Friday, May 3

Another night of heavy rain and worse. I left the house as the drizzle made concerted efforts to turn into snow. The police have issued snow and ice warnings for drivers in most parts of Finland, because winter has returned and it means business.

At Sörnäinen I find myself looking at a painted box on the street. I check and see no buses arriving so I stop and photograph it. Painted electricity boxes have become a feature of Helsinki life. I see them everywhere.

I continue listening to the podcast that Sophie pointed out to me: an independent radio show from London allegedly about cultural democracy and featuring Lorraine Leeson and Hilary Wainwright among others. I find myself comparing it to ours. I will find myself thinking that I should listen to podcasts more often.

Arcada will have almost nobody there when I arrive. Monica will arrive and then Mats. Riku will show up later.

I will work through a list of tasks. I will enrol both Maria and me for a MOOC starting next Tuesday. I will write a bunch of mails. I will write some notes. I will ask Zoho Notebook to import everything from Evernote to see what will happen. I will look at Zoho again, and wonder if we should switch all the Miaaw planning there, since everything would then exist on a European server.

Irma will pick me up from Arcada and take me to the Well in the Park happy hour at the British Embassy. We will chat with Tom and Maisa and remembet to call the people behind the bar Paul, Laura and Nina.

We will leave early to drive to the Kulosaaro reko for the first time in our lives. The reko seems like a speed-dating version of a farmers’ market. As far as I can tell it operates from a Facebook group. It takes place every second week from 19:00 to 19:30. Sellers announce what they will have for sale, and then customers place orders. If a seller has no orders then they don’t come. If the do have orders then they arrive with packages and wait thirty minutes while the customers arrive to collect them.

We will collect what we ordered: fishcakes from Peter Kellgren, vegetable steaks and other homemade vegetarian food, various breads and thirty eggs.

We will arrive home happy.