Let's go to church

The weather was really bad on the glacier today. It was foggy, rainy and strong winds. We skied till noon and got soaking wet. Then we took a break to eat some food, and skied some more, and got even wetter.

We decided to call it a day, at least insofar as skiing was concerned, and went back to the camping down in the valley, a vertical drop of almost a mile down from the glacier.

"What should we do now?" the kids asked.

They were bored in the bad weather, and I needed to come up with some ideas.

"Let's go to church," I said, "as soon as the rain stops."

And that's what we did, the way I go church of course.

Right across the river from the camping, there is an old church, from the 12th century. It's a stave church, built from wood, dark brown from the tar-paint. We walked around the church, and studied the 800-year-old logs and planks, and the dragon heads on the roof. The kids had a competition about who could find the oldest gravestone on the churchyard.

That's the way I go to church, to admire the architecture and the history. It's nice to have some cultural backup when the weather is bad, and there's some time to kill >:)

(Above is a closeup picture of the church, as much as I could capture from inside the fence with my crappy cell phone camera. Both the walls and the roof are made of wood. The oldest part of the church has been dated to 1158. It's assumed that it was completed between 1170 and 1200.)

Back to the snow

I'm back in the snow, skiing with the kids.

I could easily survive without skiing in June, but the kids insist. They want their summer-skiing this year, like previous years. We go up to the mountains for a few days in the beginning of school's summer vacation.

The kids love it, and I must admit I enjoy it myself too.

Today, we had a great day on the glacier. Nice and sunny weather, and no wind. Now it's time for BBQ at the camping down in the valley >:)

(The picture is from the glacier today on the kids' play ground, the terrain park. It's my good old skis and poles in front of the rock.)

May I have a cup of tea?

It was an interesting day. Peculiar things happened.

We had a meeting with a Russian company we're co-operating with, sort of. We had a meeting to discuss a contract on purchase of geophysical data, sort of.

You can't just buy these kind of things in Russia, and you can't bring it out of the country. It's secrets of state. Permits are handled by the Department of Defense. However, you can buy a report, with the data (which is what we really wanna buy), as an appendix. Don't ask me why. It's just the way it is.

We were going to negotiate the conditions of the purchase, and the work program. Our meeting with the technical director of the company we're dealing with was scheduled for 1 pm.

He showed up around 2pm, and he was drunk! You could easily see it on his eyes, and he didn't try to hide it. Fair enough, he excused himself, and said:
"I had an arrangement were I got too much alcohol. I know it smells. May I have a cup of tea before we start, please, to recover?"
"Sure, we'll get you a cup of tea, no problem."

He did his job, as if everything was quite normal. I was impressed by the way he handled it, but I must admit it was kind of weird, to negotiate a some-million-dollar deal with a drunk guy.

It was a rare experience, and part of the fun and excitement of doing business in a foreign country; quite interesting, I would say.

Tonight, we planned for a night in downtown Moscow, around Tverskaya Prospect, a major street with lots of cool restaurants (I can recommend the Pushkin Restaurant) and bars. We never got that far.

We had dinner in the restaurant on 34th floor of our hotel. The food and beer was good,and the view of central Moscow was stunning. We just stayed, to admire the Moscow sunset, and didn't get anywhere, Nice evening >:)

(Moscow is a modern metropol, with 12 million people. It's a very interesting city. I took the picture above from the hotel, in the restaurant at 34th floor. You can see the shadow of the hotel in the left part of the picture, First time I was here was in 1990, when Moscow was the capital of the Soviet Union, and Gorbachev was the General Secretary of the Communist Party. I can tell you that the changes throughout the last 20 years are huge)

Finally

I made it to Moscow again, finally.

Three weeks ago, I had planned and booked my trip to Russia, to Moscow and Murmansk. Unfortunately, I didn't get my visa in time, and 2 hours before takeoff, I had to cancel everything,

New attempt this week, and no problem with visa this time. I have a double entry visa to Russia valid till September.

