2008 in pictures

First off, Happy New Year 2009 to everyone! To begin with a small piece of food for thought, here’s a nice quote that I found:

New Year’s eve is like every other night; there is no pause in the march of the universe, no breathless moment of silence among created things that the passage of another twelve months may be noted; and yet no man has quite the same thoughts this evening that come with the coming of darkness on other nights.

– Hamilton Wright Mabie

While 2008 in general focused on the economy and the US presidential election, 2008 on a personal level could be characterized by many smaller-scale things; on one hand, the weather in Finland sucked most of the year with no winter or summer. On the other hand, it was the first – and hopefully the last – whole year we spent as a family of three with all the joys that go with that. The year was also sometimes busier-than-desired with Sarita wrapping up her studies, but at other times offering refreshing variation to the routine with me staying home with Amanda for a month.

Along the photographic tradition in this blog, here are a few highlights from the year follow. Click on the thumbnails for a slightly bigger version.

This photo from January represents one thing that’s wrong with the Finnish winters – there are no good-quality fresh fruits or vegetables available. What little there is is either tasteless greenhouse-grown or raw shipped-from-somewhere. In January we also started going to baby swimming lessons with Amanda; in this issue she obviously comes to her father in that she absolutely loves water!

February was unseasonably warm, up to +8C, and seaside walks felt more like October than February. Nothing much out of the ordinary happened in February otherwise; at work we managed to cut costs dramatically and dined well at Mai Thai – the 230eur bill there was a rather big decrease from the 1,200eur spent by the same team the previous time..

Despite the warmer-than-before temperatures, March is still firmly in the winter territory; hence, all flowery photographic activity needs to take place indoors, such as on this tiny rosebud. At the end of March, we got snow on two occasions that actually stayed on the ground for a while – but that didn’t stop us from looting the ice cream car one Friday. The ice cream car, btw, makes its rounds all through winter.

Some small signs of the coming spring were already visible in April, such as this beautiful blue flower in the gardens nearby. A quick trip or two to Germany seems to be mandatory every spring; this time Düsseldorf failed to impress, but didn’t disappoint either.

The Japanese garden and the cherry tree bloom is always one of the high points of May; May 2008 began in downright summery temperatures of over +20C, which we thankfully didn’t know would be pretty much the best “heatwave” we’d get the whole year. BBQ season was also officially opened in May – this year we also used the disposable BBQs successfully in parks etc, without even setting off any fires.

With June came a quick business trip to a new (for me) country, Monaco, as well as an event that has become more rare for me lately: an exam. I think IELTS must be somehow fundamentally flawed as I didn’t get a perfect score on it for some strange reason June is also when the Helsinki Samba Carnival takes place, a day when the downtown views could easily be from another country.. I like the summer in Helsinki a lot actually, there’s always something cool happening and the swarms of tourists create a nice international atmosphere that is mostly missing other times of the year.

July, the official summer month, was not very reliably summer this year – which was just as well as I spent most of the month working, with one week getting used to the pattern what would define the month of August:

August was a unique month in that Sarita went to work whereas I took the month off as paternal leave and stayed home with 11-month-old Amanda. We had a lot of fun and I made lots of interesting observations. Among these were:

• Our daughter is positively wild. Sure I knew that before, but I mean she’s wild. Sometimes it’s tiring just to watch her being at it, but most of the time she’s just so darn cute.
• While many small wonders may fill a day, one can’t actually do very many “big” things on any given day. A trip downtown and the sandbox easily fills the whole day.
• An hour can be an extremely short period of time – or it can be more like a week.
• Annoying childrens’ songs, while undoubtedly very therapeutic, get stuck on “repeat” in your head long after you’ve stopped playing them. Luckily Amanda’s favorite these days is Rihanna’s Disturbia, which doesn’t quite have the same annoyance factor.
• A cute baby is a good social lubricant even among the mute Finns. Right up there with a puppy, actually.

September began with the best business trip ever, a three-city tour of Hong Kong, Auckland and Sydney with plenty of time for my own activities. Excellent company at Auckland made the conference + sightseeing & shopping even more fun than I imagined it would be and afterwards a few days off at Sydney would’ve been downright perfect had it not been for the storm that kept the beaches closed and thus me out of the water and off my surfboard.

Still, it was one great trip. More such business trips would be very welcome

October provided another good business trip, this time to Bordeaux where it still was summer. My first time at the ICIN conference proved to be not only interesting but rewarding, as I got the Best Presentation award. Oh, and I reaffirmed my liking to French cooking. And the wine is not too bad either. Other than that, Sarita was busy studying and I was busy taking care of Amanda while she was doing that.

Late November saw a foot of snow falling on Helsinki within one day, and amidst the ensuing traffic chaos people quickly forgot the jeer typically directed at Americans when similar chaos ensues there after a foot or two of snow. Finns are so proud of the country’s winter capabilities that we easily forget what actually happens if a foot of snow is dumped on us within 24 hours. You see in Finland, typically whatever snow falls does so over weeks and months, making it quite a bit easier to clear away. Unfortunately the entire 40cm of snow was gone within a week and has yet to return.

With our stream/river still running wild in December, it seems possible that we won’t be getting a cold winter at all. Again. On the other hand, the forecast does call for -15C weather in just a few days time, so let’s see. Some snow would be nice to help the darkness a bit, but on the other hand my skin doesn’t like freezing temperatures at all, so in that respect warm winters are more than welcome.

Last year I noted that the arrival of a child changed everything. That might’ve been a bit of an exaggeration – it hasn’t changed everything. It’s brought some logistical and more importantly time management challenges, but it also feels indescribably good to come home to a hug and a kiss from a tiny person. Early 2009 will tell us whether it is actually the arrival of a second child that will change everything .. I hope not.

2008 was certainly an eventful year, but there are already strong indications that 2009 will be even more so. As is the case with the global economy, 2009 will also present us with a number of personal challenges – but challenges are meant to be tackled with and conquered, allowing us to emerge stronger after them. So bring it on! (the smaller challenges anyway)