Thanks to Judas

It’s been busy times, a Hell of a lot to do at work. That’s why my blog has been dead recently.

I’ve been working day and night for the last couple of weeks, to finish the stuff we have promised to finish before the end of the first quarter of 2012. That’s the kind of things that managers measure.

Now I’m looking forward to Easter vacation, going skiing as usual.

I’m not very concerned about the religious part of it, but I think the Christians should stop talking shit about Judas. He’s the 2nd most important person in Christianity. What would Jesus been without the acts of Judas? Just imagine Jesus dying in loneliness, from old age in a dark and dusty cabin.

Judas was an important part of the plot, the antagonist who betrayed the hero. Without him the entire story would fall apart; no crucifiction, no suffering, no resurrection. Jesus and Judas had equally important roles in God’s plan, for those who believe in the story.

I think it was just an effective twist of a good fiction writer who knew his craft, almost 2000 years ago.

Anyway, I thank Judas for the annual skiing vacation he gave us, and after Easter, I hope my blog will resurrect.

Happy Easter Holidays >:)

(I got the Easter egg in the picture from my boss today. The egg was on the desk in my office when I came to work this morning. Nice boss, good candy.)

After the election

This morning at 9am, my Russian driver picked me up at the hotel in Murmansk. Mission completed; I was going home. He was taking me to the Russian border, or more precisely, to the nearest airport across the border.

We drove through the winter-white wilderness of north-west Russia. We crossed a scenic mountain pass with two or three war memorials by the road. There were big battles during WW2. The Russians are good at building memorials.

It was a four-hour drive, and we had plenty of time to talk. We duscussed history, fishing, cars and kids. Then we talked about moving to Kaliningrad (not me, of course), and the recent Russian presidential election.

The driver doesn't like Putin. And I expect he didn't vote for Putin, but I didn't ask directly.

"What's wrong with Putin?" I said.

I have my own opinions, but would liked to hear his views.

"The main problem is that he's been in office too long; eight years as president, then four years as prime minister. People want change. Now we fear another eight years with Putin, at least."

Putin is in control of everything; the natural resources and the state-owned compenies, newspapers and television. He even dictates the super-rich oligarks, or jail them if they don't obey. The longer he rules, the more he behaves a Tsar, or a blend of Tsar and KGB officer (which he used to be).

Still people voted for Putin. According to official figures, he got 65% of the votes. Even the dead voted for Putin, thousands of people who had been dead for years. If the false votes are subtracted, he still gets more than 50% (estimated by international observers).

Halfway we stopped in Titovka, a small place in the middle of nowhere, with a cafe that serves instant coffee and something they called pizza. Maybe it was omelette; I'm in doubt.

Then we entered the military zone, where the roads are very wide. They were built for tanks, during the cold war. Built for a Red-Army invasion, that never came, fortunately.

We passed by the medieval town of Pechenga, and the depressive and polluted mining towns Zapolyarny and Nikel, where nothing has changed in decades. Then, some 10 km (6 miles) before the border, there is a check point. A grumpy guy in army uniform looked at our passports and searched the trunk of the car. He nodded , OK, but didn't smile.

Between the check-point and the border is a transit zone. You can drive through, but stopping is prohibited. At the boarder there is double-checking. A Russian officer stamped my passport, and let me through. Then finally, at the last check point, the officer greeted me: "Welcome home".

I was out of Putin's reach, for this time. Back from the USSR.

(Some pictures taken along the road; Pechenga and Nikel.)

Back in the USSR

Not really. I just borrowed the title from that old Beatles song. The USSR is history, split into a number of more or less democratic and independent republics. I'm in the north-west corner of the biggest one; Russia, the land of Putin.

Yesterday morning, I took a plane up to the Paris of the North. It was one of these big jet planes, a Boeing 7-Something. It was windy on the coast. Very windy. The first approach for landing was aborted right before we touched ground, because the pilots struggeled to control the plane in the wind.

In the second approach, the plane tilted again. Out of the window, I looked straight into the white-topped waves of the roaring sea. I don't know how, but in some way, the skilled pilots managed to level the plane right before landing. It was a very unpleasant flight, a real adrenaline booster.

