Alive in Finland

Deep thoughts by Smek the Judge

2009-12-29T08:03:00.003+02:00

I have wondered for a long time about the subject at hand. If some information has been gathered by illegal or cruel methods, should it be righteous to use?

Example A: During the horrible holocaust years in Germany, the doctors (or some "scientists") found out many things about human structure, behavior etc. Because it's illegal to study people the way they did, can we use the information they have written down? Wouldn't it be unethical?

Example B: The medicine and cosmetics industry have tested their products on animals for decades. Nowadays they don't or shouldn't do that anymore. Can they still use the information about previous animal tests although they wouldn't approve their methods? This is kind of an extension to Example A. Can you judge the others and then use their knowledge?

Example C: In a TV show You are what you eat, they set up a table with everything a fat person of the show has eaten during a period of time. It's usually full of delicious food, like chips and coke. Delicious but unhealthy. Now, will the TV production team eat all content on the table afterwards or will they throw it in the garbage pin because it's so unhealthy for anyone to eat and drink? What about the poor countries, the developing ones? Should the food be carried to them instead? Wait, isn't it just as unhealthy for them? What should be done with the table full of leftovers then? Isn't that a waste of waste, LOL?

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-22T13:08:00.002+02:00

I may not blog before Christmas, so here's my wishing to all of you! It's snowy and cold here in Finland. It really looks like one of those Christmases when I was young. It's great that it still can happen, despite the client changes. I will probably stay passive in my blogging for now due to lack of motivation. Last time I wrote about slowing it down I increased my blogging noticeably! Well, let's see how it'll turn out this time. Have a good and peaceful one!

In my darkest hour

2009-12-21T10:44:00.002+02:00

Today it's the shortest day when it comes to daylight. It's Winter solstice, according to calendar. It may not seem that dark because of the snow. It's as if the snow had been invented to shed some light on gloomy Winter days.

Don't get me wrong - I like it dark. It's just that human body and mind doesn't. I want to sleep in the dark, in a way it's my friend. My eyes don't hurt, like they do when it's light. I like it light as well, but not excessively.

If we look on the bright side, it's great that the Winter solstice is before Christmas and the New Year's eve. When those celebrations are due, it's already a bit lighter. That kind of gives a promise of better, lighter if you will, days ahead. The worst is behind and the sunlight in spreading into our days more and more every day.

It's good to have dark days though. Without them we couldn't rejoice days of early Spring that much.

December in Smekland

2009-12-17T19:55:00.002+02:00

Keskustori in December or December in Keskustori?

2009-12-15T08:42:00.005+02:00

Sorry for my lack of blogging lately. I just haven't felt like doing it. Instead I have concentrated on my comic strip drawings and Facebook. It seems that not before you have found a certain amount of friends there, it gets more interesting.

They have set up a Christmas square in Keskustori, the heart of Tampere city. It looks beautiful now with all those lights and colours, cottages and a huge Christmas tree. It's the second time around when this kind of Christmas celebration is happening there.

Tampere has organized these "Valoviikot" ("Light weeks") in every December as long as I have lived, which is quite a long time. There are many types of Christmas and Winter related characters formed out of light bulbs. They have stayed basically the same as long as I can remember; only some more of them has been added. The latest arrivals are more colourful than the oldest.

I started wondering about the girl feeding seals character. The girl has clearly a mini-skirt on - in the wintertime! Ok, seals are fed indoors in Särkänniemi, the amusement park in Tampere, but still. And isn't it a bit sexist nowadays too? Well, nevermind that. You can judge for yourself by watching the middle picture beside.

Currently I work in the center of Tampere. I use buses to get to work, because it's so damn hard to get a free parking place there. By 'free' I mean both available and costless. If I wake up early enough, I have a better chance to get one, but I still have to walk a mile or so to get to work. That's not bad though.

Now that the temperature has gone below zero, -15 C degrees this morning actually, the starting up of a cold motor engine strains the car a lot - at least according to the latest studies. One cold start-up equals to 500 km of driving. I'm trying to save my car a bit here. A 30-day travelling card (similar to 30-dagarskort in Stockholm) costs today 73 euros. It's handy but if I use the car every now and then, it won't be cheap anymore.

There's no T in Sahara

2009-12-08T08:21:00.003+02:00

I read the news. I comment the news. I criticize the news. That's me, like it or not.

In recent news there has been raised an issue about humans' growing need of water in near future. At the same time the ice-bergs keep melting away, which brings extra water. Where is the problem? Today I read that the water level on earth is going to be higher than previously expected. Need of more water in the future again to solve this problem. Why not bring the extra water into Sahara and make it fertile again? Or something just as unexpected.

Scientists are trying to combine hydrogen (2 H₂) and oxygen (O₂) not just to make water (2 H₂O) but in order to get huge amount of energy from nuclear fusion. That should not affect the balance of water still, but the outcome would be more environmentally friendly than radioactive waste. I may calculate here wrong because I wasn't brilliant e.g. in chemistry at school, but instead of using oxygen we could use the ozone (O₃). It would require 3 hydrogen molecules, but who cares, right? The ozone layer wouldn't grow anymore and everyone would be happy.

Yesterday there was a piece of news on TV which I had heard already. Having a dog costs environmentally double as a sport utility vehicle (chemically marked as SUV). Ain't that something? It isn't bad enough that people who claim to love animals keep them imprisoned - they also contaminate our future. I don't know who has sponsored that news, maybe the Hummer manufacturers or such, but it leaves us with a wider perspective anyway.

All in all, it seems that we're still dumb enough not to truly exploit the energy our Sun is dealing us every moment. Why to build even wind mills to spoil the views? Ok, the Sun will stop shining one day but it's a millions of years away still. Or hundreds at least. We could save some of it for the future needs already, if we couldn't use all of it right now. Why are we so petty that we fight for a piece of the action while the whole action is endangered?

Chitchat

2009-12-03T08:12:00.003+02:00

There are some chat applications available, like Office Communicator. Also Skype, Gmail and Facebook for instance offer chat services. So this topic is familiar to many of us already.

When I use the chat, I can see an informative string of text saying "X is writing" or something alike. That means I'm about to get a reply from Mr/Mrs. X soon. Sometimes the info text is there and then it suddenly disappears. No reply. Then the info re-appears there, only to disappear again. Finally I get a short reply, like "Ok". Sometimes there won't be any reply at all. I wonder what happens. Was the fellow I was chatting with erasing his text, then re-wrote it, erased again and in the end wrote 'ok' and pressed 'send' button (hitting the enter key also does that usually)? And sometimes he cleared his text and didn't send anything? Or is the informative text giving erroneous information? Can it be trusted anymore?

This is not the end of the world, but small things like this start to aggravate after a while. Chat is a good tool for many purposes - both at work and when you want to be a prick with your friends. I do them both, in a positive sense if it only is possible. I'd like to think it is.

On the sunny side of the world

2009-12-01T13:26:00.003+02:00

Why is this not happening yet?

While oil-producing countries are lifting up prices, others are thinking of new ways to produce energy. In the worst case, like in England, they start using old ways to do it, like setting up coal factories again. Many countries, Finland in the front row, increase the usage of nuclear power. All of this sounds pretty crazy to me.

I don't understand why oil-producing countries, like Saudi-Arabia, don't develop high tech Sun energy. And wind energy plants. They have vast areas to put up high towers and Sun panels. It's hot there for the most part of the year, if not always. Now that they still have oil (it will end someday, you know), wouldn't it be an excellent idea to invest some of it in the future? They could easily cover the energy need of the whole world, thus making electricity cost much less than nowadays. This would prevent other countries which don't have the highest technology and the warmth of the Sun on their side from competing with them. The oil monopoly would change into energy monopoly.

This would guarantee riches to some of the poorest countries as well. This type of energy is something that never ends. When the need of energy were covered, it would be easier to work for a better and cleaner environment. And leave the rest of the oil for making of vinyl records, LOL!

150 posts so far

2009-11-30T10:42:00.005+02:00

While I have been feeling this momentary lapse of motivation in blogging. I can see that there has been slight changes in reader nationalities. The number of Finns has stayed pretty much the same while the Swede count has rapidly decreased. I can't really explain it otherwise than by the loss of Sweden-related posts from me. Or natural lack of interest of Finns by them. Quite a few of Russians have also left my blog, otherwise it looks much the same as it did 50 posts ago.

Finland - 35,49 % (2./35,17 %)
Sweden - 29,61 % (1./38,98 %)
United States - 12,42 % (3./8,32 %)
Hong Kong - 4,49 % (4./5,49 %)
United Kingdom - 1,66 % (5./1,29 %)
Canada - 1,62 % (7./0,68 %)
France - 0,91 % (8./0,51 %)
Russian Federation 0,78 % (6./- 0,94 %)
Germany - 0,76 % (10./0,37 %)
Korea, Republic of - 0,61 % (-)

As it's been mentioned several times, I like statistics. Sadly I haven't received any statistics about the hit count of my blog. Maybe there isn't that many, but I still would like to know. Or else I'll remove those ugly ads in my blog. Whatever it takes, man! LOL!

It was hell, but we're alright now

2009-11-30T09:04:00.004+02:00

It's exactly 70 ago today since the Winter War against Sovjet Union started. The Russians had shot at their own village near the border and claimed that the Finns done it. That was the excuse to start a war against Finland. Sovjet Union began a heavy-scale attack and thought Finland to be conquered in two weeks. It took finally 105 days and Finland stayed independent. The Finns had almost tenfold army against them, but they made it. Support from other countries was close to non-existent. Yet Finland had to pay a heavy price for the war it didn't even start.

Today people ask if the Finns still have the same kind of fighting spirit left. I doubt it, but no-one really knows. At least I wouldn't be willing to find it out. Those veterans of the war were basically common people who had a misfortune to be young adults those days. They didn't think of being heroes; it was just their duty that called. They must have been sad times, times of horror and uncertainty. It has transferred to the following decades and generations. We can't forget the terrible things that happened. Hell, we are not allowed to forget. It will be a part of me too as long as I live, even if I was born more than 25 years later. I'm not sure if that's a good burden to carry.

Both my grand-fathers were in both wars, the Winter war and the Continuation war. They survived but some of their brothers didn't. It must have been hell to discover those unnecessary casualties of war. There probably were no families that weren't affected. Due to reasons I leave untold, I have to confess that without those wars I wouldn't be writing here. Actually, I wouldn't even have been born. Talk about coincidences of life and death.

November in Smekland

2009-11-25T20:15:00.002+02:00

Almost forgot to do this...

Series 60 - going seriously on 70

2009-11-24T09:04:00.029+02:00

Last weekend was a good one, for me at least. I took a trip to Stockholm with my wife. We flew there with an old Danish airplane, which still had propellers. It was a Blue1 flight, so that was expectable. The crew spoke both languages: English and Danish. Especially the last one was a big help. I had bought the tickets something like six months ago, thus getting them quite cheap. They totalled 100 euros. The only thing that saddened me (yes, there must be one) was that I couldn't join the Christmas party arranged by our company. It was the first time for me not to take part in it during this 9-year span of working there. I'm not really missing the missing, LOL, but it has been such a tradition to follow. Maybe I'll start a new one from now on?

My old mobile, Nokia N73, gave me another disappointment. When I started it up after the flight, it showed me the notorious "Contact the retailer" sign. It was no news to me, I had experienced that a lot lately. For a normal user, it would have been the next thing to apocalypse, but as an experienced user I know the 'secret' magic-key to force format it. Secret in quotes, because it's common knowledge in the Internet. The downside of it is that you lose all of your personal data. That's why I install all the applications and pictures on the memory card. It's true that sometimes even the magic-format won't help. Then it really is time to contact the retailer. Or, like in my case, murmur by myself and throw the cellphone away.

I hadn't experienced the Arlanda Express before. It's a fast train that doesn't stop between Arlanda airport and the Stockholm city. It promises to take us to the capital of Sweden in twenty minutes. Hell, it took even less than that! It was fast alright, but it was expensive too: 240 crowns (about 24 €) each.

We had booked a room in Scandic Alvik hotel which was a pretty good choice. Thanks to Amig-J for recommending it to us! Alvik lies reasonably near Stockholm center and the subway station is close to the hotel. The room was tidy and modern, the breakfast was awesome (there were even pancakes available!) and the service was immaculate. I'll be sure to visit there again, when possible.

The main course was of course yet to come. Another lucky break for us was the subway connection. It led directly to Globen arena. Ericsson Globe, if you will. I won't. It was my second visit to the holy place where Finland won its first (and the only) WM ice-hockey title in 1995. This was the first one to attend a concert there. The event was part of Cliff Richard and The Shadows' final re-union tour. They started together over 50 years ago and now it was time to gather to dissolve.

I have always liked both Cliff and The Shadows, together and separately, but I have never been a huge fan. But this time it was an opportunity to see them all at the same time, performing those oldies. Classics like Move it, Lucky Lips, Living Doll, Summer Holiday, Young ones, Apache, Atlantis, FBI, Shadoogie and many, many more were heard during that night. It was somewhat ecstatic, somewhat unreal to testify it happen. Men around 70 were rocking and rolling, doing those simple - or difficult but only simple-sounding - early songs. They all have an impressive back catalogue after 1966, particularly in case of sir Cliff, but last Friday it was non-existent.

My personal rock favorite by Cliff & The Shads "Dynamite" was also included. They all sang (Shadows can sing too, if you didn't know) perfect harmonies and played amazingly well. One of my Shadows favorites "Dance On" was there too. Sure I missed a couple of my personal favorites of the era, but you just can't have them all. A 3-hour-lasting spectacle with an intermission was more than enough for one concert.

Personally I was a bit disappointed in Hank Marvin's playing, but it may be that he deliberately wanted to sound just as rough as he did in his early days. Kind of refused to exploit his later skills in guitar playing. Or on the other hand he may have lost some of his touch due to his age or some illness. I don't know, really. And furthermore, he must have had to re-learn those riffs, guitar breaks and solos. Can't expect that he would have remembered all of those fingerings by heart.

The drummer Brian Bennett was doing the best job of all, if you ask me. He was in real good shape when it comes to playing drums. In fact, most of the classics of the night were recorded before he joined the group in 1961, so he had to mimic his predessor. His son was on stage too, playing multiple instruments in the background and providing great symphonic instrumentations on synths whenever needed.

Bruce Welch, the rhythm guitarist, lead singer and the lead composer of many Cliff's and Shadows' hits, was playing tight rhythm all over. It's a shame that his guitar was almost drowning in the sea of musical extravaganza.

The bass player had been playing with the group for decades, but to me he was a newcomer. Nevertheless, he played pretty well. There was yet another musician on stage, a keyboardist. He was the most invisible man there - and to me, the most inaudible. I couldn't tell what parts he played, but I'm sure he wasn't there for nothing. I don't believe another "Linda case" (yes, for me to know and for you to shrug your shoulders).

Because we had a luck of getting the first row seats, I could watch them live; I mean real live, not just from screens behind the group. It's a totally different kind of experience to see them close close. Wrinkles, liver spots, sighs and off-the-mic comments. When the show was over and the group bowed to audience in standing ovation, I felt Mr. Bennett looking at me straight in the eye. For a fracture of a second, there was a contact and it felt good. In addition to his own talent, the man has talked and played with such rock legends as Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran. I'd give a penny for Brian's thoughts when they played C'mon Everybody - a Cochran classic - which was one of the three "new" songs by Cliff and his lot. It's because he had played it behind Eddie himself too, on Cochran's and Vincent's tour to Britain in 1960.

They still had the same old dryish sense of humour left. Very British indeed. Actually, they had even the same jokes as always before. Stunts, wise cracks, fake stumble - the works. Now it was more than ok to include them. The best of their songs go together with the best of their stage routine. I found two bridges to the Paul Anka show I witnessed earlier this year. One of them was a speak by Bruce: "It's great to here in Stockholm tonight. At this age, it's great to be anywhere.." Anka said the same about Tampere. Another one was another "new" song, Singing the blues. Mr. Anka had recorded it in the sixties in fact and was for his part only going through his diverse but uneven back catalogue, that being the difference. I like the song, but let's face it: it's not THAT good.

There was a lot of different merchandise available. I bought an extensive tour booklet at 140 kronor. It's pretty neatly illustrated, offering a little information on the side. Well worth buying. The T-shirts were too expensive for my taste, although I must admit that they looked good.

It fits about 16000 people in Globen according to Wiki and I'm not the one to argue. It was a full house as far as I could see. Sitting so close to the target, I managed to snap one intermediate shot with my mobile. It's included here in this post. Damn I wish I had had a decent camera with me! These darn mobile cameras don't work too well in the dark.

Saturday was a second-hand record store time for me. This time I concentrated solely on Solna stores. I started with the one closest to my ex-residence in Råsunda. They have a huge storage of the 80's records. And they are cheap, 10 crowns each. I like the place. My friend S. has his atelier there in the back stage, if you will, but the man himself wasn't there. Then I moved on to the next store. The owner knows me by my face and I'm not that flattered by the fact. Luckily he wasn't around this time. He might have cross-examined me about my absence. I wasn't prepared to speak that much Swedish this time either. The third store lies right beside the second, but it's a whole different gold mine. George Harrison's All things must pass, a-triple album from 1970 was a steal at 50 kronor. I had to act accordingly. Well, not to steal but you know... I was too tired to check out the fourth place. It would have required some walking and the place is by far the most expensive. It has the biggest storage of records in Solna, perhaps in entire Stockholm area, but for some reason I have left the place empty-handed several times.

It was more than crowded at Kulturhuset on Saturday. I don't know what was the occasion, but a lot of families with small children were present. In spite of it, we had a dinner on the fifth floor. There's a reasonably cheap restaurant there. Warm food with salad and coffee cost only 190 crowns - and that was the sum of two persons. You can spend some time up on the roof as well. It served us a fine view over Stan for dessert.
On the ground floor of Kulturhuset there was a miniatyre of Stockholm on display. For such it was huge. I took a picture of it. You can see Globen in front, leaving the center of the city in the background. Although the architectural masterpiece seemed unfinished, it was impressive just the same.

A lot of Christmas lightings sparkled everywhere already in November. Yup, it's approaching once again: time for hot toddies (glögg) and pepper cakes (pepparkakor). We had some foretaste of it in Stockholm. Along with serious gift shopping. Plus my ever-confusing vinyl collecting. Did some great findings there, but who cares? Besides me. Finally we walked to Slussen and Vikingterminal. It had been a beautiful day all day. The long walks require a plenty of rest afterwards. Most of the passengers were eager and ready to start partying, while we were expecting to get a good night sleep. And we did.

Face unknown faces

2009-11-06T14:46:00.003+02:00

I just discovered a new challenging game for people with lots of pastime. I include myself in that group from time to time. I'm not a big Facebook fan, but lately I have visited my friends there quite often. Yes, the time on my hands.

My Facebook game rules go like this: First you pick the best-looking woman (or man if you're a woman, or... improvise, for God's sake!) and view all of her friends. Again, select the prettiest one and continue. You win if you finally find your own image in the list. Until then, just waste your time on pretty faces. If there's no women in the list, or if you pick a person who has no other friends, the game is over. In that case just start over with other options.

You can variate this with choosing the ugliest woman/man, the one with glasses, sunglasses, the one without a photo, with a photo not taken of the person - the sky is the limit, man! If you spend your time on this quite a harmless but yet meaningless type of "media", then a game like this may not be that far fetched for you.

The Swedish nose

2009-11-06T09:20:00.003+02:00

It's a Swedish day, "Svenska dagen" or "Ruotsalaisuuden päivä" today in Finland. It means that our Swedish-speaking part of us will be celebrated today. I guess they will celebrate more by themselves, I don't know. After having so much trouble with my stay in Sweden - the latest drop in the ocean came yesterday when there seemed to be some connection break between me and the union or something concerning my weeks of being laid-off - I have stopped advertising the good sides of living there.

It's also a nose day, "näsdagen" or "nenäpäivä" today. That sounds too stupid to make nosy remarks. The good cause of it, I don't even know exactly what it is I'm ashamed to reveal, may be worth joining the group of fake-nosed people. To me, it's the part of the body I'm most proud of. Should I hide it then? Hell, no. (TIC)

Today I have finished the third and the last edition of my book, as far as I'm concerned. It was about frustrations during my years in Sweden mostly. I have collected the last part of my stay in the book. They happened after my two previous editions and thus make the story complete. In one episode I even tell about an adventure I was forced into while fetching the second edition of the book in Bromma. It's still in Finnish, sorry, but the most of it can be read in my previous blog, Moved To Sweden. Link beside somewhere.

Smile, you're on YouTube!

2009-11-05T10:44:00.002+02:00

See a Finnish female driver tries to leave the parking place. I hate to be mean, at least this mean, but this is awesome. It kind of made my day. Thanks to Big Juice for sending the link to me. I guess the unfortunate star of the clip will soon make a record, host a talk show, write a book, pose naked in Playboy and finally gets elected in the congress. That's how it goes sometimes.

Calorie-loss weekend

2009-11-03T11:34:00.004+02:00

Last weekend I had sports of many kind. My muscles still ache some. And tomorrow I'll get some more - ache probably.

