Nik's Saga

Yes, an early morning post.

Mainly because I won't have time to post later. So far this morning, although I haven't actually had breakfast yet (must remedy that!) I've already been out to Morrisons to acquire a vital ingredient for a successful Hogmanay party - dishwasher tabs. How could anyone possibly enjoy a huge meal knowing that although there is a dishwasher, there's no detergent and so you're going to have to wash up by hand? *Shudder* Even as I type the machine is running through a cycle to deal with last night's meringue frenzy (and, admittedly, some other stuff).

I really should write down instructions for Wayside meringues. As I only cook with this oven once a year I always forget the subtleties of temperature and so on. This year's pavlova is pale brown, rather than white - something that is partly due to me using coloured vanilla essence, but partly because the recipe I used called for 120 C, which is probably a little high. I think that 100 for 1.5 hours and then turn off and allow to cool is probably better. And while I'm at it, that's 8 egg whites and 550 ml of sugar (no scales, so I had to work in cup-equivalents).

Right - off for coffee, bready delights (scones? potato cakes? eccles cakes?) and a banana before I start again. Next this morning is blueberry ice cream and the custard for the trifles. And (hopefully) part of one of those damned Operating Systems lectures...
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And what have I done?

Well, relatively speaking it was quite good. K and Ch came up for Christmas Day, which went well apart from the Christmas Pudding Disaster. Boxing Day was spent buying Dad a new laptop from PC World, made possible because I have a business account with them and they support XP far more in their business machines that in their home machines. He does now realise that the next time he buys a machine he'll have to bite the bullet and go for Vista or spend a bit more and buy a Mac if he wants me to do the long-distance telephone admin stuff for him.

Then there was the Great Curry Disaster. Well, it was a disaster to me, although most of the diners seemed quite happy. I'm sure that the main reason for wanting bah-mee one night and curry another was so that I could make copious amounts and he could then freeze the left-overs as the recipes are rather more complex than he would think of attempting.

Sunday was busy. As S and D were in the UK for Christmas I drove up north to meet them for lunch at the Longlands, near the caravan. Four of us had a very good Christmas lunch (with enormous mutant Yorkshire puddings) and an excellent chance to natter. I must go there for lunch again at some point. In the evening I also managed to catch up with another friend, so all in all it was quite a tiring time.

Then yesterday I drove up here. Mmm... Wayside... *relaxes and gives a satisfied sigh* I've just been feeding coffee to the chimney sweeps. Wayside has, it turns out, a very complicated chimney system with more twists and turns than a pipes screensaver. D realised a couple of weeks ago when she tried lighting a fire that the chimney needed sweeping as the smoke was coming in, not going up. The sweeps arrived this morning and, after a sterling attempt to clear the chimney, discovered that there is a rather large nest within it that will require the attentions of a builder to clear it from above... and then fit a 'chinese hat' to the chimneystack to prevent the same thing happening in future. It means that we will be without the real fire this new year but I'm sure we'll come up with something else to heat the room.

I'm just about to go off shopping. My plan for the rest of the day is to shop, to drop in on T and K for a cuppa and then commence my baking frenzy. Meringues (possibly a pavlova or a gateau) will be committed, together with a trifle (got to use all of those egg yolks somehow!) and some finger nibbles (both fruity and chocolatey). That should keep me going for the next 36 hours, during which I hope also to finally start writing some lectures. Yes, I know I'm supposed to be on holiday, but there are rules about how much I can manipulate time for personal benefit...
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I meant to post this a couple of days ago - but you might have gathered that this year's holiday season has been a bit hectic.



With best wishes for a low-stress holiday season
and a successful and enjoyable 2009

from Nik
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I'm here in Liverpool.

Travel was relatively straightforward - made more so by M giving myself & my colleage A a lift from Reykjavík to Keflavík. The airport itself was dead - clearly no-one is travelling to or from Iceland any longer, something borne out by the lack of bodies on the flight.

Yesterday there was too much shopping, in that I had to make two trips to Asda. All those wonderful things to buy! But I was strong, and did not cave in to the shelves and shelves of bready goodness. I didn't actually receive the official shopping list until after my first trip to Asda - to get what I thought was the only thing outstanding - so I waited until 21:00. It was still chocker.

