Friday, October 5

 

 

Today I set off from home cycling in something between drizzle and rain. I met the usual suspects on the way to Puotila: the teenage boy who races out of a house on the hill on an old BMX bike, the woman who cycles along from Alepa to the roundabout, and an older woman who cycles in the other direction. I felt glad I hadn’t let a spot of rain put me off.

I spent the morning at Arcada doing the kind of things I do, until I had a short Skype meeting with Sophie at midday to plan the next steps in the podcast plans. I then had lunch with Fred, which involved uunimakkara and mashed potatoes.

In the afternoon I posted the CMS assignment and wandered up to the staff room to the monthly staff coffee event – the one that Henrik used to call Rektor’s Kaffe, and Mona changed as soon as she could.

At 16:15 I take a 6T tram to Hakaniemi where I take a 17 bus to near the British Embassy. The bus stop stands outside a building where I can join an interesting demo. It has a party atmosphere and the small crowd watch while eating pea soup and drinking beer. For some reason it makes me feel nostalgic for some unspecified past that I never lived.

I will meet Irma at about 17:20 and we will go into to Well in the Park. Today we will meet Giovanni and Liisa who work for Kone and OP respectively, as an engineer and an IT person. We will also meet Leena who starts off convinced that we have met and chatted at length at a dinner function and ends up under the impression that she has never met me before.

After this we will go to Prisma for our weekly shopping and spend some time at home discussing Finnish history as it applied to Reds vs Whites. I will come to realise that the local right wing would have counted as left-wing in England or America.