Wanted: bagels

    Fact: there are no good bagels in Finland.
    This is most unfortunate, as bagels would make excellent light lunches or snacks. A few years ago, there were no bagels whatsoever in Finland; then Stockmann, Arnolds and some other places started coming up with them. I found Stockmann’s bagels the best, but a few weeks back they changed suppliers and… well, the situation certainly didn’t change for the better and what’s available now can’t really be called bagels. A shame.
    Can’t believe I’m going to have to make such basic foodstuff myself.

How to get Finns to talk – almost

    Our lizard eats live insects and there are only a few places in Helsinki to get them – unfortunately you can’t order them by mail, which was really convenient in the US. Anyway, in the wintertime you have to transport the crickets or locusts in a cooler (with bottels filled with warm water inside) so that they would survive the transportation.
    Some weeks ago I received some really funny looks when I was sitting on the bus with a surprisingly loud, chirping cooler beside me. Many people almost asked me what the heck was going on, but being Finns, nobody did. A shame again, I would’ve happily explained that I’m carrying a swarm of fully grown live crickets :)
    Pictured on the right: locusts, which incidentally do not chirp.

Things they don’t tell you in the ads

    A recent SonyEricsson advertisement stated of their new phone that it “stores up to 1,400″ songs or whatever the number was. Nice enough, right? Only it seems that mp3-players and music devices in general are so badly overhyped in the ads that it’s almost funny. SonyEricsson’s ad conveniently left out not only the fact that a) the songs need to be encoded at a rate that will remind you of a broken gramophone for that many to fit there, but also that b) you need to buy a 2GB memory card to even theoretically achieve that theoretical number. Nice.
    Some of that might’ve been written at the bottom of the ad with the 6pts font small print that nobody reads, but if it was, it nullifies the main message.