I can see the McDonald’s golden arches on a rooftop on the other side of the bay from my hotel room. I can also see the big white cathedral, the national museum, and the Hesperia park and the trees around it turning red and yellow. Down below, green trams are going up and down Mannerheimintie, the five and a half kilometers long main street that begins from Erottaja, the most expensive lot in the Finnish version of Monopoly, and turns into highway 3 in the north end.

The McDonald’s sign may have been there 17 years ago, I’m not sure, but I don’t think it was. Neither was the Helsinki Music Centre, or the glass cube which is home to Sanoma, a major Finnish media house.

Mostly, the view over Helsinki looks exactly like it did in 1994 when the NHL took brought Teemu Selänne’s Winnipeg Jets came to town to show how things were done in North America.

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Sometimes, late at night, when the neighbourhood is quiet, and even the teenagers with the mopeds have gone to bed, I wake up. It’s the silence that wakes me up, but when I sit up, and listen, I can hear a long, whining sound in the distance.

And I laugh.

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One summer, twenty years ago, I decided that I wanted to play soccer again. I hadn’t done it in years, but I got some guys together, mostly my hockey teammates, and I signed us up for a season in a recreational league.

Our red shirts with “Ericsson Hotline” on the chest were a donation from my Dad’s store, the numbers on the back I had ironed on myself. After all, that’s what coach-GMs do.

In one August evening match, we had a new guy on the pitch, a lanky, blond guy who had a fantastic stride as he flew down the left lane. He was one of my late recruits, a necessary addition, due to some injuries and general summer recreational soccer league no-shows.

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Many years ago, in a world without the Internet, when people in Finland didn’t want to line up to the bank to go pay their bills, they could send them to the bank to be automatically – in a world when IT was still automatic data processing – withdrawn from their account on the due date.

All banks had their own systems, but the one in which I worked one summer, had something they (we) called the Green Envelope. It couldn’t have been easier: all you had to do – besides have money – was to stuff the green envelope with your bills, and send it to the bank. And the best part was that those special green envelopes didn’t even need postage stamps.

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When Wife and I met over a decade ago – time flies when you’re having fun raising a family – the beginning of our relationship was all a big secret. After all, it was an office romance, and we didn’t want people talking about us, so we kept it all under wraps and during office hours, we acted normal. Nobody suspected anything.

Or so we thought.

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I spend most of most days sitting at home, in my home office, in front of my laptop. I sit here, under a photo of Bobby Orr’s “The Goal”, and I type away. I chat, and I make those funny comments on Facebook, I tweet, I email, and I write stories.

I still tell people how great it is to work late at night when the family has gone to bed, “because there are no interruptions, the phone won’t ring”, but I don’t know why I say that. The phone never rings.

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I have about 400 friends on Facebook. One of them is my mother. Right now, her status is, “another CrossFit torture awaits tomorrow.”

If you don’t know what CrossFit is, I’m sorry, but I can’t help you. I don’t know what it is, either. I mean, I can guess that it’s some kind of a workout method, and based on what Mom told me, it’s really good. Weights, and balance, and stretching, and more balance. Agility, too. All great things for anyone, but as Mom told me, “important stuff as you get older.”

It’s no surprise that I didn’t know what CrossFit was, or is. I’m the guy who still has the exact same workout regime he had 15 years ago. It’s actually true. When I do go to the gym, Friday is still my leg day, and I do the same exercises I’ve always done.

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The CEO stood in front of the entire staff, all of them dressed in casual summer clothes, and recapped the assignment that was about to cap off the official part of the conference. One more push and then they all would get back on a boat, get back to the mainland, and go have dinner at a nice restaurant.

But first, the assignment, the creative challenge that would also – hopefully – generate some solid ideas that the CEO could then use in sales. With about 40 great minds gathered in one place, she went for the kill.

“So, your assignment is to create a magazine concept for Marimekko,” she announced.

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If you’re not already on Twitter, and are thinking about joining, don’t. If you, poor bastard, are on Twitter, why aren’t you following me?

Oh yes, I’m there, one of millions and millions of people thinking that there are people out there who’d like to hear what I have to say. All those funny observations that usually only Wife gets to hear – as well as links to my stories that I usually make Wife read – I can now broadcast to the world! To the world, I say!

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“Can’t you tell me those funny George Lucas’s Beard jokes again, Dad?” said Son.

“Sure I can,” I said.

Sometimes I don’t even realize how funny I am. Some of those times I’m funny because I make a “cute” mistake in Swedish, and Wife just can’t get enough of it. Or, I’m so scared on a roller coaster that I hold on to the car with my knuckles white as snow, my arms all spread out, so that I practically push Wife over board, and when she then sees me on the post-ride photo, she tells me that I’m “doing that funny thing with my face again.”

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