| Tammerfesting |
[Jul. 13th, 2008|11:04 pm] |
I spent the past four days at Tammerfest, enjoying the city (music) festival. I took my work laptop with me to do work remotely, and took residence in a friend's vacant apartment, which she graciously agreed to let me use for the few days.
Wednesday I saw Stella at YO-talo, and before that Heidi Holmavuo performing covers at Fall's Cafe. Heidi's set was interesting because it started with Indica's Ikuinen Virta, then Tiktak's Harhaa, then Irina's Vastaan and PMMP's Odotan. At this point I was wondering if she had somehow prepared the song selection from my favourites. :) Later on there was also Stella's Aamun kuiskaus, and even the songs that weren't quite from my favourite artists were done well. Stella's performance was really good too at the sold out venue, even if the vocals were quite drowned out by the music coming from the stage at the front where I was. At least I hope I got good pics...
Thursday it was time for SMG and Von Hertzen Brothers at Pakkahuone. It was the best performance from SMG that I've seen in a good while, even if I've not seen that many times this summer. :) And I'd only seen VHB once before and this time it was much better, even if I didn't quite get converted into fandom.
And friday's concert at Vuolteentori had Chisu and Jenni Vartiainen performing. Both lively and fun as ever. Afterwards we decided to head over to YO-talo to catch the vibrant Pintandwefall there (not that great quality musicianship but good punkish fun as the show).
To top all these concerts off, on saturday there was a concert with first Micro and then Silhuetti playing at Ottopoika. It had been far too long (march?) since I saw Silhuetti live. Ottopoika is a really small place, the downstairs room which has the "stage" can fit perhaps 30 people as audience. But that made it all the more fun! In a way, the place was packed...
Overall much good music, plenty of good company, and a fun time! |
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| Random pending updates |
[Jun. 23rd, 2008|09:31 pm] |
Nothing of these is particularly recent, but I didn't get around to posting at the appropriate time... So anyway.
A picture of the cherry tree in blossom, on my backyard back in May. I think it looked nicer in real life than in this picture. By now of course all the blossoms are gone. The cherries will probably all get eaten by birds, if last year is anything to go by. But that's okay, I'm not that fond of cherries.
My new leased bike. I've even ridden it three times so far (in about a month)! It's nice, level ground feels like downhill. (But still makes me exhausted...)
And this is quite old news, but back in March I agreed to be the main logistics organizer for the annual Ropecon event, with about 4000 visitors expected. It's on the second weekend of August this year. Fortunately for me, we've got a rented conference center, all the people coming take care of their own food and lodging (mostly) and such, so it's not as big an ordeal as it might seem. I just need to handle whatever things our program and activities and organization require. But still. |
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| Bicycle leasing |
[Mar. 31st, 2008|07:15 pm] |
Today I discovered that the company I work for actually allows you to have bicycle leasing. I've heard about car leasing before, but the same concept applied to bikes is a new thing. For some reason, I find it quite amusing. :)
All that aside, come summer I might actually consider trying that out. :) |
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| Kitchen audio |
[Oct. 28th, 2007|05:30 pm] |
Today I've spent some time finishing a project of mine, setting up a couple of loudspeakers in my kitchen. They're hooked to my stereo system in my working room (or "home office", I suppose), so now I can enjoy music also in kitchen when cooking or eating, or just reading.
The speakers are a pair of Chorus Compact 662. They sound good, far far better than any portable miniradio or such - as they were meant to be. The biggest problem with audio quality is probably that I had to place the speakers high and in the room's corners, so far from the ideal placement.
Now if only I'd get my new CD carousel player and amplifier devices one day... |
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| Facebook |
[Oct. 7th, 2007|11:25 pm] |
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I joined Facebook. So, umm, if you know me, feel free to send a request my way. |
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| Back in Finland |
[Sep. 29th, 2007|05:53 pm] |
So I'm back in Finland. The trip was fairly uneventful, a lot of queuing and waiting as usual. Didn't really sleep, extremely tired now...
Now I have to figure out my life here. What was I up to, what were my plans for after coming back? Can't remember that well... |
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| Last night in Boston... for now. |
[Sep. 27th, 2007|10:47 pm] |
Last night in Boston. I ate at the Thai place again, and then on the way to the apartment tried this place selling Italian ice cream. Mmmm, I have hazelnut and pistachia flavored ice-cream mixed here right by the comp as I type this, it's yummy. :)
I don't actually seem to have much to write. Of course one never knows but it does seem likely I'll be back here, in a year if not sooner. Probably April and September/October are the best times to come around here, weather-wise anyway. Given how things seem to be going now, I'll probably end up seeing some of the people from work visiting Helsinki too.
