I’m writing this in the kitchen of the northern-most Swedish family in the world, looking over the world’s northern-most concrete plant, with my back towards the northern-most hospital in the world. I believe that right now, I may just be the northern-most Finnish freelancer in the world, and for sure, this is my northern-most blog entry ever.
“Now that I’ve just tasted coffee, it tops my list of things that taste bad”
– Son, June 28, 2010
Many of the human treats are truly acquired tastes. Who really likes the taste of beer? Coffee? Wasabi? Any kind of alcohol? Blue cheese? I know I didn’t. On the other hand, some of my early favorites don’t taste that good anymore. Like, milk, and specifically breast milk.
“The Crown Princess waved at me!”
– Son, outside the Royal Castle in Stockholm, June 19, 2010 at 6 pm
We made the trek from our Stockholm suburbia to downtown Stockholm, the self-proclaimed Capital of Scandinavia, now, thanks to the Royal Wedding also doubling as the love capital of the world. The subway ride was free partly to make sure no idiot – especially a Finnish-born idiot – would decide to drive to the city, and partly because the Princess herself wanted to keep her wedding as environmentally friendly as possible.
A few days ago, I heard an interesting radio show about an experiment some Washington Post reporters ran, on themselves.
So when eight Post reporters got to talking about their attachment — no, addiction — to their BlackBerrys, phones, Twitter and Facebook, it was only natural that someone said, okay, let’s go without, if only for a week. No Web, period. If you need to talk to someone, do it in person or by phone.
Everyone got excited: What would our friends and loved ones think if we didn’t respond to their texts and e-mails? Would we be able to do our work? Could we make it five whole days?
Some of them did.
I admit it, I missed the memo on fist bumps. I guess I was still pretty much on the map when the secret handshakes were around, although the one me and Terry had in 1985 wasn’t ever used. It had three different stages, ending in a finger hook. Maybe even a pointing gesture. But it was never used in a real-life situation.
Nobody’s doing the secret handshakes anymore. It’s all fist bumps. I’m not saying that I don’t like it, because I kind of do. I get the bonding, and in some way, I like most hand gestures: the peace sign, the thumbs up, high-five, and the like.
I went through high school in a city with a population of about 50 000. Not a huge city, in other words, but still a major town in Finland, well-known and all.
I’ve always spent a lot of time with Dad at work. It was at the backroom of my uncle’s store he made all those hockey masks for me, and it was the same store where I crashed through the glass door. (I was trying to be as cool as Dad and his colleagues who ran up the three stairs inside the store, opened the door, and kept on running.)
When Dad took a job at another store, I followed him there, playing my first games of Pong there, and having endless hours of fun with a typewriter, and a pencil and a fan.
She came running from behind me, and swooshed by, with a quick step, arms pumping up and down, giving her the beautiful rhythm I think she has. I’ve said it a hundred times, I’ll say it again: Daughter knows how to run!
She stopped, and opened her jacket, then took it off, ignoring Wife’s and my protest.
“I’ll wear it, I’ll wear the hood over my head. Just the hood,” she said, then asked me to help her put on the jacket so the hood was over her head.
I did, and then kept on walking. Two seconds later she came running again – oh, so beautifully – yelling that she was a superhero.
I did the same thing when I was a kid as did surely millions of kids around the world. I would wear my yellow bathrobe an jump down from the benches in the sauna dressing room, pretending I was flying. I know I haven’t told Daughter about that, so it must be an idea that just occurred to her. And to millions of kids around the world.
We all want to be superheros. We all want to be powerful. We all want to be special. Only the heroes change.
In her head, Daughter was Batman.
Jumping down from that bench in a Helsinki suburb decades earlier, I wanted to be Super-Goofy.
“Ha ha, like your old boss”
– Wife, on Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt sticking his fingers up his nose while watching hockey.
Bosses, I’ve had a few. But then again, too few great ones to mention. I’m probably not an easy employee, and it’s not because I want to be difficult or because I think I’m smarter that the rest – although I understand that even writing that as a possibility probably qualifies me as a jerk – or because I ask tough questions. I sometimes do ask silly questions and I often tried to make everybody laugh at a company meeting, back when I still had bosses.
These days, I have clients.
When I moved to Sweden over twelve years ago, I told my parents that it wasn’t such a big deal because “Stockholm is closer to Helsinki than Joensuu is”. Helsinki was my hometown then, and Joensuu theirs.
It’s true. The distance between Stockholm and Helsinki is 398 kilometers, while the Joensuu-Helsinki trek is a 440-kilometer one (and I know every inch of it).
