I just found it weird. There is no plot to speak of. Stuff happens, people do things, events occur. Characters appear, some part of their story gets told, then they exit again. Or, they appear again and again, connected to almost everybody else in the book, but none of what they do matters. Sometimes I am unsure whether the different events happen before or after each other, or whether they’re talking about the same thing.

At the same time the book does not appear surrealist. All the events are realistically rendered, all the people and places reasonably normal. It looks as if it should make sense.

I kept reading bits of it but never felt like any of it mattered. I picked it up less and less often, until I finally just let it lie. Unlike really bad books, which I give up on after 50 pages or so, I think I read over 80% of this one, until I couldn’t be bothered to open it again.

Amazon UK, Amazon US, Adlibris.

I’d been making vague plans for a longer bike outing since the beginning of summer – Ingrid not being much of a walker, and somewhat too young for climbing mountains, biking seemed like a good way to get us all outdoors. Initially I had thought of maybe being away three or four days, but since the weather forecasts have been promising rain and yet changing all the time, and Ingrid hasn’t been in the best of moods lately, we cut it to just two days, with one night of camping. (We wanted to be as sure as possible that rain wouldn’t ruin Ingrid’s first camping experience, so that we can convince her to do it again next year.)

To keep it simple, we went for a local ride: a combination of Sverigeleden and Mälardalsleden, two marked and mapped bicycle routes. From our home in Spånga we headed east, via Kista towards Edsviken, where we hit the Sverigeleden. Then we followed that route north, past Sollentuna and Upplands Väsby, up to Märsta. After dining in Märsta we made camp at the beach at Steningebadet (with a view of Steninge castle across the water). On day two we cycled to Sigtuna, had a bit of a walk around the town centre, and continued to Bålsta. From there we took the train back home in the afternoon. In total I think we covered about 45 km on day one and perhaps 35 on day two. Ingrid sat on a child seat behind me, and Eric got the trailer with all the food, clothes and camping gear.

The weather was just about perfect for cycling. On Monday it was about 20°C and overcast but dry all day. On Tuesday there was a bit of sun, which made for a sweatier ride, but still not too hot. There was some wind to cool us off but not so much that it would be a hindrance.

I think Ingrid found the camping experience exciting: outdoor meals, sleeping in a tent, cooking porridge on the portable stove, washing up in the lake…

Well, the actual sleeping in a tent part was better in theory than in practice. At about 11 o’clock, prime sleeping time, we were interrupted by some yobs joyriding and skidding a van back and forth across the beach. It made an awful lot of noise and the headlights came close enough to make me worry they’d hit the tent. Fortunately they stopped when Eric went out and gave them the evil eye. Then a few hours later the early morning light started bothering Ingrid, and all her tossing and turning kept waking me. (And, predictably, sleeping on the ground is not at all comfortable when you’re 7 months pregnant.) We were all pretty tired in the morning.

The bike ride itself was, I think, rather boring for Ingrid. Sitting still, doing nothing… There was a fair amount of complaining about “I wish it was evening already” and “Are we almost there yet”. On Monday, in the more inhabited areas, we could at least stop at a few playgrounds on the way. On Tuesday it was mostly countryside.

Of course, the countryside had wild raspberries, and fields of wheat and oats (“flour for bread and cakes, and oats for your morning cereal”), and grazing horses, sheep and cows. Horses aren’t uncommon around the outskirts of Stockholm but there aren’t many who keep cows and sheep here. “Normally it is horses who are in pasture” Ingrid told me, somewhat surprised.

Next year I think we will try something a bit more ambitious – Åland perhaps, or Gotland. Baby 2 should be the perfect age: young enough to not be bored by the bike ride, old enough to not be too fragile.

Snacking outside Skånela church

The city centre was way more crowded than usual, of course, but not so bad that it would get annoying (and my threshold for crowd tolerance is low, believe me). The stalls were all spacious and spread out, which made the festival area easy to get around. It wasn’t even hard to get around with a buggy.

The music (where present) was provided mostly by wind orchestras and brass bands, since this year’s Hansapäevad coincided with a wind music festival.

