perspective, birds, cats...and latex

it was one week ago that my plane landed in iceland, give or take 2 hours. i like it here. slowly i’m getting used to the place. i’m not sure yet, maybe it’s too early to judge, but i think i might have found here the place i’ve been looking for in france. i’ll just write some more impressions, nothing coherent, just some thoughts.

one striking feature here is the landscape. due to the lack of tall buildings and the relative flatness of the terrain (at least in my side of town) you can always see the horizon far, far away; and somehow the clouds are so low you have the impression of being closer to the sky. it’s really nice here when the sky is clear (and even when it’s cloudy it still seems majestic). and the buildings and trees seem to be scattered in a random fashion, unlike in grenoble, in neatly engineered rows; this makes the landscape seem wild and primordial.

the day before yesterday i saw a bird flying upside down. i’ve always believed this to be impossible. there were actually two of them, crows or ravens as much as i can tell. and one was chasing (courting?) the other. when it would get above the other this latter one would always do a corkscrew maneuver, several times in a row. stupid drunken icelandic birds.

the only animals i’ve seen apart from birds are cats. i was told there are quite a few stray cats in reykjavik. well, it’s still better than stray dogs. especially the ones that live in bucharest and feed on japanese businessmen. i like cats. i like cat-girls even better. hmmm. do you think if i’d take in a stray cat she might turn into a cat-girl like it happened in true love?

i’ve also started to learn to use latex (got myself some documentation too from the prof). i think it’s just like linux: easy to use, difficult to master. i only wish i had taken advantage of pete and sanyi and learn some tricks from them while i had the chance.

i’ll post some nice pics of reykjavic soon…tomorrow maybe.