29th March 2012
Some people succeed in finding happiness earlier than others.
Others falsely think they have found happiness and accept what they have as such.
Yet others give up ever finding happiness or don't even embark on the journey of discovery and decide it is easier to just put up with whatever fate has dealt them.
We are all capable of uncovering what our deepest desires are but most of us avoid trying to do so because of the fear associated with following through and pursuing the necessary course. You might have to give up all that is familiar and comfortable.
In the pursuit of a guiding philosophy, how many of us believe that it must have been done by someone else before and therefore by reading past philosophies, we will find the answer we are looking for? The meaning of life.
Let me say that it would be no short cut to try and understand all that the past philosophers have written. It would be a lifelong study. This is not to say that we should disapprove of or brush aside what these great thinkers did. After all, these are some of the greatest minds that ever lived. In fact, if reading and using your brain are pastimes you enjoy, then a lot of pleasure can be derived from reading the great philosophers - just don't get sidetracked by existential nihilism; I did and I got stuck in it for quite a while.
You are best advised to look within and uncover what it is deep inside you that would make your life really worth living. Anyone who has spent even just a little time on this would soon realise that the answer cannot lie within organised religion or political alliances; these are hierarchical groups established to benefit the few at the top and to keep the masses in confusion and servitude.
When looking for a guiding philosophy, the one concept that is a sticking point for some people is that of universal application. This is not to say that your guiding philosophy should be the only right course of action to be pursued by everyone. It is a means of testing the validity of a certain philosophical approach to life.
For example, to test the validity of, "Follow only that which makes you happy", we need to imagine what the world would be like if this were the only guideline for all of humanity. We soon realise that this, as a guiding philosophy, would be too simplistic because we would have to accept living in a world with happy murderers, rapists and torturers. We would also be living in a world piled high with dog shit because we would have to avoid doing the sometimes necessary but unpleasant acts required in the real world such as picking up your dog's shit.
Spend some quiet time on your own with a pencil and some paper and write down all that comes to mind when thinking about how you should live your life. You will eventually find the words that perfectly describe happiness for you. You will know this because these words, or rather the meaning of these words will have a resonance that you will feel.
Thursday 29 March 2012
Tuesday 27 March 2012
Positive thinking
27th March 2012
I have determined, from now on, to make the most of my time. I am feeling optimistic and full of energy and I want to use this energy to make some positive changes in my life.
Where the mind goes the body follows.
I know this because I have done it before and I am going to use the same tactics as I did when I went from 35% body fat and 100 kilograms to 69 kilograms before building up to 83 kilograms and 5% body fat over the course of three years. I also went from being a smoker and having no out-of-work pastimes apart from drinking and watching films, to being a runner in the top 3% of the world for my age group and having a happier and healthier family and social life. This was achieved through the power of the mind and a lot of hard work.
This time though I want to see if I can extend this energy outside just the physical and try and apply it to other aspects of my life. I know that by using strong imagery the mind can steer the physical body to great things and that we are all capable of this.
Some people refer to this as Lifeshifting and the journey is sometimes described as entering a new dimension. That probably sounds a bit Californian but forget about what it is called and just think about it as pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.
In this blog, I want to describe this journey while including observations about my new life here in Finland and exploring past avenues that receive illumination as a result.
Some blog posts will be simple anecdotes of what I am experiencing in my new surroundings. Others will describe my metaphysical journey based in the physical world.
I have determined, from now on, to make the most of my time. I am feeling optimistic and full of energy and I want to use this energy to make some positive changes in my life.
Where the mind goes the body follows.
I know this because I have done it before and I am going to use the same tactics as I did when I went from 35% body fat and 100 kilograms to 69 kilograms before building up to 83 kilograms and 5% body fat over the course of three years. I also went from being a smoker and having no out-of-work pastimes apart from drinking and watching films, to being a runner in the top 3% of the world for my age group and having a happier and healthier family and social life. This was achieved through the power of the mind and a lot of hard work.
This time though I want to see if I can extend this energy outside just the physical and try and apply it to other aspects of my life. I know that by using strong imagery the mind can steer the physical body to great things and that we are all capable of this.
Some people refer to this as Lifeshifting and the journey is sometimes described as entering a new dimension. That probably sounds a bit Californian but forget about what it is called and just think about it as pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.
In this blog, I want to describe this journey while including observations about my new life here in Finland and exploring past avenues that receive illumination as a result.
Some blog posts will be simple anecdotes of what I am experiencing in my new surroundings. Others will describe my metaphysical journey based in the physical world.
Sunday 25 March 2012
Life in the sub-Arctic
25 March 2012
Sunday
I've always loved looking at maps.
In Japan, when everyone was installing these brilliant navigation systems in their cars, I preferred maps and still do now.
I'm not a technophobe.
I'm not like that when it comes to music. I went from records to CDs, to MP3s to Spotify. I now tend to make albums in Youtube or listen to friends' live recordings using Dropbox.
...
The edges of our planet have always held a fascination for mankind. Most of us have a bit of the explorer in us... Apart from people like Outi's husband who has no desire to go overseas. It is not because he is uncomfortable with flying or anything like that. He is just happy where he is and feels there is a lot more of Finland left for him to discover. I felt the same about Japan.
He also thinks that if he takes his family to a foreign land, his children may get kidnapped.
...
Looking at the world atlas, I have, for a long time, been drawn towards the northern extremities of our planet.
For me, travelling is not just about the destination but about getting there. Travelling by air is just so dull and there is something clinical about arriving at an airport - it doesn't feel real. I'll fly if I have to but given the choice, I would rather plan a journey closer to home on foot or bicycle, by car or train or boat. A road tour around Lappland, the land of the indigenous Sami; now that would be an adventure. A boat trip from Norway to the Faroes and on to Iceland for some hiking. Walking in the upper Norwegian plateaus in the winter.
...
A quarter of Finland is inside the Arctic circle and Kauhava where I am is just three degrees south of that. South Ostrobothnia wasn't included in what was referred to as Finland until the 18th century.
The latitude here lies just south of Reykjavic. Pan to the west and we are in southern Greenland. Keep going and we are in the Northern Territories and the Yukon, more northerly than most of inhabited Canada, north of Anchorage and in the middle of the Bering Sea, just south of the Bering Straights. The sea around northern Japan freezes in the winter and yet Japan is the equivalent to another one of itself to the south. Siberia is half a continent away to the south.
And yet, Finland is not classified as Arctic tundra. Despite its location inside the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Bothnia, it still benefits from the North Atlantic Drift keeping it warmer than would be expected given its latitude.
Yes, temperatures do get low but I have felt colder in England at plus two degrees than at minus 18 here. If it's windy, you don't go out and although the zinc roof above me has blown like billows, it's not as windy as when it's blowing a south westerly along the Paragon in Ramsgate.
Wrapped up in extra layers in my living room in Ramsgate, shivering while looking at a map of Finland before getting here, I thought, "What a remote land. Why did people ever think of first settling there? It must be freezing in the winter. What am I thinking?"
Let me just say that the Fins know how to live here. You dress sensibly, the houses are properly insulated and ventilated (hence my kitchen extractor which I can't turn off) and living is generally very comfortable. My heating is hardly ever on and yet it's a constant 21 degrees in here and I am sitting in a T-shirt.
They don't just cope, they manage in conditions that would bring our country to its knees.
And in the summer the whole country celebrates in mid-summer festivals while basking in temperatures of over 30 degrees.
Sunday
I've always loved looking at maps.
In Japan, when everyone was installing these brilliant navigation systems in their cars, I preferred maps and still do now.
I'm not a technophobe.
I'm not like that when it comes to music. I went from records to CDs, to MP3s to Spotify. I now tend to make albums in Youtube or listen to friends' live recordings using Dropbox.
...
The edges of our planet have always held a fascination for mankind. Most of us have a bit of the explorer in us... Apart from people like Outi's husband who has no desire to go overseas. It is not because he is uncomfortable with flying or anything like that. He is just happy where he is and feels there is a lot more of Finland left for him to discover. I felt the same about Japan.
He also thinks that if he takes his family to a foreign land, his children may get kidnapped.
...
Looking at the world atlas, I have, for a long time, been drawn towards the northern extremities of our planet.
For me, travelling is not just about the destination but about getting there. Travelling by air is just so dull and there is something clinical about arriving at an airport - it doesn't feel real. I'll fly if I have to but given the choice, I would rather plan a journey closer to home on foot or bicycle, by car or train or boat. A road tour around Lappland, the land of the indigenous Sami; now that would be an adventure. A boat trip from Norway to the Faroes and on to Iceland for some hiking. Walking in the upper Norwegian plateaus in the winter.
...
A quarter of Finland is inside the Arctic circle and Kauhava where I am is just three degrees south of that. South Ostrobothnia wasn't included in what was referred to as Finland until the 18th century.
The latitude here lies just south of Reykjavic. Pan to the west and we are in southern Greenland. Keep going and we are in the Northern Territories and the Yukon, more northerly than most of inhabited Canada, north of Anchorage and in the middle of the Bering Sea, just south of the Bering Straights. The sea around northern Japan freezes in the winter and yet Japan is the equivalent to another one of itself to the south. Siberia is half a continent away to the south.
And yet, Finland is not classified as Arctic tundra. Despite its location inside the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Bothnia, it still benefits from the North Atlantic Drift keeping it warmer than would be expected given its latitude.
Yes, temperatures do get low but I have felt colder in England at plus two degrees than at minus 18 here. If it's windy, you don't go out and although the zinc roof above me has blown like billows, it's not as windy as when it's blowing a south westerly along the Paragon in Ramsgate.
Wrapped up in extra layers in my living room in Ramsgate, shivering while looking at a map of Finland before getting here, I thought, "What a remote land. Why did people ever think of first settling there? It must be freezing in the winter. What am I thinking?"
Let me just say that the Fins know how to live here. You dress sensibly, the houses are properly insulated and ventilated (hence my kitchen extractor which I can't turn off) and living is generally very comfortable. My heating is hardly ever on and yet it's a constant 21 degrees in here and I am sitting in a T-shirt.
They don't just cope, they manage in conditions that would bring our country to its knees.
And in the summer the whole country celebrates in mid-summer festivals while basking in temperatures of over 30 degrees.
Saturday 24 March 2012
Spybot, defrag and a sauna
23rd March 2012
Before Midnight
The computer has been frustratingly slow recently. It's taking me as long to save and publish my blogs on Twitter as it is to write them. My impatience is growing because as I wait for the computer to do what it is supposed to do, my creative muse is pouring ideas into my head. I reach for scraps of paper to write down the themes for future chapters in my blog.
The operating system on the computer is in Finnish and I'm not confident enough to navigate my way around so I limit my maintenance to installing Spybot.
Spybot picks up a load of malware but takes hours to scan for the more than 800,000 known culprits. The scan ends and Spybot suggests restarting and running again to get rid of the 21 items it was unable to clear the first time round. I do so and find it starts to go through all 800 and odd thousand items again. I give up writing any more for tonight.
...
24th March 2012
6.00pm
The computer hasn't been any better today, so I manage to track down Defrag and start running it while I go upstairs for a sauna.
I check the temperature in the sauna. It's close to 100 degrees so I leave the door open for a while and mix some birch tree tar with water in my sauna bucket. I sit down in my customary pose with my elbows on my knees and scoop some of the water mixture onto the stove. The Fins call both the water and the resultant steam löyly ('y' is pronounced like a u). I brace myself as the löyly almost immediately lashes my back and my nostrils are filled with the smell of birch tree.
The room does not steam up. There is no condensation on the door windows nor on any of the surfaces inside the sauna. It's too hot. The air is at a temperature that would boil water. How do we manage to be able to sit in these conditions? The wooden bench is so hot that when you sit, you can't slide. You just have to plonk yourself down and not move. You can't lean back against the wall when it's this hot.
I'm looking forward to experiencing my first wood burning sauna soon. Apparently, they are not so dry.
Sauna competitions are held in Finland where cases of severe burning and even death are common. There is a lot I find similar between the two cultures of Finland and Japan. Strangely enough, even between the languages which I shall explore at some later date.
In Japan, I used to set my bath temperature at 42 degrees centigrade. In hotspring or Onsen resorts, at just one degree hotter, it becomes almost unbearably hot; I have to lower myself in very slowly.
The pleasure of these two forms of heat is further heightened by suddenly subjecting your body to the other extreme, usually by plunging into a cold pool. In Finland, this can be a hole in the frozen surface of a lake. After just a short time, you are rewarded for your bravery by a beautiful tingling all over your body and an almost hallucinatory head spinning feeling that momentarily warps your vision as if in some sort of Daliesque landscape. I remember feeling this particularly strongly in Japan when staring at a clock.
