I was quite unhappy with the takeover of Steem and subsequent split between Steem and Hive. Although there was no doubt which branch I would choose, I still lost quite much of the motivation of keeping on - so I've been quiet for a while.
I'm having quite a lot of trouble with Norwegian authorities during the last year or two, particularly:
- Barnevernet (the Norwegian Child Protection Authorities) decided they wanted to take custody of our four children - they spent nine month "investigating" us, it was horrible. Eventually we won over Barnevernet in the court, but we're not taking any chances, the youngest children moved to Russia together with my wife prior to the court case. It didn't fit into the plans of my eldest son, so I'm staying with him in Oslo now. The youngest children seem happy with the move, those nine months for sure were quite stressful for them, so they are happy to be safe from Barnevernet. School was also a major problem - particularly for our ten year old boy, he was a "problem" at our local school in Oslo, now he's getting top marks in all subjects except Russian language, even including marks for behavior.
- The children went to school in Oslo until summer 2020 - but the school has somehow managed to report to the authorities that the children moved out half a year earlier - so now we're supposed to pay back half a year of child support from the state.
- The building authorities (plan og bygningsetat) has been causing us a lot of problems after we renovated a basement and made a kitchen and bathroom there. From what we can understand we are in our full rights, but the bureaucrats seems to be of a different opinion, possibly we'll have to revert everything "back to the state it was in" (a wet and moldy place) plus pay some hefty fees.
- The tax authorities have been investigating my bitcoin trades for several years already, and may conclude that I owe them more tax than what I can ever hope to be able to pay ... so in any case they will probably confiscate said basement and the rest of the house.
I for sure miss my family, I've been visiting them twice in St.Petersburg and I'm looking forward for the summer vacation. It's for sure impractical to be separated like this.
Sorry to read that. I had a better opinion of Norway, but what you're saying here smells like communism. Hope everything will work out good after all.
Norway is generally a good country to live in, for most of the Norwegians. Job security may be good - perhaps too good, it's almost impossible for a company to get rid of employees if they don't perform well, and for the public sector it's even more difficult. Competent people that are unhappy with their current position can just move on and find a better job, incompetent and lazy people tend to be stuck with the job they have. I do remember from when I went to school, it was a big problem that there were some few bad teachers, and impossible to get rid of them. The problem may also grow, competent people also prefer to work with other competent people, and in particular with incompetent leaders the good people will "vote with their legs" - hence a school may end up with very few skilled teachers left.
It would be very bad of me to generalize, for sure there are lots of good people employed by the public sector in Norway (I think the teacher of our ten years old son is a good teacher and a good person, our son was mostly in conflict with other employees, teachers and perhaps children at the school). The rotten apples exists. I think the risk is particularly big for bad people to end up in the child protection agency. Newly employed young people may start there with the best intentions (but with a serious lack of life experience and experience with children and parenting). They probably experience a lot of shit, the parents are usually hostile towards the service, and whatever the employees there will do it will be wrong. If they fail to act towards the really bad families (think of violence, sexual abuse and parents having problems with alcohol or other drugs) they risk to be shamed by media, if they do intervene such that a family becomes split they will also risk to be ashamed in the media. I think few people are mentally prepared to stay in such a job, keep up the motivation and perform well - the rest will either move on and find another job, or they will continue working but with a lack of motivation and competence. In our case I think they did a very poor job on the investigation, they took a lot of shortcuts, they didn't listen to us, they just wanted to make good statistics on the number of families they had "helped", and when we didn't want to play their game they tried to be tough on us ... without any consideration at all on what's good for the children.
I also believe we need some structural changes, we're going down a very nasty path now - it seems like the average politician is too young to remember DDR. When I grew up, confidentiality was considered sacred. By now they have changed the rules, i.e. health workers are by now mandated by law to report to the relevant authorities i.e. if someone visits the doctor to ask for help against drug or alcohol abuse. If a person would drink two litres of beer every evening, if the doctor would learn, they are mandated to report this as an alcohol problem, the driving license will be taken away even if the person has never been driving under the influence of alcohol, and the child protection agency will also become involved. Everyone is encouraged to report to the child protection agency if they just have the faintest suspicion that something is wrong.
