Space flight and missed flights

July's almost over, so in some ways "summer" is too. Which is obviously objectively not true, but maybe the years in Norway are rubbing off on me gradually :). I did get to enjoy the peace and quiet for at least part of the holiday month! Cleared the decks a bit, sorted out some things that had been waiting to be sorted.

Yet somehow I'm left with the feeling that the crowds are going to come streaming back, the trickle will turn into a flood, and I'm going to end up feeling like there wasn't quite enough of the quiet. Oh well, it's quite possible that no amount of time would have done that anyway :).

Seems like we managed to more or less sidestep the properly warm weather though. The day we were leaving for the UK (more on that later) marked the start of the warmest part of the summer in Norway so far this year, and simultaneously a cooling off in England after a particularly long warm and dry spell. And it started raining again in Norway the day before I came back...

I suppose in a way it's not surprising that July in Norway felt short seeing how I was away for almost half of it :D. The time away was perfectly nice, meeting family, having some quiet days. It was the travel on both ends that ended up rather fraught. It was almost comical how closely the sequence of events on the two flights mirrored each other - trains to the airport worked like a charm, comfortable amble through the airport, boarded more or less on time, the aircraft pushed back from the gate, then boom, technical issues :(.

The difference was of course that while the flight to the UK ended up getting cancelled after we'd been sitting on it for a couple of hours (and we ended up getting rebooked for the next day), on the way back it did take off the same day, albeit an hour and a half later than expected :|. Well, we got to enjoy the rather nice breakfast at the airport hotel at least :P.

But now I'm back, and it's raining. Except, it's actually sunny at the moment, but I'm too tired to properly entertain the idea of going out on the bike. Maybe the forecast for the weekend will turn out wrong and there'll be a stretch of time when I can go for a ride and not get drenched :).

Speaking of water, I genuinely didn't know that octopuses could survive out of it for several minutes at a time! Yes, I've attempted a rather awkward segue from the random happenings segment to the books segment of this post :P. I speak of Remarkably Bright Creatures of course. I still think it was quite a fun read :). But there are buts.

To start with, there were characters whose arcs I enjoyed, and those whose arcs I didn't. There were attempts to create depths, but it felt a little half hearted. But mainly, I wish there was more of the octopus! It almost felt like Marcellus was there to draw us into the story and then quietly disappeared into the background. To be fair, maybe that was the point. But I didn't like that.

For the most part thought, it was an enjoyable read. Even though I did have to coax myself to keep going from time to time :). As often happens though, the closer I got to the end the faster I went along, until almost suddenly, I ran out of story! Not only that, almost before I'd realized it, I found myself most of the way through a short story that had nothing to do with Marcellus, or Sowell Bay. Left me in rather a tangle to be honest! Made it a lot harder to just stop and reflect on how I felt about the book. Oh well. I'll just have to be more careful about booby trapped endings in the future.

Anyway, so after that, I started on The Martian. Yes!! I finally managed to find a copy! But only because a colleague kindly lent my hers. And not because the Norwegian public library system had suddenly uncovered an English language copy of the book that wasn't in fact a DVD. (This is the point where I wish my retro keyboard emoji skills were better so I could make an eye-roll with o's and stuff. As an aside to an aside, I'm weirdly reluctant to use actual emojis.. ¯\\(ツ)/¯.)

Anyhoo, the book!! So I first came across Andy Weir with Project Hail Mary, like three years ago, and quickly followed that up with Artemis, copies of both of which were very conveniently in the local library. It's only a while later that I realized the rather famous Matt Damon starring film was actually based on one if his creations as well!

Somehow though, I've never actually seen the film. Which may be a good thing, as it allowed me to approach the book with no real pre-conceptions. And it was great fun! :) The mostly accurate yet easy to follow science was present and accounted for, as was the almost nervous humour, and his books are always a rapid read! So much so that I actually had to stop myself from reading too quickly so that I'd have enough left the flight back. Which there would have been, had said flight lasted the scheduled length of time ಠ_ಠ.

So now we're back to waiting for a book to arrive at the library. Also, incidentally, back to flying solo for a month. I guess I know a bit of what to expect from last summer, so it's not completely uncharted territory at this point :). Maybe I'll actually get on the bike a bit. We shall see.

