About

The long and the short of it

Bjørnar Egede-Nissen was born in Norway in the glorious decade of the 1980s as an heir to, hmm, well, not exactly a fortune, but he did at least inherit uncommonly good common sense and a jolly good sense of humour. He is not very particular about how you pronounce his name, but if you would like to make the effort, there is a pronunciation guide below. Otherwise just call him Ben or “hey, you”.

Bjørnar is now 26 years of age and lives with his girlfriend Jenna and two adorable cats in a nice and roomy ground-floor apartment. He is still not sure what to do with the remainder of his allotted time (which he hopes will be a very long time indeed, since he has so many unfinished projects), but is leaning towards saving the world. He has recognised long since that saving the “whole” world might be a bit ambitious so he’ll settle with saving a small part of it. If he can just figure out how. He is getting more and more interested (concerned is a better word) in the implications, both political and environmental, of global climate change, and it seems more and more like this is going to be his specialisation.

As a step in that process, he recently finished his master’s degree in Global Governance at the Balsillie School of International Affairs. The Balsillie School is a shiny new joint initiative between the Centre for International Governance Innovation, the University of Waterloo (UW) and Wilfrid Laurier University, all in Waterloo, Ontario. Bjørnar will receive his degree from UW in June, 2010.

When not planning to take over the world doing an honest effort to look interested in the world around him, he pursues a selection of hobbies. He enjoys many computer related activities, which he pursues with varying degrees of luck (this website being a result of that). Photography has rapidly risen to become one of his primary pastimes. In 2005, he bought his first DSLR, in Prague, (a Nikon D70) after his Canon G6 was stolen from right under his nose (or feet, as it were: he was sleeping in a tent and the camera was pinched while he was sleeping). Since then, he has taken more than 20,000 25,000 30,000 pictures with it, and we have to assume that at least a couple of those turned out. He goes on long bike rides around the city, always with a camera. In fact, the camera is seldom far away when he goes somewhere.

He is also far too fond of writing of himself in the third person.