It’s become painfully obvious to everybody that I am no handyman. I’m not somebody whose idea of having a great time is to disappear into the garage and fix stuff. My idea of a good time is to hang around that person and talk and maybe play ball.

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I can think of at least five meetings I’ve been invited to sit in just because I am Finnish. Not that I didn’t enjoy sitting in - I’m pretty fond of the Swedish meeting culture with the coffee and the bullar, the cinnamon buns - and not that I took it as an insult or so, I just thought it was pretty obvious to everybody that I was there just so our company could show the prospective (Finnish) client that we had intimite knowledge of Finland, and Finns. We had one sitting right there in the office. Me.

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I just bought a new bike, and realized, again, how much fun riding a bike is, but then I read Christopher McDougall's "Born to Run," and I think - I think - that even though I have said (many times) in the past that "Running Is The Devil", I may give running one more chance, just because I also like the idea of running barefoot.

After all, I ran barefoot to school and back, ten kilometers, uphill, each way, through the snow, when I was a kid.

Good times.

Official announcement from the office of Risto Pakarinen: I am the new new renaissance man of the 21st century, the kind who can’t do anything. By “do” I mean fix things, plant anything, or make any visible - constructive, literally - changes in my surroundings.

But I can play ball.

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Being the President of Finland still seems to have some pull. Yesterday, H, the boy genius - both self-proclaimed and encouraged by parents - surprised me right in the middle of a nice bike ride to the grocery store.

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Our family is bilingual, and since I write a lot in English, I switch between three languages all the time, every day. Every language is special in its own way, and each of them portray my personality in a slightly different way.

Even my voice is a little different depending on whether I’m speaking Finnish, Swedish, or English, let alone the style of my speech. A good American friend of mine once noted that while he was getting more fluent in Swedish while living in Stockholm, he always counted money in English. I seem to be doing the same, only, I count in Finnish.

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Seems to me that life is a chain of small races, competitions. I’m sure there are people out there who don’t care about competing that much, and who are happy just to participate, but I'm not one of them.

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