Today was the day for running around buying gifts that Dad had forgotten. Too much time, followed by far too much time wrapping things. Why did I spend 4 hours wrapping gifts that will remain wrapped for anywhere between 12 hours and a week, that's all? It seems a terrible waste of time and paper to me. Bah humbug. When I grow up I'm going to go away to a hotel for Christmas. Or sit at home sewing and actually watching some of the special Christmas television.

Oh yes, and I think that the Liverpool 08 people have missed another merchandising opportunity - Santalambananas! I want a santalambanana for the Christmas tree!

Another good thing is my latest toy. As I didn't actually buy myself a permanent memory-gift from Brussels I have had to designate Rudolph the Hat as my Brussels-gift. This meant that I had to buy myself a birthday present so, aided and abbetted by some money I received for the event, I bought myself a Sony eReader. I'm hooked! It's bigger and better than the Palm and holds many more books. Best of all, I bought the light with it which means I can read it in bed. Until now bedtime reading has been limited by the fact that my light dims automatically so I can only read for about 10 minutes before it becomes too dark. Now I can ignore this and just keep on going. Hurrah for e-books! :)
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Okay, cancel Christmas.

I'm just not ready for it. If we can delay it for a couple of weeks then I might be able to get sorted in time but the current timescale is just unworkable. A week away on a business trip and the resulting week of being ill has completely thrown me (mainly the week of being ill actually). I've managed to get most of the presents sorted but the cards have failed to be written, never mind sent, and my to-do list still has several things that I have to do up here before leaving. Like letting my landlord know that I plan to leave at the end of January, little things like that.

*Sigh*

But enough of that. It's been a busy couple of days. Friday was the last day of the semester (from my point of view) but that didn't make it a light day. Plenty of meetings and the like, just as usual. Our new contracts mean that the CS staff are now working on the Icelandic 'pay per lecture' scheme which requires us to work out how many 'teaching points' we're doing each semseter. There is an unsurprisingly complex method for doing this, but I think we've now got it worked out. I'm going to have a busy time next semester. Over the whole year I'm supposed to do about 900 points, mostly lectures but I do get a rebate of about 250 points for my admin duties.

We are sufficiently short-staffed that we don't have any problems making these numbers. In fact, given that one of my modules is taught to all science students, including the new January intake, I'd actually make my points on that module alone plus a couple of project supervisions. Life is not that easy though, and I'm actually teaching abour 740 points next semester plus the admin duties. It's going to be a busy few months. Fortunately I'll be paid a decent amount in overtime for this which is quite useful nowadays.

*Sigh*

On a more positive note it's only ten days to go until the start of the International Year of Astronomy. Woo-hoo! After listening to the Christmas Jodcast I added them to my Twitter list and learned about the 365 Days of Astronomy podcasts. Their aim is to provide a podcast of up to 10 minutes every day during the IYA and are looking for volunteers to create these.

Now I've never made a podcast before so this is an excellent excuse to have a go at it. I've signed up for a date in March and I'm currently tempted to do a podcast about Ptolemaic cosmology. If it goes well I might volunteer to do a second one later in the year but for now it means I actually have a reason to use the GarageBand software that came free on my Mac. I'll probably also have a first shot at podcasting in January just to learn how to use the software and so on. Stay tuned to this channel for more news. Hmm... I wonder if we could podcast from Redemption? If this works I might even give it a try.

More geek news - the RFID tags are now available for the Nabaztag. The idea is that you stick an RFID tag on something (or someone!) and your rabbit will recognise the tag and perform a programmed action. I've no idea what I'll use it for but I'm going to have to give it a try. All being well there should be some tags awaiting me when I get back to Liverpool after the new year.

For now, though, I'd better go and carry on baking. I'm due to be going out for dinner tonight to meet my new will-be neighbours... assuming that we don't have too much more snow, that is.

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I noticed another sign of the kreppa today.