Many roads and many faces

Well, June happened fast! And not just in the -the days just went by and I didn't notice- sort of way, more the -wow, a lot happened there, and I've barely managed to keep up- sort of way :). Not that that was a bad thing, just seems to have left me feeling almost a bit dazed.

In some ways this has been a much more "normal" summer month compared to the last several years. Periods of beautiful sunny weather interspersed with cooler days and rain. Which is actually a lot better for how things grow here. I should probably cut the grass, but it seems very happy and it feels bad to just get rid of all the beautiful wild flowers :).

This (the sunny - rainy see-saw weather) was also true when we went up north to Rørvik! The week and a half we spent there in some ways feels scarcely believable now, event though it was only three weeks ago! Norwegian fjords come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, but living literally a stone's throw away from such beauty is something I can't imagine ever getting used to :).

There was a lot of time spent catching up with friends we hadn't seen in a long time. And being together over a stretch meant we got to catch up in a way that quick weekend trips and meetings can never really replicate. It was also fun to be able to lend a hand in the preparations for the confirmation which was the nominal reason for our visit :).

Not long after we were back, it was our turn to be hosts :). Chats and walks, again, a nice way to spend time catching up with a visiting friend. Particularly when said friend is about to head off to Japan for an as yet undetermined number of years!

And finally last weekend we volunteered to help at a children's camp for some seventy odd 7-10 year olds! I mean, I'm not exactly in bad shape or anything, but keeping up with that many highly energetic kids just getting started with their summer holidays definitely made me feel old :D.

I guess when you write it down like that it doesn't sound like a lot, but with work alongside bringing its ups and downs, I guess a little bit of peace and quiet wouldn't be the worst thing :). And to be honest, I have been disappearing into books from time to time as a bit of a getaway.

I feel like I have to mention that My Sweet Orange Tree got an absolutely phenomenal reception at the book club! Different people found different aspects of the story as well as the storytelling itself fascinating, but mainly people seemed touched by just the simplicity yet depth in an emotional journey which wasn't weighed down by points being made.

Most of this month though, I spent working my way through Hyperion. Once I'd finished it, I was left wondering, did I like it? But there doesn't appear to be a straightforward answer to that. Did I enjoy reading the book? In parts certainly, although not always. Did I find the writing and storytelling interesting? Also a resounding yes. Did I find the world(s) fascinating? Absolutely. In fact that was probably one of the parts of the book I enjoyed the most, the discreet world building from multiple perspectives.

You sense a but coming don't you? So do I, but as I try to pin down quite what it is about Hyperion that leaves me unsettled, I'm having a hard time. Part of it, and there are likely to be spoilers ahead, may well be what the introduction dropped such a large and annoying spoiler about, that is the pilgrims, such as they are, don't actually reach their destination before the book ends. Although having read it, I can see how this book was more about the various trajectories and how they intersect than about the destination.

While the vastly different narrative styles, settings and characterizations in the six different "stories" were set out masterfully, I was left with a jumbled up sense of overlapping realities that, unlike in say some of Iain M Bank's works, didn't easily add up to a rich whole. Maybe one needs to read some more of the books in the series? Something I definitely find myself not wanting to commit to in the immediate future at least. So yes, an interesting experience.

This month's book club book was one I'd read before, but several years ago now. The last time I read The Bullet that Missed, it was part of a readthrough of all three then-published books of the Thursday Murder Club series. I decided seeing how a copy was available in the local library, it would be fun to read it in Norwegian this time!

I can't quite make up my mind if I found it less funny this time purely because I was actually comparing it to the first or second books, which I remember being very funny, or if my far from complete grasp of Norwegian meant I missed just enough to lose some of the humour. Luckily I didn't have any issues following the actual story :).

Now I've started with Remarkably Bright Creatures and while it's very early days, so far things look promising :). Which is something one might also say for the upcoming month or so. The summer holidays have begun, so the office is beginning to empty somewhat. Often this means I get the extra headspace to move forward with things I've been wanting to do but haven't really found time for. There's of course the risk of ending up doing things others would have done if they weren't on holiday :). Such is life.

