When brown is green and white is red

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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bills, they could send them to the bank to be automatically – in a world when IT was still automatic data processing – withdrawn from their account on the due date.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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Keep pushing

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I know exactly when I knew that I probably wasn’t cut out to be a major league hockey player. Not that I really had thought about it much. When I was a kid, I just loved to play so I just moved from one age group to another, as simple as that.

Of course I had dreams, and of course I would have wanted to be just like Valeri Kharlamov, or Wayne Gretzky, or Hannu Kapanen, or Matti Hagman, or Frank Neal, all my big idols at one point.

People like this totally undermine my credibility as a father, as I keep telling Son and Daughter that they're NOT allowed to sit down on the floor in a public place.

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Better than science, fiction

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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.

Warhammer.

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Stefan Liv

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When Son was born, almost nine years ago, I used to see his small, wrinkled face in my mind whenever I closed my eyes. I could be lying on a bench at the gym, and his face would emerge in front of my eyes. It’s hardly surprising since most of the time when I had my eyes opened those first few weeks, I would see his little face, too.

I didn’t want to be one of those pushy new fathers, so I didn’t carry photos of him to show to people. The one image I carried with me, of him, wherever I went, was that mental one. And maybe that’s the one I will always have with me, and maybe that’s why he will always be my baby – even now when he’s a genius almost trilingual Ph.D of Harrypotterism.

But last night, and today, when I close my eyes, the image that I see is of a smiling Stefan Liv, the Swedish goalie of the Yaroslavl hockey team that was wiped out in a plane crash yesterday.

Number one.

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Time after time

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A friend of mine is a synesthete, a person with a “neurologically based condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway”. What it means in her case is that when she sees or hears a number, she sees a specific color.

To her, four is always blue.

And here I was thinking that I was special for always connecting the number 2 and the letter A.

For some reason, though, my view of the calendar is a bit skewed. I know it’s easy to connect the 12 months of the year to the 12 hours of a clock, but in my brain, the connection isn’t a straightforward “1 for January, 2 for February” one, even though my year does start at noon.

Noon is the New Year’s Eve.

Then we have the spring, and at 3, the summer strikes. It’s all nice and easy, hanging out in the sun, until seven. That’s when the summer’s over, the autumn falls, and the school starts. From 7, I work my way up towards Son’s birthday, around nine, to my birthday, around ten, and to Xmas at about 11.30.

Right now, my mental clock calendar is 7. That also means that the hockey season is about to start.

The Stanley Cup parade at four.

Purple pain

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One late May evening eight years ago, Wife and I shook hands on a deal we had just made. She would launch a website for Swedish-speaking parents in Finland, and I, at my end, would try to make the world a better place by launching a hockey publication.

The next few months we sat in our kitchen, facing each other, but both typing away on his and her laptop, with the covers leaning on each other, like we were leaning on each other.

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Sales up!

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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.

Deal!

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Column: Take a chance on me

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Today, I wrote a new “fear column” for Aalto EE’s Profile, and realized I probably hadn’t posted my previous one so here it is.

Fear is a survival mechanism. Fear keeps us alert, on our toes. And it’s primal. According to neuroscientific research, the neural circuitry underlying fear is highly conserved in mammalian species, from rats to humans. In other words, fear mechanisms and systems are so fundamental that they’ve been carried over through the biggest of changes, the many, many slow changes that have made us us: the evolution.

Gulp.

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Two amigos

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Sometimes life really imitates art. My life real art. The other day, visiting Dad, Son and I walked to the car to get his flashlight, so that he could sleep in a little playhouse in the backyard. On our way back, I thought it’d be smarter to walk around the house and go straight to the backyard through the back door.

YOU! GUYS!

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