Back in town after a very cold, but also very enjoyable, trip to New York. I got out just in time to escape the heavy snowfall, only to arrive in Oslo in time to catch the heavy snowfall. Yay.

New York's not at its best in January, but luckily there are numerous intriguing places to retreat to when it gets unbearably cold and windy. Like the Museum of Natural History, where I visited the Petra exhibit (excellent research), and the dinosaurs (whatever happened to the Brontosaurus?). Like movie theatres, where I saw the slightly overrated, but still entertaining, Mystic River. And like all the coffee shops, diners, delis, and restaurants that make New York such a fantastic (and dangerous) place for a food lover like me.

The flight back was one of those truly enjoyable flights that are all too rare, and very precious. The plane was almost empty, and I had an entire row to myself. The new Airbuses (the captain proudly announced that SAS, the airline, has eleven of them - each with a price tag of $150 million) also have exterior cameras (one pointing forward, the other down) which you can access via the seat back touch screen - great fun during take-off and landing, not so much when you're ten kilometres above the Earth, on a cloudy night. Lastly, the direct flight from New York to Oslo only takes around seven hours, which isn't bad. All in all, it was one of those everything-goes-right flights that you learn to appreciate when you travel a lot.

Unfortunately, the NYC-Oslo route is closing down in a few months, and it's unlikely that it will be resurrected in the forseeable future. This means that there will be no direct flights from Norway to the US - which just reinforces our position on the outer fringes of the civilised world.

And for those of you who only hang around waiting for news regarding The Longest Journey: The team has worked long hours lately to meet another important deadline, and things are coming along very nicely indeed. I'm sure it won't be too long now before the world gets the first glimpse of the second Journey.  ¶ 18:06