Last Friday I had another match against Amig-J. He's pretty much taller than me, slimmer than me and overall in better shape than me. Plus he's 10+ years younger than me. In the beginning I won him easily, but now that he's got the hang of Badminton, it's pretty equal now. Due to the physical facts I listed above, I expect him to beat me bad anyday now. Sure he has won the match several times, but I mean like crushing me has yet to happen. Anyway, I was unusually beat after the one-hour session of Badminton.

The next day we went skiing. Yup, there's no snow on the ground yet, but we took a trip to a 'snow pipe' in Jämi. They have a large tunnel 625 meters long, 8 meters wide, which has two lanes for traditional skiers and the middle for the skating-stylers. I had no experience of doing it inside (LOL!), but it was pretty ok. I did 7,5 km's of skiing which was enough for me. For starters. I found new muscles in me. Well, not new but rarely used lately. I heard many passers-by talking Swedish. Don't they have a tunnel of their own? Or, since it must be environmentally an unhealthy construction, do they criticize it in Sweden and yet visit one in Finland?

It was time to visit the Ice-hall of Nokia on Sunday. They have an open hour for everyone in the afternoon. Since it's a smaller rink than average, even smaller than NHL rinks I suppose, it was quite full of people skating around - mostly in the same direction. It reminded me of skating around the lion king statue in Kungsträdgården, only in larger scale. There was an older man skating close to the fence. He looked like a beginner in skating, having a helmet on and everything. What caught my eye however was the long underpants he wore in his head! A leg of it was hanging in his neck. Ok, he seemed like harmless but still. My feet were killing me again. It's always the first time on skates.

Tomorrow I should be swimming. If my wife joins me and our daughter, I'll get a chance to do some serious swimming for a change. I haven't been lifting weights since last Spring, but otherwise I feel like being in a semi-good shape. I could do more of course, but things like work prevent me from concentrating on these really important issues. Ok, work is important too, in money-wise. And socially of course.

I've been vacuumed all over

2009-10-29T08:22:00.003+02:00

The capital area in Finland sucked me totally. Helsinki and its neighbor cities Vantaa, Espoo and Kauniainen form grand-Helsinki which has more than one million people living there. Most of them have moved there from small cities around the country, so it's a kind of melting pot of Finns and other nationalities. Much like Stockholm in Sweden.

I have faced feeling of superiority in so many people coming from Helsinki area that it just can't be a coincidence. It really happens although most of them are born in the rustic regions of Finland. A sudden rise in the ladder make some lose their inheritance or something. You can sense the Helsinki superiority also on TV, even in the news.

Ok, I'm not here to mock Helsinki people. I lived in Stockholm for almost two years and acted quite the same way myself. It's just that I spent two days in Vantaa this week and all this resurfaced. It was a work-related trip so basically I had no chance to choose whether I liked going there or not. It was bearable this time, but anyway I was pretty tired afterwards.

I stayed in a hotel near Jumbo which is a ridiculously huge shopping market center. It's easily bigger than those I have visited in Stockholm area, at least it seems so. I didn't have much time nor strength to browse late in the evening, but I guess I will do that some day. With my wife. She likes those shopping centers. I like them too, but the most of the shops are not usually to my interest. They are good places to find Christmas presents however. All goodies in one place.

One thing I don't like about the capital area is the presence of traffic jams during working hours. It would be desirable to use trains and buses there, even subway, but they just don't cover the whole area. And taxis are expensive of course. At least I'd be in trouble finding a good way of travelling there, coming from outside the ring 3 highway, or what this 'kehä III' or 'ring-trean' is called in English. Frankly, I don't give a damsugare.

Driver download dilemma

2009-10-21T13:54:00.006+03:00

I have been in pain with free downloads lately. Nerve-wrecking commercial business is trying to cut in on me. But I'm not buying, nor dancing for that matter. This has gone too far now. Everyone agree?

When you're trying to download a driver for your hardware, perhaps to update it, that should be completely innocent stuff. Manufacturers even encourage to do that. It used to be quite easy. Nowadays you google some pages to find a free download and get a list of several good-sounding links. Almost each of them are commercial. They show the true download link in a small, almost hidden place. The biggest 'download' link goes to a commercial site, where you can buy something. Something else.

Usually the small, real download link leads to another page, which has a similar kind of hide-and-seek download link there somewhere. Or there is no link for it at all; only commercial links. Sometimes the download should have started by itself, but if you have denied an access for active-X components or such, nothing really happens. Only this 'safety bar' appears on top of the page, where you can allow the component to be run. Usually you have to enter the download link again during the same session to continue.

When it comes to drivers, they seem to have a lot of driver detectives out there. None of them are free. The download is free however and the driver detecting is free as well. But when you want to do something about it, it will cost you. And it doesn't say it before you've reached the step three. I don't want to pay for downloading free drivers! Some of the detectives show which driver would be updated by which driver, so that way I can save some time and do it by myself. I agree that those detectives are useful (haven't tried them though) - for some.

When you find a good place to download drivers or other software, it's worthy of gold these days. Even many manufacturers, Microsoft included, have those commercial traps everywhere. Be warned, be worried, be angry.

Bye bye birdie!

2009-10-17T18:01:00.004+03:00

Wow, that was fast. My trip in the world of Twitter ended today. I got fed up with it because the celebs were basically talking to each other or advertising their products. If they were who they appear to be. Plus, in Finland the Twitter has not caught on fire, so there weren't any Finnish celebs to read about. This post is basically plainly informative and a kind of an apology to them who had started to follow my tweets.

Who likes birdland?

2009-10-14T19:18:00.004+03:00

Memorize the date: the 14th of October. That's a meaningful day for me for another reason too, but I can't discuss that. Yup, it's today, LOL!

My comic strip was officially published today, in a net-blog of a newspaper. Because the release contains my true identity, I don't want to give you the link there. In addition, it's in Finnish, so it wouldn't be worth much for the majority of you. I have blogged about it anyway in my earlier posts. This character of mine may travel far, let's see; usually birds do.

However small an achievement this may sound, to me it's another milestone in my artistic career. And there ain't too many of them in the past. I think I'll have a drink today, cheers!

Gay man's an island?

2009-10-12T11:51:00.003+03:00

Yesterday I heard the news about Obama's intention to let gays enter the army too. In the US, things get cooking. Some of the gays may be delighted to get an equal share of fighting in wars, but I guess not all of them are happy (although gay). It has been a good excuse for many rock stars to pretend being gay, just not to get drafted. For many true gays who have stayed in the closet, being afraid of getting stamped as homosexual officially, this may bring some consolation. But does it in the end? If you're in gay troops, aren't you stamped 'gay' all over your forehead? I don't know much about the news, but this kind of thoughts started haunting me immediately.

If I have watched and understood American TV series correctly, also junkies and criminals are not allowed to enter fields of war. A criminal record gives a shelter. I don't quite understand this. Of course some schizoid mass murderer might do more harm on his/her own side, and couldn't be trusted. A junkie might endanger the whole group of soldiers somehow. The Dirty Dozen is fiction, but could it have a seed worth sowing? I still don't get it, why a 'decent' citizen should suffer the most.

The gays are 'decent' citizens, as long as I'm concerned, so basically I do agree with Obama. He's got balls big enough to say it aloud - especially after his Nobel peace prize victory. If he were assassinated, I'm afraid we'd face the same kind of deep emptiness that followed after Kennedy's murder. Let's hope it'll never happen. There won't be another Beatles to comfort us.

October in Smekland

2009-10-11T19:03:00.005+03:00

Here we go again. Maybe you have to be married or in a serious relationship to get it, maybe not...

Good luck to Obama and Rio de Janeiro!

2009-10-10T20:35:00.003+03:00

I'm a bit late with this, but better late than never. Congratulations to Mr. Obama for the Nobel prize. Peace is a wonderful thing and never too much appreciated. However, I was surprised they decided to give the prize to him this soon. I mean, he hasn't done anything concrete yet. And indeed, he was astonished about it himself. Let's hope he'll live up to the expectations he's now been tied to.

It's been almost certain lately that a president of the USA gets a Nobel prize - sooner or later. It feels like a scholarship for peace on Earth. It also occurred to me that when Mr. Obama and Chicago were denied to get the Olympics of 2016 to arrange, they had to come up with something. To compensate the loss, I assume. I was happy that a new continent was introduced to host the Olympics, finally. Party in Rio has already started, of course. These are only my speculations, but sometimes things may be as they seem, i.e. sometimes a Strat is just a Strat, LOL!

Here comes.... pea soup?

2009-10-08T15:16:00.005+03:00

This may be of no interest to you, but it may amuse some still. Anyway, I'll keep it short.

The first sentence I spoke in Swedish was "Här kommer ärtsoppa". I had heard that "här kommer" means "here comes". Then, as a clever boy of eight or something like that, I discovered the word "ärtsoppa" in a pea soup can. It probably was a can, I'm not totally sure of it. I could read by then of course. I merely linked these two Swedish lines and came up with an immortal line mentioned above. It's not much of use to anyone, though.

My uncle heard me saying it. He readily admitted that it was genuine Swedish. It was my luck that those words in that line were pronounced as they were written, which is somewhat rare in Swedish. Man, I was proud. I could speak Swedish! Little things can be wonderful, when you're a boy. What happens to us when we grow up?

Lingonberry twist

2009-10-07T09:06:00.007+03:00

It's the time of the year when it's worthwhile to go in the woods. When the night temperature has reached below zero (Celsius), the most of the mushrooms are dead. Only some of them, the driest ones like funnel chanterelle (suppilovahvero), survive in a modest freeze. When it comes to lingonberries, the freeze makes them more tasty. That's an old legend told from a father to son, a mother to daughter, and I can't help but agree.

We have a "sure-fire" place for picking lingonberries. It's been there for years. Only this time it wasn't that full of berries. Admitted, there was a lot of them, but yet not as much as I recalled there should have been. Me and my wife picked a little less than 10 litres together and my mother did about 7 litres. The weather was favourable; it was not that cold and windy, LOL! Ok, there was a small rain shower in the end, but otherwise it was a good berry-picking weather.

I didn't take pictures in the woods, so I'm supplying one taken in the yard of our neighbours! They had a lovely set of lingonberries there, waiting for someone to pick 'em. The picture was taken in fair sunlight, so once again the course of events has been manipulated and falsified. In reality, the berry-picking day last Saturday wasn't this sunny and warm. Read more about faking the history in my previous post, if still interested.

It doesn't however end when the picking is done. There must be a twist in my story, especially if the title suggests so, but this time it isn't a Smek twist. When the berries have been cleaned, i.e. all leaves and other impurity that doesn't belong there have been removed, it's time to smash them. Yes, the picture number 2 demonstrates how it's done. You push and twist it (there you go) with a smashing device, until it's mostly paste-like. You can use the same "weapon" smashing lingonberries as you do when smashing potatoes. Then you put a lot of sugar (it's not necessary, but the taste is pretty acid (hapokas) without) and mix it while still twisting. That's how the lingonberry jam is done. No extra ingredients, no food additives! Easy as pie and healthy as hell!

I didn't use to like lingonberry as a child, but during my ever-lasting years of adolescence, LOL, I have grown to like it. A lot, actually. Lingonberry is good as jam, used with game (riista) and food made of blood, liver and other internal organs. Furthermore, it's delicious with quark, yoghurt, in a pie, ... my personal favorite is lingonberry porridge. It's basically a semolina pudding (mannapuuro) with lingonberries. I have variated it with (red) currants and apricots. It's also easy to prepare, and the taste is beyond your wildest imagination!

Another aggravation?

2009-10-06T15:03:00.002+03:00

I have noticed that many women want to look good outwardly. They put on make-up and wear clean smart clothes when they go to work. It's important to many. I don't have complaints about it.

When a man goes to work, he's more concerned about looking good internally. He doesn't want to screw up anything. The dressing is of second priority. Shaven or not, as long as the job gets done.

Usually at the work, the internal goodness overrides good-looking appearance. Well, at least in the field I'm working. That makes men getting more respect than women. But: when a woman is both sharp and sharp-dressed, she's the ultimate winner. No man could ever top that.

This all was just gazing from a traditional men's eye view. Meaning when men rule the world and all that jazz. When a woman is a boss, the rules may be turned upside down. Pretty boys with brains get the most respect.

I may be wrong, but this idea occurred to me today, and I decided to try it out in my blog. My observations haven't been that triumphant before and I don't expect it to happen any other way this time either. Something to think about at least?

Over(s)lap in my face(t)?

2009-10-05T09:37:00.004+03:00

The company I work for was merged into a bigger company with two other companies last month. Yes, we are going for global world domination, LOL! Seriously, we got bigger threefold, which leads to some questions. It always does.

In an info session, we were notified that the fusion will not affect anyone. How come I knew that? After followed a number of merges in the newspapers, they have always told that it won't lead to any changes in the company. And after six months or so, they always tell us that of course we had to cut down overlapping resources and thus some of the personnel has to go. It happens every time. I can't see why it wouldn't occur with our case.

It's perfectly understandable that when three companies become one, there must be a lot of overlapping around. Rarely the management gets affected by it though. But this lying about it really pisses me off. Why do they pretend as the merge wouldn't affect anyone? Are they the only ones in the world who don't know the truth? Are they so pompous that they think they can make it, not giving room for reasoning, or a reason for that matter?

I think they are only buying time. The workers must keep working. It's easier to work under an illusion that there will be work for years to come. And a worker doesn't know if he/she's the one to go in the end. Personally, I'm expecting to hear from our management the sad, "unexpected" news not later than right after this Christmas. Then, I can write "What'd I say?", which is just about the only consolation I can think of right now.

Smek joins the Twitter community [edit]

2009-10-02T09:57:00.003+03:00

The world is full of... compromises? I wasn't too keen on starting to write this blog in Finnish, in spite of its pros (and cons). The readers consist however more and more of Finns. My answer to that may be stupid and temporary, but now I joined the Twitter too. And there I'm writing only in Finnish. You can see my latest twitter post at the end of this blog page, so you basically don't have to visit the Twitter at all. That is, if you don't mind staying out of progress. Progress, my ass, you might say. I'm just finding it out, so I can't really tell.

If you really want to know, I'm bored. But the boredom is the word sometimes. Without it, I probably would never have started Facebook nor Twitter, never got introduced to P2P or Skype, not to mention Messenger; hell, I would never have even blogged! And I have felt mostly good about blogging. No-one knows how long these hype-smelling pastime products will live, but right now that isn't the question. It's more about sharing your thoughts with people who are interested in them. Arguing perhaps, commenting, encouraging, exchanging opinions. Broaden our visions and attitudes to life, at its most optimistic way of seeing it.

I'm not a mentalist, but it seems obvious even by now, that these gadgets, toys for socially active people, will be gathered under one portal application, if you will. From there you can control all of these 'needs'. And from there your 'needs' can be controlled. That application will be used via mobile phones. I'm not a fortune teller either, but mark (read: mock) my words!

Alright, I removed the Twitter link in my blog, because I simply couldn't make it fit and look stylish enough. If you wish to visit there however, you can find in here.

Nokia for dummies, part 2: Kuuma koira

2009-10-02T08:00:00.004+03:00

This is not a Finnish, but a Nokian culinary dish. It's called 'kuuma koira' which is a translation of 'hot dog'. However, it has very little to do with a hot dog as we know it. It's a grill kiosk product invented by a man called Teutori in early 70's. He served this 'kuuma koira' along with basic grill products, such as meat pies, hamburgers and, I assume, genuine hot dogs too. Nowadays some other people have taken over, but the name of the grill kiosk is still 'Teuto grilli'. See the small picture of it, lying close to Nokia's railway station (PIP).

I hadn't tasted it before I moved to Nokia, so it wasn't that famous even in Tampere which is located right next to Nokia. Actually, my then-future wife wanted to introduce it to me. She didn't care for it that much herself, but I liked it from the first bite on.

A picture tells more than a 1000 words, they say, but I still want to describe it textually too. The basic idea of the 'kuuma koira' is that it contains a standard doughnut (munk/munkki) with a large steamed sausage. In addition there is cucumber salad, ketchup and mustard - standard grill spices as you like it. It used to have doughnut jam there too, but it was removed later, due to the extreme heat is gathered while re-heating it.

The taste is confusing. It tastes both sweet (the sugar of the doughnut) and salty (the sausage and the spices). There is a plenty of eating in it, and it's relatively cheap too. It's not a healthy meal, and that's why I can't have it that often. Still I can recommend it to anyone. Actually, I introduced it to my by-now-very-Swedish uncle a few years ago, and he said it was interesting. That could be interpreted that he didn't really like it. But I'm sure it was worth trying for him too. Even now, as I write this story, I get hungry even by thinking about it. The picture though may not look that tempting, LOL!

Today, the 1st of October, 2009

2009-10-01T12:12:00.004+03:00

Today Tampere celebrates its 230 years of being a city. Gustaf III founded it in 1779. It's a long way from those days, a lot of water has run down in Tammerkoski, the falls in the heart of the city. Yesterday, a radio reporter claimed that Tampere was now 320 years old. Some journalism, some math brilliance. Happy birthday, my old home town, however old you are!

Today the grocery tax was lowered finally. The reducement is so small that it's hardly visible. When rounding cents (hundredths of an euro) to the nearest 5 cents as we do in Finland (1 and 2 cent coins are not in use, although they exist), the gain may be totally lost sometimes. They have calculated that a family saves 100 euros per year after the tax reducement. It's a temporary relief though, because the tax will go up again next Summer, by one per cent. A lot of price tag changing for so little amount of money.

Today the alcohol tax was raised. This will not concern me that much, since I have started to cut down my alcohol consuming. The point of getting drunk, if there ever was one, has never appealed to me. Instead of strong liquor, I have plans to concentrate on wines. My wife has come to the same conclusion. Hell, 15 years ago I didn't even like wine. Well, now I do. It's not that dangerous nor expensive to open up a bottle every once in a while. It may be even healthy, if you believe what they have found out about redwine.

Today it's official: the great Finnish formula driver Kimi Räikkönen leaves Ferrari. It's not yet sure whether he will carry on racing in Formula 1. He has lately been participating in some rally racing competitions, with promising results. If I received 42 million euros as a golden handshake for leaving my job, I wouldn't hesitate to retire. Then again, my career hasn't been as glorious as his. So far, LOL!

Today the police starts giving speeding tickets after you have been caught speeding 11 km/h. After speeding 6 km/h, they will give you a warning. Until today, the decision has been under policemen's consideration, when the speed limit has been exceeded worth giving a ticket. Now the rules are clear and there's no room for speculation. However, I'd like the speedometers to show the precise speed of the vehicle. As far as I know, every car's speedo shows too much. How can I drive and speed 10 km/h and thus avoid the ticket, if I don't know my exact velocity?

Today I started using ads in my blog. I hope to see the hit count that way. It would be great to know are we talking about dozens or thousands of readers here. Funny, those ads reflect my posts. Now there seems to be a lot of links to criminal TV series on DVD available. It'll be quite interesting to see if the bot detects and solves any of my multiple quotations and other twisted jokes I plant in my blog. I'd better not let it affect my blogging anyway...

Nokia for dummies, part 1: The introduction

2009-10-01T10:44:00.010+03:00

Now that I have re-inhabited myself back to Nokia, I received a 'Welcome' post from the city. Nine months overdue! Well, at least I'm welcomed now; it didn't happen in 1995 when I originally moved to Nokia. The brochure contained information where the name 'nokia' comes from. I did not know that, and neither did my wife - a native Nokian. Actually, no-one really knows, but they speculate it's from sable, a furry little animal. The brochure is worthy of a free entry for two in the swimming hall of Nokia. Just how lucky can one get?

Nokia used to be a part of Pirkkala, until it was dealt into Northern and Southern Pirkkala, Nokia being the Northern. When Nokia name was taken into use in 1938, the people in Nokia actually wanted to have 'Pirkkala' as the name, but the president of Finland decided otherwise. 'Pirkkala' name was given to South-Pirkkala. The Nokia manor may have been the cause for the name change. It had existed since the 1600th century, at least. Read more about in wiki pages.

The company called Nokia has its roots in the city alright, although they have never manufactured one single cell phone there. That is something that seems to bite many Nokians. Of course they'd like to gather all credit for it, but it simply isn't up for grabs. When there have been plans to unite Tampere, Nokia, Pirkkala and Ylöjärvi, and call it Tampere, some Nokian have said 'Why not call it Nokia? It's far more famous all around the world!' Well, that someone is right, but clearly doesn't want to remember that Nokians didn't approve 'Nokia' for the name of their town in the first place. In addition, Tampere is still one of the key places where Nokia's mobile development takes place.

The city of Nokia is somewhat pathetic. Most cities own their name for a web site, e.g. http://www.tampere.fi/, http://www.helsinki.fi/. But http://www.nokia.fi/ leads to the company pages. Instead they have a difficult http://www.nokiankaupunki.fi/, which means thecityofnokia. In 1977, Nokia became a city.

I have wondered for a long time, which one of these has used this font for 'Nokia' first. There is a paint shop in Nokia that has a name 'Nokian väri' (Nokia's colour). Well, Nokia's colour has always been red, LOL, except lately when the right-wing took over. In political wise, nothing has still changed because the same old farts are in the same old positions, doing the same old decisions. And the same old mistakes, I might add. Back to the logo and the font: see for yourself the similarity! I'm surprised that this kind of news has never reached the media's attention. They may have some kind of agreement made in the background, who knows. The paint shop, by the way, is a good place to do shopping. Good service, although the prices are bit high for my taste.

