On our way up to my Dad’s on the kids’ fall break, we stopped at a gas station to get some gas, sandwiches, and to go the bathroom. Son walked in, looked around the place, and the few people hunched over their cups of coffee and their donuts, and he said, with sunshine in his voice: “Dad, this is a typical Finnish hangout.”

And it was. The gas stations used to be where people hung out and back when I was a teenager, we only had two real coffee shops in town. One of them was across the street from my Dad’s store, the other next to a bank, and being a block away from the market square, a little too far for me. So, if I ever went to a café – which I hardly ever did – I’d pick the one across the street from Dad’s store.

My hangout was the cafeteria at the hockey rink. That’s where I always found buddies, but not having a cup of coffee, but playing Pac-Man or another arcade game.

Continue reading →

For a short while, Son’s favorite song was one about a man on a polar expedition gone wrong. In the song, the man – his name is Alfred Pesonen – falls through the ice, but somehow gets back up and survives. The setback frustrates him, though, and he decides to go for an African expedition instead. While there, he sees elephants and, impressed by their size and strength – “that would beat even a walrus” – he decides to take a few of them with him to another polar expedition.

Unfortunately, the African elephants, not used to the arctic conditions, die, even though Alfred covers them with fur coats. Alfred gives up, and goes hunting for a white whale.

Years later, when scientists find them, they take them for mammoths.

Well, I can’t be entirely sure it was Son’s favorite song, because he was just a few months old when I sang it to him daily, but it’s one of the top songs on one of my favorite albums of all time: Kake Singers debut album from 1979.

Continue reading →

A few weeks ago after dinner, Sister-in-law told us about a fun game she had played at work. Or, maybe it was a work-related event, because while guessing TV themes is no brain surgery, I wouldn’t want the actual brain surgeons humming the X-files tune when they ask for the scalpel.

She had her iPhone in her hand, and she played the tunes one by one. And Wife, me, and Brother-in-law shouted out our guesses.

“Twin Peaks!”
“Friends!”
“Seinfeld!”

And then, after the first few bars of another tune, while I was still trying to put the familiar tune together with the show, Brother-in-law yelled: “ALF!”

And I kicked myself under the table. Alf! I should have got that one. After all, I still quote jokes from Alf. Oneliners like, “Noses run in my family,”, “I kill me”, and “I guess you had to be there … I WAS!”

But out loud, I said, “Oh, of course … Alf … for Alien Life Form, but he was really Gordon Shumway from Melmac,” I said, in an attempt to show off my vast Alf knowledge, because, yes, my dinner companions just had to know that one 1980s orange puppet was “really” from “Melmac”.

Continue reading →

Just like “there are times when the Phantom leaves the jungle and walks the streets of the town like an ordinary man”, you can sometimes spot me jogging a little around the neighborhood. Not very often, never far from home, but still, out there, with my lazy eye of the tiger.

Yesterday was one such day.

Continue reading →

Long before I had moved to Sweden, or met Wife, and long before there was Son and even longer for Daughter, I sat on a train. It was a red train, a commuter train, so you know it was a long time ago because it was when the trains were red, and the seats were blue, before the red-and-white and the green-and-blue-and-white trains, and before the platform at the Helsinki train station had got its roof.

Continue reading →

As I type this, every once in a while I catch a glimpse of something orange hovering over my keyboard. It’s the plastic bracelet with the New York Mets’ logo on it, together with their slogan, “Ya gotta believe!” I’ve been wearing it around my wrist for two weeks now.

I’ve been trying to become a fan for years. A fan of … anything, really, but mostly a team of some non-hockey sports team. My method has aways been the same: I first make up my mind about the sport, then go about deciding which team to choose – then buy that team’s fan merchandise.

Continue reading →

My first trip to New York City was a 30-hour layover on my way from Montreal, Canada to Helsinki, Finland. I had been at a sports fair in Canada, and had somehow managed to convince my boss that it was a good idea for me to travel through JFK, and, well, did it really matter if I stayed there for three hours or thirty? He didn’t think it did.

That’s how I arrived in New York City late on a Friday night. I was going to stay at a friend’s place in New York, and not only had he welcomed me to his home, he had also arranged for a driver to greet me at the airport.

Continue reading →

One of the things I remember best from my time in the business school is how our law professor, who apparently was very famous in Finland, told the packed classroom that “a lawyer’s best friend is the telephone.”

Now, I’m no lawyer, but I always thought it was a clever thing to say, and I’ve always remembered it. Especially when I’ve had car trouble.

I know nothing about cars, so my best friend has been the phone. Most often the call has been placed to a person I like to call “Dad”. The car doesn’t start? Dad walks me through it.

“OK, give it gas, reeeeeally pump some gas, and then turn the ignition,” he’d say.

There’s a weird noise? Dad knew the cause.

Oh, and if the car still wouldn’t start? Dad always knows a guy who can come and tow me.

Continue reading →

My Dad is, and has always been, a joker, a real prankster. He was also my hockey coach, so he knew all my friends, and sometimes that led to situations in which I didn’t think he was as cool as he thought he was – or as cool as my friends thought he was.

He was the guy who stuffed candy bars with salt and then gave them to kids on the team, or filled somebody’s pockets with a half dozen eggs when they didn’t pay attention.

My friends still tell me stories like that of my Dad, and while I laugh at the stories now, I also know I didn’t always laugh at them then.

It may be hard to be saint in the city, but I’m sure even The Boss would agree that it’s just as hard to be a cool Dad. It’s a moving target at best.

Continue reading →

Had they not rebuilt the Joensuu rink the way they have, I’d be able to show you exactly where I was when I realized I wasn’t going to become a hockey star, down to an inch. It was the middle of the night, and my team had just got back from a road trip to the west coast of Finland. I had probably not played a lot so for me, it had mostly been a 12-hour bus ride across Finland, with Twisted Sister playing in my Walkman.

I got my hockey bag from the trunk of the bus, and as I lifted it on my shoulder and started to walk towards the arena entrance. And that’s where it finally dawned on me. I wasn’t going to be the next Gretzky, or even Matti Forss, my big idol in the Finnish league.

Continue reading →