I don't know for sure what goes through Mikhail Grabovski's mind when he scores for Belarus, besides general feelings of happiness and pride, but I wouldn't be surprised if a part of the mental images his brain produces are of a Belarusian man, named Yas, let's say, out on the field mowing clover, dreaming about Yanina, a hardworking girl!

That's what I will be thinking about, anyway, now that I've learned what the Belarusian goal song, "Касіў Ясь канюшыну" (Kasiu Yas' Kanyushinu) is all about. Now, I would have known that earlier had I understood the title of the song, which is, in short: Yas mows clover.

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You know, I was thinking...

Stuck On You

They’re playing Elvis in this coffee shop. The barista behind the counter is singing along, and when the song reached the end, she was really belting it. Don’t look now - I can’t - but I know she’s even doing the moves.

This must be the best coffee shop in Stockholm, this “V. Street Coffee” almost across the street from the main station. It’s small, but it’s got character - like you know who - like all the cool coffee shops in the world. It’s not a franchise, not a copy of somebody else’s idea, it’s its own thing. On the walls there are posters from the 1950, the price list looks like it’s from the 1970s.

And of course, the barista knows everybody.

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Today, Valentine’s Day, is Wife’s birthday. This morning, Son woke me up, then woke up his sister while I went downstairs to prepare breakfast. And we walked into the bedroom, singing, carrying a tray, and presents. Son and Daughter had made birthday cards, too, but I forgot mine. So here it is. (I centered it so it’d look like a poem).

Last week – or, six days ago, to be precise – I was, once again, walking to the gym listening to a hockey podcast, like so many times before, when I suddenly noticed something out of the ordinary in front of me.

There, parked by the side of the bike lane, was a shopping cart.

A #%#€”& shopping cart, I said to myself, under my breath, naturally.

I looked around to see if I could find the culprit, but it was as hopeless as my efforts to memorize the face of a seagull shitting on me. And yet, when that happens - it’s happened to me twice in the last ten years - I always look up, wave my fist, and point a the bird with my finger, as a warning.

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I'm one of those unlucky people who had a happy childhood.
– Jonathan Coe, author

“Risto always says he didn’t have any toys when he was a kid,” Wife told the three other people gathered around the table, and around the birthday cake with a big number 1 on it.

Then she laughed and the others laughed, too. He’s such a joker, she said, and we all agreed, but for different reasons. Maybe the others thought the idea of somebody having no toys was really funny, ridiculous even, but I just happen to think I’m a pretty funny guy and a fine joker, generally speaking.

And I do tell people I didn’t have any toys when I was a kid. Or, at least Wife and the kids, and my mother.

Because it’s true.

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Here's the year 2011 as chronicled in the opening lines of stories published in the New Yorker throughout the year. What a year!

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First time you feel it, it might make you sad
Next time you feel it it might make you mad
But you'll be glad baby when you've found
That's the power makes the world go 'round

In the winter of 1985, JVC handed out free tickets to see a movie about a young kid traveling back in time. I had read in the Rolling Stone that Huey Lewis and the News had a couple of songs in the movie, but didn’t know much else. I didn’t even know that JVC handed out free tickets, but when my father asked me if I wanted to go, I said yes.

It was a special afternoon matinee, starting at 4.30, which was perfect, because it meant that I would still be able to make it to the hockey game the same night. The game started at 6.30 so if I ran or walked briskly, there was still a chance to make it to the rink before the opening faceoff.

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I know exactly when I knew that I probably wasn’t cut out to be a major league hockey player. Not that I really had thought about it much. When I was a kid, I just loved to play so I just moved from one age group to another, as simple as that.

Of course I had dreams, and of course I would have wanted to be just like Valeri Kharlamov, or Wayne Gretzky, or Hannu Kapanen, or Matti Hagman, or Frank Neal, all my big idols at one point.

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A friend of mine is a synesthete, a person with a “neurologically based condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway”. What it means in her case is that when she sees or hears a number, she sees a specific color.

To her, four is always blue.

And here I was thinking that I was special for always connecting the number 2 and the letter A.

For some reason, though, my view of the calendar is a bit skewed. I know it’s easy to connect the 12 months of the year to the 12 hours of a clock, but in my brain, the connection isn’t a straightforward “1 for January, 2 for February” one, even though my year does start at noon.

Noon is the New Year’s Eve.

