Author: Shaun

Previously on The Espoo Diaries:

“…5 people to run a restaurant…”
“…gijima to the seety, not the township, one-time…”
“…atmosphere was festive and the place was packed to the brim…”
“…at least five or six incidents of unnecessary drunken behaviours in
public places…”
“…expecting to see bullets whizzing past…”
“…McDonald’s regular or the McDonald’s supersize, no ice,
flush…”
“…soothing, sultry manner in which certain young Finnish women speak…”
“…the virtues of avoiding afternoon traffic…”
“…a really gorgeous stewardess with a sweet smile to brighten the flight…”

As with all great works of literature, I thought it appropriate to begin
the second act with a poetic narration of the events thus far.

“A South African in the City of Bars,
A place where there is no need for cars,
Will he survive?
Or will he see his arse?”

Ok, maybe we should not go down that road.

The scene is set – the venue: Joburg International, attempt two.
I waved my goodbyes and boarded the lovely South African Airways
Airbus A340-600 for my flight to Frankfurt. Flying in that plane is a
real treat, as far as any long distance flight can be anyway. Here I was
afforded the chance to directly manipulate a computer system that works
within the same parameters as, and possibly is linked to, the aircraft
flight systems. A scary thought – has anyone properly
considered the security aspects involved here? “Ladies and Gentlemen,
this is your captain speaking. Would the passenger in
seat 43C please stop his denial of service attack on the flight computer
so that we may prepare for take off?” In all it was a good flight – I
far prefer the bigger planes – with the only disappointment being that I
timed my watching of a movie perfectly so that the entertainment system
would be switched off for landing right as it was reaching the climax of
the movie. Eish. (Survival Tip: #7 – Plan movie viewing to accomodate a
switch off forty minutes before landing.)

The airports proved quicker and easier this time, obviously due to my
familiarity. This of course excluding the many-houred wait at Frankfurt
Airport itself. I nearly ended up being strip-searched at the European
departures terminal due to my carrying of a dangerous metallic item
throught the metal detector. Yes, my chewing gum wrapped in a silver
foil was going to cause the downfall of the civilised world by the
blatant terrorist act of, well, just imagine where I could stick a
piece of used chewing gum… Nasty! And so the silly, yank-following
Europeans let me through without checking for a bomb in my shoe, or in
my camera, or my laptop, or even asking what the small one-buttoned
device with three LED’s (which scans for wireless networks, but looks
more like a wireless detonator) was. I was ever so glad to feel safe in
the thought that tougher security measures were working well at
eliminating the terrorist threat. (Terror tip #1: Carry chewing gum for
misdirection.)

I arrived in Helsinki for one of the most beautiful, pleasant and warm
weeks that the city has ever known in the month of April. The
temperature was between 20 and 25 C, and it brought forth the revelation
that the miniskirt is heavily in fashion in Europe this season. In just
over a week it seemed as though everything had moved from grey to green
– a lot of green. With all the wetlands and nature-filled areas, the
flat outskirts of Helsinki strongly resemble the US state of Florida –
without the alligators and the “president”.

My first week back turned out to include a first Friday of the month and
so I was afforded the opportunity of attending the 2600 Hacker meeting
in Helsinki, where I made a few contacts and had a bit of tech-speak
with fellow geeks. With Miss Moneypenny missing this entire week – I
think our timing was just out of synch – I ended up back on the streets
alone later that same evening with no idea of where to go. In an odd
twist of fate, I visited “Sling In”, where I actually ran into two of
the guys I had met earlier.

One of the guys in the group turned out to be a Liberian
named Cucu who had lived in Finland for fourteen years. Our common
heritage of “Ma Afrika” forced us to ally in a battle of wits and drinks
against the Europeans. Later that evening, Cucu and myself headed off to
“Helsinki Club” – Helsinki’s trendiest, upmarket night hotspot. Its
apparently the place to be, but I don’t really think its the place for
me to be. Here the Liberian introduced me to some Nigerian connections
(Terror Tip #2) and pretty soon it was really starting to feel like
home. (Theme Tune #5: “Norah Jones – Feels like Home”, played very
faintly above the heavy techno beat of what Moneypenny classifies as
‘poser music’. )

One thing is for sure – South Africans are very highly respected by
other nationalities for the almost “violence-free” transition made to
democracy in our country. Now that’s how to be “Proudly South African” –
sharing knowledge and ideas about your country with foreigners – not
sticking logos on milk bottles and charging for the “privilege” do it.

