For a lot of people, 'normal' seems to be the holy grail. A lot of people want to be normal and don't like to stick out. To me, more often than not, being 'normal' is sort of not good enough. This is certainly not the rule for every aspect of life, but in many ways I just don't find myself on the middle ground. And I don't want to either. I do too much of something or not enough. I do something early or too late. And as far as I remember, I've always been this way. Of course, there are outside pressures, influences. But if I want to be 'true to myself', this is who I am.

When comparing myself to other people, I always want to be better. Feeling 'equal' doesn't really do anything for me, unless it's aspiring to be equal to a group of people I consider beyond my level, in whatever sense. This comes to fore in the most obvious way in a sports context, where direct competition and vindication is clearcut. So I tend to try hard if I think I can be better than someone. On the other hand, if it is obvious that I can't, I don't really try. This doesn't have to be an instant thing, I've often times played sports with people far better and tried to gradually reach their level. But if I don't believe that I can, then I don't see why I should even try. So I don't really apply myself.

There is no way I could articulate this conviction, and as such I don't really think it is a conviction on any logical grounds. It is just an instinct that lies within. And it isn't necessarily to do with competition either. A lot of the time, the pride for doing something well comes from doing more than the norm. More, or better, than what is considered to be sufficient, or 'good'. That doesn't mean I consistently do so, my lazy side counters that instinct and often times I end up doing too little, which feels like failure. On the other hand, doing 'just enough' doesn't seem to have any kind of vindication. The only thing I feel is that 'I've done it' and it's over, because I know it is. But I don't feel happy about it, I don't feel fulfilled. There's a lot of things I've done 'just okay', like getting a driver's license or graduating from high school. But I don't feel any pride about those. It feels like I did what I had to, and had I not done it I would have failed. But I don't deserve credit for doing 'just alright'. Even if it is something that matters a lot. Conversely, I take pride in doing things well, even small things. And I sometimes remember them for a long time.

I suppose it is a passion, coupled with a fairly one tracked mind. When I like something, I immerse myself in it. I remember when I was a kid and I was just beginning to play sports. 'Play sports' doesn't really describe what a four year old, or a six year old, does. But that's where it begins. And every time I played something, like kicking a ball back and forth, the other person would always want to stop before I did. I always wanted to go on. Finally, after about the third time of asking, I would agree to stop. I always wanted to keep playing. And I can trace that right back into the present. I still want to keep playing when others have had enough. And I still want to keep doing something after others have quit. Of course, provided it's going well. I don't blindly do the same thing over and over when I don't feel that I'm getting somewhere. But that just comes right back to the notion that there is no 'just enough'. There's either 'not enough' or 'too much'. In school we used to have 'ski day', the whole school skiing once a year. I loved those days. We would be up there from about 10 to 2 in the afternoon. That was when school ended ordinarily, so ski day would too. I always wanted to stay on. This was tricky, you had to get a note from your parents saying they let you stay longer and take the later bus home. (My parents never minded, but I was never good at remembering these little bureaucratic twists.)

Always wanting to do more. Countered by a strong force of inertia. If I do less, I feel like a failure. If I do just enough, I don't feel any pay off. Then there are things I never really wanted to do, but it's a necessity. Like cooking. I do just enough and I don't even think about it as enjoyment or achievement of any kind. It's just something to get over with.

There is no middle ground.

That's it, I'm never buying that cheapass Euroshopper brown rice again, even if it is dirt cheap. Trying to cook it had me confused about when it was supposed to be done. At no point during cooking did it really taste edible, even though it was soft enough by rice standards.

I'm generally a fan of Euroshopper, they have really cheap stuff and it's generally quite good too. For instance the "English breakfast tea" they produce is very good and incredibly cheap (35c for a pack of 20 tea bags). Most tea products sell for around a buck and aren't nearly as good either. They also have low price soda that's good. But don't buy their pizzas, I did once and was made to regret it.

