November 12, 2010

We followed the same formula as yesterday and did a good schooling session in the morning.

I have forgotten to mention that we finally managed to get hold of a Macbook Air of the type we wanted. All 3 kids can now do school work on a computer at the same time. They have learned how to use the annotate function in Preview and put in their answers directly into the books. They use Excel and Word in addition and never have to use pen or paper. It works like a charm. It´s still a challenge to make sure they make the necessary progress, but we´re getting there now.

The solution for getting the Macbook Air was using the Apple online store. The challenge was that Apple refused to deliver to a US address when I used a Norwegian credit card. They really didn´t want my money. In the end I filled out my address in Oslo as the credit card billing address with Tennessee as my home state and US as the country. The machine complained that my zip code was not valid. On a hunch I added a 0 in front of my 4-digit Norwegian zip code. Presto! The picky system decided to let me pay after all.

It was interesting to follow the machine´s path across the globe. 3 days after I ordered it it had been produced at a plant in Shanghai and handed over to FedEx. It then flew to Anchorage in Alaska before a short rendevouz with FedEx headquarters in Memphis and a small interstate trip through Tennessee before reaching me in Chattanooga.

Those types of chains of events and the way the globe has shrunk in the last century has always fascinated me. When my paternal grandfather grew up in rural Norway the world for him was about 3 orders of magnitude larger than mine is today. For him, in the 1910s, going to the local village, Skarnes, by rowing boat, was a day trip. Going in to Oslo was an adventure and a different world. Going across the Atlantic was something people did with the intention of never coming back, like his brother-in-law did.

Today it takes me an hour by car from Oslo to where he lived. Going from there to Skarnes is a 10 minute drive. I have held presentations in Bergen, the other side of the country, and I have done it as a day trip. People now go to New York from Oslo on weekend trips.

It has not even been 100 years and the perceived size of the globe has gone down by about 3 orders of magnitude. I can type into a computer in Chattanooga and a factory order is made in Shanghai.

The world has in many ways become a village. It´s cliché these days, I know, but he ramifications for mankind are still mind-bogling. A hundred years ago, what you did on a day to day basis would normally have consequences in a radius of a few kilometers. Today, what we do, what we shop, what we eat and even what we chose to listen to or watch often has consequences all around the globe.

The world is truly a village and we all live or die with that village.

Our hunger for consumption and energy usage is skyrocketing as the perceived size of the globe gets increasingly smaller. Politicians are talking and things are happening, but they are happening way too slow. In 1965 world energy consumption was 2 terawats per year, in 2005 it passed 5 terawats. According to Wikipedia it has been estimated that more than half the energy produced by man since the industrial revolution has been consumed in the past two decades.

Uh, yeah, sorry.

Today´s park was Epcot.

Epcot is split in two. One part contains pavilions from 11 different countries (both Norway and France are represented). The other part contains different types of attractions where the earth and the future seem to be the common theme.

What a contrast to yesteday´s packed Hollywood Studios! The part of the park with rides felt empty in comparison. Except for the 2 most popular ones, Test Track and Soarin´, there were practically no waiting times. We had a ball!

Early on we met this duck:

One of the first attractions we did was a short movie for children about how we use too many of the earth´s resources too fast, how we pollute and make animals extinct. The finishing line was that you have to start with yourself. It was well made and the kids got the message.

We went straight from this movie to the restaurant area. The only option was single usage plates, glasses and cutlery. There was lots of packaging around most food options. I took a look around and tried to imagine the amount of unnecessary garbage created in that place every hour. The double-standard was frankly embarrassing. I find it incomprehensible that they don´t try to do something about this. In a way it was a striking symbolic example of how we deal with poor old mother earth.

 

On the positive side we took an interesting ride which, much to our surprise, brought us in a boat around a greenhouse where there is research going on in alternative ways to grow food. It was really impressive to see how they grew lots of stuff in simulated dry environments with minimal water.

 

 

There was an experiment where plants grew in the water of a fish farm. Fish fart, plants grow from the fertilizer. Neat.

 

The best ride, without comparison, was the Mars ride simulator. It came in two versions, a light ride and a heavy duty ride. The boys and I took the heavy duty one, and we all did the ride twice. You sit in a simulator pod which is spun around like a centrifuge to create horse-kicking G-forces. You really get to feel what it´s like to sit in a spacecraft at liftoff. This must have been way more than the 4G we experienced in Huntsville. The geek and coolness factor meter in my brain maxed out completely.

There was also a Nemo ride where computer generated images were displayed on aquarium glass. Nemo was swimming with real fish. Cool illusion.

We managed to get fast passes to the two rides with long waiting times. They were both for the late evening, 8-9pm. We wandered into the pavilion part, where there were lots more people,  We met with the mexican Donald Duck

and saw a great movie about China. We also, of course, stopped by the Norwegian pavillion.

The kids didn´t quite believe that the employees there spoke Norwegian. In the end Viktor dared to ask one of them in English if she spoke Norwegian. She answered in fluent Norwegian. Test passed.

It was now starting to get late and we were a bit stuck time-wise since we were getting hungry and needed to wait for our fast pass time slots. There was a food festival on and lots of unhealthy food in small and expensive quantities was available. Not very tempting when you are hungry for dinner.

I admit it straight out. When my blood sugar gets low I change personality. I become aggressive and snappy. I get a headache and the world is my enemy. Hélène says it´s the closest to PMS she has ever seen in a male.

I was getting rather unsympathetic at this point, according to my better half. We decided to go over to the French pavilion to see if they had some decent fast food stuff available. Unfortunately the French have much too good a reputation for food and the lines to get food went all the way into the horizon.

OK. I suggested to change the plan and go to the French restaurant at the pavilion instead. We had little time, but it should be possible. Hélène didn´t dare say no. The restaurant was full. Despair. Hunger. Pain.

I remembered having read that there was one more restaurant, so I parked the rest of the family with a “STAY HERE!” and started scanning the French pavilion. In the “back alley” there was a rather small door with a lady behind a restaurant type seater´s counter/table. YES! Without hesitation I asked for a table for 5. We got one. We were in!

I fetched the other four and as we were taken upstairs I started to wonder what kind of place I had brought us to. It turned out to be a French gourmet restaurant, complete with white table cloths, champagne coolers and French waiters who cut your food by the table. OK, upgrade from the greasy Frankfurter sausage I didn´t have at the German pavilion. 🙂

On the kids menu they seemed to have decent stuff. At last, a good nutritious French meal for the kids. They all had a look at the menu and decided to go with a croquette de boeuf, also known as a steak haché. A classic kid´s dish which is basically a steak made from ground beef.

I noticed, and found it a bit odd, that it was served with brioche, a French type of sweet bun, which you normally don´t have with your dinner. Since I only read the French part I didn´t even notice the mention of the fries. Sometimes your brain can be slow, especially when you are low on blood sugar.

Here is what the kids were served:

Haven´t I seen that dish somewhere before? And it wasn´t in a French gourmet restaurant, I´m pretty sure.

Oh well, one more cannot make all that difference, and for the kids it was better than some fancy gourmet food. They were happy as you can see. Hélène and I were also very happy with our food:

Beats a Frankfurter hands down! (let´s not mention the check, shall we?)

We managed to use our fast passes and were quite satisfied after another great day at Disney World.

The grownups are especially happy that we managed to combine a good school week with top fun for the kids.

That concludes the US chapter of our story. Tomorrow we´re really heading south. South of the equator.

Eirik

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