For the time being, I make do with a cold shower although when there was still snow outside my front door, I was standing barefoot in it with just a towel wrapped around me. Beautiful.
I come back down to catch the end of the defrag. It's recovered a lot, so fingers crossed, things will have sped up now.
Before Midnight
The computer has been frustratingly slow recently. It's taking me as long to save and publish my blogs on Twitter as it is to write them. My impatience is growing because as I wait for the computer to do what it is supposed to do, my creative muse is pouring ideas into my head. I reach for scraps of paper to write down the themes for future chapters in my blog.
The operating system on the computer is in Finnish and I'm not confident enough to navigate my way around so I limit my maintenance to installing Spybot.
Spybot picks up a load of malware but takes hours to scan for the more than 800,000 known culprits. The scan ends and Spybot suggests restarting and running again to get rid of the 21 items it was unable to clear the first time round. I do so and find it starts to go through all 800 and odd thousand items again. I give up writing any more for tonight.
...
24th March 2012
6.00pm
The computer hasn't been any better today, so I manage to track down Defrag and start running it while I go upstairs for a sauna.
I check the temperature in the sauna. It's close to 100 degrees so I leave the door open for a while and mix some birch tree tar with water in my sauna bucket. I sit down in my customary pose with my elbows on my knees and scoop some of the water mixture onto the stove. The Fins call both the water and the resultant steam löyly ('y' is pronounced like a u). I brace myself as the löyly almost immediately lashes my back and my nostrils are filled with the smell of birch tree.
The room does not steam up. There is no condensation on the door windows nor on any of the surfaces inside the sauna. It's too hot. The air is at a temperature that would boil water. How do we manage to be able to sit in these conditions? The wooden bench is so hot that when you sit, you can't slide. You just have to plonk yourself down and not move. You can't lean back against the wall when it's this hot.
I'm looking forward to experiencing my first wood burning sauna soon. Apparently, they are not so dry.
Sauna competitions are held in Finland where cases of severe burning and even death are common. There is a lot I find similar between the two cultures of Finland and Japan. Strangely enough, even between the languages which I shall explore at some later date.
In Japan, I used to set my bath temperature at 42 degrees centigrade. In hotspring or Onsen resorts, at just one degree hotter, it becomes almost unbearably hot; I have to lower myself in very slowly.
The pleasure of these two forms of heat is further heightened by suddenly subjecting your body to the other extreme, usually by plunging into a cold pool. In Finland, this can be a hole in the frozen surface of a lake. After just a short time, you are rewarded for your bravery by a beautiful tingling all over your body and an almost hallucinatory head spinning feeling that momentarily warps your vision as if in some sort of Daliesque landscape. I remember feeling this particularly strongly in Japan when staring at a clock.
For the time being, I make do with a cold shower although when there was still snow outside my front door, I was standing barefoot in it with just a towel wrapped around me. Beautiful.
I come back down to catch the end of the defrag. It's recovered a lot, so fingers crossed, things will have sped up now.
Rattling cars* and tractors
23rd March 2012
Friday
Round about midnight
After my first night here, I had to find a way to turn off the air extractor above the oven. Its constant droning kept me awake. It has fan speed settings of 1 to 4 but no zero setting. The only way to turn it off is by switching off the whole circuit in the trip box which I do every night after hanging up towels at the front and hallway doors.
That's fine, except the next night the sound of the fridge dominated the night's silence and so the following day I emptied and disconnected it.
I would have to keep my food in the kindergarten downstairs. Anyway, at least by doing this I am saving electricity and I don't feel so bad about using the sauna.
...
Before leaving England for Kauhava, I had looked at a map and had felt a snarl develop on my upper lip when I saw a runway on the northern fringes of the town. This wasn't out of town; it literally ran into the town almost making up part of the road network.
I like it quiet and I wasn't looking forward to coming to one of the most remote places on earth only to find myself in the middle of modern human civilisation.
I needn't have worried on that front. The runway is used by the airforce for training purposes and is not in use at night. Except I'm not sure how they define night in the summer when the sun barely dips below the horizon.
The aeroplanes and their manoeuvres are impressive and the base is a source of pride in South Ostrobothnia. The airforce has been here for over 80 years and apparently they put on an impressive spectacle for the midsummer festival.
...
I am trying to sleep but for the first time I am aware of the sound of traffic despite the two sets of double glazing on the windows. I lift my blind and look out the window. A white Ford Orion and a red Volvo 740 burble along the road outside. It's Friday night and they have probably been driving around looking for a fight or some fun. Maybe both.
I have seen these two cars in town. They both have exhaust pipes the size of dustbins and at the weekends prowl up and down the main shopping street. They are not always together and usually have no passengers. They get to the end of the street where the petrol station is and turn in. They stamp on the throttle, do a quick wheel spin, apply some anti-lock and hope that someone is watching. The music system is turned up to max but from outside all you can hear is a booming and a rattling as the door fixtures and linings are shaken.
They join the main road where there is a procession of teenagers driving their micro-cars and tractors. You only need to be 15 to drive these in Finland but they are limited to 45km/h and have a large red and orange triangle on the back to denote this. Kids drive these to school in the winter and ride small capacity motorbikes in the summer.
The micro-cars are pretty cool actually but being a Landy fan I quite fancy the tractors. Except these ones are a bit too luxurious for my liking. They have glass enclosed cabins and although they are single-seaters, the kids manage to cramp in three or four friends around the cabin with their knees up.
*Ordinary Boys, happy being nothing ... Happy going nowhere, just around here in their rattling cars Morrisey, The ordinary boys
Friday
Round about midnight
After my first night here, I had to find a way to turn off the air extractor above the oven. Its constant droning kept me awake. It has fan speed settings of 1 to 4 but no zero setting. The only way to turn it off is by switching off the whole circuit in the trip box which I do every night after hanging up towels at the front and hallway doors.
That's fine, except the next night the sound of the fridge dominated the night's silence and so the following day I emptied and disconnected it.
I would have to keep my food in the kindergarten downstairs. Anyway, at least by doing this I am saving electricity and I don't feel so bad about using the sauna.
...
Before leaving England for Kauhava, I had looked at a map and had felt a snarl develop on my upper lip when I saw a runway on the northern fringes of the town. This wasn't out of town; it literally ran into the town almost making up part of the road network.
I like it quiet and I wasn't looking forward to coming to one of the most remote places on earth only to find myself in the middle of modern human civilisation.
I needn't have worried on that front. The runway is used by the airforce for training purposes and is not in use at night. Except I'm not sure how they define night in the summer when the sun barely dips below the horizon.
The aeroplanes and their manoeuvres are impressive and the base is a source of pride in South Ostrobothnia. The airforce has been here for over 80 years and apparently they put on an impressive spectacle for the midsummer festival.
...
I am trying to sleep but for the first time I am aware of the sound of traffic despite the two sets of double glazing on the windows. I lift my blind and look out the window. A white Ford Orion and a red Volvo 740 burble along the road outside. It's Friday night and they have probably been driving around looking for a fight or some fun. Maybe both.
I have seen these two cars in town. They both have exhaust pipes the size of dustbins and at the weekends prowl up and down the main shopping street. They are not always together and usually have no passengers. They get to the end of the street where the petrol station is and turn in. They stamp on the throttle, do a quick wheel spin, apply some anti-lock and hope that someone is watching. The music system is turned up to max but from outside all you can hear is a booming and a rattling as the door fixtures and linings are shaken.
They join the main road where there is a procession of teenagers driving their micro-cars and tractors. You only need to be 15 to drive these in Finland but they are limited to 45km/h and have a large red and orange triangle on the back to denote this. Kids drive these to school in the winter and ride small capacity motorbikes in the summer.
The micro-cars are pretty cool actually but being a Landy fan I quite fancy the tractors. Except these ones are a bit too luxurious for my liking. They have glass enclosed cabins and although they are single-seaters, the kids manage to cramp in three or four friends around the cabin with their knees up.
*Ordinary Boys, happy being nothing ... Happy going nowhere, just around here in their rattling cars Morrisey, The ordinary boys
Rice ice-cream and allergies
24th March 2012
Saturday
We haven't had much luck in terms of attendance at the kindergarten. The number of days that we have had a perfect register is less than the days with absences due to illness.
Outi, (I still feel wrong when pronouncing her name but it is close to how we say Audi) has been off because her kids are not well. She has it tough. Her kids have terrible allergies and suffer from seizures and reflux - she doesn't get much sleep. She is limited to six food stuffs she can feed them and has to spend a fortune on supplements.
She had an official day off work a couple of weeks ago and set off in the car with her husband and kids at 4.30 in the morning;
To go and see a doctor five-hours drive away.
Apparently, one of only two doctors in Finland who has experience in dealing with the type of problem her kids have.
The other day at the swimming pool with Minna and Esa and the boys, I had a rice ice-cream. I've never had a rice ice-cream before and I was quite excited.
I had tofu ice-cream at the school the other day because one of the kids whose birthday it was can't have milk products.
Both ice-creams were perfectly ice-cream like. Very nice in fact.
There has been a rise in the number of allergy sufferers in Finland over the last few years, more so than in neighbouring Russia. People here say it is because children's natural immune systems are weakened due to the greater degree of hygiene; Finland is too clean (i.e.; it's cleaner than Russia. i.e.; Russia is dirty).
Others say these problems have increased together with other illnesses since Chernobyl (i.e.; Russia is to blame).
Saturday
We haven't had much luck in terms of attendance at the kindergarten. The number of days that we have had a perfect register is less than the days with absences due to illness.
Outi, (I still feel wrong when pronouncing her name but it is close to how we say Audi) has been off because her kids are not well. She has it tough. Her kids have terrible allergies and suffer from seizures and reflux - she doesn't get much sleep. She is limited to six food stuffs she can feed them and has to spend a fortune on supplements.
She had an official day off work a couple of weeks ago and set off in the car with her husband and kids at 4.30 in the morning;
To go and see a doctor five-hours drive away.
Apparently, one of only two doctors in Finland who has experience in dealing with the type of problem her kids have.
The other day at the swimming pool with Minna and Esa and the boys, I had a rice ice-cream. I've never had a rice ice-cream before and I was quite excited.
I had tofu ice-cream at the school the other day because one of the kids whose birthday it was can't have milk products.
Both ice-creams were perfectly ice-cream like. Very nice in fact.
There has been a rise in the number of allergy sufferers in Finland over the last few years, more so than in neighbouring Russia. People here say it is because children's natural immune systems are weakened due to the greater degree of hygiene; Finland is too clean (i.e.; it's cleaner than Russia. i.e.; Russia is dirty).
Others say these problems have increased together with other illnesses since Chernobyl (i.e.; Russia is to blame).
Snow balls and ice slabs
24th March 2012
Saturday
Becky from Michigan stood in for Outi at the kindergarten for a few days this week and brought her little kids with her.
There is a large Finnish population in Michigan where Becky is from and in fact she is third generation Fin. Her grandparents spoke Finnish but not her parents so she had to start from scratch when she arrived here three years ago. It's a tricky language but she is now fluent.
In fact she has most certainly gone bush. She even puts her little baby outside in the pram for her afternoon nap, just like the natives. As long as it's not below minus 10. The children sleep deeper. Probably like that Swedish man who hibernated in his car for over two months.
During the morning break time we are outside in the playground. There has been only one day that we haven't been out and that was when it was below minus 10, windy and foggy. It was spectacularly beautiful with the frost freezing on the twigs of the silver birch trees but too cold to play outside on that particular day.
We share our playground with a pre-school and after school care place. The kids are very curios about this new foreigner who has come to town. They whisper and point and snigger. It's almost like being in Gambia where I went to school or in Japan where foreigners really stand out.
We have started to say hello and they teach me their names. One of the bigger boys, Eero who is seven, makes a giant snowball and gives it to me like some kind of peace offering.
During one of the warmer days big puddles form around the edge of the playground. The kids now wear waterproofs on top of their ski wear like chest-high waders used by fly fishers. The pre- and after-schoolers break off big slabs of ice from around the edges of the puddles and lay them like stepping stones in the water.
By the afternoon, the slabs have melted but as the sun dips towards the horizon, the puddles have started to ice over and are solid again an hour after the sun has set.
The spring thaw
24th March 2012
9.00am
I am sitting outside in my pyjamas having a coffee and a cigi. It's quite mild today. I check the thermometer; it's hovering around the zero mark. It's snowing.
Meanwhile, back home in Ramsgate people are sunbathing. On Facebook, Karen says she got sunburn. Kids have been running on the beach and playing in the sea.
I never did like laying in the sun and getting sand between my toes.
I hear a car come down the drive. It's got studded tyres which churn up the newly laid snow and gravel. It's a legal requirement in Finland for all cars to wear winter tyres from the end of October until April. Some have metal studs but most are of a soft compound with extra grip, like the ones I had in Japan. If I ever have a car in England again, I think I shall have an extra set of winter tyres.
