Lavonardo

And that’s the magazines (old storage houses as opposed to weekly newspapers) smack dab in the middle of the town. The ones that were in severely worn condition. The ones that were slated to be demolished next week.

Looks like someone beat the official demolition team to the show.

And nope, didn’t see the fire - the flu has taken a sudden surge upwards, which sure isn’t nice. Didn’t even see the smoke, proving that there’s a serious dead angle between Haaga and downtown.

The incident is considered to have been an arson, according to witnesses there was a loudish bang and the fire spread unnaturally quickly within the southernmost house.

Citizen journalism was very much in action as well - there’s plenty of images available on the web - view them through the likes of pinseri.

Seems that a busdrivers strike is a semi-annual event now. Slated to begin today at 1800, the strike would mean that almost all companies jointly handling the municipal traffic in the Helsinki metroplex area would stop.

Originally the strike was set to begin already two weeks ago, but that date, being the start of kids skiing vacation, would have not been disruptive enough. Tomorrow will be, considering that mr. weatherman has promised an ample supply of snow for the beginning of the week.

As collateral damage to the bus drivers, also the grabagemen go on strike. Of which the Lavonardo HQ gets to enjoy the benefits sooner than most - sometimes it’s not advantageous to share the house with a grocery store. And no pied piper of Haaga has yet shown up to take care of the local rat population.

Had a bit of time to kill yesterday before the movie. And the time taken was worthy, since the theatre was almost sold out and having first row seats next to the screen is never pleasant.

So, had a bit of time in my hands, and went to see the newly opened second phase of the Kamppi mall located pretty much next door.

As expected it was crowded, but not to the point of claustrophobia. However, must have been the fresh paint or some otherwise absent factor that caused the roiling masses to totally forgot how to use escalators. Crowds gathered on both ends oblivious to others wishing to step on or disembark. Seriously, it’s not that hard, folks - and you can practice at your leisure even with regular stairs.

Browsed a couple of stores in semi-interested fashion. The much-touted Niketown (first in Scandinavia, supposedly) was very much on the small side. The Quiksilver outlet had a thin selection of t-shirts and the ones available were ugly, expensive and usually both.

The mall seemed to be entirely without a record store, and the resident petstore looked very generalistic - the fishtanks were newly set up, so the cloudiness has a natural explanation.

The twelve-lane bowling alley seemed packed to the gills, and if nothing else, that arena is a worthy addition to the services offered by downtown Helsinki. To add to the big chunk of floorspace in the basement devoted to feeding customers, a couple of new establishments had been opened. Spotted one bar - big, dutch-style pub; and there’s supposedly a brewery at another location. Time to investigate when the crowds have thinned out.

On one hand, it turns out that the much-maligned finnish loss was not all wasted.

If we had won, there would have been thousands and thousands of people witnessing an utter catastrophe of a celebration.

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.

Broke several years abstainment and joined in on the festivites of the annual Helsinki Night of the Arts.

Weather wasn’t perfect, but rain very much remained in the background. A complete rainbow formed across the sky during the busride and remained for quite an extended period of time. Unfortunately the phone camera didn’t quite capture it right. The sunset on Mannerheimintie turned out better, but there’s disconcerting amount of toppling buildings in that one.

Didn’t do much downtown. Saw Alamaailman Vasarat on Esplanade Stage. Were in good form, and had appropriately inane raps: “let’s all say ‘TAIDE’ now!” and “is cauliflower, in your opinion, bad?” Could have listened longer to them, despite the drizzling rain. And would definitely have bought a t-shirt, if they’d been available as advertised.

Skipped a visit to the official neppis-competition at Makasiinit due to high cover cost. Eight euros is kinda high for a drop-in visit - right? Especially when the activities all around town were completely gratis in contrast.

Saw the thus far only ladybug this summer. Inside akateeminen kirjakauppa, of all the places. Of the smaller two-spotted species, and not the real thing. Pleasant encounter anyway, and one that proves that summer is far from over. Despite the rapidly accelerating nightfalls.

Took a look (and a Corona) in Stockholm, a new nightclub downtown. Supposedly the opening night, with free drinks - but must have missed them by just minutes. No cover charge, ok prices, excruciatingly loud volume. Don’t anticipate a quick return.

Stumbled upon Behnford’s yesterday. A smallish shop located in the Helsinki WTC, and stocked with a good selection of american foodstuffs. M&M’s, Newman’s salad dressing, Bacon bits crafted of soya, Jell-O - it’s all here.