Instead of cheap tat, there was a huge market for traditional Estonian handicrafts: wood working and wood carving, pottery, knitted wool, felted wool, embroidery and sewing, smithery, traditional food and so on. A lot of lovely stuff to look at! In some senses I may not be strongly Estonian any more, but I do feel a strong affinity to Estonian crafts. The feel of the Estonian woollen yarns (hand spun, slightly rough, unbleached), the smell of juniper wood, the look of the traditional striped fabrics – it all says “home” to me. I love Estonian traditional textiles in particular, and wish I could fit them into my wardrobe without clashing with everything else I wear.

They had even thought of families with children. Not just the usual bouncy castles (although there was an area with such junk as well) but also meet-a-policeman, pony rides, and a lot of craftsy activities for kids of all ages: stamp your own shopping bag, draw and paint, make a paper doll with real fabric clothes. Even better, the activities were not all in one corner of the festival area. We could alternate between window shopping (stall shopping?) for me and activities for Ingrid, so no one got bored.

Add ice cream, and a fountain to splash in, and great weather (below 30°C!) and it was a roaring success for us.

This month saw the arrival of the era of Pink and Princesses.

Ingrid has never cared much for pink – whenever she mentioned a favourite colour, it was always green, and when she chose clothes she mostly went for green or red or brown. Now she says that pink is the prettiest colour and purple is pretty, too. Peer pressure begins its work.

And princesses. She’s loved fairy tales for a while, with all their magical ingredients: kings and queens, princes and princesses, dragons and magicians. Now it’s all princesses. She wants princess colouring books and princess stories, and so on.

I would be gagging already but luckily there is a Swedish series of children’s books about unconventional princesses. The first book is titled Så gör prinsessor or Princesses do that, and talks about a princess who, admittedly, begins her day by choosing a dress and a crown and brushing her hair 1000 times, but then goes on to scare away robbers, tame a dragon and rescue a prince. (Have a look at Prinsessor.nu for more.)

Here in Estonia she also found a princess book that she wanted to buy and I most happily agreed: it was full of Disney princesses teaching about manners. Snow White teaches table manners to the seven dwarves, Ariel learns about apologizing, Cinderella’s mouse friends talk about being friendly and nice. Quite a good idea. (Amazon US, Amazon UK, Apollo.ee)

I think the summer break might let the pink princess wave abate somewhat. There hasn’t been much talk about pink at all during the past 10 days or so. We’ll see what happens when she’s back at nursery.

Other things Ingrid has learned from the kids at nursery: (if you don’t do x) “then you can’t come to my party”. Social blackmail already.

Also possibly from nursery, or possibly an independent invention: roars of opposition. When she wants to be very clear about not agreeing to whatever it is, she turns to face me directly and lets out a deep chesty roar/growl. No tantrum, no yelling, just a roar.

At nursery she’d almost always greet me in the afternoon with “Emme can Majken come home to us?” or “Emme can I go home with Julia?” (often followed by “Emme you will not come with me”). Even 8 hours at nursery surrounded by people is not enough for her. Totally my opposite.

Now during the summer break she misses her friends from nursery. Luckily she has a good friend here in Estonia too, just a few months older than her. It took them a little while to “find” their relationship again, after a year’s absence, and of course we will be going home soon… but they’re having fun in the meantime.

When I look for a thread/pattern in her interactions with her friends, I see a focus on identity and comparisons. Several times they have swapped names – “Emme, now I am Julia and she is Ingrid”. Once she’d swapped clothes with a friend, which was quite funny – my brain had real trouble with resolving the situation. Majken in Ingrid’s clothes looked weirdly wrong, and I couldn’t find Ingrid among the crowd of 10 other fair-haired kids, because my eyes would always glide back to the familiar clothes.

Often it’s about being/doing/having just the same as the other girl. The other kid wants a banana? Ingrid must have a banana, too. The other kid decides to draw with a green pen? Ingrid also wants a green pen. The other kid finds a snail on the path? Ingrid wants to find a snail.

Sometimes it’s all about being first. “No I want to be the first to the door! No I want my milk first!” I find myself halving plums, and turning away from them while pouring milk in two glasses so they can’t see who got their milk first.