Or an old Land Rover like the one Richard lent me for over a year. A pre '72 series 2 or 3 should do the trick. Tim had an '84 series 3 short wheel base, while I was driving a '72 long wheel base, flat bed. Brilliant fun.
It's been beautifully sunny here for the last week or so with temperatures between five and eight during the day. Despite a few nights of snowfall, it has started to thaw. The main roads and pavements are snow free and the verges are becoming exposed. The snowploughs haven't been out for a while now and where the snowmobiles had cut the cross-country ski tracks it's surprising to see that the grass is green despite having been covered for the last three months or so. It must be hardy stuff. I bend down and pick a clump. Its round in cross section, a bit like chives.
I feel a bit sad to see the snow melting. Snow adds a romantic dimension to any landscape and it really is very beautiful here. As it melts, it all turns sloshy. Cars and trucks are covered in muck and the once virgin scenery is getting dirty around the edges.
When they lay gravel on the snow here, it's not just salty sand. This is big profile gravel, chunkier than cats' litter.
In Copenhagen one autumn, I felt as though I was walking through a building site because of all the gravel left behind from the previous winter.
Apparently, here they hoover all the gravel up in the spring and recycle it.
Needless to say, unemployment in Finland is not on a par with the rest of the western world.
9.00am
I am sitting outside in my pyjamas having a coffee and a cigi. It's quite mild today. I check the thermometer; it's hovering around the zero mark. It's snowing.
Meanwhile, back home in Ramsgate people are sunbathing. On Facebook, Karen says she got sunburn. Kids have been running on the beach and playing in the sea.
I never did like laying in the sun and getting sand between my toes.
I hear a car come down the drive. It's got studded tyres which churn up the newly laid snow and gravel. It's a legal requirement in Finland for all cars to wear winter tyres from the end of October until April. Some have metal studs but most are of a soft compound with extra grip, like the ones I had in Japan. If I ever have a car in England again, I think I shall have an extra set of winter tyres.
Or an old Land Rover like the one Richard lent me for over a year. A pre '72 series 2 or 3 should do the trick. Tim had an '84 series 3 short wheel base, while I was driving a '72 long wheel base, flat bed. Brilliant fun.
It's been beautifully sunny here for the last week or so with temperatures between five and eight during the day. Despite a few nights of snowfall, it has started to thaw. The main roads and pavements are snow free and the verges are becoming exposed. The snowploughs haven't been out for a while now and where the snowmobiles had cut the cross-country ski tracks it's surprising to see that the grass is green despite having been covered for the last three months or so. It must be hardy stuff. I bend down and pick a clump. Its round in cross section, a bit like chives.
I feel a bit sad to see the snow melting. Snow adds a romantic dimension to any landscape and it really is very beautiful here. As it melts, it all turns sloshy. Cars and trucks are covered in muck and the once virgin scenery is getting dirty around the edges.
When they lay gravel on the snow here, it's not just salty sand. This is big profile gravel, chunkier than cats' litter.
In Copenhagen one autumn, I felt as though I was walking through a building site because of all the gravel left behind from the previous winter.
Apparently, here they hoover all the gravel up in the spring and recycle it.
Needless to say, unemployment in Finland is not on a par with the rest of the western world.
Thursday 22 March 2012
The benefits of taking a regular sauna
11th March 2012
Taking extremely hot saunas raises the core temperature in the body and momentarily brings on flu-like symptoms. The body fights back by producing white blood corpuscles and by repeating this procedure over time, your body's natural defenses against illness are fortified.
After two or three saunas a day for three weeks, I find my post-sauna recovery period has improved; my heart rate returns to normal and I stop sweating much quicker now than at first. However, I'm not sure whether the same can be said about my resistance. This is a pretty basic stove-with-stones-in-a-small-wooden-box type sauna and doesn't have any of your modern digital readouts or temperature settings. I can't really control it so that the temperature is the same every time. Sometimes I get in when it's 100 degrees, once I've been in at 120, but it is usually between 80 and 100.
I sit in the same place with my elbows on my knees, bending forward. I time how long it takes for the first drop of sweat to hit the bench below me on which my feet are placed. I used to do a similar thing on the treadmill when I was training for the marathon. The greater my resistance, the later will be the first drop of sweat. This improves over time.
My aim is to completely cover in sweat the plank of wood exactly in the middle between my two feet. I move my head around to control the drops of sweat. I yawn and the wrinkling effect on my neck causes a stream of sweat to drop onto the board below. I raise my head slightly and a river runs down my nose and cascades like a waterfall below. Hmmm. I've now caused the sweat to form a big pool in the middle of the plank. I cheat; I bend forward and gorilla-like, brush the sweat with the backs of my knuckles until the plank is evenly wet all over.
...
I tell Maria, one of our board members, about my sauna training; not in great detail.
In Japan the saunas were usually around the 100 mark and you would limit yourself to 12 minutes at a time before plunging into the cold water pool. You should not repeat this cycle more than three times in a row; very strict and clear rules; very Japanese.
Maria, who had lived in Germany for several years, said the Germans had a similar approach and she didn't think they actually enjoyed their saunas; they treated it as more of a challenge.
She laughs.
She isn't impressed with my sauna tactics. Something must be wrong.
...
A week later, with Esa and Minna at the spa land, I observe real Fins in a sauna. I join Esa and his boys in the large sauna in the men's shower room and find it is quite pleasant. My heart is not pounding as if I am running a race. I am warming up nicely and then Esa throws a few ladles full of water onto the hot rocks and we are covered in a hot steam.
It's really rather pleasant and not at all chore-like.
Mind you, Maria might be from Pohojanma but she is not a man and Esa might be a man but he is from Tampere; most certainly not Pohojanma.
Taking extremely hot saunas raises the core temperature in the body and momentarily brings on flu-like symptoms. The body fights back by producing white blood corpuscles and by repeating this procedure over time, your body's natural defenses against illness are fortified.
After two or three saunas a day for three weeks, I find my post-sauna recovery period has improved; my heart rate returns to normal and I stop sweating much quicker now than at first. However, I'm not sure whether the same can be said about my resistance. This is a pretty basic stove-with-stones-in-a-small-wooden-box type sauna and doesn't have any of your modern digital readouts or temperature settings. I can't really control it so that the temperature is the same every time. Sometimes I get in when it's 100 degrees, once I've been in at 120, but it is usually between 80 and 100.
I sit in the same place with my elbows on my knees, bending forward. I time how long it takes for the first drop of sweat to hit the bench below me on which my feet are placed. I used to do a similar thing on the treadmill when I was training for the marathon. The greater my resistance, the later will be the first drop of sweat. This improves over time.
My aim is to completely cover in sweat the plank of wood exactly in the middle between my two feet. I move my head around to control the drops of sweat. I yawn and the wrinkling effect on my neck causes a stream of sweat to drop onto the board below. I raise my head slightly and a river runs down my nose and cascades like a waterfall below. Hmmm. I've now caused the sweat to form a big pool in the middle of the plank. I cheat; I bend forward and gorilla-like, brush the sweat with the backs of my knuckles until the plank is evenly wet all over.
...
I tell Maria, one of our board members, about my sauna training; not in great detail.
In Japan the saunas were usually around the 100 mark and you would limit yourself to 12 minutes at a time before plunging into the cold water pool. You should not repeat this cycle more than three times in a row; very strict and clear rules; very Japanese.
Maria, who had lived in Germany for several years, said the Germans had a similar approach and she didn't think they actually enjoyed their saunas; they treated it as more of a challenge.
She laughs.
She isn't impressed with my sauna tactics. Something must be wrong.
...
A week later, with Esa and Minna at the spa land, I observe real Fins in a sauna. I join Esa and his boys in the large sauna in the men's shower room and find it is quite pleasant. My heart is not pounding as if I am running a race. I am warming up nicely and then Esa throws a few ladles full of water onto the hot rocks and we are covered in a hot steam.
It's really rather pleasant and not at all chore-like.
Mind you, Maria might be from Pohojanma but she is not a man and Esa might be a man but he is from Tampere; most certainly not Pohojanma.
Ice Fishing 2: The Sequel
4th March 2012
Chris comes to pick me up around midday after Finnish school with a Polish classmate and we set off to Ylihärmä along the snow-covered road.
Chris's friend is also called Chris and he has been working as a welder in Finland for the last four years. It was Polish Chris who had replaced the tip of the ice drill which had been such a disaster last time out and he was supposed to have fixed it again. We foolishly don't ask anything about the ice drill.
Funny that, isn't it? How you feel that something is just so taken for granted that you don't say anything. People say the strangest things and you don't react. You just nod politely and later think, "Why didn't I just say something?"
We get to Polish Chris's house and have a coffee before setting off with the fishing gear. It had been snowing a lot in the last week with the temperature a constant sub minus 10, usually referred to by the locals simply as 10.
"It's about 10 today. Not bad."
This results in the snow being very fine and powdery; it's light and doesn't compact. It is easier to walk on than when it has melted and frozen again like the ice we occasionally have on our English pavements.
We drive a fair way and turn off onto a forest track. Here I see big boulders, partly exposed. I hadn't seen the natural ground cover until now but apparently there are a lot of granite boulders strewn all over the place - a remnant of the last ice age, left behind by the receding glaciers.
The national flag of Finland is an off-centre blue cross on a white background. The white represents the snow that dominates the scenery for a large part of the year and the blue represents the more than 4,000 post-glacial lakes.
Finland is mostly flat and is one of the few countries organically growing in size. The land is bouncing back after the melting of the glaciers. The islands between Vaasa in Finland and Umea in Sweden will form an archipelago which will continue to rise until the Gulf of Bothnia eventually becomes an enclosed lake, an inland sea.
Polish Chris tells English Chris to, "Park here".
We are on a track with a cottage about 100 metres ahead on what would be the coast of the lake. There is another track off to the left and a bank of snow on the right in what is possibly a lay by. Except you wouldn't be able to lay by here if you weren't in a Hummer. And we are in a Volks Wagon - the type you would take to the shops or drive your kid to school in. Unless you were in London and then you probably would use a Hummer or at least a Range Rover.
Polish Chris says it's all right to leave the car where it is in the middle of the track; "Nobody is coming down here".
We get the fishing gear and follow Polish Chris who is walking towards the cottage. He is slightly ahead of us and there are no signs that anyone has been here for a while. Suddenly Chris stops. He is up to his thighs in snow. "Let's go back and find another way."
The other way is no better but we trudge on until we get to a three-walled shack with a bench along the back wall. The two Chris's seem a bit puffed out so we sit for a while. English Chris asks Polish Chris if he tested the drill. "No. But it will be all right, I fixed it properly this time." I find an axe in the shack and as the other two are setting off I ask whether I should bring it with us. "No. We'll be all right." I bring it anyway.
The snow is not as deep on the lake. It must have drifted up along the coast so it's a bit easier going as we march out across the lake. Polish Chris finds a spot near a rock sticking out of the ice. English Chris asks, "Is it deep here?" "Yes, it's deep near this rock." Fish like deeper water when the surface is frozen.
While the two Chris's are attempting to sharpen the once-again-failed ice drill, I set about chopping a hole in the ice with the axe. It's not easy, as the deeper you go, the longer you need to make the hole because of the angle of swing.
English Chris gives up on the ice drill and joins me for a while and we take it in turns with one scooping while the other one chops. We get through the ice which is probably just over 30cm thick and brown muddy water comes gushing up. We clear the chopped ice from the surface of the water while Polish Chris, who has finally given up on the ice drill, makes a start on another hole with the axe.
I thread a few maggots onto the hook on my spinner and drop it into the murky water. I let the line off and it comes to a stop. Last time out I had the same feeling that the water wasn't that deep although at the time Chris seemed to think it was. I had plunged the tree trunk into the hole and had soon hit the muddy bed of the lake. I had pushed the trunk down further and it was about as deep again in mud.
We finish the second hole and drop our lines in but English Chris has had enough already; "I'm giving up winter fishing. I don't think I'll go out again until the summer."
Polish Chris has a boat on this lake.
I look forward to that.
Whether we catch fish or not.
Chris comes to pick me up around midday after Finnish school with a Polish classmate and we set off to Ylihärmä along the snow-covered road.
Chris's friend is also called Chris and he has been working as a welder in Finland for the last four years. It was Polish Chris who had replaced the tip of the ice drill which had been such a disaster last time out and he was supposed to have fixed it again. We foolishly don't ask anything about the ice drill.
Funny that, isn't it? How you feel that something is just so taken for granted that you don't say anything. People say the strangest things and you don't react. You just nod politely and later think, "Why didn't I just say something?"