We arrived in the airport with the difficult name (S airport) around 3 pm today, and booked into our hotel. It's a great 5-star hotel called Swissotel Krasnye Holmy, located a ten minute walk from our Moscow office.

This evening, we walked down to Red Square to see the St Basil Basilika and the Kremlin. But, dammit, the camera on my cell phone didn't work, so no pictures from Red Square, unfortunately.

(Back in the hotel, we stopped in the bar and took a beer, and guess what, suddenly my cell phone had decided to be co-operative again. The picture above is my only shot today; Baltika 7, local Russian beer, fairly good, but not comparable to the fabulous Sibirskaya Korona)

134-hour live broadcast

Right now there is a cool TV project going on here, real reality TV.

One of the coastal express ships has been equipped with lots of TV cameras, and the entire voyage from the first port in the south to the last port in the north is broadcast live on TV. It's probably the longest continuous live broadcast. It's on webcast as well, click here here if you wanna see it.

The broadcast started yesterday and lasts for 134 hours, almost six days. I watched it for a while yesterday, fun to watch in small portions, but somewhat tedious after a while.

The coastal express is steaming along our coastline every day, all year, and has been doing so for almost 120 years. A full round trip from south to north and back to the start takes 11 days. All the 34 ports are served on a regular schedule, once a day. At any time there are 11 ships in operation.

The coastal express is hardly an express any more. However, in the old days, before commercial air lines, it was the most efficient (and only) way to travel along our long coastline. Now the coastal express is operating more like a cruise line, with lots of tourists. But you can, of course, still buy port-to-port tickets, and use it as public transport.

I have traveled with the coastal express a few times, between small towns up north, when the air lines have been on strike (they have powerful unions), and on national holidays, when Six Flags Airlines have taken a day off.

Tomorrow morning the TV-ship is coming to our town. Little boy wants to go down and watch and waive to the cameras, so we plan to bike down to the port tomorrow morning >:)

(I took the picture above in May 2008, when we lived up north. It's the coastal express steaming to port. This was the view I had through the kitchen window every morning at 7:30 am, while eating breakfast, before going to work. I must admit that I miss it.)

Ghostwriter

I've been ghostwriting the last couple of days. No, I'm not talking about the Holy Ghost, though we're just through the Pentecost. I'm talking about science and technology.

I often make slides for my boss, technical stuff that she uses in various settings. This time, however, it was kind of a special event. Today the Prime Minister, the Mayor, and the CEO of the company came to visit our research center. I've never seen any of these people in real life before, only on TV.

Three months ago, we made a fairly big oil discovery in the Arctic (we found oil worth some 50 billion dollars with current prices). The Prime Minister, the Mayor and the CEO came to hear about the role of research and advanced geophysics in this discovery. My boss had 13 minutes to tell the story (the time schedule was planned minute by minute).

My own contribution was, by all means, very modest. I was just involved in parts of the geophysical work. I made my four slides, as usual. But this time I did more than that, because I wanted to create a good story. So, I wrote down, in detail, a proposed wording (a monologue) to use when presenting each slide.

As I was doing this, I realized that, what the Hell, this is just like writing a short story or a novel. I need a good hook to start with, then build up the excitement before the grand finale (unfortunately they already new the happy ending). I also put in a teaser pointing to on-going and future work, like writing for a series. It was great fun to write, actually.

I did of course, tell my boss, that this is just my proposal, the way I would have presented it. Use it if you want to, pick pieces of it if you like.

(The picture above has nothing whatsoever to do with the oil discovery mentioned above. I picked it from my archive of past projects. It's a seismic image from the other side of the world, offshore South America, computed 7 years ago)

Writer's ban

My ambition was to complete my so-called novel (the 1st draft) by the end of June. Now I have realized that this will not be possible.

I don't suffer from writer's block, quite the contrary. I've got writer's ban.

When I sit down to write, it takes less than ten minutes before I'm interrupted by my old lady:

"What are you doing?"