The next flight to Murmansk was on a good old Antonov 24, a small propeller plane, a piece of Soviet technology from the 1960s. It's a robust plane, built for harsh conditions, simple and reliable technology, if they just keep up with the maintainance program. I hope they do.

It's amazing how these small propeller planes fly in bad weather, and it feels quite comfortable. The small planes kind of flow on the air like a little bee, moving with the wind bursts, rather than trying to oppose it.

The Antonov 24 has nylon curtains in the circular windows, and there is full Russian service on board. It means vodka. I don't drink that stuff; it's poison, and a tragedy for the Russian society. Vodka is the main reason why the avergage expected lifetime of Russian men is less than 60 years.

When I arrived in Murmansk, my driver picked me up in the airport and took me to the hotel. The road from the airport to the city makes a detour into the forests. They started out in the wrong direction when it was built.

Moscow is a modern metropol, but Murmansk is very much like it used to be in the Soviet days. Old buses and Red-Army vehicles (and some brand new Lexus'es and BMW's) are driving in the streets. Huge nuclear-powered ice breakers are anchored on the bay.

A few miles out the fjord is the town of Severomorsk, with the big navy base and shipyard. During the cold war, it was the headquarter of the Soviet Northern Fleet. It's still in operation, but the submarines are not as many as they used to be.

Murmansk was bombed to bits and pieces by the Germans during the 2nd World War, and then rebuilt in typical Soviet style architecture. The suburbs on the hills accommodate thousands of people in massive gray concrete blocks.

I'm back in the USSR >:)

(Pictures taken today and yesterday. The first picture shows central Murmansk, with the big cranes on the harbor and the fjord. In the upper right corner is the Alyosha statue, a 35m (110 feet) high concrete statue overlooking the city, a WW2 memorial built in the 1970s. The second picture is a close-up of the Antonov 24, parked on the snow-covered runway of the Murmansk airport last night.)

Great skiing and a good book

We just had a weekend of fantastic sunny weather in the mountains. The skiing was great. For the first time this winter, we could ski in the high zone, above timber line. The wind chill was still like -20 degrees (-5 Fahrenheit) at the top, but in the sun it was quite pleasant.

Little boy and I was mostly skiing in the off-piste area. I've realized that I'm getting older, so I need to be somewhat careful. So, this is what I do: When we take a new route, I first send little boy alone. When he comes down (I hope), he can tell me if the route is recommended for me. Then we ski it together.

I needed something to read in the evenings. So, on the way to the slopes I stopped by a bookstore, and picked a book at random: Siberian Education by Nicolai Lilin, an amazing book. It's an autobiographic novel about a boy of the Urka people, born and raised to become a criminal, in a traditional Siberian society.

(The Urka people was deported from Siberia to Transnistria, on the border between Moldova and Ukraine, in the Stalin era.)

The philosophy of the Urka people reminds me of Jean Genet (Thief's Journal, The Miracle of the Rose), in the sense that everything is turned upside down, compared to the "normal" society. Police and authorities are the enemies. Thieves and robbers, so-called "honest criminals", are heroic role models. Spending half a lifetime in jail is normal.

Nicolai Lilin doesn't quite match Jean Genet, though. But who does?

(I took the picture above this weekend. It's little boy, my main ski buddy, surrounded by the white gold, under the blue sky.)

Apps

I'm working with science and technology every day. Therefore I'm not very interested in playing with gadgets outside office hours.

I prefer to spend my free time reading, writing and skiing.

Yesterday I made a great leap forward: I got my first smart phone. Not because I'm interested in smart phones, but simply because people expect me to read mail when I'm out travelling. There have been some problems and misunderstandings when I didn't (like messing up time and place for drivers to pick me up in Moscow, not a good thing to do).

So, now I've got a brand new HTC phone (that's what they give us at work). And where do I go to learn how to use it?

Answer: Ask the kids. They have a natural feel for how these things work (older boy has an iPhone4S; guess who paid for it).

The kids taught me how to download apps from the Android Market. There are thousands of apps, for doing all kinds of rediculous and useless things.

