Someone told me a joke that immigrants to Norway tell their families back home:

“What do Norwegians call five minutes past 4:00pm?”
” – Overtime”

It is pretty amazing to be warned you’re “overdoing it” by staying in the office until 6:00pm. Coffee in the canteen is available from 8:30am onwards and no earlier. The ethic about dividing time between work and family, etc, holds strong here. Much more so than in the United States. I’ve probably spent at least five nights here in the office waiting for phone calls from media back in New Zealand wanting to interview me for the Disarm’s NZ premiere. Each time I somehow manage to get a bunch of work done, perhaps because it is so much quieter and fewer distractions?

Norwegian’s also have a great attitude toward socializing at work as well. In the two months since I arrived there’s been three birthday cakes, two ski days, a pub night, and, last Friday, “Quiz” night in the canteen. The last one is indicative of a craze that’s been sweeping the country…

Quiz nights are regularly held at the local pub or elsewhere in which several teams of 4 people each participate in a kind of “Trivial Pursuit.” The one we had was held in the canteen, where after drinking for more than an hour, the pizza finally arrived and we got started on the quiz. My team consisted of just three people: a Norwegian, an Ethiopian married to a Norwegian, and me with zero Norwegian language skills. Yet we managed to come fourth out more than eight teams!