"Writing"

"Do something useful. Do the dishes, mow the grass, paint the fence, water the flowers, iron your shirts, clean the bathroom, go for a walk. Do whatever, just get off that computer."

So, I have to go back to my old strategy, write when I'm out traveling, take the opportunities I get, write in small portions, slowly but steadily. No goals.

And writing a blog post only takes five minutes >:)

(That's my copy of On Writing by Stephen King in the picture. This winter, I put it in my pocket when I was on duty as gate judge in a giant slalom race. I planned to read before the start, and between the 1st and 2nd run, when nothing was happening. During the day, it started to rain heavily. Both the book and I got soaking wet. I took two weeks to dry it and bring it back to a readable condition. Good book.)

Antichristmas

Today is the 6th of June, 6/6, the day Satan was born.

We're planning a big celebration, at least I do. Mohahhaa, it's scary, isn't it?

Not really. I'm not taking God nor Satan very seriously.

I think the Christians should be happy to have their Satan. He's a nice guy, and the second most important character in Christianity (after Jesus). Satan has been used for centuries to scare people to believe in God. It has been an effective campaign. Satan and Jesus are friends.

By the way, here's a cool joke I heard from little boy some time ago.

Pete and Paul were playing in the sandpit.
Pete said: "Paul, do you beileve that Satan really exists?"
Paul replied: "No, it's like Santa Claus, it's just dad."

Merry Antichristmas >:)

(The picture above is not my work, unfortunately, it's a cool drawing. I found it on the internet some years ago. I have used it in presentations at work from time to time; nobody has been offended so far. We're a country of heathens>:))

Fun & Games blogfest

A couple of weeks ago I arranged oral exam in the course I've been teaching this semester. Half a dozen PhD students were taking the exam. I made three problems, and made two copies of each, to make the students believe there were six different ones.

I called them in, one by one. Some were nervous, some quite relaxed. It's interesting to observe how different people react when under pressure. To start with, I let them throw a dice, to decide which problem they were going to solve. It was a fun game, at least for me ... it didn't make it to my top 3 list though >:)

So, here it is, my Fun & Games Top 3 list, for the blogfest Alex J. Cavanaugh is hosting today:

1. Skiing. Best there is, no doubt.

2. Badminton. When was a student, I used to play badminton every week, in the university sports center. I played just for recreation, not competitive. It's a fast and fun game, and it gives good exercise. Now I'm only playing with little boy in the backyard.

3. Trivial Pursuit (and similar games). I like the games where you're challenged on knowledge, over a wide range of subjects, from the Boston Tea Party to Russian Classics. And you may even learn something new from wrong answers. We usually skip the dice throwing (it's boring) and just draw the question cards to read.

Finally, here are the games I don't like: All kinds of computer games, Playstation, Nintendo and Wii. Completely useless waste of time, the most boring I can imagine. The kids have all kinds of electronic games and game machines. I refuse to touch it.

(I din't have any badminton pictures, nor Trivial Pursuit pictures. So I picked a skiing picture from my collection, more or less at random, cross country this time. A skiing picture may seam odd at this time of the year. On the other hand, our summer skiing is just a couple of weeks away)

Day off

My trip to Russia yesterday was cancelled.

I went to the travel agency in the morning, to get my visa. My flight to Moscow was at 12:30 am, and I had to get my visa before 11 to get to the airport in time.

I didn't.

Nothing to do about that. You can't push Russian authorities. I jumped on the plane back home. We're trying to reschedule the trip to Murmansk for next week, or the week after.

Today is a national holiday, the celebration of the Ascension of Christ (for those who still believe in fiction written 2000 years ago). Little boy and I went for a bike trip, though the town centre, and down to the harbor. on the way back home, we stopped by a small cafe in the old part of town and bought buns and coffee (for me) and Coke (for little boy).

So, I got a day off at home, rather than being at work in Russia.

That's perfectly fine with me >:)

(I took some pictures when we biked around on the harbor. The one above shows the Leif Erikson statue; you know, the guy who discovered America in the 10th (or 11th) century, almost 500 years before Christopher Columbus)