An interesting behaviour I’ve noticed is covering her ears and telling us “you mustn’t say that”. Sometimes it’s when I repeat an unpleasant truth, or remind her of something she must or must not do, but it can also happen when I comment on something she’s done well (washed her hands after going to the loo, etc). Is it because she doesn’t want to think about the unpleasantness more than absolutely necessary? Or does she want it to feel like she did it all on her own, not because we nagged her about it?

Myself with baby

Ingrid still draws a lot. When she draws on her own, it’s mostly people. They are now much more detailed: there is hair, fingers and toes, sometimes fingernails, boobs and navels, ears, necks etc. When she draws me, she will often also draw a baby in my belly. Not all of the body parts are always present, but I don’t think I’ve seen her draw a single tadpole this month. From blobs to mum-with-fingernails-and-baby in under two months.

Often she draws together with me or Eric. (Anything you can do on your own, Ingrid will want to do together with someone.) Sometimes it’s complementary drawing, but more often it’s parallel drawing. Complementary: Eric draws a train, Ingrid draws a passenger. Parallel: I draw a bus, Ingrid draws a bus; I draw a car, Ingrid draws a car. Quite often she will proceed to cut out the thing she has drawn.

Colouring books are not of much interest, but the princess series (see above) has a painting book that she likes. Each page has half a picture or a scene, that the kids then complete – a dinner table with no guests, or the princess’s half-empty wardrobe, or half the head of a dragon. This is not only fun for Ingrid but a great help for me, when my head is too tired to come up with ideas.

Ingrid got her own room this month, with a bed of her own, and an alphabet rug that she has longed for. She bravely said she would sleep in her own bed, but until now she’s ended up with us every night, some time in the early morning hours. Since she mostly manages to do it quietly and without disturbing us much, and there is more than enough space, I’m not bothered.

Otherwise the trend towards slowly increasing independence continues. (She gets more practice now that my pregnancy makes me tired.) She’s a lot more willing to do things with other adults, without me being present: with Eric of course, but also other kids’ mums, and her grandmother and step-grandmother, etc. Last year when we were in Estonia I hardly had a free moment; now I could nap for an hour after an exhausting morning, while she was out picking berries and playing with her step-grandmother. She’s also more accepting of my need to get things done, and negotiates around them: “first you cook a little dinner, then you read a little, then you cook some more, then you read again”.

In other news this month, I discovered brown spots on her teeth and we went to see the dentist. I was fearing the worst but there were no cavities, luckily, just weak tooth enamel. I guess she’s inherited my poor teeth. So now we’re even more diligent with brushing her teeth, and more restrictive about snacks between mealtimes. I used to let her snack on fruit pretty much as she wanted, except just before a meal. Not any more.

Favourite movies: old Disney shorts, which she could watch forever, and Fem myror är fler än fyra elefanter (like a Swedish Sesame Street). She likes to watch the same few episodes over and over again: A and 7, P and X and 6.

New and improved skills: buckling her bicycle helmet. Knowing the names of all weekdays, in the right order, in Swedish but not yet in Estonian. Cutting veggies without any help (but with close oversight) – hard-boiled eggs, cucumbers, string beans and rhubarb stalks have been great practice material. Catching a large ball, and throwing it back to me. Almost manages to make a swing go: she can make it happen for a short while but then loses the rhythm.

Favourite foodstuffs: raspberries, ice cream, blueberries (but the garden kind, not the wild ones). Anything with ketchup.

And Tartu doesn’t even have a lake, a public pool or any other kind of outdoor swimming. (That’s puzzled me for years now. A simple wading pool would make a huge difference.)

