Want to1 hear2 my3 life philosophy4? Here5 goes6: Keep it7 simple8,9 stupid10.
K-I-S-S
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Fear of speed
“Tachophobia is the condition of having an abnormal, extreme, and persistent fear of speed, that is, the experience of traveling quickly.”
Each new generation seems to be moving faster than the last one. Take any sport, for example, and you will see world records broken, even if they seemed impregnable when they were set. Yes, Jim Hines, the first person to run 100 meters in under ten seconds, held his world record for 15 years, but his time of 9.95 seconds at the 1968 Olympics would have landed him in sixth place in Beijing 2008.
We are always trying to go and be faster. Faster is the first word of the Olympic motto, Citius, Altius, Fortius – Swifter, Higher, Stronger. Almost as soon as we learn to walk, we start to run. Just ten years after Henry Ford introduced the Model T, attempts were made to build a car that would fly. And with his Model T, Ford developed the assembly line, a method of faster, uniform production that revolutionized manufacturing.
Hi there, kiddo
Webmaster here. I’m probably going to get fired for this, for “invading his privacy” or whatever, but I found these photos on the desk of Risto Pakarinen and I just have to share them. See what he did now? He actually went back to his old track, took a photo of what it looks like there now, and then pasted an old photo on it. He must have copied that from somewhere – probably here – but that’s not my point.
Look at his hat! Oh, boy. Oh well, enjoy.
Memoirs of the Monopoly Hat
I know that people laugh at me these days. They call me “Old Hat” behind my back. But I don’t care, I know who I am.
The hat and 200 dollars in my pocket were all I had when I first came to this town. I am the hat.
Signed, sealed, delivered
It may be the Finn in me, but I seem to take missions seriously. Well, mission is too grand a word, really, when I mean favors people ask me and tasks they ask me to do. If somebody suggests getting a cup of coffee “tomorrow”, I hold my day free from other engagements. If I’m asked to find a good restaurant to have dinner at in Helsinki, I ask around and try to find the best one.
And if somebody asks me to deliver three golf shirts to some hockey people when I go on vacation in Vancouver, I deliver those shirts no matter what.
Soundtrack of my life
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.
What the smurf?
Let’s start with a fact. I am officially 170 centimeters tall. I don’t know what that is in feet and inches, but whatever it is, it’s below the average in most Western countries. It is the average height for males in Brazil, and above the average in countries like Bahrain, Chile, and Gambia. In Indonesia, where the average height for males is 1.58, I would be considered tall.
(Seriously, Google tells me I’m 5 feet and 6 inches and fifty-nine-sixty-fourths tall.)
This used to be my playground
For the next three weeks, I’ll be in Helsinki, Finland, to cover the hockey world championships. It’ll be my longest stay in my hometown since 2004 when Wife and I moved back to Stockholm after a two-year stint as a Swedish-Finnish couple in Finland.
I was born in Helsinki, I started school there, I went to university there, and I got my first real job there. I’ve also moved out of Helsinki four times.
Writing on the wall
My grandmother liked to talk about death a lot. The turning of time seemed to be very much present in her life, and in her relationship with everybody, including her grandkids. One of her favorite topics, as it related to death, was the inheritance.
When I was about ten years old, I fell in love with a brown, leather coin purse of hers. I played with it, opened and closed it, put it in my pocket, pulled it back out again, feeling very cool. My Grandma watched me play with it, and she asked me if I liked it. I did, I told her.
“Risto, I’ll give that to you. As an advance inheritance. So when I die, you can tell the others that I gave that to you, and that it’s yours,” she told me.
Blast from the past
I saw this photo (below) on Twitter, and sent a link to a buddy who then reminded me of a blog entry I wrote about Shanahan six years ago for the nhl.com. So I went and dug it up. Here it is:
Shanahan The Man
As you’ve probably already seen, Rangers forward Brendan Shanahan was named the inaugural winner of the Mark Messier Leadership Award this week.
Brendan Shanahan truly is a leader. He stands out from the crowd. He’s different. He’s smart, he’s a great athlete, he’s rich, he’s famous, he’s got it all. When he gives interviews, he actually answers the questions he’s asked. He looks the interviewer in the eye and delivers his thoughts in a careful manner. He’s tall, he’s dark and, yes, he’s handsome.
