Memories of memories, old and new

It's definitely autumn now. In fact, onto the distinctly wintry side of autumn even. There are still the occasional sunny days, but the sun has taken on that light-only-no-real-heat sort of persona :/. This is usually the time of the year where I begin to find life a bit difficult. The rapidly shortening hours of daylight has most to do with it I think. Vitamin D tablets can only do so much to be honest.

So it was nice to have more visitors! The parents-in-law stayed over for a week and a half and we had a pretty fun time together! It feels a bit surreal that it was just over a year ago that we found this place, and now both sets of parents and several siblings etc. have come and spent some time with us here :). Extra space has definite upsides.

We made the most of the sunnier days to go walking in the vicinity and also made a couple of forays into Oslo! We took the opportunity to have a look around some places we hadn't in the past, despite meaning to, and some we had! The new Munch museum and the National museum were, I think, the highlights!

When the new Much museum appeared on the Oslo waterfront some years ago, the way the eventual prize winning "lambda" design translated from renders on marketing material to the real thing left more or less everyone rather miffed :|. I definitely was on the miffed side of the general public opinion spectrum. But seeing how we had a compelling reason to explore the art within (namely my mother-in-law), it seemed a good time to ignore the outward appearance and venture in.

It's actually a pretty awesome experience! It's possible to gain a progressively elevated view of the city as one climbs up the twelve floors, providing a unique perspective. The buildings and roads very familiar from ground level take on a rather different, and grander, character. And then of course there are the many many galleries :).

I'm not exactly an art person. I mean, I like spending the occasional day or a few hours in galleries every now and then, but I'm not sure I have strong opinions beyond things I like more or less. Munch seemed to leave a particularly strong impression. Was it because I was accompanied by people who understood more of what was going on? 

Who knows, either way, I was struck by the particular way in which the artist's thoughts seemed to come through in the paintings. Particularly the way in which a completely still scene could convey so much movement, physical and otherwise! It was a fun evening.

Then there was the annual Oslo culture evening which we had been to this time last year. We decided to limit the walking, and focus on the Parliament - National theatre - town hall area. There were open air bands, brief forays into student photography exhibitions, a look around the Nobel Peace centre and finally a chunk of the evening at the National museum. The last being the only thing we repeated from last year :).

Otherwise, I feel like it's been a quiet month. Went cycling once, but this last week it's started getting properly cold in the mornings. Not quite freezing yet, but definitely frost territory, and it's still only September! Just about :).

This month's book club book was of my choosing, and instead of focusing on fantasy or sci-fi, I went with authors I have some personal connection to. Ended up reading Hema Sukumar's Minor Disturbances at Grand Life Apartments again :). I feel like, having known the story (and remembered most of the significant plot points) let me enjoy the atmospherics of the writing even more :).

It was, as with the first time, a very nostalgic read for me to be honest! A sense of familiarity in different ways. But equally, an odd sense of looking in from the outside, which form me came across particularly in the characters of Jason and Laxmi. And I suppose Karthik to a limited extent. 

It's an interesting half-in half-out existence, that of growing up in a country in the midst of significant social and technological change, and then spending the rest of one's life figuring out how to fit into another culture, set of social norms and expectations. Also, weather. Weather's actually kind of a pretty big part of life, which isn't often obvious till one moves somewhere with very different weather :).

I also started reading one of my other suggestions that didn't get picked, Srinath's If It's Monday It Must Be Madurai. So, confession time, this book came out over a decade ago! And I actually was in touch with Srinath at the time, albeit sporadically. I distinctly remember creating the Goodreads page for the book :D. (Yes, they were simpler times, any logged in user could create or even in many cases update the details of a book. Now you have to go through a whole moderation process. Which is a good thing, I think :).)

But then I never read it. Until now. Is it the passage of time, and the greater distance? Not sure, but I'm really really enjoying reading this. Occasionally I find myself even reading it in Srinath's voice in my head, imagining his facial expressions at particularly hilarious or ironic moments :). I'm a bit over halfway through, and looking forward to the rest of it.

Looking out to the thin slice of the Oslofjord that we can see, I feel an odd sense of layered reality. This particular view, with it's treed hills folding into blue-grey water, punctuated by pointed evergreens in the foreground and with the hills in the distance fading to blue, is actually really new, but already feels so familiar. Beneath it though (or beyond, it's hard to find words to capture the feeling), I see the waving trees in the middle distance outside the living room windows of the flat in Asansol. Somewhere in-between there are the ever-changing expanses of water seen from the various decks of the various ships.