• Robins can literally see magnetic fields, but only if their vision is sharp –
• Drowning Doesn't Look Like Drowning – Drowning is not the violent, splashing, call for help that most people expect. Except in rare circumstances, drowning people are physiologically unable to call out for help. The respiratory system was designed for breathing. Speech is the secondary or overlaid function. Breathing must be fulfilled, before speech occurs.
• New York Magazine: Parenting – All Joy and No Fun – Why parents hate parenting, and the difference between moment-to-moment happiness and a long-term purposeful life.
• Analysis of the "Flash Crash" – An analysis of the May 6th stock market abnormalities, that is both simple and seems to make perfect sense.
• An Introduction to Drilling Offshore Oil Wells –

We flew to Tallinn yesterday and spent the first day and night with an old friend of mine in Tallinn. This afternoon we took the bus onwards to Tartu, where we’ll be staying the majority of our time here, almost two weeks. We were met by proper high summer weather: 30°C heat alternating with thunderstorms. (It’s pouring down outside now, and finally cooling a bit, after several very unpleasant hours of sticky, sweaty heat.)

In Tartu we’re renting a guest apartment. Somewhat to my surprise, there were a number of such apartments on offer in Tartu. I picked the cheapest one, not so much because it was cheap (although that also mattered) but mostly for its convenient location.

Given the price and the apartment’s non-commercial landlord (the Estonian Society of Naturalists) I wasn’t expecting a high standard. And that’s fine – I don’t need fashionable furnishings or cable TV. I wanted a kitchen, a bathroom, and an internet connection. This apartment promised all three, and technically delivers all three. I have no complaints about the internet connection, and the bathroom looks reasonable. (Although I’ve yet to investigate the quality of the hot water supply). But the kitchen really surprised me on the downside. I mean, if someone rents an apartment rather than staying at a hotel, it’s probably because they want a kitchen, right?

I can understand that someone of the older generation might consider a microwave oven to be a non-essential item. I can live with that. But this kitchen has a stove from the 1970s, with those black iron hotplates, dreadfully slow – and no kettle to compensate. Dinner tonight took forever; I’d lost the habit of turning on the stove as soon as I’ve decided that dinner will be needed.

Tomorrow we will go shopping for essential kitchen equipment:

• A kettle, so that we can cook pasta in under half an hour
• A pair of scissors
• A potholder or two
• Salt (of which there was some, but there was so much rice in the salt shaker that I barely managed to get any of it out)

Still, I’m not unhappy, given the price of this place. The next cheapest place cost double, and several other guest apartments cost triple the price of this one. Even the kitchen investments will cost me no more than two nights’ price difference to the next apartment on my list.

Then suddenly he finds out that magic is real, and he can learn to be a magician. Instead of going to a normal college, he goes to a magical one, and does indeed learn magic. But magic has no magical power to make him happy. Magic gives you power, but without anything meaningful to apply that power to, a magician’s life can feel as meaningless as anyone else’s.

Ordinary people given magic remain ordinary. They make stupid decisions, make messes of their lives, make nothing of the opportunities they’re given. They long for something, and when they achieve it, realize it’s made them no happier.

This may make a great truth but it does not make a great book. Or perhaps it makes a great book, in some literary sense, just not one that’s fun to read. In fact, despite all the magic, it was ultimately a depressing book. Or perhaps it was depressing because of the magic? We expect fantasy literature to show us something magical, something different from this world. And here’s a so-called fantasy book that tells you that you ain’t gonna get it. Because of this, I suspect that people who don’t normally read or like fantasy are more likely to enjoy this book than fantasy readers.

I also found the storytelling in The Magicians unsatisfying. There is a lot of “tell, not show”. The world, the characters, the action, all remain at a distance, and I never get that sense of being transported into a different reality. A charitable interpretation would be that Grossman makes the book mirror Quentin’s state of mind. Just like Quentin always feels that he’s never really part of the world, that surely there should be something more to life, the reader feels the same about the book. Unfortunately I don’t think this is the case: indulging in weak writing just to make a point would be going too far. So I think it’s just a case of slightly weak writing.

There are some great ideas and some excellent scenes, and I kept hoping (like Quentin) that something would turn the whole thing around, but it never happened. A promising but unsatisfying book.

Amazon UK, Amazon US, Adlibris.

