Last day

Today is the last day of the year.  Tomorrow comes a new day with a new year. Who knows what ut will bring.

New oportunitues and new challenges? New problems and new obstacles?

Maybe it will be status quo, or maybe its time for a revolution, for me and for you.

We will see.

Happy new year >:)

(Picture taken a couple of days ago when I was out skiing with the boys. They are much better skiers than me now, even little boy. So I hang around watching them in the snow park from time to time. It's fun)

Skimas

Vacation in the mountains. Skiing with the boys. That's nice. There's only one person I'm missing right now.

Christmas. Christ mass. I'm not into the religious part if it. I should call it something else.

Snowmass? No, that's a place in Colorado, close to Aspen. Nice place. I've been there many years ago, when we lived in Colorado

Skimass or Skimas?  That's a nice name for the holidays. I have to check on the Internet if it already exists.

Lunch break is over. Time for a couple of more runs on the slope before its getting dark. Days are short in the north at this time of the year. Sunset at 2pm.

Tomorrow is another day, I believe >:)

(Picture taken today, before lunch. Blogpost written on my cell phone)

Winter solstice

Tomorrow is the darkest day of the year. It’s the winter solstice. We only get about 4-5 hours of daylight. The day after tomorrow we start the the journey towards increasingly longer days. That’s good.

Also, we are approaching Christmas. That’s not so good. I’m not into the religious part of it, and the commercialism just makes me sad. I try to keep it on a very minimum. When I enter the malls with Christmas-pop-music on the loud speakers (Jingle Bell Rock, Santa Claus is Coming to Town) and people running around carrying bags full of stuff, it makes me feel sick.

The only place I feel fairly comfortable is the bookstore. So that’s where I try to do most of my shopping.

It’s been a rush at work as usual. Projects and reports need to be finished before the end of the years. Managers sitting with there Excel spreadsheets counting deliverables, worrying about the KPI’s.

If you don’t know what a KPI is, you’re lucky. KPI means Key Performance Indicator. That’s the measures by which managers can maximize their bonuses, by local optimization in their little pond, and private agendas. At the same time they usually harm the overall interest of the company. But who cares. This is competition. This is the wonderful capitalist world.

Whatever, it’s great with two weeks of vacation, skiing in the mountains.

I hope I get the book by Thomas Piketty for Christmas. If not, I buy it on sale in January.

Happy winter solstice >:)

(Picture from my archives, from a past Christmas, in 2010 or 2011 I think. We have less snow this year, but thanks to efficient snow making system, the skiing is not at risk)

Soviet retro style

The streets were dark and cold. It was winter in Siberia.  It was silent. No people around, except us.  The old brown log house was lit by only a weak lamp.

They brought us down in the basement.  Heavy brown chairs and tables.  Small bronze statues of working class heroes. The the red flag with hammer and sickle. Old pictures on the wall. Pictures of Yury Gagarin and Leonid Brezhnev, and the hockey team from 1985; Krutov, Larionov, Makarov, Fetisov and Kasatonov.  The best team ever, raised and trained under the red star.  An old TV set showing a classical Russian movie. Black and white.

We were back in the Soviet Union. Retro style.  Even the menu. Russian vodka and Russian beers. Traditional Siberian dishes. Fish from Lake Baikal. Steamed sig.  Frozen omul in thin slices, eaten raw with salt and onion. It’s called Stroganina. Siberian sushi. Sig and omul. That’s the Russian names. The English names of these species of fish I don’t know.  But the fish was very good.

After the food, we got a Soviet-style chewing gum. Made from resin. Tasting of pine. Quite interesting. Just like the chewing gums we made ourselves when we were kids.

(The pictures were taken at the restaurant, Unfortunately, my crappy cell phone camera takes bad pictures in the dark. Sorry about that. I need to get a new one.)

Game of Thrones over Siberia

We left Irkutsk this morning, on the Aeroflot flight back to Moscow. It's quite a long trip, more than 6 hours. Fortunately, we were flying on business class, which is a lot more pleasant than the packed rows on economy. We got comfortable seats, with plenty of space to stretch out the legs. The food is very good too.