And while the soda supplies were currently running low, there’s promise of getting a steady supply of Vanilla Coke in Helsinki, both diet and regular. And there was much rejoicing.

A thoroughly mellow summer came to an abrupt end yesterday in the neighborhood. A domestic dispute went completely and permanently wrong, resulting in one fatality and likely a long prison sentence. Happened in the middle of a day, at a wide-open marketplace, in plain sight.

Not the first time this has happened - never ever saw any cops in Vapaala during junior high and high school, but the silence was broken by a triple homicide one evening less than half a kilometer away. Even more a bolt out of the blue than this.

But both of these events were firmly in the “dysfunctional family”-camp, so I’m really not worried about violence spreading out in Haaga. Nah. The area is way too grannified for such.

EDIT 24.8.2008: The original news article is no longer available. Iltalehti seems not to believe in archives.

Unlike I assumed previously, the google maps does work well enough even with limited satellite data to show the whereabouts of Lavonardo HQ.

And the utterly missing street-information’s bound to show up sooner or later.

Google Maps now covers the whole world. Though without street-level details, or precise satellite imagery. But it’s a nudge (a big nudge at that) in the correct direction.

New bus terminal opened in kamppi. Pretty much unfinished business, with only the two lowest floors occupied at the moment.

But there are a lot of shops already present. Including EB games (where they do not speak any finnish at all, it appears) and some quite gourmet-y food emporiums. Well, at least the chocolate shop seemed to be very much on the expensive side.

But for the most part it’s nothing really new.

Shops-wise, that is. The actual terminal approaches science fiction, with per-platform monitors and altogether quite sizable resemblance to an airport, not to a bus depot. Well, I won’t be frequenting this one, since the buses to Lavonardo HQ still take off from elielinaukio.

(ObNudge: So What!, Steffan Chirazi’s unorthodox Metallica biography on sale in suomalainen kirjakauppa at 14 euros.)

More tour guidance.

Visited the ice bar at Uniq. Nice experience. Chilly, as expected. And you’re forced to put on this Romulan-Inuit coat that certainly nullifies anybody’s street cred in a moment.

Ate at Belge for the first time. Good food. Plentiful portions. Decided that three days of finnish food is torture enough for anybody.

Torni had been de-scaffolded, and the view from the Ateljee-bar on the 11th floor was still mighty good.

Souvernir t-shirts are surprisingly expensive.

And there’s a lot of image-filled books about Finland. And some manage to hit all the clichés along the way. But some don’t, thankfully.

So, another reunion draws to a close. Thanks guys. And see you in Bavaria, next year.

Played host for a bunch of visiting friends over the weekend (a non-sanctioned Utah European Alumni event).

Weather was nothing short of excellent, and sunshine was much
appreciated. Especially when it’s been raining rather severely today.

So, what’s there to do:

• Reindeer and other finnish delicacies at Lasipalatsi.
• Boat-tour of the Helsinki harbor and environs. On the chilly side, but definitely worthy.
• Day trip to Porvoo.
• More finnish specialties at Zetor. Elk sauté
  (riistankäristys) is definitely worth a visit.
• Temppeliaukio
  Church never fails.
• Mandatory nightcaps in U.Kaleva & Torni
• Suomenlinna in the evening, in high winds and bright sunshine. And before the summer crowds swallow up the islands.
• Listening to some non-descript up and coming band pound their instruments from Kappeli patio.
• Weird recycled-materials art show behind Kiasma.
• Just generally rambling around, pointing out buildings, statues and things as they are passed.

All in all an enjoyable weekend. Pictures will be posted somewhere once I wrangle them out of the camera. Don’t hold your collective breaths (and anyway, I took only a few).

And I’m definitely looking forward to the upcoming one in Munich next year.

The first finnish band that ever really made it, Hanoi Rocks, is back with a second album after reforming a couple of years ago when Michael Monroe and Andy McCoy finally decided that they can tolerate each other (and that they need the money…). The other two remaining guys decided to opt out of the reunion, so they’ve been replaced by younger players (the original duo must be pushing 45 these days), and Razzle was killed in ‘85 in a drunken car accident caused by Crüe’s Vince Neil.

Played a free promo gig on top of the “stockan kello”, a balcony on the department store’s second floor. And caused chaos, as an estimated 10000 people crowded the area around the store. Did not see much from the corner of Aleksi and Keskuskatu, but heard well, the PA system must have been turned close to eleven. And this was around 50 meters away from the stage, so closed up must have been way louder. According to a couple of trusted sources (hesari, roklintu) the entire gig was done with playback, but Mike Monroe played up his usual rock’n'roll rooster antics to cover up the fact.

