The COP freefood Twitter feed

I realize I've been quite quiet for the duration of the COP... please forgive me it's been a frenzied week. Breaking from this alarming trend, I thought I'd post on a unique practice I've found to be one of the more hilarious and predictable sideshows here in the Bella Center. Put into an equation:

What happens when... you add:

15,000 delegates (who knows how many starving NGO observers)

+

Market-priced food (Danish market price, that is)

+

Information technology (Twitter and free wifi)

=

...
http://twitter.com/oliverbruce



Translation: sharks circling the food tables after side events. Indeed our event on Saturday was not immune. I'd be upset if I didn't find it so hilarious.

(Below: Frenzy @ #cop15 #freefood)

An odd Iceland end

The Icelandic Yule Lads (a story distributed by the Icelandair flight crew)
In earlier centuries, the number of Yule lads varied according to regions. The number 13 is first seen in a ballad about the giantess Gryla in the eighteenth century, the names of the lads first appear in the "Iceland Folk Tales" compiled by Jón Árnason in 1862. About 60 other names for the Yule lads are known from various sources. The following are those most commonly used nowadays: Sheep-Cot Clod, Gully Gawk, Shorty, Lable Licker, Pot Scraper, Bowl Licker, Door Slammer, Skyr Gobbler, Sausage Swiper, Window Peeper, Door Sniffer, Meat Hook, Candle Beggar. The lads come down from their mountain dwelling, one each day. The first to arrive is Sheep-Cot Clod. He appears on the 12th of December and leaves on Christmas Day. The last one, Candle Beggar, arrives in Christmas Eve and goes back to the mountains on the 6th of January, the Thirteenth Day of Christmas.

Verbatim.

In memory of this beautiful story the flight received a free glass of malt & appelsín (some sort of fermented orange drink) served on the below napkin. ...I think the Black Death may have had more far reaching consequences than the Icelandic are willing to admit.

Iceland ends

Does the Icelandic term for Seasonal Affective Disorder still spell SAD? Almost 11am local time...



Icelandic architecture exhibit A.



Icelandic architecture exhibit B.



Icelandic architecture exhibit C.



...all in all I'd say it's a half Galway, Ireland, half Victoria, British Columbia with a ski town ethos and the isolation of Micronesia.

Iceland odds

Give Black Death a try...



Fried fish jerky and Icelandic chocolate. Unbeknown to me at the time of purchase the candy bar is simply a double tube of black licorice covered in chocolate. I guess the Black Death name was already taken. Could have been a more satisfying meal...



Ranch = America. ...and a more advanced reference, I wonder which went first: Cooler Ranch or Cooler American?




I hate to be the guy snickering and photographing this stupid sign... but seriously: the internet.

Reykjavík

With a whopping 120,000 residents, Reykjavik is by far the largest city in Iceland. In fact, according to the spiffy but fundamentally flawed display (not so sensitive touch-sensitivity) on the seatback of the antiquated Icelandair 757 that safely landed me in this strategic north Atlantic backwater, more than 60% of the country's 300,000 strong population lives within a stone's throw of this booming metropolis. In reference to Sarah Palin's "real America" that's an island the size of Kentucky with a population roughly equivalent to Corpus Christi, Texas and a chief city the size of Manchester, New Hampshire.

...but one can only write in relative measures for so long. What's much more interesting is that at 10am local time not only is it pitch dark, but the heart of this boomtown is zombie apocalypse D-E-A-D. Of course, it's Sunday and this is Europe (well kind of, anyway), but aside from the errant street sweeper there is not a soul about (...and I can't confirm the streetsweepers themselves have souls, not to be overly inflammatory, but those folks really stare through you from behind the exceptional turning radius of the extra-bristly Zambonis).

Indeed it was a full 40 minutes of utterly aimless wandering through downward sloping cobbled streets and past scores of sweater boutiques before I finally happened on a store with a light on... and another ten minutes before I found signs of life at a French café cum Irish Pub... which is where this winding anecdote finds your narrator. Unfortunately, in spite of the advertised 9-11am every day breakfast special, the "chef isn't in" so it's coffee and a croissant, but at least it's warm.

So here I am pecking away on my laptop, firing off work emails in my few hours in the land of ice and fire. ...since I started writing this a British couple has settled in behind me droning on in the Queen's tongue over the minutiae of the real estate section of the paper. "What a steal!" Rightfully opportunist, but perhaps a touch too soon.

Alas if my Icelandic were stronger I might be able to share more interesting gossip... but no time for language lessons, as it looks like the sky is lightening and I've only a few precious hours of sleep-deprived exploring left.

(Pictures: above Hallgrímskirkja [credit, me]; below view from Hallgrímskirkja [Wikipedia] ...yep that's pretty much the whole city)