The cat's gone

2009-10-01T09:05:00.012+03:00

Where is the cat? The cat's in the Moon. The cat's in the cradle. The cat's gone.

There is a district of Nokia called Haavisto. I live not so far away from it. I have heard rumours from wife that there is a man (let's assume it's a man) who hates cats so much that he even lures them into his yard and then catches them. He sends them to a lost-and-found office for animals. That's quite nasty of him. Of course loose cats are a problem to an extent, but this is almost cruelty to animals. And to cat-owners of the district.

Personally, I don't like cats. I prefer dogs. Cats scratch and will never be tamed. My wife hates them both and our daughter loves them both. The conclusion is that we don't have furry animals in our house. There are allergies involved too.

However, I kind of like those wild or loose cats walking around our yard, because they catch mice. At least they keep them away quite succesfully (That reminds me of having to set up mouse traps; it's a dirty job but someone's gotta do it).

Then again, I don't like cats killing birds, pheasants (fasaani) in particular which used to be widespread all around Haavisto and its neighborhood. Also one of the most sympathetic animals, hedgehogs, are a rarity around there these days. Hedgehogs eat snails; we'd welcome one anytime in our yard. Cats do love to piss and shit in the sand, which we have all around.

That being said, I still wouldn't harm a cat. None of us would. For weeks ago, we received a note saying that someone had lost their cat. The print-outs were in lamp-posts, basically everywhere. Then the former cat-owner must have gotten an angry, almost threatening letter, presumably from the kidnapper of the cat. The letter implies that the cat will be killed the next time it crosses their yard. Maybe the next time was at hand? If the execution has taken place already, what's the use of spreading leaflets? Shouldn't the police be notified?

Now we, along with other inhabitants, got a printout of the threat and information about other several similar cases. The note says that their cat had been searched everywhere, lost-and-found office included. Someone in there really doesn't like cats! Ok, I'll do the same to the mice, but those are not anyone's pets. I wouldn't lure them into our house just to kill them.

Indeed, I haven't seen any cat walking around our home lately. Someone has been efficient, I must admit. But that someone hasn't everything in order at his home. Beware of the catman!

TOP10 in televison

2009-09-30T14:44:00.006+03:00

It's time to update my favorite TV programmes at the moment. Let's see how many of them I can come up with.

1. The Shield - a great series. I like the total dispare it puts on display. I don't watch it now, however, because for some reason I have seen them all already.

2. CSI - one of the best ever. I watched the episodes shown in Finland already in Sweden, so I'm basically putting all CSI's on hold while I get new stuff to watch. I don't care for seeing the same episodes twice.

3. CSI - Miami - Caruso's legendary performance keeps amazing. He moves at the speed of light, hell, he's everywhere. We should have more bosses like him, LOL!

4. CSI - NY - the same thing as with the other CSI's: waiting for unseen episodes to watch. Sinise's role is perhaps the most credible of all. He's the most sympathetic anyway.

5. 2½ men - This series is shown in the afternoon. Bad time for a working class hero to watch. The first comedy in the list, and the fifth favorite show I'm not even watching!

6. Cold Case - I discussed this in my previous post. The storylines and the characters are fine. There's a certain type of coldness in the lead character, which only needs to be accepted.

7. NCIS - not that far from CSI naturally. This has much more humour in it. Great characters, great bitching. The PC-nerd maid is hot. Nice awkward situations in every episode. David McCallum has had a role in a popular series every decade since the 60's!

8. Bones - this is maybe the greatest show I'm watching this Fall. The lead, and even side characters are just perfect. Small humour thrown between the lines.

9. Law & Order - ok, with it's spin-offs, although the UK version hasn't really convinced me. It's a classic with carefully written stories. The theme, especially in its original form, is one of the most fantastic ever implemented.

10. The Mentalist - in Finnish: Mentalist. LMAO! I'm not sure whether this should be included here, because I have seen only two episodes of it. I will give it another go still.

The series I miss: Millennium, especially the 2nd season, a classic. X-files, in its heyday. Star Trek stuff, all of it. Not much good comedy in sight, most of them are movies. Married with children was good, so was The third stone from the Sun. 4400 was also good sci-fi, but I lost it when moving to Sweden. Expecting this list to be updated, let's see if I will post it then.

It's yesterday once more

2009-09-30T07:57:00.010+03:00

I have some theories why days in the past seem often so attractive and "better". I don't have exclusive rights to all of these, but no matter. Just let me entertain you (a Queen quote, not by Robbie Williams).

One of my oldest observations is about the movies. Yes, if a film describes a certain year in the past, there are old cars in the pictures. To be exact, they are all of that precise vintage: if you have a "backflash" in a movie from e.g. 1955, every goddamn character has a new car from that year. And they are always pretty clean and waxed, all the time. Hell, if I looked out the window (if I had one with such a view), I'd see quite few car models of 2009. And the standard of living has risen since the 50's. Take a look at film footage from 1955, there's a lot of cars from the 30's in it. Probably the actual owner of the car, who has lent his/her pride and joy to the movie production, wouldn't have allowed them to be smutched, not to mention scratched. That's a fake picture of the past, and of course more beautiful than in reality.

The same goes for cellular phones for example. It's pretty rare to see a brand new phone in use immediately after its release, unless it's a company phone. Well, in The Dark Knight movie Batman used a Nokia model which hadn't even been released yet. But that is fiction and Tube isn't actually state-of-the-art tech anymore. In one episode of X-files there was a tongue-in-cheek flashback, with Mulder carrying a huge mobile phone with him. Old technology means fun sometimes, especially with phones. I had my first cellular in 2001, because I was strongly against it for years. I had to have it because of my work. It didn't fit in my philosophy then; now I can hardly live without it. Things change.

Also TV's fall into the same cathegory. Right now, I don't possess an HD-TV, and it was not until late 70's when we had our first colour TV. Naturally without a remote control, although they were already in constant use in the US by then. Even in some Finnish series they like to "remember" everyone having a colour TV in the 60's. Hell, there wasn't even that much production in available in colour. In the mid-70's, all the TV presentations were still in black-and-white.

Maybe the worst generalizer of all is the TV series Cold Case which I otherwise dig. Basically everything is vintage about the year in question. For instance, I didn't listen to the hits of the day at home in 1998. I don't even know what the hits were then. I was so concentrated on my own music that I couldn't care less about others'. And the music in Cold Case etc. filming plays in stereo, sometimes even in 5.1, 6.1 or 7.1 (how far can they go with the speaker system? 1000000.1? LOL!). Mono players were very popular still in the 60's. There are no scratches in the records, remember vinyls and 78s? (shellac, savikiekko, stenkaka) I bet that the next time they set up a sixties scene in a movie, they will use the fresh out of print re-mastered versions of The Beatles songs in it. Why not? Authenticity is for the freaks like me (another good title: freaks like me. LMAO!).

About the beauty of the past. When we take a look at old photos or video shots, it's usually sunny and beautiful. Well, those days photography was heavily dependent on light and shooting in the rain was out of the question. We usually smile for the camera, rather than cry. All of this moulds our minds later when we browse old pictures. Even in the movie industry they need light and sunshine to film outside the studios. Rain has often been arranged with artificial showers.

Naturally our own personal memories are alike. When we were young and healthy, without worries of adult age, everything may easily seem to have been lovely in the past. It affects whether we like it or not. People tend to remember only the good things in the past, leaving the bad stuff under the carpet. That may be wise for humans to survive (this one's for Darwin). Looking at old pictures may bring back bad memories as well, but mostly people skip those pictures, or move on quickly to the next picture with more pleasurable memories.

Like a legendary Finn, Matti Nykänen, has once said: "Elämä on ihmisen parasta aikaa" (Life is the best time for man). He should know. Carpe diem, seize the day, and remember that we're living now those wonderful memories of the future! Smile :)

Johnny, remember Winter

2009-09-29T13:37:00.002+03:00

As they promised, the weather turned cold today. It was barely above zero degrees (Celsius) this morning. The wind shields of my car were covered by thin freeze. Even yesterday evening we saw a pair of hail showers, and somewhere in Lapland genuine snow had fallen down. The signs of Winter are here alright.

As for me, I'm not yet ready to welcome Winter. I'd like to have a long warmish Autumn first. We have had some foretaste of it already, but I want more. The leaves of trees are magnificent at the moment. The insects are mostly gone. There was not that many butterflies this Summer, but the crickets were still there. Let's make a note: in the year of 2009 I did hear crickets chirp. What a thriller it will be for the next Summer, LOL!

Chauvin's Etude in matter minor

2009-09-28T12:06:00.004+03:00

The reason behind this post is to check if I still have female readers left. After reading this I'm sure I won't have any, LOL! Well, joking aside for a moment, this is basically serious stuff.

At least in Finland I keep hearing several women protest: "The same-sized salary for the same work." Yes, that's familiar stuff indeed. Women are getting paid less for working in the same position as men. In principle I agree with them: everyone should get the same reward for the same job. Regardless of sex.

But, as far as I have seen it happen, women don't do the same amount of work. Exceptions exist of course, but at the jobs I have had there has always been a woman who does 95% of the talking. It's humanly impossible for her to manage with the same work load than the rest. And usually those even interfere others work, sometimes massively. They use their womanliness to lure poor men to do some of their work. Am I right?

To prove my point, let's take a look at the sports. 100-meter sprint, for example. Women do the same work as men, only slower. If they want the same fee for it, why don't they race in the same competition then? Side by side. Unisex sports are rare, what does that tell you?

Admitted, I'm deliberately trying to raise some eyebrows. It's only because I'm sick and tired of hearing that 'same salary for same work' slogan. I agree, as long as it really is the same work. And, in places where I come from, it is not.

Cleanup time

2009-09-28T09:25:00.004+03:00

We have a personal cleaning lady in our premises in Tampere. She probably has more places to clean than ours, but she seems to spend her time here. She's quite a personality.

I have no knowledge about what rights she has been granted, when she moves around our working site, but she seems to have them a lot. She drinks our coffee in our coffee space, reads our magazines or newspapers on our tables, heats her lunch in our microwave oven, puts her dishes in our dish machine etc. I don't mind that, but it feels weird. In a way, she's one of the 'guys' here, which is extraordinary. Normally cleaning ladies are hardly even treated as persons in this sector.

She's the boss when it comes to cleaning toilets. There's no interrupting her. Unless there is a lunch break. Then the toilet cleaning is put on hold and no-one is allowed to enter before her lunchtime has ended. We need more people like her, I suppose. Self-respective. I usually greet cleaning staff. That's not what everybody does. She is not shy to have a word with our 'prez' either. Indeed, she IS one of us.

Get Smart - TIC of the month?

2009-09-25T11:38:00.003+03:00

Way, way, way back in 1985 - a good year for me by the way - I made up the following thesis:

If you educate someone, you'll get dumber yourself!

It means that when sharing a piece of your information with someone, the average wisdom in the world grows - while yours stays the same. Simple. The meaning of this post was not to brag about ancient wisdom I used to possess, but the following news I read today game me the reason to use my anthiques, LOL!

According to an article I just read, physical violence against children makes them dumber. Their IQ can reduce even by 5 points. That's much. Hell, I could have been a colleague of Mogli with those points, LOL! Or his boss.

Well, back to the thesis. Now it can be moulded into this form:

If you punish your child physically, you'll get smarter!

The same logic: while your child gets dumber and thus lowers the average wisdom in the world, yours stays the same. Sad but true. Personally I think that people who see violence as a solution, are stupid, but maybe I have been wrong all along?

Van Hanen goes heavy?

2009-09-25T09:03:00.004+03:00

It would be interestig to know how much about this piece of news has been released around the world. You be my guinea-pigs, please!

In Finland, we have had a storming year with the funding behind the politicians and parties. Some of them admit knowing where the money has come from while most of them act ignorant. In principle, no-one has done anything illegal, but the cover-ups and denials make the politicians look dirty. It's all about the credibility in the end.

Our not-anymore-so-beloved prime minister Mr. Vanhanen is in the middle of it. He has been connected to RAY, which is a Finnish money games owning company. All left-handed robbers (or fruit-games, as we called them today) for instance belong to them in Finland. RAY is a sacred institution for us, and therefore should be non-political.

Vanhanen and his party, the Center party, are involved in another mess too. Along with most of the congressmen in Finland. There is a company called Nova group which is now bankrupt. It was revealed that several parties and politicians had received vast amounts of money from them when the company was in economical trouble. Now they are forced to pay back the easy money they had received. It hasn't gone without objections naturally. The 100k-euros-plus the Center party now owes to Nova group isn't actually chicken feed.

Because of the innuendo that these gifts and contributions might have affected the result in the previous election, many congressmen, especially on the opposition side of course, demand a new election. Immediately. Prime minister says no, and the debate continues.

I must admit that Mr. Vanhanen really has balls. Like a true heavy rock star. He's in deep shit, so to speak, and yet he acts like nothing had happened. Quite like Berlusconi, I could imagine. Maybe that's the only way to stay in power. Denial gets you far. Into my blog too, LOL!

In fact, I'm not that excited about the new election. Let's face it, some faces might change, but the composition in the parliament wouldn't. People are so slow when it comes to change their mind about political orientation. After all, it's the parties that "guide" their representatives in the parliament. It would be gullible to think otherwise. And, frankly, I think Matti Vanhanen has done a great job so far. His non-political moves are only a good sidekick to his otherwise boring persona. Who said that politics mustn't be funny too? Not me.

Flea market brain?

2009-09-24T13:15:00.002+03:00

I have normally avoided such places as flea markets (kirppis/loppis). It's basically junk they try to sell there, with few exceptions of course. Well, these days I think differently.

My wife has hired a table in a flea market in Nokia several times. She has been selling old baby clothes mostly. They are very handy stuff because they seldom get so worn out. Children grow so fast when they are babies. That's why it's almost stupid to buy new stuff for them. And - yes, the green values ahoy - it's ecologically wise to recycle.

Well, my interest didn't reach the baby stuff selling, although I was glad to hear that we got some money back. The table costs 25 euros per week, which seems quite expensive to me. Since the stuff you sell can't be price-tagged with several digits, you have to sell a lot only to cover the table rent.

There's another angle to it: you get rid of old stuff and get room for new stuff. What would we need old baby clothes for? We're not planning to increase the family number of ours. Surely we have received and given plenty of material to our friends and relatives, but that's just a tip of an iceberg.

This time I got interested. I had a load of vinyls I didn't care for, some of them bought in Stockholm. Yes, I make mistakes too. Plus I had bought some collectors' items just to sell them later in my life. Now's the time, it seems. Records are much cheaper and in better condition in Stockholm compared to Finland. Well, based mostly on my Tampere area experience. Thus it's not a crime to sell them at a higher price. The travelling costs are not non-existent, you know. The sad thing of it is that the Finns, and the Nokia people in particular, are such a cheap people who'd buy nothing that isn't free. I have closed some deals there anyway, hoping to cover the rent for four weeks. Actually, the table is joint with my brother, but I'm in charge of everything this time.

Yes, you have a chance to join this flea market hype and visit my stand in Nokia! I'm not expecting anyone really to be there, but hypothetically it's possible now. You won't see me there either, because the owner of the market takes care of the charging. I only put my things on display (no laughing here). I have some CD's, DVD's, books and magazines there as well. Even some VHS's, for old-fashioned. They kind of fit to be close to vinyls, don't you think?

Swedish chopper in the news

2009-09-24T07:55:00.002+03:00

Yesterday, in broad day light, a group of people robbed a huge amount of money in the Stockholm centre. The group didn't get caught while the Swedish police watched it happen with the front row tickets. Yes, it's possible, but only in Sweden. It might have been too 'jobbigt' (troublesome) or 'farligt' (dangerous) for the policemen to try stopping them, I suppose. There was a bag close to the choppers which presumably could have included explosives. Were ALL of the police helicopters in one place, surrounding the bag? Can one bag make the Swedish police force powerless?

How difficult it is to follow a helicopter these days? The police told the press that the chopper landed in Arninge, near Täby. Why wasn't an army of policemen (and policewomen) waiting for them? Didn't the information get through to Täby? Was there a 'fikapaus' (coffee break) going on? LOL! Last year I was marvelling at the robbery in Kista, Stockholm, when the thief escaped by a moped and got uncaught. Now the getaway vehicle was even more striking.

By now it's clear that the rest of the world enjoy reading about the Swedish police. It really makes me wonder, why they didn't try shooting the chopper down. That should have been an easy task. When it was flying above the forest or other uninhabited area, to prevent from getting unnecessary casualties. Was the money in the chopper the reason? What WAS the reason?

The thieves must have had inside information to carry out a project of this scale succesfully. The police have arrested two persons which may have had something to do with the robbery. If the story continues as with those multiple robberies before this, nothing will be solved. And this piece of news will fall into oblivion, at latest when the next, perhaps even bolder attempt steals the column space all around the world.

Je m'appelle Smek

2009-09-23T14:49:00.002+03:00

Bonjour, everyone! It finally happened. I'm studying French! I have three lessons behind myself and who knows how many ahead.

It has been almost legendary with my French studies. More than 15 years ago I wanted to learn some French. The French night school courses in Tampere where I lived were always sold-out. Those days the Internet wasn't really in use as we know it, so I had to walk to the door of a high school to find it out. I didn't give up, so I borrowed a book in library and started to study myself. It didn't lead far from zero of course.

Years later I tried to join a night college or something, but I didn't find the right door in a strange place. I had recently moved to Nokia and the city was almost totally unknown to me. I was unemployed at the time, so I could have easily taught myself a new language.

This Autumn I felt like learning again. It's still not clear whether the course will go on any further, because the minimum amount of participants is eight, and there are only six of us. It's been great so far, although as the only male in the class I get too much unwanted attention. I wouldn't want to get to answer the teacher's questions as often as I have to. Somehow along the line I have got used to accept that I won't get any French education, so this feels quite weird at the moment. It's been clear from the start that this language is difficult. For me at least. This learning is more like pastime to me than a serious hobby. It never hurts to get more educated. Well, sometimes it does.

Greedence Revival

2009-09-22T09:15:00.003+03:00

It's frustrating and annoying to read the news sometimes. Now the price of gasoline is going to get close to 2 euros per litre in Finland. That's a lot. This way, the oil companies will harm themselves, by giving room for bio-gas. That serves them right! The greed knows no boundaries.

The electricity companies are legendary, especially Fortum which is led by the state. They lifted up the price when there was not enough rainy days in Norway where the electricity was coming from. The next year it rained a lot there, but it didn't lower the prices. They went up again instead. Many times when electricity consumption has increased, they have pumped up the price, because it's so damn expensive to cover the peak consumption. This Summer the news from Fortum was no different - only the grounds were new. The Finnish electricity consuming had dropped 10%, so they will have to increase the price by 11%! Boy, did I get angry to read that! I have tried to save energy - only to get my electricity bill stay the same? Normally, when consumption goes down, the prices follow. But not in this case. And they are even increasing their income by 1% on top of everything. Greed is the word.

This Autumn the tax (GST, ALV, MOMS, whatever the tax is called) of the groceries will be lowered. They have set up some officials in a group to watch that the prices wouldn't go up right before the tax lowering, thus bringing the profit into the sellers' pockets instead of customers'. Like it did when we changed our currency to euro in 2002. Now they have already detected the face-lift of the prices in several places. I must point out that the food costs in Finland more than in any other country in EU. The poor people must suffer always, it seems. Nonetheless, the people get screwed in the end. The greedy rich get greedier when they get richer.

This note's for me

2009-09-21T14:02:00.003+03:00

This is the first day for me at work after the lay-off. It feels like my watch had suddenly emptied its batteries. Time is running too slow right now and I'm sleepy at all hours. My personal projects naturally suffer from being at work, but the money is needed anyway so... Ok, the first day, it's always like this. I have some topics to blog about still. Let's see how they'll materialize in near future. I have put some ideas on hold. Actually, I'm waiting for replies. Maybe that's why the time goes on so slowly today. And tomorrow, etc. Let's not blame the work I have hardly started yet.

Stockholmian vinyl logic with mustard

2009-09-18T12:11:00.010+03:00

This post couldn't have come in a better time. Today my Finnish readers (or to be exact: readers in Finland) overtook the Swedes. They have been neck and neck for a while now, but I guess the Swedish crowd has lost its interest in me after I stopped writing about them. Beautiful! I also have noticed that while the smiley amount has gone down in my blogging, the more and more pictures have started appearing here. Whether this has or hasn't anything to do with the decrease of Swedish followers, I don't know. But relax, foreign readers, it seems that the Finnish reader amount has stayed pretty much the same, while the other countries have replaced some of Swedish following.

However, the reason for me taking a trip to Stockholm wasn't my Swedish readers. It was the second-hand record stores, of course. I had to postpone my trip, because I got laid-off. I simply had no extra money to spend. Right after I got an envelope from the Swedish tax company saying that I'll get a few thousand euros back in tax return and when they had materialized in my bank account (thus verifying that I had understood what the Swedish text was all about), I bought tickets for me and my wife. As the schools had started in mid-August, the prices had gone down. With 'red prices' or 'last-moment trips' in mind, I managed to get them at 22 €. Back and forth for the two of us! Huge thanks to dear lady Jane, who tipped me off about the tax reducements! I wish you well!