Maybe I'm working on assimilating all the different normals of the last fortyish years, and these books are bringing back oh so many memories. Or maybe I'm just feeling the end of summer blues :).

Of travelling ceiling lamps, lost electricity meters and slushy snow

Recency bias is a thing. I mean, I know for a fact that I've definitely felt run off my feet during most of March, yet, having had a nice and very relaxed Easter break for most of the last week, I'm feeling closer to chill than I have done at any point this year. Yeah, crazy! Well, that's how it feels anyway.

But yes, it has been very nice to be able to kinda slow down. Took the first couple of days to just sleep in really! And since then it's been more about pottering about the flat, sorting a few more things out. To be honest, after the initial spurt and the visitors, there hasn't been that much headspace to do all that much really. Although it must be said, getting used to a move takes time, so it's probably for the best that we didn't try and do too many things too soon.

The internet's working properly though!! Yay! And it took most of three months, but we finally have all our ducks in a row when it comes to transferring over all the bits and pieces from the previous owners. We think. How boring does that sound?! :D. I feel like there's nothing that makes you feel more like an adult (in all the mostly boring/blah ways) than owning a place.

So why didn't it feel this way the last time around? Hmm. Food for thought. I wonder if it had something to do with the fact that at that point I was also trying to adjust to landlubber life after nearly a decade of offshore rotations? Adulting has many faces. Mostly though, it seems to be about figuring out that the adults never really had anything figured out anyway. Hurray!

On to the more mundane (or exciting, depending..) matters of weather and such, spring is definitely on the way. In that wet, damp and somewhat miserable way it has sometimes when the snow disappears more from getting washed away while the world stays enveloped in fog, rather than getting melted away in the more exciting company of blue skies and sunshine! But hey, the crocuses are trying to put in an appearance, so I'm not necessarily complaining. 

Somehow I'm not unhappy at all to see the back of the snow at this point. Maybe it's because we did manage to get in one more day of some pretty fun cross country skiing. And even an afternoon of snowboarding! But the cross country first.

Got invited to a weekend away to Blefjell with some acquaintances, so we get there Friday evening and settle in. All of Saturday is basically a blizzard blowing outside, the likes of one I've never seen before! Once the winds abated and the clear skies came out, there was a bit of work to be done to dig the cars out :/.

The Sunday was just amazing weather though! So we made the most of it :).

Then later the same week, we had a Winter Day with work, which involved carting our choice of snow shredding equipment to work and heading off the Tryvann Winterpark at lunchtime! The rest of the day was spent enjoying some of the very slopes where I took my first very shaky steps on a snowboard sixteen years ago!! Time does fly.

So that was most of the excitement, but I've also been reading a little bit! Richard Osman's latest was entertaining enough, if not spectacular. Although, I did have a very enjoyable time on the train to work one day, so much so that a fellow passenger had to sneak a peek at what I was reading to see what was making me shake quite so much while I tried to stifle my laughter :).

After that I decided to try some more Norwegian, but this time took the easy way out with Batman: Earth One. Norwegian translations of which are to be found in our local library :). Quite an interesting take on Gotham's finest. I mean, weird, but kinda novel!

While I was at the library, also decided to pick up a copy of Fight Club. Why? Not entirely sure. I guess it had something to do with the fact that the staff had decided to stick it on the recommended shelf? I'd watched the film, maybe a couple of times, but nearly twenty years ago and was left suitably dazed/shocked. The book though, is entirely at another level.

One interesting thing was to try and keep my knowledge of the protagonist/Tylor Durden relationship from messing too much with the reading experience. But then I'd see sentences like this:

"I know this because Tyler knows this."

Anyway. I think I got a bit creeped out by some of it. The satire is very very dark for my taste. But then again, was that really unexpected? So now the book's just sitting there on the living room table, waiting for me to pick it up again. I think I'd like to finish it. We'll see.

Well, there's one more day of the break left before getting chucked back out into the churn and bustle of the world. To be honest, not looking forward to it. Maybe I just need a longer break. Don't we all though?

Is this too early to be wishing for spring?

Not that I want to wish any of this year away. Despite the extra day, February felt brutally short :/. Although, while my abiding feeling about it, a bit like with January, is that it was incredibly busy with not a moment to catch my breath, that's probably, mostly, proximity bias :). I mean, this last week's been a bit crazy, but there've definitely been some quieter bits.

