We seem to be lucky enough to live in one of the few places in the world where it is easier to catch public transport than to drive. The public transit is not always perfect – sometimes trains are late, metros stop due to signal failure, and buses are so crowded you have to stand. The one-day train strike brought Belgium to a halt, paralyzing a major method of transit between the cities and adjacent countries.

Usually, however, the public transport is amazingly easy. We deliberately chose an apartment that is next to a supermarket, seconds from a metro and minutes from a train station. It is just so easy to get around. I simply look at a map of our destination to find the closest metro station, and then plunge down into the network and then pop up again when I have arrived. On the weekends we can wander down to the station to find a train that will take us to a new city for a quick day-trip.

At lunch time I hear my colleagues complain about having to drive to work. If there is an accident or snow, then it can take up to three hours each way. There are heated arguments over which road rules apply and which ones are only guidelines. Even at our table there is little consensus about giving way to cyclists or how to merge two lanes. I have been told that it is generally custom and habit that determines who gets right of way at an intersection, rather than the posted signs.

It is such a relief not to have to worry about parking, or cars, or speeding, or petrol prices. I carry a monthly pass in my wallet that gives me unlimited rides on all buses, trams, and metros within the city. It is like I have a legion of carriages waiting to take me to my destination. The even put the metro stations underground so that I don’t get cold while waiting the few minutes before my chariot arrives.

Photo by Hannes De Geest

My shiny new kindle arrived yesterday by courier. My purchase was inspired by this xkcd comic, as well as my general gadget geekiness. When I left my lab in Seattle last year they kindly gave me an Amazon.com gift certificate, which I had been holding onto for something special, and decided to credit it towards this purchase. It arrived by courier and landed on my desk yesterday in a small brown box labelled with “frustration-free packaging”, with a cute little access strip.

Image from breadslice

I tore open the strip, lifted up the box, and there was my kindle 2 sitting inside the box. I lifted that out, and there was a USB cord that plugs into a US power plug. Amazon did warn me that it would ship with one, but it is still disappointing that they didn’t spring for compatible adaptors for the various countries. I peel off the sticker, thinking that the instructions were printed on them. Instead, they stay on the screen. It takes me a moment to realise that the instructions are actually in written in the e-ink used for the screen. As it requires no power to maintain the ink, the instructions stay on the screen from the factory to the customer. So I am very impressed with the screen. It really does look like the text is printed straight onto it. Whenever I change pages there is a black flash as the electronic ink rearranges itself on the page.

Image from breadslice

I plug it into my USB port to charge, and it docks straight away and acts like a simple flash drive. Unlike the iPhone that requires iTunes to add media, I can simple drag and drop books from any computer. Though, like apple, if you want to experience media from their store, you must use their hardware to do so. In addition to the proprietary .azw format, it also accepts .mobi and .txt files, while other files (such as .pdf) have to be emailed to username@free.kindle.com, where they are then emailed back in a compatible format.

Whenever I showed the device to others, my most common phrase was “it is not a touch-screen”. While the “next page” button is easy enough to find, navigating throughout the device is not intuitive. The tiny little joystick is frustrating, and the keys on the keyboard are far too small. If one is going to dedicate one third of the device to a physical keyboard, then one should make it a good one. Instead, there is all this dead space around the screen that does nothing but bulk up the size. It is also surprisingly heavy at 540 grams, compared with an iPhone at 133 grams or a paperback at 300 grams. Lab126 (who made the kindle) are based in Cupertino, so you’d think that they’d be able to channel a little bit of Jonathan Ive when they were putting it together.

It is connected to the internet via the cellular 3G data network, and does not have WiFi capabilities. US customers can access the whole web, but this option is currently disabled for international customers. To remind me of this fact, the bookmarks in the web browser still list CNN, BBC, etc, but when I select them, I get an error message. The electronic instruction manual also has not been modified to reflect this, so it still talks about nifty features, such as google and blogs, even though they are disabled in my region (“due to local restrictions, web browsing is not available for all countries”).

The kindle can hold 1500 books and gives me unlimited online access to Wikipedia without any further charges in over 100 countries in Europe, the USA, Japan, India, Brazil, South America, Australia, and NZ. It comes with an integrated version of the New Oxford American Dictionary. The battery lasts for fourteen days when wireless is switched off, and for four when wireless is on. I can play Minesweeper and GoMoku. I can transfer any of the 20 000 free books from Project Gutenberg via a USB connection with my computer, or purchase any of the 295,865 books, 54 newspapers, or 33 magazines from the Amazon store.

Image from B.K. Dewey

It is depressing that the currently kindle bestseller is a horrid right-wing piece of rubbish by Glenn Beck (“You’re minding your own business, when some idiot informs you that guns are evil… we should copy the UK’s health-care system… or the rich have to finally start paying their fair share of taxes”). Luckily, the others in the top dozen include “Evidence for Evolution”, “Outliers”, and “The Help”. I can browse the entire kindle catalogue right on my device, read reviews, download the first chapter for free, or buy the whole book and have it instantly delivered to my kindle.

