Lavonardo

Pintprice.com, the cost of a beer in 202 countries.

Waiterrant has a nice guide on how to order wine.

It’s a decent guide, but there are definitely other rules and corollaries that apply to the ordeal.

n. When in doubt, delegate. But never, ever complain about the suboptimal choice the volunteer made. You had your chance and chickened out.

n+1. Don’t be an ABC-bozo. It might be cool to resort to “anything but chardonnay/cabernet”-cliches, but it’s not worth it. Unless you’re desperate for strained laughter from tablemates.

n+2. Buying by the glass is OK. Unless the restaurant sells by the bottle. Don’t try this in Italy.

n+3. Never spill red wine. And never, ever send the laundrybill to the restaurant if you do.

n+4. Anything that’s successful in a testdrive by hesari will be sold out the same day. Unless it’s available in industrial quantities.

n+5. No matter what Sideways says, Merlot is not a terrible choice, and Pinot Noir is not always divine.

It’s not often when a company utterly muffs an advertising campaign.

Hartwall miscalculated the amount of money people would have to spend to get a laptop or another technocratically appropriate prize. After all, for a thousand bottles of Pepsi MAX you get a decent computer. And 400 gallons of soda. For which every penny you receive as payment is pure gain.

Turns out that they’ve opened the book of dirty tricks to spoil the game for late arrivals. Absurd timeouts have been inserted to the code-entry system and originally unnecessary receipts for purchases and actual bottle labels are now needed.

Not like this, dudes. This is going to soil the good name of pepsi for a long long while.

Me? Never been one to buy pop in industrial quantities, and am reasonably happy with max as is, and with the cappuccino variant especially. Though I’m sure its good taste is some infernal plot to finally get me to drink coffee more often than once a year.

EDIT 26.8.2008: The original story is gone.

Let’s start with the negatives on this yet again belated list of things that rose above the threshold.

grainy, torn and creased:

• Revenge of early wakeup calls. And in the darkest season of the year.
• The original Galactica has not exactly stood the time well (but the title theme still reigns).
• Note to self: learn bus routes, not schedules. 210N does not go by Haaga. And the first stop past Munkkiniemi is somewhere in Säteri. But even with that roundabout it was still quicker than queuing up for a cab downtown.

in living color:

• Four day weekend. Repeat: FOUR DAY WEEKEND.
• Stop press: Pepsi MAX Cappuccino is actually very very good. But then, I’m an inveterate Vanilla Coke addict, so take the recommendation with an appropriate caution.
• 73 minutes of Incredible Brainshells on CD. Finnish grunge rarely (if, like ever) sounded so good.
• Secured a playoff spot in virtual NFL.

One of my favorite coffeetable books ever has been the Absolut Book. It’s a story of the concepting of the advertisements on the most popular liquid swedish export.

And considering how well the ads (all centring on the same simple concept - embedding the well-known absolut bottle shape into an image, more or less seamlessly) have been put together, the book’s an absolute (pun accidental) delight to read. However, the campaign hardly stopped around the fifteen year mark, when the book was published. Nope, the TBWA continued creating imaginative ads (one of which even featured Helsinki, in a lengthy line of city-based images). And a collection of them has been published by a second book on Absolut advertising, appropriately called Absolut Sequel. Heavily recommended for all who appreciate quality graphic design.

The brand’s own site is an über-flashed navigation disaster, but decent sites about the images abound. absolutcollectors seems to be the highest profile of the bunch - they haven’t got the Helsinki ad, but Potemkin (my other big favorite) is present all right.

Had an enjoyable evening with electronic entertainment apparatus and friends at Pekka’s place (his blog gone the way of the dodo, it appears).

First up was the latest incarnation of the best football franchise: Pro Evolution Soccer 5. The game had not changed much, but enough to prove that scoring goals is hard. A grand total of three in four games shows that there are indeed some new tricks that have to be learned.

Star Wars Battlefront II was a brand new arrival for all but the host, and as such the games cannot really be regarded as anything but beginners fumblings. Especially when the manual proved to be on very much the nothing but the obvious-side. But good fun was had, and the game’s scope obviously allows for vastly larger battles than the six-some we had.

Continued sucking in Ghost Recon 2.

The third game in the TimeSplitters series proved that simple frantic violence sometimes is therapeutic. Apart from a couple of randomly selected levels where the default weaponry was inequal, this turned out to be the sleeper hit of the evening. Good clean fun, and dimly recalled some levels from the previous part played some good two+ years ago.

Pinball was uneven. Had two decent scores in Twilight Zone, but got utterly outplayed by the newest arrival in the stable.

Ate far too many smoked almonds. No-one had yet seen the Cappuccino-variant of Pepsi Max, which sounds like a scary combination that allows use of some taste essences that are banned in civilized countries. But judgment will be reserved until the first actual sip.

And this week the lady fortuna smiled/frowned on the following.

Grin:

• Figs. As a jam particle and eaten singly. Dried only, couldn’t score fresh ones in the local shops.
• Ninth Island Pinot Noir. Much appreciated. And the white’s supposed to be an even more classic selection.
• Empire magazine. One of the greatest time sinks known to man.

Grimace:

• Overpaid primadonnas with eagerbeaver agents. And that’s T.O. and not one of folks at work.
• No issue #10 of Wired seems to be coming to Finland. Official story is that the shipping agency “misplaced” a pallet “somewhere in Sweden”.
• Still no snow. And plenty of darkness.
• And AK-47 is hurt. Again.

A BBC news guy is spooked by what he sees going on in the streets and bars of Helsinki. It’s not really funny, not at all inaccurate, but manages to be very patronizing.

