London Calling
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You know you're in Norway when...

... you try to sign up for broadband, but are told it takes FIVE weeks before you are guaranteed to be up and running. You get somewhat puzzled as you thought Norway was part of the fast world and seem to remember to have read somewhere that Norway is one of the world's most connected countries, but you shrug and get yourself a mobile broadband instead. You're up and running in a whiff, but soon discover that, surprise...

...your internet supplier doesn't have a support line. That is, they have a support line for their mobile phones, but for the broadband they're selling you have to call the mobile phone support who will notify the in-house techies who might contact you the following day if your call is logged as extremely urgent, or in a couple of weeks if it's logged as not quite so urgent. So you'd better play safe and make sure you've got another internet connection at hand, I mean , it's not as if you can call any of your editors and tell them they will have to waive their deadlines until your internet-supplier decides to contact you to restore your connection... Not to mention how stuck you get if your connection stops working outside office hours... a far cry from that fast world you thought Norway was part of, but at least there is one area where the country is both fast and efficient:

... exchange of sensitive information like ID numbers and credit- and tax information between state and commercial organisations is rampant. Everyone is linked up to the central state register, and you find companies obtaining credit ratings of you without you ever having asked for credit, nor consented to the company obtaining this information. You have to use your national insurance number to log on to your online bank, and your online bank code to log on to your account with the mobile phone operator, making Norway a paradise for cunning computer hackers...

... your average 15-year old has only the latest editions of mobile phones, PCs, iPods and anything technical that you, as a communications professional, can only dream of. This might be one explanation why your mobile broadband provider doesn't have a stand-by support line: surely most Norwegians are wealthy enough to have more than one internet connection...

....the people who serve you in shops, gas stations and supermarkets are likely to have graduate, if not post-graduate degrees, and your tube driver is probably studying for a Phd. Yet you find politicians, perhaps suffering from the delusion that we still live in the bygone industrial society, insisting that "Norway's problem is not lack of jobs, but lack of workforce", ignoring the blatant mismatch between Norway's highly educated workforce and the bulk of unskilled jobs available. You have heard Norway's former finance minister talk of how it's Norway's highly skilled workforce that sustains the country's international competitiveness, but find yourself wondering if Norwegians should not be more grateful that they don't speak Norwegian in India 

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