Of memories, musk ox and an early start to summer

April has practically flown by, and there's a lot to write about! There was the highly anticipated Easter road trip, some interesting reading and number twenty! But through it all, the odd sense of displacement. On the one hand, I kept feeling like this must be May already, the weather being as warm as it is. On the other hand, it feels like there hardly was an April, so it can't possibly be May already!

I guess it's not a total surprise, this early start to summer, but while last year the snow at least lasted into April, this time around it's been gone almost mid March! I mean, is there actually anyone still left actually believing that anthropogenic climate change is not a thing? Oh well. 

But it did mean that the Easter trip to middle Norway with some visiting friends went a bit differently that it might have done! Given that one of said friends was a lot happier to not have to deal with too much snow, this actually worked out quite well in the end :).

So the plan had actually been theirs to start with, spend a week in Norway, focus on exploring the mountains and fjords, scenery over urban experiences. Which was perfect seeing how they'd also picked Easter week, when most of Norway pretty much shuts down :). 

The trip ended up being a visit and stay at Åndalsnes, a place we'd been to nearly eleven (eleven!!) years ago, and then a stop on the outskirts of the Dovrefjell national park on the way back. It ended up being a really nice relaxed holiday, just what we all needed :).

My memories of the last trip to Åndalsnes are rather heavily dominated by the Romsdalseggen hike, but also the beauty of the landscape. What we had not done last time was spend any sort of time in the town itself! Something we remedied thoroughly this time around :). It's a really pretty little town, nestled at the head of a fjord and surrounded by towering mountain peaks on all sides. Given the holiday week, it was quiet, but with enough going on to keep us entertained :).

We did do a bit of hiking, however there had never been any thought of repeating the whole hike to the top. We spent a bit of time exploring the paths near the bottom, and then decided to use the new installation since our last visit, the gondola to the edge of the ridge!! A lazy but quite spectacular way to enjoy the views! There was even a nice restaurant at the top! We did spend some time actually hiking the ridge, and yes, the views were just as dramatic as I remembered :).

One of the days we decided to head over to Ålesund, get a bit of the city experience, but also explore more of the fjord landscape that can be so breath taking in that part of the country! Having been there no a separate trip about seven years ago, it was fun to see how much of the navigation could be done without help of GPS :). The answer turned out to be mostly, but not quite entirely :D.

One big source of anticipation throughout the trip was our planned musk ox safari! Seeing how we were going to be passing Dovrefjell, and the only place in Norway (and indeed one of the few anywhere in the world) where one can see mux oxen in the wild, it seemed like an opportunity too good to pass on. There was, as I say, much anticipation, particularly from one of our visitors :).

I am happy to report, that not only did we get to see some of the magnificent beasts, it was a wonderful day to be out! We didn't even have to venture too far to get to the point where a heard of more than twenty were happily grazing, play-fighting and generally lounging about. Our guide proved to be quite the character as well, full of entertaining, and occasionally weird and wonderful anecdotes and pieces of information :).

All in all, the trip, as I said was a success. We even managed a quick pitstop at Lillehammer on the way down south to the much tamer landscape. To be honest, even the landscape in the area hear around the Oslofjord is pretty spectacular if one were to compare it to other parts of the world, but the majesty of the landscape is just on a completely different level once one ventures a bit further north :).

During the holiday and otherwise during this month, I also explored Abeth! Book of the Ancestor proved to be great fun! Partly because, I imagine, this being the second Mark Lawrence trilogy I read, I did go in a bit better prepared :). For one thing, once I'd noticed the sometimes disconcerting changes of pace and shifts in the passage of time, I decided to take my time, and not rush headlong through the three books :).

There are definitely some great lines in this series :). Here's one that lends itself very easily to being quoted:

It is important, when killing a nun, to ensure that you bring an army of sufficient size.

I mean, seriously?!! :D. Yes, totally badass. Having said that, it's not all about action, as usual. There's as I said, a lot of variety to the pace. Once you get used to it though, I feel it's easy enough to navigate. There's a very different tone to this series compared to The Red Queen's War. There's isn't the same level of grimness, although it still is pretty grim, and neither is there the layer of almost forced mirth.

