From: cindy@solan10.solan.unit.no (Cynthia Kandolf)
Subject: NRK, Grooming, and Student Fees
Organization: /home/ludviga/cindy/.organization
Distribution: alt
Date: 8 Sep 92 21:03:35

First, NRK.  NRK is the national broadcasting company.  Until last
weekend (you read right, folks), unless you had cable TV or one of
those oversized salad bowls on your roof, your choice in television
was NRK, plus maybe a local channel if you lived in a big enough
town.  By NRK i mean one channel, one non-commercial channel.  

Norway has finally joined the civilized world and gotten itself a
second channel, creatively called TV2.  This is a commercial
channel.  NRK suddenly has to think about losing viewers, because
they finally have a serious competitior to lose them to.  This
has led them to change their "image" (while still mostly showing the
same programming, which never was all that interesting...).  Before
i delver the peeve i should explain that NRK has long been fighting
to stop the invasion of borrowed words into Norwegian.  I partly
agree with them... when there's a perfectly good Norwegian word
already that means the exact same thing, i hate to hear people using
a borrowed word just because it's "in".  On the other hand, if there
is no word in Norwegian already, well, what's the fuss?  

The Peeve is: NRK has now started "NRK Weekend".  Yes, that's what
they call it.  They used an English word where there already is a
Norskie one ("helg"), thus nominating themselves for Hypocrites of
the Year.

Grooming.  This year the smoking room of the student canteen has
finally become a _room_, with walls and a door.  I figured this
meant i would now be safe when i had a cold - no smoke making
breathing even more difficult than it already is.

Now, i have a cold.  It's not such a terrible cold, and it had the
decency to come on a weekend, so that i could spend the first few days
when it was at its worst whimpering under the covers with a clear
conscience.  And now the problem of smoke in the canteen is gone,
so i should be fine, right?

Fat chance.  Maybe the problem was always there before and i didn't
realize it, but now i'm in classes with mostly girls (drat) and 
it's called itself to my attention.  When you have a cold, it seems,
girls wearng too much perfume seek you out.  They want to sit next to 
you in those two hour lectures that are so crowded that you can't
move to another seat.  GASP!

Another grooming peeve:  People who apply hair spray in public
toilets.  The stuff stays in there for hours if not days, and
again is no fun to deal with if you have a cold.  Personally
i think they should be made to spray the damn stuff on their
hair in the smoking room in the canteen.  Smokers lost their sense
of smell long ago anyway, and besides it would be amusing.

Last one: student fees.  Not the fees themselves, because we only
pay 215 kroner per term.  That's less than three hours' pay.

A new student organization has declared itself founded.  This is
nothing unusual at our university.  This one is complaining about the
high cost of getting an education.  So what are they griping about?
That the stipend for students living away from home is a joke, because
it doesn't begin to cover expenses?  That interest rates on student
loans are too high?  That books cost twice as much as they need to?
No, not a peep about that.  They think the student fees are too high.

!

-Cindy Kandolf
 cindy@solan.unit.no
 Trondheim, Norway




Newsgroups: alt.peeves