Downstairs has a kitchen, a living room, a large bedroom, a bathroom, a weird room behind the bathroom, and two hallways. Upstairs has two smaller rooms and a toilet. Until now we’ve really only lived downstairs. One of the upstairs rooms has served as a library, with bookshelves along all walls, and also housed many of the plants that we brought with us from London. The other room has basically been a transit warehouse for unpacking and sorting books, but it’s occasionally doubled as a guest bedroom. (We tend to refer to it as “the room with the boxes”.)

We know we will have to vacate the downstairs bedroom for the refurbishment some time later this year. It’s not imminent (we haven’t even got planning permission yet) but it is certain to happen some time within the next half a year. We also think that Ingrid might get more and better sleep if she doesn’t have to share a bedroom with a (possibly rather noisy) baby.

Circumstances led to it all happening on Midsummer’s Eve. We were recently given a child bed that Ingrid’s cousins have outgrown; we recently found time to sort through the last few boxes of books; we had guests coming for a Midsummer barbecue whom we could ask for help carrying the beds upstairs.

Unfortunately carrying our king-size bed upstairs turned out to be impossible: it just won’t fit up the staircase. Eric and I ended up sleeping on our guest mattresses instead. It all felt like a makeshift camp: us sleeping on mattresses on the floor, Ingrid sleeping next to piles of boxes and a bunch of plants that we haven’t gotten around to moving yet.

And, after bravely promising she’d sleep on her own in her own room, Ingrid tottered into ours at about 2 o’clock. Then she proceeded to toss and turn and climb around for what felt like an eternity. I guess everything felt strange and out of place. After a while Eric gave up and moved out to Ingrid’s room; after about an hour Ingrid finally settled in, too. All in all, it was the worst night’s sleep we’ve had in many months.

Tomorrow we’re going emergency bed shopping. (IKEA was closed today because of Midsummer’s Day.) Then we’ll do some cleaning up in Ingrid’s new bedroom, to make it feel less like a warehouse. But the new master bedroom is going to feel like a camp for the next half a year, or however long the refurbishment will take. After all, we will have to squeeze in all the important parts of a bedroom in addition to all the bookshelves that are there now.

Does anyone need/want a wooden base spring mattress (resårbotten)? IKEA Sultan something or other, 160cm, medium hard, bought in 2002, only rarely jumped on.

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

He first expressed this in Unhappy Meals, an essay in NY Times Magazine back in 2007. I found myself agreeing so strongly with everything in the essay that I bought the book. Then I read the book, and again I found myself vigorously agreeing with every single page. This is such a sensible book that I wish it was mandatory reading for everybody. In fact just skimming through the book now while reviewing it makes me want to re-read it.

Part 1 of the book talks about “the age of nutritionism”: how food was reduced by scientists to collection of nutrients, which we’re always told to eat more or less of. Great news for the producers of processed foods – and bad news for us, since instead of just enjoying our food, most people are confused, obsessed and worried about what they eat. Unfortunately all this advice rests on a very weak foundation – the last few decades’ prevailing advice to “eat less fat” was essentially a huge experiment, and is now looking like a failure.

Part 2 talks about “the Western diet”: how our relationship to our food has changed over the last 150 years. We’ve gone from whole foods to refined, from complex food chains of wide variety to simple monocultures, from quality to quantity, from leaves to seeds, and from food culture to food science.

Part 3, “Getting over nutritionism”, goes back to those seven words of advice and expands them into more tangible pointers. What does it mean to “eat food”? How can you help yourself not eat too much?

For a contrarian viewpoint, check out In Defense of Food Isn’t About Nutrition (a review), according to which Pollan’s book is mostly “the desire to show off beating out scientific thinking”.

Amazon US, Amazon UK, Adlibris, Adlibris (Swedish translation).

Back starting to ache? Check.
Fast walking starting to become difficult? Check.
Baby kicking around like a nutter? Check.
Body starting to look a bit less bony? Check.

Been there done that.

Whenever I have to buy something expensive, I have to overcome a slight internal resistance – even though I know that we need it, and that we can afford it, and that it’s not worth buying a cheaper alternative, because you get what you pay for (most of the time).

Spending money is a little bit easier when it feels like a long-term investment, like a bicycle, or winter boots, or a computer. Even then, though, it takes a bit of an effort. The hardest for me is to buy things that seem frivolous, that I like but don’t really need. One winter scarf is perfectly enough, so even if I see another really pretty one, it’s unlikely that I will buy it.

