Dreaming of a White Christmas ...

I have now been home for two nights and I'm not flying back to Finland tomorrow. I think my body has finally realised I'm not just here for the weekend and is now starting to relax.

We had a glorious weekend before I left with friends Graham, Barbara, Jim and Linda. Lots of adventures and visits, the photos of which are all cunningly stored on the PC in my Helsinki apartment, so those will have to be posted another time. But the weather there helped to get the season feeling truly festive; we had snow whilst walking from the Winter Gardens to restaurant Sea Horse for Sunday lunch and, by Tuesday when Graham, Barbara and I visited Porvoo, temperatures were down to minus 15.

I flew back on Thursday, amidst threats of a BA strike, thankfully now averted. Had I tried flying a day later, the snow might have prevented my arrival, as several UK airports were closed by an amount of snow that my Finnish friends would consider an unimpressive start to winter. But on Thursday, I put all my experience of regularly travelling this route into action. I dawdled somewhat coming off the plane at London Heathrow, ensuring that I was the last passenger on the first bus from aircraft to terminal building. Doing this ensures that I am the first off at the arrivals hall, whereupon I stride out as a man on a mission, walking the (it feels like) five miles from entry point to passport hall. The unpredictable IRIS machine worked (yay) and so I was through passport control without queueing. And despite the UK baggage handlers showing sympathy for their striking Finnish colleagues by putting our bags on the furthest belt from the exit, my case (loaded with Glögi, Finnish chocolate and smoked Reindeer) was the first off the aircraft. I was out to the arrivals hall less than thirty minutes from landing, a personal best when travelling with luggage!

The photo shows the sight that greeted me from our living room window on Friday morning. I am so glad that I repainted the sheep in the summer, as their previous somewhat green tinge (from four years or so of lichen growth) would have been rather noticeable against the white carpet which nature had provided as their setting, for the next few days at least. Will the snow last until Christmas? I rather hope so.

A day less ordinary ...

Well, I think today (actually yesterday, by now) has probably been the most diverse set of experiences in the two years, five months and thirteen days since I moved to Finland.

It started with a text message at around 8am from one of the newswire journalists, suggesting that I might want to frame the day's copy of Kauppalehti, a business newspaper here. It turned out that a briefing I had given on Tuesday on a legal case had resulted in a story including my official photo, printed rather larger than the photo of our company chairman on the previous page. Surely a career limiting move!

Today was our Capital Markets Day, to which we invite representatives of our major shareholders and investment analysts, as well as journalists. It was only my second time wearing a suit and tie this quarter, part of my role was to press the button to advance the slides for my executive vice president who was presenting.

The event ran a little over its scheduled time, so I had to rush to my car to drive home and change to be assistant stage manager for the Finn-Brit Players' performance this evening. Thankfully, I was not too late and there were no traffic cops around.

The show was great, making me wish for the second time this year that I was performing rather than part of the technical crew. An evening in Marian Helmi, coincidentally my local, ensued.

I was rather grateful that none of my Finn-Brit friends had read Kauppalehti this morning, I got quite enough teasing on that from colleagues earlier. One of the joys of the group is that it matters not a jot what you do to earn a crust, you are taken on your merits as a performer or supporter, nothing more and nothing less.

On Friday, I will fly home to see my wife and daughter in their show. I only hope they have had as much fun as I have this week. I can't wait to see their performances.

From Panto to Pinter ...

This weekend we have been setting up for the Finn-Brit Players' Harold Pinter revue, the latest activity in their Pinter project. Rehearsals until now have mainly taken place at the offices of the Finn-Brit Society in Helsinki - the photo shows the festive table there, selling British goods in aid of the Anglican church in the city. Expats have been able to buy such treats as Branston pickle and Frank Cooper's marmalade, bringing a taste of home for those who have been too long away from the motherland. You may recognise a few of your own favourites in the picture.

For the revue, I am assistant stagehand, building on the technical skills garnered from lighting the last show. It is proving to be useful experience which I hope to put to use when I return to the one seasonal favourite not available here, British pantomime.

While I have been preparing here, my family and friends at home have been set building and preparing for the run of Jacko and the Watercress stalk, which opens on Tuesday in Old Alresford, hopefully to the usual packed houses.  I will be home in time to do front of house on Saturday night and then join the cast and crew party afterwards, helping with teardown on Sunday.

Though I love the panto and the shows we produce in TOADS, I am also enjoying the straight theatre productions here.  It has been great to get some life back into my work/life balance over the past couple of weeks!

My wife is a cow ...

Well, actually, she will be the front end of a cow, in the TOADS panto this year, Jacko and the Watercress Stalk.  My youngest daughter is playing the rear end and tonight I saw them rehearsing this for the first time.

Normally on weekends when I am back in the UK, I leave home around 3:30pm and so am gone by the time rehearsals start. But unusually this week, I am working in the UK on Monday and Tuesday and had the rare treat of a Sunday evening at home.

You may have noticed, dear reader, that it has been over a month since my last post. I do apologise, this was down to a couple of factors, the first being that the last month has been rather busy at work and the second that I am finding, after more than two years of living in Finland, that there are fewer things that seem novel to write about. So this post is rather more focused on "home home", rather than my weektime home of Helsinki.