The child protection agency sent lots of information requests and based their "research" on us on that - like, the dentist reported back that they didn't like the smell of the mother (but they didn't know if it was the mother or if it was the fur coat that). The mother had a heated debate with the dentist on what's more healthy of skimmed milk and full-fat milk (for the teeth, it doesn't matter at all), hence the dentist was filing in the report that the mother was "unwilling to receive advices". They asked the police if they had anything on us, the police sent a full report on everything that was on file on us (I don't even think I have the right to see this stuff), without background knowledge or juridical competence the child protection agency quickly concluded that we were criminals. It's just ... wrong! It shouldn't be like that.
They don't have any problem giving kids for adoption to gay, but they want to take yours. I don't like that...
They had already found some candidate foster parents ... the 10yr old was supposed to be taken over by a single man living on a farm, who "wanted" a boy in that age. It could be perfectly OK ... it could ... but our alarm bells were ringing loudly.
The 7 years old daughter and the 2 years old toddler was supposed to go to a lesbian pair. I consider myself to be tolerant and I have nothing against gay people. I don't mind gay people working in a kinder garden, and if the children would have some gay aunt or uncle, I wouldn't mind them to occasionally take care of the children - but the parent role, that's a completely different thing. I think a child needs a dad and a mum, and in particular I think a boy needs a "normal" dad and a girl needs a "normal" mother. Of course I wouldn't like my children to be raised by other people than us ... but I feel even less comfortable by my daughter to be raised by a lesbian couple, and I find it utterly unacceptable that my son should be raised by a lesbian couple.
(No disrespect meant for single mothers or dads - my mother got divorced when I was around six months old, and I've never seen my own dad after that).
On the topic of gay people having children ... it is biologically possible for one of the "parents" to be a biological parent, but not both. I also find it weird with a relationship where one of the parents is a real parent while the other one isn't, it must be quite weird.
Hypothetically, if a lesbian and a gay couple lived together (or were close neighbours) and they arranged it so that both the lesbian ladies got pregnant, with both the gay persons being parents ... well ... then my arguments above is void. Such a setup is maybe on the border line of being acceptable :-)
Wow, sounds like some awful stuff you and your family had to go through. Hopefully everything will be ok very soon and the whole family will be back again.
We, at (ex) SteemitWorldMap have been trying to reach out to you after Hive, about your delegation. But I just checked you've undelegated already. We've rebranded as @pinmapple on Hive if you would like to continue support us, but totally understand that you may need the funds now in view of your circumstances. Either, thanks for your ongoing support and hope all goes well.
Seems like I will have to wait for a while before the undelegated amount is available and can be redelegated.
Think it's 5 days nowadays. Pinmapple appreciates your continued support!!!🍍
At first we thought that the children would stay in Russia for one school year, but we've decided to prolong it for at least one more school year, since it's going so well at the school there and since we don't have any idea what school we could safely put the children into here in Norway. There are two international schools in Oslo, but they are far away, very expensive, and probably they probably won't have space for our children anyway. It's also not much good for the children to change school frequently. It's sort of like a nuclear option ... so it's more likely that I will go there than that they will come here (my eldest son should theroetically be big enough to manage himself by now).
There are problems though, it's non-trivial for me to get visa/residence permit, according to new regulations at my employer I cannot work from Russia anymore, but the worst is ... I don't enjoy staing for too long at that place, I find it too flat and boring. I like nature, hills and mountains, fresh air, skiing (in hilly nature, not in a flat park), etc. While St.Petersburg (and Russia!) for sure does have its qualities, I'm quite fed up with the area around that school. Perhaps things will be better if I come there with the boat.
Seems like a lot to decide and sort out, and it gets so much trickier when you have to consider kids' education, it restricts a lot of what you want and can do unless you're prepared to home school them. Hope you find a right balance pretty soon
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