It is no longer possible to get a bottle of wine for less that 1000 kr. Last time I went into Vinbúð you could still get a cheap and cheerful bottle of sweet white for about 800 kr, while if you wanted, say, a Gallo white then it would be about 1300 kr. Enough to make me leery of buying wine often but not so bad that I didn't bother. Today that same bottle of Gallo white is 1700 kr (about £10). It's not just the exchange rate issues that have led to the rising price of alcohol; the goverment recently raised the alcohol duty as well. My inner cynic suggests that they have thought this out well - people are miserable so they drink more to cheer themselves; let's raise the alcohol duty so that we can make a bit of money from this.

I didn't go into Vinbúðin looking for wine. We had a 'leaving lunch' for my other departing colleague today and as one of us wanted to swing by there on the way back to the office I thought it would be an excellent opportunity to pick up some more local beers for S. I managed to get two microbrews, one local and one not, plus the jólabjór from the two main breweries. These are generally stronger and considered rather better than the normal beers. They're now sitting in the cupboard waiting for my trip to Redepmtion in February when I can hand them over.

It has been quite cold today, below -10C. I've got used to scraping the ice off the car windscreen before driving into work in the morning. I've even got used to scraping the ice off the car windscreen before driving home from work at tea-time. I do, however, draw the line at having to scrape the ice off the car windscreen at local noon (to within 10 minutes) in order to drive down into time for lunch. That is definitely taking the joke a bit too far. :)

Tonight, though, I'm curled up here in the warm hoping to complete the cross-stich bit of the current embroidery. If I manage that and get into the backstitching I will be happy.

Labels: iceland

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It occurred to me tonight that running an SCA fencing practice - or mini-tourney - is in some ways not dissimilar to running a Cub Scout meeting.

As it was the final fencing practice before Christmas I decided that tonight we wouldn't do a drill session but would instead do a 'nine lives' tournament similar to the one run at Raglan this year. I only decided this about an hour before the practice so I didn't have time to make up bead life tokens but instead just gave everyone nine lengths of ribbon each. They then had an hour to win as many 'lives' from their opponents as possible, with the structure, weapons and stakes of each bout decided upon by the combatants.

There were some very amusing bouts - the five-person melee where only leg hits counted; the dagger v. rapier between the tallest (dagger) and shortest (rapier) fencer; and the aggregate 'number of kills in 30 seconds v. an opponent armed only with a parrying device - and I wandered around watching, making suggestions and occasionally handing over extra lives to keep people in the game. Yes, I was the lives fairy. Or possibly the re-spawn of Satan. :)

In the end it was closer than people expected - 26 ribbons compared to 24 - although unfortunately the winner happens to be slightly allergic to nuts and the item I grabbed at the last minute as a prize was a large fruit and nut toblerone (not, as far as I know, available in Iceland yet). It's becoming quite difficult to find things for prizes without making them - one person doesn't like chocolate, one doesn't like fruit, another doesn't like nuts... I don't think I can win with that one. Clearly I need to keep a selection of hand-embroidered things lying around just for that purpose. Nevertheless, E is now the Shire's Yule Champion.

I'm now hoping that a moderately active evening means that I'll be able to get to sleep before 03:00, unlike the last few days. No DVD in bed for me tonight... I hope.
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... Completing the last of your marking.

Which I managed today. I was very pleased with the results as both papers had some quite tricky bits in them. This is good as it means that I will have happier students and I'll be able to finish the last of my paperwork tomorrow before getting a couple of days clear (probably the equivalent on one full working day, knowing the way things crop up here) to make a start on the lecture materials for next semester. Happiness is also managing to find a pdf of the kilo-and-a-half textbook that I need to take back to the UK with me.

With the marking completed it finally feels as if the semester is over. I only realised that it's just 8 days until Christmas when I saw something telling me such this morning. 8 days... it's not enough. Last week's illness has really messed up my pre-Christmas planning. I should do lots of stuff tonight, but as I only got about 4 hours sleep last night - curse these strange diurnal variations! - I suspect that an early night is called for.

Nevertheless, I'm making good progress on K's Midwinter gift. All being well I'll finish it by the weekend and get a photo up. The shadings of green, blue and grey are absolutely gorgeous.
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I made it back into work today.

