Fest konsert

Opera at night, a photo by ausfi on Flickr.

Today was the open day at Bjørvika and at the opera, of course. There was a festival concert inthe evening, we could get free tickets to it from 10 in the morning. One was allowed four tickets and I was able to get two friends take two of the tickets. Lots of people watched and listened on the opera roof.
The concert presented excerps from future programs. The conductor was Fiore, the opera director, most of the vocal soloist were Norwegian, except for Olga Guryakova. Everyone performed wonderfully, one could feel with Olga's Madam Butterfly, for example. The last piece, Salome's dance, by Richard Strauss, was exciting, the orchestra exceeded themselves. And Fiore is so funny.

Meow. Now you know how to speak "Cat".

P1100653, a photo by ausfi on Flickr.

When you start Flickr, you get a greeting in a different language. As a joke, they also use "cat" as a language. I just do not think it works very well, the title tells you what a cat says in English, Finnish cats say "miau".

A year later

A year later, a photo by ausfi on Flickr.

They brought flowers to lay under the big heart on the Cathedral lawn again also. There was also the great idea to put roses that had the little water container attached, to stand in the flowerbed, that was beautiful. I only have a video of those.

National Remembrance Concert

National Remembrance Concert, a photo by ausfi on Flickr.

On July 22nd, a year after the terror, there was a concert . People came from two directions to the City Hall. It was raining, so there were many umbrellas, though they tried to advice people in the TV and newspapers to take raincoats. But raincoats were only important to use in the area in front of the stage. I did not even try to get there. There were huge screens for people to see. Lots of people though not as many as in the first gathering on 25th of July 20011.
Many people brought roses again.

Keihäs

Untitled, a photo by ausfi on Flickr.

Only the semi-finals, and already Thorkildsen is so good that he might win the javelin competition. It is funny that while I live in Norway, I hate it when a Norwegian beats a Finn. But it is so sad about Finland, they have now one silver only. There expectations are just 3 medals!
There was one runner, and he did not finish, actually was carried from the stadium, his leg hurt so much.
I have just seen Mannio throw, 81.99 when 82 m is the limit. Does it mean he did not get into the finals?
Later: Mannio got into finals, as 12 people are allowed in the finals and only eight reached the limit of 82 meters. Both of the other 2 Finns got to the finals also. The finals were on Saturday and I started to watch 'A few good men' on the TV, even if I had already seen it.
I only remembered on the way to church on Sunday. I got the news in my phone and the first I saw was an interview with Thorkildsen's father where he said he did not think any one was as likely to get the gold metal as Andreas. He had won the gold in the two previous Olympics, so it would have been wonderful to get a third gold. My heart sank. But then I noticed the date was Saturday and found an article below the first one where it came out that the gold was won by a surprise winner , Keshorn Walcott from Trinidad & Tobego, only 19 years of age.  Ruuskanen was third, Thorkildsen but the sixth! So it wasn't so bad I had not watched, I will probably find a video on YouTube.