Holiday notice

I am off to India for the next 5 weeks. I will not be posting anything during that time.

Sometimes...

... one can only stand and stare in wonder. I had to be prompted to go and get the camera for this shot.

HDR, a 3 image merge, tonemapped.

Goðafoss

Goðafoss ("Waterfall of the Gods) is not very tall but makes up for it by being very beautiful. Legend has it that when Alþingi decided that the country would become Christian, the carved idols of the old gods were thrown in the falls.

Hafragilsfoss

This waterfall is in the same river as Dettifoss and is a little lower down in the canyon. It is well worth visiting.

The unemployment saga continues

I had a bad night, tossing and turning, too hot under the duvet, too cold with even just my arms outside, buzzing in my ears, irregular heartbeat, nausea, resulting in a numb headache today. I guess it's the shock. I caught one REM cycle in the early hours of the morning, which seems to have been enough to energise me for another day.

I managed to get a lot done this morning: cleaned up my personal files from the computer, sent everyone on my personal e-mail list my new e-mail address, cleared away half of my personal belongings, and got a little bit of work done before I started feeling sleepy and went home. What remains is to clean up my bookmarks in the browser, finish the work left on my soon-to-be-ex desk, have a chat with my department manager, and go to the farewell pissup and bowling match.

Yep, that's right: we do know how to say goodbye to departing employees. The bowling match is an annual event, and was combined this year with a farewell pissup for two others who are leaving of their own free will, but now they will be saying goodbye to four of us.

Bad day at work

...or rather a really bad day.

I am about to join the ranks of the unemployed. It sucks.

I am losing my job because a small group of fat cats played Monopoly with the country's biggest corporations, using a lot of money that seems to have only existed on paper, lost big and collapsed the economy. Because the government I helped elect into power is gormless, spineless, and heartless. Because they are making the public sector cut down, down, down, not just where it is necessary, but also where there is hardly anything to cut down except staff, and in the case of my workplace it's staff they can hardly afford to miss. I am laid off, I think, because I am the most "expensive" of the three people trained to do the job I do, i.e. I have worked there the longest and have the highest salary, and also because I am overqualified so they think it will be easier for me to find a new job than the others, only one of whom has a university degree, and that not as far advanced as mine.

But:
I am the only one of the three who doesn't have a spouse to support me while I am looking for a new job.
I don't have children, so I don't take off children's sick days as well as my own.
I get people who have worked there far longer than I have coming to me for help with certain tasks.
I trained all of the people who will be dividing my job between them.
I am the fastest worker among the four of us.

But they needed to cut down on expenses as much as possible, so they laid off two non-managerial staff members who have been here longer than the other people who have training to take over their jobs, so out we go.

I have been asked, nicely, to stay out my period of notice, which is until the end of December, but as they still have to pay me whether I work or not, I am out of there at the end of this week. I have no intention of making this easy or cheap for them, but I will do it within what the law and my employment agreement allow, because I do want to leave here with a good letter of reference. Tomorrow I am making an appointment with my union representative to discuss my options.

Stay tuned, the saga will continue...

Dettifoss

Dettifoss (literally "the tumbling waterfall") is Europe's most powerful waterfall. Iceland also has the European waterfall with the most water, Urriðafoss. I visited it, but it's not easy to take good photos of it, so I didn't include it in the blog.

Ysti-Rjúkandi

This is the next waterfall after the one from last Monday:

Húsavíkurkirkja

The church in Húsavík is one of Iceland's most beautiful old churches. Here seen from the dock:

In Húsavík

Húsavík has at least two companies offering whale watching tours. I would have loved to go on one, but thought 40 euros was a bit steep, so I visited the whale museum instead. This two-masted sailing boat is one of the vessels used for whale-watching.

Lichens

Lichens growing on the rocks around Dettifoss, watered by the spray from the waterfall.

Yet another waterfall

This multi-tiered waterfall is by Highway 1 in eastern Iceland. I forgot to check what its name is.

Ásbyrgi

At the end of my first really nice, sunny day I camped in Ásbyrgi. Here is my car in front of a rock formation known as "The Island".

The small things are beautiful too

A layered rock dotted with lichen.

In the Beautiful Valley

This lovely old mountain hut is situated by the road over Fagridalur ("Beautiful Valley"), a mountain pass in easten Iceland that connects Reyðarfjörður and Egilsstaðir. The valley's charms were covered in low clouds at the Reyðarfjörður end, but I drove out into bright sunshine at the other end.







More photos of Fagridalur, including one of a rock slide that temporarily closed the road in 2005.

Watch out for reindeer!

Invasion of the gnomes

Depending on your tastes, this might be called either awful or awesome:


The word kitsch comes to mind:


As does tacky:


Don't get me wrong, I love this kind of stuff, but that doesn't mean I necessarily admire it. It just appeals to my sense of humour.

Letting nature do the cleaning

Someone has hung a number of reindeer antlers under this small jetty in order to let the sea creatures clean them:

Road sign

It's good to be able to know in which direction you should start walking to get to Moscow...

Mjóeyri við Eskifjörð

This is where I sought shelter on a rainy night when I didn't fancy pitching my tent in the rain:


I stayed in a small side-building of the main house, and had a 12 person dormitory all to myself. Very cosy.

Helgustaðanáman

When you get to Eskifjörður, if you drive through the town and along the gravel road that leads up the coast, you will come to a signboard with some information about the Helgustaðir mine. Drive only a little further, and you will see this:

Follow the rubble up the mountainside for a short while, and you will come to the mine.

For about 200 years the mine yielded large quantities of calcite crystals that came to be known as "Iceland spar".


The mine is now protected, and it is forbidden to remove crystals from it, but there are still plenty of them around:

Most are not clear enough to show the crystal's ability to refract light.

A short history of the mine in English.

In Petra's garden

There are not only rocks in Petra's garden, but also flowers and all sorts of garden decorations and sculptures. While this one may be rather tacky looking, you must admire the artist for his or her ingenuity:

Petra's rock collection

Petra Sveinsdóttir has been collecting rocks and minerals for more than sixty years, most of them in the neighbourhood of her home town, Stöðvarfjörður. Her house and garden has been turned into a museum dedicated to her collection:


A wooden statue of Petra in the garden:


A piece of volcanic glass in the garden:


For a modest fee you can enter the house and garden and explore her collection, which is thought to be one of largest privately owned rock and mineral collections in the world. The collection is the single most popular tourist destination in the east fjords.

Flower

Still water

You will not often see the sea so still in Iceland.

Actually this is an enclosed fjord or lagoon, and on the other side of the narrow isthmus that separates it from the ocean, the sea was quite rough. Even so, the fjord's waters would usually be ruffled by the wind, but on that day, there was no wind, a rare occurrence in Iceland.