It felt like three days. Okay, it was a full day but I felt absolutely shattered when I finally got home. I managed to mark the database exam papers and catch up on a bit of the general admin stuff. Tomorrow I intend to get the HCI papers out of the way, after which I just have to polish off the database coursework and I can get down to writing the operating system lectures. Losing almost a full week last week was really quite inconvenient; I foresee another Christmas night of lecture writing, just the same as last year. I must, however, see if I can find an electronic version of the text book as I really don't want to have to lug a kilo and a half of textbook across the Atlantic (I'm pretty sure I won't have a chance to nab a local library copy for the holiday season).

We finally got the big budget news: the university is to take a funding cut of 8.8% relative to last year's figure. Not as bad as we'd feared - a figure of 10-15% has been discussed - but once you figure the current inflation rate of 15% into account that's a huge set of savings to be found. Now that they know the figure the university is planning to set up a committee to look for savings. I fear that science - or computing at the least - may turn out to be one of those savings; small student numbers and high costs in science has always left it vulnerable to budget cuts. I still have a job, for which I am grateful, but I'd say that there's at least a 50% chance that I won't have one come July.

In spite of this there has been a happiness of the day: a long conversation with P, during which I organised the latter part of my Christmas break. The plan is starting to come together - hurrah!
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My health continues to improve, thank goodness.

Okay, so the bug is likely to sit on my chest for a month and screw up my voice, but I can live with that compared to how I felt last week. No excuse not to go back to work tomorrow then.

Today's happiness is a bowl of proper rice pudding, baked to perfection. I'm following my Nana's recipe to the letter - stick a couple of handfuls of pudding rice, some sugar, some milk and a knob of butter into a pan and boil for a while, then transfer it to a bowl, add some more sugar and milk, and bake for a couple of hours or so - and it does make a scrumptious rice pudding. This seems to be my comfort food of choice right now. It used to be egg and chips on a Friday (also done by Nana) but is now rice pudding on a Sunday (the only right and proper day for rice pudding). Mnom.
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Today's happiness is that I seem to be getting better. Hurrah!

I'm still snuffling and sneezing, and these have been joined by a marvelously productive cough, but my head no longer feels as if it wants to explode. I've still spent a fair bit of the day asleep, although I've also managed to do a bit more embroidery - partly because I always take the glasses off to sew. The eyes are still a bit puffy and tender, which I suspect is due to sinusitis. But it's improving, which is the important thing.

On television right now is a double-length programme about the French Revolution. It reminds me that I rather fancy re-reading all of the Honor Harrington books again, in order. I might interleave them with the Miles Vorkosigan novels, as I have to re-read them (what a chore!) before the panel at Redemption. I happen to have most of them in electronic format so I might just load up the Palm before I fly back to the UK for Christmas. Given that I only really use the Palm for reading e-Books it does make me wonder if I should cave in and buy something like the Sony eReader. I'll see what happens after Christmas for that one, I think.
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Just a short thought today.

Mainly because my eyes are so puffed up that wearing my glasses (which I do to use the computer) hurts across the bridge of my nose if I leave them on for any length of time. On the other hand I have just discovered the 'zoom' feature of the 'universal access' section of my Mac, which is quite useful. Still, the eyes are a bit too tired to look at the screen for too long. I think this is going to be an evening for listening to stuff, not watching it.

I did make it into work today to collect some exam papers and to drop off the leaving gift. My co-workers sent me home again as I was clearly too ill to be there. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing I don't exactly know yet. :) I do know that the gift got to its intended recipient eventually.

My happy thought for the day is a purely physical pleasure: sometimes my nose clears enough that I can, for a few minute, breathe through it rather than through my mouth. These are, indeed, happy moments.

Wooo - if I use the touchpad the whole screen moves around! That wasn't what I expected. That is seriously strange - I can move the cursor using the mouse but it's not the normal movement relative to the fixed screen edge; the visible part of the screen moves until you reach the screen edge and then the cursor moves. Very strange indeed. I think I'll turn this off now...
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Three days of illness is just Not On.

I did try to go into work today. I got up, dresseed etc, then sat down on the sofa and suddenly it was ten o'clock and I was feeling like death warmed up. I then phoned a colleague to ask him to stand in for me at the beginning of my HCI exam only to be reminded shortly afterwards that the exam is tomorrow, not today. Clearly the bunged up head has caused a bunged up brain as well.