Or fruit. There is a part of my brain that insists on telling me that apples for 19.90 SEK/kg are perfectly good fruit, though slightly boring, and there is no need to splurge on grapes for 49.90.

Lately, though, I have begun to train myself to ignore that part of the brain. If there’s one thing in my everyday life that I really enjoy, it is simple, fresh, good-quality food. Often when I look back at my day and think about the highlights, it’s the freshly baked bread, or the cereal with fresh strawberries, that comes to mind.

And it’s not like we cannot afford it. For various reasons, we do not spend money on a car, or eating out, or alcohol and cigarettes, or movies and such. We run a not insignificant surplus every month.

So now, when I feel like eating the season’s first Swedish strawberries, 60% more expensive than the Belgian ones, I just do it. (I’ve nothing against Belgians, but their strawberries are a poor substitute for the real thing.) When the veggie stand down at Spånga Square has in-season Pakistani mangoes at exorbitant prices, I barely hesitate. (They keep a few of them in a small box right next to the cashier, with a hand-written sign describing them as “the best fruit in the world”.)

• Hot Dog Security – Two of my favourite common-sense bloggers find each other.
• Being an Emotional Minority – We all seem to outgrow our own emotions. The things I held sacred in my youth are no longer so. This seems to happen not just to individuals, but to the whole human race. As we have become more rational, many superstitious and prejudiced beliefs and rituals have faded away.
• NY Times: The Evolution of the World Cup Ball – What I've always thought of as "the" football is apparently the official ball of the 1970 world cup.
• WSJ: The Oil Disaster Is About Human, Not System, Failure – A letter to the editors detailing a sequence of mistakes and obvious red flags, ignored by the engineers at the Deep Horizon rig.
• The Burger Lab: How to Make Perfect Thin and Crisp French Fries – A detailed investigation into the art of making French Fries

There has been a lot of drawing and writing going on this month. Almost every day she has a few drawings to take home from nursery. Her drawings are very much based on schemas and symbols. She copies things that she sees the other kids draw. She tells me, “look, this is how you draw a hand”. She asks me, “how do you draw a tree”? (My first attempt at a simple tree was too complicated, with roots and branches. “I can’t draw that,” she said, so I simplified it to a green ball on a brown stick. Plus red blobs for cherries. That was accepted.) When the first attempt at copying is not close enough, she aborts and tries again.

She likes drawing the same things again and again: mostly people, but also cars, houses – and traffic lights. Often she draws them the same way, too, with just the most essential parts, but sometimes she adds details. The people sometimes get fingers, or hair, or bags, or glasses (in which case they are daddy), or eyelashes. I don’t think they ever have bodies, though – the arms and legs are attached directly to the head.

The drawings are often accompanied by writing. And whenever I write something (a note, a shopping list), she wants to join me. She asks me, “How do you write ’rubber boots’? flower? leek? milk? eggs? traffic lights?”

The letters are more and more letter-shaped, and almost always in a row. However the row can go either left or right or snake around in any other direction. Occasionally, they’re of reasonably equal size, but that seems to be a matter of chance.

Most recently she’s discovered the concept of the alphabet. She’s been singing snatches of the alphabet song (from nursery I guess), and found it at the back of an ABC book we’ve read.

Not all the stuff that she learns from the older kids at nursery is equally useful. She’s learned to whine: please, please! She’s learned to talk with a silly babyish lisp. She’s learned to mock others, ranging from the superior “ha ha!” to such mature terms as bajskorv, fisbajs, fegis and dumma dumma bajskorv (delivered to the tune of “na na na na naah na”). In english that would be “poop turd”, “fart poop”, “coward” and “stupid stupid poop turd”.

Pott, kann, pirn, kork, porrulauk

We’ve spoken a bit about not saying such things to others because it tends to make them upset. At some point I happened to tell her that it was OK to say “ha ha” to me, that I didn’t mind. She then generalized that to all the mocking, and I now get called “poop turd”. She says it with such joyful innocence that I really can’t get upset and have to laugh instead.

