Onnea Ylioppilaalle!

Ylioppilaan 'juhla-ateria'

30.5. Suomi juhli monen uuden ylioppilaan kanssa, niin mekin teimme. Mikä parasta, ilma oli aurinkoinen ja tunnelma ylpeän isän puheessa shampanjan ja kakun siivittämänä oli mahtava.

On Saturday Finland celebrated many new 'Ylioppilas' (= youngsters who had passed their matriculation examinations (a mouth full that word...) and had just received their shiny white caps, which they can now start wearing every vappu (making them less shiny & white)). The weather was perfect for a garden party of my god son and the speach of the proud father + 'kakku' (=cake) & champagne were memorable.

Good luck for T in future & army... in 45 days ;D

Time flies when you're having fun

Danger - Architect at work... via

What is it with architects and deadlines?

Somehow it is 10 days since our last post, although it only seems like last night. I have several things I want to blog about (including horses & cows, blood pancakes, not cycling, dentists and other random things) but we're in that mad 'draw-up' zone trying to get our Europan 10 competition entry ready, working 12 hour days redesigning everything for the n-th time, redrawing it, redesigning it again, drawing it again, re-reading the brief, starting it all again.... Having the world's worst rickety, uneven table as a drawing board, no network, flaky software and only an A4 printer (also very temperamental - rather like it's owner) doesn't exactly help. Mind you the set up is still almost as good as my last office...

The observant amongst you may be wondering why I making a big deal about this as we still have exactly a month to go, however my course starts on Monday (oh bugger I have to revise for that too), and we have Juhannus in between, and I need to get a 3d CAD model of the whole site finished next week so we can work up some perspective views then work on the written part. While Konna will only have to draw everything else! If we were doing this in an office I would hope there would be a few more hands.  Lucky it is 'only' three A1 boards... (and 10 A3's, and 2 CD's) ... and we can't even publish it here until after the judging - in January!

things you should and shouldn't know

I've just discovered (while idly skimming through my Sitemeter stats) that our little unfocused blog has been picked up by 'this is FINLAND' published by the Finland Promotion Board as one of just five blogs (so far anyway) of 'recommended' reading on Finland, along with our fellow ex-pat architect Lewism. So heipa if you have just arrived in confusion from there. One of the others is the Finnish foreign minister's blog... which isn't so surprising once you see who produces the site. Nice Aalto vase inspired logo too.

I wonder if we come under the 'things you shouldn't know' category the site's strap line mentions?

In which summer hurtles towards us

mmmmm, ihana

It only seems like a couple of weeks ago since I was still writing about snow.  Now all the snow is long gone, winter gear retired to the attic/cellar and even the grit has been swept up and taken away.  Suddenly the bare birches have got this season's must have look (in leafy spring green) and as I look out the window at 22:31 twilight is falling, although the sun will be back in just six hours.  In a few weeks the schools will break for summer, and Juhannus - the nightless night - is only five weeks away...

Anyway we have been absorbed in working up our ideas for Europan (which has only six weeks to go - oh-ho!), and otherwise kept busy Nordic walking and going to an Utzon lecture (where we also bumped into Lewism) in the last week, and now my back is finally better I'll be back on my bike this week.

I also cooked a rather fine (even if I do say so myself) roast beef dinner for some friends today - but I'll show you a salad as it seems more seasonal - as well as better for you...

Remember

Tänään on kaatuneitten muistopäivä suomessa

Today is Remembrance Day in Finland

Finnishnessness

Suomen lippuja: From hölynpöly

Tänään on JV Snellmanin päivä, suomalaisuuden päivä

Today is JV Snellman's day - the day of 'Finnishness'

Here are some ways to be Finnish today (if you are not already):

• Try to be quiet or at least monosyllabic (unless using a mobile phone, in which case speak rapidly and volubly for at least 1 hour about your most personal issues while on public transport)
• Don't smile at strangers, or anyone else much
• Eat a disgusting black substance containing NH₄Cl
• Pretend W and V are the same letter
• Shake hands with everyone you meet
• When going for a walk take your ski-poles (you may need to hire some if you don't ski)
• Sit naked on a bench in a small wooden hut heated with a stove full of rocks to between 70 and 90°C with several people you barely know; throw water on the rocks to make steam and sweat; if insufficiently masochistic so far hit yourself with leafy boughs; you may only leave to swim in a freezing lake; award self with a beer.  Repeat until cooked, drunk or drowned.
• Eat lots of sausages. And potatoes. And then some more sausages. If you want vegetables or fruit you'll have to wait until autumn when the mushrooms and berries are around.  

Also hard English is

Came across this article on this site (via an exchange on Facebook about clams... but that's another story) which reminded me that although the Finnish language is difficult, English is not exactly a piece of cake either. Or any other bakery product. 