Then we have the spring, and at 3, the summer strikes. It’s all nice and easy, hanging out in the sun, until seven. That’s when the summer’s over, the autumn falls, and the school starts. From 7, I work my way up towards Son’s birthday, around nine, to my birthday, around ten, and to Xmas at about 11.30.

Right now, my mental clock calendar is 7. That also means that the hockey season is about to start.

“I’ve never seen you cry”
– Son, a few months ago

Well, he’s just not been there because I do cry. Ask Wife. I cry when the world treats me unfairly or when my kids do yet another wonderful thing and the emotions are just too much for me to keep under control.

I cry out of pride and I cry out of pain.

Different kinds of tears, I know. They even taste different.

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Part I: Urinals

1. As soon as you have located the urinals - a task that may be difficult when entering a rest room for the first time - you should position yourself at the first available one. Note: available. If the closest one already has an individual occupying it, the first available one is not the one next to him, but the one next to that one. Only when there are only two urinals in the restroom, should you place yourself right next to another person urinating.

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By Son.

In another time, some time ago, even before I used sugar water to comb my fair like Fonzie, and before I had a crush on Julie on Love Boat, back when I used to play cowboy, this town was my summer town where things were done a little differently than at home.

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“You used to be great at giving those speeches”
– Wife, the other day

Now, first off, it should be noted that I am not much of a speaker.

My first public speaking experience took place in a church. I was nine years old and I had been chosen to read the gospel at school. Never in the history of mankind have Joseph and Mary got so fast from Nazareth to Bethlehem as they did in my recital.

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The elevator at my hotel in Bratislava was the kind that have doors on both sides so that you never really know which way to face. And as I got in, the people in there had already figured out that the front of the elevator was on the other side, which meant that when I entered the car from the back, I found myself staring at Vyacheslav Bykov’s neck.

I was a little disappointed because I had expected to be able to jump in and practice my Blue Steel look without an audience.

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I always feel lost when I’m traveling. Not because I don’t find my way around the city, because most of the times I do. But because I lose my pocket system.

Like many men, I don’t carry a bag with me. No messenger bag, not a back pack, and no man purse. Whatever I think I’m going to need, I carry with me in my pockets.

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I used to be able to fit a hockey puck in my mouth. Sure, it took some pushing, and I had to pull my lips over with my hands, but at least on that one sunny, spring day, I could do it, and I have witnesses who can back me up.

Well, you may not think that’s anything special.

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Unlike Groucho Marx, I’d be happy to get into a club that would have people like me as a member. As a kid, I started numerous clubs, and always designed membership cards for each of them: Tarzan club, Pecos Bill club, Tex Willer club, and Woody Woodpecker club. They were ultimate anti-Groucho Marx clubs, because most of them had just one member: me.

I didn’t care about not having any other members in my clubs, that wasn’t the point anyway. The point was the card, the official badge that I could flash whenever I felt like it. The cards had my name, my membership number - “1” - and the club logo on them, often “a stamp” of the main authority. Me.

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I've been thinking about this for a long time, but haven't got around to trying to make one. Anyhow, you know how certain songs always take you back to a certain place? Like, for me, Bruce Springsteen's "Night" always takes me back to that one winter's night when I was in high school, and Dad stopped at the traffic lights and then the drums kicked off "Night". I know exactly where we were.

And "Heaven's on fire" makes me think of Terry, and how he would rest his feet on our dog while watching music videos.

I was sitting, resting, at the gym at the Orillia Y when that summer's big hit, "Brickyard Road" was playing and I remember hearing the lyrics clearly for the first time, and how sad I thought it was.

So, here's my attempt to create my historical musical map. I'll update it as new songs pop into mind.


See a larger map on Google.

I read a great story in the paper this morning, about a Guldsmedshyttan hockey team that was getting ready to put the finishing touch on their Cinderella story in Sweden’s under-16 national championship tournament.

The team hails from a 3000-people strong village of Bergslagen and had beat big Swedish clubs, such as Djurgården, Linköping, and Leksand, on their way to the Final Four, against all odds.

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I've been playing around with Twitter short stories lately. So, if you're on Twitter, you can follow @finnjewel*, and get these 140-character stories delivered to you. (And yes, it's surprisingly easy to follow a story with 140 characters.)



Here they are, in no particular order:

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Today, I watched Ghostbusters 2.

I loved the original Ghostbusters movie when it came out. I loved the title song, and I thought Bill Murray was the funniest and coolest guy in the world.

