Last year, as in most previous years, I read a lot – I could probably be categorized as an information junkie, though I prefer to call it a mostly harmless side effect of my ambition of being a specialist of everything Anyhow, in the process, I also learned a lot. Which is great, I love learning. However, in the constant quest for new information, new research, new data, new this and that, individuals, companies, industries and even societies often lose track of what’s more important – application of the knowledge acquired. And I fear that is precisely what happened with me, too. As Bill Mollison pointed out:

Perhaps we should do nothing else for the next century but apply our knowledge. We already know how to build, maintain and inhabit sustainable systems, but in everyday life of people this is hardly apparent.

That may be a bit extreme, but there’s a very good point therein. At one end of the spectrum, we know how to make fuel-efficient cars, but we don’t. We know how to generate electricity sustainably, but by and large we don’t. We know how to farm truly sustainably, in a way that is healthy for the soil, humans and animals alike, but do anything but that. We know we shouldn’t be burning all those fossil fuels and using up all those resources quite at the speed we are, but we do. At the other end of the spectrum, we know we shouldn’t eat that chocolate or whatever, but we do. We know we should exercise, but we don’t. There is no shortage of such paradoxes, at all levels large and small, and failing to apply what we know might very well be the ultimate curse of humankind.

Which is why I’m planning on dialing down the reading in 2012 – not stop, never going to stop, but reduce. I have also pledged not to buy any more books until I have finished my current reading list (that currently consists of this, this, this, this, this, this and this).

The plan is to begin shifting the balance from reading to reflection and producing rather than consuming text, and also subsequently action. I plan on spending more time thinking, reflecting on and synthesizing what I’ve learned and how it could be applied, spend some more time on writing what I think, and also doing what I think is sensible and needs to be done, hopefully reporting on that and also spending some more time with my other precious hobbies and life in general. I have came to realize that anything I read and learn – anything anyone reads or learns – doesn’t really have any impact whatsoever unless I do something. It’s good to remember this point, formulated here by John Michael Greer in his great book The Wealth of Nature: Economics as if Survival Mattered (a book that I need to cover in another post):

It deserves to be remembered that a small step that actually happens will do more good than a grandiose plan that never gets off the drawing board, a fate suffered by nearly all of the last half century’s worth of grandiose plans for sustainability. Starting from personal choices and local possibilities, rather than abstract and global considerations, makes it a good deal more likely that whatever evolves out of the process might actually work. Tackling the crisis of industrial society from the top down has been tried over and over again by activists for decades now with no noticeable results. Maybe it’s time to try something else.

All this means the contents of this blog will, again, shift as well. Shift how? Maybe it’ll be towards something more opinionated. Shorter, more frequent posts, perhaps. Maybe I’ll have more photos again. Maybe recipes again. What I will try to do less of is pure reviews, that practically dominated my blog in 2011 – of the books that read and review, I’ll endeavor to add more insight and reflection to the review. More meat around the bones, even if the books themselves are already meaty. More personal.

Finally, maybe this shift will also elicit more comments from my readers – not that it’s a raison d’être for any blog’s existence but I don’t in fact know if anyone ever reads this blog anymore It continues getting plenty of hits – averaging around 1,500 page views per day – but something like 99,9% of them are probably spam, the vast majority of which is thankfully effectively captured and dealt with.

Although this lengthy post was all about whining about lack of real content, this post will ironically wrap up here, having no real content Consider it as a heads-up for changes ahead, and as a mental reminder for myself to start making the Transition (capitalization and pun intended).

January was the height of summer here, and our first-ever vegetables were beginning to bear some fruit. The tomato plant was a success, but unfortunately some unknown animals (most likely possums) thought so, too, and ate a bunch of them. This year we are better prepared with nets.

Summer inevitably brings with it some critters, and it must be said that despite Finland having lots of forests etc, nature comes closer to you in Australia, even in the cities. Many people are not particularly fond of spiders, such as these pretty big huntsman spiders captured here on our fence in February. You may not learn to love them, but you do learn to live with them – and, as far as spiders go, the furry huntsmen are sort of beautiful, aren’t they?