Decisions decisions

Green isn't it

More on the Kela saga: Since registering unemployed a couple of months ago (which I was told I 'had' to do even though I wouldn't get any benefits from it), I have now had four Päätös (decision) letters in the last couple of weeks as well as a request for more information about the week before that.  It seems it has decided it is only going communicate with me in Finnish (as I stupidly wrote in Finnish last time), however with a bit of help from Konna I have worked out that for each 'application' you get a 'decision' response (even if you didn't know you had applied for something).  So after first being told I don't qualify for 'basic' or 'training' benefits (these are loose translations), I now have been told instead I will be getting 'integration' payments for 'foreigners joining Finnish society'. I didn't even know I had applied for it! I'm also pretty sure I will get the 'training' payments when my next language course starts now this has gone through the Työvointoimisto for approval. Not that we are talking big money here, but as my income has been zero since the end of last May it will at least help counter slightly the sizeable drain in our savings.

As it happens our savings accounts are now looking as healthy as they have ever done as we have just sold our London flat in just a month (is this a record!?). Of course in Finland the whole process would only takes a couple of days, not having our tangle of property and contract law to deal with. It is a strange feeling not having our own 'home' in London anymore, but hopefully we have made the right decision to take a decent offer now and get capital out of it to back us up if we need it, (and to stop losing money renting it out!). I can't see we would get a better offer in the next couple of years anyway, and this way we have more flexibility for what to do in the future and less risk.

I like to think I am a fairly rational and logical chap, but sometimes I do wonder at my own decision making process (the above excepted I hope!).  Currently I am on a low income, am training for a cycling event and (temporarily I hope) have a bad back and have hurt my heel.  So what I really needed to buy yesterday was a pair of running shoes, right? Right...

Hyvää Äitienpäivää

Valkovuokkoja

 Tänään on äitienpäivä suomessa, ja suomen lippu päivä myös. No, onnea kaikkille äideille. 

Today is Mother's Day in Finland, and also a Finnish Flag day. Konna collected the traditional white valkovuokkoja flowers for Hirri this morning, while I cooked a not so traditional English breakfast at her request (she seems to have developed a liking unhealthy English food!). 

Hazards to navigation

Murraisia enjoying the sun

The good weather last week led to what was, with hindsight, an over-enthusiastic start to my cycling season. (No not there, my back actually). After several tours around the off-road tracks of Mustavuori before Vappu (including up and down what I like to call Roskismäki - the hill on the old landfill site overlooking the new harbour), we took a trip out to Mustikkamaa at the weekend to meet up with Bore and Persika, and to have a Vappu-left-overs picnic whilst sunning ourselves on the rocks. Even though the temperature was only in the low teens I still managed to get sunburn, although as Konna said I could sunburn from a 20W bulb; and if I will wear cycling shorts...

As well as bringing out the koivu (birch) leaves, flowers, confused woodpeckers drumming on (metal) lamp-posts, ants (muurahaisia), fat bumble bees (if you hit one while cycling you'd think a rock had pinged of your helmet), the sun also brought out photographers toting tripods lurking round corners and kyykärme (adders). While avoiding one of the former, I swerved towards a suspiciously serpentine 'stick' on the trail, narrowly missed it and turned back to see it weave rapidly off into the under-growth beside the track. Not something that is often a hazard around London...

Another problem is that I keep believing Konna when she says she knows the way (despite not having lived here for 10 years), this has led to a few 'scenic routes' (or usually un-scenic routes next to main roads instead of along one of the gravelled off-road track that Helsinki is well endowed with.  Luckily I'm not foolish enough not to take a map and compass with me.  Even better YTV (Helsinki's public transport body) provides a cycle route planner that not only is available in English but lets you choose the type of cycle path (tarmac, gravel, road) and set way-points.  All I need now is a way to integrate that with GPS on my iPhone. And an iPhone. Of course even good route planning doesn't stop people going the wrong way, or digging up half of Myllypuro which put a spanner to our previous long trip (by cutting off several cycle and pedestrian paths), and did again as we tried to get home and was inexorably pulled back there.  

We're on a road to nowhere... well Myllypuro actually

Despite all that, last week I only totted up another 100km, and am now suffering for it (mainly as Hiiri keeps trying to get me to use horse linament on my back) - 140km in six or seven hours is starting to seem a big task.

hYVäÄä VvwaPpuu!

ei ole lippu...

[hic] onnn wwappuuu eiksss? [hic] missssä 'nn valkoi-ja-sssinsssen ... nen ... 

perrrkelet... [hic] msssä on lpp- li- ll - pu 

[george] anteksss...