Odds and ends

Old habits die hard. Sometimes the same seems to hold true for old troubles. It's been another interminable wait for, wait for it, a visa! Now I might be mistaken, but this should be the last one I need to worry about getting for the immediate foreseeable future. So what happens? My paperwork goes on an unscheduled holiday to Kuala Lumpur for a few weeks...

Anyhow, looks like I'm finally headed to Norway sometime in the coming week. And by the looks of it, winter's still very much holding its own up there. Maybe I'll get that one weekend of snowboarding yet! Not that I'll mind a little drop in temperature too terribly. It's been getting pretty hot in Cal these last few weeks.

In the mean time, I've been keeping myself entertained, no, not by yelling at visa handling agents. Well, not all the time anyway. But with Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time. And thus far, it has proved a fairly fulfilling read! But then again, I'm only closing in on the end of the fourth book, there's a long way to go :).

I must say, I find the relatively straightforward progression and the many characters that don't die all of a sudden but continue mostly unharmed from book to book, a huge relief. Plus, it took me a while, but finally I wizened up to the clues in the symbols at the start of each chapter :). It's quite the grand fantastic mystery. If only there weren't all of fourteen books (including the prequel, which was pretty awesome, I thought).

However, I seem to have forgotten entirely about that other awesome book I read on my way back from South Africa. Robert A. Heinlein's Have Space Suit - Will Travel! Ever since that dedication in To Say Nothing of the Dog, I'd been meaning to read it. And once I finally got to it, it was totally worth the anticipation. (Although in retrospect, I'm not entirely sure that dedication said much about this book. I suppose I just thought the name was too awesome :D.)

I loved the suddenness of it all :). The weirdest things just sort of happen as you read along, and somehow, they seem to be the most natural thing! All things considered, it came as a little bit of a surprise exactly how long ago the book had been written. Then again, I suppose some things don't really change all that much over time.

I haven't really been taking photos lately. I suppose I should get over this thing about waiting for something to happen 'worth taking photographs of'. In the mean time, a few roads from the past year...

Currently: blah
Listening to: Lifehouse - Nobody listen