It's weird how things work out, but now I'm in the US at my friends Jesper and Kianna (and their 2.3 kids). They have a huge house and Jesper's been nice to offer his office as temporary quarters for me.

The flight here went surprisingly quick, considering it was nine hours of doing nothing. The inflight films (worth watching) were "007 - Casino Royale" and "The Prestige" The first one was of a very poor quality and the other I've seen. So I ended up talking with Jean in the seat next to me for at few hours.

She was moving back from Denmark (some little village outside of Svendborg) where she's lived for a year with her husband who works for Mærsk. Anyway, she got fed up with small-town Denmark (and who can blame her :o) and needed to go back to the states for a couple of months to get some work done. She does a bit of web designing and often needs a hand with the back end, so by chance I got to do a bit of networking there :o)

In Seattle (Tacoma) airport things went smoother than I expected. Immigration was more or less a breeze (compared to getting into Bahrain) - identify luggage, re-check luggage and go to the gate. Half an hours wait and into the smallest commercial aircraft I ever saw. only three seats pr. row and only 10 rows. I was close to laughing out loud, when a few minutes after take-off the flight attendant said: "The 'fasten seat belts'-signs have now been switched off and you're free to move around in the cabin"

But the flight to Portland was quite fabulous scenery-wise. We flew right past Mount St. Helens in the sunset. It sort of stuck up in the middle of some low mountains, had snow on its sides and everything - just beautiful. I hope I get to take a picture of it when I go back, but my only camera is my phone .. which I'm "kindly asked to keep turned off for the entire duration of the flight". Maybe I should see if I can find a camera over here... hmm

In Portland baggage-claim is open to the public - anybody can walk in, get someone else's luggage and leave with it. Nobody took mine, and ten minutes later Jesper picked me up, and we were at his house at 4 AM on my clock. So I got a few beers and some dinner at went to bed at 9 AM (still my time) and 8 hours of sleep later, I'm on West Coast time and not jet lagged :o)

Today is supposed to be about relaxing a bit and the rest of the week should be spent working on our masters project. Next week we're going skiing, but I'll see if I can write a bit on that later.