She remains an intensely social creature, and she is totally unwilling to do anything on her own. It’s not that she needs someone to entertain her – she just wants company. That someone no longer has to be me. But whatever she is doing, she wants to talk about it, share it, do it together. When she is with a friend, she is good at taking initiative to come up with activities: “Come, Majken, let’s paint! Majken, do you want to take a bath with me?” and they can entertain each other for a long time. But on her own, she’s lost.

As a result, she is quite good at social relationships and social language: taking turns, sharing, finding activities that both enjoy, resolving disagreements.

Last month it was very important for Ingrid to “win” at everything, i.e. be the first. First up the stairs when coming home, first to wash and dry her hands after going to the loo, first everything. That’s still there but less markedly.

The cycling and swinging continue. And it seems the cycling has generally made her more active. Some days she’s even run all the way to nursery. Even on the days when she wants to take the stroller to nursery, she’s likely to walk and run on the way home. (The latest game: running ahead of me and stopping, arms and legs wide apart, to make a “gate” to block my way. Initially the gates could be opened by a button on her nose. Then some required a coin, or a key. For some, just saying “please, gate, could you open” worked. Lately some gates were broken and had to be climbed over or around.)

Favourite books: the 1-2-3 series, and fairy tales.

Favourite item of clothing: her new brown Scooby Doo Crocs. Otherwise her taste in clothing is weird, tending towards a lot of layering. Shorts over trousers, tank top over dress, dress over skirt… you name it.

I love having a garden. I love our garden. Even though I don’t spend much time there every day (because our evenings tend to be busy, and because we have no evening sun in the garden), I love having it nearby and around me.

I love being surrounded by greenery rather than houses, cars or people. Looking out through the kitchen window during breakfast and seeing green grass, trees and blooming lilacs. Being met by growing things when leaving the house in the morning, and when coming home in the evening.

I love the quiet. Which is not a direct effect of having a garden, really, but a neighbourhood with gardens mean less dense housing, which in turn means more quiet.

I love the air and the smells. I like to end my day by walking out onto the balcony when brushing my teeth and just inhaling the garden. Just a few moments’ exposure makes a big difference.

At first I thought this might not be the right group for us. I’d have preferred to stay longer at every temple, have more time to take pictures, see and hear things in more depth. But then again Ingrid wouldn’t like such delays anyway, so actually the pace was quite right for us after all.

Beijing toilet, extreme version

A bit more about the toilets. Beijing is abundantly supplied with public toilets – a boon for tourists, especially when travelling with a three-year-old. Many but not all were squat toilets, and some places even gave you a choice, with a pictogram on the door of each stall telling you what’s inside – seat or squat. The toilets would not have surprised anyone who’d grown up in a Soviet country – except that the Chinese ones were always spotlessly clean. You could argue (and perhaps they do) that the seated version is less hygienic – you’re sitting where other people have put their bottoms. When you squat, on the other hand, you’re at a safe distance from any germs, as long as you can aim. Western tourists, lacking the required technique, sometimes miss, which makes for wet floors, but all the toilets we saw were very frequently cleaned. (Like every 10 minutes, literally.) The cleanest ones I saw were in the hutongs, where there were no tourists.

Travelling with a three-year-old turned out to be quite doable. It took some extra planning, effort and attention (I think I missed half of what our guide told us because was busy with Ingrid) but nothing hard. The following worked for us:

• Choose the right trip. No long bus rides (no two-week tour of Morocco). Lots of variety. Best to have a trip where we’re based in one place rather than moving every day, so we have the option to take a day off if needed.
• Make sure there is entertainment at hand for the slow moments – story books, drawing materials, etc. For Ingrid, Ingrid also borrowed our cameras quite a lot.
• Carry snacks (fresh and dried fruit) and tasty drinks at all times. Ingrid hardly ate any “real food” and hardly drank any water, but consumed a lot of sandwiches and fruit.
• Not all normal rules need to apply. We allowed a lot more snacking between meals than we normally do, and were more willing to carry her on our shoulders than we ever do at home.

