Friday, January 29, 2010

Taxi driver

I actually made a New Years resolution this year. I'd try and update my blog a bit more often. Looking at the time stamp of the previous post, I can't say I'm off to a very good start. I have a feeling 2010 is going to be a good blog year though.

My weekly treatments were moved from Wednesdays to Thursdays. When I checked in at the cancer ward a couple of weeks ago the nurses asked if I wanted to share the room with another Norwegian. It turned out he had been there for a while as well but on different days up until now. Pretty cool to have a Norwegians-only room though only for a few hours. We'll try and meet up outside of the hospital as well.

I had to check in at First Aid on Tuesday evening. There has been a stomach bug going around in the family and I eventually got it too. I had a bit of fever and the doctors took it pretty seriously even though I told them it must be the same stuff as the rest of the family has had. I guess they wanted to ensure it was not the swine-flu. I even had to stay over night at the cancer ward. All the rooms were actually booked so they put me into a storage (or something) room. There was a lamp above the bed that looked like those they use when doing surgeries. I didn't sleep too well, but the following morning I felt fine and was sent home. Later on in the afternoon the stomach starting acting up but it lasted only until midnight.

I took a taxi home from the hospital and had a good conversation with the taxi driver. We touched upon important issues like the beautiful winter we have had so far and the status of her taxi business. The usual topics. Well, we also discussed problems around immigration (not sure why) and she was horrified when I gave her some bad examples from Oslo that I've picked up from Norwegian newspapers. Then I noticed she wore no seat belt. I think it's the first time I've ever seen someone drive without a seat belt. I was pretty close to ask her why but managed to keep my mouth shut. It was a pretty nice Mercedes with probably a lot of good air bags, but still I don't get that.

P.S. A note from the wife: what is it with the taxi drivers and immigration?? More than 50% of the time the topic comes up. Gitta Helin even mentioned it in her column in Aamulehti (newspaper) today, she said in Helsinki they have two kinds of taxi drivers: loud racists and those who don't know where Kalastajatorppa is. (Kalastajatorppa being a famous hotel which is not situated downtown Helsinki)