So I went back to sleep... until I realised that I had to go out to buy a leaving gift for another colleague who's escaping leaving tomorrow. I dragged myself out to the car and then discovered that for the middle of the afternoon there seemed to be a huge amount of traffic in and about Akureyri today. Unfortunately the gallery shop I'd planned to visit is no longer trading; it's clearly been closed for a while as it has been replaced by yet another expensive-looking boutique. This is probably not too surprising as it used to specialise in expensive arty gifts - hand-made mosaics, ceramics and artwork, that sort of thing. Not the sort of place I needed (or could afford) to visit regularly.

That left me at something of a loss. I tried the one other arty shop I knew of but it was full of Christmas stuff, nothing suitable as a leaving gift. That left me with two options - the book shop and the tourist shop. I opted for the latter, fortunately as it turned out, as there is now a small gallery shop selling hand-made mosaics, ceramics and artwork, that sort of thing. No, it's not the same shop re-located, it's just that these are the things that seem to be terribly popular as gifts up here. I eventually came out with something; quite small so that it won't take up too much space in the luggage, which was duly wrapped for presentation*.

While I was out I also took the opportunity to visit the post office to pick up a parcel - it turned out to be the IEEE Visualisation and Graphics conference proceedings, so not exactly the exciting parcel I was hoping for! Nevertheless, I also bought stamps for my Christmas cards (which need to be in the post on Monday) and this year's set of stamps for C next door in Liverpool; he's a big stamp collector so I normally buy him the official set for Christmas.

Tomorrow I have to go into work, ill or otherwise. I have exam papers to mark; at least I can bring them home and do them over the weekend.


* That's my happy for the day. It was fascinating watching the woman at the gallery wrap the print. Once she'd wrapped the print in red paper she added three turns of gold ribbon before knotting two semi-scrunched bits of gold net fabric, a similarly-scrunched piece of clear plastic and two bits of red stick into a very artistic focal point. It's that strange but elegant Scandinavian design thing again.
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I'm probably much the same today as I was yesterday.

Whatever happens, I have to go into work tomorrow because I've got people sitting one of my exams. Thankfully I have a small stock of Contac 400 which should keep me going. Yes, the lurgy has reached the well-and-truly-unblocked nose stage.

Today there was more sleep. There were more cherries in kirsch. There was more hot blackcurrant cordial.

And my happiness report for the day? I've spent some time reading Irregular Webcomic. There have been laughing out loud moments and a few amused groans. I do rather enjoy the author's footnotes, although I couldn't face an explantion of Gödel's Incompletelness Theorem in my current condition. :)
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I seem to have caught one of those international travel lurgies.

Yesterday I started to feel my throat roughening up, and by the time I went to bed I had developed a racking cough and a sandpaper throat. No fun. I woke up this morning feeling lousy and decided that going into work was a bad idea*. Instead, then, I've spent much of the day asleep on the sofa with the gentle murmerings of BBC World in the background, throat soothed by copious amounts of the local Ribena-equivalent made up with hot water and Boots cold+flu mix.

I do have a meeting tomorrow but it's one that I can cancel if I'm still feeling grotty. I'll see how everything goes overnight. I might have to escalate from cold+flu to Contac 400 if things progress as expected. Blah.

* As an aside, I have been challenged to post something that made me happy that day for the next eight days. The realisation that I had no lectures or meetings today and that as a result I could actually take the time off to be ill was definitely a happy moment.
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My recent trip to Brussels was a bit of a boost to the self-esteem in one way.

I spent a lot of the trip speaking French. Not just the day-to-day, survival shopping French, but the sort of French that allowed me to discuss Iceland's recent economic problems, or to read and comment upon a newspaper article on the need for COBOL programmers. Okay, I admit that my French is slow, I get my cases confused a bit and I regularly found myself wracking my brain for a piece of vocabulary that I may have had over a quarter of a century ago at school but whose memory location has more recently been filled with the Java Collections Framework; the important point was that I was managing.

This is important to me at present because of the problems I have with Icelandic. I think I've left it way too late to pick up a new language, especially one as complex as Icelandic, to any extent more than basic pleasantries and survival shopping. I haven't had the time - or, if I'm being honest, the inclination - to throw myself into studying the language and I'm also very self-conscious about trying to use what I do know. The result is that I feel pretty useless and a bit paranoid when Icelandic is being spoken around me. I feel like I'm the archetypal monolingual Brit.