We get to Polish Chris's house and have a coffee before setting off with the fishing gear. It had been snowing a lot in the last week with the temperature a constant sub minus 10, usually referred to by the locals simply as 10.
"It's about 10 today. Not bad."
This results in the snow being very fine and powdery; it's light and doesn't compact. It is easier to walk on than when it has melted and frozen again like the ice we occasionally have on our English pavements.
We drive a fair way and turn off onto a forest track. Here I see big boulders, partly exposed. I hadn't seen the natural ground cover until now but apparently there are a lot of granite boulders strewn all over the place - a remnant of the last ice age, left behind by the receding glaciers.
The national flag of Finland is an off-centre blue cross on a white background. The white represents the snow that dominates the scenery for a large part of the year and the blue represents the more than 4,000 post-glacial lakes.
Finland is mostly flat and is one of the few countries organically growing in size. The land is bouncing back after the melting of the glaciers. The islands between Vaasa in Finland and Umea in Sweden will form an archipelago which will continue to rise until the Gulf of Bothnia eventually becomes an enclosed lake, an inland sea.
Polish Chris tells English Chris to, "Park here".
We are on a track with a cottage about 100 metres ahead on what would be the coast of the lake. There is another track off to the left and a bank of snow on the right in what is possibly a lay by. Except you wouldn't be able to lay by here if you weren't in a Hummer. And we are in a Volks Wagon - the type you would take to the shops or drive your kid to school in. Unless you were in London and then you probably would use a Hummer or at least a Range Rover.
Polish Chris says it's all right to leave the car where it is in the middle of the track; "Nobody is coming down here".
We get the fishing gear and follow Polish Chris who is walking towards the cottage. He is slightly ahead of us and there are no signs that anyone has been here for a while. Suddenly Chris stops. He is up to his thighs in snow. "Let's go back and find another way."
The other way is no better but we trudge on until we get to a three-walled shack with a bench along the back wall. The two Chris's seem a bit puffed out so we sit for a while. English Chris asks Polish Chris if he tested the drill. "No. But it will be all right, I fixed it properly this time." I find an axe in the shack and as the other two are setting off I ask whether I should bring it with us. "No. We'll be all right." I bring it anyway.
The snow is not as deep on the lake. It must have drifted up along the coast so it's a bit easier going as we march out across the lake. Polish Chris finds a spot near a rock sticking out of the ice. English Chris asks, "Is it deep here?" "Yes, it's deep near this rock." Fish like deeper water when the surface is frozen.
While the two Chris's are attempting to sharpen the once-again-failed ice drill, I set about chopping a hole in the ice with the axe. It's not easy, as the deeper you go, the longer you need to make the hole because of the angle of swing.
English Chris gives up on the ice drill and joins me for a while and we take it in turns with one scooping while the other one chops. We get through the ice which is probably just over 30cm thick and brown muddy water comes gushing up. We clear the chopped ice from the surface of the water while Polish Chris, who has finally given up on the ice drill, makes a start on another hole with the axe.
I thread a few maggots onto the hook on my spinner and drop it into the murky water. I let the line off and it comes to a stop. Last time out I had the same feeling that the water wasn't that deep although at the time Chris seemed to think it was. I had plunged the tree trunk into the hole and had soon hit the muddy bed of the lake. I had pushed the trunk down further and it was about as deep again in mud.
We finish the second hole and drop our lines in but English Chris has had enough already; "I'm giving up winter fishing. I don't think I'll go out again until the summer."
Polish Chris has a boat on this lake.
I look forward to that.
Whether we catch fish or not.
Summer 1988
Summer 1988
What a summer that was - a California dreaming summer.
We would sit outside at the tennis courts listening to the radio and beating each others knees like drums until our thighs were red and sore. And we laughed.*
...
I had previously met Noriko during the Easter holidays when she was still 18 and I was 23. Although I had taught English at the local language school every spring and summer holiday for the last three years, this spring found me waiting at Alexendra's, the Italian restaurant where I had worked on and off for a few years. It was my sister Katie who was teaching at the school at the time who said she wanted me to meet this charming Japanese girl.
Through Noriko, I later met Jeremy and we formed a small group with two other Japanese girls.
I was operating my tennis court and bicycle rental business in the mornings. Sophie, my younger sister would take over here while I taught English from one in the afternoon until seven and then waited at Alexendra's most evenings until after midnight. I was busy but the predominant memory is one of fun and discovery. Every Friday after the school disco, a small group of us would go back to the pavilion where I ran my business and we would party there until the small hours.
...
Jeremy and I were like long lost brothers, perhaps from a previous life. This was the first year I had come across Japanese people and I immediately found them off the wall and interestingly whacky. A few summers before, I had taught a group of Mexican women and had fallen in love with them - this time though it was different.
I started to read about Japanese history and culture and Jeremy and I promised each other that we would make our separate ways over there and find ourselves running along the neon-lit streets of Tokyo.
A little over a year later after huge changes in my life, I did find myself in Tokyo and a few months after that Jeremy also arrived.
Although I had changed university courses before, this was the first major Lifeshift I had embarked upon on my own.
* The song of the summer: Hothouse Flowers; Don't Go - extended promo (1988)
What a summer that was - a California dreaming summer.
We would sit outside at the tennis courts listening to the radio and beating each others knees like drums until our thighs were red and sore. And we laughed.*
...
I had previously met Noriko during the Easter holidays when she was still 18 and I was 23. Although I had taught English at the local language school every spring and summer holiday for the last three years, this spring found me waiting at Alexendra's, the Italian restaurant where I had worked on and off for a few years. It was my sister Katie who was teaching at the school at the time who said she wanted me to meet this charming Japanese girl.
Through Noriko, I later met Jeremy and we formed a small group with two other Japanese girls.
I was operating my tennis court and bicycle rental business in the mornings. Sophie, my younger sister would take over here while I taught English from one in the afternoon until seven and then waited at Alexendra's most evenings until after midnight. I was busy but the predominant memory is one of fun and discovery. Every Friday after the school disco, a small group of us would go back to the pavilion where I ran my business and we would party there until the small hours.
...
Jeremy and I were like long lost brothers, perhaps from a previous life. This was the first year I had come across Japanese people and I immediately found them off the wall and interestingly whacky. A few summers before, I had taught a group of Mexican women and had fallen in love with them - this time though it was different.
I started to read about Japanese history and culture and Jeremy and I promised each other that we would make our separate ways over there and find ourselves running along the neon-lit streets of Tokyo.
A little over a year later after huge changes in my life, I did find myself in Tokyo and a few months after that Jeremy also arrived.
Although I had changed university courses before, this was the first major Lifeshift I had embarked upon on my own.
* The song of the summer: Hothouse Flowers; Don't Go - extended promo (1988)
Tuesday 20 March 2012
Bing, Bang, Boom
5th November 2005
We loaded up the big rental Vauxhaul estate, strapped little three year old Sean in and left Heathrow.
I had abandoned my crutches a few days before but hadn't yet had the operation to replace my cruciate ligament. (In fact, this wasn't to happen for another two years). I had been back and fro to Japan three times in three months to finalise the house clearance over there and settle matters back in London.
We drove down to the Kent coast on the way to my parents' in a corridor of fireworks. It was Bomb Fire Night and it felt like our return was being celebrated.
We never used to do fireworks like this when I was last living here but I would soon find out that a lot of things had changed in England over the last 15 years.
I had heard so much about Cool Britania, I had sensed the excitement and the optimism; I had been in London when it was announced that we (for now I was a Londoner) had won the Olympic bid. A few days later on the 7th of July, London suffered a series of terrorist bombings.
I had arrived at the brink of its downfall - Cool Britania was melting and was in a state of unstoppable collapse which would imminently be reflected in my own downfall.
Again.
I had arrived in a booming Japan just as the bubble had burst there and it seemed now as though I had brought the curse with me. Except we weren't to know this just yet. We wouldn't really know this until the credit crunch and the collapse of international finance a little under two years later.
I had rented us a modern two-bed apartment in North Finchley, north of anything in the London A to Z. There was a strong Japanese community here; a Japanese supermarket and Japanese kids in the schools. It had been so nice during the summer and I had been full to bursting with positive energy, but looking out over North London across to Alexandra Palace from our 11th floor balcony in November was not the same. Noriko had missed the summer and now it seemed all she had to look forward to was fog and damp and cold and uncertainty in a foreign and unwelcoming land.
Shit.
What had I done?
My so-called job was far from secure. I had managed to find a three-month consultative position with a Japanese company headquartered in Wales, in Cardiff. I had little idea about what it was Saburo wanted me to do let alone how I was supposed to do it. London living was twice as expensive as life in Japan. The rent for the apartment was astronomical for what it was and my consultation period came to an end in February 2006.
I was in an awful spiral, a frightening vortex that I managed to escape thanks to my sister Katie and a kick up the arse from Jacko. I had somehow managed to make contact with Jacko, an old friend I had known in Japan, after a considerable absence. I would phone Katie on my way to the new job I had found working nights in a financial publishing house, near London Bridge and Borough Market.
Noriko had gone into a deep depression and spent most of the days hibernating under her duvet. I felt totally at fault. I should never have come here; I should never have taken the fish out of its pond.
I had been worried that the dark and cold winters of England would be too much for me as they had proved to be before I had left to go to Japan.
It seemed that the winter of 1988 had come back to haunt me.
We loaded up the big rental Vauxhaul estate, strapped little three year old Sean in and left Heathrow.
I had abandoned my crutches a few days before but hadn't yet had the operation to replace my cruciate ligament. (In fact, this wasn't to happen for another two years). I had been back and fro to Japan three times in three months to finalise the house clearance over there and settle matters back in London.
We drove down to the Kent coast on the way to my parents' in a corridor of fireworks. It was Bomb Fire Night and it felt like our return was being celebrated.
We never used to do fireworks like this when I was last living here but I would soon find out that a lot of things had changed in England over the last 15 years.
I had heard so much about Cool Britania, I had sensed the excitement and the optimism; I had been in London when it was announced that we (for now I was a Londoner) had won the Olympic bid. A few days later on the 7th of July, London suffered a series of terrorist bombings.
I had arrived at the brink of its downfall - Cool Britania was melting and was in a state of unstoppable collapse which would imminently be reflected in my own downfall.
Again.
I had arrived in a booming Japan just as the bubble had burst there and it seemed now as though I had brought the curse with me. Except we weren't to know this just yet. We wouldn't really know this until the credit crunch and the collapse of international finance a little under two years later.
I had rented us a modern two-bed apartment in North Finchley, north of anything in the London A to Z. There was a strong Japanese community here; a Japanese supermarket and Japanese kids in the schools. It had been so nice during the summer and I had been full to bursting with positive energy, but looking out over North London across to Alexandra Palace from our 11th floor balcony in November was not the same. Noriko had missed the summer and now it seemed all she had to look forward to was fog and damp and cold and uncertainty in a foreign and unwelcoming land.
Shit.
What had I done?
My so-called job was far from secure. I had managed to find a three-month consultative position with a Japanese company headquartered in Wales, in Cardiff. I had little idea about what it was Saburo wanted me to do let alone how I was supposed to do it. London living was twice as expensive as life in Japan. The rent for the apartment was astronomical for what it was and my consultation period came to an end in February 2006.
I was in an awful spiral, a frightening vortex that I managed to escape thanks to my sister Katie and a kick up the arse from Jacko. I had somehow managed to make contact with Jacko, an old friend I had known in Japan, after a considerable absence. I would phone Katie on my way to the new job I had found working nights in a financial publishing house, near London Bridge and Borough Market.
Noriko had gone into a deep depression and spent most of the days hibernating under her duvet. I felt totally at fault. I should never have come here; I should never have taken the fish out of its pond.
I had been worried that the dark and cold winters of England would be too much for me as they had proved to be before I had left to go to Japan.
It seemed that the winter of 1988 had come back to haunt me.
What goes up, must come down
I was visiting my family on one of our trips back home while living in Japan. My sisters' faces portrayed complete disgust and I saw they didn't understand. I was explaining how beautiful death by ritual suicide, seppuku, was.
I read a lot of Japanese literature while I was in Japan and had amassed a good collection of books. I had to leave these behind when we moved to London but their sense remains with me, particularly the works of Mishima Yukio. I didn't model my life on his, far from it. How could a gaijin, a foreigner understand the mind of a nationalist, imperialist, Japanese fascist? But his sense of art and beauty struck a chord with me. Before I had come across his works, I had always thought that the development of the mind was not superior to that of the body. I had always wanted to take up body building but it was not until I was 38 that I had the chance to do so.
Life had been good to me in Japan. I had arrived thinking I would stay a couple of years at the most. I had traveled a lot as a child with my family due to my father's work. I somehow thought it was in my blood to continue to move, not to settle anywhere, but Japan got under my skin. My first day there was of a day of joy and this feeling rarely left me during my 15 years there.
