Only slightly bent

In Boston there was a system: when one is biking or rollerskating or running or just generally ending up in a situation where one has to pass some pedestrians walking along, you could yell “On your left!” or “On your right!” and people immediately understood, without looking back, what was going on: somebody or something faster than you was just about to pass you from either your left or right side, so better not step there. Of course it always came out more like a one-word “onurleft” but people understood it perfectly anyway.

The system worked beautifully.

Alas, there is no such custom in Finland. Try doing this in Finland by yelling “Vasemmalla puolellasi!” or something similarly akward. Not only are the words too long, but if by some miracle you manage to yell them before you’ve passed the people, what you might get as a reaction are a couple of facial expressions representing bafflement, disorientation or a general “WTF?!”-kind of an attitude. And, most likely, the person in front will jump right under you or perform some other kind of a bad move.

When biking, you have the bell you can ring – but this only causes the people ahead of you to either glance behind them to see what’s happening or to randomly jump around the road. Neither practise does the person desiring to pass these people any good, nor, I would argue, for the one being overtaken. Plus when rollerskating or running, you don’t have a bell.

How could we get this kind of a convenient system to work in Finland?

Ever wanted to (re)discover some muscle groups, be ashamed at yourself, have fun and be surprised all at the same time? Try running after not running for half a year.

What’s somewhat surprising is that swimming and biking apparently do zilch for the muscles needed in running. Subsequently, the shame comes from the realization of what a crappy shape these muscles in question can be in after neglecting running for the winter.

All of that leads to the inevitable rediscovery of these muscles. That’ll happen by tomorrow at the latest.

The fun part, I gather, needs no explanation. Exercising is fun and any resulting pain somehow belongs to a better, more acceptable, category of pain than other pains.

And more things on the upside; it’s actually warm enough to run outside without nasty side effects like pneunomia. Yay! And light enough to be doing that under sunshine at 8pm.

(And no it’s not yet nice and green here as in the picture. But who wants to look at a photo of a pile of last years semi-rotten leaves topped with a grey layer of gravel dust?)

One of the biggest annoyances in this country is the problem with clothes. The problem, specifically, is that you need too damn much of them: to have any kind of an active life in Finland, one needs to be able to survive in any kind of weather conditions that can happen – and that list is long. Too long.

In general, clothing and shoes are needed for the following weather conditions:

• Warm summer; it can be up to +30C in the summers and sandals are a better bet than shoes here.
• Normal summer; shorts and T-shirts simply do not suffice in the evenings, so some kind of light coats and long pants are also needed.
• Cold and/or wet summer; this is when the coats and long pants need to be somewhat warmer and be equipped with Gore-Tex fabric or something similar to prevent you from being soaking wet.
• Nice spring and fall; it could be sunny, but an occasional cold wind demands some wind-stopping capabilities from the clothing.
• Nasty spring and fall; this also calls for Gore-Tex outfits, only warmer than the summer versions.
• Normal winter; warm clothing is called for when we get months of -10C or so.
• Wet winter; the kind dominated by sleet, rain and wet snow. Normal woolen winter coats can’t handle rain and sleet very well, so Gore-Tex is a must all around.
• Cold winter; with temperatures plunging down to -30C, you need to be dressed warm. Really warm. So warm that you’ll get a heat stroke whenever staying inside for longer than 27 seconds, but the alternative – freezing to death outside – is even less appealing.

And, as anywhere, at least the following main types of clothes are needed:

• Really nice clothes for special occasions
• Neat clothes for work
• Casual wear for a bunch of occasions
• Sportswear for whatever sports it is that you do; this alone could be a long list

To get the total minimum number of outfits required, multiply the first list with the second list. Then add shoes to go with each situation and then think whether you can live with just one of each type – you need to wash them, too. The main trouble in Finland is that the first list being so long, the total number of outfits required is long enough to bankrupt anybody. It’s impossible, really, not to mention highly annoying; the end result is that for half the year you don’t have anything suitable to wear. And before someone mentions that you should dress in layers, well, yeah, you should, but layering is not a silver bullet – the clothes need to fit, too, and you can’t pile up layer after layer under a summer coat to magically transform it into a winter coat.

So the least we could ask, I think, is for the clothing to be tax-deductible in Finland. And we could also remove the VAT from it.

Many of my weeks are dominated by text; reading and writing. In the course of any given week, I stumble upon many interesting articles or documents. Below are a few interesting ones from the archives:

Gregory D. Foster: “A New Security Paradigm” (WorldWatch Magazine)

This article was published in WorldWatch magazine about a year ago and is now available for free download. It’s written by a US Military expert on how the view of national and global security having to do with military action and defense is woefully wrong and how efforts should be placed in a completely different place – the environment. I know most people already know this, but judging from how little is done about it, environmental problems cannot be overstated.