That's why the trip to Brussels was a bit of an ego-boost. It reminded me that I'm not completely useless on the linguistic front. I suspect that several times over the next few weeks, while Brussels is still fresh in my mind, I'll wish that folks over here spoke French rather than Icelandic. Or even German. But at least I will be able to remind myself that even if I have terrible problems with Icelandic, I can communicate to a reasonable level in a second language.
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Now accompanied by a large floppy elephant from Ikea.

The journey back was about a five on the ten-point scale of travel chaos - the flight from Heathrow was packed full of Brits planning a (relatively) cheap drunken weekend in Reykjavik. When we arrived at Keflavík we discovered that a similarly-packed flight from Manchester had also just landed. In spite of there being about 450 people waiting to go through passport control we still had only two officers on duty. It was a little bit hairy at one point, as there was almost a pile-up at the top of the escalator leading from the arrival gates to passport control as the escalator moved rather faster than the queue, leading to a lot of crowding at the top. Once we got through it turned out that the FlyBus ticket machines were broken, leading to another long queue, and then FlyBus were running fewer buses than usual. I did wonder if the country had completely fallen apart during the week I was away (unfortunately not impossible at present).

It also turned out that, for the second time, LastMinute.com had screwed up in sending the details of my hotel booking to the hotel. Fortunately I'm a regular there and get on well with the night manager so he found a room for me. I only used LastMinute.com this time because I didn't get a response when I phoned the hotel (several times) and tried enquiring through the website. This revelation was rewarded by a very worried look from said night manager, who is going to look into it. Just in case, I booked my room for the night of my return in early January when I checked out yesterday morning.

It was 03:00 before I got to my room so I didn't bother with breakfast. Instead I had a leisurely morning drinking coffee and doing an embroidery in the hotel lounge. I'd hoped to start this one last week - it's a Christmas gift for Dad's new Significant Other - but the Brussels trip proved to be busier than I'd expected. At 13:00 M joined me for lunch and we tried out the hotel's new salad bar lunch offering. It was extremely good; lots of salad, two soups, two hot dishes, sodas, tea and coffee for about 1200kr. If you're looking for a good reasonably-priced lunch in Reykjavík then you could do far worse than Hotel Cabin.

After lunch we paid a visit to the big blue shed (a.k.a. Ikea). I'd not been to the new one before, and it is much larger than the old one. It was something of a research trip as I'm going to have to acquire a larger table if I'm moving to a larger house. What I wasn't expecting was to fall for a large floppy elephant (now called Eirik). Between Eirik and the dozen wine glasses I bought I had quite a collection of assorted bags to take on the flight back up to Akureyri. Fortunately I had the help of M and E (who joined us for coffee at the airport) to carry the bags into the airport before I reorganised and sorted them.

Today I've just ambled about a bit, done a bit of embroidery, eaten the occasional chocolate and processed the photos. I didn't take too many while I was in Brussels; I always feel terribly embarrassed pulling out a camera on these trips. Nevertheless, here's a selection of things that either impressed or amused me, starting with the carousel at the Winterfair in Place de Ste. Catherine. What fascinated me about this is that all of the 'seats' move, either from side to side or up and down. I have never seen anything quite like it:



I mentioned the other day the crucifix - some assembly required. This is an ivory travelling crucifix. The idea is that you find two appropriately-sized pieces of wood to form a cross, stick the arms into the arm sockets and then, using the ivory nails provided, affix the figure to the cross. It amused me greatly:



On Friday morning I went to the Musical Instrument Museum and saw a number of strange instruments. These are my favourites, starting off with a mechanical trumpet and a multi-horned trumpet. Both of these look, to me, as if they were designed by the Clangers:



I'm quite familiar with the idea of the harpsichord, a keyboard instrument which plucks strings rather than striking them. The claviharp, however, is a strange variation on the same concept:



When I told my 'hostess' Claude that I was going to the MIM she began to tell me about a strange local instrument called a rommelpot that was used to accompany traditional dances in Flanders. I'd never heard of such a thing but did finally find it. It turns out that it's a friction drum that dates from at least the 16th century:



Finally, there has to be a picture with me in it just to prove I was actually there. This one was taken at the centre for sculpture reproductions that so impressed me on Wednesday. I didn't have a chance to return on Friday so I'll just have to pick up my museum-quality reproduction of the Venus of Willendorf next time I'm in Brussels. Oh yes, and that's Rudolf the hat perched on my head:



I'm definitely going to have to return to Brussels. And not just because nowhere in the UK sells Condé Port-Royal Cherise Kirsch chocolates (which are my favourite chocolates of all time).
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I've made it as far back as Heathrow after a gentle morning's amble around the Brussels museum of musical instruments. It has many interesting exhibits in spite of its small size, plus an interesting audio track. As you walk past some of the exhibuts your headphones play you a snippet of music played on the instrument in question. Again, I have photos of some of the instruments that tickled my fancy but I can't upload them until tomorrow. The museum did make me think once again that I really should build myself a theramin... Just not in the next few months.

The gentle amble has left me with sore feet - although not as sore as yesterday, when I went on a major ramble aroung the architectural highlights of art deco/art nouveau Brussels. I am happy to say that I can now just about tell the difference between the two styles, and they are no longer merely "early 20th century" to me.

The only problem was that while I had, sensibly enough, packed my heavier walking shoes (Icelandic winters, for the use in) I'd forgotten that they need my much thicker socks as padding. I definitely have some raw bits so I should remember this in future.

On the morning amble I did remember to pick up some chocolates as a thank-you for the ESI staff, plus a couple of special chocolate gifts for friends. It was only when I was looking at the huge and varied selection at the airport that I realised that not having anyone to share is perhaps a bit sad...so I bought myself a self-indulgent box of cherries in kirsch anyway.

Hmm...having just killed 20 of the 90 minutes until check-in opens I think I shall now break out my book for the remaining 70.


Sent með Blackberry frá Vodafone
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Today I managed to remember the names of the beers.

This morning I had a gentle start, ambling into ESI at about 10:30 for coffee and then what proved to be a very productive meeting with Jacqueline, our next ERASMUS exchange lecturer. She's coming over to Akureyri in March and will be doing a week of teaching on my Data Visualisation module. We have everything planned and are both feeling very happy with the advance organisation. :)

Wednesday is, it seems, the day upon which some of the staff bring a larger lunch than usual - normally some traditional Belgian food of some sort - and today they invited me to join them. We had a very tasty pork and veal sausage (mmm... sausage...) and Brussels sprouts. They were washed down with beer, which helped; a mid-golden beer called Delerium Tremens. It tasted of light beer but was very pleasant.

In the afternoon I did my first timetabled 'Cultural Immersion' session with Michel (who previously visited us in Akureyri). After a short drive around some of the elegant art deco houses we headed up to the Royal Museum of Art and History via a most curious enterprise that operates in the museum's basement. Hidden away behind a door in the side of the building are the workshops where they make museum-quality replicas of stone sculptures, reliefs and statuary. It's a fascinating place, around which we got a guided tour by one of the artisans who was, when we arrived, polishing a bust of Voltaire. I was very tempted by a replica of the Venus of Willendorf, as it's small enough that I could easily carry it in my suitcase and it would look good in my office. I'm not really an ornament person but that was unusual enough to make me consider it. I may be heading back into that area on Friday -there's more at the Royal Museum that I'd like to see and the Museum of the Army is on the same site - so I may yet give in.

We only had time to do one of the six sections of the museum, the Gothic/Renaissance/Baroque section that contains quite a few Flemish tapestries and a variety of other little delights such as a foldable fork and a portable crucified Christ (some assembly required). The photos will follow once I get back and find the USB cable. No photos of the tapestries, I'm afraid, as they were too large for pictures to really do them justice. As I said, I might go back on Friday because I'd have liked to have done the Egyptian and the Celtic/Roman/Merovingian sections as well. This is the only problem with visiting large cities on business trips - there's never enough time to devote to the local museums! Or should I not be thinking that way...?

We then stopped for a beer and I discovered that although Belgian restaurants are smoke-free Belgian pubs are not. Even after a single beer (a Belle Vue Kriek - sweet but pleasant) my eyes and throat were burning and I had to give up.