I spent half of March working in Europe, in Brussels and Paris; over the weekend there, I think I exhausted most of Brussels’ interesting sights, from the Atomium pictured here to breweries and museums. While early March is not a particularly pleasant period to visit either city weather-wise, with spring yet to arrive, I do like Europe a lot, though Paris much more so than Brussels – even the ubiquitous crepes in Paris win the ubiquitous waffles in Brussels hands down

In April we went on a road trip, touring to Lakes Entrance, Buchan Caves, Snowy River National park (the edge of which is pictured here) and Canberra. Canberra turned out to live up to its reputation – clean, orderly, uncrowded, and somewhat boring. The kids, however, loved the wonderful science museum there, Questacon, and the War Memorial was pretty impressive as well.

Over the past couple of years, we’ve gotten to know and love the local farmer’s markets, like the closest one at Sir William Fry Reserve, a couple of kilometers from where we live – pictured here in May. The quality & selection of the produce is excellent, supporting local farmers is crucial and you can get some things you can’t easily find elsewhere; stuff like like venison, which makes for a very passable substitution for reindeer when making poronkäristys.

In June, for the first time in Melbourne, I hired a set of studio flashes for a photoshoot gig I did for a friend. Testing the equipment at home, our kids were the natural guinea-pigs and made for supremely cute subjects.

Late July we set off for Singapore for a couple of days’ stop-over on our way to Finland. Singapore is a great place to visit, particularly if you like good food or shopping – really all there is in the city are shopping malls and restaurants, or at least that what it seemed like. I wouldn’t want to live there, though – the climate is too hot & humid, people often not very nice and it’s not what you’d call a family-friendly city either. And I don’t like shopping. It was, however, good to catch up with some of the friendlier people in the city with our friends as guides.

After Singapore, we spent the entire month of August in Finland; it was the first time we went back after moving to Australia in 2009. I took some 7,000 photos during the month, many of which still need to be sifted through, selected and sorted, but the best moments were spent with family and friends; like this one, where me, my father and my son – three generations of men – are going fishing. Perfect, like many moments. Even the weather co-operated, with a sunny and warm August pampering us.

Some three days after returning from Finland, at the very beginning of September, I was off to San Francisco / the Bay Area for a business trip. What made this trip particularly great was that there are now some three good friends living in the area, and that I got to spend a weekend there which meant lots of hiking at various National, State and County parks.

By October, summer (by Finnish standards anyway, the official one starts in December) was in full swing in Melbourne, and many of the warmer evenings were spent on the beach – the kids never get tired of water and sand, and hanging around at the beach is not an entirely unpleasant way to spend time for adults, either One of the highlights was when Amanda found a bunch of live starfish from our local beach.

In November, we spent some time at the local botanical gardens; this flower is from the Royal Botanic Gardens Cranbourne that has great picnic areas and interesting tasks for kids, whereas the Melbourne version has some great water features in the summer, like water vapor fountains, artificial rain in the “rainforest” section of the children’s garden and a small artificial river for wading in.

At the end of December, we went on a vacation for a week to a destination that raised quite a few eyebrows here; we were going to Canberra. Again. Most Australians are generally perplexed why anyone ever bothers going to Canberra, let alone twice within a year – but really it’s not all that bad.

The primary reason for going back was that ever since our visit in April, our kids had been begging to go back to Questacon (the great science museum). And since a) science is a good thing to be excited about, b) one of the best sources of joy is seeing kids happy and c) it wasn’t a good time of the year to visit other destinations on our to-do list (Uluru and Cairns), off to Canberra it was. To be fair, we did include a few other places in the itinerary, too – wonderful experiences like seeing kangaroos in Tidbinbilla, good food in Canberra and quite a few good sights in Cowra (of all places!). We finally made it to a couple of cave tours at Jenolan Caves, too, which were simply awesome:

It felt like 2011 was a year when I did very little traveling in, but looking back it seems I’ve been traveling abroad or domestically in Australia for over 20% of the year, most of it on vacation, which doesn’t feel so little after all. Anyhow, it’s been mostly a great year for me personally (I’ve learned a lot) & our family, and despite the alarming emerging macro trends I’m hoping that streak will continue in 2012.

