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
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.
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
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.
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
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
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!
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
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
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.
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.
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