Let’s go to the tape

Posted on January 7, 2020 by Risto

For a couple of years now, regardless of sport, Daughter and I have played Ed Sheeran’s “Divide” album in the car on our way to one of her games. When we play it during the trip isn’t set in stone, but we do always play it, and we do always play it from the top, starting with “Eraser”.

And we talk about this and that, but most often we simply sing along all the way to the arena, and get our minds in the right frame of mind. Hers into playing her best game, and mine, getting ready to show those hotdogs who’s boss.

Does it work?

Of course it does. Those hotdogs don’t stand a chance.

As for Daughter, it’s a nice little routine that makes her feel like a player, and gets her in a game frame of mind.

Also, it’s nice.

Continue reading →

On ZX Spectrum

Posted on September 5, 2019 by Risto

My first contact with a computer was a printout of Snoopy made out of x’s and o’s and ampersands. I don’t remember where it was, and not what the computer looked like – although in my head I saw it during one of our field trips during my two weeks with the scouts and it was one of those room-sized mainframes but both claims are just as likely to be fake memories I created as I typed this – but I can see that Snoopy as clearly as if I was holding the two-tone continuous form paper in my hand right now.

To me, it was the work of genius. Looking at it up close, it was just a mess of characters, but once you took two steps back, there was Snoopy dancing! Snoopy!

If that’s what computers could do, count me in! However, it took me a couple of years to get my hands on one.

Continue reading →

Keep pushin’

Posted on April 10, 2019 by Risto

Her name was Gladys. Must’ve been. Well, one hundred percent it would’ve been if she’d been a character in a book. An American book. From the seventies, maybe. Come on, man, that was prejudiced. Maybe even racist?

Racist? Puh-lease. How could it be racist when she was a white woman and I’m a white man.

Fine, it was a little … rude. And probably – what’s the word – “namist”? Slapping a name on to a person who I knew nothing about, except for what I saw right in front of me, and then thinking the name is a catch-all for everything. And what’s in a name? Not all Gladyses are the same. (Gladysi?)

Continue reading →

Liverpool flashback

Posted on September 29, 2018 by Risto

The Globe, The Globe,
the pub with
the
             famous
                    sloping
                           floor,
next door to the Walker’s
       and a lady
      who sells
   fruit.
A bus to Hanover St passes by,
         as the Starbucks busboy
            picks up trash.
At night, he plays
        in a band
             called
                          the Deetles.
At The Globe, The Globe:
the pub with
the
             famous
                    sloping
                           floor.

A notebook entry, July 2017.

The old man and the lady

Posted on May 18, 2018 by Risto

At the Coca-Cola museum in Atlanta, Georgia, visitors get a nice introduction to the history of Coke, from John Pemberton’s times when the drink still contained cocaine and was used as medicine to present day when Coke (and Diet Coke, and Coke Zero) can be found anywhere and everywhere.

Continue reading →

The Ambassador

Posted on March 19, 2018 by Risto

Once upon a time, she had been a wunderkind. An overachiever, a go-getter. She had graduated from high school a year ahead of time, and then joined the foreign office as a 20-year-old, and in another time, she would have been on track to become the youngest foreign minister in her country’s history, and probably, the youngest prime minister, and possibly, the first female prime minister.

But not in the Seventies, maybe not even in the Eighties, although after Thatcher in the UK, there were some rumblings – in the circles that were in the know – about her becoming a cabinet member, but by then, she was too far into her diplomatic life overseas, and loved it too much to put in the effort to make it happen. She had her supporters, of course, but not enough of them at the very top.

Also, she had always been one of those people who saw the whole world, not just one country, as her domain, and when she at the age of 24 got her first foreign posting – an undersecretary in Asia – she saw it as a stepping stone to … something.

Continue reading →

Clean house

Posted on February 6, 2018 by Risto

He knew it right away, the second he got out of the taxi and saw the footprints in the snow. He had expected to see footprints in the snow, yes, because his wife was walking in front of him – while he carried their luggage.

He didn’t like seeing his wife’s footprints in the snow, either, but he had stopped raising the issue a long time ago. She just didn’t think it was important, not like he did. On the other hand, he didn’t think vacuuming was important. She did. For example.

Continue reading →

Door 3: Buddies

Posted on December 3, 2017 by Risto

During my university years, my student apartment in Helsinki was an old hotel room converted into a student apartment which gives you a good idea of what it was like but in short: it was tiny.

I didn’t need much, though, just my vinyls and an ever growing collection of CDs that provided me with the most of the soundtrack of my life. Also, I had Sky Channel and its music shows so there was always music playing in the background from the moment I got up and grabbed the remote to the moment when it fell on the floor from my hand.

And yet, when I think back to those days, I think of just two songs.

Continue reading →

A Swedish lesson

Posted on September 29, 2017 by Risto

I don’t know what startled me more, what was being yelled at the office or who was yelling in the office, or whether it was the combination of what and who.

Thinking back, I think it may have been neither, because I couldn’t make out the words anyway and I didn’t recognize the voice so what shocked me must have been simply the sound. I didn’t know what it was, except that it was such a loud and piercing sound that not even Journey (playing in my headphones) could push it back, and I know I tried. I didn’t stop believin’ but I did remove my headphones to get a better idea what was going on.