Here comes the summer

We spent Easter at Ulriikka's parents' house which included a walk around a frozen lake. On the way home we saw the huge lake Näsijärvi from the train and it looked pretty much frozen solid. On monday this week, I was wearing my winter coat as the temperature dropped to about -5 in the morning.

Next week is Vappu, the first of May. It's a big deal in Finland and the tradition is to sit in the park having a picnic while nursing a terrific hangover. We were looking at photos from last year when it was t-shirt weather and everything was green. We were contemplating a Vappu in the cold when something remarkable happened. The sun, which has been shining more or less constantly for the last month or so to no great effect, suddenly started feeling warm and now today it's a rather toasty 18 degrees and looks like a beautiful day - looking out of the balcony window just now, I can't see a cloud in the sky.



We've started getting prepared for Vappu and yesterday we made some Sima. Or rather, we are about halfway through making some sima. Right now it's sat on the kitchen table brewing, or whatever yeast does when it's in a pan full of sugar and water. We'll be bottling it later and the idea is that it will make a slightly fizzy weak lemon drink that we will be drinking on our picnic next Friday.

We'll have a house full next week as Lash, Stevilee, Danny and Vicky all come to visit us. They'll be arriving to Tampere at about 11pm on Thursday, which should be just as the city reaches the peak of its post-apocalyptical drinking session. It will be a baptism of fire for them - especially if they get the bus from the airport and arrive at the train station surrounded by the Ale-Pubs there. "Ale" is Finnish for discount, which means that where beer normally sells for about 5 Euros a pint in normal bars it's sold for about 3 Euros in the Ale-Pubs. This means that it attracts the... ahem... more interesting characters in Tampere.

But I don't want to paint a bad picture of Finland and Vappu is more like a festival than a party. There will be bands and fairs in the town centre. The new university students are dunked into the rapids that run through the centre of town - which might be cold since the water will be made up from defrosting ice. The Ice Hockey World Championships is on and Finland are actually quite good at it - they were finalists a couple of year ago. There is always a really good atmosphere in the city, which is maybe helped by the alcohol flowing through everybody's blood system. But I'm really looking forward to it and I will try and give an update as it happens.

The One Armed Man Lives

This weekend I decided I might as well check out Duke Farms, it’s one of those places that I have driven by about a million times and never visited. (And I still managed to get lost because basically I’m an idiot and didn’t look up the proper directions to the visitor’s entrance.) The Duke Estate is huge chuck of prime NJ real estate that is worth approx a gazillion dollars. Doris Duke spent many of her insane years there; you can even watch a movie about how crazy she was starring Susan Sarandon with Ralph Fiennes as her also alcoholic Irish butler. She inherited all her money from her family cancer stick business or something along those lines.
At the guard station check in I was told to drive to the visitor’s center and check in with someone named Pete. The visitor’s center parking lot only had two other cars in it, I did think it would be more busy as it is a Saturday and spring-like.
I make my way inside to meet this Pete and find that he is most likely the “One Armed Man” from the Fugitive or just his brother Pete that happens to have two arms. He makes me fill out a card with my address and information so he can effectively stalk me later if he wants. And also give me a laminated map and says I should skip the Butterfly Spur because it’s basically been decimated. Some ladies appear who have just completed the walk I'm going on and one of them randomly tells me I should use the rest room before I start, Pete does not offer advice on this topic, he does give me a disclaimer card with their phone number on it. He asks if I have a cell phone and recommends I call them if I have any trouble, which of course leads to me wondering what kind of trouble one can get into here.
The start of the walk leads you through a large patch of trees, many of which appear to have been ripped from the ground by giants and struck by lightening. Some of the ones that are still standing are snapped partway up and making loud creaking noises and I wonder not if but when they will fall on me.
There are protective fences around most of the estate to keep deer out, which makes me happy as they are one of my natural enemies and also the scourge of the earth. According to my laminated map, deer caused a lot of damage to the trees and generally cause trouble being such sinister creatures.
Moving on I realize that I am indeed the only person anywhere to be seen and it is incredibly creepy. I imagine several situations where the Zodiac will appear. The Butterfly Spur is indeed decimated. There is also the shell of a barn that burned down 100 years ago that is now filled with marble statues of women, some of which are missing heads.
I manage to take find some interesting plants to shoot with my old film camera since I’m back on real pictures and generally had a nice time with moments of paranoia that are a direct result of reading too many true crime books in the past. I’ll have to go back in the summer when things are a bit greener, there will probably be more people then and I’ll end up getting annoyed instead of creeped out.
On the way back out through the visitors center the One Armed Man showed me the Bald Eagle Cam where you can spy on a nest. The "eaglets" should be hatching today or yesterday: http://www.dukefarms.org/

