Cool, I got a new Laptop!

There I was complaining about not having a laptop and getting withdrawal symptoms the other day when along comes the boss man who quietly presented me with his personal IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad to use for the time being. What a nice chap, he could see I needed one to effectively do my job.

What’s more I was given a copy of Office Enterprise 2007 and told in no uncertain terms that I was to install whatever I needed on the machine, including Itunes, antivirus, Photoshop, Blackberry software etc. Wow, this guy’s liberal or what?

The cherry on the cake is that I get to learn a whole new language in the process. Uh huh that’s right, you see, my boss is Norwegian and the machine in question is, you guessed it, Windows XP Norske complete with Norske keyboard. So with one deft swipe of the keyboard I can make character’s like Ø, ¤, Å, æ and Æ.

And the usual windows commands like Cut and Copy become, or translate to, Klipp Ut and Kopier as well as Properties becomes Egenskaper. It’s pretty easy really; let’s have a go shall we.

English – I don’t have a clue how to operate this computer.
Norwegian - Jeg har ikke en anelse om hvordan du skal betjene denne datamaskinen.

There you have it, your first Norwegian lesson. To show my appreciation, I’ve installed all my programs in English except for the Spanish anti virus, Chinese character map and the USA keyboard short cuts. If I could just add a South African plug to the mains adapter the whole schizophrenic ensemble would be complete.