Malin

You don't see the skulls? They don't look overly emo/goth to me. It's just a nice little detail.

Not really, but then I have really poor eyesight. I can make out something sort of skull-shaped on the brown one, if you tell me it's there.

I'm not wearing sandals right now because it's October in Norway, and I do have limits. Otherwise, though, not actually too far wide of the mark.

October in Norway is not a good time for sandals. Unless you want gangrene of the toes. There's already been snowfall in the mountains, and winter is getting closer every day.

 

Okay so where exactly can I get brogues (they are brogues) with skulls on the front.

Have you suddenly gone Goth? You might want to check Arkaden, they have all that emo/goth fashion stuff.

I am totally a grammar nazi, so much more so now that I work as an English and Norwegian teacher and come across poor use of grammar in two languages nearly every day.

Testosterohne's use of the adverb personally is incorrect, but really hasn't been bugging me as much as it seems to have been annoying Mark. Being Mark, and a sometimes overly pedantic and patronizing person (I should know, as his long-suffering and extremely awesome wife :wink: ), he may have expressed himself in a patronizing and overly pedantic way. As he frequently does.

Congratulations on you wedding, Tom. Sorry to hear about the Italian bugs eating you, though.

For Norway's prices, you kind of expect everything to be made out of diamonds. But it's not. It's just regular stuff that costs about as much as if it was made out of diamonds.

Jessie speaks the truth.

I come back to find Mark wears suits. WTF? This is messing with me.

Mark has only been wearing really smart tailor-made suits since we came back from Hong Kong this summer. But he tended to wear suits, or at least smart trousers with jackets long before that, at any available opportunity. Although he may not have done this when he lived in London, when some of the forum-members met him in person. He also still wears his sandals for most of the year.

 

I've found True Blood amusing - even outright funny - but you have to turn a blind ear to some of the indulgences. Karen's read the books and she's satisfied with the adaptation.

I've also read all the books (nine and counting) and think they've turned the show into an interesting adaptation. Since the books are first-person narrated, the show had to change things, as you simply can't see everything from one person's POV on telly, without it becoming a very boring show indeed. Some of the additions the creators have made, such as vampire Jessica, are awesome.

On an entirely different note, my new fluffy entertainment show is Castle. I'm so glad Nathan Fillion finally found a show that got renewed past its first season.

Rule of thumb: think of a foodstuff. Is it delicious? Does it bring you joy? If the answer is "yes", Pål is almost certainly allergic to it. If the answer is "no", Pål is merely probably allergic to it.

- Mark

The idea of being married to someone you love for ever.

That's rather lovely, Ade. I will second that.

 

Maybe we should all just listen to Malin, then, because she's probably better qualified to determine this than anyone else I've seen on this thread. Well done, Malin!

Not sure if I should feel slightly patronised here, does expressing my own (and that of two of my friends) opinion about the attractiveness of Tennant really deserve a "well done"?

Mark's right though, he wasn't in any way attractive to me before he was on Who, and I did think he was very gawky-looking in that first glimpse of him at the end of season one (Mark says it's season twenty-seven, but he should let me post in peace! ).

 

Yeah. The new Doctor is arguably even more of a chick magnet. Plus the New Who companions seem to have been chosen to appeal to women just as much as (or more than) to men.

Says who? Matt Smith is just funny-looking, I really don't see much appeal in him at all. This might change when I see him act, but judging purely from photos, Tennant will still be the Hot Doctor. The new companion is well pretty, though.

That's a really nice skirt, Jessie. It suits you.

My condolences, Josh.

 

Currently I'm "getting" Pushing Daisies for my sister. Any good?

I like it a lot, but some people find it overly cutesy.

I'm getting married.

 

On the 25th September.

Congratulations! That's great news, Tom.

Thanks for that, Malin, that was really interesting. I wouldn't have expected Moscow to suck. How much time did you spend in Russia?

We spent 3 and a half days in St. Petersburg, one night on the train from St. Petersburg to Moscow, 2 days in Moscow, 4 nights and days on the train from Moscow to Irkutsk, one day in Irkutsk (although most of that day was spent traveling to Lake Baikal and back), and about one day on the train before we got to the Mongolian border. Moscow was by far my least favourite of the whole trip. It was probably a combination of the excessive heat, the fact that I was very tired those two days, and that everything was VERY expensive.

Now I'm an eeeeeeeeevil history teacher

I briefly considered doing my degree in Evil History, but after some thought, played it safe and boring, and went for a Medieval History degree instead. :wink:

The whole trip was absolutely ace. The only bit that I didn't enjoy so much was Moscow, which was big, ugly and even more expensive than Norway. St. Petersburg was lovely, and full of beautiful art and architecture. Most of the trains were surprisingly comfortable, especially the train from Moscow to Irkutsk. If anyone is ever planning on doing long-distance train travel in Russia, make sure you get tickets on one of the trains with names. We were on the "Rossiya", and there is also the "Baikal". These are new, really luxurious trains, with comfy berths, air-conditioning, an electrical socket in the cabin so we could easily charge all our gadgets, radio, and even a TV. Not that we watched the TV much, as it was all in Russian (hilariously dubbed with the original American still audible underneath the Russian). My friends and I would happily have stayed on that train all the way to Vladivostok. The only downside was the lack of a shower. After 4 days and 3 nights on the train our hair was extremely grimy, but apart from that, we were fine.