Yeah, very cool new offering from Amarok this week. Amarok, of course, being THE best music player on the planet the last few years and they have new releases very close to each other with a lot of innovation, this is really fast paced open source development at its finest. In the newly released version 1.4.4, Amarok has added integration with the Magnatune music store.

Why do we care? The thing is, Magnatune is a pretty cool, modern music label that signs a lot of musicians and gives them a much better deal than the established music industry (which is known to sponsor certain marketable artists through the roof while leaving the rest in the gutter). They have also taken the new medium that is the internet for what it is and sell mp3s without DRM. And they cut 50% of the price right to the artists, so you know they are not being paid in peanuts. You can buy an album for a price you set yourself (minimum is $5).

But Magnatune only has music that isn't licensed by other labels, which means none of that stuff I've ever even heard, how do I know what's what? This is where Amarok comes in. On Magnatune's site, you can listen to the music before you buy anything (you could even record it if you wanted to bend the rules a little bit), but with Amarok now integrating the collection, you can just drag and drop albums or tracks right onto your playlist, just as you do with files on disk. Hell, you can queue up all of Magnatune if you wanted to. So essentially, you can listen to all that music for free, just as long as you're online. Of course, if you want it on the mp3 player, you'll have to buy it. (Or if you want to support Magnatune and the artist for offering this.) They sell albums in mp3 format and on cds (remember those plastic things?).

So up until this point Magnatune was there, but with Amarok it's going to be a lot more accessible and a lot more people are going to hear about it. Classic example of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.

When I was 12, my family went on vacation to England for four weeks. We drove across country to Bergen, hopped on the ferry to Newcastle, headed down south to London for two weeks, spent a week on the south coast by Durdle Door, then returned to Newcastle to catch the ferry home. It's the only time I've ever been to England and we had a very good time. What wasn't quite as thrilling was the ferry itself - 16 hours of waiting at daytime to cross the sea. This is where your attention turns to all kinds of little details you would never otherwise bother with. Like the ferry magazine they put out. Apparently, people go on these ferry rides for weekend shopping (if you live in Bergen I suppose why not, although 32 hours in the space of a weekend sounds pretty brutal), and in this magazine they advertised that Newcastle has the second biggest mall in Europe (I'm sure if you check the rankings things will have changed by now).

While I'm not one for malls nowadays, as a kid I found shopping very exciting. And indeed we spent a couple of hours at that mall, I think it was our idea of visiting the city of Newcastle. The highlight of that mall was certainly the computer store. Back then, I used to subscribe to PCFormat, a UK magazine that was heavily game oriented. And I recall seeing a review for a game in the mag that truly whet my appetite for it. The game was Sid Meier's Colonization, a strategy game revolving around, indeed, colonization. I didn't buy the game, games were very expensive and definitely out of my budget at the time. Walking into that computer store at the mall - which was more of a computer game store really - was something else. The collection of games on display was greater than I could ever imagine. Not that games weren't popular back home, but let's just say that with the UK being [probably] the second largest market for games, and many of the titles being produced there, it was quite a difference from anything I had seen back home. Much to my delight, Colonization, slightly outdated, was on sale for £12 (the average markup on a game, even a dated one, in Norway was about £30).

It's no overstatement to say that Colonization was the highlight of that summer. To this day I remember the game just as well as I remember the vacation. I still had a week off from school after getting home and I spent that week eating and breathing Colonization. I would wake up at 9, start playing and get so involved in the game that the clock would strike 3pm until I felt an incontrollable hunger for breakfast and simply had to pause. The point of Colonization was to select a European power, establish colonies in the New World and then wage a war of independence against the colonizing power. The plot was the same no matter who you played with - England, France, Spain or Holland - with some nation specific twists. The whole thing was loosely based on historical facts, where it suited the game. It was about a lot more than war, however, it also involved trade, diplomacy, emigration, historical figures etc. But ultimately, it was the military strategy which won or lost the game. And the strongest military unit was the cavalry - soldiers on horses with muskets in hand. In the war of independence, the king's troops would attack your colonies. A cavalry unit which lost a battle would lose the horses, so you were left with just soldiers on foot (infantry in modern military nomenclature). A message would inform you of this event, saying "cavalry routed to soldiers". They could still fight, they were just a weaker unit now. Losing another battle meant losing the muskets, which would reduce them to civilians. If you're still reading this, you must be as mesmerized with Colonization as I was. ;)