Ant Lifeboat

One of the best things about starting from scratch in a new country is buying little things that you've always wanted. Like a clear kettle. So we have one like this:





















It's fantastic and seems to make my life that little bit more bearable. However, it's become the focal point of a very strange phenomenon.

Over the summer, we've had a real problem with ants. The weather is so hot in New Zealand that you really have to be careful with leaving food out. Make the mistake of leaving something sweet out on the kitchen counter overnight, and you can rest assured that when you wake up there'll be ants everywhere.

We even found that they'd managed to infiltrate sealed glass jars of honey. How? We first thought it was impossible - that they must have created some kind of Star Trek transporter to pass though solid materials. And then we realised how they did it - they travelled along the groove of the screw lid until they got inside the jar. Crafty bastards.

This is nothing though in comparison with their latest trick. A few times I've woken up and walked into the kitchen, sleepy-eyed. I've gone to flick the kettle on and realised that there's something black floating on the water inside it. Astounded by this object, bobbing up and down on the surface about as big as a kidney bean, I've taken a closer look...

It's a raft. Made of ants, with more ants on it. Just floating there, in the middle of the kettle.

Now I'm no scientist but I'm stumped if I know how or why they're doing this. The simplest explanation is that one fell in and they just kept following, like lemmings. But if this had happened, you would expect the water in the kettle to be peppered with ants. What they have done seems almost planned. When you look closer, the dead ants have created a raft by linking their legs together, and then the other ants are sitting on top having a nice sail.

WHY? WHY? WHY?

I guess we're just lucky to have a clear kettle to act as an early-warning device for this odd event. You know those times when you make a coffee and there's undissolved coffee floating on the surface in your cup? Maybe that ain't coffee after all...

All this talk of ants has just reminded me of a fantastic lyric I heard on the radio the other day:

I want to cover you in ants, bees and honey,
Then take a picture for the cover of our album!

Watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCPY-zD6e-I

The false economy of flying Ryanair

It seemed like a good idea at the time - we would save some money and get to see a nice city. So when we booked our flights to Manchester we went with Ryanair. A few weeks before we were due to fly they cancelled our return flight meaning we had to book a new flight with BA, which while not expensive was double the price of the Ryanair flight. But so what, this was all still cheaper than flying direct.

Going to Manchester was two flights - the first from Tampere to Bremen. We then had about 6 hours in Bremen as long as we didn't mind the snow that was pouring down. We braved the snow and headed into Bremen town centre. This being Germany, getting to town was absurdly easy. A tram from ten metres outside the airport dropped us outside the cathedral. We then went round the corner and could see this:



Which is a nice thing to look at. We had some nice schnitzel in a cafe and felt ready for the weather. We weren't - it was freezing. We spent the next few hours going between places and being inside for as much as possible. It's a place to go in the sunshine really - it would have been nice to spend more time looking upwards! We pretty much condensed a holiday in Germany down to 6 hours. Medieval catheral? Check. Stamps printed individually at the post office? Check. Heart-attack inducing cake in a cafe in the middle of a maze of ancient streets? Check. Slightly flat beer in a dark pub served by a slightly overbearing fake smiling lady? Check.