One of the unexpected delights of the kindle are the beautiful screen-savers that appear every time the device goes to sleep. From portraits of famous authors to scientific illustrations to illuminated manuscripts, these images remind me the significance of what I am holding. A whole library in my hands, from Gilgamesh right up to Richard Dawkins, as well as the entirety of Wikipedia. No longer needing to trek to specialty English-language bookstores or wait a month for Amazon.co.uk to deliver, I can have nearly any book that I wish in my hands in under sixty seconds.

Image from .Larry Page

Inspired by this list, my current kindle contains the following free e-books from Project Gutenberg:

Dante Alighieri, Italy, (1265-1321), The Divine Comedy
Hans Christian Andersen, Denmark, (1805-1875), Fairy Tales and Stories
Giovanni Boccaccio, Italy, (1313-1375), Decameron
Thousand and One Nights, India/Iran/Iraq/Egypt, (700-1500).
Honore de Balzac, France, (1799-1850), Old Goriot
L. Frank Baum, USA, (1856- 1919), The Marvelous Land of Oz
Geoffrey Chaucer, England, (1340-1400), Canterbury Tales
Anton P Chekhov, Russia, (1860-1904), Selected Stories
Joseph Conrad, England,(1857-1924), Nostromo
Charles Dickens, England, (1812-1870), Great Expectations
Fyodor M Dostoyevsky, Russia, (1821-1881), Crime and Punishment
George Eliot, England, (1819-1880), Middlemarch
Gustave Flaubert, France, (1821-1880), Madame Bovary
Gilgamesh, Mesopotamia (c 1800 BC).
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany, (1749-1832), Faust
Nikolai Gogol, Russia, (1809-1852), Dead Souls
Homer, Greece, (c 700 BC), The Iliad and The Odyssey
Knut Hamsun, Norway, (1859-1952), Hunger.
Victor Hugo, France (1802-1885), The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Henrik Ibsen, Norway (1828-1906), A Doll’s House
James Joyce, Ireland, (1882-1941), Ulysses
Franz Kafka, Bohemia, (1883-1924), The Trial
Kalidasa, India, (c. 400), The Recognition of Sakuntala
DH Lawrence, England, (1885-1930), Sons and Lovers
Giacomo Leopardi, Italy, (1798-1837), Complete Poems
Mahabharata, India, (c 500 BC).
Herman Melville, United States, (1819-1891), Moby Dick
Shikibu Murasaki, Japan, (N/A), The Tale of Genji Genji
Ovid, Italy, (c 43 BC), Metamorphoses
Edgar Allan Poe, United States, (1809-1849), The Complete Tales
Francois Rabelais, France, (1495-1553), Gargantua and Pantagruel
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Spain, (1547-1616), Don Quixote
Laurence Sterne, Ireland, (1713-1768), The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy
Sophocles, Greece, (496-406 BC), Oedipus the King
Jonathan Swift, Ireland, (1667-1745), Gulliver’s Travels
Leo Tolstoy, Russia, (1828-1910), War and Peace; Anna Karenina
Virgil, Italy, (70-19 BC), The Aeneid

(I am very sure that there will be some trashy vampire novels mixed in there soon to contaminate all that literature)

So, while the kindle 2 feels like a chunky 1990’s device, it delivers on its main promise. It has a paper-equivalent screen and instant access to multitudinous books. It is the first internationally-available transbook. One day, an object like this will be the portal into every library in the world. That is why my kindle is called Atlas.

NB: As an added bonus, I just got an email from Amazon today saying that they had dropped the price of the kindle by $20, and they were retrospectively refunding me the difference via a transfer to my credit card.

Adrian’s dad and his wife are visiting at the moment, and last weekend we took them to Namur (in Wallonia) to watch the Combat de l’Echasse d’Or (fight for the golden stilt). This competition involves two teams of twenty men, with either red and white stilts (the Melans) or black and yellow stilts (the Averesses). In a ninety minute battle, the two teams attempted to knock the stilts out from each other. When the last of the Averesses fell, the Melans turned upon each other. Finally, only one man was left standing. Standing on one stilt, he lifted the other up into the air in victory. He won the l’Echasse d’Or, and will return next year to defend his title.

I am so happy that we have moved to Belgium. Everything seems to have fallen together perfectly. I have a great job, we have a lovely apartment, two cute kittens, and live in a fascinating country. Adrian finally has his own lab, and he has a team of students and staff who are benefiting from his wisdom and mentorship. On weekends we are able to explore new places and learn about other cultures. During the week we both go to jobs that we enjoy, and then come home to watch the sun set over the city that is becoming our own.

Today is our two year wedding anniversary. We met in Australia, were engaged in Croatia, moved in together in the USA, and eloped in Canada. We flew up to Banff National Park for the weekend, staying at Banff Springs Hotel. I felt like the princess of the castle.

Over the past 732 days, Adrian has been the most wonderful husband. He has worked tirelessly to ensure my days are filled with delight. He shares with me his understanding and his insights into the world. He is my best friend and my greatest support. He is constantly reminding me that the point of life is to be happy, and the dangers of using other goals as proxies if this means sacrificing ones own joy in the process.

We begin the third year of our marriage as homeowners and immigrants, adjusting to life in Europe. Adrian is now running his own lab at a major university, conducting novel and elegant experiments in medical research. I have an enjoyable job that teaches me about the pharmaceutical industry. We have time to travel and explore, to watch the city move around us, and to walk hand-in-hand down historic paths and cobblestone streets. It is a very happy anniversary.