Summer is rolling along and all is well here. I’ve been harvesting strawberries from our garden; our plants did really well this year and we had a bumper crop of sweet, delicious berries. Sadly, the same cannot be said of our raspberries bushes. I’m not sure what’s wrong with them but the berries are quite small and fall apart as I pull them off the plants. I’ll have to do some research and figure out how I can get them to do better next summer. I also picked some cherries today and am looking forward to using them in a dessert…something with chocolate, I think.

I recovered from my World Cup love affair with Spain by taking a quick trip over to England with Husband to visit a couple of his friends and also to drop in on my friend and fellow ex-pat blogger, Joanne. Jo and I have known one another for over two years now through our blogs and through email but this was the first time we’d met in person and it was wonderful! She and her family moved to England from South Africa only seven months ago, so we now have the “starting over in a new country” thing in common in addition to all of the other things we’d already bonded over. I had a perfectly lovely time. They took me sight-seeing around their picture-perfect English countryside, complete with quaint seaside villages, authentic fish and chips, and most excellent local beer (Adnams Broadside…hmmmm.) It’s tragic that I forgot my camera and have absolutely zero photographs to document our fun. Next time!

Sometimes I can’t believe how lucky I am to have met so many amazing people through my blog. From the very beginning, really… Emily, Victoria, Liz, Helen, Caroline, Kristin, and now Jo. I look forward to meeting Mel and Gretch one day soon, and to hanging out with a whole load of my blogging buddies at the Oslo BlogFest coming up at the end of August. It’s going to be a hoot!

I had an interesting conversation with a man on the airplane coming back from England. We were chatting a bit about Norway and England and the near-global economic crisis and I mentioned how fortunate I felt to be living in Norway, where I was able to earn a decent living working as a cleaner. My new friend responded with a tad bit of disdain at this statement. “I have no admiration for a society that engineers that kind of false equality,” he said. “When a cleaner can earn as much as a professional, something is wrong. Why would anyone strive to be better, to be innovative, to create? Socialist economies make people comfortable and that’s bad for business. Markets work best when there’s an upper class and a lower class, a group that owns things and a group that works hard to also own things. What you have in Norway cannot be sustained. It will lead nowhere good.”

I’ve heard this kind of thing before from quite a few people. To be honest, I used to think a little bit the same way when I first moved here from California because the society and government are so, so different from the aggressively competitive atmosphere I was used to back home. I’ve totally changed my mind about that now, though, because I realize it’s just not correct.

It’s incorrect to assume that all Norwegians are economically equal. Sure, there is hardly any grinding poverty, not many people sleeping on the streets like we had in San Francisco. If you have a job in Norway, you earn a wage that, in general, enables you to take care of yourself. Isn’t that the way it should be? How can that be wrong? Can’t life be more than just working all the time? Anyway, believe me, there are plenty---plenty!!---of wealthy people here. So, although there isn’t a huge lower class, there is definitely an upper class. And as for striving, you don’t need poverty to make people strive---that’s what greed is for! Right? Remember Gordon Gekko in the original “Wall Street?” Remember what he said about greed?

“The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind.”

I feel safe in saying that Norway, just like everywhere else, has its share of greedy people, in a good way. There is innovation and creation happening here, all by people who are probably pretty glad they don’t have to step over homeless people on their way to work.

But people have been debating economic models for generations, so I knew better than to get too into it with my fellow RyanAir passenger. I just repeated that I was happy to be living in Norway and then I stuck my face in my book. A Norwegian crime novel that I’m proud to say I’m more than halfway through. Because I’ve been working hard on my Norwegian. Because I know that I won’t get a better job without better language skills. And I do want a better job. I guess I’m a little greedy, too. And I’m looking forward to seeing the sequel to “Wall Street.”