As for the first day of 2012, I am writing this on January 1st, 2012 and it’s a scorching ~+35C outside with the UV index at 11. I’ve raked a couple of hundred liters of flowers from our driveway (this is a daily exercise this time of the year, as the 20m tree generates a near-infinite number of flowers), the kids have had their water play in the balmy morning weather, and are now enjoying some downtime. A siesta would sound attractive, as would hitting the beach – but probably won’t do that until later in the day after some of the heat dies down. Tomorrow the temperature is forecast to head beyond +40C, but luckily it’s a day off to compensate for January 1st falling on a Sunday – so it’s shaping up to be a rather relaxed start for 2012. Maybe I can even read some of the books that I meant to read on our vacation this past week, but didn’t even open

Happy 2012!

So I set about to educate myself, and our kids, about the trees here. After some research, I concluded that the best book to do that with would be CSIRO’s publication Forest Trees of Australia by Boland et al. This is one massive text; at over 700 pages and 2+ kilograms in weight, it’s hardly a field guide – but it is, from what I can tell anyway, an extremely comprehensive text about trees in Australia. It begins with a short introduction covering the trees, climate, topography, soils, microbes, fire effects and other factors affecting trees here.

The bulk of the text consists of species descriptions, over 300 of them, each species with two pages. The left-hand page contains the common names and botanical names, related species, climate where the species lives, map of its distribution, descriptions of the bark, leaves, cones, fruits, wood etc – interestingly including points about forestry uses, such as durability, wood density and common uses. The page on the right-hand side has a dozen or so pictures of the tree bark, leaves, fruits, flowers etc. Unfortunately the vast majority of the photos in the book are black-and-white, but the photos are extremely clear and come with size guides.

Towards the end of the book there is an extensive glossary and the usual references & an index. Due to its heft, it’s a book that I will likely never read every page of, but it is absolutely fascinating reading. For example, I did not know that the Mountain Ash (Eucalyptus regnans) here is, at up to 100m in height, the second-largest tree species in the world, only exceeded in height by the California redwoods.

Another revelation that the book brought with it is that there are lots of different species of trees here, many of which look very similar to each other. This makes accurate identification somewhat painful. There are a total of approximately 30 tree species in Finland – over here, just the eucalyptus genus has over 700 species. Given time, I am sure I will learn to identify some of the most common ones, but all of them? Forget it. Never going to happen. While a more compact field guide may come in handy at some point (the most compact of them all, the Leafsnap app by Columbia University, doesn’t really work well here), the Forest Trees of Australia is an indispensable reference loaded with fascinating information.

The $35 bagel and the curse of the “luxury” hotels

I’ll tell you one thing; upscale hotels are ripping their customers off left, right and center. I stayed at one of the supposedly best hotels in the city for the first few days, Mark Hopkins San Francisco. The room rate was reasonable (although, I later found out, so deeply discounted I didn’t even get points for the stay!), but the more or less necessary extras were far from it. Parking? $52/day. Internet? $19/day. Breakfast? $32 + tips. Bottled water? $6.50/bottle. Shower? Malfunctioning. Water pressure? Nonexistent. The list goes on. Thanks to one busy morning, I once had just a bagel. Because the breakfast was a fixed-price buffet, this meant I had a $35 bagel; and that only by tipping far less than is the generally accepted norm nowadays.

And no, the price-quality ratio was not too great at that level. It was a pretty ordinary $1-level bagel.

On top of that, “basic” luxury amenities like swimming pools were nowhere in sight. The typical clientele is obviously from a different socioeconomic group than me, which became apparent when I asked if there was a swimming pool nearby. The concierge said sure, there’s a pool a couple of blocks down the hill. The catch? They charge what the hotel concierge said is “a nominal fee of $20” to use the pool. Now I don’t know about you, but I sure as hell don’t think $20 is a “nominal” fee for a swim.

Sure the company paid for the stay, but there is a limit to how much I like even them to be fleeced, so for the latter part of my stay I switched to Crowne Plaza in Palo Alto. Not only was it more convenient considering my last day’s schedule, it was a much better deal. At a lower room rate, one got a bigger, better equipped-for-work room, a swimming pool with hot tub and all, free breakfast, free (actually truly high-speed) Internet and free bottled water. Oh, and a shower that works with decent water pressure and that works without having to call maintenance in the first place.

Enough with that, however. During the weekend I managed to get out and take some photos:

Photos

First, the Muir Woods National Monument; gotta love the big trees.