There is an entertainment system on-board, of course. On the flight from Moscow to Irkutsk, I mostly watched documentaries, about the Kola Peninsula, and the province of Bashkiria. I never watch TV series. My Russian colleague isn’t much of a TV watcher either. But on the flight from Moscow, he started watching Game of Thrones, and got hooked. He recommended me to check it out.

I like to look down on the places we’re flying over. In the beginning we had a nice clear sky and a good view. But then we entered into clouds. There wasn't much else to do, so I decided to watch the first episode of the first season of Game of Thrones. I can tell you,  that I didn’t get  hooked.  It was pretty boring, and I don’t like watching violence.

The scenes with naked girls were nice of course. I have heard you can find compact compilations on the Internet with only the hot scenes from the series. I think I go for this option.

I still haven’t become a TV-series watcher, and probably I never will. I rather spend my time reading books and science papers, and watching girls. Just watching >:)

(I have the habit of taking pictures from planes. This is a picture I took today, cruising over the endless frozen Siberian wilderness.)

Siberia

So, I ended up in Siberia. It wasn’t too bad. It was very nice actually, except for the beginning

The jetlag is bad when going 7 time zones eastward. It’s still bothering me a little bit.

I arrived at the airport in Irkutsk a 4:30 in the morning. I traveled together with a colleague from our Moscow office.  I have seen the city only in the dark. But it looks very nice, with all the old large log houses in the city center.

We have been working all day, and only went down to the city center to eat after work. I’ve eaten lots of good food, mostly fish from the Lake Baikal. It was species of fish I’ve never heard of before, such as sig and omul. They are species that live only in Baikal.

We have been effective at work, so today we finished at noon and went for a trip to Baikal. It’s the lake of the lakes, 1600m (5300 feet) deep, and contains 20% of the (liquid) fresh water on earth.  

I really liked Siberia. I think I would like to go here for vacation some time,

Tomorrow Aeroflot will take me back to Moscow.

(Picture taken today on our afternoon trip to Lake Baikal.)

Sent to Siberia

Someone must have been telling lies about me. I knew I had done nothing wrong, but his morning I was sent to Siberia.

You may have recognized the opening already.  I borrowed and adapted it from The Trial by Kafka.

It’s true that I’ve done nothing wrong, as far as I know, nothing serious at least. We all do things we regret, and things we should regret. That’s the case with me too, but nothing to worry about. YOLO; that's what the kids say.

It’s also true that I’ve been sent to Siberia, by the company I work for.  I’m on my way to Irkutsk, close to the Lake Baikal.

 It’s such a long flight, so I was allowed to fly business class. Now I’m sitting in the Aeroflot lounge in the Sheremetyevo airport, waiting for my next flight. I kind of have a feeling that I’m surrounded by Russian oligarchs, people with expensive clothing and jewelry, and small dogs carried in expensive bags. Actually, many people look quite ordinary too, poor guys like me.

Whatever. The lounge is quite good. I get free food and drinks, and I can relax while reading and writing, but I wish they could turn down the volume on the TV.

  

It’s gonna be interesting to visit Siberia. I wonder if it’s very cold there now. We will see tomorrow >:)

(I haven’t been to downtown Moscow today, just waiting in transit at the airport. So I picked a picture from my collection, taken a couple of years ago, from the top of Moscow State University, one of the famous Seven Sister, built for the 800 year anniversary of Moscow. The big venue in the center of the picture is the Olympic stadium from the 1980 summer Olympics. The games were boycotted by most western countries due to the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan.)

Suicide (at the public library)

I made a quick trip downtown today, on my bike, to the public library. I was looking for books by Peter Handke.

After the controversy when he received the Ibsen Prize, I got curious. I want to read a couple of his books, to make up my own mind.

I wasn't the only one. All the books by Handke were out.

So, I borrowed a book by Stig Sæterbakken instead. He was one of our finest contemporary authors. I say was, because he died in 2012. He committed suicide at the age of 46. He often wrote about dark and unpleasant themes, such as loneliness.

I have always found authors who comitted suicide (for instance Hemingway and Bjørneboe) very inteteresting.

The French/Algerian author Albert Camus said that "the only serious philosophical question is suicide"

All animals and humans have a natural fear of death. Those who commit suicide are able to defeat the greatest of all fears.