All in all it was a good evening and I met some interesting locals too,
thanks to of all things 2600.

The rest of the weekend was spent mostly recuperating with little
excitement on offer other than a visit to a flea market where I found on
offer a huge variety of old vinyls, antiques, and more. It was actually
more of a “communal garage sale”, with the emphasis on antiques. I also
found medals and pins, grenades, mortar bombs, weapons, clothing, gas
masks, helmets, field radios and ammunition. (Terror Tip #3 – Hit the
flea market for supplies).

And so another week whizzed by. (Work? What’s that?) Walking in the
streets, it is interesting to see how many people are wearing
headphones, listening to music supplied by some or other electronic
device – usually an mp3 player. I also discovered a third good beer –
‘Karhu’ – pronounced “Car who?”, as in “Dude where’s my car?”.

Its an interesting thing this Finnish language. Take for instance the
word for cigarette lighter. Its “savukkeensytyttimen”, which is the
reason why so many Finns carry matches. Another interesting word is that
of the value “93” which goes “yhdeksankymmentakolme”. I somehow don’t
think “99 bottles of beer on the wall” is sung around these parts. I
have also yet to see a crossword puzzle in a Finnish newspaper.

The weekend of the 14th of May was upon me before I knew it. I had spent
nine weeks living in hotels, with cooked breakfast and restaurant food
every night and visiting various nighttime hotspots at random. Wow. One
of the restaurants which I visited this particular Friday accompanying
Colin, an English guy working for Ariba, and his wife, was ‘Bakers’. The
food was good, but I soon discovered that certain British people are
just way too fussy and picky. I’ll just accept it but I do not
understand. Thereafter I met Olaf and Irina, also members of our team,
and we visited “Torni” the tallest building in Helsinki – 25 floors or
so. The view of the darkening city was magnificent.

Saturday morning began with a jolting ringing sound – a phone call on
the hotel phone. It seemed such a strange and unfamiliar sound in this
world of polyphonic symphonies. At the office the company has their own
cellular base station in the building, so as soon as employees
enter the building their mobile phones switch to the local network and all
outgoing calls are diverted through the base station at no cost to
the employee. Unfortunately us mere contractors do not share this
privilege. No office telephones are therefore required, with the only
fixed-line phones being in the conference rooms.

The offender at the far end of the copper communication wire was Olaf,
or more accurately, on-a-mission-Olaf. The weather was slightly sunny
and a little bit warmer, and Olaf was determined that we should hire
bicycles to roam around the outskirts of the city on. I headed down to
breakfast and before I could ask myself ‘What the hell would I want to
ride a bike in Helsinki for?’ Olaf was there, with a bike in each hand.

We headed out on the streets, me now being a high speed South African
danger to locals. The entire area is well geared towards cyclists,
inline skaters, skateboarders and walkers – specially marked paths
accompany almost every relatively large road, even so much as having
special traffic lights in the city for people on the cycling paths. It
really was an interesting experience, and as it turns out, a very quick
and efficient way of moving around and seeing some of the countryside. I
would have preferred to be on inline skates though. After many
kilometers my legs decided that this really is not such an ‘efficient’
mode of transport, and I headed back to the hotel by a shorter route
than Olaf took. And that is when I discovered the problem with cycling
around Helsinki – although you can move quicker, you can also get
horribly lost a lot quicker.

There I was on the middle of some frikkin island with little wooden huts
all around, not a main road in sight, a bicycle with a seriously
uncomfortable seat under my ass and weather starting to look a bit
rainy.

I was ‘Lost on Lautasaari’.

Fortunately some African survival skills kicked in.
Step one – Pray to the rain gods.
Good, sunshine.
Step two – Find a metal pin and some magnetic rock, rub the rock on the
pin and float the pin on a pool of water to find North. (Ok, I didn’t
really do this…)
Aha, North is opposite of where you think it was…
Step three – Use a magnifying glass to start a fire and set off smoke
signals.
Step four – Be the foreigner, become one with the ignorance, and ask
someone for directions.

No prizes for guessing which steps I took.

I eventually reached the hotel, cursing everything from the inventor of
the bicycle to the inventor of the sunny day. From now on I’d stick to
walking.

Of course this exercise was way too healthy, and there is only one
solution for exercise – beer. Saturday evening required a visit to
‘Kaisla’, a lively pub with a wide selection of beer to sample. Of
course one cannot merely visit one location per night in the city of
bars, and so the next stop we decided on was ‘Bakers’, the restaurant
now nightclub and bar after 11pm. Fortunately for the pub-hoppers, there
was no entrance charge, just a euro or two to look after your jacket.