We had to wake up very early to leave the ship in Stockholm. It was something like 6:30 a.m. local time. There was no hope of any shop being open at that hour. So we took it calm and walked all the way from Vikingterminal to the T-Centralen, via Slussen and Gamla stan. The weather was lovely and we had the time.

I had accidentally found out that there was a tunnel in the center, stan, which was basically a round tube. I read about it. It had cost a little to use the tube in the early days, but people would rather walk the other way than to pay for it, so nowadays it's a free ride. As you can see in the pictures, there's not much to see. Now we know that too. The street leading to the tunnel was according to my source the place where Olof Palme was murdered back in 1986. There were several memorial plaques for some other important persons, probably for those who planned the tunnel, but no sign about Palme. Maybe I didn't look carefully enough. Granted, the street carrying his name is nearby.

In Gamla stan, the old town of Stockholm, there were concrete dickless lions which served as show stoppers for the cars. Some may remember my post in my Swedish blog, Moved to Sweden. I wrote about the Sweden's decision to remove dicks in all military uniforms. Just to increase equality between sexes. It should not take an animal expert to know that the long hair is also a sign of a male lion. Females don't have the hair. Another case of hermaphrodism perhaps? LOL!

One of the targets was also to find a magnet sign for our dish-washing machine. We had seen one in a shop at Sergelstorg area, right next to Kulturhuset. I'm so poor at noticing when the dishes are dirty in the machine. My wife does some pre-cleaning up before putting the plates etc. into the machine. Many times I can't tell whether they should be taken into use already. I didn't like to have that machine in the first place, but I kept my mouth shut. There are occasions when the washing up hasn't removed all dirt in the dishes. Then you have to wash afterwards as well. I'm the person who usually takes care of manual washing up, but my wife controls the automatic cleaning. From now on, when I see the sign "DIRTY" (Swedes pronounce it in a funny way, like 'dirr-thea'), I know to add dishes there. And when the sign is turned around, saying "CLEAN", I know that it's my time to gather the dishes from the machine and put them in their correct places. Simple but efficient!

The mission I was on, the search of old vinyl rarities, was somewhat satisfying. There's not enough time in the world for me to look at each and every LP there is in Stockholm area. I have to skip something, this time I didn't go to Solna at all, although there are four very professional and, if you must, less expensive, record-stores. I concentrated on Södermalm and St. Eriksplan area. Man, I was tired in the end. I spent about 50-60 euros on vinyls. There was a couple of gems I came across. Some of them I bought, some I had to leave there because of the price. Man, I should have got more tax return, LOL!

My wife did some shopping on her own in the meantime. She didn't find much, but was obviously pleased with window-browsing and visiting small antique shops in Vasastan and Kungsholmen. She was looking for small sushi plates for soy, but didn't find any to her liking.

It was a rare experience for me to stand in Slussen in a warm and sunny day. It usually rains, blows or both. Preferably hard even. We bought by now an almost obligatory skåning from a booth at the square. That is basically a fish burger, or a Danish sandwich if you will. There is a fillet of fried herring on a dark toast with sweet mustard, red onion and miscellaneous spices. It's worth every 35 crown it costs. Me and my wife recommend it warmly.

We had a little extra time on our hands, so we decided to have a drink at a terrace in Drottninggatan. There was a plenty of cafés around, but not that many bars. It was surprising to realize that. In the end we sat down in a terrace of a Mongolian restaurant. It was crowded because of the fine weather. The service was poor and when we had told them that we were there only to drink, they totally ignored us. It was almost humiliating, but everything turned out nicely. We left the place to watch the booths around the Sergelstorg square. Maybe it was because Sweden is the chairman in the EU at the moment, but there were booths from separate nationalities, serving food, handicraft and such. So we stopped at the Austrian/German stand and bought a few pretzels. There was no logic behind that decision, but they tasted alright.

There was also a protest going on, which we skipped. They demanded that USA should leave Iraq or Afghanistan or whatever. It's quite easy to demonstrate here in Stockholm. You sing a couple of songs, stand among the crowd and go to your well-equipped home. Pleased with yourself. With a 100-meg broadband. I may sound a bit ironic here, but let's face it, how much good did that demonstration do? Did the US leave any country?

Finally we hopped on a Silja line ship near Gärdet. The subway was working as before. There was not many evident changes in sight. The Kista Galleria was still under construction. The sushi was great there. The old SL magnet tickets were still in use, although the new ones which could be loaded with any tickets I suppose had arrived. Again we were damn too tired to exploit the tax free shopping in the ship. Unlike for so many, our goal wasn't there, it had been in the city.
I bought a can of cola with a new label. Limited edition and all. I had to take pictures of it. Two reasons. The first: It was the first time ever I had had a cabin with a real window! I had already forgotten that they exist. It was a nice view to the harbour, and I wanted to use it in the background of another picture collage of mine. The second: I don't know how readable it is, but the can says '0 calories'. When you take a closer look at the list of contents, you can see that the calory amount is 1. What..? Why do they lie to us? Or rather: why do they let themselves get caught? I both hate and love this kind of so-called informative lapses.

In two-month's time, I will be visiting Stockholm again. And you can read about it in my blog naturally. That piece of information hardly keeps the remaining Swedish readers online for me, but just in case a bit of advertising. One thing that I was expecting was to meet my old (or ever so young, LOL) colleague Jaime in Stockholm. My another friend Amig-J had met him there twice, without setting a date! I failed to meet Jaime by accident, which led me to thinking that maybe he had moved away from the city. Just kidding, I know he lurks there somewhere. With or without an instrument in his hand, LOL!

September in Smekland

2009-09-16T10:26:00.003+03:00

It's so like me to start up more ideas than I can chew. I almost forgot my brand new monthly Smekland comic strip series. I have a rule that I won't use more than 30 minutes in finishing the picture. Unfortunately it shows, but as you can see, the pun if there ever is one, is quite lame as well. This time I used MS Paint to do it. Maybe I'll get back to GIMP next time. At least it's in colour this time. Enjoy, if you can, LOL!

Stayed up for crabs

2009-09-07T09:53:00.004+03:00

Last Saturday I entered the first crawfish party ever for me. It was fun. It was... an experience. Funny that I had to come back to Nokia from Stockholm to do it. But I guess things happen that way.

We were invited to a buddying family of ours to spend an evening at their house. They had fished crabs in a river nearby, Nokianvirta. That's the main stream (pun intended) that runs through the city of Nokia, being the main reason for the birth of the city as a matter of fact. The huge paper and gum factories still lie by the river. Well, they have put some baby crabs in the river years ago and now they are up for grabs.

As the tradition requires, we took a schnapps in the beginning of the meal. A small drink of hard booze down the hatch. Then we learnt how to eat crawfish. I knew already that it's pretty messy but also that it couldn't be avoided. There's not much to eat in one crab, but it tasted good. Surprisingly good actually. Along with wine and more alcohol we discussed and had a pleasant evening there. We even went for a walk to see some crabs in pots placed in the riverside. The view from there was beautiful. It was chilly, dark - only some city lights glimmering and reflecting in the river. I hadn't seen Nokia in that light before.

Luckily I didn't get too drunk. We had planned to take a taxi anyway, so there was no need to worry about it. This Swedish custom of having crawfish parties includes singing crab(by) songs, but we skipped that. In fact, it was not even mentioned. Knowing our family singing abilities, that was a wise choice. At 2:30 a.m., we were climbing from a taxi to walk home and almost straight to bed. It was a reasonably controlled drunk and the hang-over that followed the next day. Naturally. This time a fair enough price to pay.

I pronounce U

2009-09-01T21:23:00.011+03:00

I have some linguistic weirdos and mysteries to blog about. In several languages this time.

Finnish

We have a TV program called 'A-studio'. Since 'studio' is also 'studio' in Finnish, there's no tension from my part when it's pronounced in Finnish. But, then there is 'A-talk'. It should be 'A-keskustelu' but 'talk' is English and thus pronounced in English. But but, 'A' is pronounced in Finnish, more like the letter 'R'. I hate it. Also, we have 'A-zoom', which follows the idiotic two-language pronounciation path. The 'A' comes apparently from a Finnish word 'ajankohtainen' (topical). It would be nice to hear them say 'Ajankohtainen-talk' or something. Those hosts of the show look very contempting, educated and snobby. How on earth can they deal with the 'A-talk' dilemma, LOL?

One of the all-time weirdos for me is the Finnish word 'ilmeisesti'. It is translated into English 'obviously'. Somehow the meaning of 'ilmeisesti' has changed into 'probably'. The word's origin, 'ilmiselvästi', equals with 'obviously' still. I have no idea what's happened along the way. Do you? There's a similar issue with the word 'varmaan' which used to mean 'for sure' but has nowadays changed into 'I guess'. How vague can one get eventually?

In Berlin World championships this year, there was a lot of athletes with interesting names. It was somewhat titillating (kutkuttava) to watch the Finnish commentators stumble and fall with them. There was a Polish sportsman called Adam Kszczot! It wouldn't be surprising to hear if many reporters had asked him: "May I call you Adam?" LOL! That name reminds me of a certain super villain character in Superman comics antiques. Also a US sprinter Muna Lee made me laugh at the expense of the commentators. Because 'Muna' means, not only egg but balls, dick or whatever down there is called, in Finnish, and the commentators were careful not to spell it in a Finnish way. For example, "Muna otti varaslähdön" (Penis took a false start). They pronounced it like "mew-nuh" and they could be right to do it that way. I won't argue anyway.

Finland-Swedish

It's been almost relaxing to listen to the Radio Vega in Finland. It broadcasts Finland-Swedish programs only. I have been noting that they abbreviate words, not the sentences, like those in Sweden. Remember 'vasadu' and 'nudags'? Now I can hear words like 'int' (inte) and 'da' (dag).

Especially the Swedish news on the radio are of good practise for intermediate (for some reason I don't dig that word) Swedish-speakers like myself. They pronounce properly without background noise, and usually some of the news are already related to older news which makes it easier to follow.

Swedish

I was discussing with my uncle who has lived in Sweden for 40-plus years. We discovered the word 'tallrik' which means 'plate'. It also means pineful, a place with lots of pines, since 'tall' means 'pine'. Instead 'tal' means a lot of things, and 'talrik' means 'numerous'. So you have to do a damn good job in pronouncing sometimes. And, sorry Amig-O if you're on the line, it's still not always the context that tells the difference. We were BBQ'ing, having plates on the table. Surrounded by the pines.

Another oldie for me is a pair of Swedish words. 'Grönsaker' means basically 'green things', which sounds like an understatement of the year when you talk about vegetables. Yup, Hairy Swede blogged about that several posts ago, but he forgot another equivalent: 'vitvaru' - 'white stuff'. That means the kitchenware, because they all used to be white. Well, they aren't all white anymore. Yet the name is in use.

Also the Swedes have their own trouble with English words. It's not rare to hear 'John Lennon' pronounced as 'Yon Lennon'. Being a number one fan of his wife, I think he actually might have liked the Swedish way of pronouncing his name.

Danish

I missed this in my Denmark extravaganza. I was amused by two Danish words. The first I noticed that 'sönder' (actually with a Danish ö) means 'south', not 'broken' like the word is in Swedish. A lot of 'broken' streets et cetera in Denmark, he he. The other one was of course 'böger' (books). Well, it's actually 'bögar' (gays) in Swedish, but the word 'pocket-böger' sounded funny to me still.

English

When Ronald Reagan was chosen for president in 1980, there was a debate in Finland about how to pronounce his name. 'Rea' in 'Reagan' was pronounced by some like 'reel', while some knew better to advice the others to say it like 'great'. The most usual way the Finns do it is like 'ray gun', no pun intended. The same thing with Warren Beatty. I have heard many say 'beat' in 'Beatty' like 'beat' (huh?), whereas some besser-wisser has corrected and told it should be like 'bate'. The most embarrassing moment in my pronounciation-spotting was met when a host of a quiz show repeatedly called him Warren Beauty. The same person, who is an actor in fact, calls constantly Groucho Marx as 'Grue-cho', as if it were a French name. And he's not the only one to use that pronounciation. If you have ever seen or heard any of Marx Brothers' entertainment, you should know 'grou' in 'Groucho' is called like in 'crowd'.

Another exception is Steven Seagal. I like some of his movies, because they are so pointless and the good guys always win. And the bad guys ALWAYS have great skills in martial arts, LOL! It seems like Steven has also used millionaire's shampoo. What that means is for old readers to know and for new readers to find out. Well, against all odds, I like to pronounce his name like 'se-gull'. Not like 'seagull', not like 'say gal' (again, no puns here). Gladly I have found that many web-writers share my opinion. What's yours?

Latin

Ok ok, this may sound a bit snobbish, but I really have something to comment about Latin as well. Not the font, LOL! I have noticed that the Ceasar's famous phrase "veni, vidi, vici" - although often used - is a mystery when it comes to pronouncing it. The letter 'c' was generally pronounced like 'k' in Latin, but there were some exceptions when it was pronounced like 's'. I'd go for the 'k'. It's interesting if no instructions how to speak original Latin fluently has survived.

My English teacher at some advanced schooling course years ago was criticizing me for the use of 'circa' in my essay. She taught me that it's Swedish and I accepted it. I learnt my lesson - until I read that Larsson's book this year. The same 'circa' was used there too and at first I thought it was just another mistake in translation. When I checked it in the Internet, I found out that it was used in English as well. Well, I haven't seen it, but I guess I can't challenge the web. The word is actually Latin, and therefore can be used in any languages. (see how the first 'c' is spelt like 's' and the second like 'k'!) I still won't use it in my English writings but at least now I know better. And hopefully you do too.

Summer's almost gone with the wind

2009-08-30T20:01:00.002+03:00

It's the last official day of Summer tomorrow, since it ends the final Summer month August. I can feel the Fall coming soon, day by day. Some of the leaves have already begun to fall, morning dew lasts until afternoon and there are mushrooms everywhere. The winds blow a bit harder, a bit colder.

What a Summer we had! In weather-wise I mean. It has been better than two previous ones put together. There has been nearly no mosquitos at all, which has made it pleasant for me to walk around in the forest, picking berries and mushrooms. I have some kind of love-hate relationship with mushrooms. Sometimes it's more like treasure hunt, which in itself is rewarding. Preparing good food with mushrooms is another thing. Being no chef, the challenge is there. Definetely.

Some of the time I have been relaxing in our new terrace. We bought an outdoor sofa there and I've been daydreaming there ever since. Taking a nap in fresh air is underrated luxury. Especially when there's no irritating insects around. That's where I read most of the paperback by the late Stieg Larsson.

The Summer hasn't quite given up yet. The forecasters have promised warm days ahead. Next Wednesday it should be even +23 degrees, which sounds almost too good to be true. We have have our share of rain as well, and we haven't heard the last of it yet. Exceptionally little of thunders and lightnings have been among us, which is good. I hate them nowadays, and being a man living in a wooden house I'm also afraid of them.

The two biggest setbacks of the Summer must be (outside the obvious being laid-off) missing the Brian Setzer Orchestra concert in Pori Jazz and missing the a to Stockholm to shop around. I really would have liked to mingle again in Stockholmian second-hand record stores, breathing in the atmosphere of the city and the wonderful scenery. All of a sudden the money got too tight to mention. Otherwise it would have been alright, but the lead time to get the compensation money from being laid-off takes an awful lot of time at the moment. I guess I'm lucky to get them by Christmas. Well, good things are worth the wait, and there should be some of them in horizon already.

The Swedish King and the Queen visited Tampere, my hometown. It was 30 years since they last did it (LOL), when the city of Tampere celebrated its 200 years of existence. This year has been some kind of a 200-year anniversary for Sweden and Finland too. I don't know what there is to celebrate. I also wonder why the same type of anniversary hasn't been celebrated with Russia. After all, it's them who "saved" us from the Swedes. Between a rock and a hard place, I know...

August in Smekland

2009-08-27T19:14:00.004+03:00

Finally I have had the time and the motivation to start this monthly series in my blog. I'm planning to draw a comic strip or something like that every month from now on. These are drawn with my Bamboo tablet digitally, so bare with the quality please. I have the jokes ready for the rest of this year, so no worries. The finishing of them is yet going to be handled later on.

Originally I bought the tablet to draw my bird character which I have already began. It only happens that some of the 'jokes' I have come up with don't fit in my bird's mouth. Some of them would be lost in translation, especially the punchlines. So, in a way, this is a side product for my blog readers to enjoy. Beware of weird sense of humour also in my drawings. So be warned and prepare to be confused!

I'm a fly, eat me

2009-08-26T14:15:00.005+03:00

We have taken a few steps further when it comes to be environmentally conscious. Since July we have received electricity that has been produced by wind and water power. So no coal, oil or nuclear based electricity anymore. Well, it was the cheapish price that had the most saying in it, but I don't mind getting green electricity from now on.

Since we started collecting bio waste into a separate basket, a bunch of small flies have moved into our house. I take out the garbage as soon as the bucket gets full, and it gets full in a little slower pace when we have two baskets. Those flies irritate me. They don't settle with the bio basket, it's suddenly the fresh food they are after. Especially the fruits of course.

This week we welcomed two carnivorous plants (lihansyöjäkasvi) in our home. Basically I don't cheer when new plants arrive at our house, but this time I was enthusiastic as well. Yup, they should eat small flies. In the kitchen the plants are having a front row seat, so to speak. It would be interesting to find out, what is the Greenpeace man's opinion on this. I'm feeding a plant and yet killing flies. Should the carnivorous plant start being a veggie or something? Or should I buy more bananas to the flies? Or quit eating healthy fruits myself? Tricky, LOL!

Gays, Bolts, fiasco and romaniacs

2009-08-24T10:14:00.002+03:00

While the other countries were sporting in track and field, Finland was diving. Low. No medals for us. Here's my (in)different summary of the world championship held in Berlin 2009.

The US athletics wore a sticker "JO" in their shirt, referring to the legendary Jesse Owens, who kicked a nazi ass big time at the Berlin Olympics in 1936. Being a black man, Hitler refused to shake his hand. When Jesse came back to the US, the behavior was not that much different. He was still regarded as a second-rate citizen. Like all afro-American back then. Maybe this was a way of rehabilitating him, who knows, but I guess that the most of the athletes were just honoring his success in Berlin.

Usain Bolt was amazing, again. The envious Swedes were spreading rumors that some in Jamaican team or related had used steroids or such. Pretty vague. I really hope that Jamaicans are clean, like the others too. Tyson Gay was running super-fast for an injured man. Maybe his injury was more like between his ears?

The Finns were a bunch of loosers. Olli-P***a Karjalainen was a disappointment in hammer throw. Tommi Evilä tried hard but didn't quite reach the final in long jump. Jukka Keskisalo did alright, being number 8 in 3000 m steeple chase final - as the second best European. Female javelin thrower Mikaela Ingberg was as bad as she has lately been. I wonder why she gets chosen to race every goddamn time, although she hasn't been in shape for ages. Maybe her coach, the ever-respected gold-medalist in Söul 1988 has too much to say who gets to throw in major tournaments. And maybe they both like to see the world for free, see the champs for free and feel the atmosphere for free?

It's very noticeable that Kenian top runners acquire citizenship of other countries just to get to race and earn money. The competition is so tough in Kenia that a lot of talented athletes have no other way to break through. Finland has not been that attractive a choice for many, and what we have got has been a group of has-beens. Edward Hämäläinen, Wilson Kirwa and Franz Kruger had already reached their top before they became Finns. Now they are or should be retired.

What about men's javelin? It was the first time ever that Finland had 4 men in the WC javelin final. What happened? Not much. Positions 5th, 6th, 9th and 11th were not actually what we were expecting. And this time it should have been almost a child's play to grab a silver and a bronze medal. Gold went deservedly to a Norwegian, who was according to my modest book-counting the only medalist coming from Nordic countries. Yes, the Swedes were not much better either, but that wasn't my headache. In fact, I almost hoped that ANY athlete from Nordic countries would have made it. Not necessarily Thorgildsen, though.

One female runner looked like a man, gathering a lot of headlines in media. Because she won, the headlines got bigger. And I thought it wasn't a beauty contest. It's kind of politically incorrect to criticize anyone's appearance, especially women's. Although I must admit that there were a lot of beautiful women in the Olympic stadium. One of the women, an Australian sprinter Sally McLellan, had small boobs - compared to the others who had none. And when she kneeled down to start the race, the camera man tried to peep inside her shirt. It happened EVERY TIME! In the first and the second round, in semi final and the final! It felt like an obsession. Granted, she was a world class athlete and therefore one of the most photographed. But still, zooming into her cleavage - was it necessary? Every time?

When the world championships were over, I didn't have to change my mind about which country had the most beautiful women. It's the Romanians. Not a beauty contest, like I said, but a fairly comprehensive sampling still. It has nothing to do with the sports, I digressed once again. Sorry about that. Also I do think that "Who's the sexiest athlete in Berlin" type of voting polls are clearly out of line. And I did enjoy watching it, the results and records were satisfactory per se. Apart from the Finns obviously. Alas.

