I don’t have a car. I used to, but sold it when I moved to Brussels and when I came back I didn’t really see the need for it, since in the Helsinki metro area we tend to have pretty decent public transportation.
it was not a surprise, but definitely a noticeable difference to see that the city of Seattle (as many other cities in the United States) is built around the car, to the extent that you get commuting times in the local news right after the weather report.
No surprise the price of oil has everybody up in arms.
Category Archives: in english
Gospel singers in front of the original Starbucks
Seattle looks like Oslo
At least, given its flora, weather and orography, its environment definitely does. The city, however, is built in an entirely different order.
Yoda feels a little under the weather
This actually is a backpack I got in the US last month.
The Finnish NATO predicament
Finland has a continuous history of being a non-aligned country, but some politicians hereabouts have started to wonder whether they should be joining NATO. They know that they would be most welcome, but domestic public opinion seems to oppose it, preferring the status quo of universal military conscription. Somebody close to me summarised the situation with the following line:
"Who do I trust to defend Finland, crooked foreign politicians or drunken Finnish teenagers?".
Time travelling
During the past few days I've seen quite a few stories that involve time travelling. From an episode of Babylon 5 to the Spanish movie Open your Eyes to the novel The Forever War, I spent this weekend trying to analyse rather convoluted timelines, and finding myself enjoying them.
Interestingly enough, I know that some people close to me have certain difficulties following those plots whereas for me those kind of paradoxes are kind of normal. That's what happens when you grow up with a steady diet of science fiction.
Superclásico fever
In every league in every sport there are derbies. You know what I’m talking about, the kind of grudge games that build up in the whole city or country that are one of the highlights of the season.
In Mexican football, there is none bigger than the América (águilas, or eagles) vs. Guadalajara (chivas, or goats) rivalry. The 200th version of that game was played last Sunday, and my beloved Chivas won.
The most rewarding part of the whole experience is when we look at the league table, where Chivas is at the top (having lost one game in their whole league campaign) and América at the bottom (having won only two in their worst season in history).
Chivas’s Copa Libertadores campaign hasn’t been so good, but there is still a chance to qualify to the knockout stages of that competition too. Needless to say, I’m a happy Chiva congelado.
The SEO rapper
This guy rules.
Tototoromoomin
What happens when you mix Finnish & Japanese cartoons?
Work in Finland
This is a marketing campaign for Kauppalehti, the leading Finnish business daily that brings forward the labour shortage in Finland. The English language version of the online component of the campaign is actually quite bad, whereas the Finnish one has real content in it. I guess that contrary to what the campaign seems to be about, they didn’t care too much about the immigrant / foreign audience after all.
Funnily enough, there was a completely wasted bum/drunk just next to this ad, but I couldn’t bring myself to take that picture. I guess it would have been too poignant of a social commentary.