12th March 2009 Birthdays

Today has been an ordinairy Thursday. At the office I recieved a 20 emails or so and send at least the same amount to many different corners of the world and to offices at the other side of the corridor.
At the office our team leader had her birthday today, and as she came in after lunch we arranged a suprise flowers and a personal greetings card. When I arrived home I found that Merijn was skyping with his grandfather, my dad, who also has his birthday today. He became 65, which is the general age to retire in the Netherlands. There will be not much celebration today, because there will be a party organised on Saturday. I am very sorry not to be able to be present at such occations. On the otherside when we do visit my parents we usually stay or a week or more, so if one was to calculate the precise amount of time spend together the number of hours would not differ so much. And todays relative cheap way of communication as by email, blog and skype make distances not as long as they used to be.
In the mean time I also found out that it is basically imposible to rent out my house in Norway to a new tennant before we are having our summer holiday there, since the bank system can not put in money in a dipositums account unless both tennant and owner are physically at the bank opening the account. I wonder wheter I am the only person with those kind of problems.
I also found out on a webside that a ambassador for Norway living in another country and is paid by the Norwegian government is paying 18% tax. For some reason I think that this rule does not apply to me, but I find is impossible to find out what does. And I have to find a way to get access to my own files, since all post will end up at Brohaugen or the University in Norway, in those the entry codes are printed to be able to make changes... no entry codes .... no changes.
The new sevice site of the Norwegian government does not help either, here one needs the same codes too to get access. Somethings can realy become amusing.