Only slightly bent

Hmph. I saw another news item today that highlights the fact that some things in the emergency response system in Finland are just broken. Badly. There has recently been discussion around at least three things that need fixing.

First, for the past months there’s been talk of how badly the new centralized emergency centers are operating with severe personnel issues and all that goes along with those – what this ends up is bad response times even in normal situations. For example in July, 15% of the callers had to hold between half a minute and two minutes before the emergency number answered. Two minutes is not a nice time to be on hold when somebody’s life is at stake. Two minutes or even a minute is the difference between life and death in many cases.

Then there was the ambulance helicopter debacle, with the choppers being grounded for a while during financial crisis of the operating company. This has come to be a semi-annual occurance it seems, with some sort of financial crisis popping up every now and then.

And now the latest piece of news has to do with the wireless network (VIRVE) dedicated for authorities; a separate, secure communications channel that is not used to its full extent because it’s too expensive.

All this just begs the question how highly do we value life in this country. If basic emergency services experience breakdowns during normal times, how well can we expect them to work when they’re really needed, in times of crisis? If we don’t have enough trained people answering phones in the emergency call centers, it doesn’t take a big accident for the system to grind to a complete halt.

All three things I mentioned – emergency call centers, medical choppers, wireless networks for authorities – should be fully financed, operated and guaranteed by the government in one form or another. Not to mention that first responders like police and firemen are a) inadequate in numbers and b) paid poorly. And yet, even with the poor salaries, fire & police departments complain they can’t afford to hire more people.

Emergency services is one place where I would gladly have my tax dollars – or euros – be used. But no. I’ve often wondered whether national budget democracy has ever been tried – a process where each citizen could decide what even a part (like maybe 10%) of his or her tax money would be spent on.

This morning was one of the first days with a clear autumn feeling in the air; a tired sun, still managing to inch above the horizon early in the morning but the light waning and cooler. Crisp, chilly air that you know will be warm in the day but one that soon starts begging for a coat in the mornings.

As I watched the thunderstorm raging outside earlier today, while welcoming even the fleeting rain it brings after a long dry period, I also had one small wish for the fall of this year – for it to be as warm, beautiful and pleasant as it was last year.

To commemorate this first day of autumn, below an image from late last fall – a sunset reflected off a fence before 5pm – and one from last weekend what might’ve been, mentally anyway, the last day of summer this year.

Hey Russia, get a clue!

There have been forest fires in Russia for the past weeks. That’s more or less an annual occurance, but this year there are many fires and the wind is blowing all the smoke directly at Finland. Like yesterday, the air quality in downtown Helsinki was worse than when there was a big fire right in downtown some months ago.

The ineptitude of the country to control their fires is nothing short of amazing. The country that now boasts the most expensive city in the world should afford to put out a couple of fires. They should also have the capacity. In case they don’t have either, Finland’s offered help – but they don’t want it, leaving us to only conclude that it’s arrogance, negligence or some other stupid thing that’s preventing them from acting. Meanwhile, we’re suffocating. I wish the wind would blow all the smoke directly on top of St Petersburg or Moscow, then we might see some action.

More Trivial Research

YLE was reporting about a study made by some Finnish researchers on how some species will not be able to migrate along with the changing climate. How the heck is this news? I would consider it crystal clear that not all species will be able to migrate with fast-changing climate. And now they’re saying that this migration “may not be axiomatic”. WTF?! It never was that to begin with.

The worst beach ever

Here’s a small photo (taken from a newspaper) of a beach in China. Horrible. That’s so much worse than the worst parts of Italy or Spain which I thought were as bad as beaches get in terms of crowds.

DNA whines that non-existent services aren’t used

Some time ago, DNA was quoted saying that they’re to some extent disappointed with how much (well, little) people are using the 3G services.

What 3G services? The video call which was doomed to begin with? What other 3G services do they have exactly that would be worth using? Elisa and TeliaSonera were also some time ago emphasizing that now that the price war is over, they will focus on service development. Yeah? With Elisa not even having PoC out yet, I’m not holding my breath on any new exciting services emerging from the operator domain.. A free hint to the operators: either put your money where your mouth is or move aside and let the Internet take over.