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The commuter train that I take from downtown Stockholm to our idyllic Sollentuna is probably about 100 meters long. Maybe a little longer, maybe 150, even, because it takes me a good minute to walk from one end to the other.

It may not sound significant, but choosing where to get on is a big decision, because it practically also seals my decision to either walk home, or take the bus.

Front of the train: bus. End of the train: walk.

It’s an 11-minute walk in the winter, and a 9-minute-walk in the summer.

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Driving north on Sankt Eriksgatan in Stockholm, at the intersection between the said street and Rörstrandsgatan, there’s a no-left turn sign. I see it every day, when Son and Daughter and me are driving home from school. (It's here.)

We’re always on the left lane because the right one is only for those turning right, and the traffic is always easier on the left lane anyway. I pick up the kids, on average, four times a week, but for argument’s sake, let’s just say I’m in my car, driving north at Sankt Eriksgatan and Rörstrandsgatan three times a week, sometime between 3 and 3.30. (Singing, talking, playing car games, refereeing a backseat argument, or, just quietly listening to a podcast while Son and Daughter listen to a CD).

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“If you find a job you really love, you'll never work again.”
– Winston Churchill

I’m listening to “The Upside of Irrationality”, by Dan Ariely, because I like to hear how stupid we people are. I like books that take down things that we’ve been taking for granted, like for example, that the bigger the bonus, the better the performance. (According to Ariely, a moderate bonus works best, and a huge bonus actually makes people choke, or lose focus).

He also writes about the importance of meaning in work, and cites several of his experiments as proof of how not only money, but the meaning of the work we do, matters. “Even a small amount of meaning can take us a long way,” he says.

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I was walking home from the gym - after a nice hour of sauna if you're curious - listening to music - Bruce Springsteen, and The Promise, if you really want to know - and had just walked through the underpass when I saw something that made me stop: two sets of footprints in the snow.

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FADE IN.

GROCERY STORE – INT. – DAY
A man is standing at the sausage counter, trying to choose which one to have as a younger man appears behind him, with two children in tow.

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To You Pakarinen
I am DUANE COKER, the Personal Attorney to a Foreign Contractor, who
worked with a Multinational Oil Firm here in Cotonou Benin republic.
On the December 25, 2003 , my client,Engr. B. J Pakarinen ,a national of your country,an oil Merchant /Contractor with the Federal Government of
Benin,He died along with his entire family of a wife and two children in
airplane Boeing 727 ghastly Air-Crash.
For more about the Air Crash you can visit the CNN web news.
Until his death few years ago on one have call me or ask me anything as his Brother or Sister,
Before his death, he had an account with the bank valued at five Million Five hundred thousand dollars ( 5.5 M USD) at his Bank in Benin here.

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Walking back from Tallinn, Estonia downtown to the ferry that would take me back to Helsinki, I stopped at a … shopping place. Too shabby to be called a mall, but enough of a building not to be called a square, it was simply a place where entrepreneurial Estonias sell everything under the sun.

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Somebody sent me a message on Facebook this morning.

Hi, Risto,

I read somewhere that you own a book about Valeri Kharlamov. I’d like to buy it, if you’re willing to sell it. You can name your price…

Hockey greetings,
M

PS. You are the hockey writer, right?"

» Continued

You may want to check out Hunch.com. Just a gut feeling I have.


But I'm the opposite of a cat person. And I definitely don't have a thing for redheads.

But sure, blue pens are cool. And it did recommend these professions for me:


An interesting read.

The end is nigh. The end of summer vacation, that is. Tomorrow morning, at about 8 am, I will be left alone in this home office of mine. No more bicycle trips to the pool house, no more making pancakes for lunch, no more football matches or games of petanque in the park, no more lazy days in my lazy chair outside while the kids run around with their friends.

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Let’s say you’re in charge of a big science park, a place that introduces science to kids and families. Let’s say you want to have a unique attraction, something to keep people buzzing about your fine establishment for years and years.

Because you know that what you have is pretty darn good. You have all the cool things that people love to try out; the Indian fakir spike mats, the mirrors, the car with the square wheels, and dozens and dozens of other cool tests that explain gravity, light, mathematics, and laws of physics in an entertaining way.

But, like I said, let’s say you also want to spice it up a bit. Would you go with dancing bears, or an Einstein lookalike walking around, solving math problems with the visitors, fireworks in a bottle, or a full-blown particle accelerator?