Five songs. Recognized none. All from the new album, I’d expected some old classics to cap the set, either Tragedy or Don’t you ever leave me, but nope, they concentrated on the new material.

Wasn’t bad by any means, but not on the top of my shopping list.

There’s a new library in Helsinki. Smack in the very middle of downtown, maximizing convenient access by being located next to the railway station.

But it’s not a full library - actually very far from it. Seems to concentrate on music, with shelves after shelves full of cds; and comics and travel literature as an afterthought.

Picked up some in each category - KMFDM live is pleasantly crunchy, the lonely planet guide to Madagascar interesting, and the classic “Hunting Trip” graphic novel penned by Pierre Christin and illustrated by Enki Bilal as good as I remembered. Though not really topical any more, communism having gone the way of the dodo.

Old library card worked well, it’s been ages since its last use, and it has shed a lot of ink, but the self-service machinery was able to pick up the bar code still.

Erwin the storm has wreaked havoc across the northern parts of Europe, Finland has been spared the worst effects thus far.

The only noticable effect is the sea level, which is quite a bit above normal in the Helsinki harbor (five feet). Normally you can dangle your legs from the edge, today you sure couldn’t. Not much water on
the market square, but quite a lot of preventive materials, like huge bales of paper to staunch the potential flood of seawater.

But still, it was the top item in the half-past-eight news and quite a bit of people were on an evening stroll on or near the square, such displays of mother nature occur so rarely on these latitudes as to always be interesting.

[ The very first photo-blog entry. One that has revealed yet more CSS nastiness in the stylesheet. A maximally crude hack allows sensible viewing of this entry, but a proper floating behavior must be installed ASAP. Looks like the whole style model needs seriour refactoring. Well, that's what you get when you learn as you go. And prototypes were always meant to be tossed and replaced. ]

Bus drivers on strike. For the second time this fall.

Hasn’t led to much chaos, but the few remaining lines are crowded, and the trains as well.

Sympathy strikes are supposed to spread out in other cities (just the capital area now) tomorrow, probably leading to a speedy resolution. Or not, as both parties can be stubborn bastards.

Me, I’m just grateful I live in walking distance from work…

Finished Tuomas Vimma’s debut novel: Helsinki 12.

It starts off as a hedonistic tale of a true opportunist working in advertising, and turns into a violent thriller towards the end.

It’s not a bad book. The protagonist is charming in a patrickbatemanesque misogynist labeldropper kind of sense, and the two female leads are as improbable on their own.

The book’s been criticized for many things… True, it’s violent, indifferent and portrays advertising in a not too flattering light. One of the main criticisms, however, that of language falls very short of the mark. Even though the slang is artificial, and even stilted at times, it’s still coherent - and as the whole story might be just strong delusions of a single character with a penchant for odd words, it really is not that bad. And it has got some absolutely glorious oneliners within, unfortunately they get fewer towards the end and eventually replaced with garden variety macho posturing.

Yes, it’s good, it’s worthwhile, and probably does not suit most people. But, to cop an attitude from the protagonist, those sad wankers are wrong and probably in need of a dose of either spanking or Bolivian marching powder.

The rapidly chilled finnish spring (top temperature down to 5C from 26C) made it to CNN this morning. Small consolation being away, Paris is not warm either.

Indeed, what a lazy easter it’s been. Been chilling the whole weekend. Eating well, sleeping a lot and recharging batteries for the upcoming week. Finished Barabasi’s “Linked”-book. Started the new Pratchett, seems decent. Played around with taking digital macro-pictures (things closer than 20 centimeters), seems that a tripod, even a small one, would come in very useful in this. Saw the lost chopper-cops from Tampere circling around downtown (supposedly sizable drug bust in Kallio on friday).

Virus killer’s been dying out on me for the last couple of hours. It insists that it’s indeed the most “up-to-date” version. Not very promising, not promising at all. Got it cheap with the computer, so no big economical damage is incurred, if replacement is needed.

Chelsea lost and drew this weekend. Fortunately the Champions League does not continue next week, so they’ll have a decent shot of finding their mojo again.

Signed up for hattrick. Yet another sports franchise simulator where Haagan Hakkapeliitat can face insurmountable odds. This is purely a game, and not based on real players like the ones available at Yahoo. Tried quite a few this season: football (2nd - lost the bowl game), ice hockey (8th - thought that nabbing Kariya, Selänne and Lehtinen in the draft was a good thing), basketball (in progress - AK-47 produced, Kidd and Dampier also until they got hurt).