Another walk took us to the Big Basin area; nice environment for walking and driving alike:

While the forests were ideal bushwalking destinations for the day, The Dish at Stanford was better experienced in the not-too-hot late afternoon sun. This scorching jogging track near the dish is most likely not a pleasant destination in the midday summer sun:

Hotel fountain:

San Francisco, though often foggy, had a couple of sunny breaks. This view is from the Top of the Mark, the restaurant of the first hotel, which admittedly had some pretty splendid views:

The sunny breaks were followed by copious fog pretty much every evening:

Whenever one returns to ones home country, there is some level of excitement in the air – how will it feel? Inevitably both the country and myself as a person have changed. How that plays out remains to be seen, but there are some guarantees; it will be great to see family and friends after being away for years. It’ll also be wonderful to experience the relatively long days (sunset is after 10pm in Helsinki even though it’s the latter third of the summer already), and hopefully we’ll also get to enjoy some warm days. Foods that just aren’t available here will also be welcome; for example, the only way one could get (fresh/frozen) lingonberries in Australia is to order them from a wholesaler in China – with a minimum order quantity of 10 metric tons, which slightly exceeds our freezer capacity.

On the flip side of the coin, it’s also pretty much guaranteed that one will experience an overdose of rude people in Finland and a number of other suboptimal things which I’d rather not focus on in advance.

With the trip, thoughts on being foreign and living abroad inevitably surface. Living abroad gives immensely valuable and wonderful experiences, but it’d be naive to think it’s purely and strictly a positive experience. Personally, I’ve found the increasing longing for things from different countries to be the most difficult aspect of leading an “international” life; naturally one misses friends and family that are elsewhere, and the more places you live in, the bigger percentage of your friends will always be elsewhere. But one inevitably also ends up longing for other things; food, culture, unique nature, specific places, experiences and other things. In every (good) place one lives in, a small part of you remains there, and before you know it, you can no longer be 100% at home anywhere – you always crave for some things from your other home(s).

This only slightly exaggerated “home everywhere, but home nowhere” feeling is, I think, both inevitable and a permanent state of being – but few people thinking of moving abroad understand or realize that even if they come back after a year or two, they will never again have a single home country. This is of course assuming you allow yourself to be immersed into the country, culture and all – it is after all perfectly possible to live years in physical and mental expat bubbles anywhere in the world and stay completely detached from everything. That’s just not how I like to, or can, live.

The Economist had a good article on the topic a couple of years ago Being Foreign – The Others. It’s worth reading the whole article, but here’s a short excerpt to wrap this post up:

But we cannot expect to have it all ways. Life is full of choices, and to choose one thing is to forgo another. The dilemma of foreignness comes down to one of liberty versus fraternity—the pleasures of freedom versus the pleasures of belonging. The homebody chooses the pleasures of belonging. The foreigner chooses the pleasures of freedom, and the pains that go with them.

An interesting thing to note of the above quote is that even though being foreign is a choice, it’s hardly ever a well-informed choice; you never know what you’re going to get in the new country and how it affects you. With that, I wish all my readers here a good rest of the summer/winter and I’ll get back to blogging sometime in September!

While on one hand the lack of insulation is infuriating, on the other it’s quite understandable – if you don’t insulate your house here, you are mildly uncomfortable for a few months of the year. If you don’t insulate houses in Finland, you die. Minor difference. But not all is bad; I generally like the house layouts here a lot, particularly the emphasis on the living room / kitchen area and the ubiquitous open plans. In Finland, many houses are just… how should I put it, boring. So it appears wherever you are, to get what you want, you need to do it yourself: I/we therefore have somewhat of a long-term goal of building a house. The actual building, however, is still years away, as several minor details – like what country to build it in – need to be sorted out first.

That, however, doesn’t mean one can’t start upskilling for that project. As I harbor no dreams of doing much of the actual construction myself (even though I can lay floors, tiles, paint and do minor stuff like that), much of that upskilling has to do with getting acquainted with the various building materials, design choices etc. One of these aspects is the building process and knowing how the builders’ world works; while I have great deals of second-hand experience of this from co-workers and relatives cursing the tradies to the lowest levels of Hell, I also wanted to do some reading of my own. Hence I started with What Your Contractor Can’t Tell You: The Essential Guide to Building and Renovating by Amy Johnston – a crash-course into what the well-informed owners should know and do when planning and building. In essence, it’s a guidebook on how the owners can a) be more of an asset to he building process than a hindrance and b) how to avoid mistakes – budget overruns, bad work, delays etc.

