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November is tough - and these days the weather is rain/snow and temperatures just above freezing. I spent Saturday in the office/server room to provide onsite support to our Indian colleagues who were patching our servers here in DK - from India. Talk about remote management.

Sunday in Frederiksberg Svømmehal - from 12 to 16: first a few laps of swimming, then the 125 meter waterslide (I guess it's more fun for the 12-year-olds), then steam bath, Finnish sauna, jacuzzi, massage chairs, infrared lamp treatment, and floating in the Dead Sea pool (high salt concentration). That's just about manageable.

I am now a certfied CMAS Gas Blender and Service Technician, yeah! Five hours lessons and hands-on this evening, a one-hour written test and practical exam and that was that. Now let me sniff that helium-argon-deep-air high-pressure oxygen!

My Aquatimer is back from repair - it had to go past the Richemont factory in Holland for "complete service" - it took them five weeks! So except for scratches and other signs of wear and tear it should be as good as new. Everything covered by the warranty.

Per dropped by at 1930 yesterday and helped me transport my diving equipment to Aquarius HQ in Eastern Bronx. Some heavy shit. Then I went to the swimming pool and did 52 laps from 21 to 22.

Monday evening CMAS Gas Blender & Service Technician course in Aquarius at Østerbro. First out of two parts, this time was about laws and regulations, cleaning methods in theory and practise, physics, and blending methods in theory. Next monday we do practical blending and exams and certification. After that I should be able and allowed to mix own blends for myself and others. Aquarius has a very nice and brand new Bauer compressor, continuous fill blending system, booster pump, and (relatively) cheap oxygen and helium.

Weekend! Friday evening I saw the Kingdom in Falkoner-biografen (or whatever its name is, new cinema at Frederiksberg) with Sven, Per, Erik, and Christian. I had expected a lot, since the Kingdom is produced by Michael Mann, who also produced Miami Vice (both the original series from the 1980's as well as the recent movie), Heat, and Collateral, all of which are fantastic movies with respect to atmosphere, filming (digitally filmed, fantastic night/low light scenes) and sound. The Kingdom is somewhat OK, and if nothing else I left the cinema with the clear understanding that Saudi Arabia is not a place I want to visit in the near future. But it is far from being another Michael Mann masterpiece. Good action flick, though.

Saturday I did laundry and surfed the Internet, and finished Jose Saramago's Seeing, which is the sequel to Blindness. Highly recommened. See my book page for a bit more info, or read this review from the Guardian.

Sunday I slept till 11, had a quick breakfast, and then went to check out the last day of BogForum2007, the large Annual Book Expo in Copenhagen, with the participants of 550 authors, 180 different publishers, and an estimated number of 25-30.000 visitors over the weekend. There was quite a number of interesting things, fx new titles by Jonathan Franzen, Nick Hornby, Ib Michael (the sequel to Blå Bror, I forgot its name), and tons of stuff I would never even consider buying. And except for the fact that I like to hang out with other elite literate book lovers ;-) I actually prefer to go book browsing in book shops instead - the noise/signal ratio at an expo like this is simply too high. On the way home I stopped by Illum at Strøget and did some quick grocery shopping in their very nice Irma - the first time I'm there. It's actually compareable in both size and quality to the one in Amager Centret.

Pretty pictures here and here!

Close but no cigar :-(

Danish centre-right government stays in power after yesterdays elections. Read more and more on BBC.

I see 2 possible positive aspects of this: either the new constallation will be so unstable that there will be a new election shortly. Or they will do everything to stay in power, hence having to accomodate more of New Alliance (pro immigration, pro road taxing, pro increased foreign aid, pro flat tax) core ideas, and let Danish People Party more into the cold, where they rightly belong.

Yesterday in Copenhagen: dry but rather cold weather. At 6 pm I met with 11 former Mobilix/Orange/Telia colleagues for dinner at Mad klubben in Store Kongensgade near Kongens Nytorv. Nice place - friendly very much down to earth atmosphere and good food and wine to easy-to-understand prices (1 course 100 DKK, 2 courses 150 DKK, 3 courses 200 DKK and so on).

Today Tuesday is election day!

Yesterday night Jiri Kylian's Silk & Knife in the Danish Royal Theater at Kongens Nytorv - and what a show! Fantastic performance and highly recommended. Training starts today (and you should book your tickets tomorrow!)!

Today the weather is very nice - sunshine and clear blue sky - but cold. A long walk in fresh air along Amager Strand - and now it's snowing outside!

A few weeks ago I went with Sven to visit Østerbro-based CMAS diving club, Aquarius. We have been looking for a club to join for quite a while - as opposed to diving with the commercial based dive centres - dive shops, of which there is quite a few around the city.

The advantage of diving with a commercial diving centre is that you get what you pay for: you come there and pay and they take you diving.

However gas fills are expensive, if you don't bring a buddy you get paired with somebody random - the insta-buddy, whose skill level is unknown to you, and might even ben non-existing!, and after the dive it's up to yourself to bring all the wet equipment back home (using public transportation) to the 25 sqm apartment on the 10th floor (and no elevator) and hang it to dry over doors and chairs and on the carpet in the living room.

Diving with a dive club addresses all of these issues: gas fills are cheap - both nitrox and trimix, because the club is non profit, you know with whom you are diving, because it's the same people on all the trips, and the same people with whom you swim laps with in the pool every Tuesday, and you know their skill level more or less: at least they are not so dangerous to themselves and their buddies that they have managed to get themself kicked out of the club so far, and after the dive you can hang all the equipment to dry in the dive club - and leave it there until next time you go diving!! What a joy!

Aquarius has several boats, a repair shop for equipment, a brand new filling station, plenty of space for storage of gear and tanks, a bar (for hanging out after diving) and what seems to me lots of jolly people who are more or less my own age. So after paying up (400 DKK initial fee to join, 350 DKK every three months), I am now for the first time in my diving career a club member!

Aquarius is a CMAS club, which means that they conduct their training according to the CMAS program. But since I do my training elsewhere, it doesn't really cause any problems: I can choose to dive without snorkel and without the buddy-line if I want to on non-training dives - which is the kind of dives I will be doing with Aquarius.

Yesterday we went to the pool at Vesterbro Svømmehal where a CMAS 2* class is being conducted - I brought swim trunks only, and managed to do 50 (or so, I lost count) 25 meter laps. GUE has a 275 meter in 14 minutes requirement, Aquarius themselves have a 500 meter no time limit requirement - I comply fine with both of them. And swimming is a nice workout on top of that.

I didn't make it to the Trentemoller concert in Vega, but I managed to get invited to a private champagne after party at Frederiksberg afterwards. Driving through Copenhagen looked like New Years Evening 2 months early- lots of people on the street. But okay, it's Friday, salaries have just been paid out, the X-mas beer from Tuborg launches today, and the weather is decent. Of course people want to go out. Saturday morning up to a fantastic sunshine, nice late breakfast, the newspaper, and no plans for the rest of the day. And it's not even Sunday yet!

Ps. Diary entry in English as a special courtesy to my international readers - in November only!