This far up the Artic Circle, the changes in daylight are quite dramatic during the year. Already slightly after the spring equinox the length of the day exceeded 14 hours.
In the height of summer the sun won’t set, whereas in the darkest times of winter you will experience the dusk of kaamos.
At the summit of Pallastunturi, after 3 kms of snowshoeing (before another 3 kms on the way back).
We were in Lapland for holiday last week (pictures here), and it was very interesting to realise how massified has tourism in Lapland has become (even though of course we were going during the high season). Our flight from Helsinki was using one of the big Airbus 340s that are normally servicing Finnair’s intercontinental routes, and the plane was completely full.
Furthermore, on the way back we saw that there are flights to Kittilä arriving from Manchester & London besides Helsinki. That’s welcome news for the economy of those northern regions.
Will spring finally come to southern Finland? At least Otsonlahti Bay seems to feel its effects.
Finally watched this Oscar-winning movie. Set in the slums of Mumbai, the plot is very well built, and the soundtrack and camerawork are just excellent. Even though it has its very tragic moments, it is quite an uplifting movie, unlike Amores Perros & Cidade de Deus.
Give it a try if you haven’t yet.
One of the main disadvantages of living abroad is the sparser contact with one’s own family. In this day and age, of course you can use e-mail, Skype or just plain old long distance phone calls, but there’s nothing like being physically present.
Your family, whether you like it or not, is part of who you are. Enjoy them when you have the chance.
We know that Finnish is not the simplest language in the world, but I find that its difficulty is a little bit exaggerated and has become a source of national pride, however right or misguided (nothing wrong of being proud of your language, but because it’s perceived to be difficult for others to learn?). Every once in a while people are surprised that I would have taken the time to learn it, but I’d say that its learning curve is quite steep in the beginning due to the amount of new vocabulary and grammar that needs to be learned, but tapers off later (unlike English for example, where it is very easy to get started but there are lot of irregularities).
I am very grateful to have had very competent teachers in the beginner and advanced levels, but was just listening to an acquaintance who mentioned that even his teacher said “Don’t worry of you don’t learn, it’s a difficult language anyway”. Now that’s a way to motivate people!
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: “Suomen kieli ei niin vaikea ole, vaan erilainen” (The Finnish language is not so difficult, only different). Very different maybe, but if you unlearn what you have learned you’ll be fine.
Anybody who knows me a little bit (or has seen my profile at Last.fm) has probably realised that my musical taste is quite varied. On any given day I could be listening to raï, ranchera, punk, samba, rock, jazz, metal, classical music, ska, axé, or electronica from Mexico, Japan, Brazil, Algeria, France, Belgium, Israel, India, Canada, Argentina, Egypt, China, etc… which if they’re not your usual Anglo-Saxon pop-rock will usually be clumped together into World Music, with very awkward results.
For example, with the current version of iTunes you have a “Genius” feature that promises to make perfect playlists for you. However, the database they use seems to have been made by the record companies instead of users, so when it does find the music I have (which is less often than I would expect), if I ask to create a Genius playlist out of e.g. one of my favourite Mexican rock bands it will put it together with Mexican & Argentine traditional music too since they’re “Latin”, something akin to lumping James Brown together with Enya because they come from the English-speaking world. It gets even better when I try it with some of my favourite samba artists, as they will be lumped together with salsa, raï, Bollywood and tango acts because they are “World Music”, even if I do have plenty of MPB (Música Popular Brasileira) to make a list with.
David Byrne said it best: he hates world music.