Aaaand we're back in the present. Tuesday morning I walk out of the house, go round the back to where I park my bike, lost in my own thoughts, when I just stop and pause for a minute. Hang on, where is my bike? This is very odd, it *was* right here. I know I parked it here, I've been doing it for two months. Could someone have moved it? Impossible, it was locked. Huh. That's weird. I've been routed. Reduced to a pedestrian. I was just gonna get on my bike, but now I'm stuck walking. It took me 45 minutes to get to the tennis court rather than the 10 minutes I'm used to. I was definitely surprised. You just don't think it's going to happen to you. All my life I've heard of bikes being stolen, but it hadn't happened to me. When I moved to Holland I was hearing all about how stealing bikes is a national sport. But I had been religiously locking my bike for 20 years and nothing had ever happened to it. First time for everything, huh? I have to say I felt very at peace with the world right than and there. It's probably the mixed emotions of that bike's entire history, I so resented fixing it every time it would break down. But it was still a perfectly well functioning bike, that I had used quite a lot lately.

My insurance should cover the financial loss, but the bike being about 4-5 years old was worth far more to me in terms of transportation than monetary value. In a throwback to Colonization, I find myself strategizing now. Okay, my bike was stolen. So there's no reason it couldn't happen again. And again. And again. Rinse, repeat. So what kind of long term strategy could I adopt here? Well, in the first place - a bigger lock. My lock was fine for Norway use, apparently it was no match for the enterprising Dutchmen (and/or Dutchwomen). If I buy a new bike, which seems inevitable, I'll need a top-of-the-line lock. But that doesn't help much if they steal it again, if I'm going to be embroidered in a never ending cycle of replacing my bike, I'm going to need extra insurance to cover the full cost of the subsequent bikes.

Of course, the other option is to buy a total piece of trash that noone will want to steal, and then bang it up some more so it looks even more worn down, that's one form of insurance in itself. But then again, biking is a form of recreation to me, it's not merely mundane logistics. I'd like to be able to use it on some rides around the city or outside of it, as I've already been doing. So the idea of getting something so crappy noone would want to steal it doesn't really work for me.

Then you get on the plane. Pilot's always gotta come on the PA system. Give you his whole thing of what he's gonna do. "And here's how I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna take it up to twenny thousand. Then I'm gonna make a left by Chicago. Then I'm gonna go south by ..." We're all back there going... "yeah, fine". "You know, just do whatever you gotta do, I don't know what the hell is going on here. Just end up where it says on the ticket, okay? Can you do that?" Do I bother him telling him what I'm doing, knocking on the cockpit door "I'm having the peanuts now".

The legendary air travel routine by Jerry Seinfeld. Why do I bring it up? Consider this.

I got We got a letter from the post office today. It was addressed to "Inhabitants of this address". What about? Glad you asked.

TGP Post from today on is called TNT Post.

Then they go on to explain how they are changing their company logo from using red and white to using orange and white. Yes, it really makes you sit up and take notice, doesn't it? They also assure us that we will continue receiving mail as heretofore - their service is not changing.

For those of us still a little frazzled by this unexpected development, they bundle a little brochure with a nice new orange letterhead and lots of pictures of mailmen and mail trucks in the sparkling, new orange color. Not only that, a prepaid envelope, as they say "This one time you mail for free". I suppose if one were to hoard these letters, a greater amount of these free envelopes may actually be worth something in postage savings. Then again, I mail about 2 letters a year.

But it's good to be up-to-date. In other news, the sun will set tonight as scheduled.