Next on the trip was Manchester and we stayed at the Brittania hotel in Piccadilly. I've been to Waves, the bar underneath the hotel and didn't have especially high expectations of the hotel itself. The hotel is beautiful itself but inside is amazing, as though it was designed by M.C. Escher. One of the things I was looking forward to doing in Manchester was to have a margarita in Rodeo. However on arriving there I was confronted with this:



You can't really see from the picture, but Rodeo is now "Keko Moku". It doesn't roll off the tongue quite as nicely but the place is essentially the same. I can recommend the Dark and Stormy cocktail.

It's birthday season at the moment and after Pia's birthday party on Friday in Chorlton we were up bright and early the next day to go to my Dad's 60th birthday party. My Dad himself didn't know that we were coming - what better present than post traumatic stress? Certainly that was the expression on my Dad's face for the next hour after we arrived. I think that in truth our arrival gave the game away about a party later that day but from a purely selfish point of view, it was worth spoiling the surprise just to see the happy look on his little face. Plus it gave me a chance to set up a Spotify account.

Getting up the next morning we had to leave to head down to that there London town. I have noticed that living abroad has changed my attitute towards a lot of things about Britain. For some reason I've become nostalgic for places, like London, that I don't actually have any specific attachment to. So I pretended not to be a republican to try and see Buckingham Palace down Pall Mall, took photos of Big Ben from every angle (and yes, I know that since Big Ben is the name of the bell not the clock tower I realise that I couldn't actually see it), crossed the road to get a better view of look of Downing Street and so on. Most pleasantly of all though we were in the centre of London before the protests in the City.

We spent the last day in the British Museum. I'm sure that I will have been there in the past but I don't remember ever visiting there. It was quite nice to see all the things from ancient civilisations. Say what you want about the contibution of the Egyptian empire to human civilization though, they clearly didn't know what a lion looks like...

Kiukku

Kiukku is a word I learned on my work placement. It means anger (my dictionary actually says "crossness"). Anyway, it's a pretty useful word at the moment since it more or less describes my feelings at being back at language school. I didn't learn the Finnish for waste of time though, and that would have been even more useful just now.

About 8 weeks ago I was told that my work placement was going to be at a nursery school. Before it started there we were two weeks of lessons about Finnish work life. They were unbearable. I was given the choice to go back to the normal lessons just before I went and I was on the verge of doing it before deciding on a "get it over and done with policy" and, well, getting it over and done with. The idea of working in a nursery school was not one that I contemplated with any kind of relish. I was pretty sure that I would not like it and the thought of trying to corral 5 year olds who wouldn't understand me filled me with terror.

I arrived on day one determined to keep an open mind. Sure, it was probably going to be pretty awful but it was only 7 weeks and starting the work practise expecting horrors was probably the best way of making sure that it happened. As long as there was some kind of improvement in my Finnish then the whole episode would not be a waste of time. I had met the staff that I would be working with and they had seemed to be pretty nice so I figured I would keep quiet and knuckle down.

However keeping quiet and knuckling down is a pointless and boring way to fill the time. After the first day had been and gone and I had sat watching children play or eat for six hours I left feeling glad to have survived a group of children and feeling that I had acheived fairly little. So I looked for ways to relieve the boredom. Ultimately that meant actually interacting with the children. Slowly I got myself more involved in what was going on. Initially that meant doing my best to stop the children killing each other. Anybody checking the statistics will find that I did that aspect of the job especially well - in the time I was there, no-one died.

My days were slowly filled helping the children put on their outdoor clothes, helping them take them off, nudging them along when they set the table for dinner, getting out and putting back beds, and so on. I'm not sure when it happened but at some point I realised that I was enjoying myself. Sure, there were bad moments - mostly when not much was happening and I was again just watching. But the boring times were not that bad and were partly the reason I was there in the first place. That is, I was rubbish at doing the job because I couldn't speak Finnish. If I could have spoken more Finnish the job would have been even more enjoyable.

At the moment, I'm giving serious consideration to going to school and studying so I can start working properly in a nursery school. However before that can possibly happen I need to improve my Finnish. And so back I go to Finnish school. And it's intolerable. Yesterday was spent listening to people complain for three hours about their experiences. One guy seemed to be mostly upset that the place he was working in expected him to actually do some work. His logic was wonderful - he was only on that course because the job centre paid him do it, so it was unfair of them to make him go to work. People seemed to miss the point that learning a language usually involves using it in some way.

