Winter in Oslo has apparently started.

Autumn in Oslo

Autumn is my favourite time of the year. I love the colours of the trees. In Canada it becomes lovely sweater weather (it never really gets hot enough in Oslo to make this a relief).

A couple nice sunny days this month I went out to take pictures around Oslo of the nature.

I first went to Sognvann and discovered as soon as I got there that both camera batteries I had were dead but I got one picture.



The walk around the lake was really quite beautiful. Colours were lovely and the weather was just cool enough that walking around in a coat was comfortable.






On another sunny day I went to Vigelands Park:

my husband

 I spent about an hour sitting on the bank reading Terry Pratchett in the sun. It was lovely.

Yesterday I wanted to go somewhere I haven't been before so I went up to Maridalsvannet and walked down along Akerselva river. I got a little lost on the way there so I walked a hell of a lot more then I planned on and the sun was quite low in the sky by the time I arrived so the light wasn't that great.

These guys look way more like wolves than huskies.

Maridalsvannet- Oslo's drinking water

several parts of my path were flooded

kitty!

This waterfall gave off mist. Mist + minus degree weather= black ice. 

hurt my hand. Now it can't really do much.

I think 28th of October is the record for earliest ice accident of the season. After falling my back and hand/arm really hurt so I found the Nydalen t-bane stop as soon as possible and headed home. On the t-bane I had to avoid bursting into tears when I pulled out my Kindle and saw this:

the e-ink screen is broken and as it's over one year old there's no chance to return it. My electronics always break within a couple months after the warranty is over. This pretty much guarantees that I won't complete my 50 books a year goal this year. I was already behind but I can usually speed read a couple shorter books in December and catch up. Now there's no hope. My (absolutely lovely amazing mom) has said she'll buy me a new one but as I'm looking at the new Paperwhite Kindle it'll be a couple months before I get it.
The screen of my small cheap camera is also partially broken but it still works.
Because of my sore body and the grumpiness caused by breaking my stuff I didn't end up doing anything for Halloween. I just watched stupid movies curled up in bed. I should be doing my thesis...

Book Review- On the Beach by Neville Shute

Published in 1957 this book is about the near future after a World War 3 in which the major powers of the Northern hemisphere have obliterated each other with nuclear bombs. The radioactive waste is gradually coming south with the wind currents and this book tells the story of people living in Melbourne, Australia who know they will be the last major city on the earth.
I loved the premise of the book, a large 'what if?' scenario that makes you wonder what you would do if you knew you and everyone on earth would be dead in a matter of months. With an American submarine commander and his Australian liaison we get to see glimpses of decimated and empty American shores where they hopefully call out announcements to check for survivors.

Spoilers ahead!

While I loved the premise I didn't like the uniformity of everyone's solution to the 'what if' scenario. Apart from an initial increase in partying, pretty much everyone just continued on with their lives; making plans for their garden, sowing the field for the next year's harvest, or going to school to learn to type. While I have no doubt that the majority of people would just consume themselves with self-denial and continue on I'm sure that at least a handful of people would try and do -something-, anything. Like attempt to make a survival bunker underground and prep it so it will last until the radioactive half-life is through. I would expect a brash of suicides as soon as the news hits. I also expect there would be a religious revival and people preaching about the end of days. Just something different instead of everyone passively denying the truth until they're half-dead. One character somewhat did this by taking up race car driving near the end but he was the only one, and I'm a little disappointed he didn't die driving his car. I did, however, like that they commented upon the nonsensical actions of others and some then recognized they each had their own form of craziness.
I absolutely HATED the women in this book. Perhaps it was just typical portrayal of women in the 50s but they annoyed the hell out of me. Little, frivolous, emotional, irrational twats the lot of them. Mary was the worse of them. I just wanted to reach into the book and slap her. Self-denial can be a powerful thing but hers seemed coupled with an intense stupidity as well.
This book had a weird sort of atmosphere to it which was done well. Most post-apocalyptic books have some sort of hope in them, a vague light for the future but not this one. While the submarine was on missions around North America I keep expecting them to find something or someone but there wasn't anyone to find. Humanity was truly and completely obliterated. It's quite depressing to think about really. But I have to look on the bright side and think that nature will eventually come back and reclaim everything.

What would I do? Part of me says I would try and get with a group to build a sort of underground compound to survive in but I'm not sure if I'd really want to live 5-20 years underground. When this book was written it would have been technologically impossible to complete that in 6 months so if I were a character in this novel I would probably spend my time reading until the sickness hit the town and then off myself gloriously before I got sick.

This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

-T.S Eliot