Facebook date and Midsummer in Norway

My regular readers know I’m a networker by heart. Some weeks ago, I got a new Facebook friend from UK. He found me in the Facebook group: ‘Get LinkedIn’. We are both listed at LinkedIn, of course, and soon we became registered as contacts there too. So far nothing extraordinary, as this happens all the time. But then things started to move in a new direction: My new friend Chris had a business trip to Norway and asked if we could meet – just like that – so we had a very nice time getting to know each other over a couple of beers in Oslo:


Taken with my Nokia mobile phone.
Click to enlarge!

Chris is COO at QuickStart Global, an IT Company with a very interesting business approach (click her to see for yourself!). Working in The Norwegian Computer Society sets me in a kind of network hub within Information Technology in Norway and I could give him some tips on how to approach the Norwegian market.
Chris and his family are kind of globe trotters who have lived in Toronto, Canada for 6 years, and recently moved back home to England. He and his wife have talked about moving back though, and then of course I suggested they moved to Norway instead. Why not? He text messaged his wife and she wasn’t exactly negative to the idea. So who knows?

Midsummer in Norway:
You might wonder why I put up this subject in a post like this. Well, it’s because my blog is about the significant four seasons, and we passed a very special milestone this weekend. The time between the 21st and 22nd of June was the ‘longest’ day on the northern part of the globe. In Oslo that means the length of the day was almost 19 hours. As I sit her now around 11PM, it’s still daylight (the sun went down 22:45).
This has been celebrated in Norway for thousands of years; there have been settlements here for more than 10 000 years back. Since they didn’t know the exact time then, the Midsummer Evening (St. Hans) has been celebrated the 23rd of June. This weekend it has been poring rain though, so you didn’t sees as many bonfires as is normal. So if you are interested in more background and old traditions, you’ll have to click here and check my post from last year.

Our Midsummer celebration is very much like our Swedish friends and good neighbors. The captain of our Cyber Cruise, Mrs. Lifecruiser, has posted about it today, so please click to read her ‘Midsummer flower power love’ post!

Now the school season is over and soon Norway is closing down for the summer. Most of us take at least three weeks vacation in July. No wonder we are eager to meet the sun: in December in Oslo, the length of the day is a mere 6 hours.