I'm hoping that when I go back to the normal lessons and actually study Finnish it will be a more pleasurable experience. One discussion point yesterday was "what is Finnish work culture like?" I have worked in a variety of jobs for more than ten years and still I couldn't describe British work culture - every job I have had has been different. So there is no way for me to describe Finnish work culture after seven weeks. If I could do it, I wouldn't have the words to talk about it in Finnish.

Hopefully it won't suck all of the life out of me and I'll manage to struggle on. It's giving me Kiukku though!

Cancelling the phone, wriggling out of exercise

I have just got off the phone with O2. I have had a phone contract with them for about 6 years and after I left the UK it was still running. It runs out next month though so I was calling to cancel the contract. It feels like my last connection with the UK and that without it I won't be able to be contacted. As it happens there are only about three people who still send me any messages on it and I'm in email contact with all of them so I don't expect me to lose touch with them any time soon!

It is strange how attached you get to numbers though - I had thought about changing it to a pay as you go just so that I could keep the number. Of course nowadays nobody knows anybody's phone number since it's all on the phone so whether I keep a particular number or not is irrelavent. But there was a time when you knew all the phone numbers of the people you called most often. I can still remember my Dad's old Hazel Grove phone number twenty years after he moved out. That's all changed now and I don't even know Ulriikka's current phone number. It means that if I lose my phone I might never see her again.

In unrelated news I joined the local gym, technically with the intention of getting rid of the paunch that seems to be deceloping. I'm probably not going to start using the weight machines as it seems to be the most boring thing I can imagine doing. I have gone to a couple of the classes though and they seem enjoyable enough. I did a cycling lesson which started off OK. After about 15 minutes though I was in agony from the bike seat that made it difficult to sit down. The idea of the class though was to stand at various points which left my thighs feeling like they were on fire. So my choice was between severe bottom pain and thigh-knack. I managed to make it to the end of the hour though (mainly by not standing on the bike as much as I should have done if I am honest).

Next up was pilates a few days later. Piece of piss, I figure, it's just stretching. I couldn't do it. I figure that the main problem is that I'm just not strong enough to do it and it will get easier if I stick at it. It was a bit embarrasing not to be able to keep my leg still lifted in the air. Not as embarrasing as not being able to do a sit up mind, but at least that was at the end of the hour and I could blame it on tiredness and the ball between my legs...

The plan is to go three times a week, or twice at the very least. That said, I'm writing this instead of getting ready for the Vatsa-selkä class starting in five minutes. I haven't been to the gym this week at all so week 2 and skiving doesn't bode well. But I will be going regularly so that at the very least I'm not out of breath when I walk up two flights of stairs at school.

The Land of Clean Public Toilets

The Maoris’ called New Zealand the “Land of the Long White Cloud” and now while there are still long white clouds visible here and there, I think they should think about changing it to the “Land of the Amazingly Clean Public Toilets”. This would also be a good slogan for there tourist board to use, it would pull in millions of tourists who are sick of taking vacations to destinations with disgusting public toilets. I have never been in so many clean public facilities. All of the ones I visited had both toilet papers and locking doors; they were also generally up to a better standard then my last five places of employment. Amazing. The “Hunderwasser Toilet” is even a tourist draw and is the only public toilet I have ever taken a photo in.
Another previously unimagined facet of my trip was the general lack of crazy people roaming the streets. I counted six on my trip. Two of those were confirmed crazy as they could be witnessed shouting random things or singing and grunting to themselves on the side of the road. The other four just had big beards and tended to wear army jackets. Confirmation of crazy was impossible as maybe they were just trying to cover up their weak chins and like the color green.
More shocking was that I only spotted one potential serial killer as a hot water stream/swimming area. He fit the classic strange man lurking alone at family swimming area. That was also unusual considering on a normal day going to work I see about three or four.