I've not yet packed, not that there's that much to do. I have to leave some things for the morning anyway. The biggest challenge will be fitting all my electronics into my carry-on backpack. |
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| Update and something Wicked |
[Sep. 26th, 2007|11:55 pm] |
What have I been up to?
Well, hmm, let's see. Last Friday I was invited to dinner at a co-worker's place, that was fun. I took the train north and same back later in the evening. In between there was general sitting around in the back yard / garden (of sorts), and eating barbecued meat.
Saturday I met up with another colleague and his wife, and we drove to South Boston and had a nice walk along a beach. Afterward dinner again, at a place called Hilltop.
Sunday not much. It would've been a perfect day to go on a day trip to Salem, but I slacked off.
Talking about weather, today it was crazily warm, also known as hot. Some degrees over +30C. And to think what it's like in Finland in this time of the year, well, I wish I could take the weather with me when I go back.
I went to the gym again today. It wouldn't be that noteworthy but my colleague discovered an entire room dedicated to free weights on another floor. Exactly what we'd been looking for. Pity I can't stay to take advantage of it.
( Wicked! ) |
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| Gymness |
[Sep. 20th, 2007|10:05 pm] |
A co-worker invited me along when he went to the gym tonight, and I was happy enough to join him. The place had hardly any free weights, only some free hand weights, but otherwise had a nice not-too-posh feel. Still fancier than the Kisahalli I go to in Finland, but not so much that it would have bothered me. Plenty of machines. I had a good workout, and to top it off they had a dry sauna. Not as hot as what would've been normal in Finland perhaps, but still nice enough.
Maybe I'll go again next week. |
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| Muffin |
[Sep. 20th, 2007|12:08 am] |
I so can't eat one full American-sized muffin, they're just too large. At least on top of being full from dinner already. |
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| Chicago blues |
[Sep. 18th, 2007|12:15 am] |
I visited Chicago over the weekend. Very very quickly, as in I didn't really get to see much at all, but it was nice anyway. :)
I went to a rock concert (more about that later in a separate post, maybe?) not very surprisingly. Besides that I got to eat Chicago style pizza. And well, I talked with the taxi driver called Elliott who was from Ghana originally but had lived in Chicago some 20 years (and before that, in various places in Europe).
The flight back on sunday was something where I can I enjoyed myself. I got an exit row seat with lots of legroom, and the weather was gorgeous and I was able to see the landscapes in bright afternoon daylight. It's so easy to get mesmerized by the scenery underneath, staring out of an airplane window. That and good music playing. |
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| New mp3 player |
[Sep. 14th, 2007|07:58 pm] |
My 1.5 year old Samsung YP-F1 mp3-player started acting up about a week ago, and after some attempts to figure out what was wrong, I thought maybe it was time to get a new player. After not too much research I settled on Insignia Pilot 4GB which you can get from the local Best Buy. It's a brand new model, so new that they only got them today, and when I went to ask for the device they had to search the store and eventually located them in a storage room on a different floor... I have it now, it seems nice, and it works without any problems with Linux. :) |
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[Sep. 13th, 2007|11:43 am] |
It's really hard to book flights to Chicago online, if you're a non-US resident. Blah. Fortunately I can use the travel agent which we use for for work trips for this, hopefully that helps.
In other news, the Finnish band Tiktak has announced that they're going to call it quits. There will be a collection of singles with at least one or two new songs on it, and a farewell tour in Nov-Dec. Makes me sad... At least I get to see them one or two more times. |
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| Boston day 1 |
[Sep. 4th, 2007|09:49 pm] |
The first day here in Boston, in random impressions and events.
( Click for details ) |
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| Boston re-revisited |
[Sep. 4th, 2007|05:41 am] |
Once again in Boston. A bit over 17 hours of travel time total, from door to door. Flying is getting to be such a hassle, if there's any more queuing added that means people will end up spending more time in the queues than inside the airplanes. But anyway, I survived -- it wasn't even that painful really, not even with some 2-3 year old child two seats away from me and sitting in the middle for the 7h London-Boston flight.