The ending did feel a tad predictable, in that the hero/heroine unlocks power of ancient advanced sci-fi tech buried on planet stuck in a medieval fantasy social structure while battling personal evils and a society on the brink because aforementioned sci-fi tech is failing. Also, unlocking of power happens in a way unlike that anticipated by everyone... You get the idea. Still, very much worth the read :).

Now I'm finally trying to make my way through the book club book of the month, the appropriately named A Short History of the World According to Sheep! I have to say, after the entertaining and frankly wild ride of the short history of Nona Grey's life, this is a hard one to get properly into :P. I'm about halfway through (which is good, because book club is in less than a week, so maybe actually not so good, but anyway) and so far it mainly feels like a long string of entertaining but rather random facts about sheep. Or things related to sheep. Sometimes rather tangentially.

Anyhow, the other big one, number twenty!! At the start of the season, there was no other word to describe how I felt other than cautiously optimistic, meaning, top four finish and hopefully deep runs in the cups. Then in January, it was suddenly this surreal situation of being on top of everything! At which point the inevitable thing is to remember that LFC is the club with the record of number of seasons where they've topped the table at Christmas/New Year and not won.

Then of course we're in the middle of March and the cup losses meant that there was a proper sense of loss. I was speaking to a fellow Liverpool FC supporter the other week, how at the start of the season, being top of the league in April would have felt like the best thing ever! And yet there was a sense of what might have been. Last week though, and I think the game in particular, blew all that away, and it was just pure joy :).

Who knows what'll happen next season, but as a sports fan, you've got to enjoy these moments :). YNWA

So here we are again :). You, my (mostly) imaginary reader, and me, attempting yet again the exercise in futility that is trying to sum up the year that has been, in some sort of sensible way, within the confines of a single blog post :). But hey, that's never stopped me in the past, so why bother now :D.

Another end of year post from the UK, a bit of an extended Christmas break this time. Partly because I was left with extra days off because of bad planning (or serendipitous oversight, depending on how one looks at it), and partly because of the way the days of the week matched up with the days off. We've been here exactly two weeks now, and don't head home till the end of this week :).

Apart from the complete and much needed break from work that this has allowed, it's also been particularly good timing with respect to a partial hip replacement situation that came up :/. Fortunately that has meant maybe even more time spent with family that may otherwise have been possible.

As for the rest of December, it actually snowed!! Not huge amounts, but enough to make it feel like proper winter. It would appear that as I type this more snow has arrived back home, so who knows, maybe it'll be cross-country season when we get back!

Speaking of, last season wasn't really much of a cross-country skiing one for us. And for a change, this was not for lack of amazing conditions! It was just that this time last year we were trying really hard to get the new flat ready to move into! Feels like an absolute age ago now :). Not only did the move go like a dream (with a lot of help from some friends), we've had quite a lot of our close family visit since then, from India and the UK, which has felt really fun!

I guess travel was a bit more limited this time around, although the train trip to the west coast of Norway with my parents in the summer was a highlight. Do I wish for more travel in the coming year though? Not really. Maybe a bit more adventurous cycling might be fun, but if not, I'll be happy if we can just keep up the rhythm of cycling to and from work once or twice a week in the summer :).

When it comes to reading, it feels like an oddly off and on year. I think I've spent a lot of my spare time on NFS No Limits instead... which, I guess has been a lot of fun. But do I miss spending more time reading? Not sure. I mean, I did manage to get totally mesmerized by two completely different types of fantasy in The Murderbot Diaries and The Invisible Library. The book club books, as usual, were a bit of a mixed bag. Maybe a few too many non fiction choices this year, oh well.

Speaking of book club books, I'm currently sort of meandering my way through The Game. It's the first book of a trilogy originally written in Swedish. I was having a hard time locating a copy in English, so decided to go for the copy in Norwegian from our local library. Hmm. Possibly a mistake. I think when I do get into it, I really enjoy reading the book. But the language is definitely more complex and dialect-wise heavy. Definitely a step up from anything I've read in Norwegian before. So maybe I should have given myself some more time, really :/. I have been enjoying it so far, but there's a very real chance that I'll end up not being able to finish a book for the first time, not because I gave up, but because I'd run out of time!!

