This first of May was the first day I gave a speech in public. It was for our radical first May event. Us and a lot of other civil society groups rallied together and we marched down Laugarvegur together and celebrated together afterwards. Look at me rallying the masses! It's a learning process having my notes in my notebook was a bad idea, the first part was good, I got lost in the middle and then I just tried to wing the end. My comrades were very supportive though and cheered me on.

It's an alliteration! The biggest protest ever in Iceland (›22.000) took place today in wake of the revelations from the Panama Papers. Icelandic corruption is extensive and it is now more apparent than ever, that despite the praised "pots and pants revolution" in 2009 nothing has changed. The protest was calling for the resignation of the Prime Minister who was implicated in the Panama Papers, but there are increasing calls for re-elections.



Afterwards we met up to discuss ways to keep the momentum going and extending it to a movement for change and avoid the same outcome as 7 years ago.

So I have been watching the acclaimed new Icelandic TV series Ófærð or Trapped for English speakers. It is a good Scandinavian crime/thriller kind of series in the style of Arnaldur Indriðason, complete with xis-gendered, male lead whose marriage just failed and whose career suffered due to a mistake, which haunts him, jadajadajada...
It captures the claustrophobia of snowed in Icelandic small towns pretty well. Having lived in Blönduós I feel I can make that assessment.
However, having lived in a small Icelandic town I was a bit disappointing with the only foreigners represented being criminals (a hilarious caricature of eastern European (Lithuanian) mafioso, I'm sure the 1,683 Lithuanians living in Iceland were pleased) or victims of human trafficking (because all black women are). There are no immigrants anywhere, despite the fact that there are 25.000 (7.4%) of us. In a cast of 30 (only counting Icelandic adults) there should be two immigrants if it were to represent Icelandic reality.
To any film makers in Iceland, I volunteer to be your foreign cast member, as long as it won't be a tourist, criminal or victim. Please acknowledge my existence...

Today, 27 years ago beer was legalized again in Iceland, after several years of being the only alcoholic drink prohibited, due to a variety of circumstances.

Beer replaced spirits as the most popular drink in Iceland as soon as it was legalized and if you ever tried Icelandic Brennevín (also called Black Death, an Icelandic Schnapps) you can understand why.



Icelandic alcohol consumption has been mainly increasing in the past 27 years, a rather untypical development for a European country. There is currently a proposal being prepared by an MP of the Independence party to allow for alcohol to be sold in stores (atm the selling of alcohol is only allowed by the State Alcohol and Tobacco Company of Iceland), despite there being overwhelming evidence that availability of alcohol in stores leads to an increase in total alcohol consumption and especially heavy episode drinking. Binge drinking is already a problem in Iceland, with 1/4th of all adults engaging in binge drinking once a month and 1/3rd of drinkers only.

Having said all that, I am a fan of Icelandic beer and look forward to being able to walk to the store and get a beer when I feel like it.

... went really quickly. Iceland turned from this:

to this:

I moved house and now have a landlord (lady actually) who is not an asshole. Sadly I lost my dutch flatmate on the way (I really should have indexed my boxes). She lives with her boyfriend now, but we have a weekly brunch and go swimming every Tuesday. It is really good to have some motivation to stay active in winter and I am practicing to be able to do front crawl without drowning. I'm getting there.
My new house is awesome, it has floor heating and a dishwasher,. The latter motivates me to make lots of vegan drinks or spreads with my food processor. At some point I might put recipes on this blog, especially of my milk substitutes (oat, rice or coconut), which I like a lot.
University is over for this winter and I'm happier than ever to have chosen the Public Health course. after getting all excited about epidemiology and statistics last spring this semester I got to write a paper about the Millennium Development Goals and the previous post was part of learning how to use social media for health campaigns.
Not that using social media for campaigns is completely new for me, as we had done this with the IWW. We had another workers rights information event with the public library and even got a new member and a pretty logo!

In other news, the first snow storm just happened and Anonymous shut down government and restaurant websites to oppose whaling.
Iceland made news in the past months with a grassroot movement aimed at convincing the government to accept more than the previously planned 50 refugees from Syria. Facebook pages were founded, protests organised and lots of people offered to take refugees into their homes or signed up with the red cross as a volunteer. While the movement was used as another promotion for the liberal paradise that Iceland presents itself abroad, the Directorate of Immigration kept invoking the Dublin regulation whenever they can and the government kept dragging their feet until they finally decided to up the number of refugees they are going to accept from 50 to 200, celebrating themselves as humanist, while every other Nordic country accepts proportionally a lot more.

The police quietly decided to have weapons in the car now, despite falling crime rates, showing some impeccable timing after the Paris attacks.

As every year the Ikea Christmas goat burned down. All I can say about this incident is that my flatmate was installing Christmas lights the day before at IKEA....