I'm staying in a corporate apartment this time (no hotel, yay!). The place is quite huge -- I think maybe 70 square meters at least? Just guessing, and floor space is hard to estimate, but it's definitely about the same size as my old apartment. There's a big living room and a big bedroom with a king-size bed (I think it's a king-size anyway, definitely for two people). A small kitchen and separate room for clothes and such. And there's hardwood floors! Exactly the same paneling as in my new home back in Finland.
At the street level, there's at least a CVS (24h convenience store / pharmacy) and Au Bon Pain (cafe thingie). And a bunch of other shops. When I came in at 10pm it was quite busy there, dozens of people walking every way.
There's a guard at the lobby, of course. You can tell we're in Boston, almost the first question he asked me (after we'd gotten over the business part) was "So are you a Red Fox fan?". Turned out they were just playing, and "we're winning". Definitely OUR team playing.
And oh, Boston is hot -- I think something like 28 degrees celsius. When I started it was supposed to be just 21... It's also hot inside the apartment, there's AC but it hasn't been turned on. And it hasn't done much during the first half an hour, I think it might be a bit broken, we'll see.
I'm dead tired. I'll make a quick run to the CVS to buy some basic necessities and then I think I'll crash into the bed.
*edit* Apparently the CVS isn't 24h, but closes at 10pm. After a bit of wandering (past a couple of music instrument stores, a couple of fast food places, a Thai restaurant, a hardware store, and other assorted places) I found a 24h market a few blocks away. There were a lot of people walking along one major street, the Red Sox game on the Fenway must have ended now. Also apparently I look like a local, since at the 24h market I got asked by someone if there's any place around here that sells beer at this hour... I was very confused, since I didn't think anyone would ask me something like that, especially on the first night when I certainly felt rather lost and staring at things trying to figure everything out. Maybe that's normal here. :) |
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| CD shipping confirmation |
[Aug. 22nd, 2007|10:29 pm] |
I ordered a couple of CDs from CD Baby. As usual with orders, there was an email confirming the shipping.
( Read the email ) |
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| 100/3 |
[Jul. 20th, 2007|11:58 pm] |
Been awhile since the last time. As usual.
A week ago sunday I turned 100/3, ie. 33 and 1/3. I meant to celebrate but I went to the Rockperry festival in Vaasa to see Within Temptation play, and so I just spent the sunday driving back. The WT concert saturday evening was good though, so maybe that's good enough way to celebrate. :)
And I'm now officially on my summer holiday, yay!
Today's achievements:
1) Installed a reading light on the wall by my bed.
2) My question of "wonder how many are there?" caused a re-count to happen at the lineparty in front of the Akateeminen book store, waiting for the Harry Potter book 7 to start selling. Yay, my claim to fame now! :) |
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| Back to normal life, such as it is |
[Apr. 3rd, 2007|11:53 pm] |
Right. Since I've returned back to Finland, there won't be much about my trip round-the-world anymore here. I should write a few entries from my travels still, notably from Koh Samui and Dubai, and if I do get around to writing them I will back-date them but also write a note at the "top" that I have done so. However, aside from that, I'll just keep writing about ordinary stuff here. Keep reading if you like (as if I could stop you) but there won't be much in the way of travel stories anymore. Not until the next trip at least, which I don't know when it will be, but will eventually happen for sure. Meanwhile I'll probably write about the concerts I've gone to and music and computers and other boring things. :) And about my move to the new home.
Now, about today and stuff...
My last day off work. I had lunch with my friend, went to the old apartment to pack up some things and took two computers to the new place. Then I picked up two friends and so we were four to start moving furniture in the late afternoon, early evening. My roommate knew someone who had a van and we were able to borrow it, a good thing. It took us only about 3 hours to move two couches, my bed, two shelves (one for CDs, the other for books and misc items) and a living room table. And about 25 or so boxes. It went surprisingly smoothly, it helped that we were four so it was not overly hard effort for anyone. I think in truth I did less carrying than anyone else, since I was packing and trying to figure out what can be moved now.
I've set up my bedroom in the new place now that it's nice and "ready". I still need to buy a closet and maybe a table there. But it's nice and mostly uncluttered now, which is a good thing since the rest of the house is a bit of a mess. I didn't unpack yet any of the boxes that we moved today.
Tomorrow I go back to work. It's a bit strange but I'm looking forward to it. In general I feel pretty good, happy and relaxed. I suppose a three month vacation does that to you. :)
Alright, time to go sleep. |
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