Clive Thompson: Meet the Life of Hackers (NY Times)

An interesting article detailing how destructive interruptions are to work and how they could be managed better. However, the single most useful and actionable information in here is that getting a subsctantially bigger monitor can vastly improve the perfomance and productivity of an IT-worker. Something to share with your boss

New Research Explores Multi-Sided Markets (Harvard Business School’s Working Knowledge)

An interesting interview with Andrei Hagiu who has been studying multi-sided markets, something I’ve been digging into lately with regards to the credit card business and how it functions. Nothing earth-shatteringly new emerges in the interview, but it’s still a good introduction as to what two or multi-sided markets are and how they differ – critically – from “normal” markets.

Yesterday evening, we decided to give another Kamppi newcomer a try: Henri’x BBQ House. I was hoping they’d fare better than their neighbor and, being one of the few truly BBQ/steak-oriented restaurants in the city, expectations were actually quite high.

The surroundings suffer a bit from the restaurant being essentially in a mall; however, Henri’x also has a nice all-glass semi-terrace from where you could observe the life around the Kamppi center. As was expected with all the concrete and tiles, this life consisted almost purely of skaters who had the open space completely under their control. And they weren’t great either. So not much in terms of a view (yet).

Once inside, we were shown to our table after some initial confusion as to where it is that we were supposed to be seated in the first place. There is not much internal decoration to speak of and the tables and chairs are, while comfortable, also very basic. The neon bull at the bar was quite nice, but that was about the extent of the interior décor.

At the tables, things seemed to be in order: nice cloth napkins and a clean set of glasses. No tableclothes, but that is perfectly understandable for a BBQ place. The physical menu itself, however, was flimsy – a piece of more or less crumpled paper, some haphazardly glued to a piece of cardboard.

From reading the menu, it’s immediately clear that this is not a place for vegetarians: in fact, the main courses are all steaks. The wine was interestingly classified on the menu with selections of only “decent – good – superb”. It turned out that there is a separate wine menu, too, something that wasn’t curiously brought to us before we asked for it. Our selection of wine, Ca’del Solo Big House Red, turned out to be a bit too weak to accompany the heavy food. Of course, this was purely our mistake and I’m sure the list would’ve offered better options.

But on with the real essence of the evening, the food. The starters sounded quite delicious with choices like coconut green curry-soup, but we felt like going straight for the meat, with the hopes that the portions are big enough. Sarita went with a chateaubriand (€22) with chilli butter. I was looking forward to testing the much-advertised BBQ sauce, so I chose the porterhouse steak (€38, though see note at the end) with that. Neither of us was asked how we wanted the steaks – this could either be a good or a bad sign.. After taking a little long to arrive, I was a bit disappointed to find out that my porterhouse steak was served pre-sliced and not as whole. But as soon as it came to the table, doubts about it being big enough vanished. There was lots of it. I mean lots, the photo does not do justice to it.

And, as it turns out, it was really quite good and tender. When bringing the portion, the waitress immediately offered to bring more BBQ sauce and taking her up on the offer was the right thing to do – the BBQ sauce was delicious. Doubts about the level of doneness were luckily unfounded: everything was cooked just right. Sarita’s chateaubriand also turned out just perfect, though the chilli butter could’ve used some chilli in it – a common problem in Finland. In any case, in terms of quality of food, the expectations were met or even partly exceeded.

There was a choice of three side dish selections; Basic, Classic and Modern. At least the Basic with potato wedges, simmered red cabbage and an onion-haricot bake was a good selection.

Then came the shocker, however: my portion was so big that I just could not down it all. This caused more mental anxiety than actual physical trauma – am I going to have to leave delicious meat on the plate? In the end, I had to condescend to admitting defeat: there was just no room for it all.

The dessert menu also sounded delicious, but anything more to eat was out of the question at this stage. When we got the check, I realized why I had trouble with the size of my portion. They had inadvertently brought me the porterhouse for two (€64, IIRC), which our waitress said is a whole kilogram of meat. What a relief. Suddenly I didn’t feel so bad about not being able to eat it all. The mistake was swiftly sorted out on the check. But of course, now I can’t be sure whether the porterhouse for one would’ve been big enough… Perhaps it’d still be safe to say that it would.

All in all, the service was quite good, and the occasional glitches (like not refilling our tiny water pitcher without asking, offering the table next to us food they didn’t order etc.) were something that I could live with. With the food also very good, it’s likely we’ll be back here – must try the starters and desserts next time, too.

• ..does swimming in the rain seem stupid? It’s not like you stay dry during anyway.

• ..do we call what is a natural and inevitable evolution of the web something as lame as Web 2.0? Do people so badly need a catchall-phrase for all things?

• ..do people hoard stuff like they would never again step in a grocery store before all occasions when the stores are closed for more than 24h? Case in point: Easter weekend in Finland. Only over here it applies to hoarding alcohol, too – heaven forbid the nation might go a day without booze! (Alko sales are five times higher than normal on Maundy Thursday)

• ..is there such an affection to stupidity as to profitably sustain entire industries like the Yellow Press or, say, the tobacco industry?

• ..do I have to hoard bookmarks to the extent that managing them is now an impossible task? Why is there not a good tool to do this?