Mid-Way Through Norway, a Trip to Holmenkollen

Today was the first day of the Norway seminar, with thirteen attendees mainly from Oracle itself and from partners. After the seminar, Aaron Merry from Bicon kindly took me for a drive up to the hills outside Oslo, where we saw Holmenkollen, the site of the Winter Olympics, and looked out down from the hill across Oslo . That's me below, with the fjord behind me.

And how about this for something typically Norwegian..

More on flickr. It was good actually to take a trip out of the city centre, as everyone had been telling me how nice Oslo was, but so far all I'd seen was the city centre, the hotel and a few of the local sites. Getting out of the city - now you can see what all the fuss is about. Everyone over here seems to be into the great outdoors - on the drive up the mountain/hill, there were people skiing uphill using skis with rollers on; the air seems very clear and fresh and of course the view over the fjord was pretty stunning. Back in the hotel now though, after going up to the 34th Floor restaurant, having probably the most expensive meal I've ever had whilst at work (Norway is v. expensive, and Oracle are paying...), and then back to the room to update the blog.

I've got into a bit of a routine now with the seminars, where the night before usually requires a bit of work, to set up the demos, go through the slides and so on, but the second night is actually rather nice; tonight, as I said, I ended up in quite a swish restaurant - it's the hotel restaurant, so a legit choice - and it's rather nice actually to sit through a slap-up meal, reading a book and gradually getting rather sloshed. I'm currently re-reading what is probably my favourite book - "The Time Ships" by Stephen Baxter - and to make things even better, they've got BBC Prime in the hotel room, I've just watched Nighty Night, and I'm Alan Partridge is on at 10.30.

And - to top off what is already not a bad evening - I've just finished my Open World, and UKOUG Conference, papers - which you can now download from here. It's just a shame that tomorrow, my flight gets in to Heathrow at 9.40pm, I've then got to travel to Paddington, stay in a hotel there, and do another day's work in London, rather than get back and see Janet and the kids. Still, can't win every time, I'll be back on Thursday evening.