Don't worry; I'm not one of them. I just find it interesting>:)

Handke and other jerks

Last week, the Austrian author Peter Handke was awarded the Ibsen Prize. This created a Hell of a lot of noise; demonstrations and protests. The reason for this was Handke's support for the Serbians during the war in ex-Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Handke also gave a speech in Slobodan Milosevic's funeral in 2006.

Handke was awarded the Ibsen Prize for his plays, not for supporting Serbia. The question is, can we judge an artist's works independent from his actions and opinions?

We appreciate the novels by Knut Hamsun in spite of his pro-nazi attitude during the war. He met both Hitler and Goebbels in person. Hamsun was convicted for act of treason after the war, but was put in a hospital rather than jail due to his high age.

We enjoy the writing of Jean Genet (e.g. The Thief's Journal), even though he spent years in jail, for theft, robbery and gay prostitution. Jean Paul Sartre recognized Genet's talent as a writer, and helped him avoid a life-time sentence.

We can be entertained by Marquis de Sade's novels even though the sexual abuse he describes (e.g. Justine; The Misfortunes of Virtue) is horrifying.

I think I'm gonna order a couple of books by Peter Handke from Amazon, to make up my own mind regarding his work as an artist. I usually like books by people with twisted minds.

As far as I know, Peter Handke has done nothing illegal. He has just stated opinions that the majority of people don't like, just like Ibsen's Dr. Stockmann did ... >:)

(Picture of Peter Handke borrowed from Wikipedia)

Storm

This weekend we had the first storm of the fall coming in. It's been windy, cold and raining. It's the kind of weather when you would rather stay indoor reading a good book, or playing with your new toy.

Last night I was out in the yard to take down the kids' trampoline before the wind takes it. Sometimes these wind-borne trampolines end up in the neighbors garden, or smashing the neighbors car. I don't want that to happen, so better be precautious.

I made a quick visit to the town center today, to buy a new shirt. Commando shopping as usual; fast in and fast out, with a brief stop in the bookstore afterwards, In the streets people were hurrying from shop to shop or wherever they were going, dressed in raincoats,

All these nasty storms are coming in from the west, even though Russia is to the east. Just joking. I like the Russians. Many of them are very nice people. I always enjoyed traveling to Moscow. I just don't like Putin's aggressive politics, domestic and abroad.

By the way, after the opening of the iron curtain, some precious gifts from the east have come to cross my path.

This storm isn't too bad, actually. There are worse to come, I think. Whatever, we'll probably stay happy as long as there are good books and fun toys >:)

(Picture taken with my cell phone today outside the mall. Not the most interesting picture. I'l try to take some more exciting ones tonight.)

Disappointed?

Some days ago I bought a new pair of sneakers. I tried them after work today at the gym. I didn't run any faster. My endurance wasn't any better.

I was very disappointed.

Money can't buy me running ability, and happiness?  Tomorow I will go back to the store to complain.

After my exercise, I went to the university to attend a guest lecture on astrophysics and cosmology.

The lecture was in the big auditorium where I took my undergrad courses in calculus and complex analysis 25 years ago. Cool to be back.

I learnt that there are some 500 billion planets in our galaxy. Millions of them have conditions similar to the earth.

In the future, Mars will become like the Earth, and the Earth will become like Venus. On Venus the temperature is 400 degrees (Celcius).  The longterm weather forecast is not good. But this is still a billion years into the future.

The best things in life are for free; science, knowledge, maybe happiness ... and a couple of other things >;)

Shopping

This afternoon I did something that I hardly ever do. I went shopping. I bought a Hell of a lot of stuff.

This is what I bought:
o 1pair of shoes (for me)
o 2 pairs of sneakers (for me and little boy)
o 2 pairs of ski pants (for me and little boy)
o 1 pair of goggles (for me)
o 1 jacket (for little boy)

I bought as much in one day as I normally do in one year. It feels like I carry the entire consumer society on my back, alone

That's a heavy load.

Fortunately, I didn't pass by any bookstores >:)

New shoes

Yesterday I went downtown to buy some new shoes. When I passed by the bookstore, I felt this strong attraction which was impossible to resist.