Before that though, I had no issues racing through The Library at Mount Char in no time! With the possible exception of the logic behind the title, there were absolutely no let downs! The plot twists, while sometimes almost literally outlandish, always kept me engaged. The characters were interesting enough, but mostly it was the world mechanics and the plot that kept me glued to it.

So there we have it. A year where the beginning feels so far away as to almost defy belief, yet one that has simultaneously run by way too fast for me to really catch my breath. I can hear the fireworks going now :). As we drove the rental car back from helping babysit our niece (yup, right-hand-drive for the first time in a while, was good to keep the habit alive I guess) we did notice some going off pretty early on in the evening, but feels like things are now properly picking up around here. The other thing I can hear is the wind howling :).

So, fireworks and storms. Interesting way to start a new year I guess? Who knows. I'll hope to keep a more even keel than maybe I've been able to this last year. Continue to be grateful for the amazing blessings I can count. Beyond that, I guess it's just a case of strapping in for the ride :).

Of the colours of autumn that came, then went

It feels like the end of summer was just a few days ago. And yet autumn's practically come and gone. I mean, the leaves are mostly mulch by now. And yet, it's not gone below zero at all. Time is flowing in fits and starts. It pauses, takes a breath and then just dashes forward a few weeks.

It's crazy to think that the "mini-cruise" to Denmark was actually the beginning of this month! Feels like absolutely ages ago! So basically running the Holmenkollen relay in May gave us all free vouchers for Oslo-Copenhagen return trips on one of the ferries, so we thought, why not :). A first in about six or so years.

It was quite fun being on a ship again, mainly because it was all fun and no work :). As we sailed down (and eventually back up) the Oslofjord, it was really nice watching the land on either side sailing by. Noticing details of the landscape, some of it ridiculously familiar, others new.

The six or so hours in Copenhagen were also really fun! We just mainly walked around. Enjoyed some of the coastline, the castle, some churches, some parks. Lunch at a really nice little cafe with a very short, but nice menu :). Getting up close to a heron! (Until the dog came by that is.)

Strictly speaking I suppose the trip was mostly still September, I just posted my previous post before we left I guess. And since then the world feels like a bit of a blur. The autumn colours did show up in earnest. Although briefly. Then it got kinda wet and extremely windy, so they disappeared. The days started getting shorter, the mornings darker. Then the hour changed, and things briefly got brighter...

In between I ended up adding another new country to the visited list. Switzerland. Another work trip. This time to Zurich. We did manage enough time for a guided walking tour around the centre of the city, which managed to mainly whet my appetite for a more thorough exploration at some point in the future!

Zurich felt like a fantastically old city, but in a way where it's all still very much alive and vibrant! There seemed to always be a lot going on! We even got a brief view of the Swiss countryside through a train trip halfway across the country into the French part. Briefly the seasonal clock seemed to have been turned back, with the colours and leaves very much back in evidence.

Unfortunately I returned with a fairly annoying cold. Fevers are never really fun. Particularly when you can tell your thoughts are bordering on the delirious. But you're just aware enough to notice, not enough to stop...

I think it's fair to say cycling is over for the year :/. It was definitely fun while it lasted, even though the most cycling I did was to and from work :).

It's been relatively quiet on the book front. I finished reading Srinath's book. And it certainly was an eye opener. I don't know that there's a lot more to add from my post last month, except I guess to add that I learnt much about my country of birth that I had already known, but had somehow lost, or forgotten. some things that I'd never known. But it was all wrapped in a comforting sense of familiarity that made even the bizarre approachable.

When I moved on to Starry Messenger, it was quite a shock. I'm not sure if it was mostly the writing style, the switch in subject, or just the fact that after a month of reading books written in familiar rhythms, this was altogether more foreign, and the adjustment required was significant. 

I think over all I was left with a positive impression of the book. The beginning and end felt a bit too rushed and breathless. Almost as if Tyson was trying way too hard to make his point. With the rest of it he seemed to calm down a bit more, which made reading more pleasant :).

It was a pretty quick read, and since next month's book club book arrived from the library a lot sooner than expected, I thought I might as well read Free sooner rather than later. To be perfectly honest, I knew very little about Albania or its history other than the existence of Enver Hoxha (and how to pronounce his name thanks to a particularly memorable section of Inside Man).