Talk about cheeses

2009-08-15T11:25:00.006+03:00

Our daughter likes to read Nalle Puh, which is Winnie The Pooh in Finnish and Swedish. It's mostly wathching the pictures for her. It's alright with me, those characters are sympathetic and kind. No evil villains like for example in Aku Ankka's (Donald Duck/Kalle Anka) cartoons. As a matter of fact, I just cancelled the order of the duck because it doesn't seem to wake any interest in her. And I haven't been able to read it for ages. It's too daft for me.

Why I'm writing about Winnie The Pooh? The answer lies in the pictures. The comic book of this week has a cover that got my immediate attention. I got irritated. That doesn't take much, LOL! I made a blow-up of the detail where Piglet hangs cheese on a rope. The practical joke in itself has nothing to do with my post. It's the label "Edam" that aggravates me. It's so easy to see that the cheese in the picture is Emmentaler cheese, not Edam. Ok, those characters are not educated and can hardly read or write but still. And I was just in my previous post writing about how fairytale characters don't do this kind of faulty information sharing!

How about the educational side of Winnie The Pooh? Edam and Emmentaler are not the same. They taste very different. They also look very different (Edam in the right in the picture beside, for those who can't separate them). What is the IQ of the editors there? I just can't quit dissing editors - I have my personal reasons which I may even have blogged about sometimes before I moved back to Finland. The fact that "Emmental" wouldn't have fitted in the small room it was given can't be a believable reason. Neither that "Edam" is more familiar a name or brand to the children than "Emmental". Since it obviously looks like a piece of cheese, the tag is completely unnecessary there. It's not wise to fool children. Adults should have some responsibility. Even in the case of Nalle Puh!

Hippy Hippy Gumbo Millennium Shake?

2009-08-13T16:20:00.004+03:00

I just finished reading a book in English, "The girl with the Dragon Tattoo" by Stieg Larsson. Some of my older, say 'advanced', readers may remember my personal challenge of reading through the whole Millennium trilogy. Not only that but in 3 different languages. Last year I finished the second book of the trilogy, not knowing about the other two when purchasing it. It was in Swedish, the original language. Not a good way to read in that order, I don't recommend. The first one was equally exciting, and now I'm beginning to chase the third one, in Finnish. Basically any Finn could do the same challenge, but I doubt if anyone has ever done it before.

I must admit that reading in English was much easier. Unfortunaly, the English used in this book gave me pain. It was mostly poor. The translator, Reg Keeland, must be a Swede who thought that he knew English. There's no other way. I can find dozens of small errors and a few gross ones. First of all, why were 'herr' (mister) and 'fröken' (miss) left untranslated? The same with 'tunnelbana' (subway). In addition, there were sentences that didn't seem to make any kind of sense. If herr Larsson were able to read this, I bet he'd roll over in his grave. Then again, there were quite a many strange words to me - making me wonder what they were doing amongst all this pigeon-English. I was content with the Larsson's Swedish, as much as I could cope with it, so I really can't blame anyone else but the translator. Though I must admit that I surely couldn't have done a better job myself. But someone could have. Should have.

One interesting point came to me while reading this. In one section some character mentions The Finnish War, which happened in 1808-1809. However, the character claims as a fact that it began in 1940. Of course the character could lie or remember incorrectly, but normally these historical facts are always true. And no other character at the scene suspected it to be an incorrect year. Global disinformation, eh? Instead of Finnish War he must have referred to The Winter War (1939-1940), but still the starting year is erroneous. Either the author didn't know the real starting year, or he made a silly little mistake. The Continuation War took place in 1941-1944, it can't be that either. I don't remember any writer to have made a character give falsified information on true events on purpose. Although in real life many characters do.

I don't want to spoil the fun by telling about the content of the book. All I can say is that it's more captivating than the Da Vinci Code I also read last year. This really ties you up on a chair (read: sofa), so be warned. That's why I might take a long break before continuing with the third part of the trilogy. All of a sudden my wife agrees with me on something. I must do something else too. For example blog.

Anal sex free sauna in Stockholm area discovered

2009-08-11T12:29:00.006+03:00

You can only imagine why there has been a reason to put this kind of warnings on the wall of Skogåshallen. Skogås, south of the Stockholm center, is one of the places I haven't visited. And it seems that I probably won't either. I didn't see any of these hanging on the wall of Vasalundshallen, so it would have been alright to do it there? TIC, but still.

"Thanks for not having anal sex in our sauna. Kindly, the personnel." So it's not forbidden but worth thanking if not exercised. Strange. I remember a lot of children in the shower room and sauna too. And furthermore, it kind of says that you may practise it in other saunas, but not preferably in "our" sauna. The personnel really is kind, thankful and everything. I wonder whether the fathers do appreciate the poster, when their kids ask: "Dad, what is anal sex? Why isn't is proper to have it here?"

This is once more another evidence about the Swedes going too far. Maybe that Skogåshallen is a known gay swimming hall, I don't know. But still having sex in general places should be considered as breaking the law. As it is in Finland, and maybe in the rest of the world too. Thanks to my friends for sending me the picture, it's a gem. I only wonder what they were doing over there, and with a camera, LOL!

Remembering Diana, 52 years later

2009-08-10T10:24:00.006+03:00

Last night I went to see Paul Anka with my wife. It was more than satisfactory. To hell with Madonna, LOL! Well, I still like Madonna a little bit, but it never occured to me to see her in Helsinki this week. Not even because it was the biggest concert in the Nordic countries, or the her first gig ever in Finland. Perhaps if I had lived in Helsinki... well, too many if's (one too many). Back to Paul, and back to the 50's. I can't really explain why, but I'm slightly hooked on late 50's/early 60's teenage pop. Kind of B-files (B for Boppers). Especially I have been interested in Paul Anka's early material. He's a kind of an odd ball amongst all those Bobbies. Coming from Canada for a start. Being so young, writing his own material, singing comparately well, being... well, a gifted, good-looking guy. An all-around entertainer, if you will. Maybe it's the kitsch-type of songs, Crazy love in particular, that somehow appeal to me.

It seems beyond comprehension why Mr. Anka lost the touch in writing songs in the mid-60's, and started to record other people's songs. He's done a series of hits since then as well, but they are different. Maybe he started to dislike those teenage ballads of his own. To me, they represent a perfect way of escape to my deepest feelings. Diana, Put your head on my shoulder, You are my destiny, Puppy love, Crazy love, Adam and Eve (the original In a gadda-da-vida song, LOL!), Lonely boy and My hometown to name some of those we heard yesterday night. And the man created them all before he was twenty! Today, heading for 70, Paul has still got it. Hair? Um, well... I meant talent, but he's got some hair. Again. He has probably used that same infamous millionaire's shampoo as Sting, but it's alright. I don't mind - it doesn't affect his singing voice, which is still in good shape. It was such a joy to see him move and interact with the audience so smoothly. It felt like he had brought a piece of Las Vegas to Tampere for more than two hours.

I haven't thought about buying Anka's Rock Swings CD, because it contains old rock classics from the 80's/90's newly arranged into swing. Van Halen, Bon Jovi, Nirvana, ... I bet Kurt Cobain would have been angry, had he heard Anka's arrangement of Smells like Teen Spirit! Then again, Kurt had enough problems of his own to look around what's happening outside his head, or something like that. Whereas Paul Anka has always been a chameleon in music industry, seemingly aware of what's going on. And I was pretty pleased to hear these swing versions. Not because they were better than the originals (they weren't), but because they sounded great! It was not that far from Brian Setzer Orchestra's music. Sadly we had to skip B.S.O.'s gig in Pori Jazz festival, but this was balsam treatment for us as well. Besides, this was more jazzy swing than Setzer's group ever has been. It occured to me that syncopated rhythm has been in original swing since the 30's - and funk rock isn't that different from it after all. Now I even consider of buying that Rock Swings record, if it's on discount and crosses my path. In the meantime, my lazy but productive search of Anka vinyls continues. Stockholm was and is a good source for that.

It felt good to hear Paul salute Buddy Holly, the man whose number one record It doesn't matter anymore he wrote in 1958. An acoustic version of that song was heard yesterday at Tampere-talo, with Anka also featuring in guitar. The man played some piano too, telling semi-dirty jokes every now and then. Well, the audience was old enough to hear them. Maybe too old sometimes: we saw some old guys with a hearing aid there. Yup, a lot of past 70-year-old ladies were in the front rows. Acting like teenagers again. A good nostalgia trip for them I suppose. There were multimedia shows on screen from time to time. Sometimes Paul sang a duet with a performer doing a show on video, e.g. with Sammy Davis Jr. and Frank Sinatra (yes, it was My Way). I wasn't too keen on that, but the man needed the rest. Paul showed a picture of his current wife. It seems that the first line in Diana has turned upside down.

The only thing that really bothered me, was that I didn't bring a decent camera with me. It was alerted there not to take any pictures during the show, but yet most of the audience shot as much as they could. Hell, Paul Anka even encouraged people to take pics of him by grabbing the camera and taking a picture of himself by himself. And of the band. A very old but professional band, I must add. Now I had to settle with taking photos with my oldish N73, which isn't that great when it comes to shoot in the dark. See for yourself. Or instead, you can picture this: a combination of Mr. Putin and Mr. Berlusconi. I reckon Paul and Silvio share the same barber these days, LOL!

Berry picking

2009-08-09T14:14:00.002+03:00

After a few years really, we went to the woods to pick blueberries. If you find a good place, it's almost fun for a while. Until my back starts to hurt, that is. And until the mosquitos find us. We found a decent enough place to do some old-fashioned berry picking. We are not using machinery mainly because we are old school. It took less than two hours to gather more than 5 litres of blueberries. Not bad. The weather was great, like it has been for some time now.

Let's move on to the Smek twist in the story. When we got home, it was my job to clean our berries and remove any dirt discovered among them. That's a boring and troublesome job; the Swedes would say 'jobbigt'. Anyway, it has to be done. Like with fishes and mushrooms, it's by far the most annoying task of the process.

When my wife made blueberry pie, it was served to our invited guests. My wife was telling how she had done it etc. but there was no mention about who had cleaned them. I thought to myself that my job is invisible as long as everything is okay. Suddenly she found a piece of plastic in the pie. And it only took a second for her to announce who had done the cleaning of the berries! I couldn't be silent but stated that the cleaner is never mentioned unless someone finds something that doesn't belong there. That's gratitude.

I began to compare berry picking to SW development. Developers do the picking, it may be of good quality, or bad. If they use machines to pick berries, it's like they'd use some scripts or other tools in sofware creation. Tools may create errors on regular basis - in berry picking tools gather dirt, leaves and green blueberries.

Then a SW tester comes and tries to sort it out. Find the shit and remove it. In SW world they'd just ask someone to fix it. Because the cleaning up requires human eye and touch, it can't be automated. The more lines of code, or litres of berries, the slower it gets. No show stoppers, i.e. spiders and worms are allowed to pass the test.

The application is released. The pie lies on the table. It's time to use it. The developer gets praises how delicious the pie is. At least courtesy praises. If nothing wrong is detected, the application/pie has passed the end-user test. But, if something weird is found inside it, the focus moves instantly from a developer to a tester. The poor cleaner. "The tester should have found it!" is echoing in my ears while I'm feeling an undesirable deja vu all over again. Tester's job isn't appreciative, but nonetheless critical. I have yet to meet another profession which is more important and yet as dissed broadly.

Sporty thoughts by Sporty Smek

2009-08-07T11:08:00.002+03:00

This is a kind of warm-up post for the world championship games in track and field to be held in Berlin. Yes, it's Smek, the couch potate in action again. But this time exercising himself as well. Great?

To start with, I like numbers. I also like Numb3rs. Although I'm not convinced that anyone could actually calculate and solve crimes using those never-really-shown-completed formulas. I don't buy it, but otherwise it's splendid waste of time for me. Anyway, we have some old, doping-smelling Finnish records existing. They date from the 70's and early 80's. One of the oldest, if not the oldest, Finnish record in track and field is in 3000-meter steeple chase. The holder of the record is semi-legendary Tapio Kantanen. Today we have a good contender for the record, Jukka Keskisalo. He's in good shape right now. Two weeks ago he tried to challenge the old record. It was exactly 33 years ago when Kantanen's record was set. On the dot. The run was progressing as planned, almost. When Keskisalo reached the finish line, his time was..... 33 hundredths of a second over the record time! It must have made him frustrated. As far as I'm concerned, I was delighted. See the play with number 33. I must admit that it would have been even greater a joy if Jukka had managed to improve the record 33 hundredths. On the other hand, it's good to leave him a bit hungry for the big games. He's missed two major events in a row due to injury, let's hope he'll be in shape this time.

Our kid has been attending to a track and field training this Summer. They practise in Nokia's athletic field. Stadium, if you will. That's a good place to exercise. In my childhood, I would have done anything to get there, but those days it wasn't possible. At least for us in our family. They get instructed while jumping and running. They also throw javelin, discus and shot. Sometimes they measure times and lengths, but it's basically more like a play. The young adult girls do the instructing, and to me it looks quite sloppy. Every once in a while there is a male instructer who usually gets more done. A little bit of army style but it works neverthesame.

One time our family was there by ourselves, simply having fun. I tried to inspire our daughter by exercising myself on the side. We had a watch and a measure with us, so it sounded more "official". I also wanted to see how I'd do today. I hadn't done anything like this in 25 years, at least. I remember my top score in long jump was something like 5,10 meters. I promised myself to jump at least 3 meters. And what happened: When I reached the plank, my feet kept on running! I tried again, and the same result. My head says "jump!" but my feets say "hell no!" I couldn't trust that I wouldn't hurt myself in landing or something. I was both confused and disappointed in my performance.

I also tried to run 60 meters. I figured that 100 meters in full speed might give me a heart attack, so I settled with this indoors sprint race. I ran it twice, both times in 10,2 seconds. The result was pretty good. While running, I felt like falling forward most of the time. My mind wanted to speed it up while my legs had a hard time coping with it. My wife stopped me from trying another time, and after a while I agreed with her. In my pre-teens, when I ran my 60 meters record, the clock stopped at 9,8. Never under that. Later, we changed the 60 meters to 100 at school, so I have no better time measurement for 60 meters during my most sportly active period. By the time I got to high school, I had dropped all exercise. That's something I regret today, but those days I just wanted to concentrate on music, music, music.

It will be interesting to see Michael Schumacher does, if he gets to race in F1 once more. In case he will be positioned amongst the top 10, I think it would be almost scandalous. I mean, how could it be possible that someone who hasn't raced seriously in three years could do such an impressive result? And how bad is the level of the other racers then? Of course, Schumi is a legend who won't ever give up, but Ferrari hasn't had good cars this year. But, like I said, it will be interesting.

Post number 100

2009-07-31T20:35:00.002+03:00

It's time to collect some data. According to Globetrackr, I have collected here a top ten list of the countries that have visited my blog, Alive in Finland. It may have some old leftover data from my previous blog, Moved to Sweden, but I can't separate them. Too late for that.

Sweden - 38,98 %
Finland - 35,17 %
United States - 8,32 %
Hong Kong - 5,49 %
United Kingdom - 1,29 %
Russian Federation - 0,94 %
Canada - 0,68 %
France - 0,51 %
Australia - 0,44 %
Germany - 0,37 %

There was "unknown" in the 5th place with a 3,23 % share. Hits were from all over the world: 56 countries thank you very much! It seems that Sweden has lost its share but Finland has stayed pretty much the same. Whereas USA has grown big-time. There I have Hairy Swede to thank for. Mogli has been busy outside blogging, which may have caused the decrease of Filipinos at least in my visitor list. It seems not likely that the Finns will ever get the 50 per cent share, which would mean my blog language change to Finnish if they did. I'm not sure if I even wanted that. Let's have another walk-through with the statistics after 50 or 100 posts. Until then...

Den #5: Nature

2009-07-31T16:55:00.003+03:00

Finally I can conclude this 5-piece introduction of Denmark. I have some other type of posts pending, but I needed to get rid of this first. To get it out of my system.

The most of Denmark consists of fields. There are no mountains. That explains those rapid weather changes. Denmark wants to increase and develop their wind power plant technology further. No nuclear plants. They are so green, environmentally conscious. Then again, what about legos? Plastic stuff that never decomposes. And, as far as I'm aware of anything, plastic still needs oil as its ingredient. I like their idea of being energy independent though.

Let's continue with Finns. When we arrived at Billund airport, there were two guides awaiting. One of them was male. A quick look at him saying "Hei!" convinced me once again: this dude is gay. My wife has warned me about not judging anyone by the first impression, so I stayed silent. The guide of our hotel was an older lady. Fuzzy old woman. She had interesting things to say, but it was a bit boring. When we got to the hotel, we had a welcoming event. The male guide took care of talking. And he was brilliant. He sounded just like a Finnish Lasse Norres, one-time manager of a legendary Finnish group called Dingo (he's done nothing ever since, but is concidered as a celeb still). Back to guide. When the occasion was over, my wife whispered to me: "This man sure is one of those..." Yup, even she noticed it, LOL! Nevertheless, he was such a good tourist guide that I wished he had been ours. I liked the way he pronounced "Billund" - it sounded more like "Pillunt" than "Biillynd" to me. Maybe it was a correct pronounciation still, who knows.

Back to Danish. And tolerance. The Danes are world famous for their tolerant attitude against sexual items. Also they are free to make fun of other religions but their own. But the free will seemingly doesn't reach immigrants. It was a news to me to hear that Denmark accepts least immigrants in Nordic countries. That is, even less than Finland. Maybe they are afraid of foreigners after what they have said and done. Or maybe they want to keep those busty women all for themselves. If you live in Eldorado, there simply can't be room for everyone..? Besides, the Danish men seem to have the same kind of hair loss going on as the Swedes do. And the Finns are not exactly foreign to that phenomenon either. So perhaps their self-esteem has lowered not to be able to compete with dark, handsome hairy rivals?

The guide told us that the legendary Danish fairy tale writer and teller Hans Christian Andersen was never married, but had a love of his life somewhere. Yeah right. Of course he could have been a "if I can't have you, I don't want nobody, babeh" type of a guy, but I doubt that. He could have been a "girl at each harbor" type of a charmer since he travelled a lot, which seems more likely. Then again, he could have been gay, making up stories about his distant lover. After all, he was a master in that field. Or worse, he could have done things Michael Jackson was accused of having done with children. An old man telling bedtime stories to small kids isn't actually popular these days. Please remember my ever-present TIC attitude, Danes, and be worthy of your tolerant image.

Personally, I found the Danish very polite and friendly. Not that helpful but still never rude. They smiled at us in a friendly way when they passed us in the streets, as if they knew us somewhere. An old couple even said hello to us while walking with the nordic poles. It must be partly because of our Nordic looks, partly because we had a lovely girl with us. I can't expect it happen to everyone although it could.

The Danish were even more into their own language than the Swedish. Maybe it was due to the whereabouts of the Vejle, but they preferred German over Swedish. English wasn't that great there either. I must admit that I'd never make it if I had to have a conversation in Danish. Even our guides talked English with the local people.

Now I have finally visited every Nordic country, Scandinavia if you will. The trip to Norway's Lapland hardly counts as a true visit but still. I'd like to fly to Oslo some day, although Norwegians are not famous for their love of Finns. At least as far as sport is concerned. I'd like to find out whether that is true in the grass level. It's kind of pleasant to notice that I'd like to re-visit every Nordic capital. Except for Finland's, which is so lame.

Den #4: Copenhagen

2009-07-31T15:10:00.005+03:00

While the most of our group of Finns were travelling to a zoo nearby, we decided to see some of Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, instead. We had seen Kolmården already in Sweden, and our lady guide told us that it was much the same. Luckily there was a railway station in Vejle which had a straight connection to Copenhagen. Since we were in mainland, we had to cross some bridges and islands on our way. It took about 2,5 hours to get there. A lot of modern times windmills escorted us along the way.

At first, we checked the map to find out where the famous statue of small mermaid would be lying. Or sitting down actually. There was an arrow up in our map, pointing that the statue would be just out of range. Hell, it was several kilometers out of range! We walked and walked along the harbour, and it started to rain. Finally, when we were ready to give up, we saw it in the distance. Normally I wouldn't go to great pains for a statue. It just had turned into a challenge during the search.

Another thing we wanted to experience was a Danish bread, smörrebröd. That was a huge disappointment. We have had the same kind of bread and butter with a lot of topping on it in Finland for ages, so this wasn't that new an experience. To know better is to judge better, LOL! Granted, it was just one sample, but we saw pictures of other Danish bread slices, which weren't any dissimilar.

It would have been stupid to stay in Vejle on Sunday, because everything was basically closed. Our famous male guide told us that in Copenhagen the shops are mostly open on Sunday as well.

Ströget, the pedestrian shopping street area in the centre was a nice place to wander around. The prices were high, even higher than in Finland. Sadly the second-hand record shops were all closed. Not that I checked them all out. An old round tower in Ströget was a nice place to visit. We simply had to climb there (no steps, no elevator; just a diagonal road almost to the top), to see the view of course.

Suddenly it came to me: is there a Hard Rock Café in Copenhagen? I had chased HRC souveniers in Rome, Paris, London, Reykjavik and Stockholm already. I have now 3 guitar-shaped bottle openers which also pass for ice-box magnets - sad thing I didn't start collecting them from the very beginning. They probably didn't exist in 1996? My wife also took a traditional picture of me (with our daughter), standing in front of Hard Rock Café.