It wasn't all a bed of roses and the shit was mostly of my making but the positives dominate my memory; Noriko doesn't share this with me and I can understand that entirely.
...
It was December 2005 and I was back in England with my young family to embark on a new chapter. I had returned in the summer to find a job, a place to live and a school for our 11 year old boy Jun.
I was about to turn 41 and had been pursuing a fitness regime that I had started three years before. I had shed 25% in body weight of fat and had built up 13 kilos of pure muscle. I had gone from 100 kilos and 35% fat to 69 kilos and 5% in two years and built up to 83 kilos over the following year. I was training five times a week and was running 200 kilometres a month. Before work. I was counting my calories and balancing my diet, I was eating six times a day and burning more than 6,000 calories. I had done the Tokyo City Half Marathon in February 2005 in one hour and 35 minutes at the age of 40 and I had only been running for six months after an hiatus of more than 20 years. This time put me in the top 3% for my age in the world. I was preparing for the Christmas Honolulu Marathon and was aiming to do it in under three hours.
I was on top of the world, I had the fitness of a teenage athlete and I was coming to London, the capital of capitalism where I would make my fortune.
On the 3rd of August, while messing around at football with my nephew in my aunt's neighbour's garden, I snapped my cruciate ligament.
I was due to fly to Japan the next day to bring my family back to London. I had to postpone the flight - I was in a plaster caste from my hip to my toes and wouldn't be allowed on the plane.
I read a lot of Japanese literature while I was in Japan and had amassed a good collection of books. I had to leave these behind when we moved to London but their sense remains with me, particularly the works of Mishima Yukio. I didn't model my life on his, far from it. How could a gaijin, a foreigner understand the mind of a nationalist, imperialist, Japanese fascist? But his sense of art and beauty struck a chord with me. Before I had come across his works, I had always thought that the development of the mind was not superior to that of the body. I had always wanted to take up body building but it was not until I was 38 that I had the chance to do so.
Life had been good to me in Japan. I had arrived thinking I would stay a couple of years at the most. I had traveled a lot as a child with my family due to my father's work. I somehow thought it was in my blood to continue to move, not to settle anywhere, but Japan got under my skin. My first day there was of a day of joy and this feeling rarely left me during my 15 years there.
It wasn't all a bed of roses and the shit was mostly of my making but the positives dominate my memory; Noriko doesn't share this with me and I can understand that entirely.
...
It was December 2005 and I was back in England with my young family to embark on a new chapter. I had returned in the summer to find a job, a place to live and a school for our 11 year old boy Jun.
I was about to turn 41 and had been pursuing a fitness regime that I had started three years before. I had shed 25% in body weight of fat and had built up 13 kilos of pure muscle. I had gone from 100 kilos and 35% fat to 69 kilos and 5% in two years and built up to 83 kilos over the following year. I was training five times a week and was running 200 kilometres a month. Before work. I was counting my calories and balancing my diet, I was eating six times a day and burning more than 6,000 calories. I had done the Tokyo City Half Marathon in February 2005 in one hour and 35 minutes at the age of 40 and I had only been running for six months after an hiatus of more than 20 years. This time put me in the top 3% for my age in the world. I was preparing for the Christmas Honolulu Marathon and was aiming to do it in under three hours.
I was on top of the world, I had the fitness of a teenage athlete and I was coming to London, the capital of capitalism where I would make my fortune.
On the 3rd of August, while messing around at football with my nephew in my aunt's neighbour's garden, I snapped my cruciate ligament.
I was due to fly to Japan the next day to bring my family back to London. I had to postpone the flight - I was in a plaster caste from my hip to my toes and wouldn't be allowed on the plane.
Suicide is painless
If our lives are so empty and worthless, why not just end it all now?
Have you ever considered suicide? I mean considered it as a real option and not just a theory?
Theoretically, we can all imagine different ways of ending our lives. I remember the discussion we had, like so many teenagers must have had. We had momentarily escaped from the school where we were boarders and were sitting with our legs dangling over the prom at Dumpton Gap looking out to sea.
Jumping off a building would be so frightening, you probably wouldn't be able to do it. Fire would be too drawn out and painful. Throwing yourself in front of a bus or train would be messy. Ian's choice was death by drowning. "When drowning, your bodily functions eventually stop but your brain continues to function for a while. You aren't breathing, your heart has stopped but you can see through your eyes and your brain registers this. This must be such a beautiful way to leave the world."
Yukio Mishima, the Japanese author three times nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature, graduated from the renowned Tokyo University attending daily lectures while continuing with his private writing by night, which he kept secret from his disapproving father. This habit of sitting at his desk at midnight every night continued throughout his life.
Mishima took up body building at the age of 30 and carried on his thrice weekly regime until his death 15 years later.
"After the age of 40, we cannot look forward to a beautiful death. All we can look forward to is decay."
Mishima is probably most famous for his failed coup d'etat attempt and death by ritual suicide; seppuku or hari kiri; self disembowelment.
Imagine it. You are kneeling on the ground with your stomach exposed. You plunge in a dagger and draw it across. You then pull out your own guts while your nominated second decapitates you.
Mishima's second botched his multiple attempts at decapitating him, so another of Mishima's attendants had to finish the job off. This same young man also assisted in the suicide of the failed decapitator later that day.
"In the bronze age, average life expectancy for a man was 18. In the Roman period it was 20. Heaven must have been full of beautiful people then."
Have you ever considered suicide? I mean considered it as a real option and not just a theory?
Theoretically, we can all imagine different ways of ending our lives. I remember the discussion we had, like so many teenagers must have had. We had momentarily escaped from the school where we were boarders and were sitting with our legs dangling over the prom at Dumpton Gap looking out to sea.
Jumping off a building would be so frightening, you probably wouldn't be able to do it. Fire would be too drawn out and painful. Throwing yourself in front of a bus or train would be messy. Ian's choice was death by drowning. "When drowning, your bodily functions eventually stop but your brain continues to function for a while. You aren't breathing, your heart has stopped but you can see through your eyes and your brain registers this. This must be such a beautiful way to leave the world."
Yukio Mishima, the Japanese author three times nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature, graduated from the renowned Tokyo University attending daily lectures while continuing with his private writing by night, which he kept secret from his disapproving father. This habit of sitting at his desk at midnight every night continued throughout his life.
Mishima took up body building at the age of 30 and carried on his thrice weekly regime until his death 15 years later.
"After the age of 40, we cannot look forward to a beautiful death. All we can look forward to is decay."
Mishima is probably most famous for his failed coup d'etat attempt and death by ritual suicide; seppuku or hari kiri; self disembowelment.
Imagine it. You are kneeling on the ground with your stomach exposed. You plunge in a dagger and draw it across. You then pull out your own guts while your nominated second decapitates you.
Mishima's second botched his multiple attempts at decapitating him, so another of Mishima's attendants had to finish the job off. This same young man also assisted in the suicide of the failed decapitator later that day.
"In the bronze age, average life expectancy for a man was 18. In the Roman period it was 20. Heaven must have been full of beautiful people then."
Ground Hog Day
Thin sharp clouds scuttle across the evening sky like little black islands in a turquoise sea. My gaze is drawn back to my more immediate surroundings. TV.
How many of us waste our time in front of the TV watching stuff we don't really need to nor really want to? Not many of the people I have met in Finland up until now - everyone is far too busy doing more important things.
If we miss something, even if it is something that we were looking forward to, would our lives be ruined for ever?
In terms of population, Finland is a small country of just under five and a half million people. Television is limited, by budgetary constraints I should imagine, but a lot of the programmes are foreign documentaries and films. These are always broadcast in the original language with Finnish subtitles which can be turned off and this is part of the reason quite often cited for being able to speak and understand English so well. (I guess they do watch TV some of the time).
We, as modern man, often find ourselves in an incessant cycle of mindless repetition day after day. Our own particular Ground Hog Day. We all have the ability to break this spiral but very often do nothing about it - it's easier to just carry on with what we know. We know there are so many things we could be doing but we often justify our weakness: "It's too late to start now", "It will take too long", "I'll never be able to learn another language", "I'll never have my dream body". If only we spent less time finding excuses and just got on with it, we could achieve so much.
How many of us waste our time in front of the TV watching stuff we don't really need to nor really want to? Not many of the people I have met in Finland up until now - everyone is far too busy doing more important things.
If we miss something, even if it is something that we were looking forward to, would our lives be ruined for ever?
In terms of population, Finland is a small country of just under five and a half million people. Television is limited, by budgetary constraints I should imagine, but a lot of the programmes are foreign documentaries and films. These are always broadcast in the original language with Finnish subtitles which can be turned off and this is part of the reason quite often cited for being able to speak and understand English so well. (I guess they do watch TV some of the time).
We, as modern man, often find ourselves in an incessant cycle of mindless repetition day after day. Our own particular Ground Hog Day. We all have the ability to break this spiral but very often do nothing about it - it's easier to just carry on with what we know. We know there are so many things we could be doing but we often justify our weakness: "It's too late to start now", "It will take too long", "I'll never be able to learn another language", "I'll never have my dream body". If only we spent less time finding excuses and just got on with it, we could achieve so much.
Sunday 18 March 2012
I sit in my room
4th March 2012
Sunday
This is my third Sunday in Finland. I have had two weeks with the kids at the kindergarten and I started to break the ice with a few of them towards the end of the second week.
On Friday night after my sauna, I am rubbing my legs when I come across a painful lump on my shin. Ah, yes. Little Samuli had jabbed me in the shin with a plastic shovel after a snowball fight the day before. Up until now, the snow has been too cold to form a ball, but with a thaw starting to take hold, we are able to make balls really easily. The sound of the snow changes underfoot and the kids immediately know by this that they can now throw balls of snow at each other. And at me. I retaliate, a little too enthusiastically and get Samuli with a ball right in the face. Oh, dear. He's all right though and he picks his moment for revenge. A day later he jabs me in the shin.
...
Annika, who is the one in charge at Kinderi, introduces me to her fiance and on Saturday, Massive Marcos takes me to the local school's gym. Annika is in the kindergarten from 7.30 in the morning and does an evening shift at the local Lidl supermarket three or four times a week. I try to flatter Marcos by saying she is a great gal and that I wish I had one like that (not that I do - I don't want to fall into that trap again). Marcos replies with a gruffness close to Schwarzenegger, "You will get it."
...
I sit in my room looking out the window. It's 6.00pm and the sun has been blindingly low for the last hour. It's just reached the horizon but it will be another hour until dusk.
After a couple of text messages this morning from Noriko, we agree to turn on our computers so that we can Skype and I can speak to the kids.
We argue. As usual.
I see her in profile, her cheek. She is beautiful.
Katie was right all those years ago; of the three black angels, Nori would be the one to blossom. But like a rose, this has been accompanied by thorns.
The opportunity to talk to the kids has passed.
...
The sun is slow and stays low all day. But the days are getting longer.
A red car scuttles along the black ribbon of a road laid out across the stark white landscape of South Ostrobothnia. Pohojanma.
It's March but the snow came late this year. Although we have had a couple of days of thaw, the snow will stay with us for a while yet.
Sunday
This is my third Sunday in Finland. I have had two weeks with the kids at the kindergarten and I started to break the ice with a few of them towards the end of the second week.
On Friday night after my sauna, I am rubbing my legs when I come across a painful lump on my shin. Ah, yes. Little Samuli had jabbed me in the shin with a plastic shovel after a snowball fight the day before. Up until now, the snow has been too cold to form a ball, but with a thaw starting to take hold, we are able to make balls really easily. The sound of the snow changes underfoot and the kids immediately know by this that they can now throw balls of snow at each other. And at me. I retaliate, a little too enthusiastically and get Samuli with a ball right in the face. Oh, dear. He's all right though and he picks his moment for revenge. A day later he jabs me in the shin.
...
Annika, who is the one in charge at Kinderi, introduces me to her fiance and on Saturday, Massive Marcos takes me to the local school's gym. Annika is in the kindergarten from 7.30 in the morning and does an evening shift at the local Lidl supermarket three or four times a week. I try to flatter Marcos by saying she is a great gal and that I wish I had one like that (not that I do - I don't want to fall into that trap again). Marcos replies with a gruffness close to Schwarzenegger, "You will get it."
...
I sit in my room looking out the window. It's 6.00pm and the sun has been blindingly low for the last hour. It's just reached the horizon but it will be another hour until dusk.
After a couple of text messages this morning from Noriko, we agree to turn on our computers so that we can Skype and I can speak to the kids.
We argue. As usual.
I see her in profile, her cheek. She is beautiful.