I didn't want to buy any books, just take look in the shelves. 20 minutes later when I left the bookstore, I had bought a book by Paul Auster.

I met my best friend. We went for a cup of coffee, and I felt such a strong attraction again.

Then I walked back home, with my old shoes.

Just walking around

I'm out walking, more or less at random. Just needed some fresh air, to clear my mind.

It's a nice summer night, but summer is soon gone now. It's getting dark around 10 pm. The long light summer nights belong to the past.

The students are back in town. They make s lot of noise. Get-to-know-eachother parties and stuff like that. Happy young people, new to the town. Those were the days.

There are still some tourists around. The Japanese climb on everything they want to picture; statues, monuments, the rail og the old town bridge. I took a picture too (below), like I was a tourist in my hometown.

I stopped by a bar. Bought a glass of beer, the local beer on tap. I don't like it very much, I prefer the dark beer. Just bought it to remind myself that I really like this town, I like to live here.

It's been a wonderful summer. Who knows what the fall will bring. I'm optimistic >:)

Happiness

There is no such thing as happiness. You can only chose how to be unhappy.

That's life.

And then you die, and it's all forgotten.

Temple of Capitalism

This morning we visited the Temple of Capitalism. The one and only true god is Money. The view from the 86th floor wss magnificent.

Then er walked down to Greenwich Village. I bought a book by Saul Bellow (Ravelstein) for $6 in a second-hand bookstore on Mercer Street.

I met an ice-cream seller on Chelsea Market who was a fan of Opeth (Swedish metal band). So am I. He recognized the band name on my T-shirt. In the bookstore I bought a book by Paul Auster (New York Trilogy).

Buy, buy, buy. Oh great Money; we worship you. Do we?

(Picture taken to day from the 86. floor of the Empire State Building)

Saving lives

It was lunchtime, and Tom and Anna sat in the grass by the fjord. It was warm, and the sun was shining. They had just finished their sandwiches.

"Everything feels so right with you, so natural, even eating a shrimp sandwich," Anna said. "But now I want the desert”.  

She stroked the bulge on his trousers, and then she opened the zipper to feel his bare skin.

“Be careful”, he moaned, “I don’t want to spill it on neither your clothes nor mine.”

“Don’t worry, I will take care of it”.

She embraced his erected penis with her mouth. Her lips moved slowly up and down the shaft, and her tongue caressed the head. Tom felt relaxed and excited at the same time, lying on his back in the grass. He looked up at the blue sky, through the sparse green leaves of a birch. In a wonderful moment of joy, the leaves of the tree appeared yellow and red.

Anna looked at him and smiled.

“You’re clean now. Nothing was spilled,” she said.

“Thank you,” said Tom.

He put his hand on the inside of her naked thigh and started to explore. She had no panties on. She spread her legs to let him touch her wet and smooth cleft.  She closed her eyes and moaned, and the wrinkle of pleasure appeared between her eyes.

Her body started to shiver. Two ants were climbing up along her thigh. Tom snapped the ants away, saving them from drowning in her ocean of wetness

“We have just saved two lives,” he said.

"Yes, yours and mine."

They were two happy horses grassing on a green field, and with no fence around >:)

(Picture taken a couple of days ago. I don't know who the people are. There are people everywhere, doing all kind of weird things on these nice and warm summer days ... )

Corporate values

It was one of the sunny and warm summer days that are rare in the north. Tom Snare sat in his hot office, trying to solve an equation he had been struggling with for some time.  Occasionally, he looked at the fjord outside the window, where the sun was blinking in the calm sea surface. He wished he could go out to enjoy the sun, but he had this damned equation to solve.

Around noon, Anna knocked the door to his office. He was happy to see her sweet smile, and her green emerald eyes.

“Will you join me for lunch today, Tom?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I’ll get some sandwiches and cold drinks for us,” she said, “and then we can meet down by the fjord.”

Ten minutes later, Tom pulled his ID card at the detector, to open the gate in the main entrance. Then he was out in the warm and pleasant sun.  He walked quickly down to the fjord, to the little cape where they sometimes met.

Anna arrived with sandwiches and soft drinks a couple of minutes later.