Surely someone from the land that invented ladism and elevated time-constrained bingeing to an art form ought to be built from sterner stuff.

Up:

• Buying Laphroaig for others by the glass and by the bottle.
• Appreciation for Charles Stross as an author.
• Fear of cold turkey for the availability of the second season of Lost.

Down:

• Apparent availability of Lagavulin in finnish shops.
• Quality of the weather; but not the temperature, however.
• Price per gigabyte in any hard disc-based device - holding off buying a new iPod, but a recording digibox would be nice.

To offset the frighteningly dry previous entry, here’s a couple of absinthe-related links thrown in for good measure.

Remember, however, that possession of the wondrous green liquid is still illegal in the states…

And that you can get a variety of stuff almost everywhere else.

EDIT 24.8.2008: Laws have changed, and so have the URLs.

Slept in. Horribly. And thus missed breakfast. Surprisingly the hotel provides a newspaper for every room, which is always a notch in the plus column.

Explored the area surrounding the St. Catherine further, and quickly ended up in HMV. Had very cheap Neil Young albums for sale, and at five euros each, couldn’t really even pretend to resist. Noted that Otomo’s Steamboy (which I missed in last year’s R&A) will be out tomorrow. Or actually today. Discovered a chapters bookstore also, despite indication by the phone book that none such exist in the city.

Hook up with the rest of the guys, more aimless wandering and shopping. A big collection of Criterion movies is available, but cannot decide which to get, so opt for something much lighter instead. A very grand local liquor store has a lot of interesting stuff for sale, and I’m very tempted by the 1970 Coeur de Lion calvados. Decided against it, in the end, still got half a bottle of the previous grand ancienne left…

Good dinner in the portuguese/brazilian quarter, guidance provided by a Norwegian friend. End up taking octopus, which is excellent, and fried sardines for appetizer, which turns out to be quite manual-intensive portion. A couple of beers in various bars in and around the Latin Quartier cap the evening nicely. Didn’t quite recall whether the 2003 hotel was nearby, the area seemed rather familiar, but we clearly were not far enough north, this time.

Finally discovered the Nirvana box set at an affordable price. It cost $50, whereas back home it sets you back more than 70 euros.

Had the requisite whopper (still pissed off that BK retreated from Finland so early), and bought a frighteningly official album for State Quarters. I’ve gathered a few during the last few years, and now it’s time to see how many different ones I actually have. Turns out that there’s two variants of each coin - one for each mint, Denver or Philadelphia.

Fought sleep bravely for several hours after getting back to the hotel. Sam Adams’ White Ale is not bad at all, but neither a good glass of that nor NCAA basketball on tv are enough to keep from beginning to nod off at an unreasonably early hour.

Busy week at work and otherwise. That’s only to be expected after having missed the previous due to flu.

Anyway, here’s a slice of this week:

• Lemmy has bought a third pinball machine. Indiana Jones. Tough shots, but good fun. I still suck at it, less than 200M after a score or so games.
• No NHL despite a new round of negotiations.
• Missed NBA allstar game, and the collateral games.
• Finally wireless at Lavonardo HQ. A spare SMC box on loan provides immorally convenient web access from sofa.
• Haven’t seen too many movies on the Metacritic’s worst movies page. And some do not belong here… Like 8 mm, way better than what the score indicates. Most of the others probably deserve what they get.
• Kipinä seems to be quaintly Kaurismäkiän in its interior decoration.
• Lewis Trondheim’s Jussi
  Jänis is the best new comic since… since… dunno, Fables?
• Saved the city of Bögenhafen.
• Teräsbetoni shows that you can take it one step further from Manowar. The first single’s A-side is decent in a slightly cringe-inducing way, B-side not so very good at all.
• Eatz’s kaiten serves a decent miso, but hides utterly inappropriate chunks of red bell pepper in some makis. There ought to be a law. Or at least a “creativity”-warning sign.
• Carcassonne got a surprising positive review in a column in Taloussanomat. The publisher, lautapelit.fi hit the resurrection of boardgames perfectly. Apart from their shortage of the basic game. To be complemented by the first expansion’s translation next week.
• Both Kaisla and Teerenpeli sell very good wintry stouts. This is not the season of lager and hefeweizen.
• Excel’s conditional formatting continues to suck in ways not imaginable. But contrary to initial beliefs, you can do multi-cell references.

Santa Clauses spotted on street. Check.
Two prancing in front of Forum-mall.

Compilation albums in record stores. Check.
Korn and Marilyn Manson both have released their first “best of”s in time for the holiday shopping season. Both with requisite added content - Korn’s rendition of PF’s Another Brick in the Wall does pique the interest a wee bit.

On a completely unrelated track, Vanilla Coke is unofficially available in Helsinki. One of the small self-importing stores in Asematunneli proudly hawks the liquid, at a rather steep price (two euros for half a liter). Good, hope this paves the way for an official introduction soon.

Indeed, what I bought from Narita was not Sake, but something distilled further (to 45% strength). Authenticity police probably won’t mind consuming it from the sushi-picture covered ceramic sake-set, I’m sure.

Burnout 3 is fun in multiplayer as well. Not so much the races (the screen is necessarily squished to half the normal area), but the crash-competitions shine…

And my sister’s new laptop is indeed an Apple.

Visited the luxury-shops area on Madeleine Square.

Exquisite grocery shops next to each other. Never seen so many varieties of mustard available. Nor jam.

Managed to find Absinthe despite the stern statement from Alcatel’s folks we asked about its availability “it iz competely banned, forbidden, to sell it”… An official-looking spoon accompanies the bottle.