The rest of evening all blurred into one, with a few distinct moments in
between. For example the blonde girl on the dance floor who seemed to be
tripping on something a bit stronger than Finnish vodka. I also brushed
up on some more Finnish, learning the lyrics to a popular song – ‘Meille
vai teille?’ – ‘Your place or mine?’. I ended the evening with another
pleasant late night stroll the to the hotel, ready to face what turned
out to be a lazy Sunday ahead.

A saying was born early that Sunday morning: “You may be horribly
hungover, but its only the foolish man who skips the hotel breakfast.”

Breakfast was fortunately brightened with a smile from Moneypenny and a
pill from Paramed.

Life in Helsinki is good.

🙂
Shaun.

Next time on The Espoo Diaries…

“…Belge is not just for Belgians…”
“…Karle, what a place…”
“…Mari Koskinen versus Megan Moneypenny…”

Please note.
Due to election coverage and ‘president’ George W. Bush actually making
a speech to the US nation (his third ever) this edition of Espoo Diaries
will not be broadcast in its regular spot.

Previously on The Espoo Diaries:

“…5 people to run a restaurant…”
“…gijima to the seety, not the township, one-time…”
“…I conducted a “hotel-migration-exercise…”
“…atmosphere was festive and the place was packed to the brim…”
“…the Golden Cap index is based on a truer scale….”
“…attempt to call the two young ladies from the floor below…”
“…at least five or six incidents of unnecessary drunken behaviours in
public places…”
“…expecting to see bullets whizzing past…”

Well it has been a while since the last edition, and there’s loads to
relate, so sit back, grab a beer, a vivid imagination and a blonde, no
wait, if you have a blonde forget about this email – focus on the blonde.

Like a flush of water down a toilet bowl, these are the days of our lives…

Speaking of toilets and flushing, a very interesting observation has
revealed itself at the Radisson Seaside hotel (and in retrospect also
applied at the Scandic Espoo although I never quite got my head wrapped
around it). In the ablution facility one is presented with a choice.
Matrix fans, think blue pill vs. red pill. Or perhaps biltong vs dried
wors, or maybe even in true airline style, beef or chicken? The choice
is this, and it is your choice alone on completion of the necessary
facility usage: big flush or little flush.

A dilemma of enormous magnitude and perhaps somewhat unnecessary in this
world filled with choices, in almost every bathroom there is the option
of the generic McDonald’s regular or the McDonald’s supersize, no ice,
flush. Admirably, it is all about saving water, but I play it safe and
supersize my flushes.

The weekend of the 17th April saw me with a bit of company in the city –
Olaf, one of the other Ariba team members was staying this weekend and
proved a dandy companion in my travels and adventures.

Friday evening included a visit to a small popular Chinese restaurant.
The food was good, the beer was low alcohol, and the chairs and tables
were Chinese size, so it was my turn to feel like a Viking, but all in
all it was a good change. Thereafter we found a bigger, better cinema –
Kinopalatsi – where we watched ‘Valamiehet’ (Runaway
Jury) for a pittance at 10€. The cinema was very big though and spacious
enough to lie in your seat with legs outstretched, pretending you were
flying first class, because this is the closest you’d ever get to it.

Afterwards a crowded Molly Malone’s waylaid our path (this now a second
appearance for me), loads of really drunk Finnish people and a beer or
two later it was back to the hotel to prepare for the weekend ahead.

Saturday morning we missioned off at Olaf’s request, roaming the
suburban areas slightly outside Helsinki in search of some “really nice
place he’d heard of” which never turned up. It was however, interesting
to see numerous sculptures of modern art litter the area going out of
Helsinki. I managed to guide him carefully back to a main street to
catch a bus back to the city. Of course once in the city, the necessary
cosmopolitan atmosphere dictated that we find a coffee shop and do the
‘coffee thing’ ™. The warm atmosphere and the smell of coffee was
accompanied by the soothing, sultry manner in which certain young
Finnish women speak. The rich sound rolls off their tongue like
chocolate coated strawberries provoking your taste sensation, a
soothing, yet unintelligible trickle of playfulness to one’s ear.

It gives true meaning to the Afrikaner-ism – “You can for like to speak
deliciously”.

Olaf also wanted to visit Seurasaari, the open-air museum, but I had
already been there and I remembered seeing a ‘summer house’ on display
when it was snowing at Seurasaari and convinced him that it was not
really worth the effort.

