21

Back in the common room, Bjorn found Ante leafing through a flimsy little newspaper in an easy chair over by the window, and Frank still sitting in front of the TV.
"So what does 500 MG stand for?" Bjorn asked as he sat down in the sofa across from Ante.
"It is short for 500 milligram," Ante replied without putting down the newspaper. "It is half a Gram."
"Half a gram of what?"
"Of gold," Ante replied, now putting down the paper. "You can get physical gold delivered in return for those chips over at the casino. They only accept round numbers, though. The smallest gold wafer is two and a half Gram, and is really tiny. And there is a fixed service charge of 100 MG for each wafer to discourage people from trading in their chips for gold."
"So if I have five of these, I can get one of their smallest gold wafers?" Bjorn asked, holding up the green chip.
"Well, it would cost you 100 MG, so strictly speaking, you would need 100 MG in addition to your two and a half Gram in order to get one of their smallest wafers."
"That´s kind of cool, though," Bjorn remarked. "But why are they doing this?"
"Beats me. Jan and Pedro just decided to do things this way, and that´s how it has been."
"Jan and Pedro?"
"Oh, you haven´t heard of Jan and Pedro, have you?"
"No."
"Well, Jan owns the casino, and most of the land out here. And Pedro is the guy who negotiated the asylum centre deal with the foreign minister. Pedro is in charge of the asylum centre. He is into all sorts of businesses, apparently, and this is his latest venture."
"Making a living off of other people´s misery?"
"Perhaps. I don´t know. How about you? Aren´t you too making a living off of this asylum centre?"
"Well... yeah... I guess I am, in a way."

Ante was right, of course, and it was silly of Bjorn to point a moralizing finger at anyone regarding the ethics of the asylum centre. He leaned back in the sofa, and put the green chip back in his pocket.

"So have you decided whether or not you´ll come with us to Lundby on Friday?" Ante asked, changing the topic to something less political.
"I´m not sure. What´s the plan?"
"I have reserved a table at Nora´s place. It´s a Philipino place. Very good food, they say. And then we´ll go over to the casino and have a few beers afterwards."
"That´s it?"
"Yeah. What did you expect?"
"Nothing really. Who´s going?"
"Me, Thomas, Espen, and Frank. There is room for one more in my car. You know. You really should come with us. It will be fun."
"So you are going too?" Bjorn asked, looking over at Frank.

Frank confirmed the fact with a short "yep", and for some reason, this was the bit of encouragement Bjorn needed in order to accept Ante´s offer.

"Okay. I´m in," Bjorn said with a smile.
"Great!"

Ante looked at Bjorn, very pleased with himself. Then he pushed the thin little newspaper he had been reading over to Bjorn, pointing to an article on the front page. "Five stars for Nora´s place," was the title, spelled out in English rather than Norwegian.

"Here, why don´t you read this? It will make your mouth water!" Ante said. But Bjorn´s eyes was on the title of the newspaper. "The Lundby Gazette."
"They got their own newspaper?" Bjorn asked puzzled. "In English?"
"Yeah. Its a free weekly thing, and it´s all in English. Most people in Lundby don´t speak Norwegian, so I guess that´s why. I picked this one up last time I was down there. You find them everywhere. Didn´t you come across this on the ferry. They have them there too. In those metal boxes, you know."
"Really?"
"The articles are mainly promotions of Lundby as a tourist destination. But it features real news too."
"And who´s behind this?"
"I don´t know. Who cares? It´s a pretty good paper, for what it is. You find them on line too, if you´re interested. I´m sure you´ll find out who runs the thing if you´re curious. I suspect it's controlled by Jan, though. He is the one with the casino, so he is the one most likely to benefit from the PR."

Bjorn picked up the flimsy paper, and started reading it, quickly noticing that the grammar was far from perfect. Someone with a fairly limited knowledge of English was behind this, and the spelling was probably only as good as it was due to automatic spell checking. But the layout and look and feel of the thing was as good as anything. It looked very professional, so it was painfully irritating that the grammar made it hard to read at times.