Odd things in Nuuk

After having written that rather serious piece of information concerning my first two weeks in Nuuk, I feel the need to write something a little more cheerful and silly. I don't believe life should always be taken too hard or serious and although my life at the moment may not be all I could wish for, I feel it important to still try to enjoy my time here in Nuuk, hence my attempt to write about small and insignificant things in a humorous maner in this blog.

There are quite a few practical matters here in Nuuk that have brought out a smile on my face. Although they are grave in the sense that they have to some extent cause me troube, I have decided to just face them with a grin.

My current housing f.ex. is one of these matters. Not the fact that I'm actually without proper housing for the time being and can look forward to many relocations in the near future, that actually stresses me out quite a bit, but rather it's the apartment itself in which I'm living at the moment that I find rather amusing. You see it's located on an old Inut burial site and people up here are rather superstitious making them believe in spirits are such things. Because of this not that many people wish to live where I live and others don't want to come to close to you once they here that you live out here. In some way, it's really too bad because the area is very nice and the view from out here is absolutely spectacular. True, it's slightly isolated from the citycenter and quite "dead" due to the many empty houses but this would all change if people would just overcome their superstition and move out here.

Plus the apartments themselves are really rather nice. The one I live in right now has a big living/dinning room connected to a spatial kitchen and 2 good sized bedrooms. Also there's a small entry and a big bathroom. The amusing part is however that although this apartment is very nice and fully furnished with all sort of modern interior (it has a big flatscreen tv, nice leather sofas and a washingmachine etc. etc.) it somehow seems that it hasn't been taken into consideration that one or several persons will in fact be living here. F.ex. all the rooms are very high-ceilinged and the closets go from floor to ceiling, making them equally high and of course very big. But for some reason the coat hangers in the closets have been hung all the way at top of the closets making it absolutely imposible to reach them or hang anything on them without the aid of a chair or small table. Considering the fact the Grenlanders themselves are a rather short nation (I'd guess the average height is about 1,60m) one have to wonder why the people furnishing this house ever decided on placing the coat hangers so high up. I mean, the builders themselves have most likely been rather short people and so it does not seem natural that they should place the coat hangers so high.

Another thing in this apartment that is a bit odd is the rather strange placements of the power sockets. There are at least 10 sockets within my view at the moment from my place at the dinnig table which I suppose could be considered a good thing. However most of these sockets are placed in quite obscure places suchs as just under the ceiling or behind a radiator or behind a bookcase. And then there are areas in the apartment where there are no power sockets whatsoever as f.ex. in the bathroom. So becasuse of this my electrical toothbrush is right now recharging underneath one of my sofas...

And then there's of course the Internet connection... Here in Nuuk you actually have one of Europe's best Internet connections in terms of good cables. However the company distributing the Internet is obviously publicly owned (as all other companies are here in Nuuk) and so the agreements one can sign and the connections one can actually obtain are really really bad. The Greenlanders aren't use to use the Internet and haven't really understood the amazing wonders connected to the virtual world and therefore the subscriptions one can get aren't to the advantage for big-time Internet users. You pay for two things, one your actual subscription and two your actual use. Use that requires a lot of data-transfers such as downloading a film or uploading some photos costs a fortune. And in public places where there is Internet, pages such as Youtube, CNN and Alluc are blocked due to the high costs connected to them. So even if you could get a decent connection up here that doesn't necessary mean that you would be able to be online because you might not be able to pay for any actual use.

All this is in some sense just a matter of development. In time I'm sure Greenland will be as much online as the rest of the world. Unfortunately for me I don't think it's necessary gonna happen any time soon.

However the odd thing about the Internet that I wanted to mention isn't really about the Internet at all. It concerns the actual Internet socket itself. It's placement in this apartment truely shows that people here are not used to the Internet at all. Instead of making serveral sockets (as one would probably do in Denmark) and placing them around the aparment I have only one socket. Placed very strangely in the remote corner of my bedroom underneath the bed... Now this would be nothing if the Internet was wireless or one had a really really long wire to connect to the computer. Unfortunately when I first got online I had neither of these things. Next, my Internet is one with a modem and such a thing requires electricity and thus a power socket. However, the bedroom is one of the other places in the this apartment which is hardely crowed by sockets. In fact there is only one and that one is connected to the room's only lamp. So now you have to choose if you either want to sit behind/under the bed in total darkness but online or if you want to have light in the bedroom but no Internet connection. I chose the first option and therefore spent my first happy moments online in my own place sitting behind my bed in total darkness... Unfortunately it was a short found happiness as my computer was also in the need of eletricity and by plugging in the modem I had consequently run out of valiable power sockets.

Needless to say the very next day I went down to the town and brought the longest Internet cable I could find and two (just to be sure) additional outlet sockets. So now, I'm in business;-)