Katie was right all those years ago; of the three black angels, Nori would be the one to blossom. But like a rose, this has been accompanied by thorns.
The opportunity to talk to the kids has passed.
...
The sun is slow and stays low all day. But the days are getting longer.
A red car scuttles along the black ribbon of a road laid out across the stark white landscape of South Ostrobothnia. Pohojanma.
It's March but the snow came late this year. Although we have had a couple of days of thaw, the snow will stay with us for a while yet.
Pohjanmaa (Bohoyama)
26 February 2012
Sunday
For someone who doesn't do shops, apart from the occasional in and out of a charity shop, I am like a man transformed. Not for long though. You can't change the habits of a lifetime but here I am leafing through suits in the flea market like moldy pages in an old book. I don't buy anything apart from one day after school. The next day I tell Outi and Annika that I had bought a second hand pair of underwear. Sloggi. There was a momentary look of undisguised shock. But they were my size. And they were clean. And they were Sloggi.
The look on their faces was mirrored a few days later when I said something about the motorway connections here. I was in the car with Annuka, the Chairperson of the kindergarten as she was showing me around Seinäjoki, the fastest growing city in Finland, where I had to go to register myself at the local municipal offices. She drove me around and showed me the biggest roundabout in Finland. It wasn't very special and would be dwarfed by any of the many roundabouts in the Isle of Thanet. People from outside Thanet comment on the number of roundabouts we have - it's a kind of joke that the local people don't know about.
Seinäjoki is growing fast but with no evidence of any planning. There is a mixture of industrial and residential complexes all overlapping. Logistics is a big business in Finland - it needs to be as Finland is a very large country. I had read that the highway system was very good up to Tampere from Helsinki and I said this to Annuka. She looked at me as if she couldn't believe what I was saying. "But people say we are on the motorway here. And that the connections are very good. Even though this is not a motorway."
People in this part of Finland refer to their patch as Pohjanmaa but pronounce it with an extra 'o' after the 'h'. It sounds almost Japanese when they say it; Bohoyama. South Ostrobothnia. They are a very proud people. Everything here is bigger and better than anywhere else. The men are real men, they are tougher and the women like their men that way. It reminds me of the tensions between Osaka and Tokyo. People from Osaka like to big themselves up. Tokyoites don't say anything. They don't need to. It's a bit like people who drive smaller-engined cars when talking to an owner of a V8.
Sunday
For someone who doesn't do shops, apart from the occasional in and out of a charity shop, I am like a man transformed. Not for long though. You can't change the habits of a lifetime but here I am leafing through suits in the flea market like moldy pages in an old book. I don't buy anything apart from one day after school. The next day I tell Outi and Annika that I had bought a second hand pair of underwear. Sloggi. There was a momentary look of undisguised shock. But they were my size. And they were clean. And they were Sloggi.
The look on their faces was mirrored a few days later when I said something about the motorway connections here. I was in the car with Annuka, the Chairperson of the kindergarten as she was showing me around Seinäjoki, the fastest growing city in Finland, where I had to go to register myself at the local municipal offices. She drove me around and showed me the biggest roundabout in Finland. It wasn't very special and would be dwarfed by any of the many roundabouts in the Isle of Thanet. People from outside Thanet comment on the number of roundabouts we have - it's a kind of joke that the local people don't know about.
Seinäjoki is growing fast but with no evidence of any planning. There is a mixture of industrial and residential complexes all overlapping. Logistics is a big business in Finland - it needs to be as Finland is a very large country. I had read that the highway system was very good up to Tampere from Helsinki and I said this to Annuka. She looked at me as if she couldn't believe what I was saying. "But people say we are on the motorway here. And that the connections are very good. Even though this is not a motorway."
People in this part of Finland refer to their patch as Pohjanmaa but pronounce it with an extra 'o' after the 'h'. It sounds almost Japanese when they say it; Bohoyama. South Ostrobothnia. They are a very proud people. Everything here is bigger and better than anywhere else. The men are real men, they are tougher and the women like their men that way. It reminds me of the tensions between Osaka and Tokyo. People from Osaka like to big themselves up. Tokyoites don't say anything. They don't need to. It's a bit like people who drive smaller-engined cars when talking to an owner of a V8.
Downshifting or Lifeshifting
My life couldn't be much different to what it was four or five weeks ago.
Robert Twigger, who I worked and played with in Tokyo, is now a successful adventurer and writer. He wrote Big Snake which was shown on Channel 4 in the UK a few years ago but his first successful venture into the world of writing came with Angry White Pyjamas (An Oxford Poet Trains with the Tokyo Riot Police). This book won the Somerset Maugham Prize and was later voted by Waterstones as the best Sports Book of the last 25 years. Robert is a lifeshifter and has written about this in his blog as well.
Some may think that what I am doing now is dropping out or downshifting which I may very well be doing. If, however, what I am in fact doing is giving more time to what I like doing and less time to what I do not like, then I am lifeshifting. I believe though to qualify in Robert Twigger's definition of the term, I need to be earning a living at it. I do not agree. I think if you can afford to spend more time doing what makes you happy, then you are lifeshifting whether you are earning more or less money than you were before. Certainly in my case, money is not important - it is not money nor possessions I seek but time and space which I have always considered the greatest luxuries. I have these now in abundance but a lot of the time I miss things. I think about the life I had. I think about my kids a lot, I think about my family and I think about my friends. I think about my dad and I think about Tim and Alan.
Today, I went to an indoor beach with swimming pools, jet baths, a massage waterfall, saunas and steam rooms. I was picked up by a lovely family whom I had dinner with last weekend - my first Finnish family experience. This is a universe away from my recent life in Ramsgate.
While at the pool, I saw some big people, particularly big women. I thought of Mike who, before I had left England, had told me I could look forward to the warm embraces of the local Finnish lasses. I said I wasn't going to Finland for that reason. I was going so that I could get away or as Robert had written to me, to "put some space between you and your present problems". Mike teasingly told me I would probably be surrounded by Burgermeister daughter-types - he's not wrong I thought. And I had thought this before now. There is a particular clan of Romani women in this area who are very large-hipped and who wear tent-like velvet skirts down to the ground; to assist them in shoplifting some say. Although, of course, they don't all shoplift.
Surrounded by all these big women at the pool, something Sandra had told me in Japan sprang to mind. Sandra was Maori and Scottish and was married to Ed who was originally from Western Samao. A massive bloke of about 150 kilos of mostly muscle, he was gruff and until you understood his humour, worrying. Sandra had played number eight for the All Blacks (ladies of course) and her hips came up to my chest. When, one day, we asked her if she wanted to join us at the pool with the kids, she said she couldn't do that. "Just my leeeg on its own is bigger than most of those skinny little Japanese ladies. If they saw me in my swimsuit, they would have a heart attack."
She would be all right here I thought.
Robert Twigger, who I worked and played with in Tokyo, is now a successful adventurer and writer. He wrote Big Snake which was shown on Channel 4 in the UK a few years ago but his first successful venture into the world of writing came with Angry White Pyjamas (An Oxford Poet Trains with the Tokyo Riot Police). This book won the Somerset Maugham Prize and was later voted by Waterstones as the best Sports Book of the last 25 years. Robert is a lifeshifter and has written about this in his blog as well.
Some may think that what I am doing now is dropping out or downshifting which I may very well be doing. If, however, what I am in fact doing is giving more time to what I like doing and less time to what I do not like, then I am lifeshifting. I believe though to qualify in Robert Twigger's definition of the term, I need to be earning a living at it. I do not agree. I think if you can afford to spend more time doing what makes you happy, then you are lifeshifting whether you are earning more or less money than you were before. Certainly in my case, money is not important - it is not money nor possessions I seek but time and space which I have always considered the greatest luxuries. I have these now in abundance but a lot of the time I miss things. I think about the life I had. I think about my kids a lot, I think about my family and I think about my friends. I think about my dad and I think about Tim and Alan.
Today, I went to an indoor beach with swimming pools, jet baths, a massage waterfall, saunas and steam rooms. I was picked up by a lovely family whom I had dinner with last weekend - my first Finnish family experience. This is a universe away from my recent life in Ramsgate.
While at the pool, I saw some big people, particularly big women. I thought of Mike who, before I had left England, had told me I could look forward to the warm embraces of the local Finnish lasses. I said I wasn't going to Finland for that reason. I was going so that I could get away or as Robert had written to me, to "put some space between you and your present problems". Mike teasingly told me I would probably be surrounded by Burgermeister daughter-types - he's not wrong I thought. And I had thought this before now. There is a particular clan of Romani women in this area who are very large-hipped and who wear tent-like velvet skirts down to the ground; to assist them in shoplifting some say. Although, of course, they don't all shoplift.
Surrounded by all these big women at the pool, something Sandra had told me in Japan sprang to mind. Sandra was Maori and Scottish and was married to Ed who was originally from Western Samao. A massive bloke of about 150 kilos of mostly muscle, he was gruff and until you understood his humour, worrying. Sandra had played number eight for the All Blacks (ladies of course) and her hips came up to my chest. When, one day, we asked her if she wanted to join us at the pool with the kids, she said she couldn't do that. "Just my leeeg on its own is bigger than most of those skinny little Japanese ladies. If they saw me in my swimsuit, they would have a heart attack."
She would be all right here I thought.
Settling in nicely, thank you
I've been here four weeks now! Like asking someone to draw a map of their route to work or school, this blog has a lot of detail near the beginning.
I've been ice fishing on frozen lakes twice, been invited to dinner twice and of course I have been in the kindergarten every day.
If success were measured in numbers of fish, the fishing trips were a disaster. But fish are not always the point; Chris, Tiina's partner-cum-husband (this partner thing started while I was in Japan and I still feel weird about it) took me out into the forests to a beautiful spot.
We started to hike across this flat expanse of snow with ice underfoot. "How far are we going?" With my head bowed to protect myself from the driving snow, I had to shout to be heard against the wind. "Over there, near that little cottage." It was at least a kilometre and a half away. We had bumped into Tiina's father in the supermarket car park on our way and Tinna told us later over dinner that he had said only mad foreigners would go fishing in conditions like this. We got to our spot and Chris started to drill a hole in the ice with the massive ice drill he had carried with him. The tip had been replaced by a friend since the last time he had been out and it hadn't been sharpened. It didn't work. Chris had a metal file and started to file the edge of the drill, cutting himself in the process. He was bleeding all over the snow and by the time he gave up, the place looked as though he had butchered a dog. He wasn't making any sort of impression on the ice with the blunt drill and normally he would have cut through it in seconds so I walked off to the coast in search of some assistance. I walked through the forest until I found what I was looking for and came back with a long tree trunk. We found an old hole in the ice previously cut by chainsaw but which had frozen over solid again. After a few attempts at battering it with the tree trunk, brown muddy water spouted up. We scooped the ice out and set our lines, had a coffee and waited. It wasn't long until we started to pack up and make our way back to the car. We had been out on the lake in an ambient temperature of about minus 15 with the chill factor taking this down to at least minus 20. The whole time, through the drilling, the sharpening, scooping the ice out of the hole, Chris's hands had been bare. He said he was all right but they looked nasty red to me.
We got back to the car, packed our stuff into the boot and started the return drive along the forest path. When we got to the edge of the forest where we had to turn to cross a field, we were faced by a barrier of snow that had drifted across the track. Chris straightened up the car and made a rush at it. We were stuck. An old local boy walking his dog assisted us as I went in pursuit of another log to wedge under the spinning wheels. It was getting dark and Chris was starting to panic but I felt no sense of urgency; I knew we would get out. This was, however, before I had read the story on the BBC website about the Swedish man just across the other side of the Gulf of Bothnia near Umea, who, trapped in his car for two months, had survived because his body had gone into a sort of hibernation.
We did get out and we did survive to tell the story over dinner in a warm cosy house set in a most beautiful landscape of evergreens and silver birch.
I've been ice fishing on frozen lakes twice, been invited to dinner twice and of course I have been in the kindergarten every day.
If success were measured in numbers of fish, the fishing trips were a disaster. But fish are not always the point; Chris, Tiina's partner-cum-husband (this partner thing started while I was in Japan and I still feel weird about it) took me out into the forests to a beautiful spot.
