02/01/2009: "hello...? anybody there..? xD"

Wow.. what a dusty old site! *cough* I haven't been here for AGES! I have not forgotten this place but I've been too lazy to do anything about it.. Recently I renewed the hosting for another year, so I though it's ABOUT TIME I start doing something with this place again! Before Christmas I was actually working on a new winter-themed layout, but then something really bad happened.. here's the story:

On Friday December 12th, I took the bus directly after work to spend the weekend at my parents' house. On Saturday, December 13th, in the morning, my cell phone had a flat battery and as usual I had forgotten to bring my charger. Then my dad got a phone call from a friend of mine who was really upset and wanted to know if I was with them. When I talked to her, it turned out that when she hadn't been able to reach me on my cell she'd become so worried about me, because she'd seen on the news that there'd been a big fire in the building where I live and 6 people had died. I was shocked because I hadn't watched the news yet and didn't know anything about it. When I turned on the TV, I saw images of my building with people sitting in the windows waiting to be rescued, and fire and smoke coming out of the windows. I was incredibly happy that I'd decided to leave the night before!! The fire had started in the middle of the night, and 6 people who had tried to escape had died.

When I got back to Oslo, everyone who lived in the building was eventually allowed back into the building (it's still there, but the stairwell is very damaged by fire and there's smoke damage everywhere in the corridors and bathrooms) in the company of police officers. To my HUGE relief my apartment was okay, except that everything smelled strongly of smoke of course. I have been able to bring out a few things from there, but no more than I could carry, and now the insurance people (thank goodness I had insurance) have removed all my things and sent them somewhere to be cleaned.

So.. here I am, living in an apartment hotel (the owners of my building also own hotels, so we're allowed to stay here paying our normal rent, and the insurance covers the rest of the bill), which is okay but I do miss my things! Of course I've been so lucky - I wasn't there during the fire, I didn't know any of those who died (although I feel sad for them of course), and my room and my things are okay. But it'll be up to 4 months until the building is restored and we can move back. I have very few material belongings right now - luckily I have my laptop but I don't have a mouse which makes it too hard to work on new layouts (the touchpad drives me crazy O_O). And I really don't want to buy new things when I already have them - when I get everything back I don't need 2 of everything :P Well at least I can watch DVDs on my laptop - I've lots of boxes of TV series to watch (my own and borrowed ones), and I've ordered the new KAT-TUN live DVD which should arrive soon :3

Replies: 1 Comment

on Sunday, February 1st, Leanne said

I can't believe that happened... I'm so glad that you're safe and okay! But for all those people I feel so sorry for their families :(