Tollef Fog Heen's blog

I landed at Heathrow on Monday morning after sleeping crappily the night before. Flight was uneventful, we had to go a couple of rounds in a holding pattern before we could land, but nothing else, really. Transfer to Oxford was painless, and finding the B&B was easy enough with my N810.

From there on, I set out to find a place to live for the next year and just look around. I had a couple of addresses, so I visited those and walked a fair bit more too. Finding a place to rent is quite hard when you have a dog, so I didn't manage to find anything the first day, which was somewhat disappointing. For dinner, I went to the local pub and ended up chatting a bit with some locals.

On Tuesday, my feet were sore from the walking, so I decided to rent a bicycle. Halfway to the store, I discovered I had forgotten to bring any money, so I had to go back. The good thing about this was I got to see even more of Oxford and also a nature preserve. Once I had the bike, getting around became a lot easier, and I got into downtown Oxford and picked up a UK sim for my phone. I tried to top it up online, but that didn't work because my VISA card isn't registered to a UK address. As I discovered more and more, lots of bootstrapping depends on having a UK address.

I also had two viewings, one which was out in the middle of nowhere, quite expensive and utterly run-down. The other ones was nicely located, somewhat worn (but they'll paint it over) and seemed quite good. I took some pictures and discussed it with Karianne, and we decided to go for that one. I still haven't gotten a yes or no answer on it, but that should happen soon, hopefully today. Everything ended up taking a bit more time than I intended, so I ended up going to to a small cafe which was excellent, then a beer at a pub, which was fairly crap.

Wednesday, I filled out the necessary forms to do background checks and all and had beer and food with a Debian developer and his lovely wife, before again biking home in the dark. Biking here has been surprisingly easy and I haven't been honked at once. Most cars, and particularly buses are careful to go around you rather than at you.

As I didn't have all the information needed on Wednesday, I got to make yet another trip to the agent on Thursday with more bits of information before lunch in a pub downtown then the bus to London to meet up with ilmari, mjg59, thom, daniels, robot101, pippin and robster. As expected, we had good fun and good beer. I slept over at ilmari's up in Camden and walked from there back to Marble Arch in the morning.

So far, I'm having good fun here in the UK, so I think this year will be an interesting and exciting one. I miss Karianne a fair amount, but we chat every day and phone sometimes too. It'll be good to see her again, even if it's not for another week and a half.

I appear to have bought a wii. My wii number is 3042 1052 1672 0571, so if you have one and feel like meeting up, drop me a mail or message on IRC?

It's quite fun, though I think my wrists are going to hurt a bit.

What is it about all those people who think that just because I'm in Rio, I'm 20 hours off CET or something? It's -0200, if you wonder what time it is, using $ TZ=Brazil/East date will give you the current answer. Assuming your clock isn't wrong, of course.

It's been summer for a while already, but I have been busy with work and we have been busy with buying a house which we are taking possession of on August 1st. Together with that comes a zillion things to plan as well as a lot of packing (which we have barely started with).

We are also having a little bit of summer vacation. We took the train (and bus) to Molde yesterday with loads of luggage and Odin and everything. A bit of a stressful start, but it worked out ok and I got to read almost a whole book.

Today, we have been out for a walk, visiting some of Karianne's family and helping put a boat on the water. We also spent a bit of time planning what we need to do (or don't need to do) with the kitchen and two bathrooms. Not a very exciting day, but it's vacation so that's fine.

I also got an SMS from Mie (after a little bit of prodding) telling us she given birth to a small girl. Lots of congratulations from us here.

It's hard. Let's hope it goes well.

At the moment, life is quite good for a number of reasons:

• I'm in the middle of switching jobs and the new job is already wonderful, with good people and interesting challenges. Leaving Canonical is not an easy thing with so many wonderful people there, but I need a change now.

• We went to a party at Mie's and Thomas's on Saturday, which was good. Met up with some people I don't think I've seen since New Year's Eve 2000 and met some new people. Didn't get back too late either.

• Åsmund called and we had a small chat. We haven't spoken for ages and ages, so that was good. He got married back in August. Congratulations!

• Other various good news from other people.

In addition, the sun is shining I'm enjoying a couple of days of Easter vacation. In Oslo until Thursday when we are off to Hemsedal.

Some time ago, I got an invitation to go to a musical (Singing in the Rain) from a financial company, Orkla Finans. Karianne and I went, first to a presentation (and a little bit of bubbly wine), then to the musical. I liked it quite a bit, Karianne was a bit disappointed. Lots of singing and dancing and stuff, as it should be.

It had started raining a little bit when we exited the theatre and started walking home. Halfway home, an unmarked police car with sirens and lights flashing passes us, then two uniformed cars. About a hundred meters ahead of us, the cars stopped and policemen jumped out. When we arrived, a couple of them were sitting on somebody on the ground. I snapped a couple of pictures and sent them off to a couple of papers so if they decide to use them I get a bit of money.

All in all, an eventful evening.

After getting up at 0330 this morning (for some value of morning), I am now out travelling again, this time to Portland, Oregon. So far it's been fairly eventless, but I have made some observations. I think I landed in a different terminal in Frankfurt or something like that, since I didn't recognise anything there. Oh well. For some reason, I did not have to go through a secondary security check when coming in. Whether that's because of randomness or the US having changed their policies, I have no idea. Pleasant enough, though.

The other thing that happened in Frankfurt was the woman in the boarding pass check area insisted on seeing a printout of my travel schedule, or rather, that I had a return flight booked. I don't always care about those (what's the point of an "electronic ticket" if you still have to carry around a bit of paper?), but luckily, I managed to find my printout fairly quickly. At Gardermoen, I had already given my hotel address, but the not-so-nice lady demanded I give them again.

What annoys me about all this is not so much the hoops I have to jump through each time, but rather the lack of predictibility. I would be fine with most procedures if they didn't change every three months, seemingly for no other reason than change itself.

I love the mornings where as I am lying in bed, slowly waking up, Karianne moves closer to me so I feel her breathing and the heat from her body.

We got back from Brussles fine, in one piece and all with no beer bottles broken. Yay! Last week passed in a blur and I can't really remember much of what I did, except build some IKEA furniture on Friday, in the revamped server room at Freecode. Went for a walk in the woods on Saturday, as usual, role-playing on Sunday.

Work's been fairly good this week and I have gotten quite a lot useful work done and it feels like the pressure is getting a little bit lighter, at least. Not completely happy about the workload, but it's at least moving in the right direction. On Monday, I was supposed to go out for beers with two old, old friends of mine, but one of them was in London so it ended up not happening, which was just as good since I was quite tired.

Tuesday, I met up with Hege, whom I haven't seen for a couple of years and we chatted about life, the universe and everything. She's changed quite a bit, but I guess people do that when you barely see them between the age of 20-ish and 27 or so.

Wednesday, work and such and then a scout meeting. Good to see the crazy kids again even if it was a bit louder than I wanted and they have their conflicts too. Oh well, it'll work itself out, over time.

Karianne and Odin are doing well, it's fun to hear about her achievements when it comes to him and it's fairly obvious they both enjoy it. I'm going to Portland on the west coast of the US next week, which I have mixed feelings about. It's far to travel, it's being away from Karianne and it's going into the US. One of the things I am looking forward to is picking up some photo equipment I have ordered, so that will be fun to play around with.