We started to hike across this flat expanse of snow with ice underfoot. "How far are we going?" With my head bowed to protect myself from the driving snow, I had to shout to be heard against the wind. "Over there, near that little cottage." It was at least a kilometre and a half away. We had bumped into Tiina's father in the supermarket car park on our way and Tinna told us later over dinner that he had said only mad foreigners would go fishing in conditions like this. We got to our spot and Chris started to drill a hole in the ice with the massive ice drill he had carried with him. The tip had been replaced by a friend since the last time he had been out and it hadn't been sharpened. It didn't work. Chris had a metal file and started to file the edge of the drill, cutting himself in the process. He was bleeding all over the snow and by the time he gave up, the place looked as though he had butchered a dog. He wasn't making any sort of impression on the ice with the blunt drill and normally he would have cut through it in seconds so I walked off to the coast in search of some assistance. I walked through the forest until I found what I was looking for and came back with a long tree trunk. We found an old hole in the ice previously cut by chainsaw but which had frozen over solid again. After a few attempts at battering it with the tree trunk, brown muddy water spouted up. We scooped the ice out and set our lines, had a coffee and waited. It wasn't long until we started to pack up and make our way back to the car. We had been out on the lake in an ambient temperature of about minus 15 with the chill factor taking this down to at least minus 20. The whole time, through the drilling, the sharpening, scooping the ice out of the hole, Chris's hands had been bare. He said he was all right but they looked nasty red to me.
We got back to the car, packed our stuff into the boot and started the return drive along the forest path. When we got to the edge of the forest where we had to turn to cross a field, we were faced by a barrier of snow that had drifted across the track. Chris straightened up the car and made a rush at it. We were stuck. An old local boy walking his dog assisted us as I went in pursuit of another log to wedge under the spinning wheels. It was getting dark and Chris was starting to panic but I felt no sense of urgency; I knew we would get out. This was, however, before I had read the story on the BBC website about the Swedish man just across the other side of the Gulf of Bothnia near Umea, who, trapped in his car for two months, had survived because his body had gone into a sort of hibernation.
We did get out and we did survive to tell the story over dinner in a warm cosy house set in a most beautiful landscape of evergreens and silver birch.
Sunday 11 March 2012
TV in Suomi
18th February
Sunday
Another window into the psyche of a nation and its people is through seeing what they allot time to on their tellies. Hmmm. This is fraught with hurdles, however, as the foreign visitor is at an enormous disadvantage. There are the obvious barriers of language, culture and history and rather than being able to make a slick analogy about a nation's television and the people who watch it, the subject deserves deeper study and consideration. Which I am not about to do in a hurry.
A couple of years after my arrival in Japan, I found myself working among an uncouth bunch of Pomes in a language school in Jimbocho, North Tokyo. These were not true expats on fantastic overseas-rate salaries, bonuses and perks but the school had a long history and was highly regarded having garnered contracts with most of the large trading houses, banks and government ministries. Its staff were bright, educated and motivated; mostly by the fat paychecks that could be earned. We had left behind a country that was on the brink of another economic meltdown and here we were earning hourly rates that we could only have dreamt of back home and if you could fill your week with 30 hours at school, you were doing well. This entailed being chummy with the head of timetabling so most of the teachers had lucrative private classes, sometimes at unsocial hours, thus leaving very little time for anything else.
I knew guys who were monthly yen millionaires when the exchange rate was around 250 yen to the pound. Today's rate of around the 120 mark, would double your money. Wow! We had spent a lot of time in Thatcher's Britain and while we may not have shared her political ideals (most of the country didn't), we had embraced the get-rich-quick crassness that had swept through the western world of the 80's.
Outside classes and preparation, the average English language teacher spent most of their time in Tokyo's many bars and nightspots. I was one of the few who had settled in and had an appreciation for the culture; I was married and was on the way to going native. My colleagues used to call me Hiroshi, a very common Japanese name. This was meant in a derisoury way, because by this time, while having only a limited grasp on the language, I could understand Japanese TV and thus found entertainment at home.
A couple of years after joining the teaching staff, I moved to the testing department - no work on Saturdays, no early morning starts at company offices; a nice steady 9 to 5 type of job except it was more like 9 to 4, rather than the 7.30 to 9 at night teaching pattern with lots of waiting around. This was probably the beginning of my downfall for it was here that I was forced into close proximity with two of the most cynical people I have ever met. When explaining his unpleasant behaviour and outlook on life in Japan, one of my new colleagues explained that because he couldn't understand Japanese TV and found the culture and humour base, his only entertainment was his quick wit and hurtful jibes.
This summed up a lot of the non-Japanese I knew. They couldn't understand the language and had no insight into the culture so therefore considered it inferior.
I am not about to fall into that trap here and will allow time before I make any judgements about the Finnish culture. Suffice to say, I am able to gain a certain amount of entertainment from the box due to the large number of English-language films, documentaries and dramas which are broadcast with Finnish subtitles. This is helping me in my quest to pick up the language and may help to explain why everyone, from the staff in the local bank to the ladies on the cash tills in the supermarket, can speak such good English. The education system may have something to do with that as well but that is a subject for a future post.
Sunday
Another window into the psyche of a nation and its people is through seeing what they allot time to on their tellies. Hmmm. This is fraught with hurdles, however, as the foreign visitor is at an enormous disadvantage. There are the obvious barriers of language, culture and history and rather than being able to make a slick analogy about a nation's television and the people who watch it, the subject deserves deeper study and consideration. Which I am not about to do in a hurry.
A couple of years after my arrival in Japan, I found myself working among an uncouth bunch of Pomes in a language school in Jimbocho, North Tokyo. These were not true expats on fantastic overseas-rate salaries, bonuses and perks but the school had a long history and was highly regarded having garnered contracts with most of the large trading houses, banks and government ministries. Its staff were bright, educated and motivated; mostly by the fat paychecks that could be earned. We had left behind a country that was on the brink of another economic meltdown and here we were earning hourly rates that we could only have dreamt of back home and if you could fill your week with 30 hours at school, you were doing well. This entailed being chummy with the head of timetabling so most of the teachers had lucrative private classes, sometimes at unsocial hours, thus leaving very little time for anything else.
I knew guys who were monthly yen millionaires when the exchange rate was around 250 yen to the pound. Today's rate of around the 120 mark, would double your money. Wow! We had spent a lot of time in Thatcher's Britain and while we may not have shared her political ideals (most of the country didn't), we had embraced the get-rich-quick crassness that had swept through the western world of the 80's.
Outside classes and preparation, the average English language teacher spent most of their time in Tokyo's many bars and nightspots. I was one of the few who had settled in and had an appreciation for the culture; I was married and was on the way to going native. My colleagues used to call me Hiroshi, a very common Japanese name. This was meant in a derisoury way, because by this time, while having only a limited grasp on the language, I could understand Japanese TV and thus found entertainment at home.
A couple of years after joining the teaching staff, I moved to the testing department - no work on Saturdays, no early morning starts at company offices; a nice steady 9 to 5 type of job except it was more like 9 to 4, rather than the 7.30 to 9 at night teaching pattern with lots of waiting around. This was probably the beginning of my downfall for it was here that I was forced into close proximity with two of the most cynical people I have ever met. When explaining his unpleasant behaviour and outlook on life in Japan, one of my new colleagues explained that because he couldn't understand Japanese TV and found the culture and humour base, his only entertainment was his quick wit and hurtful jibes.
This summed up a lot of the non-Japanese I knew. They couldn't understand the language and had no insight into the culture so therefore considered it inferior.
I am not about to fall into that trap here and will allow time before I make any judgements about the Finnish culture. Suffice to say, I am able to gain a certain amount of entertainment from the box due to the large number of English-language films, documentaries and dramas which are broadcast with Finnish subtitles. This is helping me in my quest to pick up the language and may help to explain why everyone, from the staff in the local bank to the ladies on the cash tills in the supermarket, can speak such good English. The education system may have something to do with that as well but that is a subject for a future post.
Saturday 10 March 2012
Things Finns like (and probably Robert Twigger too)
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| Real axes for real men |
More photos can be seen here  |
| Sloggi - only the best |
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| Real rubber and fur lined |
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| Usually behind glass doors |
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| Ice drills |
Link to Robert Twigger's Blog; Lost City Explorer's Club. Author of Real Men Eat Puffer Fish and Being a Man in the Lousy Modern World
Wellington boots, axes and horse things
19th February 2012
Saturday
When arriving in a new country, a quick and easy way to gain some insight into the culture is to observe what they make space for in their shops.
Having foraged and begged food for the last year or so, I haven't had much call to go to shops and try to avoid it is as a pastime. It is generally, for me at least, quite an unpleasant experience so I am mildly happily surprised on my first visit to a Finnish shop. It's big and empty of human traffic.There's a bit of food over in one corner but this one is mostly given over to the sale of clothes and things for hobbyists; fishing things and stuff for people who ride horses.
I have now visited all that Kauhava has to offer on the shop front and I can report on a few interesting observations. Kauhava itself is a small town with not much more than 8,000 inhabitants but has six large supermarkets or department-like shops and three second-hand-cum-junk shops, two of which are almost warehouse-like in their proportions.
Kauhava recently, within the last two years I believe, amalgamated with its neighbouring towns and villages to make one large municipal area governed by a single local authority serving a population of around 18,000. Kauhava is historically the centre and this may explain why there are more shops than one would imagine necessary. Finns drive a lot and a trip to the shops is usually done by car which are more expensive than in neighbouring countries. I did see some old cars for under one thousand euros but I was later warned that these had more than likely been driven into the ground with probably over half a million klicks on the clock.
Of interest to the foreign eye in the shops is the superior quality warm winter clothing, fantastic rubber Wellington boots, fishing equipment with lures locked away in glass cabinets together with the valuable electronics, ice hockey sticks, ice drills for the other fishermen amongst us, brilliant gloves, mittens and hats.
And lots of axes. Beautiful axes with hollow, carbon fibre (perhaps) handles. There are chain saws as well - not the toy-like ones we have in our garden shops. These are for real men. Who like chopping things down.. Oh, and pants. For men. Sloggi. You can't beat good underwear. Having read when in Japan that these were the best you could buy, I hunted high and low for Sloggi in England and only ever found them once; in a dingy old school clothes shop in Whetstone in faded packaging. Forget Calvin Klein, it's got to be Sloggi every time.
Saturday
When arriving in a new country, a quick and easy way to gain some insight into the culture is to observe what they make space for in their shops.
Having foraged and begged food for the last year or so, I haven't had much call to go to shops and try to avoid it is as a pastime. It is generally, for me at least, quite an unpleasant experience so I am mildly happily surprised on my first visit to a Finnish shop. It's big and empty of human traffic.There's a bit of food over in one corner but this one is mostly given over to the sale of clothes and things for hobbyists; fishing things and stuff for people who ride horses.
I have now visited all that Kauhava has to offer on the shop front and I can report on a few interesting observations. Kauhava itself is a small town with not much more than 8,000 inhabitants but has six large supermarkets or department-like shops and three second-hand-cum-junk shops, two of which are almost warehouse-like in their proportions.
Kauhava recently, within the last two years I believe, amalgamated with its neighbouring towns and villages to make one large municipal area governed by a single local authority serving a population of around 18,000. Kauhava is historically the centre and this may explain why there are more shops than one would imagine necessary. Finns drive a lot and a trip to the shops is usually done by car which are more expensive than in neighbouring countries. I did see some old cars for under one thousand euros but I was later warned that these had more than likely been driven into the ground with probably over half a million klicks on the clock.
Of interest to the foreign eye in the shops is the superior quality warm winter clothing, fantastic rubber Wellington boots, fishing equipment with lures locked away in glass cabinets together with the valuable electronics, ice hockey sticks, ice drills for the other fishermen amongst us, brilliant gloves, mittens and hats.
And lots of axes. Beautiful axes with hollow, carbon fibre (perhaps) handles. There are chain saws as well - not the toy-like ones we have in our garden shops. These are for real men. Who like chopping things down.. Oh, and pants. For men. Sloggi. You can't beat good underwear. Having read when in Japan that these were the best you could buy, I hunted high and low for Sloggi in England and only ever found them once; in a dingy old school clothes shop in Whetstone in faded packaging. Forget Calvin Klein, it's got to be Sloggi every time.
Local shops and street scenes
More pictures can be seen here |
| On the way to the shops |
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| Local shop |
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| Supermarket |
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| Nordea Bank |
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| Sam Burger |
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| My local bank - Pop Bank |
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| Sam Burger |
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| The main street |
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| S Market with mint 240 |
Kauhava, my new home, for a while at least
17th February 2012
Having arrived on Thursday night, I have a few days to settle in before starting at the kindergarten in my new role as classroom assistant and English language clown.
I go downstairs (for that is where the classrooms are - I'm upstairs and need only to fall out of bed to get to work), and pop in to say hello. It's 12 O'clock and I am welcomed by a very bubbly and smiley Outi. Pronounced not like out and tea but more like ow, as in ouch and tea except the t is more like a d and the u makes the o longer. Oh dear, not a great start to a new language. I'm going to have to go back to basics and start with the alphabet. Again. Except this is possibly easier than Japanese. Possibly. At least it's legible. Well, nearly.
Outi has green eyes and dark hair and the whitest skin.