The weather was sunny most of the time, ever since we left the harbor and the mermaid. We also walked to see the royal castle and watched the guards standing in their posts. Our kid asked me: "Why do those guards wear such funny hats?" I couldn't really tell, so I speaked some jargon about old habbits and fashion trends. All I could say for sure, was that those hats must be pretty warm to wear in hot weather. And, that too, is based on assumption.

Tivoli, the amusement park stood the opposite of the main railway station. We had no time to visit there, but it is plain to see that the next time that one will be our main target. And there will be a next time. We definetely want to see more of Copenhagen. More than just 8 hours. And maybe we want to sit on the lap of H. C. Andersen's statue once more. That was very slippery by the way.

They have a weird but working system with the trains. If you travel to a certain place, you must enter a correct carriage. That way the train conductor can easily check new arrivals. Also, if you're in a wrong carriage, the doors may not open at your station. In that sense, it was a bit tricky. Then again, tickets were easy to buy in ticket machine via credit card. And there was no time and date in the ticket. That's a plus compared to Finnish system. I hate it when I have to know in advance what precise train I'm going to use on my way back. And, the trains were right on schedule!

Den #3: Vejle

2009-07-25T11:45:00.013+03:00

The city where our hotel located was called Vejle. Still is. It is pronounced in the German way, almost like the word "whiler". It is a small town actually, near the sea. The only bigger street was a shopping street, or a pedestrian street if you will. Anyway, it was full of small boutiques which attracted tourists. Picture 1 (taken in the largest shopping center of Vejle): When the brand is succesful enough, all you need is a logo!

At first we had a hard time finding a place to eat or drink coffee, but later on we found out that the most of them were already closed. And it wasn't even evening yet! Almost every shop was closing during 5 - 6 p.m. We were really struggling for a cup of coffee. Our male guide had tipped us off to pay a visit to a "hidden" restaurant. It was very well hidden indeed, but we found it the other day, by accident of course. Maybe the expectations were too big to meet, but the food wasn't particularly tasty. And the service was pretty slow. Then we didn't realize that it was the way of the world in Denmark.

The hotel (picture 2) was alright, but the same breakfast buffet every morning started to irritate me. There was not that much assortment to variate a lot. Anyway we needed to eat something, notably those days we stayed in Legoland all day. The service proved to be slow also in the Danish hotel business, and the beds were not made at all during our stay.

Once we ordered a cup of coffee at the reception bar - after we had desperately searched for a coffee bar in the Vejle center. Ten minutes passed we noticed that the woman in charge hadn't even started to make it yet. My wife, the more impatient one, went back to the counter and explained the situation to another woman, who started to make it at once. In a moment she brought it to our table - only to be interrupted by the first woman, explaining that the second woman had made it in a wrong way. She took the coffee away, and came back after several minutes. That was a weird coffee machine she used: you had to push a piston (mäntä) down, but not before the coffee was ready. Hell, we were in such a need of coffee that we pushed it down quite soon and drank it. It didn't taste good, but it was coffee still. And our last cups of coffee there. It was strange because in the mornings the coffee was quite good.

In picture 3, you can see a shop called "Catwalk Scum". I just had to take a picture of it! Scum? What were they thinking of? Bum fashion, the next big thing? These things justify having a camera in your cellular, LOL!

Our male guide (who will co-star in the last episode of my Denmark study) advertised that there were some extremely delicious fish restaurants near the harbor. The fish would be fresh, caught the very same day. Well, we couldn't find any fish restaurants there. Hell, we didn't even find the street the recommended restaurant was supposed to locate. We asked some local people and they didn't know either. I wondered that it sure was easier to say "I don't know" than guide us in English. Finally we entered one sushi bar, which was a pleasant place. Once again, the waitress was polite but the service was so slow.

Since I'm on a roll with pictures (in fact, being lazy to transfer these pics to a PC delayed the making of this post. As you can see, it was worth having them here...), let's have another one. In the last picture, you can see a mixture of cola and energy drink. It promises to be the strongest cola in the world, having 50% more caffeine than leading brands. Not saying which they are, of course. I bought it at the airport, on our way back home. I thought that I might need some extra energy while driving from Helsinki back to Nokia. Yup, it was keeping me awake convincingly. I only took a couple of sips of it to be honest.

When we arrived home, I began wondering that maybe it was too strong a drink to bring to Finland. It's not for sale here, I guess. Then again, why would it be sold at the airport, if it were illegal to carry abroad?

Another thing that caught my eye in the can, was the text "support the breasts". Hell, I support them gladly, LOL! If it wasn't obvious after my previous post. It continues in Danish, but it says basically that 25 öre of each can go to the fight against breast cancer. I support that too, although 25 öre is close to nothing. It's something like 3,5 cents of Euro. It's kind of weird though: get high with caffeine and save some breasts at the same time. I'm all for saving Danish breasts, and as I mentioned earlier, there is a lot of it to save (I'd put a smiley here, but I have promised myself not to use them in my posts anymore. In my comments they adventure sometimes still).

Den #2: Rackland

2009-07-24T12:28:00.002+03:00

I know, I'll get crushing objections from Floridian and Sapphire to name a few, but I just can't be silenced. Sorry...

The first thing I noticed in Denmark, was the D cup effect: almost every woman walking (read: bouncing) in the street was astonishingly well-equipped. It blew my mind, to quote Hairy succesfully. I had thought this could happen only in Sweden, but now it happened in Denmark too. And the women in question weren't fat at all. I felt like being born in a wrong country; and I didn't need five days to decide that. Then again, if this were a daily scenery for me, I probably would not pay any attention to it anymore. If I ever had. Maybe it's good to be born in Finland, even if just to go abroad and see the natural wonders of mammals.

This supports my theory of Finnish not originating from Scandinavian roots (not my own theory, but a dialect of it, if you will). Even if Finland was part of Sweden for centuries, the genetic inheritance came from the East, deep in the heart of Russia. The matryoska doll, where wooden Russian woman dolls are hidden inside a larger, the similar-looking doll, serves as a prime example of a Finnish woman as well. Short height, big head, bad skin, tight shoulders, large waiste, big fat bottom and thighs, beer-belly, thick ankles, short feet, week, brunette hair (not blonde as usually stated) and, yes, small tits. Of course, generalization isn't fair, but this isn't actually my invention. It's pretty much common knowledge in Finland. We know what we are, which sadly doesn't necessarily help grow our self-esteem. Yet, Finnish women treat Finnish men like garbage. Maybe we males are so dumb to take the hits and not doing anything about it. It's considered to be manly when not complaining about anything. And maybe we are not worthy of a Finnish woman still. Ok, enough about my provocative opinion.

I have noticed that the Swedes and the Danes in particular, do eat a lot of greasy, fatty food. But for some reason, it shows in their boobs instead of ass and thigs. This isn't fair to the Finnish women; they have to eat more healthily not to grow a huge ass, and still the boobs don't grow much, if not at all. Granted, every woman doesn't want large breasts, but why do they get siliconized then? And pay a fortune for it? Do they feel the environment pressing them to get a big rack? Against their own will? That's BS.

If we go back to my original topic, I used to think that the women were pretty in Sweden, Portugal, Romania especially, Italy and France - basically everywhere I have dropped by (except for Bulgaria). Meeting these blonde (there seemed to be even more blondes than in Sweden) Danish women was a final wakeup call for me. It's not that they are beautiful, it's that the Finnish women are so goddamn ugly. With a hell of a lot of exceptions of course but still. In average. Some may want to hang me for this, but I have tried to be as objective as I can. If you wish, you can leave a comment. Bring it on, LOL!

Den #1: Legoland

2009-07-23T20:41:00.006+03:00

I have dealt this subject into 5 different posts. They all deal with our family's trip to Denmark, in one way or another. The first one is about our main target: Legoland.

We spend two days in Legoland, which is just about minimum and maximum. You can't see and experiment all in one day; on the other hand after two days it's only repetition of the same. It was a worthwhile trip. I recommend it to everyone; even if you don't have children.

Our trip, organized by the Finnish travel agency Matkavekka, was a success. We were in good hands all the time. Also the weather wasn't that bad. It was mostly sunny, although some rain showers were present daily as well. We heard that it's part of Danish weather: rainy, shiny, windy and cloudy skies change places many times during an hour! Anyway, it wasn't as bas as forecasted for the whole week.

Lego miniatyres were impressive. Really. Those amusement park equipments were also quite enjoyable. Admittedly, it was more fun for the children, but the lovely environment shone its joyous and playful feeling around - even so that it felt almost irresistable. It didn't feel that commercial a place as Euro-Disney. After you had paid the Legoland ticket, everything was basically free inside the park. Drinks, food etc. excluded of course. The Legoland personnel was very motivated, friendly and professional. The park itself was tidy and extremely well taken care of.

Because the Billund, where this original Legoland is located, had its own airport, it was pretty fast to get there. Even if we had our hotel booked in a city nearby, called Vejle. Which proved to be an excellent choice for the trip as well. This five-day stay in Vejle, with hotel, flights, Legoland tickets and transportation, cost a bit more than 500 euros each. Not cheap, but then again worth the money. And what's more: worth the experience. After the season it'll be even cheaper.

The Summer of '69

2009-07-22T22:16:00.002+03:00

Yes, it's exactly 40 years since man (or 'a man', LOL!) stepped on the Moon for the first time in history of mankind. At least allegedly so. This time, I'm not supporting any conspiracy theories. Because I want to believe. Like I read in a newspaper: why would Americans set-up the fake Moon walk so many times? Because they are stupid? I don't think so, not this time.

It's not that fashionable to brag about seeing the incident on TV, because it reveals you're an old fart. But actually I do remember watching it happen, 40 years ago. Being only 3 years old, I surely didn't see it in right perspective, LOL, maybe I was thinking "Big deal". Probably not even that. And if it weren't my mother who carried me in front of a television set, saying "Look, they are on the Moon now!", I would never have witnessed it happen. All I remember is some blurry moving images in black and white. Which is more than some recall about their trip to Woodstock.

I'm pretty convinced that we haven't yet heard everything related to the first succesful Moon trip. I wonder why Neil Armstrong is always so quiet about it. Then again, after walking on the Moon - what would leading a normal life on Earth feel like after that? Not so many people to share that mutual feeling around.

I'm so laid back I'm laid off

2009-07-21T16:42:00.003+03:00

Yes, that must be the reason for getting laid (off). These days you must lean forward in everything you say and do. Promise to get things done on time, even if you never had done anything like it. Signs of the times. I don't fit into lying matrix. I never have.

Actually, our company seems to be doing what the other bigger companies have done for the past six months. Now's the time to cut extra costs without having to explain your actions to anyone. It's the recession, you know. Understandable to kick out somebody. In plural in our case.

Getting laid off is unknown to Swedes at least. It's like you are getting fired for a certain amount of time. Or until further notice. I got a two-month lay off, maximum, after which I will continue working as nothing had happened. During a lay off I'm entitled to get unemployment compensation. It will take more than a while to get it, because there are so many people in my situation as well. I can take another job if I like/get one. I could also quit my job without term of notice.

In a way, I'm happy about the situation, because I had only a few-day vacation which I have already spent. Also, I was so tired after working and doing the same things all over and over again that I really needed to rest. On the other hand, I had to welcome more of that ever-loving bureaucracy in the shape of multiple papers and visits to several offices. And the loss of money makes the living more difficult. In fact, this lay off incident seems to follow the Smek's economical disaster curve quite expectedly, LOL!

Now I have more time to blog, but less money to do things to blog about. Anyhow, I'm hoping for a better ending to this year. That shouldn't too hard to implement. But then again: how many things go right in this crazy world?

Two slips in six months

2009-07-19T11:34:00.002+03:00

Since Mr. Obama started his presidency I have noticed two embarrassing moments in his acts. Nothing big but still big enough to mention. You'll be the judge whether two mistakes is much. Personally I think he could have avoided these slips easily if he had wanted to. There may have been more of them around, but I haven't been that interested in the subject at hand.

The first one occurred when Obama was comparing his bowling skills to paralympics level or something like that. Very unfortunate. The second one I witnessed myself, when Obama caught a fly and killed it on a television show. And even bragged about it.

What bothers me most, is the fact that these actions would have been expected GWB to perform instead of Obama. Now the 'change' doesn't feel that appropriate a word anymore, does it? I hope these slips were only beginner's mistakes - otherwise he's done a great job so far. Good luck to Barry town people, still a lot of good things to do...

Don't beat anymore, the man's already dead!

2009-07-06T08:13:00.002+03:00

At first I must confess that I have never been a fan of Michael Jackson. Then again, I have liked some of his songs up to a point. I have even purchased some of his records, though admitted because of his duets with Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger. It's not like me to pretend.

The first wave of repulsion met me right after the announcement of Jackson's death. I was still in total amazement how this could have happened, when the media started doing its thing. A lot of celebrities revealed us how they had always admired Michael Jackson and how genious he had been. Even those who actually never met the man were interviewed. Hell, including some Finns in local tabloids!

Ok, it's nice to be nice to the dead. But... where was the frontier of support when he was alive? These people interviewed kept their mouths shut. Maybe being afraid of getting their name dirty or something. Attached to alleged child abuse perhaps.

The second wave knocked me out. Autopsy reports were released, saying Michael was bald, skin and bones and full of needle marks. What gives anyone a right to release stuff like that? Now that those reports have been found to be untrue (no one tells to what extent), we keep on getting more and more of the same. In different packages, but still. I get this feeling that because he was somewhat easy to mock and hurt, the media feels they still have the right to treat him the way he has been treated ever since Thriller. That is, how they feel like.

Let's be fair and give the man some peace. Although he died at 50, he still managed to make a career worthy of several lifetimes. That's more than enough to make somebody to be not just anybody.

ME AND US

2009-07-04T08:19:00.002+03:00

I me mine and so on. Well, it's my birthday today. Not a special day in other way. Oh yes, it's the independence day in the US. Happy birthday! (a quote from S Wonder in case U wonder). And in the Flilippines too.

Not much to celebrate at the moment, but it's alright. I have always hated to be the center of attention. Well, I can stand being celebrated by my family members. They surprised me this morning by bringing breakfast in bed. A nice gesture. What makes them happy makes me happy as well.

It seems like I will have more time to blog in July. I have some goodies waiting, just around the corner...

Too much on my mind...

2009-06-23T09:02:00.001+03:00

...and too little time to blog about it, LOL! Right now I'm between two giant steps in my life, but I don't know where the other step locates. Not yet.

It must be somewhat inconvenient for readers to follow my blog. Sometimes I write even 3 posts per day and then it may take a week before I continue blogging. Sorry for that.

Right now I have been watching how our prime minister Mr. Vanhanen struggles with his statements like a worm in a hook. It amuses me. Frankly, I think he's alright but only become a little too arrogant lately.

Midsummer was a fiasco as far as the weather is concerned. Cold (+10 degrees), rainy days and almost nothing to do. Television is broadcasting reruns of reruns. Hell, I can't laugh with Frasier forever! I was hoping the forecast would have been faulty as it had been for two weeks now, but no: rain was forecast and rain we had. Rainy days in June... Not everybody loves a rainy day! Not this often at least. Sorry, Ray.

Ground hog zero day

2009-06-15T12:53:00.001+03:00

This is my ultimate touch-down day. It's for me to know and you to find out. I may reveal it later in my blog, so be patient. This June I will never forget. Alas. Cold and rainy in so many ways.

It only can get better (can't get much worse, as John Lennon sang), the positive thoughts are needed now. And indeed, I was so prepared for this that I think I will get by just fine. Nothing's too certain though, but a good slap in the face wakes people up. And I have been sleeping a lot lately.

Maybe I'm ready to start another phase in my life. Just maybe. Take the lead, so to speak. Well, it's not that serious. By tomorrow I probably will get another issues to worry about, LOL! I'll see you in my next post, with a natural TIC-attitude as usual...

An inch is better than a mile in the wrong direction

2009-06-12T14:33:00.001+03:00

Sometimes it's the small things that make your day. Like today. No matter how frustrated I have been at work lately, I shared a happy moment with a drink machine. It serves coke and other soda drinks.

I put my coins in (2 euros for those who wonder how much it costs) and received not one but two bottles of soda. Plus 20 cents in return. 0,5 l times two. It was a kind of payback time, because the very same machine stole my 2 euros twice - more than 2 years ago. As if I had forgotten it, LOL! Now the machine owes me one drink still, but the things are moving in the right direction.

Actually, this didn't cheer me up that much. But for the sake of giving a positive post for a change, this will do just fine!

Smek to the resque!

2009-06-12T09:33:00.003+03:00

In Finland there has been wide discussion going on about pensions and the lack of labour in near future. Some people suggest that the retiring age should move up, all the way close to 70 years, while the others say it wouldn't change anything. People can't work that old, if they are not anymore fit to work. Also I have read about proposals according to which only the working years would be counted. Meaning if you start working at 30, you should work until you're 75 or something. Many highly educated people have to study for 10 years after high school graduation before they can start working, like some doctors and architects. It wouldn't sound fair to me, although I don't represent any of these.

But have I got the answer! Not just criticizing other people's ideas - I have some of my own. Go ahead and criticize this!

Ballet dancers have a low retiring age, 44 years. Likewise pilots, depending on airline company, retire under 60. Army officers do it at 55-60. Yes, I'm getting to the point right away. If a ballet dancer is all worn out at 44, she or he might still be very useful in other walks of life. I can't believe a 44-year-old ballet dancer equals to a 67-year-old factory worker when it comes to comparing their physics. What about their life expectancy after retirement?

What we could do, is to keep the 44 years as a maximum age for ballet dancers, 60 for pilots and army officer etc., and then send them back to school or unemployment office. That would give a plenty of new manpower reintroduced. It's another thing, whether anyone would accept any old and cranky army officer shouting in their work environment, LOL! A ballet dancer might easily do book-keeping or any other desk job, if his/her legs are busted. Hell, even some of the handicapped can work quite normally.

For example, I can't dream of doing the job I'm doing right now (apart from blogging obviously) at 60. No way. It feels hard for me to imagine doing this even at 50. Well, who knows what'll happen. I could retire next year, had I chosen to be a ballet dancer. Could I still change my profession? LOL! I have done a dozen or so different jobs during my life; should I have stayed in my first job - as a lawnmowerman in the city of Tampere? Actually, I saw some men close to 60 still doing it. Women too. Man, they owned the world if you asked them, but that's another story...

And yet another thing: men die approximately 7 years younger than men in Finland. It wouldn't harm to let men retire earlier than women. Maybe it's not equal, but dying younger isn't equal either.

Feel free to tip the government off about this. Any government basically...

Women gonna rice again! (Aikuisille naisille)

2009-06-11T12:23:00.006+03:00

Are these the fist or the last signs of women ruling the world? At least it's what's happened in the world of rice krispies, LOL!

Check out the box, right corner. I have made a blow up of the green square I marked in the original box. It says in Finnish and Swedish that 30 g portion of rice krispies includes certain amounts of indredience mentioned in the picture and the percentage of GDA for a grown-up woman. Grown-up woman? WTH? Do the grown-up women only eat serials? Especially rice krispies by Kellogg's? What about grown-up men? What's my percentage? And, most of all, what about the kids? Should they be divided into girls and boys as well? And it's a family pack (perhepakkaus)!

This doesn't make sense to me. Then again, so few things do these days. But as soon as I had read this percentage table, I knew I had a new post coming. Good enjoyment while eating rice krispies!

Kick it in, Gladstone Gander!

2009-06-11T11:17:00.002+03:00

This June has been a catastrophe to me financially. As if I needed something more, I got a bill from Sweden yesterday: 1135 crowns! I couldn't believe my eyes - where did this come from? A fake bill? Then I started to reminisce. Last Autumn as I brought my car back to Sweden once again, I passed through a couple of street toll stations, one of them extra because I got lost at some point. I calculated that it was worth 85 kronor to drive from Slussen to Solna.

From my bitter experience I knew now that I should pay myself in the web instead of waiting for a bill with extra cost to arrive. I checked the net immediately the following day, but I couldn't pay yet, because they hadn't collected the data from that month. I had to wait for two months or something. It also read that this new system would send me a normal bill, so I basically didn't have to worry about it. I kept on waiting and gradually forgot all about it.

My hassle with address change in Skatteverket may have had something to do with it, but this bill I got yesterday to my current Finnish address directly was the first one to have. With 1135 crowns to pay? The interest and the penalty fee had accrued month by month, and I wasn't notified at all! This is a hell of sum to pay for driving a car in Stockholm. What were they thinking there? The car hasn't been registered in Sweden for months now - and I'm not registered there either anymore. Not since last December. And I should not be blamed if Skatteverket has blown it up. I did everything by the book, and that should be enough in Sweden as well. Hell, especially in Sweden!

Naturally I sent a reclamation to Sweden this morning. Seems I'm making a habit of reclaiming, LOL! Actually, I'm not laughing here. I only hope that they have some kind of sense out there. Common sense would do. All this time after my move back to Finland I have tried to defend the Swedish here and what do I get in return: a kick in my teeth! That should teach me not to pamper our neighbors of the West.

