Nina's Blog - Wednesday 18th February 2026, Ash Wednesday, Askeonsdag

@ninalanyon
Oh stop! I'm exhausted just reading about it!

@ninalanyon
I just checked out a 2026 Genesis EV. Has 350kms of range. 🤔

@swirlie That doesn't seem much for a 2026 car. What sort of car is it? A big SUV or something smaller? My 2015 Tesla S has about 330 km of range.

Of course range isn't necessarily the deciding factor, it all depends on what your normal usage will be and whether you can charge at home or have to rely on public chargers. If you can charge at home and drive a couple of hundred kilometres a day then 350 km of range is fine.

@ninalanyon
The Genesis is the luxury brand of Hyundai and is a 5 passenger SUV. It is built in Asia for the Canadian market. I don't see 350kms being a problem since I typically drive no more than 150km on a round trip from home most of the time anyway and can use a home-charger.

@swirlie Hyundai and the sister brand Kia seem like good cars. I rented a Hyundai SUV in the US some years ago and it was pretty good. A friend has had a Kia e-Niro EV for a couple of years and is very pleased with it.

@ninalanyon
Are you in Norway right now?

@swirlie Yes. Winter in Norway, summer in the UK. I'll be here until Easter, at least that's the plan.

@ninalanyon
My parents are Scandinavian, though I was born in Canada. My father is from Oslo, mother from Stockholm and every night my Dad talks to his friends in Norway on short-wave radio ..because they all belong to a Ham Radio club!

When I'm at my parent's place a few hours west of Toronto visiting for a weekend, I'll always give my cellphone to my Dad and suggest he just call his friends in Norway on my phone since I have an international cellphone plan...

He just looks at me like I've got two heads and says he wouldn't dream of calling his friends on my cellphone! IT JUST ISN'T THE SAME!.. apparently.

It's about 4:20pm in Toronto right now and I'm in my downtown condo overlooking life in the fast lane ...except we've had freezing rain all day long and traffic is at a standstill.

So I've been watching the Olympics all afternoon on TV and noticed how Norway has been pretty much sweeping up all the gold medals to be had!

Congratulations to Norway! 🥳 🥇

@swirlie I can see your dad's point about a phone call not being the same as talking over radio. I would guess that one reason might be that it guarantees that they have something to talk about, signal strength, ionospheric reflections, what kind of antenna is being used, bragging about how they can transmit long distances at very low power, etc.

As for winter sports, well we pretty much expect Norway to be at the top of the table. It's been that way for so many years that I think a lot of us here almost think it's a natural law! But in the end I think it has to be that the more populous wealthy countries simply don't try hard enough, that there isn't enough public interest. After all the US, for instance, has sixty times as many people to choose from and vastly more money dedicated to sport so they surely could find or train more winners if they tried.

Of course another thing is that pretty much everyone in Norway can find a place to ski that is only a few minutes drive from home or even walking distance. So perhaps the pool of possible winners here really is bigger than elsewhere.

All speculation on my part, sport is a bit of mystery to me, I've never really felt the urge to compete!

@ninalanyon
Your entire explanation makes total sense from the radio to the skiing! And oh yes, don't forget the static! Got to have a LOT of static or else it just doesn't sound like the Battle of Britain going on in the background apparently!

Where I was born and raised in Canada (southern Ontario), the ground was as flat as a pancake for as far as the eye could see. It is vegetable growing country and that's where most of Heinz ketchup was made for 80 years.

I did a lot of cross-country skiing as a result of a distinct absence of ski hills and even fewer mountains, which blended well with my god-gifted talent of gymnastics from an early age. So cross-country skiing became our winter activity where I competed locally, whereas with gymnastics I competed nationally.

@swirlie Snakker du norsk, eller svensk, et blanding, eller bare engelsk?

I was never a radio amateur in the transmitting sense but I uses to do some shortwave listening when I very young in the days when almost every country had an official shortwave station. Some of them would send you souvenirs in exchange for reception reports, QSL. So I had enamel red star pins from Radio Tirana in Albania, a copy of Mao's little red book from Radio Peking.

Midnight here, time for my beauty sleep!

@ninalanyon
I am fluent in English and any journalism I do is in English, but I do speak Swedish to my mom. I know all the Norwegian swear words from my Dad who taught me everything I know in his tractor workshop when I was much younger!

@swirlie It's good to hear that you speak a language other than English. I think that being able to speak another language, even a closely related one, gives a different wider perspective on the world. We sent our children to barnehage once they were speaking English and within much less than a year they were equally adept in Norwegian, indistinguishable from the locals.

@ninalanyon
The funny thing is, Canada is a so-called "bilingual country" (officially English & French) but only 5% of the entire population of Canada can speak French.

Despite my best efforts over a 4 year period in high school which included daily French classes, I still couldn't order breakfast for myself in French after I graduated at the end of it all.

In Canada, French (the official second language of Canada), is taught in school by 'writing' French, not by 'speaking' French to a teacher.

What this means is, few English Canadians can actually write French and even fewer English Canadians can actually speak French enough to get by among the French-Canadian population living in Canada.

It's really quite pathetic actually, which is why French-Canadians tend to keep to themselves in their own little corner of Canada.

What's even more pathetic is that 20 year old French-Canadian high school graduates and college students cannot actually speak English well enough to go to a job interview anywhere in English Canada or the rest of the English-speaking world for that matter. That is because English is not actually taught as a second language in French Canada and therefore like the USA, French Canada has become an Isolationist, Protectionist society within the Continental boundaries of Canada who's only interest is to serve itself and protect what they perceive as so-called "French culture".

@swirlie That sounds very much like my experience of learning French in England. We didn't have daily lessons but I did start at age nine and continued to age sixteen when I took my O-levels. I failed. I did a retake the next year and failed again. In the last year of French lessons we had French conversation sessions with some young French women who came over to England to improve their English. Picture the scene: a slim, long haired, nineteen year old French girl walks into a class of fifteen year old English boys and girls. The girls were outclassed by this sophisticated creature and us boys (it was a long time ago, I've changed since then) could think of nothing intellectual at all the hormones having taken total control. Everyone was utterly embarrassed and totally incapable of learning anything, barely able to speak English let alone French.

The contrast with my children learning Norwegian is stark: we waited until they we speaking proper English at about three and a half years old and then sent them to barnehage (kindergarten, not pre-school) half time. Much less than a year later they were indistinguishable from the other children in Norwegian with no tuition whatsoever!

In my opinion immersion is the only way to learn a language. I spent five years on and off learning Norwegian (including eighteen months of formal instruction in evening classes) but because all my colleagues spoke English and all our customers were non-Norwegian there was no pressure and little value in speaking it. then I had to visit a factory much further north, two hours drive north of Trondheim. I suddenly found that I was surrounded by people whose English was as bad or worse than my Norwegian and that if i wanted a beer or a pizza then i had to order it in Norwegian. Hunger and thirst beat embarrassment! From then on it was much easier.

@swirlie I don't think that would happen in France, certainly not these days. Even though quite a lot of French people don't speak English, or don't speak it well, there are quite a lot who do, and more who can at least undestand more. Of course everything is in French but with a bit of good will on both sides you can usually get fed :-)

The French have mellowed over the last half century and are not as hostile to the idea of speaking English as they once were.

@ninalanyon
That is all very comforting to know!