This of course left us with little alternative for that evening’s
activities but to examine the efficient use of alcohol by the Finnish
working class. The venue to be frequented – none other than
Baarikarpanen. Baarikarpanen, who knows what it means (political
insiders seem to indicate a possible translation of “Barfly”), is a
small bar/nightclub on Mikonkatu, opposite the railway station. Miss
Moneypenny had provided me with the necessary intel on this location at
a prior date and this proved correct – the crowd was rather young and
the party only starts after eleven. Of course, with the sun only setting
at about 9 pm at this time of the year, nobody wants to go to a club
with the sun still shining. Except, ummm, well, South African foreigners
it seems. (Theme tune #4: George Michael and Elton John – “Don’t let the
sun go down on me.”)

Helsinki’s reputation as the ‘City of Bars’ was starting to prove its
mettle to my liver. (Survival tip #6: Prohep/Essentiale – import it, cos
I haven’t got a clue what you’d call it here)

On leaving, at about half past one in the morning, I walked back through
the city, seeing at least five queues of fifteen or more people queuing
to enter various clubs and bars. Unbelievable.

Sunday had me pursuing a quick stroll around töölönlahti – the lake in
the center of Helsinki, taking in the sights and sounds of the city and
the young women who jog there on Sunday afternoons. I then smsed the
local cellular service provider’s special ticket number and was able to
purchase my tram ticket using my cellphone, which I then showed to the
driver when boarding the tram. A simple and efficient way of bypassing
the coin carnage.

Later on I was treated to the wonders of hotel TV including South Park,
dubbed into German. (OH- mein Gott. Sie töteten Kenny!) While the German
channel dubs everything into their native language, the norm for the
Finnish channels is to simply place Finnish subtitles on the screen – a
much better option for the English speaker I believe. Even at the cinema
every movie has subtitles, often in both Finnish and Swedish. It is
small wonder then that when you speak to a stranger in English, often
they look at you in a strange manner, almost as if they are waiting for
the white subtitles to appear superimposed below your chin.

Further investigation shows that the PayTV system is running off a
windows application – the ‘your system is running low on virtual memory’
error was a dead giveaway. Of course, it also seems that there are ways
of subverting the pay tv, but we don’t want to break any laws now do we?

I was also ‘lucky’ enough to catch some CNN election coverage, including
ten years of democracy propaganda made available by the ANC. On election
day I actually contemplated hacking the results server where the results
where being published in real time and giving everyone a scare – it was
a lowly windows machine, largely unpatched from all appearances. I
decided that due to my return to Africa the following week it may not be
such a grand idea.

The rest of the week proved largely uneventful, with work taking
priority as the system testing phase kicked off.

On my taxi ride back to Helsinki-Vantaa airport, the driver proved a
good navigator as he told me the virtues of avoiding afternoon traffic
through the use of clever routes and taxi lanes. He also made mention
when asked about accidents, that they had recently had a tragic accident
where thirty young students on a bus to a ski resort collided with a
truck carrying paper rolls which jack-knifed on the ice, killing most of
the passengers on the bus. He also indicated that it was probably the
worst traffic accident ever in Finland, and the only bad one in many
many years.

As we carved our way through suburbia I glanced at a car park outside a
shopping centre and saw, something familiar, something spectacular, but
ultimately something completely wrong. I thought I had seen a “car
guard”, but in fact it was a construction worker with an orange vest…
Hallucinations of home were beginning to set in…

A relatively uneventful flight back to Frankfurt, except for the pilot
who fancied himself as a bit of a cowboy, and little excitement at the
airport found me back on a long-distance flight, crowded in with a bunch
of “Ja bru”‘s, heading for Sunny South Africa.

Fortunately there was a really gorgeous stewardess with a sweet smile to
brighten the flight. (Although it is her job to smile at everyone, the
smile in my direction was a bit more sweet than the rest.) Later that
evening I decided to take some initiative and followed her back to the
flight crew’s quarters at the back of the plane. I had a chat with her
and things were just starting to get interesting when suddenly the plane
shuddered over a turbulent air pocket.

I woke up. Sigh… Terrible thing this economy-class syndrome.

//END OF ACT I. Cast leaves stage.

🙂
Shaun.

Next time on The Espoo Diaries…

“…Miss Moneypenny missing…”
“…from grey to green…”
“…2600 meeting…”
“…the downfall of the civilised world…”