History repeats itself: Another 3-0 result against Russia

2009-06-11T09:10:00.002+03:00

Russia showed Finland how to play football yesterday in Helsinki. They also showed how to rumble. I mean those Russian hooligans who claim they are football fans. Luckily injuries were at minimum. 30 Russians and 5 Finns were arrested before the game. Must have been fun to come all the way to Helsinki and yet miss the game. By the way, there was a saying during the WWII that a Finn correlates 10 Russians. According to arrested people, a Finn correlates only 6 Russians these days, LOL!

It was such a sad game all in all. I didn't even bother to watch it after 2-0. The Russians made yet another goal, but the game had been over for a long time already. The Finns try so desperately to get into a major tournament that they have forgotten their basic skills and playing together. They should concentrate on the game at hand, not the points they need. Well, the Russian team is probably one of the best teams in Europe at the moment, so it's not a shame to lose to Russians. But still, Finland was much better against Germany, one of the all-time greats. What happened? Not much, LOL!

The picture quality of the channel TV5 (or VII5I) isn't that glorious. But it's free and I'm glad I didn't have to pay for that game. Not that I would have. Good picture quality doesn't necessarily mean good football quality.

Bowing to 747

2009-06-10T11:16:00.002+03:00

This is such a stupid case that it's a natural source for my post at hand. I'm sure everyone agrees.

It was less than ten years ago, when we got a notification that after an accurate re-calculation our yard is sized only 747 square-meters. When we bought it, the size was 750 m². It had been that way ever since the yard had been zoned.

I got a bit mad. How come we lost 3 m² suddenly - we already had the smallest yard around (no Freudian slip remarks please, LOL!). One of our landmarks had slightly collapsed, like the tower of Pisa. My first thought was that it had caused the miscalculation error, because it was leaning towards our house. Well, that could the reason, but the authorities claimed that it was just due to the new advanced technology which made it possible to be more accurate than ever. Go figure.

I swallowed it, what else could I have done? But the information of our newly calculated yard-size hadn't reached the tax officials. When we got a yearly property tax payment, it still referred the yard size to 750 square-meters, and the cost was counted accordingly. Shit, that pissed me off!

As I have not always been fast in my moves, I made a reclamation of it only this year - almost ten years overdo! The claim to correct the fees we had paid already could extend no more than five years back. That pissed me off too. I did my thing anyway.

Well, I got a reply yesterday. Our records had been set straight. The only problem was that it was so little money in question that we will get nothing back. It was only around 10 cents per person per year to receive, and the lowest amount money to return is 5 euros. Our refund totalled 0,94 €. Bad luck. Well, at least we won't be charged for anything more than we actually own. That was the main thing.

They must have had fun at the tax office at the expense of my reclamation. Ok, let's be happy that even they can sometimes have a smile on their face. In a way, it was a win-win situation. At least I'm not pissed off anymore. About that matter I mean, LOL!

Count me in/out while playing the system

2009-06-09T11:57:00.003+03:00

I wasn't aware of the Finnish vote counting system until late '93 when an old friend and a namesake of mine told me that. Thanks for sharing it! Ever since it's been common knowledge to me, but not for all I guess. Today I read from Hairy's post (link in the right column) that the Swedes have a different way of counting it. Kind of interesting, if you like boring stuff. Which I obviously do.

In Finland, we have a D'Hondt method in use. It's in quite common a use in several countries. The main idea of it is that the most voted person in a party gets all the party votes for him/herself. The second best gets the half of the whole pool of votes. The third gets a third and so on, until we have run out of candidates or votes.

This method seems to be widely critized. For example I remember one person getting almost 20000 votes but still didn't get in, whereas several persons who got under 10000 votes were elected instead. The person in question wasn't representing any major party, while the others got help from more popular fellow politicians.

When it comes to the results of the EU election in Finland, it was somewhat interesting. The absence of the left-wing is striking. I'm glad that the Green party got two competent representatives in. My candidate wasn't chosen but I don't care. I did my share anyway.

I can't understand why Sweden chose two Pirate Party members to represent themselves in EU parliament. To me it shows the same kind of devil-may-care attitude towards European Union as they have had with their ever-dropping currency. I had back flashes of European Song Contest behavior from last year, when this Swedish clown was mocking the contest by making an ass of himself. And the Swedes cheered. This looks like a similar situation.

New EU countries didn't vote eagerly. It seems evident that they are not ready to rumble. The concept of being an EU citizen hasn't properly materialized to most of them yet. Well, actually, that applies to many old EU members as well. These opinions coming from a mouth of a non-political loud-mouth, well, just might convince someone. I take no responsibility whatsoever if it does, LOL!

Oops! They did it again!

2009-06-09T11:07:00.003+03:00

I have always been proud of my level of writing in Finnish. Yet I'm the first one to admit that I don't know everything. Still I'm eager to point out a finger at each and every mistake I come across in the printing media. It's partly because in my opinion they should know better their profession. However, for the most part it's because I'm still angry for not being chosen to study to become a reporter at university in Tampere. Decades ago. If they didn't let me in, what about these stupid reporters then? How did they got in, since they clearly don't even know how to write.

Yup, I have blown it as well, with a legendary 'slut station' in my Moved To Sweden blog. I'm not that clean anymore. Remember my two parking tickets from last week for instance. But still. My blog isn't actually a nationwide web tabloid. Come on now!

I have talked about this with Jaime, and he defends those poor bastards. They are so busy and under stress. Well, who isn't? I can understand small errors in a story, but doesn't anyone read and verify those titles? This is disappointing to me. Then again, what isn't, LOL!

To make an exception once more, I have cut a part of the web page to demonstrate my point of view. It's from Iltalehti, a Finnish tabloid which I read from time to time. I had to take a screenshot of it, because they might notice their error and correct it before you are reading this. That would give a stupid impression of me, don't you think?

Take a look at the blue square. It says: "Joka kolmas ilmaseksi katsomossa." That translates to "Every third air sex [happens] in an auditorium [of a football stadium]." Now, isn't that a sensation or what? Wait a minute - air sex - what is that? Is it like playing air guitar, only having air sex? Sex with air - like one of those notorious Michael Jackson's dance manoeuvres, LOL?

Anyway, it should say: "Joka kolmas ilmaiseksi katsomossa." That means "Every third [watching] free of charge in an auditorium [of a football stadium]." Just one 'i' missing and we have a completely new ball game here. And another mean and mocking post by Smek. Come to think of it, maybe I should be forever grateful for these funny mistakes. They kind of make my day. Every time.

Finnish Cuisine Delicacy VI: silli ja uudet perunat

2009-06-09T09:18:00.004+03:00

This is something you normally can't find in any cook books or delicacy lists. Yet it's one of the most popular Summer dishes in Finland. I have a hunch that it's very common in Sweden too, and maybe in other countries as well, but being such a simple and modest dish it's not that much advertised. Correct me if I'm wrong.

"Silli ja uudet perunat" means herring and fresh potatos (sill och nypotatis). Fresh meaning they have been picked only days before; not from last year's harvest. Old potatos won't do this time, so this is mostly a delicacy of each early Summer.

Normally it's convenient to add some "tilli" (dill/dill) there on the side. And of course some salad - preferably made of tomatos, cabbage, cucumber and such. Dill isn't present in the picture, because my wife doesn't like it and thus it's up to me to remember to buy it. Well, that's why it's not on my plate either (pictured). "Ruohosipuli" (shallot/gräslök) with "kermaviili" (sour cream/gräddfil) gives a nice extra touch to it. All you need then is some milk or sour milk to drink it with.

It's easy to cook fresh potatos. Remember not to peel them - washing will do. The peel is so slim and has most of the vitamins there. These potatoes take only 30-something minutes to cook. Just like with 'normal' potatoes, put water so much so it barely hides all potatos. No salt needed - that's old-fashioned and not healthy (besides you'll get the salt from herring anyway). Don't over-cook them. SIMPLE AS-S, LOL!

There is a good selection of several types of herring jars. This time ABBA has no musical associations. You can easily variate the dish by trying out different herrings. Well, the herring itself stays the same, but the sauce variates. Sometimes it's good to add some raw onion rings in the herring jar to give it more taste. It's not a bad idea to boil an egg to eat with the rest.

If you haven't tried this yet, please do. Now's the season for it!

A new fashion - a new shit?

2009-06-08T14:00:00.003+03:00

As you probably noticed already, I have edited my banner. It's the first one of a kind that isn't just cut-and-pasted from a pic of mine. My artistic bullshit values are on display now, LOL!

Purple has been my favorite colour since my early twenties. Maybe it just grew on me by watching those fabulous colours on Jimi Hendrix, Deep Purple and Prince albums covers. Suddenly I realized that HELL, THIS IS MY COLOUR! It was used as a theme colour in my wedding too. Luckily my wife likes purple too!

Well, my oldie favorite colour was yellow. You can draw meaningful conclusions based on that, and all that shit. I'm not sure if I ever get back to yellow again. I'm not even sure of if I wanted to. Purple is so cool... like vanilla to me.

Two-fold-idiotism idioms on sale

2009-06-08T13:11:00.002+03:00

Almost 25 years of having a driving license and then getting two parking tickets in one week. For the first time in your life. Amazing! I feel like an idiot.

Last Saturday I was visiting Tampere with my family. We knew there was a sushi restaurant in the city centre. I let the others off at the restaurant and continued to find me a parking place.

I found one very closeby. I went to the parking meter and started putting money there. It said that at 2,80 € you could stay for an hour there. Quite expensive but I put 3 euro coins there. The machine threw up the coins every time! If 2,80 were a maximum, it could have given me 20 cents back, or swallow the whole of 3€, but no; the coins ran through the machine as if they had been forbidden currency or something.

Then I put in my mastercard because it said that it was a valid means of payment. It only prompted: "Take the card off." No PIN query, nothing. I still pushed the 'print out' button and it started printing. But the time in the note was present time.

This morning I sent a reclamation to the city of Tampere. I have already paid the bill I got, but still. There's not much hope of getting my money back and setting my record straight, meaning my increasing criminal record, LOL! Well I'm not actually laughing, but you might be.

I have been using parking houses lately in the city, so I had no idea what's going on. It came to me only afterwards that maybe I should have pressed that green button several times to get more minutes for parking. But the printing started immediately, so how could I have done that?

I feel like an idiot. Just give me a third ticket and my driving license becomes one endangered species. This is giving more shades to my spectrum of state of mind. In a day (read: week) or two I'll get over it. A piece of good news wouldn't harm me severely at this point though...

Yet another (un)success story?

2009-06-05T14:03:00.002+03:00

It's been a long time since I previously have been interested in drawing. Yup, one of my unsuccesful hobbies. I have no idea why I'm putting effort to it again. But it seems to be happening that way.

In the early 90's, I created a bird character. It still looks ok to me, but especially what this character is all about intrigued me. Still does.

I sent some of them to a Finnish comic book, Pahkasika (warthog). The level of the drawing quality in Pahkasika had gone down so much so I gathered it was my chance to make it. Well, I was wrong. Thanks but no thanks, and have a great life elsewhere. And all that jazz.

My character made his debut finally in our self-produced cassette recording in 1996. It had a comic strip included in the inside cover. Then my character disappeared in haze.

Last Autumn in Solna, when I hadn't too much to do, I tried again. This time I managed to draw the first coloured version of my character ever, but my interest ran out shortly. At least it had colours now - final colours - that I don't know yet.

This year when I was giving a finishing touch to me-and-my-brother's music quiz project, my bro suggested that this (good) old character could be a mascot for the game. After a looong persuasion of myself I took a pen in my hand and continued with the character. It's there now.

But it didn't end there. For a while, I was planning to put it in the net, but from there it might be too easy to steel. On the other hand, the circulation would be free and world-wide. But I'm doing it in Finnish. Some of the jokes I put in the mouth of my character can't be translated. So much lost in translation to carry on in English, sadly.

I have been dreaming of drawing a comic strip book for years. I had the character, but lacked the substance. Lately I have been writing down some of my new ideas for the character. So even that one might materialize some day. Wouldn't put my money on it, although I may have to, LOL!

What's the name of the character, you may ask. Well, I keep it a secret for now. It will quarantee me a fake feel of security if nothing else. I tried to rename it, but all the new suggestions existed in Google already. Man, I'm beginning to wonder if Google has an algorithm which lists on-the-fly made-up web pages and results to any word you can possibly think of...

The character will have my 'charm' and wit, of course. You decide if that's going to be a success story or not. Yes, still fighting against obscurity. Maybe blogging per se is a sign of mediocrity, brrr, perish the thought!

Eeny, meeny, miny, moe...

2009-06-05T12:25:00.003+03:00

I'm a non-political person. I vote individuals, not parties. In that sense, you might call me an irresponsible voter.

This weekend all the countries inside European Union are voting their candidates for members of European Parliament (MEP). Interest in election varies in different countries between low and very low. They make important decisions over there in Brussels, but the man in the street really has no clue of what's happening. Laws are complex and difficult to find out what they actually tell about.

In my opinion, parties are obsolete. In Finland there is a party for Finland-Swedish people. Is it a left or right wing party? You could say it's in the right because Finland-Swedish are usually loaded. What about the green party? I think it would require a third dimension at least to fit all these modern parties on a scale these days. Why wouldn't a party in the right/left take care of green values? Or do they use it as an excuse to skip all nature-related issues and leave them to the green party?

There is a relatively new and small party, True Finns. I don't like their extreme right-wing attitude by some of them, but at least they are talking in a way I comprehend. Just to be a bitch, I thought to vote them this weekend. If I manage to get myself to vote, that is. I have several reasons.

I don't want to give my vote to the center party. The prime minister has lost my trust some time ago.

I don't want to vote social democrats. I hate their chairwoman's attitude. Also the president gives me the creeps nowadays.

Nor do I give my vote to any other major or minor parties, no priest nor celebrities as my choice.

If I were as sensible as I should, I would vote the green party. I dislike their chairwoman as well (not as much as I used to though), but I have to admit that their contenders have earned my respect along the way.

There is an election database machine in the net (valmaskin/vaalikone). You may call it as a lottery machine as well. Anyway, I did my choices about the EU issues that were selected topics in the machine. Then it compared my results with all Finnish MEP candidates and gave me a list. The person number two i.e. which had the second best matching answers is my final choice. It was a True Finn.

I don't expect anyone to follow my decision. Maybe it's foolish to talk about your political orientation - in Finlad it's almost a taboo. Well, not for me, but I respect other practise too. It's interesting if any of my friends reveals his/her political view. I automatically take the other side! If someone takes the middle, I'll choose anything but middle. But I'm not that serious about it anyway. Hopefully no-one gets hurt while my making fun of politics...

I have voted maybe all parties by now. I'm not sure about Finland-Swedish, but nothing stops me doing that next time. Maybe. Like I said, I'm irresponsible when it comes to voting, LOL!

Without a net

2009-06-05T10:08:00.002+03:00

I'm not talking about living without Internet, God forbid, LOL! I'm referring to my way of creating things. It's like balancing on a tight-rope without a safety net. Let me explain.

It doesn't matter if it's painting, drawing, composing, writing (blogs, lyrics, books) - even talking - when I start I often have no idea how it's going to end. I just start doing it. Not too much planning, just developing the idea along the way. The plan comes later and somehow the pieces seem to fit. I usually land on my feet with my creations, but lately I have began to worry about it. What if I won't? Maybe it's the risk that excites me and pushes me do something new and unforeseeable. I don't know for sure. All I know is that I have always been like this.

I had a recurring conversation with my wife about my so called creative hobbies. I told her that my constant failures in art make me so depressed. She asked: "Why do you want to be famous?" I said that I only want to be respected in things I value myself in me. Yes, I've blogged about this before - sorry about that. She said that not anyone can be that good in what he's doing; I should accept that. Well, I don't want to be anyone - admitting that would kill me.

Clearly my wife can't see my potential, or maybe she has seen enough evidence in our 14+ years together to make a statement like that. It's good to have someone to talk to anyway. Someone who has the balls (although in this case doesn't, LOL!) to tell me things like that straight in my face. I appreciate that anyway, and indeed it gives me power to try harder. Reverse psychology..?

Like this post, I didn't really know how this would end (I came up with the last sentence less than one hour ago basically while chatting with a mate. It seemed somehow fitting so I added it there). The conclusion might be that perhaps I really should plan what I do. Then it might be more acceptable by other people too. And boring to me. Well, that's something I'm not too willing to accept. I don't want to compromise anything in my art - or called it crap if you will. It's either my way or no way... d'oh!

~~Tomorrow never knows~~ Tomorrow knows, but never tells.

When the going gets cold, the cold gets going..?

2009-06-04T08:42:00.002+03:00

Just realized this week that the half-life (puoliintumisaika) of Finnish Summer weather is two days. On Sunday we had +28 degrees Celsius, on Tuesday it was +14° C, and forecast shows +7 degrees for today. It was +4° C this morning, so it looks like the theory has almost already been verified. I'm looking forward to experiencing the upcoming next weekend. With Winter clothes on.

Bossed around

2009-06-03T14:53:00.001+03:00

Yesterday it happened: Bruce Springsteen and his band played a concert in Tampere. It was probably worth every ~~penny~~ cent, but it just isn't my thing. It's kind of boring music actually. The whole center of Tampere was jammed, so I didn't go there at all. We had had plans on going to a terrace near Ratina stadium for a drink or two and listen to Boss' music for free. We skipped that too, thinking of how many other people had had the same thought - especially when it was written in a newspaper as well.

Today another boss paid a visit to Finland. Mr. Putin, a real boss. Well, I don't want to say much about him. Things are not moving fast in Russia, that's all. So many serious news around that I begin to wish to see some light-hearted Summer-news for a while...

Save your "breath" :)

2009-06-02T11:44:00.002+03:00

I keep wondering why I'm so critical against green values. I enjoy all kind of saving, not the least energy. Here's how I'm welcoming green values at the moment:

I have bought a lot of energy-saving light bulbs. They make a lot of sense.

I have started separating and composting bio waste. Better late than never.

That's it. The list could be longer I know. Could be shorter too. I'm thinking about getting a heat pump which should give huge saves in electricity costs.

I have following tongue-in-cheek suggestions for energy-saving. Sometimes things like these can be realized later on.

The temperature of the highway road is 5 - 20 degrees, maybe more, higher than that of air's. Somehow we could get the heat stored as energy. The dark roads are easy to find even in Finland.

People fart a lot. More vegetables the merrier, LOL! Someone could manufacture a device that would be installed in everyone's butt. It would gather the gas in a container. No more smell of shit around - instead free gas available. Containers could be taken to a factory that burns the fart gas and thus creates more free energy.

_______________________

A joke I came up with yesterday:
Who is the fastest guitar alive? Kimi Hendrix

One-way ticket to the blue

2009-06-02T09:10:00.003+03:00

I used to be without a criminal record, as far as I'm concerned. Well, not anymore. In many TV crime series some people are regarded as "clean as a whistle - not even a parking ticket". I used to be like that, until yesterday.

To end this hot weekend, both literally and metaphorically, I got a parking ticket. Hell, my first one! Admitted, I could have gotten one several times before but my luck seemed to have run out. 30 euros for basically nothing, argh!

We were attending to a track and field sports hobby of our daughter's. I had never before noticed the sign telling everyone should put their parking disc visible in the windshield of the car. That's why I hadn't put it there (and it didn't weigh a ton).

In the middle of the event, one spokesperson of the club suddenly cried: "Attention everyone, there are meter maids in the parking area! All should have a parking disc set in a car!" A group of parents, including me, rose quickly and started to run towards their cars. There were two meter maids, although one of them was a man, hurrying in attaching those tickets now that they had been 'caught in the act'.

Too late for me though. I was one of those unlucky bastards that got the ticket. Like a woman checking her ticket in a car next to mine said: "Myöhäistä rypistää...", as I was putting my parking disc where it belonged. She referred to a famous Finnish saying "It's too late to crumple when you've got shit in your pants". That was my direct translation and it may exist in other form in other countries. She was painfully right. The ticket was there and it wasn't going anywhere.

To demonstrate how it's released in the news these days, I attached a pixelized picture of the ticket. We all have often realized how informative those pics can be, LOL!

Later I got to thinking that it was kind of wrong that only part of us got the ticket when all of us had been breaking the law. Naturally I wouldn't think like this, had I avoided getting the ticket.

Still I'm mad. I can't help it. Here comes that rainy day feeling again. The end.

Who's factory?

2009-06-01T15:35:00.003+03:00

It was reported today that a Finnish rock group Eppu Normaali has won the rights over the usage of 'Akun Tehdas' and a company called Akun Tehdas has lost the right. The loser pays everything and the winner stays in the ring. Oh, what poetry!

I'm stupefied. Old Ramones-style punk rock band has gone pinstripe. They used to mock everything, now they are so touchy that it almost makes me laugh. Like I noted, punk's dead, and what we have left is a bunch of old men. This band is a rich institution in Finland - one they were attacking against in their twenties. Nowadays they have accepted facts and learnt how to play the game.