At 200 pages, it may feel like a short book, but it’s absolutely packed with invaluable information. If I ever do get to the actual building part, I will be extremely happy I know all this. It’s impossible to sum up the advice, but the most important things are: meticulous planning, carefully following and enforcing those plans and keeping track of the money, right down to the dollar or cent. But why should building need a guidebook? As much of the advise itself may sound common sense when you read it, why is it so difficult to get something built successfully? Amy explains:

Why is getting something built such a high risk endeavor? For starters, owners enter a culture that’s much less straightforward than it appears from the outside, and everyone in it knows more than they do. They can expect to make fifteen hundred decisions when building a new home. Add to that a dozen new relationships, deadlines, tastes, quality standards, and more money than they’ll ever spend on anything else, and you have a formula for potential disaster. Most people don’t know how to get themselves prepared for this undertaking, and to date, few in the industry have wanted to tell them.

Importantly, the book is not about demonizing contractors or tradies – it’s about understanding their point of view, and on teaching strategies to developing a mutually respecting, positive relationship with them. It tells you where the contractors’ revenue comes from, how they try to maximize it, and how the owners should and can try to minimize the costs and control the money flow. It’s a bit like a friendly (or at least semi-friendly) game of cat-and-mouse, with all parties trying to maximize their own benefit. And if the owner – who after all controls the money – doesn’t get into the “game” as an informed participant, chances are he’s going to end up paying too much and get into other kinds of trouble. I have a fair share of acquaintances who have had nightmarish building experiences, and I can’t help but imagine they should’ve read this book before building.

The key takeaways from the book relate to careful planning, having a detailed contract, meticulously overseeing the plan fulfillment, being extremely careful about money flows and keeping a paper trail of everything. What Your Contractor Can’t Tell You is an American book and, as such, not 1:1 applicable in everything elsewhere, but I still consider it an invaluable resource with lots of essential advice and good insight into the construction business. I would go as far as to say much of the book is probably an interesting and even entertaining read even if one was not planning to renovate or build.

It was my first time that I flew on an A380. It was a very pleasant experience, though the inner decor that Qantas chose – various shades of grey – was boring to say the least. Apart from being new, the biggest plus was probably that it’s a noticeably quieter plane than, say, a Boeing 747. Supposedly the cabin is also pressurized to a lower altitude than is typical, so one should feel less jet-lagged. Based on just two legs on it, I don’t feel I can comment on whether it really made a big difference or not. On a negative note, the in-flight entertainment system was a bit flaky, with some ground crew idiots performing a remote system upgrade while the plane was airborne, resulting in an hour of reboots and restarts before it started working again. Btw, it runs Red Hat Linux.

Oh, and the Rolls-Royce engines contained themselves well, thankfully.

On another note, I can’t believe how many people take long-haul flights in full business gear, i.e. suit and all. I felt very positively out of place in my ultra-casual flying attire. It’s not that hard to do a clothing switch at the airport, but it makes flying so much more comfortable.

Over my free weekend in Brussels, I toured some of the main sights. Brussels had a pretty good free aviation museum, that had some old planes, newer planes, small plans and bigger planes – a fairly extensive selection.

Then there’s the Atomium, originally built for the World Fair expo of 1958. Giant spheres, 18m in diameter, that house a science museum of sorts.

One of the more positive surprises was the Cantillon Brewery that turned out to be an educational experience on the nice tour they have there. Lots of interesting beer facts that managed to lift my respect for beer, particularly lambic, a little bit. No, I still don’t particularly like beer.

The Justice Palace was a pretty intimidating place. I could imagine it being an inspiration for, say, the game Doom (which is the most recent FPS that I can remember playing..)

All parks were, in the typical Central European fashion, very geometrical. They would’ve been a lot more pleasant had it not been freezing.

Probably the #1 attraction of Brussels, the peeing dude (aka Manneken Pis) was having a wardrobe crisis and was covered in strange clothes every day. Probably for the better, I mean it was cold..

Trains. Gotta love the high-speed rail in Europe. With 1h20min to Paris (with poorly functioning WiFi on board) it was a joy. However, not all logistics was quite up to scratch. On my way back, I had a horrible time getting to the airport in Brussels, with the train system messed up and the information – particularly in English – lacking badly. Frankfurt airport, on the other hand, was a disaster both ways – almost worse than Heathrow. The more I travel in Asia, the more I prefer Asia to Europe. For example, the Singapore airport was still perfectly functioning and a pleasant place as far as airports go; yet they were completely redoing the terminals. In Europe (as well as in the US) everything tends to get run down past their useful lifetime and only then do people start thinking whether something perhaps should be done to fix them. Airports are a prime example.

