Hills, gloves, slow laptops, good authors, evil bitches, - Nurhan's take:

Nurhan's take:

This is Kin in search mode. If you look over his head, you see a lake in the hills behind the large lake below and further back you see a flat area with white bits on it. The flat/white area is Stavanger, where Kin and I live. Folk who fly refer to this as Veraland North, but it's actual name is Kyllesknuten and it's a 40 minute drive from Stavanger. We've paddled kayaks and slept on the islands below, this is a great area and it's easily accessible (if you own a car). Jæren hang og paraglider klub, has an agreement to drive up a farm track , quite high up on the other end of the hill, and then the club built an extra 'road' up from the farm track so that the hanglider pilots could drive up to the South start. This is a ideal place to bring Kin on his first taste of hills, most of the sheep are off the hills now, there was very little climbing to get here, rough terrain and

When I was here earlier on in the year (see post regarding reserve packing), I dropped a glove, I noticed that I'd dropped it just as I was taking off with a paraglider. The black thing in front of Kin is the glove! Despite the ground being covered with snow when I dropped the glove, we managed to find it remarkably quickly. Birds/mice had nibbled at a couple of the fingers and the glove could hardly be termed as usable, but it's good not to leave a trace of where you have been when you've been out enjoying nature, so this bit of human mark has now been removed from the hill.


This could be the last ever post written on this laptop. This laptop has an 'atom' processor, laptop is a 10" Dell Inspiration machine, it can't be upgraded and I'm beginning to refer to it as a 10" Exasperation machine. I love the size, battery life is great, as is the monitor, but the more that I use it, the slower it has got; it's now gotten to the stage where to load a message from hotmail, it takes about 1 minute. Lots of the internet applications actually time out before it's got them up and running (I have a broadband internet connection and no problem with other/work machines). Thus I've been looking at new machines. I'd like to get one from a friend of mine, Colin who runs http://www.ruramet.co.uk/   Colin is a great chap and would set me up a good machine with what I need on it, however he lives in the UK and I live in Norway this causes some problems. Could ask Mads to sort me out another machine, but I haven't talked to him for several months, and he mainly does work systems. So I've been looking around and after sever trips out and trawling through websites, I've found an Acer machine that actually cheaper in Norway than it's equivalent in the UK, and I'm now waiting for one of the local company's to get one in for me to have a look at.

 These are two additional pics of Kin in the hills.

Matt, brought his kids around the other day. We were treated to Eira screaming in his dog house, after she'd gone in there and called Kin. Didn't manage to get a picture of Kin with only his back half sticking out of the dog house with his tail wagging. Every time he lost interest, Eira would wave a ball out of the entrance and call his name. I think Eira is five and about 1/4 of his size. This was rather entertaining; the girl has no fear (not that she needs any with a Newfie).


Isaac is heavier, but:

but still out massed!


Side note on authors, Iain (M) Banks, & Jasper Ffrode, have very different styles but both write wonderfully entertaining books (and I've read all the books that they have published), and I recommend them unreservedly. I would never normally buy a book called, "the last dragon slayer", but as Jasper F wrote it, I gave it a try and I was so glad I did. Another book of his, 'Shades of Gray', was hard work to get into, and I only persevered as I'd enjoyed the other stuff that he's written; but after you got 1/2 way through the book really picked up. The way I first got into reading him was that I was 'accosted' by one of his books at an airport,  "Lost in a Good Book", I bought it and I was, this did for books what the original Matrix film did for films. 


Iain Banks write's fiction under that name and then adds the "M" for sci fi. He has better and worse books. He's very entertaining to read, but he's very dark and you probably wouldn't want him as a neighbour. I'm still grinning after reading his latests Sci fi book!


Call me racist, but generally the language used by American's writing English, tends to be less rich than a British author; this is not so with Ernest Hemingway, who manages to paint a detailed picture with remarkably few words. My only reservation about EH writing is that no one ever taught him the art of, 'a happy ending'. 


Stig Larsson was a huge surprise, crime isn't a genre that I'm particularly interested but these three books really are page turners and once started I couldn't put them down. They are originally written in Swedish, I read them in English and the English translation in still fantastically rich in language, his Millennium trilogy is brilliant and as he's sadly passed away these are his only three books.


Now for a winje and wine: Bitches on heat. In areas where your dogs/bitches are allowed to run off the leads, folk with bitches on heat should not bring there dogs here. I had to point this out to a couple who had their dog on a lead and Kin chased 400 m after her and she took chunks out of his fur, the only way to prevent him going after her was to have him on the lead and the whole point in driving out to somewhere where he can run free is to let him go free. Having words with the owners of the bitch didn't make me feel good.


Yesterday met another one. A woman with three Pointers. She said that the bitch wasn't on heat, but Kin thought differently and I would take Kin's opinion over others (look at the size of his nose, I never knew Karma to be wrong and I doubt Kin is different). First she took her pointer on the lead, now bearing in mind if we use the equivalent of cars a Newfie would be like a heavily loaded Transit van and a Pointer would be like a Lotus Elise; if the dog was frightened then Kin would not have got near her had she left her off the lead. Then she walked away from me with Kin chasing her dog on the lead, then the evil woman pushed Kin sideways down a 1/2 m drop, three times. I take her point that she was trying to protect her dog; although having her dog on the lead was dumb, and walking away from me was doubly dumb- and doubt she meant to hurt Kin, but pushing a giant breed dog down a drop sideways is just evil. Kin has had a slight limp since so I am having to be careful and only go on short walks. This is the first time that he's limped and I'm hoping that the evil bitch (and I am referring to the two legged kind), hasn't caused him a permanent injury. Examined him and can't find anything he obviously reacts to but I think that he's got a slight limp on his front left  leg. Hopefully this will pass in a couple of days, if not I'll have to go to the vets and keep my fingers crossed that it's nothing lasting. a lot of the time I don't like people very much.


Lastly, this advert has appeared on bus shelters around Stavanger:

And I overheard the following conversation: "what's that an advert for?"
'Who cares!' Said with a big grin... couldn't agree more ;-P