in the future and perhaps the posts will not be all about Emma...

Emma

...
is here. Born on the 18th of December, weighing 3695 grams and measuring 53 centimeters in length, she's absolutely perfect.

Oh, and happy new year!