For instance, there was that Saturday evening when I went cross country skiing with my brother-in-law. It was snowing somewhat softly to start with. The woods were slowly darkening with dusk and it felt like we had the whole world to ourselves. Of course, that was in the midst of a weekend when I went skiing four times, and by the time we were getting back to the car the snow was practically driving horizontally into our eyes :D.

So, we've had our first visitors in the new place! Always best with family, particularly family you get along well with, to try out new things, like how easily can six adults and a nine month old fit in the apartment you moved into a couple of weeks earlier :D. The answer is, very happily, I'm glad to report!

And yes, we went skiing, sometimes all together, sometimes in smaller groups. It was a good thing too, the snow was nice and fresh, and it was nice to have an excuse to really make good use of it. Since then, there's neither been the time, nor the weather really. It's been above 0°C most of the month, and raining :(. Well, such is life.

I did get back to reading a bit more. In fact, I'm really chuffed that I managed to read a whole book in Norwegian! The book club book for the month was At Risk. But it wasn't available in English from the library. Or rather, someone had already borrowed the English copy. I noticed, however, that there was one available in Norwegian, and more or less as an experiment, decided to get it.

So, it happens to be the debut novel of former MI5 spymaster Stella Rimington, who I'd never heard of before, to be honest. And it's a spy novel :). The first of a whole series apparently. As far as debut novels go, I guess it was fine. I mean, this was no Slow Horses, but neither was it a difficult read, or annoying in any particular way.

That doesn't really sound like a roaring review does it? I suppose the main thing I found was that reading fiction in Norwegian, and fiction translated from English at that, reminded me of reading books borrowed from the library at school, nearly thirty-odd years ago :). There was a sense that I was probably missing some details, but at the same time, I was definitely getting the gist of the story and plot just fine :). Or some version of it at least!

Since then I've moved on to The Last Devil to Die, the fourth instalment of the Thursday Murder Club series. So far, I feel it's taking me a little bit more effort to get into. Possibly because of the significant gap since I read books one to three back to back :). Still good fun though!

Right, now if only the remaining stuff around the apartment would just fix itself, some new snow just show up so we can go skiing some more, and I could feel just a little bit less run off my feet, everything would be just perfect :D.

PS: Those new cross country skiing boots are just amaaaaaazing!!! :)

Changes! Changes!

Man! 2024 feels like it's been going for absolutely ages! By the end of the first week I was already feeling like we were at least two or three weeks in, and I know for a fact that I've not been alone in thinking this :). It's been good though!

Coming back from the UK on the evening of New Year's Day, we faced record amounts of snow! Like literally amounts of snow on the ground around our neighbourhood I've never seen before! Luckily some friendly neighbour(s) had cleared enough of a way for us to wade home without much trouble!

Perfect skiing conditions right?! Indeed! And we did manage to go out once the first week. Since then, not even once.

With the move looming, and much to do - cleaning up the floors, walls and ceiling, plastering, painting, getting skirting boards fitted, not to mention packing... the list of tasks felt endless, the time short. Yet somehow, with a lot of help from friends, we managed to move in to the new apartment a week and a half ago!

Still feels crazy, but I have to say I'm really getting used to the new place already :D. Good sign right? I certainly think so! I mean, there's loads and loads to get sorted. Plus we kinda have to wait till the spring before the garden stuff can even begin to get excavated from under the absolutely monumental amounts of snow that we've seen this January!

Unfortunately the weather's turned quite unpredictable and generally warmer and wetter since the move, so the temptation to rush off on our skis hasn't been pressing :). (Or fortunately, if you account for the fact that it only changed after we'd moved!) 

Hopefully things will cool down a bit before long though, and we'll get to make some more use of the snow. I mean, I did decide I'd had enough of my feet freezing, and bought a brand new pair of x-country boots, so, really hope to be able to use them this season :).

I suppose one thing with moving not many people focus on is the place one is leaving behind. Somehow, that part hasn't quite sunk in. As I said, there's a bunch of stuff left, mostly garden/summer things, the bikes, the summer wheels... things that we couldn't finish sorting through. Going back to pick up or drop off things, or water the plants, brings back the sense of "we're back"...

I guess I've been thinking a lot recently about the nature of things. Things begin, then grow, dwindle and end. We seem to automatically assume that the first two are good and the last two are not. Which is not necessarily the truth, life consists of all these things. Finding a way to embrace them is probably important. 

Things change, change for the better doesn't necessarily make everything that came before bad :). All to say that I've really appreciated the nearly eleven years spent in the old flat, and looking forward to the new :).