Very very hot, over 30 degrees, maybe 35. I was walking from shade to shade and felt quite knocked out by the heat.

Ingrid woke early with a strong fever. I thought: that’s that, we will have to stay at the hotel and be bored all day. Nevertheless we got some paracetamol into her and dragged her down to breakfast. She’s been eating hardly anything, and especially tiny breakfasts. Today she had a whole fried egg and two croissants. After that, she was all perky and ready to go. So we decided to give it a chance after all. The rest of the day was roller coaster ride. At times she was jumping and running, other times obviously really sick and miserable, telling us she wanted to go home. Nevertheless the day went well.

The morning’s activity was a cycle riksha tour through a hutong. I found it hard to see much at this pace, especially since everyone not sitting in the first riksha will mostly see the other rikshas. It’s a good thing we saw them properly yesterday.

Then the group visited a local lady who lived in the hutongs, and got to ask her questions about her life. At this point Ingrid was feeling unwell and impatient, so I didn’t hear much of the Q&A. Instead we walked around in the street, where we happened to find a local primary school, so we watched what seemed to be an outdoors gym class, with the children all taking turns to show their rope skipping skills in the schoolyard.

It was interesting to see the hutong residence from the inside: it was more spacious than I expected, with all sorts of nooks and crannies. Almost all rooms seemed to be in separate buildings in and around the courtyard, with the courtyard serving as a sort of a hall. You had to actually go outside to get from the living room to the kitchen. Nice in the summer, probably less convenient in winter – and a nightmare to keep warm.

After this home visit we briefly visited a local vegetable market. It was crowded, noisy, and abundant. I am no fan of noise or crowds, and yet I wish I had something like this at home. Five kinds of tomatoes, three kinds of garlic, many varieties of eggs, also cereals and nuts – and fresh fish still splashing in their buckets.

Lunch was served in another hutong home. It wasn’t a real home lunch (they were obviously used to serving groups of 10 people) – perhaps it could be compared to an English bed & breakfast place – but nevertheless different from the restaurants we’ve been visiting thus far, with far more interesting flavours. (Tomato slices with sugar, anyone?)

The afternoon was free time again. Since it was so terribly hot, and since we hadn’t gotten our boat ride the day before, we went back to Beihai Park. We rented a little electric boat and cruised around on the lake for a while. It was a great relief to be in boat on lake: there was a nice breeze and the air above the water was noticeably cooler. Ingrid had a go at steering the boat (it had one speed only, and that was most sedate). It went zigging and zagging but definitely in the right general direction.

As soon as we got off the boat the heat hit me again. I had a cold drink and a cold yoghurt to fortify me, and then we went up the hill on Jade Island in the middle of the lake, to have a look at the White Dagoba. The dagoba is striking but weird from a distance, but it turned out not to be very interesting up close. It is a very large, relatively featureless white lump, and definitely looks more like it was designed in the 1970s than in the 1670s.

Then it was back to the hotel for a last dinner with our group.

• NY Times: The Naked Truth on Credit-Default Swaps – Credit-default swaps are, in reality, insurance. But the people who dreamed up credit-default swaps did not like the word insurance. It smacked of regulation and of reserves that insurance companies must set aside in case there were claims. So they called the new thing a swap. That decision, perhaps more than anything else, enabled AIG to go broke
• TEDTalks : Elizabeth Pisani: Sex, drugs and HIV — let's get rational – Behaviour that seems irrational – sharing needles etc – may be perfectly rational given the choices available to people.
• TED: Julia Sweeney has "The Talk" – Despite her best efforts, comedian Julia Sweeney is forced to tell a little white lie when her 8-year-old begins learning about frog reproduction — and starts to ask some very smart questions.
• The Tragic Cost of Google Pac-Man – 4.82 million hours – Google Pac-Man consumed 4,819,352 hours of time (beyond the 33.6m daily man hours of attention that Google Search gets in a given day). $120,483,800 is the dollar tally, If the average Google user has a COST of $25/hr. For that same cost, you could hire all 19,835 google employees, from Larry and Sergey down to their janitors, and get 6 weeks of their time.