The snow is melting away.

And the first thing you notice is all the grit on the side walks. Well, that's the first thing I noticed anyway. See, all the stuff they pour on the hardening and progressively more slippery snow through the winter months, once the snow's melted off, it's left lying around in heaps. I wonder if they ever sweep it off...Good thing though, is that there's still a fair bit of snow very much in evidence all around. Though as it melts slowly, there are little streams of water all over the place. Softly gurgling over the rocks next to the less busy streets, where you can actually hear it :).

Oh, in case it's not obvious, I'm back in Asker! Yeah, finally! :) Very big relief indeed! I was still sort of holding my breath till we actually were on-board the chase boat that was to take us back on-shore overnight. And not entirely at peace till that boat was out of sight and radio contact with the Trident :). Unfortunately, there are still some desperate souls stuck there. For once, I'm not the one with the absolutely worst story!
It was quite nice on the chase boat to be honest, with containerised accommodation and eight doubled up bunks rather strongly resembling some back-packers lodge :). Okay, so what it actually was, is that it was a hell of a lot better than I was expecting it to be :). It's been a while since I'd last been on one of these! But of course all that nice stuff came to a grinding halt as soon as we got to Luanda. It only took us, like, an insane 3 hours plus to get through a mindless succession of queues just to get checked in! And that without any check-in bag :|. Followed by a waiting area with broken air-conditioning that was a free for all for smokers, resulting in a thoroughly pervading haze. And only after some more queueing and irritating 'random' bag searches were we able to escape! Wanna know the really sad part? In about a month or so I'll be trying to get back in :(.Oh well, I'd promised myself the last time I was travelling that as soon as I had my bigger back-pack, and the opportunity, I'll get two books: Nick Hornby's Slam and Chris Cleave's The Other Hand. This time I got both. Unfortunately it was in Heathrow, I don't like the Pound :|. I also managed to almost finish the Asimov. I would have too, had it not been for the rather unusual spectacle that greeted me on the way into Gardermoen. Massive expanses of semi-frozen water. A landscape slowly waking up from winter and shrugging off the white blanket. Of course, there's still a lot more shrugging to be done :).So I guess that brings us back up to speed, I am in a new apartment this time. Well, one I haven't stayed in before. And I quickly found out that none of the electrics worked in about half the apartment. Unfortunately, the half with the fridge and the microwave :-S. With the Easter weekend coming up, that was a serious problem. Apparently nothing stays open, no restaurants, no shops, malls, nothing!

Anyway, turns out it was only a tripped load switch. Took me forever to actually find it though! But now that the fridge is back to normal operating temperature (this is one of those 'smart' things that keeps flashing an alarm if the temp's too high, or if you leave the door open for too long and all that jazz :|), I'm safe from starvation over the long weekend!
To top it off I just found out that at least one of the slopes here will stay open through Easter. Plus the local multiplex is showing Monsters vs Aliens and Fast & Furious :D. Good times!

Currently: being lazy :)
Listening to: Katy Perry - Hot and cold