We spent the day with some friends in Porvoo, a quaint small city some 50km east of Helsinki – it’s a rather charming place, especially in the summer, largely thanks to its old town area dating from centuries ago and a nice location by a rivermouth.

For lunch, we went to Ravintola Timbaali, a place where we had eaten a couple of times before and if memory serves us right, had enjoyed immensly. It’s situated right in the heart of the old town with rustic interior and a nice covered summer inner courtyard where we sat to enjoy the sunny and balmy, +25C weather. We managed to secure a table minutes before the restaurant was packed with people (many of them foreign tourists on a daytrip) and more in waiting mode queuing outside. Reservations for the summer evenings are a necessity, I’m sure. Timbaali is best known for its snails, which are home-grown and come in a number of different varieties.

Despite their staple food, it turned out Sarita was the only one who went with snails by choosing six snails in parmesan pistachio-butter (€9,80). Not a big fan of molluscs myself, I can only take her word that they were delicious.

The rest of us, it being lunch and all, actually skipped all appetizers, despite our waitress’s good attempt in trying to lure me into a Kir Royal after hearing me mention it.. To a potential horror of old-fashioned wine drinkers, we chose a bottle of the house white wine, a thoroughly delicious Chilean Morandé Pioneo Chardonnay (€28,50), despite all of us ordering meat as a main course. The wine list was obviously a careful selection of suitable wines with our Chardonnay being the perfect, lively wine for a warm summer day.

For the entrées, I chose a fillet of beef with herbs and smoked potato bundle (€23,20, below left) while Sarita went with fillet of red deer with a bolete bake and roasted shallots (€23,80, below right). Both were, for the lack of a better word, perfect. My medium beef was exquisitely cooked, savory and wonderfully tender. Really wonderful, simple dishes of great quality – by far the best meat I’ve had in a long time.

For dessert, all of us were unanimous in that it was Crème brûlée (€6,50) that we wanted to try – a good choice, although I doubt the other ones would’ve been any worse. The brûlée was beautifully caramelized and perfectly moist, making for a delicious finish for the meal.

I must say that the price-quality ratio here was far superior to that of Restaurant Piha where we went to earlier this week (see the previous review). With the service impeccable (despite the Finnish curse of multiple-waitresses-per-table-problem) and the food close to perfection, there is not much to blame here. However, due to the paper napkins outside and some inconsequentially small details I’ll bring down the overall evaluation to “only” 5- out of 5

Overall, quite possibly the best lunch I’ve ever had, at least in Finland. If in Porvoo, this is the place to go to – even if you’re not a snail-fan.

A couple of days ago we visited Restaurant Piha, an Italian style place situated “behind” the shopping center Forum (Eerikinkatu 2) and next to the reliably good Spanish place Parrilla Espanola. It was a Monday evening and our reservation was thoroughly unwarranted with the restaurant less than one quarter full. (Click on the thumbnails below for the full picture).

First, a couple of words about the physical appearance of the place. The overall impression is a nice & clean environment with some quite interesting wooden door-decor and a big courtyard-style center with a glass ceiling. The setting worked nicely enough without being intrusive, so that was good. Looking more closely at the setup, the first snag that one hits is the cleanliness of the utensils and the glasses – the washing and polishing certainly could’ve been done better with clear watermarks on each. Another minor fault was the existence of a salt and pepper mill on the table; most self-respecting kitchens do not typically let customers spice the food themselves.

What about the service? As is unfortunately quite common in Finnish restaurants, the table is served by multiple waitresses in seemingly random order. Often this creates more confusion than warranted, but here the service was mostly smooth; there was no excessive waiting as the old dishes were taken away and the next courses brought in in a timely manner. The services was friendly and worked well, but there was not even a hint that the waitresses would top up wine or water glasses – that was obviously left to the diners themselves to do. Of the menu, I liked the fact that it wasn’t overly long while it still offered plenty of choices. Also the wine list emphasized, quite appropriately, Italian wines with only a few selections from elsewhere. Nothing too fancy made it to either list but I consider that a good thing.