They sat in the grass eating, and talking about the sea and the sky.

When the sandwiches were swallowed and the bottles were empties, they lay down in the grass, so close that they could smell each other’s breaths, and hear each other’s heart beats. Tom closed his eyes and he felt Anna’s sweet lips against his, and he stroke the soft skin on her arm. His hand continued to explore under her skirt, and he could feel that she was moist and longing for him.

Tom watched a plane crossing the blue sky when Anna sat down on top of him.  She was wet and soft and wonderful.  He closed his eyes and enjoyed the thrilling flight of the moment. When he opened his eyes, the plane was gone, landed on the airport nearby.

Tom had landed too.

Anna again sat next to him in the grass, fiddling with her ID card. She read aloud the four words printed on the backside of the card:

“Courageous.  Open.  Hands-on.  Caring.”

“We’ve been through all of it now”, Anna said, and smiled.

“Yes”, said Tom, “sometimes I almost believe in corporate values.”

(Picture taken a couple of days ago, by the fjord. I have no idea who the girl in the picture is. She wasn't supposed to be there.)

Amsterdam

Blogging while traveling seems to be my new schedule. Now I'm sitting in a bar in central Amsterdam. Fortunately they have lots if TVs because the match between Germany and Portugal is starting very soon.

(I took the picture around noon today in a street crossing in Amsterdam. I have no idea who the girl is. I just thaught she had a cool hair)

The land of the midnight sun

It seems like I’m back on my old informal blogging-schedule;  blogging while traveling. That’s when I get the time to do it, when I have the evenings  off, by myself. 

This year I have hardly been traveling at all. Yesterday, when I got to the airport security, I realized how much I appreciate being at home, with just a 10 minute commute to the office (thanks to the inventors of video-conferencing).

This week I’m up north, in the city known as The Paris of the North, and The Gateway to the Arctic.   

It’s quite some time since last time I was here for real. I’ve been here many times in transit. This is the town were I used to board the Antonov-24for Murmansk, when I travelled regularly to Russia. This is the transit stop if you want to experience the Arctic magic. This is where I have boarded vessels heading for the Arctic Seas, and where I slept over when I returned.

It’s great to be here in the summer, at 69 degrees North, well beyond the Arctic Circle. The mountains are still capped with snow, and the birches have just got a slight touch of leaves. It’s not very warm, but it’s light.  The sun shines around the clock. The last sunrise was 20^th May, and the next sunset is 25^th July. Two months of continuous daylight.

My hotel  (and all the other hotels in town) are down on the harbor, with a nice view to the bridge and the Arctic Cathedral on the other side. God present is here too, apparently. Religion is hard to get rid of no matter how far north you go.

The north is challenging for the Muslims. They all died out one summer when Ramadan was in the months of the midnight sun. I’m just joking.  The Muslims up here has a special permit (from God?) to follow the clock-times in Mecca. During Ramadan, they can eat when the sun sets in Mecca. Funny isn’t it?

Religion (all of them) is pure madness. That’s why I stick to science >)

(I took the picture above this morning. When I checked the last link above, I realized that I had basically the same picture 4 year ago. But if you compare, you will see that the weather is better today.)

Such a nice and sunny day

It's such a nice and sunny day. People are hiking
the trails along the fjord, and I'm sitting indoor in my office. Not for a long time, though. I'm just in for half an hour to print a student thesis that I have to read through, tonight on the plane to the North >:)

(It takes some time to print 170 pages. In the mean time, I took the picture above through the window, and wrote this post.)

Strategy

I could have posted something interesting today, but I'm not. I'm saving it for the AZ Challenge that kicks off next week. My line managers call it strategy. I maximize my own benefit, and don't care about yours.

It's a mean world, an I'm no better, sometimes >;)

Whatever. For a moment,  I don't care if the world is bad, when the skiing is good.

(I took the picture  half an hour ago, when I was skiing above the timberline. Another post written on my cell phone. It works quite well, except I can't control the size and position if the pictures)

Going to Hell

The Italian mafia bosses will end up in Hell, unless they stop doing crimes. That's what the Pope has told them, according to the news. (Maybe they will share destiny with the Vatican mafia).

