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Tuesday 26th July

Being as I'm in a foreign country that I've never been to, I felt the need to be a tourist, so today Hixie, Kamakaze and I went to a park. A park whose designer seemed to have a one-track mind as it is full of statues of naked people. In fact the only fixture in the park that is not a naked statue (or an obelisk made up of naked statues) is one sundial. We also wandered around various parts of Oslo with some interesting architecture and visited a few shops.

The weather here has been suprisingly good so far (given how far North we are) so it was a nice day out.

Later in the day, Hixie and I played with trains.

Monday 25th July

Today, Kamakaze showed me around Oslo city centre. We did a short trip around the most important shops (ie. those that sell manga, DVDs and games) where Kamakaze bought a new board game: "Robo Rally", and I bought Megatokyo Vol. 3 (yes, it's easier to get that in Norway than it is in the UK, go figure…).

Robo Rally is a fun little game and doesn't take very long to play (unlike, say, Twilight Imperium). It involves programming your "robot" with a series of 5 commands from a selection of 9 that are dealt to you, all while taking into account the moving conveyor belts, laser beams, pits etc. in an attempt to reach a series of flags placed about the map. If your robot is damaged, the selection of commands is reduced, and with severe damage, parts of the program can be "locked" (ie. your robot gets stuck executing those commands). Of course, the other players in the game will be more than happy to interfere with your cleverly laid plans…

In other news, Voidwars Game 10 has been launched. Sign-ups are now open, join now!

Sunday 24th July

I spent the vast majority of the day playing my first game of Twilight Imperium — a fascinating strategic board game involving space combat, diplomacy, politics and trade that Kamakaze and Hixie insisted I play. I very nearly won, but Hixie decided it would be more fun if I didn't ☺, so Kamakaze won based on number of planets owned instead.

Saturday 23rd July

The trip to Oslo went pretty smoothly. I arrived at Aberdeen with plenty of time to spare, and used the wireless access point (£5 for 15 minutes — not exactly cheap, but certainly useful) to get on IRC to find out where I was supposed to be meeting Hixie.

After having my shoes checked at customs (I guess they must have looked like a suspicious pair of shoes), I boarded the flight to Stavanger, Norway. I was surprised to find that it was a propellor aircraft (and a very noisy one at that — still, I got a good view from the window which was directly next to the starboard propellor. The cloud cover was quite thick, and from above looked like a nice fluffy carpet to walk on... but I digress.

I arrived in Stavanger just in time to board the flight to Oslo. This was aboard a much quieter 737-500, and gave me some great views over the landscape of Norway (though I had to strain my neck a bit to see them).

Getting to Oslo city centre from the airport was very easy, the 'Flytoget' service runs many times an hour, and the automated ticket machines are multi-lingual.

I arrived at the arranged meeting point outside the station and waited. And waited. But there was no sign of Hixie. Eventually, I was contacted (indirectly) by Kamakaze and he came to meet me. Turns out that Hixie had decided to meet me at the airport but had managed to miss me. ☺

I'm now staying at Kamakaze and Hixie's place for the next week.