The children have eaten and are having quiet time. Except I have interrupted them. They poke their heads round the door and like shy little mice come out one by one. Breakfast is at 8, lunch is at 11 and they have a snack at 2. Most Finns eat dinner at 5 in the evening so with an earlier breakfast and another dinner later on, it is actually possible to eat six meals a day - as we should. Small and often.
I walk to the shops and have a little look around. It is heart-achingly beautiful and the shopping street, with its new buildings and silver birch, has a feel of Japanese snow resort about it.
I think I am gong to like it here.
Having arrived on Thursday night, I have a few days to settle in before starting at the kindergarten in my new role as classroom assistant and English language clown.
I go downstairs (for that is where the classrooms are - I'm upstairs and need only to fall out of bed to get to work), and pop in to say hello. It's 12 O'clock and I am welcomed by a very bubbly and smiley Outi. Pronounced not like out and tea but more like ow, as in ouch and tea except the t is more like a d and the u makes the o longer. Oh dear, not a great start to a new language. I'm going to have to go back to basics and start with the alphabet. Again. Except this is possibly easier than Japanese. Possibly. At least it's legible. Well, nearly.
Outi has green eyes and dark hair and the whitest skin.
The children have eaten and are having quiet time. Except I have interrupted them. They poke their heads round the door and like shy little mice come out one by one. Breakfast is at 8, lunch is at 11 and they have a snack at 2. Most Finns eat dinner at 5 in the evening so with an earlier breakfast and another dinner later on, it is actually possible to eat six meals a day - as we should. Small and often.
I walk to the shops and have a little look around. It is heart-achingly beautiful and the shopping street, with its new buildings and silver birch, has a feel of Japanese snow resort about it.
I think I am gong to like it here.
Spartan Pad with Sauna
I'm sure the Spartans didn't have saunas.
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| I arrive at night |
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| Language prompts on the wall |
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| My very own sauna |
Vaasa to Kauhava
16th February
2100
We walk to the car and I load up my luggage. The drive to my new home is uneventful; we do not crash, the car does not get stuck in the snow, we don't even slide. Not even a little. Everywhere is covered in snow and the wind is blowing it across the road somewhat limiting our speed; we drive along at a steady 60km/h. We follow a snow plough for a while blowing out the white stuff but it turns off and we drive on in darkness.
Tiina's father is mostly silent, a male Finnish trait perhaps or probably just a language barrier thing. He looks tough and rugged. I ask Tiina how old he is. Nearly 70! He exercises regularly and had skied over 25km that morning. Cross country skiing of course; Finland is mostly flat. I will learn at a later date that as a young man, he and his brother had cycled more than 100km to go and get a piece of fish. Then cycled home again. They're pretty tough, these Finns. They fought against the Germans in the Winter War of 1939 and then held off Stalin for four years.
Tiina had told me the journey of 67 kilometers would take about an hour and a half. We talk all the way back and I lose track of time. I didn't check my watch when we set off so I am unable to confirm how long we are in the car.
We arrive at my new home and I carry my bags upstairs. Tiina opens the door and turns the lights on. "It's a bit Spartan", she says and shows me around. There's a sauna! Tiina shows me how to turn it on and is gone. There's some food in the fridge and some stock in the cupboards. The bed is made up and there's a tv, table and a couple of small benches.
I set the sauna and an hour later I am enjoying its pleasures Finnish-style; chucking scoops of water onto the hot rocks. Now that's a nice way to round off a journey.
2100
We walk to the car and I load up my luggage. The drive to my new home is uneventful; we do not crash, the car does not get stuck in the snow, we don't even slide. Not even a little. Everywhere is covered in snow and the wind is blowing it across the road somewhat limiting our speed; we drive along at a steady 60km/h. We follow a snow plough for a while blowing out the white stuff but it turns off and we drive on in darkness.
Tiina's father is mostly silent, a male Finnish trait perhaps or probably just a language barrier thing. He looks tough and rugged. I ask Tiina how old he is. Nearly 70! He exercises regularly and had skied over 25km that morning. Cross country skiing of course; Finland is mostly flat. I will learn at a later date that as a young man, he and his brother had cycled more than 100km to go and get a piece of fish. Then cycled home again. They're pretty tough, these Finns. They fought against the Germans in the Winter War of 1939 and then held off Stalin for four years.
Tiina had told me the journey of 67 kilometers would take about an hour and a half. We talk all the way back and I lose track of time. I didn't check my watch when we set off so I am unable to confirm how long we are in the car.
We arrive at my new home and I carry my bags upstairs. Tiina opens the door and turns the lights on. "It's a bit Spartan", she says and shows me around. There's a sauna! Tiina shows me how to turn it on and is gone. There's some food in the fridge and some stock in the cupboards. The bed is made up and there's a tv, table and a couple of small benches.
I set the sauna and an hour later I am enjoying its pleasures Finnish-style; chucking scoops of water onto the hot rocks. Now that's a nice way to round off a journey.
Sunday 4 March 2012
Vaasa, Finland
We land at Vaasa in the dark. The runway is covered in a blanket of snow.
As we taxi along, I see snaking wisps of smoke-like snow blowing across the runway. A little snow doesn't stop anything here.
The Focker comes to a standstill, the engines are cut and immediately stop - silence. The doors open and we are invited to walk across the runway. Thankfully, I had the foresight to put on my ski trousers and coat before descending and making my way to arrivals. I enter through a couple of sets of glass doors and find myself right bang in the middle of the tiny arrivals hall with a single small and as yet stationary baggage carousel. Through the glass doors, I can see a small crowd of expectant well wishers here to collect loved ones. I can't see Tiina, who I had spoken to on Skype once before. I am not worried. I know what she looks like. She said she would be here to collect me.
The carousel kicks in and our baggage starts to fall onto it from outside. My bags are among the first to come through and they are both together. I pick them up, walk through the glass doors and the desks for customs (hardly noticeable, but I'm sure I saw a green circle) and immediately see Tiina. No chance for a surreptitious smoke before we make our way to the car. Her father is here to drive. Apparently, he didn't trust his daughter to drive and talk at the same time in what would be quite treacherous conditions.
As we taxi along, I see snaking wisps of smoke-like snow blowing across the runway. A little snow doesn't stop anything here.
The Focker comes to a standstill, the engines are cut and immediately stop - silence. The doors open and we are invited to walk across the runway. Thankfully, I had the foresight to put on my ski trousers and coat before descending and making my way to arrivals. I enter through a couple of sets of glass doors and find myself right bang in the middle of the tiny arrivals hall with a single small and as yet stationary baggage carousel. Through the glass doors, I can see a small crowd of expectant well wishers here to collect loved ones. I can't see Tiina, who I had spoken to on Skype once before. I am not worried. I know what she looks like. She said she would be here to collect me.
The carousel kicks in and our baggage starts to fall onto it from outside. My bags are among the first to come through and they are both together. I pick them up, walk through the glass doors and the desks for customs (hardly noticeable, but I'm sure I saw a green circle) and immediately see Tiina. No chance for a surreptitious smoke before we make our way to the car. Her father is here to drive. Apparently, he didn't trust his daughter to drive and talk at the same time in what would be quite treacherous conditions.
Riga to Vaasa
16th February
Thursday
1800
We arrive at Riga where I need to transfer. On landing, the doors open and we disembark to walk across the frozen runway. It's bitterly cold and slippery underfoot. How did they manage to land this plane without it sliding out of control?
It's about 6 O'Clock local time and I go upstairs to Costa and order a sandwich and a coffee - the first food since 7 this morning. I finish my sandwich and take my coffee to the glass-enclosed smoking space in the corner of the sitting area. It seems that smokers are treated in a more civilized manner than we are used to in England.
As I am flying within the EU I can't buy duty free cigarettes so I buy duty paid Latvian Marlboro Lights (no rolling tobacco here) and make my way to the departure lounge. I board the Focker 50 turbo prop straight away and find my window seat right next to the prop engine. This is going to be a noisy flight but thank God it's not too far to Vaasa.
Thursday
1800
We arrive at Riga where I need to transfer. On landing, the doors open and we disembark to walk across the frozen runway. It's bitterly cold and slippery underfoot. How did they manage to land this plane without it sliding out of control?
It's about 6 O'Clock local time and I go upstairs to Costa and order a sandwich and a coffee - the first food since 7 this morning. I finish my sandwich and take my coffee to the glass-enclosed smoking space in the corner of the sitting area. It seems that smokers are treated in a more civilized manner than we are used to in England.
As I am flying within the EU I can't buy duty free cigarettes so I buy duty paid Latvian Marlboro Lights (no rolling tobacco here) and make my way to the departure lounge. I board the Focker 50 turbo prop straight away and find my window seat right next to the prop engine. This is going to be a noisy flight but thank God it's not too far to Vaasa.
A hop and a skip across the Baltic Sea
16th February.
Thursday.
1730
Baltic Airlines, Flight 652, Boeing 737 descending over the Baltic Sea approaching Riga International, Latvia.
What an unusual and strange landscape.
It's dusk and not entirely clear but I see these long and straight boulevards.
Except, this is not a city. There are no lights or buildings and there are no cars driving along these boulevards.
They are definitely man made and as I look along one of them I see others from different points converging together as if at some distant Arc De Triomphe.
Hang on. These are not boulevards. Canals perhaps, cut into the landscape. But wait...
What's that?
That... that is a... a reflection. It's a huge ship. Oh, I see.. Shit! That's an icebreaker and these boulevards are the huge cracks it's cut into the frozen sea.
Wow.
Well, that's a first.
Thursday.
1730
Baltic Airlines, Flight 652, Boeing 737 descending over the Baltic Sea approaching Riga International, Latvia.
What an unusual and strange landscape.
It's dusk and not entirely clear but I see these long and straight boulevards.
Except, this is not a city. There are no lights or buildings and there are no cars driving along these boulevards.
They are definitely man made and as I look along one of them I see others from different points converging together as if at some distant Arc De Triomphe.
Hang on. These are not boulevards. Canals perhaps, cut into the landscape. But wait...
What's that?
That... that is a... a reflection. It's a huge ship. Oh, I see.. Shit! That's an icebreaker and these boulevards are the huge cracks it's cut into the frozen sea.
Wow.
Well, that's a first.
Flight to Finland
16th February 2012
I arrive at Gatwick airport on my way to Finland and check in to find that I have to pay £184 for my luggage. Discount airlines are a rip off. My luggage wasn't worth £184. I could have dumped it all and saved the money to buy new stuff on arrival but my baggage had already gone through. I was presented with an invoice and told to go to the customer service desk whereupon I was informed I had to pay the full amount - fait accompli - the baggage had already gone through.
I go through passport control and all the other stuff that makes flying such a painful and uncivilized mode of travelling. I haven't been on this side of an airport in a few years and it feels quite alien. I notice how un-airport like it is. There's hardly any sign at all that I am in a major transportation hub. I am in shopping centre and feel quite out of place. I haven't been to the shops for a long time either.
Food on the flight is also an extra and I hadn't reserved it in advance so I fly to Riga, Latvia with nothing to eat.
I arrive at Gatwick airport on my way to Finland and check in to find that I have to pay £184 for my luggage. Discount airlines are a rip off. My luggage wasn't worth £184. I could have dumped it all and saved the money to buy new stuff on arrival but my baggage had already gone through. I was presented with an invoice and told to go to the customer service desk whereupon I was informed I had to pay the full amount - fait accompli - the baggage had already gone through.
I go through passport control and all the other stuff that makes flying such a painful and uncivilized mode of travelling. I haven't been on this side of an airport in a few years and it feels quite alien. I notice how un-airport like it is. There's hardly any sign at all that I am in a major transportation hub. I am in shopping centre and feel quite out of place. I haven't been to the shops for a long time either.
Food on the flight is also an extra and I hadn't reserved it in advance so I fly to Riga, Latvia with nothing to eat.
Saturday 3 March 2012
How far can you walk?
When things turn bad, how far do you go to rectify the situation?
Or do you just walk away?
How far?
I've done this before.
The last time, I ended up in Tokyo and stayed for 15 years. Things are worse now and in some ways the destination of my escape reflects this. Kauhava, South Ostrobothnia, Finland. 63 degrees North just three south of the Arctic Circle.
In February.
This time it is not a holiday nor for pleasure although it may turn out to be pleasurable. I am on a mission to rediscover myself or perhaps reinvent a new self.
Or do you just walk away?
How far?
I've done this before.
The last time, I ended up in Tokyo and stayed for 15 years. Things are worse now and in some ways the destination of my escape reflects this. Kauhava, South Ostrobothnia, Finland. 63 degrees North just three south of the Arctic Circle.
In February.
This time it is not a holiday nor for pleasure although it may turn out to be pleasurable. I am on a mission to rediscover myself or perhaps reinvent a new self.
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