Lots of beautiful scenery, especially very green beech wood. Also, houses in the Russian countryside appears to come in two varieties - either the unvarnished wood look, or painted in some delicate shade of lime/mint/turquoise. We actually lost count of the many mint green and turquoise houses we saw. They occasionally come in other colours too, but this seems to be the most prominent colour choice. We found it very strange. The Ural Mountains are NOT mountains, merely hills, this was a disappointment. We didn't get to see good mountains until we got to Mongolia, although there were some around Lake Baikal.

Lake Baikal was stunning, and unbelievably huge. We were there on a really sunny day, and it was just clear as glass and absolutely beautiful. We saw Baikal seals (among the only fresh-water seals in the world) both frolicking in the lake, and performing in a trained seal show. They were very adorable.

The border crossings between Russia and Mongolia and Mongolia and China were probably the least fun of the whole trip. Each crossing took over 7 hours, during which, for most of that time, the air-conditioning on the trains was turned off, the toilets were locked, and no one was allowed on or off the train. We also had to fill out a huge amount of paperwork, both to leave one country and enter another.

Mongolia was absolutely ace, even if I managed to lose my nearly brand-new prescription sunglasses on the train from Moscow. Ulan Bator is certainly not going to win any prizes for beauty, but it's not as ugly as I'd been led to believe, either. A lot of old, Soviet-style, run-down architecture, with tons and tons of new buildings being put up everywhere. It was a shabby place, but everyone there was incredibly charming, and absolutely everything was dirt cheap. It's not a country to visit if your vegetarian, as Mongolians barely eat vegetables. All the places where we ate had veggie options, but they were extremely limited. Vegans would die. I don't think there was a single vegetarian option that did not feature a lot of cheese and/or egg. It also helps if you like mutton. So much mutton.

Beijing was also extremely impressive, and as Mark said, the food was great. A little bit on the too spicy side for me, occasionally, but still really good. I have no idea what they tried to feed you, Lou, but I can be quite picky at times, and I had no trouble finding tons of delicious options on every menu we encountered. China was also very hot, and Beijing was extremely smoggy. During our 5 days there, we got to experience torrential rain, and extreme heat and humidity. We explored the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, the Great Wall, a large number of markets and narrow back alleys and ate at a variety of restaurants.

Hong Kong was also an experience, and I'm very glad we flew there, as my friends and I were getting pretty sick of trains by now. We were only in Hong Kong for 4 nights and 3 days, so had to try to see as much as possible in little time. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't great when we were there, we had a typhoon on the Saturday night, which meant that part of Saturday afternoon and evening and much of Sunday was very rainy. Hong Kong also had excellent food, and very good shopping options. I very much want to go back there at some point, which is made easier by the fact that my aunt and uncle live there.

Pictures will follow. I'm still in the process of uploading and organizing them now. I think we took over a thousand, so it takes a while.

That's just plain taking the piss, to be honest. Is this something Apple have branded themselves, Malin?

Nope, its' a Iogear USB and firewire-hub. Went back to the shop today, and it turns out it was just the girl in the shop who was incompetent, she was supposed to give me a little power adapter thingie to convert the US plug to a fully working European one. Which the guy in the shop today did. So now it works fine.

I dislike that after I trekked all the way across town to buy a USB-hub from the local Apple-store, I come home, unpack the box, and find that it comes with a US power plug. Which means that it's completely useless to me, and I will have to go back there on Monday morning and complain loudly and at length. Plus, I will have to manage with the two measly USB-ports on the Mac until then.

Saw several films on the plane home from Hong Kong. I Love You, Man was a fun film, and probably the only one of the ones I saw on the plane I wouldn't have regretted paying money for in the cinema. Nothing revolutionary, but an amusing enough film, with many good supporting actors.

Duplicity was thoroughly meh. It thought it was more clever than it was, and while I usually enjoy the work of Clive Owen and Julia Roberts, not to mention some of the supporting cast in the film, I am very glad I saw it to pass the time on a 13-hour flight.

The Boat That Rocked was Richard Curtis' weakest film in a while. It wasn't bad, as such, but it really wasn't very memorable either. Again, an ensemble film, lots of great music. Philip Seymour Hoffman was the best thing about the whole thing.

Don't feel I can entirely comment on The Wackness, as I kept falling asleep in the middle of it. I'd heard a lot of good things about it, but it didn't really hold my interest much.

Have we mentioned that the last Wheel Of Time book will now be three separate novels ?!?

Yup, the fan-fic ending written by Brandon Sanderson will indeed be split into three books, so they can make as much money on it as possible. When the whole thing is all done, I might read the whole thing for closure. But on the other hand, life is short, and I'm not sure I can be bothered.

He kept his sunglasses on for the entire first half of the flight. He looked very silly.

So I'm back from my epic Trans-Siberian trip, which was awesome. Also have a shiny new MacBook Pro, which is slowly driving Mark even more out of his mind than he was previously. Now he knows how I feel when I use the old wreck of a laptop he's been using lately.

Well, I won't be around the forum for the next three weeks. Tomorrow I fly to Russia with my friends, and on the 1st of July we start our journey on the Trans-Mongolian railway to Beijing. Make sure Mark behaves himself, and cheer him up if he gets sad.

Will tell you all about it when I get back.