Or would you instead train rats to play basketball with a ball that - in its former life - used to be in a deodorant roll-on stick? And would you then stop there, or would you create a pro league for the rats?

You know how “they” always say that 80 percent of human communication is body language. Some of them actually throw the numbers around a bit, based on “new studies” - this is where Son would ask me if I meant that ironically, and I kind of do - or whatever happens to suit their message so who knows which number is right. Maybe it’s 55 percent, or maybe 93.

Let’s just agree that it’s very important, muy importante.

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FADE IN.

INT. CAFETERIA - DAY.

Two men standing in line to a buffet table. They work in the same office, but don't usually eat lunch together.


Man in a suit and a red tie steps aside, and lets the man in a blue tie reach for the turkey.

Traditions are funny. Not in the ha-ha funny sense, but the other, the “you’re right, now that I think about it” kind of way. It’s interesting how they are created, and especially how fast things become tradition, or at least the way they’ve “always been done”.

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Son, "in character", Vanity Fair style.

Last week, I shared an elevator with a Russian man who was wearing a pink pullover and pink pants. We shared the elevator going down and I went to see if I couldn't find a place where I could buy chips and a Coke, he to see if he couldn't own the dance floor at the Piano Bar in the lobby.

He was successful. I wasn't.

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Seeing the silver man, the Roman soldier, the clown, and the human water fountain do their tricks - or in silver man's and Roman soldier's case, doing absolutely nothing - on the square outside the Cologne Cathedral made me think what I always think when I see street artists.

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Well, maybe not faces, but names that make me think of familiar faces. In Germany, everybody is Anders.

For a guy who still has the 18 'Til I Die T-shirt from Bryan Adams's 1996 European Tour and several other T-shirts that are twice as old as his kids, I feel surprisingly confident with my ability to spot – and even better, to create – fashion trends.

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Every day, at around 2.45 pm, I get in the car and drive ten kilometers south, to the Finnish School in Stockholm, to pick up Son and Daughter. Or, every day when I’m not at the Olympics or the hockey World Championships for a couple of weeks at a time. But, as a rule, I’m at the school and kindergarten at three, and then we drive back up, singing, and talking about their day – and Star Wars.

We’re back home at 3.45, the latest, and then we hang around about an hour, before it’s time for me to start to cook dinner. When the kids are sick - I hear Daughter coughing now - or have a random Easter holiday, they can stay at home with me.

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What exactly is going through his mind? Leave your suggestion in the comments. The winner will receive the high resolution image with the thought bubble s/he penned in it, in return email.

“I hate luck!”
– Son

We all hate luck when it works against us, don’t we? In Son’s case, the luck he so much despised was the wind in my sails as I moved my two knights into a striking position, about to kill his king in our friendly Easter holiday afternoon game of chess.

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Of all the holidays in all the towns in all the world, Easter is my least favorite one.

It's not a bad holiday, I have nothing against it, I just don't have a relationship with it. Our family wasn't big on eating lamb, I've never been out begging for candy dressed as a witch, and ... that's all I know about Easter traditions.

I have no special Easter memories, no Easter trip stories, no crazy relatives that always turned up at Easter. Besides, since Easter always closed all the stores and restaurants in Finland when I was a kid, the only fun thing it ever brought was mämmi, and while the 16th century traditional Finnish dessert was and is a treat, it wasn't, and isn't, enough.

However, today we returned the Santa Claus kit - the beard, the boots, the overcoat - to Wife's parents, the Keepers of the Mask - a nice connection between the two big, religious holidays.

The Fantastic Four, also known as Family, walked slowly through the shopping mall, towards the bus stop. Wife carried the backpack with all the food we had just bought, I had a loaf of bread in my hand – a miscalculation, yes –, Son was 50 meters ahead of Wife and me, Daughter was examining something 50 meters behind us.

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Remember a while ago when I wrote that "remember a while ago when I wrote that “[t]here is no place - and this is no exaggaration, simply a fact, so I repeat it: no place - a Swede can’t set up a bench, or hasn’t already done so"?"

Well, the other day I went for a walk with the family and I thought about how in the fall I wrote that "I went for a walk and thought about how I said that, and how right I was. I think I may have even said it out loud, 'that thing you wrote about the benches last summer, on July 14, that was so right on, it was so true.'"

The thing that made me remind myself of that piece that made me remind myself of the other piece was a bench that I saw on my way to the mall.

This one:

I still don't get this.