So far, I've downloaded one app: Kindle Reader for HTC >:)

(That's a picture of my new phone, downloaded from the HTC homepage. I vivited their site to get the user manual on a pdf)

Tiger sharks

They appeared before my eyes, right inside of the door in the ski-shop by the lift; a pair of Völkl TigerSharks, demo skis, used once or twice, on sale for 1/3 of the list price.

I asked the cashier if I could try them a couple of runs on the slopes (buying skis is like buying a car; you should test before you buy). I made up my mind before I finished the first run, and bought the skis for $450, including bindings.

The TigerSharks are slalom-shaped skis (length 168cm, curvature radius 15m), perfect for making short turns, excellent grip at high speeds. They're pretty aggressive, and they bite, not me but the snow.

This is my 4th pair of skis. I have two pairs of giant slalom skis; my good old Dynastars that have served me well for almost 10 years, completely worn out, and I have a pair of Rossignol skis that little boy is currently using for downhill and Super G, so they're adjusted to his boot size right now. Also, I have a pair crappy twin-tip skis (K2), OK for jumping (which I hardly dare to do anymore), but to soft to make a proper carving turn.

So, as you can see, I really needed the TigerSharks >:)

(That's my new Völkl TigerSharks in the picture. I've been skiing them for 6 days in row now, and I'm very happy with them.)

Room with a view

I'm out traveling gain. This time I'm on a domestic flight on the west coast. This is one of the places I couldn't live. The town is nice, but it's too little snow in the winter. Skiing areas are too far away.

The funny thing that happened on this trip was as follows: I knew the hotels would be pretty full this week, so I booked long time in advance. Yesterday when I arrived, it turned out that the travel agency had messed up the booking, so I didn't have any hotel, and all of them were full.

But I found a solution, a small pension near the town center. It's a small and simple place. I think I'm about the only person staying here right now. Kind of scary to be alone in an old and empty hostel. Reminds me of The Shining. Bad weather and heavy winds outside, all kinds of weird and mysterious sounds ... mwuuuhaaahahaaah >:)

The price is less than 1/3 of the hotels we normally use on business trips, and the pension only has 7 rooms. It's like living in someones private house. I don't complain. This is different, and interesting.

Here are the pros and cons of a place like this:

Pros: Breakfast is very good. I'm being served by a table on my own by the lady who runs the place. Nice and cosy, and they do have a WiFi. No TV; then I don't need to waste my time on that (I hardly ever watch TV anyway. Bought a cool book in the airport yesterday; Invisible by Paul Auster). The center of the town, with bars and restaurants is a five minutes walk away. There is a library downstairs, same as the breakfast room, with books and newspapers.

Cons: No bathroom and shower in my room. I have to go down two stairs to get to the shower, and three stairs to get to the WC. Front door closes at midnight. Yesterday I checked in 5 minutes before closing time. Tonight I've got my own key to the front door, so I can come in as late as I want.

Cool place to stay. I don't miss the luxury of a high-class business hotel, not at all.

(It's my pension in the picture above. I downloaded it from the internet. It's a nice old house, in the old central part of town. I'm staying on the top floor. I have a nice view of the town center in the morning when it's getting light.)

Heat

It's been a freezing cold day with a lot of heat.

At work today, I solved the heat equation. I try to simulate a stack of sedimentary rocks being heated by the crust below, and how temperature develops through geological time.

When I came back home, I lighted the fireplace to heat the kitchen and the living room. Then I made a hot meal for the kids.

Tomorrow is race day for little boy. This evening, I waxed his skis. It's a long and tedious process to do it properly: First, sharpen the edges with a file. Second, heat the wax with a waxing iron and melt it into the base. Third, scrape of the excess wax. Finally, brush and polish the base. Then the skis are ready for the super-G race.

Now I'm relaxing with a hot cup of tea.

My old lady has been away on a business trip today. When she comes home tonight, I hope the heat is on >;)

(I computed the plot above at work today. It shows the diffusion of heat from below through a package of sedimentary rocks. After 50 million years, hot magma intrudes the sediments. The time-step between each temperature curve is 10 million years ... not much God could have done about it in 6 days, and resting on the 7th.)