Then to the food. For starters, I went with the Fruity chicken salad Tandor with Yoghurt sauce with curry and honey (€9,50). The salad looked rather big for a starter salad, but it was very good so it didn’t really matter The presentation was quite good, but a bit impractical as it was very vertically-oriented. The youghurt-based sauce went well with the salad and gave it a nice, rather neutral, taste which helped cleanse the palate with the appetizer (blueberry-flavored grappa with sparkling wine). An oddball extra bonus can be given for the fresh, good-looking basil – I wonder where they found it because just by chance, I had earlier that day visited two food wholesale places and the typically-best-quality grocery stores which all had appalling basil on that particular day; some problem with the main supplier(s) I suppose.

Anyway, the main course selection was difficult, with Sarita’s choice of Scampi on a skewer with Parmesan white wine risotto & chili-lime oil (€20,40) sounding very enticing. I ended up trying the Saltimbocca with marsala sauce; Veal schnitzel filled with parma ham and sage, potato wedges (€23,80). From the little I got to taste of the Scampi skewer and the risotto, they were excellent. The veal snitchel was also very good – although the real thing wasn’t filled with parma ham but rather wrapped in parma ham. The dish could’ve used some more color, there might’ve been a bit too many potatoes and the few vegetables looked liked they had been overcooked a little, but the schnitzel itself was done nicely and went along well with the parma ham. The presentation of the scampi skewer was nevertheless better, as can be witnessed from the photos below:

The dessert was nothing short of mouthwatering – my Creme Caramelle alla Amaretto (€6,20) was baked perfectly and the sauce was very nice. I also heard nothing but praise about Sarita’s fresh and brisk Lemon sorbet in sparkling wine (€4,80), a different kind of refreshing dessert. The presentation of both desserts was simple but flawless.

As the mentioned price points would indicate, I consider Piha to be in the middle/upper middle class of Helsinki restaurants – by no means cheap, but definately not what one would consider expensive either. As the food was mostly good and the service wasn’t bad either, it was a thoroughly pleasant experience even with some of the details being a bit off. With the decent price level, I would recommend Ravintola Piha at 4- out of 5.

I had greatly enjoyed Malcolm Gladwell’s later book, Blink, but I had somehow missed Tipping Point at the time it was published. This summer I thought I’d correct that mistake. Tipping Point is a fairly short book, and at just 260 small pages was a quick read – and an entirely pleasurable and interesting read.

Tipping Point is about how epidemics can suddenly “tip”, creating a huge and fast change. In the book, primarily other kind of epidemics than diseases are discussed; a lot deals with how a message is spread and how and why some products become popular while others don’t. Some case studies are given e.g. of crime in New York, television series (Sesame Street, Blue’s Clues), a couple of disease epidemics, youth smoking and finally micronesian suicides, something I hadn’t heard of before. Gladwell identifies three types of individuals who are crucial to making an epidemic tip: Connectors (people who are connected to a much larger number of people than most individuals), Mavens (active experts who act as sort of helpful, open human databases) and Salesmen (who can, obviously, convince people to do something).

Out of the case examples, I found especially the treatise of the New York crime “epidemic” fascinating; while it obviously can’t be proven why the crime rate collapsed in New York in mid-90s, I find Gladwell’s explanation of deliberately changing the environmental conditions for the better (like the immediate removal of graffiti on trains), thus creating a tipping point, quite appealing and believable. There are almost disconcertingly strong indications that the particular situation & environment (“context”) have an extremely powerful impact on people – something Gladwell calls the “Power of Context”, dedicating two chapters for that. Gripping studies are presented where, via very simple means, one can dramatically change peoples behaviour.

A lot of what is explained in the book has already found its way to being utilized and widely known; like the stickiness factor is, at least to some extent, already common knowledge among advertisers. The sad thing is that there are many valuable guidelines and instructions in “Tipping Point” which could be well utilized in many walks of life, not just in advertising. Since simple measures can have such powerful, positive impacts on crime and disease, let’s not waste this knowledge on simply promoting products. Overall, a fascinating read and definately worth reading even if it’s “already” six years old – as a rating, I’ll give this 4½ out of 5.