In Paris, I had a sunset view of the Eiffel tower. The most entertaining part of the tower was watching the guys who sell the metallic mini-Eiffel towers near the real one. They run back and forth, spreading their mini-towers for sale and then scooping them up and sprinting away the next second when the cops approach, only to return 30 seconds later. It’s like a real-life Tom&Jerry-show. The cops obviously didn’t care enough to actually sprint after them and the security forces didn’t care at all (nor did the salespeople care about them).

When departing Brussels, I saw the most contrails I’ve ever seen at once. It reminded me of their impact on global warming, which apparently is still being debated. There is a recent Nature-article on them, suggesting contrails have a significant impact.

Upon return to Melbourne, I was greeted with what was a truly warm morning and a nice sunrise. A welcome event after being in the cold for a couple of weeks. Also, Melbourne airport was a remarkably easy place to get out of early in the morning. With nobody around, it took me under 15mins to get from the aircraft door to the taxi with the luggage and everything. The taxi part, however, sucks. Seriously, Melbourne should get a rail line to the airport, no matter what the people with vested interests against it say (who seem to be the most vocal in this issue).

Summer was full on in January; spending the New Year’s eve at blistering temperatures, brought down by a massive thunderstorm was an interesting contrast to the typical freezing January-temperatures in Finland.

Our small yard is home to a plethora of interesting creatures. From the early summer cicadas to year-round possums, in February this praying mantis was casually walking around. Later in the year it was followed by stick insects and other critters, but luckily no snakes or poisonous spiders around – yet.

One of the best things about Melbourne (for a family anyway) are the numerous suburban parks; this shot from March is from one of the about dozen parks within a half an hour’s walk from our home.

Another cool thing are the zoos; this shot from April from the Werribee Open Range Zoo is a good example – zoos here are very nice, from both the animals’ perspective (to the extent captivity is good for any animal) and the visitors.

I have been very positively surprised how well we can go on bush- and other walks with our kids. There are many pram-accessible trails and recently even our almost-2-year-old Benjamin has been bravely walking over 3km trips. I think that’s awesome; it means we can get back to our long nature walks much sooner than I anticipated. In May we visited Phillip Island, this shot from the end of the island.

June, the first “summer month” in Finland is fall time over here. While there are not that many coniferous trees in the Melbourne area, Carlton Gardens in the city becomes a spectacular sight in June.

July, the mid-winter, is a good time to enjoy the city and escape to some of the art galleries or cafes to escape from the “cold”. National Galleries Victoria always has some nice installation around their outdoor fountains:

Melbourne is famous for its innovative architecture; this shot from August is a walking bridge near South Bank. The construction reminds me of the typical house insulation here

In September I had the opportunity to take an all-too-rare business trip to one of my favorite cities, San Francisco, for a mobile conference. Loved the city, as always.

In October we took a road trip to Sydney and Blue Mountains. In Sydney we had some hot days perfect for hitting the famous beaches, some cooler days better for sightseeing – Blue Mountains, however, were more like White Mountains. As we didn’t quite expect this chilly conditions, we will have to return to Blue Mountains later for a proper bushwalking experience.

Organic produce and excellent selection of fruit and veggies is a delight to foodies like us. This is our local organic food store in November. Now, with the Queensland floods, the prices of some fruits is bound to go temporarily up by as much as 50%, but thankfully Victoria has fared better without catastrophic crop losses this year, even if we, too, had a drought-breakingly wet spring.

In December summer finally started properly, with the first over +40C day late in the month. This picture is from a place called Hanging Rock.

The CBD – or the “city” – is a nice and compact area that is quite walkable; photography-wise, however, the skyscrapers are a bit dispersed and distributed on both sides of the river in three or four clusters. Therefore, getting comprehensive skyline photos is more challenging than it is in many other cities.

One thing that there are plenty of in Melbourne are cafes. And the cafe culture is starting to grow on me, too – to the great surprise of everyone, including myself. I have drank approximately 10 times more coffee over the past month than in my entire life before that. I kid you not.