Dinner was steak and fries with an assortment of leaves in a tangy dressing followed by apple tarte flamed in rum at the Titanic, a restaurant close to the hotel. Yummy but filling, so I'm now feeling very full and think that the only other thing that I can possibly manage this evening is to lie down and watch an episode of The Tudors on DVD.

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If I were then I 'm sure that I would be able to give you far more detail about tonight's meal. :)

I'm in Belgium (man!) so of course there was beer involved. In fact we went to a restaurant called Le Bier Circus where every dish contains beer of some sort and they serve 175 different beers. Unfortunately I can't name the beers other than the chicken supreme had a delicious sauce containing the not-so-sweet raspberry beer that begins with a 'G'. I'm rather partial to that beer myself so I did indulge in a bottle thereof. I may well do the same tomorrow.

The more academic part of the day involved a discussion with Jean-Marie, the ESI director. It was a good meeting, and we now have an embryonic plan for how to keep the ERASMUS collaboration alive when we move over to purely distance learning- so I've now satisfied my desired academic outcomes for this visit.

Lunch was at a local Italian restaurant (a HUGE mushroom risotto with more types of fungus than I've ever tasted before) and then my hostess, Claude, showed me around ESI this afternoon. She then led me on a short tour through Revolutionary Brussels. I must admit that prior to this visit my knowledge of Belgian history was confined to events in 1815, 1914-1918 and 1939-1945, so the cultural side of the exchange programme is also being fulfilled. I've got two more city tours planned for the next couple of days which will continue in that vein.

And I'll also do some more independent cultural studies. Into more of the fruity beers.

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I successfully got here in one piece.

We were slightly delayed on the way out of Heathrow but the flight itself was shorter than the Akureyri->Reykjavik flight, which does somewhat put the distances involved into perspective. Not many books that appealed at the airport though - I eventually picked up Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs & Steel and Michio Kaku's Parallel Worlds. I'm really waiting for MK's Physics of the Impossible to come out in paperback but this will do for starters.

My hotel is basic but clean and comfortable and close to ESI. ESI is the computer science section of the Haute École de Bruxelles and is our main Erasmus partner. I've spent my day learning about the governmental and education system in Belgium (the word 'complicated' is insufficient in terms of descibing this situation). After that I paid a visit to the main school for translators and interpreters, also part of HEB. Given that there's so much more interest in Iceland joining the EU nowadays I can see HEB having to add Icelandic to its language selection.

Although the hotel doesn't have wifi something else nearby does. It's slow, but it's enough to blog. :)

I'm just back from my first evening of sightseeing - the Christmas Market in the Place Sainte Catherine, It was rather fun, lots of lights, stalls, food stands (my sense of smell eventually forced me to buy a cone of chips), an artificial ice rink, the most astounding carousel upon which every 'seat' was in a moving object - I particularly liked the skeletal pterodactyl and the biplane - and a large ferris wheel. I have photos but forgot to bring the USB cable with me. My original plan was to do some Christmas shopping there, but as it turned out all I bought was a hair barette made from many different types of wood and a hat.

Oh yes, the hat. It was an expensive hat but it's just the sort I've been looking for and besides, I don't have a partner to buy me big birthday presents so I just have to buy them for myself. Rudolf the hat (for it is made of reindeer skin) is an appropriate shape to not only fit my oversized head but also to be wearable if I have my hair tucked up in a stylee. For my ID friends, Rudolf is probably a distant cousin of Pepe, although I could add a spike and he'd make excellent Mongol Horde Headgear.

After an hour and a half of wandering I headed back to the hotel and, using my dead reckoning navigation skills, took a short cut. Clearly the Force was with me because I not only got back to the hotel but found the games shopon the way. I'm getting quite good at accidentally locating the games shops in new cities. Reykjavík Compiegne, Colchester, London, Brussels... The result is that I have another new card game to take back with me (Coloretto. Not a bad haul for day 1.

Now I'm back at the hotel and nursing my shoulder. Unfortunately while my legs are quite happy to walk for hours my shoulder becomes very painful after about an hour, particularly if I'm wearing a coat. There's clearly somethine strange and biomechanical going on, but right now it is in need of a hot shower and a lot of relaxation.

Labels: brussels

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