To say it was illuminating would be an understatement. Honestly, I'm still coming to terms with it, having finished it earlier this week. The writing is fascinating. I found the difference in tone between the first part, prior to the collapse of the socialist "Party" and the second part that came after the curtains were parted, so to speak, stark and particularly poignant given that it marked the before and after of a sort of loss of innocence. A "growing up" of sorts.

In the midst of the almost hyper lucid portrayal of a country and generation in flux and upheaval, it's almost easy to overlook the personal upheavals of the four generations of the author's family. I guess to some extent that does provide a vivid canvas on which she paints the broader story.

I have to say though, two in a row was enough non-fiction for me. So I've picked up the final book of the written-by-friends trio. Amrita Mahale's Milk Teeth. I'm just getting into it, barely a few pages in, but I'm enjoying the atmosphere so far :).

I realized earlier this week that I've got some extra days off that I'd been hoping would turn into a week or so off during the autumn. But said holiday didn't materialize. I guess I'm too tired to even really think about planning anything. So I'm just going to be lazy and take a longer end of year break instead. The trouble is, that's still a month and a half away.

Yeah, total dejá vu :/. End of year, running out of energy trying to stay afloat. Too tired to actually plan a break. Well, you'd think by now I'd have figured this out, but clearly, you'd be wrong :D.

With an outburst of colour, summer rolls along sedately

Right, so July's over! And for a change I don't feel like I've had all of Norway to myself. Is that a good or a bad thing? Not sure. A couple of weeks off (somehow the week off at the end of June kinda feels like part of the Norwegian July summer holidays) has definitely made a difference from the usual! Regardless, it's been a nice summer.

One thing I'm really happy about is that we've kept up with the cycling to work! The weather's been changeable, as it often is in Norway, but most weeks there's been a day or two where it's been nice, and we made the most of it! Although that's been the bulk of the cycling so far, so I've ended up with several photos of more or less the same places along the route in varying conditions :). Nothing new there, I guess I just find certain views more interesting. (Also, it's just easier to click photos while cycling at certain points on the route than others :).)

The other thing was the trip to the UK! And meeting another brand new member of the family! 8 days old, I mean, it feels surreal to see up close what little humans are like :D. Luckily, this seemed to be a pretty happy little human :).

Since then I've been back home and since my better half is away for a while, getting used to the idea of flying solo for the first time in a long time... I'm definitely reading a lot!

I guess it's fair to say the last book club book wasn't exactly a hoot. With the Lapps in the High Mountain is definitely groundbreaking. It is the account of Emilie Demant's time spent among the Sami in northern Sweden a little over a century ago. Having only experienced the very fringes of Sami culture in my time here, I definitely found it informative. Although the discussion at the book club particularly the insights from one of our number who grew up in northern Norway with Sami neighbours were probably more enlightening.

But for a very short book, it was quite an effort to get through. I have to say that the translator I think did a remarkable job in keeping a sense of the time when the book was originally written and still try to convey the meaning within our present context.

Since then though, I've been rather immersed in yet another accidental find. As I seem to be doing regularly these days, I was browsing the library shelves and The Invisible Library caught my eye. This time I had enough time to just pick it up and read a bit of it at the library, so I did! And the writing really caught my fancy :). 

So I took it home and got through it really quickly! Turns out it's an eight book fantasy series, and all the volumes are available at the local library! Fast forward a few weeks and now I'm deep into The Mortal Word (book 5) :D. Yay for libraries! (Invisible or otherwise!!:) )

Each book is technically standalone, so it should be possible to start anywhere or pick and choose which books to read, but I feel it's best to read them in order and together. While the main relevant plots points from previous books are fed through, the world building is progressive and feels a lot more fun when reading the books one after the other.

One downside of reading the books so quickly is that I've become a bit fuzzy on which detail happens where. Each book happens in a very distinctive environment though, so they all have their own charming points. Hopefully the rest of the series will progress in much the same vein and I'll be done with the whole lot before long :).

On the one hand, the same sentiment applies to the next few weeks that I'm expecting to be home alone. On the other hand, it's never a good idea to wish life away :). So I guess I'm hoping to enjoy August, ideally with enough days each week to go cycling and maybe a bit more besides. I guess we shall see...

PS. Must keep all the plants alive!!