There’s also lots of interesting architecture in Melbourne. Federation square, one of the happening places downtown, is one example:

Flinders Street station and the old city circle tram in the foreground represent a somewhat older style of the city; none less compelling, the sporadically preserved older architecture make a nice touch to the feeling of the city.

The Southern Cross railway station, on the other hand, is yet another example of cool modern architecture. It’s kind of like the Pasile station in Helsinki, only much nicer

There really isn’t a subway system in Melbourne as such, but there is a “city loop” with stations mostly underground via which some local area trains travel. The local trains are quite nice and the tram network is pretty extensive (even though we live outside of it), plus there are buses – overall the public transportation is quite good.

As far as shopping goes, it unfortunately seem Melbourne is a very good city to do some serious shopping. We’re (un)lucky enough to live within a 15-minute drive of the biggest shopping center in Australia, Chadstone. The place is positively huge with over 400 shops and it looks pretty nice, too:

While these don’t even scratch the surface of what’s worthy of taking a photo, I expect to get some pretty nice shots of all kinds of things as time goes by. There is no shortage of subjects for sure.

US vs Australia

• Package sizes – while the GFC has brought back some smaller sizes in the US, everything is still big there. And the same disease of 1kg potato chip bags has been infecting Finland for some time, too. But over here, stuff like that is generally sold in reasonable quantities. Sure there are jumbo-sized this & that available, but it’s sort of refreshing being able to buy a whole bag of potato chips, eat them all in one evening and not feel bloated or gain 1kg from one bag.

• General knowledge aka are people “dumb” here, too? Luckily, no. Not to disparage the Americans – some very smart people there, too – but Australians in general do seem to have a better grasp of the rest of the world than Americans. Take Finland – even though Finland is only half the distance from US than it is from Australia, comparatively few “average” people knew about it in the States. When saying we’re from Finland, comments from Americas were to the tune of, and I quote, “Oh what state is that in?” and “It’s somewhere near Fiji, right?”. Over here, they’re more like “Oh nice place, we went there a couple of years ago!” and “Oh really?! I have good friends in Sweden but never been in Finland.” etc.

• Attitudes towards immigrants seem friendlier here than in the US; and this doesn’t mean that anybody was hostile towards us in the US either, but it just means that Australians are clearly very used to heavy immigration and all kinds of basic things, like getting a local drivers license, are quite easily taken care of.

• Lack of superlatives; with Americans, many things are “awesome!”, “wonderful!” or at least “great!”. Not so much here; things are mostly just “good”. Which is good. Because if you call everything awesome, what do you call something that’s truly awesome?

Finland vs Australia

• Perception of safety is a funny thing. Whether you feel safe may have very little to do with actual safety, but it’s got a strong influence on what you’re likely to do or not do. For example, I was kind of disappointed to notice that streets in Australia are mostly very poorly lit compared to Finland. When it’s dark, it’s dark almost everywhere, hence, going for a run after sunset doesn’t feel like a good idea. It might be, but it doesn’t feel like that.
  
  On the other hand, some small curiosities make Australia feel more safe than Finland; mailboxes are one. Mailboxes in Finland tend to be locked and made of bomb-proof armored steel or something like that. Here, mailboxes are openings or just very flimsily locked. Packages can be left on the doorstep, and apparently nobody steals them – not sure if anyone would steal them in Finland either, but it’s unheard of that the mail guy would leave a package unattended outside your door in Finland. House or unit door locks are a similar story – like in the US, locks here in Australia are the kind that can be picked by an amateur or kicked in. In Finland doors are like mini-safes that can withstand any assault.

• Job titles are for the large parts identical in spelling, but differ in contents. This makes it a bit more challenging in finding the right position content-wise; for example, a business development manager here is typically a salesguy-type of a position, whereas my past years as a BDM were not quite like that.

• People are certainly more friendly and open towards strangers here. Finns come out as positively xenophobic compared to US, let alone Australians. Also, say what you will about the “how are you”s and “fine”s, I like that kind of meaningless small talk. The indifference exhibited in Finland may be more honest, but it certainly doesn’t make your day any happier.

• Potatoes. Oh the irony – the Finnish staple food, potatoes, taste better in Australia than they do in Finland. I couldn’t believe it at first, but it’s now been conclusively and repeatedly proven – potatoes are better here. Why, I have no idea.