It's pretty rediculous with the Catholics, and the Christians in general. You can be as bad as you want to, if you just remember to pray for forgiveness before you die.

I'm just an atheist, blasphemer and God-mocker, and I'm not gonna ask for forgiveness. I wonder where I will end up >:)

(Another post from my cell phone, written while eating lunch in the ski resort. I took the picture half an hour ago. The snow-covered mountains is my cold Heaven, which can quickly turn to Hell if the weather changes into a blizzard.)

War profits

BigOil is evil. That’s something everybody knows. BigOil co-operates with all kinds of corrupt regimes around the world. When conflicts escalate towards war, energy prices rice, and BigOil make more money.

I work for BigOil, doing technical work. The scientists and engineers are good guys. The evil part is taken care of by the corporate-strategy department.

However, I also own some shares in BigOil. I’ve been thinking about selling some of my shares for some time (we need the money to pay for the refurbishing of our house). This week I sold my shares, and the price was quite good.

The recent increase in the share price is of course due to the escalating conflict in Ukraine, and on the Crimean peninsula. This means I've become a war profiteer. That’s no good. What should I do with the added value of my shares? Donate the excess money to the Salvation Army, or just keep it? What would you have done?

(The cartoon is from The Moscow Times, which is a very good and interesting newspaper. I used to get it on the door of my hotel room when I travelled frequently to Russia. The Moscow Times is published in English. Therefore it has few readers in Russia, and is basically a newspaper operating under the radar of Putin’s regime.)

Pi day

Today, 14. March, 3/14, math lovers (including me) are celebrating Pi day. There are also some people celebrating Pi day on 22. July, since 22/7=3.14 (approximately). What is your main Pi day?

(The formula is the volume V of a sphere with radius R.)

Arguments

We have this big refurbishing project going on. It has taken some time, but now It's close to completed. I wanted to spend this weekend finishing the last details; painting some moldings and stuff like that.

Little boy had other plans. He wanted to go skiing in the mountains, like we do almost every weekend and every vacation.

"We can ski only when there's snow", he said.
"We can refurbish the entire summer", he said.

I think he had good arguments. Guess what we did?

(The picture wad taken about a week ago, on our previous trip to the mountains, which was winter break, and a full week on the slopes)

My bookshelf

There's nothing important I have to say. I just wanted to make å test, to see if I can write a post on my cell phone, including upload of a picture. I will need to check later how it appears on the computer. The picture is of my office bookshelf, a part of it. There are some science books, of course, and a couple of oddities. On the Road by Jack Kerouac, and the Quran. I bought the latter on sale for half the price. It's a pretty useless book. The two-volume green book is more useful. It's kind of my Bible >:)

My to-write list

It’s February already. January just flew away too fast, without a single blogpost. I was just to busy. Basically, I had three jobs. At daytime I did my regular job for BigOil, as usual. In the night I worked on the refurbishing of our house. Late night I was grading exams. It’s a Hell of a boring job, but I have to do it, since I have a part-time position in the university.

Now the exam-grading is done. Then I only have two jobs, and I hope I’ll get some time to write. I have many topics to write about. Just to remind myself, here are some headlines on my to-write list:

• The white gold
• Russia; good, bad and evil
• War heroes on the metro
• Mekka and Disneyland
• Jerusalem and Hollywood
• Some people still believe in God
• The importance if blasphemy
• Michel Houellebecq
• Haruka Murakami
• Management and leadership
• Monogamy
• I never got a Green Card
• Where does Satan live?
• Skiing in America
• My merits in battle
• Does size matter?

I don’t know in which order I’ll do the list. I’m open for suggestions.

Also, more than a year ago, I started on a one month blogging challenge; 30 posts in 30 days. I got half way through it. Maybe I’ll try to do the rest of it. But n

ot this month; February has only 28 days, it’s skiing season, and soon the Winter Olympics are starting up >:)

(The picture above is the huge Russian nuclear-powered ice breaker Lenin operating in the Arctic. I took the picture a couple of years ago. To be honest, I've never actually seen the ship. There is a big picture of the ice breaker on the wall in the reception of the Poliarnie Zori Hotel in Murmansk, and I took a picture of the picture on the wall, hehe.)