As another year is soon coming to a close, it’s again a good time to take stock of the year that has passed. I dug through my photo archives to find a dozen representative photos from 2006 and thought I’d share them with a few thoughts, comments and memories from the past year. You can click on [most of] the thumbnails to view the full photo (only the February and November photos don’t have a bigger version due to their extremely non-artistic subject).

January got off to a really good start – mostly because it began in another country where it was warm & sunny and all that Finland wasn’t at the time. Our first vacation in Morocco was a success by all standards; the biggest surprise was the wonderful food we ate there – I had not expected the trip to be much of a culinary experience but it also turned out to be that.

Unfortunately the rest of the month didn’t go in too sunny moods and not just because by the time we got back to Finland, real winter had descended upon us.



Talking about real winter – it is a well-known but unfortunate fact that it isn’t until February that Finland hits the temperature lows of the winter. Last February experienced some cold spells, with this photo of a thermometer showing an appreciable 42C difference between the inside and outside temperatures.

However, -20C is by no means unusual even in the south – it isn’t until the temperature drops to -30C or so that we start experiencing some noticeable problems. Somehow our pets think that winter is over in February and start waking up from hibernation in February; little do they know it’s still months til the summer, but it’s nice to see them up & about anyway.



With the sun starting to re-emerge in March, there was a period with some awesome winter weather and a feeling of early spring in the air. But such moments are still usually illusions – just when the sun has melted away an inch of snow during the day, the next day there’s a snowstorm bringing a foot more.

Nevertheless, at the end of March I finally invested in a long-overdue thing: a new bike. Bikes are by far the nicest way to get around in the summer, so with my 15-years old bike starting to resemble a pile of semi-moving garbage with questionable stopping abilities it was about time.



As early as late April, we got a preview of summer. With temperatures approaching +20C, our balcony experienced perfect t-shirt & shorts-weather. Unfortunately the “heat wave” was short-lived and it was another 6 weeks or so before the summer really started.

In April we also started our small interior renovation project by painting one bedroom wall mauve. This project would continue on & off for some 6 months longer.



In May, we got a chance to visit Paris. Of the cities I’ve only visited (i.e. not lived in), Paris was one of the few places where I immediately felt that I need to go back to someday not too much into the future. While I couldn’t really understand the language, the people were anything but rude and the city really felt – and tasted – wonderful. Sarita, rather fluent with the language, also helped with the acclimatization.

In Finland, the biggest story was the arson of the VR storehouses next to the railway station. With the whole place already earmarked for demolition, I somehow failed to understand the massive public uproar that this caused. (Not that arson is ever acceptable.)



Summer enters the country in June, though the vacation period doesn’t start until July. Still, as the sun is shining for most of the day, opportunities for short excursions into the nature and the coastline bring welcome variety to the daily routines.

Something that I always find ironic is that exercise and enjoying nature is easier and more versatile in cities than in rural areas. At least Helsinki offers much more of an exercise and outdoors paradise than would having a house in the countryside; natural stuff like cliffs, forests, beaches, rivers and the sea are all right there nearby, as close as manmade stuff like paved roads for rollerskating, pools for swimming all year round, tennis courts, golf courses and so on. People who think our small capital is a concrete hell are so wrong.



July is the vacation month of the entire country and things seemingly shut down for the month of July. One thing I (re)discovered last summer was that normally decent restaurants should be avoided as their normal chefs and other staff are most likely off enjoying the summer. What this brings is sub-standard service and at best mediocre food to many of the traditionally good places, which is a shame. Some really good places have the sense to close for July, though it’s a difficult decision with many tourists being in the country in the summer also.



One of the best memories from August was a daytrip to Porvoo with some of our friends; this quaint small town half an hour east of Helsinki makes for a perfect summer daytrip. The old town has some beautiful buildings and excellent restaurants, plus a lot of charming small boutiques and stores. It’s become a tradition for us to visit it at least once or twice every summer.

By the beginning of August, most of our interior remodeling was finished also – we installed heat treated beech hardwood floors and some tiling for the hallway; base boards turned out to be the biggest headache of the entire project, but in the end we were both very happy with the end result.



September was still, quite unusually, what could be called a summer month. Daytime temperatures reached t-shirt levels even in Finland. At the end of September, I got the rare opportunity to visit home for a few days – Boston, that is. While it was a business trip, there was some time to meet friends and visit all the dear and great places of that wonderful city. Every now and then I think we should move back there for good, but let’s see about that..



October began nicely with a quick business trip to NYC; a nice enough city to visit, but not a place where I’d want to live for good. When back home, it was time for to get closure on a project that had lasted most of my adult life – I finished my MSc studies at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Helsinki. It still hasn’t quite sunk in that I’m done with the studies. And the vast amounts of free time that finishing the project was supposed to free up haven’t really been all that evident – maybe next year.



The partying for the abovementioned happening was left to November, with some 30 friends and family coming over. I was particularly impressed with Rowena flying in from London (thanks for that!), which was great. The party, though lasting past 1am, went very peacefully what comes to Finnish parties – only moderate amounts of strawberry margarita were consumed and pretty much everyone (I hope) was happy playing boardgames we forced them to.. Kakkukeisari again proved to be a reliable supplier of excellent cakes. Them along with a bunch of self-made stuff hopefully left no one hungry.

    In November I also got to do something for the first time in many, many years – building a new computer component by component. Now that’s always a fun (though expensive) thing to do, especially with some good stuff out there this year like the Intel Core 2 processors. At least none of my computer-related projects will be hardware-limited (like was the case before) for some years to come.



    Like the Baltic Sea in the photo here, many things refused to freeze in December. This was of course aided by the unusually warm and wet weather – it looks like the winters are moving “forward” with the real winter not beginning until in January or so. December is always the time for wrapping up all the activities of one year and trying to prepare for the next one. While the winter is still for the most part ahead of us, things start in a sense going downhill in the beginning of the year, somehow accelerating towards summer with the increasing daylight hours.