Only slightly bent

Last month, I was at Brussels doing some work for the European Commission. I had never been there before, so it was a bit of a shame that there was very little time to take a look at the city. Here are a couple of snapshots from my quick explorations anyway. Apologies for the picture quality, I only had my old compact digital camera and cellphone with me.

Ironically, the EC building where I worked was one of the nicest things. Not a bad lobby, eh?

I usually like parks, so one of the first chances I got, I headed to Park de Bruxelles Warandepark – the biggest park in the downtown area. On the the edges it felt alive, with people running around the park:

Unfortunately, when you ventured further in, it was quite close to dead in the center. Even though it was beautiful weather, the park felt like it was abandoned last fall (or some earlier fall for that matter) and left to die. Rather sad.

On the other side of the park the sight was beyond sad and downright filthy. It might’ve been an aftermath of a big event, but I did not expect to find quite this:

That, however, was foreshadowing what I witnessed right in the downtown shopping district also. Look ahead and you see a vibrant shopping street. Look left and there’s a desolate strip of road with everything closed and not a soul in sight. Strange.

You can find photos from this example and more photos from Brussels at the Brussels-album.

Speaking at a conference gave me a chance to visit Bordeaux, France for some days – my first time in Bordeaux. Below you can find some sample photos; click on them to get a bigger version. You’ll also find more photos from the Bordeaux photo gallery.

I’m sure nobody wants to hear any boring musings & ramblings on the great-when-it-works public transport in Bordeaux, on the friendly-but-English-challenged French people, on the nice fashion, on the ubiquitous WLANs (17 networks visible at a remote tram stop!), on the +24C-and-sunny-weather or stuff like that, so let’s just say it was a nice place and leave it at that.

Well let’s just put one in there anyway

All airlines that I’m aware of have been operating fully non-smoking flights for as long as I can remember. And to my knowledge, even when some weirdos allowed smoking, it was forbidden in the toilets. So why on earth are brand new planes still equipped with an ashtray in the toilets? That’s mind-boggling. I mean it even weighs more than just a door so you’d think they’d get removed in the name of fuel economy

Seats for midgets

A word of warning: avoid economy class in Cathay Pacific’s new Airbus A330s if you’re tall. I’m 6′2″ and the seat on the right is designed for people classified as midgets from my point of view. The problem lies in the unadjustable, molded-to-shape seat back, pictured on the right, lower part of the photo. Unfortunately, with my height, the seat ends way too soon and the molded upper part jabs me somewhere around my shoulder blades. The head rest becomes an awkward neck rest and the whole contraption is uncomfortable as hell. Worst I’ve ever experienced. It took four pillows and two blankets to cover it sufficiently to just survive.

Does Finland have to be 100% more expensive?

While in New Zealand earlier this month, I ate at Subway a couple of times when in a hurry. The following points struck me as somewhat unfair:
• The prices, as numbers, were more or less the same as in Finland. The problem: 1 Euro = approximately 2.08 New Zealand dollars, meaning it was >50% cheaper in NZ.
• When you order a meal, you get two cookies instead of one like in Finland.
• Soft drinks come with free, unlimited refills, unlike the different sizes you have to pay for varying amounts over here.

*hmph* Is it only our God-forsaken location way up here near the North Pole that gives us such ridiculous prices? Or could it involve some lack of competition also?

I recently had the opportunity to do a conference presentation in Auckland for work and take a vacation stopover in Sydney on the way back. On the way there a looong plane change in Hong Kong allowed me to do some sightseeing there, too.

Spending 9+11hrs in economy class – and then repeating the drill 10 days later – is never exactly a lot of fun. But when the destination is New Zealand and Australia, you can somehow accept that it takes a small sacrifice to get there And it’s always worth it.

In other news, it again dawned on me the other day that I should focus more in this blog. Too often I give in to the temptation to write about a bunch of stuff in a single post – and as we know, when you say everything, you say nothing. So from now on, I’ll try to have a single – seriously like one (or two. Three max.) – point in any one blog post. That may mean shorter posts but that’s probably good.

In that spirit, the point of this post is to advertise the photos from the aforementioned trip. The photos are in their separate galleries, so click on the below images to see the gallery for the city in question:

As far as the trip itself is concerned, it was a lot of fun. So am I glad to be back?

To my family? Yes.

To Finland? Hell no. More on that later.

Not bad.

More photos to follow a bit later once I get around to it.

I was in Monaco for a couple of days earlier this week on a business trip. As is the tradition, I’ll mainly let some photos do the talking. Before the photos (which you can click to get a bigger one) however, a few notes on flying.

As fuel prices continue their relentless rise, airlines are in a financial nose-dive with many already having crash-landed. Instead of just directly raising ticket prices (which they’ll be forced to do anyway) they are engaging in an annoying practice of adding fees on everything imaginable and sometimes unimaginable. In the words of Michael O’Leary (RyanAir boss) who says BA “is levying surcharges faster than it’s losing bags at Terminal Five“. Touché. Anyway, as a passenger, it’s somehow highly annoying having to pay extortionate prices for basic stuff like water on board, especially when you can’t even bring water along from the outside anymore.

I’m still waiting for an airline that charges more the fair way; from overweight passengers. I think it’s plain and simply unfair that people of healthy size have to pay for a few measly extra baggage kilos while some people who hop onboard with 20, 30 or 40kg extra weight strapped to their waist can get away with it for free. Kind of like the recent success of high cigarette taxation in NYC, taxing the overweight might provide an additional incentive to lose some of that.

Talking about flying, it is an awesome sight to see another airplane heading the opposite way close to your plane. You start to appreciate the speed of these things when the other plane screams by at a relative speed of 1,800km/h.. Still I’d prefer not to see any more of those any closer, thank you very much.

Finally, how come nobody – like the travel agent for example – told me that there is a frequent and relatively inexpensive helicopter shuttle between Nice airport and Monaco? Now I had to find this out from the guy sitting next to me on the way there. Sure the drive there along the coastal road – which I luckily chose over the highway thanks to a hint from that same guy – had one of the nicest sceneries there is, but compared to what a chopper ride along the same coast would’ve had? No contest.

Those helicopters would’ve been the basic transportation choice; the heliport was one busy place:

When one thinks of Monaco, the first thing that comes to mind is boats. Big boats. And there certainly were enough of those to go around. While awesome, it’s somewhat sad that they all seemed to be docked at the harbors. Now come on, the least you can do if you have a boat like that is to use it.

The villages along the way to Monaco from Nice weren’t all too bad either, as is exemplified by this view of the beach and the surrounding village.