I arrived in Oslo earlier today (or very late yesterday depending on your time zone). It was a nice trip and the plane didn't shake much, despite the bad weather. The pilot on the first leg of the trip (Seattle to Amsterdam) was a funny fellow that played harmonica over the speaker system. I wish his landing was as good as the music and humor. I asked a colleague that is a nerd-pilot hybrid what he thought of the landing and he said "which one of the three? The first kick? The second kick? Or the last one, smashing to the ground?".

Traveling on business class is much, much better. I wish I had the money to use it for non-business travels, but I feel grateful I can use it for business. During the flight my seat, which has an individual "personal entertainment system", gave me an odd warning: "seat will be rebooted, please wait". I was afraid of being ejected mid-air or that the lumbar massage would stop working. Either of the two lumbar massage engines would stop working  . But it was just the video on-demand system that rebooted, interrupting my movie (Miracle at Santa Anna). It was a nice touch to see the linux penguin showing up during the boot steps and the text based progress bars of drivers being loaded, lots of flicker, one hang, another reboot, the penguin again and after about 10-15 minutes the main menu came back. The "follow the plane" GPS map also did not work - it was showing us stuck over Hudson Bay for the last half of the trip. <sarcasm>Imagine if this was Windows, right?</sarcasm>

The Amsterdam airport is a monster. From landing to actually arriving at the terminal was a 10 minutes deal at relatively high speed. I had to cross security again, but at the checkpoint I was asked two questions, welcomed and the deal was done. The difference between this and the typical return to the US is like security at the fun fair versus bank safety deposit boxes.

Oslo was cold and dark. Still cold and dark. There is a lot of snow everywhere, and it is windy too. I cannot see a thing with the glasses on. My group tried to acclimatize as fast as possible and we decided to go for a walk. Good decision, but I forgot my cap and my ears froze. Painful. The prices are more reasonable than last time I was here and I'm starting to wonder if I went to all the "sucker" places. A diet coke still U$5 with no refills, but a shrimp sandwich went for $95 kroner - about U$13. Granted, it is one slice of bread with toppings, but eats as a salad, so the price is comparable to a Red Robin meal (about $10 for a salad) as long as you drink water.

The public transport is not affected by snow at all. The whole place is perfectly functional and there are plenty of people walking around. I guess one has to get used to it or live in the basement writing software for 5 months. Or both.

Tomorrow (or later today for Seattle) we will start what promises to be a pretty challenging week. Wish me luck.