Well, I have always liked Eppu Normaali and I guess I always will. But this trial hassle seems quite ridiculous. Especially if you know the background behind the name. 'Akun Tehdas' means Aku's Factory - Aku being the name of their drummer. It's common knowledge that their 2nd guitarist has an eternal love affair with the CCR music. They have an LP called "Cosmo's Factory", Cosmo being a nickname of their drummer. So, it's not difficult to draw conclusions. Even the record's cover art has been copied from that CCR's album, so who really owns and what? This must have been forgotten along the way I guess. They have mocked two more CCR album names, in the name of humour or lack of own creative ideas.

In case Eppu Normaali reads this post and thinks about sueing me: I didn't write this; it was my swamp rock guitar idol John E. Horny - a secret twin brother of John C. Fogerty, LOL! Well, it wasn't...

Crowded houses

2009-06-01T13:05:00.002+03:00

What a busy weekend we had! Saturday morning we rushed to attend to our daughter's first spring festival, or how you call the celebration of the term ending? Well, it was quite nice a happening. We were placed unfortunately close to a speaker which was turned on and off without warnings. The person responsible for audio system wasn't too professional if you ask me. Otherwise it was lovely.

From there we drove to the city of Akaa almost immediately. One of my wife's godchildren was graduating, so we really had to hurry to get there. It's only natural I guess, but the people from two families were clearly segregated, like in South-Africa years ago. They were sitting in two groups, on the both sides of the house. When I hastily visited the other group, I got remarks that could be interpreted as bitching. Only the star of the event was freely mingling among the crowd. The house was packed although most of us got to spend time outdoors. Luckily it didn't rain.

It's not for me to judge, but... Well, the graduate is a very tall man nowadays. Everyone (bar me) was joking about his height and it just didn't stop. His mother was the worst. She's proud of her son, no doubt, but this kind of one-subject conversation starts bugging me after a while. I think the graduate himself is also up to here of hearing envy remarks about his height. Well, his parents are short, maybe it's worth mentioning about two dozen times a day then..? And the guests had nothing else to talk about, clearly revealing that they really didn't know the graduate that well...

It's almost like if a woman graduate were praised after her good looks only. Nothing to do with her achievement under celebration. No compliments about her brain. Wouldn't that be rude in some unintentional way? Or, if people were praising how beautiful breasts a graduate had? Yup, it's the Smek in total action, but in spite of my overdoing isn't that so?

Well, it was a beautiful day all Saturday and everything seemed to roll nicely. +25 degrees was another topic of the day. Sunday was welcoming us with a 28-degree-in-the-shade weather. Can't get much more Summer in one day. It was time to do some house painting. I have done painting for a living when I was about 20. I developed exasperation for solvents and I haven't been a fan of painting ever since. Over-exposure for turpentine did the trick. Painting outdoors with latex paint isn't that bad, so no more murmur about it.

Then an obligatory manual lawn-mowing session. In the heat it's a bitch but it was time. A lot of yellow dandelions were blooming all over the yard. They look nice for a while, but basically they are weeds (not trying to create a tenuous link to Hairy's current post, LOL!).

I had been digging and constructing a terrace in our backyard with my wife. It's been an on/off project for some time now and we had planned on proceeding with it. We laid tiles on the ground. The result looked ok. It remains unfinished, but it's come a long way now.

My wife invited one of our neighbors for BBQ'ing sausages. It meant that it was time to go shopping for more sausages. We decided to ride a bike to the 'city' of Nokia. Yeah, it was Whit Sunday (helluntai/Pingstdagen) and most of the shops were closed. They had recently broadened the opening hours in Finland to include Sundays, except for official holidays. And this was one of them. Siwa shops are usually open on Sundays, but the nearest Siwa wasn't. Their slogan "Surprisingly close" turned into "Surprisingly closed" in my mind, as we drove to a kiosk which was open. Good for us, good for them - it was pretty crowded there.

I have advertised it before and I'm gonna advertise it again: Kabanossi is the best class A sausage you can get for barbequeing. It's well worth investing, forget the cheap flour-power sausages. LOL!

In the evening I felt nauseous. I had sunbathed without a cap part of the day, so a sunstroke was only a stroke away. I slept bad, waking up feeling not too good. I should use a cap at all times in the Sun. Another thing bothering me were the allergic reactions to hays. It's normally not until midsummer before I start getting those symptoms, but now it seems that the nature is ahead of its time. The possibility of drawbacks is evident and almost inevitable. Almost. Indeed, rain and cold has been forecast already for this week!

Punk's not dead!

2009-06-01T09:46:00.003+03:00

Yes, the title doesn't ring a bell to anyone outside Finland, so let's give a hand. "Punk's not dead" was/is a slogan used in badges in the 70´s/80´s. If referred to punk rock of course, desperately ignoring the truth. While 'punkki', which is a Finnish translation of 'punk' means also a mite. And mites are starring in this episode of 'Alive in Finland' - dead and alive. So, watch out, Grissom, LOL!

Yup, it's the red mites (Dermanyssus gallinae/lintupunkki/ fågelfästing = my own translation in Swedish) in question this time. No more silver fishes anymore, although I have seen one in our house too. Dermanyssus gallinae is a mite that is detected close to birds' nests. According to a quick browse on wiki pages, it's difficult to get rid of, if you have a garden or even a yard.

A couple of weeks ago I was chopping wood into small pieces in our backyard. There is a birdhouse in a tree closeby with a bird nesting there, but I didn't pay any attention to it. It had probably gotten used to the noise we were making by then.

In the very same evening, I felt like something itching in my ankle. I thought that a spider or an ant had climbed in my rubber boot and bitten me. It was a long way to climb and land, for I had my huge black Nokia rubber boots on - kind of classics around here, if you will. It was a nasty bite but it was alright. These things happen.

Then in the following week I started to get more bites. This time in my knee, upper thigh... you know why I began to get worried, LOL! Luckily it stopped there. The bites itched like crazy, and I had to scratch them a lot. It took a whole week before the itching calmed down. It didn't help much putting some cream on the bites, but I was willing to try out everything. Spider and ant bites never felt like this, so I got pretty much confused.

Then I read about these red mites. Everything started making sense. Well, everything related to this anyway. I'm 95% sure that it was those mites that caused those evil bites on me. They will die in a week which explains why they/it never took a bite of my balls... No more I'm that excited about getting birds nest in our yard.

Don't get me wrong, birds are lovely. Yet it's amazing that after living more than 12 years in that house of ours, it had never happened until now. There's probably more to come, if we won't get a cat as a pet. That's even more unlikely to happen because of allergies, sadly, so I might have to get used to this possibility of another red mite incident...

Pro test?

2009-05-29T11:39:00.002+03:00

Sometimes I get excited enough to create a silent demonstration. It's more like to give pleasure to myself than to annoy the others. Protesting without anyone really noticing it might not be sensible, but then again: how much have the 'real' demonstrations helped along the way?

This time it's the left-handed issue again. When we leave the lunch hall at our customer's, we must put the knives and forks, plates and the waste in separate holders or bags. That's ok.

What makes me a bit angry is that the plates are put in the holder with your right hand. They are so close together that it really matters how you put them there. There are 10% of people lefties in the world, remember? As I'm one of them, I can't help but notice the crying injustice.

So from this week on, I have deliberately put my plates in the holder with my left hand, creating a small chaos there. I know that my protest increases the trouble the kitchen staff has to put up with, but I don't care. Well, I have a slightly bad conscience about it, but I keep that hidden too.

Yes, it's beginning to sound like Swedish complaining. I can't say I've inherited it from there still; I have had it for decades. And you better believe it!

Grease is THE word!

2009-05-28T12:56:00.002+03:00

Yup, it's a slow day today. It's already the third post and I'm kind of pissed off at work right now. When there is nothing to do, it's drastically boring. Web browsing isn't my stuff. Nor is Facebook.

Good news, sort of. My weight has dropped 4 kg since I moved from Sweden. I hope it won't go back up again. That's a lot of fat on the table. Some may even say that it shows, but I can't see it. Not yet at least.

The problem is that I can't pinpoint what has caused the weight-loss. I'd like to know and share it. It could be badminton I recently started, but it's only a one-hour-once-a-week happening.

Then it could be the diet. I have been eating a lot of soups and salads for lunch lately. That could explain some of it.

My notorious training programme maybe did a bit to introduce me to a slimmer life. It wasn't a success though, if you remember. I still have been training at a gym once a week, but it's been quite modest.

What about the pills I started taking this week? It's too early to tell the effects (not to mention the side effects), and clearly they can't have made a difference in such a short period of time.

The "Alli" pills should block grease to infuse in your system. Thus you can eat greasy food and still not get fat. Or fatter. I don't really get the point: why would a person having a strict diet eat greasy food and then be forced to take a 'regret' pill? Because if you eat healthy food, you mustn't take the pill, so where does the meaning of it lie? Ok, there are situations when you can't help eating unhealthily, but if you eat that way all the time, how do you expect to lose some weight? Alright, maybe it helps with hidden grease in prepared food.

I have big plans to start cykling. I even washed and oiled my bike for the first time in my life! And it's working again like a new one. Let's see what happens, I'd like to get a companion for a ride. It's not fun to ride alone. Oh yes, and I should finally buy me a helmet. Hopefully this is not one of my projects I can't finish. I hate it when my wife is right - or more like it when I'm wrong, LOL!

Count the number that counts

2009-05-28T11:30:00.002+03:00

I've been told, mostly by my wife, that I'm lousy finishing any project I start. Apart from my 'own' projects, naturally. Them I normally push through. With force, if I have to.

It's just that if a 'project' doesn't have a clear starting and ending point, I may drop it easily. Like cleaning up, it never ends. And repairing the house. Hell, don't even mention washing up the clothes, hanging them to dry and collecting them later to put them into correct shelves!

I have started several times (and cancelled just as many) counting the songs I have written. But there is no clear starting point. The very first songs dating back in 1980-1982 don't really have what it takes to be a song, although they have a song-like structure, a sort of melody and 'real' words in it. You can only guess where the melody line should go and what chords should be there. I started using chords around 1982 and written melody lines in 1983, but not in all of them even then.

Ending point is almost as tricky. I continue writing songs, although in a very slow speed. I keep writing about 5 - 10 songs a year, whereas in my busiest years I wrote about 120 songs per year. So this time, when I once again start counting and listing my songs, I will start from 2009. 30 years of writing songs, that's impressive.

Another problem is that I have written songs with several people, mainly with my brother though. How do I count a song that has my lyrics only? Or only a part of the music? And what about the songs I have re-composed or re-written the lyrics: how do they count? Or an instrumental that I have later given words to?

It's maybe 7 years since I created the 'perfect' Access database application for the songs. It was a relational db I was pretty proud of, but it was too clumsy to fill in each and every song. It was too pompous, even by Access standards. The next time it will be an Excel solution. Maybe totally without VBA. And I'll start from the end.

Well, when I have the time, I'll let you know the exact number. Plus counting...

Vital Vinyl

2009-05-28T09:04:00.004+03:00

Little by little I have prepared myself for the next project of mine. The goal is to listen through all my vinyls, a couple of hundred of them. Now the time and the mood seems pretty much right for it.

It's bragging time. I bought new triangle-shaped Bang & Olufsen stereo speakers. So they have something else too in Denmark beside that Masturbate-a-thon I was informed by Big A, another friend of mine. Thanks for sharing the news by the way... Back to B&O, I never thought I'd buy anything from them simply because they are so expensive. But my wife wanted something small and definetely not cubic-shaped. So now I have them, and of course I can't blame the sound quality they offer. Although my hearing after all these rock´n´roll years of mine (LOL) isn't as hi-fi as it should.

I also purchased a new Pro-Ject record player, with a USB connection. It's totally non-automatic, which is a big change to my previous, full-automatic vinyl player. The silliest thing is that if you want to change the rotation speed from 33 to 45, you have to take the plate off and manually change the rubber band to another route! That's why I haven't listened to singles yet. Must do it as a separate session I guess.

The old laptop of mine couldn't handle USB 2.0 speed and thus was causing nasty errors in recording the vinyls. I was forced to buy another. This time I waited for a bargain, and it was worth it: a mini-laptop for 265 € with W-LAN, BlueTooth, webcam and of course faster USB ports is now in my possession.

I tried my first recording yesterday. It went pretty well, except for exporting it as MP3. Audacity programme, which is free and therefore above all criticism, didn't allow me to export it - even when I had downloaded the needed plug-in. Finally I found another one which needs to be run from command line. That's a bit trickier, but I like command lines - it brings me back to time where computers were only computing, LOL! However, I should first make a wav file of it before the conversion, so I will try it later (there was a great football game yesterday which occupied my prescious time).

I like to listen to all those records while I record them. Recording will serve as a backup for me, in case of accidents. Or if I decide to sell some records, well, which I probably will because not all of my vinyls are that unforgettable. And it's easier to carry my records in a memory stick or portable hard drive, or in my phone memory for that matter.

In the beginning I'm going to record in two sets, a and b side respectively. Maybe later I divide them into songs, but I wouldn't count on it. The lazyness may rear its ugly head, you know. I guess the needle in the player won't be in too good a shape after all been done and recorded. So I'm going to be careful with not playing anything without recording it. I still have dozens of vinyls bought in Stockholm area that I haven't even listened to, so naturally I will start with those.

The first one to be recorded was by the way American Pie LP, a classic by Don McClean. It's in mint condition. The price tag says '30 kronor' which sounds just about right, don't you think?

Seen on TV

2009-05-27T11:50:00.002+03:00

2 ½ men is shown in Finland again, yippee! The only sad thing about it is that I have seen those episodes already in Sweden. Some of them are worth seeing twice though. One slip must be mentioned. When Alan says he has developed a third testicle and the phone rings, Charlie says:'You answer, you have 30% more balls than I do.' It's not that it should be 33,33... percent, it's that it should be 50%. 30% of more balls would leave Alan only 2,6 balls which couldn't be an accurate value of testicles. See, you'd better watch out for Smek even in the craziest comedy series...

Floridian was recommending me to watch It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which has been shown here on the same Sub channel, right before 2 ½ men! I have to say that it's clearly not as fun as I was expecting. Despite Danny DeVito. Now I can see that suddenly it's not shown anymore. Was it because of bad viewer rating, I don't know, but I wouldn't ignore that option.

My interest in CSI's has collapsed. Mainly because I have seen these episodes in Sweden as well. Soon will the new ones for me be broadcast, so I have to be careful when that happens. A natural choice for me in the meantime has been NCIS. It has more humour and less science in it. Plus good actors and actresses, including legendary David McCallum - the 'real' invisible man, LOL! He has had several succesful roles in TV series starting from the 60's, but I don't recall having seen him in the movies.

American Gladiators are back. What bugs me bad, is that they have edited out more and more of the actual events, yet leaving all bullshit talk and boast there intact. Instead what makes me laugh or at least smile every time, is to see the 'Wolf' character moaning. That gladiator is hairy all over, except, oops, in the armpit area. He's shaven those hairs. That's a wolf alright, LOL! Next time, check it out for yourselves! Woooooh!

Finally the season and the episode of Amazing Race where the contenders visited Finland was shown here. It was pretty nice, especially when they were walking (actually trying to run) in the swamp mud in Ylöjärvi, only some 20 kilometers from where I live. But don't get a wrong idea of us Finns: for example I have never been in a muddy swamp up to my waiste! Actually I have never done any of those stunts the contenders had to pull through in that (in)famous Finland episode.

I started to watch the new Tracey Ullman's show where she bashes America. The US in particular. It's always a good idea to do that (sorry, Hairy), but there should be something funny behind it. Tracey has been ok sometimes, but now I had to cancel watching this series. And, by the way it's a really old topic to start a series, don't you think? Bring back The Simpsons, d'oh!

Sad but ~~dream~~ true, a hole in the wall - the Japanese nonsense entertainment show - has landed in Finland. It came via Sweden probably - I blame the Swedes anyway. I honestly can't tell what purpose this show is serving. Well, our 7-year-old daughter likes it, but otherwise it doesn't seem like a children's programme to me. A hole in the plot, I'll say!

Chauncey the Composter

2009-05-26T11:57:00.003+03:00

I started to gather biowaste in a separate bag yesterday. My wife is mildly against it, so it's totally on my responsibility. She doesn't like the mess it might cause and the amount of space it requires in the kitchen. Anyhow we're in green business now.

I don't feel myself especially dedicated to green values. It only seems like a natural thing to do, since we purchased a bio-composter. It was bought for composting the leaves, grass and such, but is also built for biowaste. Meaning it's mouse- and rat-free.

The idea of getting fresh, very usable composted soil for our own purposes for practically free is fascinating. All the composter needs is a little care every now and then. Our kid even put dozens of worms in there to make it happen. To start it cooking, so to speak.

It's still unknown where this burst of energy to compost things came from and how long it will prevail, but for the time being I'd better make the most of it. Hell, I could make a hobby out of it. My wife does the gardening and I'll do the composting. What a dream time we have, LOL!

Finnish Cuisine Delicacy IV - V: Tippaleipä & Viili

2009-05-25T15:01:00.011+03:00

I'm almost done with my music quiz application. I'm pretty proud of it and I have high hopes for it. Let's see what happens. I'll keep you posted.

Now I may have more time to blog. I have some excellent ideas about how to proceed. It's totally up to me if I only have the strength to pull it through. Time will tell, as always.

I thought to combine some delicious subjects here. The first one is called 'tippaleipä' (funnel cake) which is to be enjoyed during vappu (May Day) with 'sima' (mead). Yes, I missed that slightly in my blogging. The funnel cake is made just like you'd push doughnut paste through a meat mincer, thus getting a mixed blob of brown snakes. After boiled in oil like doughnuts of course. I haven't been a fan of funnel cakes, but this year they tasted alright. They are usually too expensive compared to their taste.

Another issue is 'viili'. It's called 'filmjölk' in Swedish (and in English too, OMG?), but that is 'piimä' in Finland (named by Finland-Swedish I think). And 'piimä' (filmjölk) and 'viili' (fil) are definetely not the same thing. I was participating in an interesting conversation in Hairy Swede's blog, but I couldn't describe it better and I wasn't able to upload any pictures to tell the whole story. So here are some.

I like 'viili' and I guess you'd like it too! This must be of Swedish origin, but since they seem to be extremely ignorant of it, the Finns can take the credit just the same. If you look very carefully, you might catch a glimpse of my reflection in the spoon, LOL!

I started playing badminton after a 4,5-year break. I was a bit unsure of starting over because I had been injured most of the time when I played it last time. To my surprise I'm still in one piece. I think that sports suits me well. I took a picture of pills I take before a badminton game in the morning. There is some to ease my body and mind. Also one pill of Hermesetas is there give some perspective, if nothing else.

At the customer's, where I have been working lately in Finland, they have started to use 'green' way of drinking coffee. Nothing to do with T or anything, LOL. Instead of paper mugs, everybody should start using real mugs provided by the customer. And at first everyone's old real mugs are to be destroyed! Oh, the logic, where did I lose you? Can't follow you anymore.

I had thought that the usage of paper mugs WAS the green thing to do. They can be composted whereas real mugs washed up in a washing machine require a lot of washing powder daily. Well, to be on the safe side, I invented my way of saving nature. As you can see in the picture, my way of drinking coffee doesn't consume any un-green burden like washing liquids because I don't have to wash up the mug. And still I can get rid of the paper mug which is, yes, compostable. In addition, the hot coffee in a paper mug doesn't burn my fingers when inside a real mug. That sounds like a winner to me! (TIC)

Well, I have lately given up that paper mug usage. My silent protest didn't stay unnoticed, so it has proved its point already. Viva la coffee, anyway you like it. If you do like it, that is.

Eurovision back-flash

2009-05-20T11:22:00.000+03:00

I'be been busy and somewhat reluctant to continue blogging even if I have had much to blog about. I don't know, maybe it's the springtime depression. Yeah, blame the others, dude.

I was quite happy to see Norway win Eurovision Song Contest. Not because it was Norway, more like in spite of it. It was one of my favorite songs in advance, just like last year. A simple 4-chord song in minor key, what else could a Finn desire, LOL! It reminded me of a Finnish Kerkko Koskinen's songs and his way of singing. Kerkko has participated in the Finnish Eurovision contest several times, but has never won it to get to perform in an actual ESC (escapism as its most?). That leaves nice room for open speculation as always.

Finnish Waldo´s People didn't impress me much. Karoliina's voice wasn't as strong as it was some months ago and the song was over before it really started. The last place in a final was we have been used to get, so no big surprise there. Well, reaching the final was a small achievement in itself.

Sweden had an oddball song. An operatic song with modern rhythm arrangement was an awful mess. The singer tried to smile when she sang, leaving me an illusion she were a ventriloquist, LOL! I couldn't understand a word she sang. It was supposed to be partly French, well, maybe it was. And she just couldn't cope with the pop-song parts of it.

By now I have forgotten what was Denmark's song like. That should tell something about it.

It was really wonderful to get all Nordic countries in the final. Even Iceland made it, and did pretty well actually. Personally I wasn't too fond of the song, but it was nice enough I guess.

What makes me upset is that Norway and Denmark didn't give any points to Finland. Seems that they really don't like us Finns. Because, let's face it, this contest has a little to do with actual songs. But this time I can't argue with the decision, since one of my favorites (Norway, Russia and B&H) took the others by storm. And with a new record in points and winning marginal, so goodbye to Lordi's old record. Sniff!