Last weekend was also spent in the UK, celebrating at the village bonfire night party (I have posted about this before; as usual I was flipping burgers on the barbeque and also cooked Broccoli & Stilton soup).  Before that, though, we headed to Christchurch to collect two new kittens, a replacement for our blue Burmese boy George, who was run over a few weeks ago. His brother Zippy, a lilac Burmese, had never been alone since he was a kitten and so was pining for company.  When we returned from the breeder with Darcy (a brown Burmese) and Willoughby (a snow spotted Bengal), you could tell that he was trying to tell us that he wasn't that lonely! However, a week later and they all seem to be getting along fine. I have posted some photos on my Facebook account but you can see them here, even if you are not a Facebook user.

Sunday was a mild and sunny November day and we were able to drive to the pub in my wife's car with the roof down, as it was 12 degrees celsius. In Helsinki I am already driving on winter tyres and temperatures hit minus 5 celsius last week, so I shall enjoy the sunshine and relative warmth while I can.

Finally, you may have noticed a few changes on the blog. The new header photograph was taken from the boat heading to Korkeasaari zoo in the summer. In the sidebar to the left, I have added a feed showing my latest status as reported through Facebook; if you have not already added me as a friend on Facebook, there is a button to do so further down.  I hope you continue to enjoy the blog, comments are welcome as ever.

Oh, what a night ...

My wife is here in Helsinki for the weekend and we have just got back from an amazing evening.

We started with dinner at Luomo, a restaurant just around the corner from my apartment.  It has been getting high praise on eat.fi, a site I contribute to (as finn-mark) and have now reviewed 45 restaurants in the last two years, suprisingly putting me among the top 5% of their users.  Without doubt, tonight's meal was not just my best in Finland, but the best ever.

We didn't even see the menu before we were offered a selection of amuses-bouche; a pork and bacon sampler on a bayleaf, chicken and foie-gras ball rolled in vegetable muesli, pumpkin shreds with a blue cheese cream and a small glass of carrot and blood orange juice topped with blood orange foam.

Luomo's full menu offered a seven course meal, comprising three starters, two entrees and two desserts. We chose a more modest five courses, together with matching wines.

The first starter was a tuna tartare, served with wasabe, soy sauce cream, mango and partnered with an Austrian riesling.

Our second starter was called "deer and forest", a combination of rare venison served cold with fruits of the forest and mushrooms, including some freeze-dried berries and a herb cream. This was partnered with a German blanc-de-noirs, a white wine made from Pinot Noir grapes not left on the skins to ferment.  Mushroom bread and home churned butter was served on the side with this dish.

Before the main course, we were served a home made drink, produced from Cola nuts imported from Africa, which is the origin of the more sugary and artificial cola drinks to be had elsewhere.

Their main course was duck, "sweet and/or sour". To the left of the beautifully cooked wild duck was a sour braised red cabbage, to the right a sweet onion cream.  The maitre-d had paired this very well with an Italian Chianti Classico and another bread, olive foccacia, arrived with this course.

Before the first dessert, another palate cleanser arrived in the form of a tiny cone filled with lemon verbena cream.

A glass of a fruity, slightly sparkling Italian red wine was poured before the first dessert, a marriage of fresh and freeze dried raspberries, pistachio ice cream and a pistachio nut cake.

Finally, a French dessert wine accompanied the final dessert of chocolate and Porcini - a mushroom flavoured chocolate brownie topped with a chocolate ice cream, Porcini cream and a wonderfully tart, orange, Sea-Buckthorn ice cream.

The portions were sufficient to enjoy the meal without feeling bloated and I have never had such well matched wines for each dish.  My only regret is that we didn't take all 7 courses, and so missed the third starter (a goat's cheese and beetroot combination) and the second entree (a bouillabaisse).  We will definitely be returning - they change their menu every six weeks or so.

After two and a half hours in the restaurant, we were ready for a walk, so headed to the Svenska Teattern (Swedish Theatre) to catch the late showing of Pink Noise by Fork, a four-piece acapella band, who I saw perform last month at the Nokia World party in Stuttgart.  They put on a great show, which rounded off a wonderful evening.  And the weekend has only just started, as tomorrow (well, later today) we are off to the Hartwall Areena for the second time in two weeks, this time to see Elton John and his Red Piano.  I can't wait.

Living in a material world ...

You can't live in Helsinki for long without noticing the UFF shops.  One of my Finnish friends is a big fan, regularly scouring the branch on Kalevankatu after a coffee at Gran Delicato.  But I hadn't picked up on their supply chain until this weekend.

Back home, we have a lot of charity shops, run by organisations such as Oxfam, Sue Ryder and the like. Each relies on donations brought to the store.  In addition, groups such as the Salvation Army or my own local favourite, the Hampshire & Isle of Wight Air Ambulance, have collecting bins in public places; the latter has one in the car park of our village hall.

But here in Finland, UFF has an end to end approach.  This morning, after a wet Sunday spent sorting through the wardrobe, I took a bag of clothes to a collecting container, one block away, having checked on their website for my nearest site.

According to the UFF website, they have these in about 131 municipalities in southern Finland. In total there are over 600 container sites. In 2008 UFF Finland collected and recycled 7.6 million kilos of clothes.

In addition to reselling used winter clothes wholesale to other European countries, they also have 8 second hand shops in the largest cities in Finland: 6 shops in the capital Helsinki, one in Tampere and one in Turku. In 2008, a total of 400,000 paying customers (or one person in 13 in Finland) visited the UFF shops.

UFF (more fully, U-landshjälp från Folk till Folk i Finland rf) was founded more than 20 years ago as an independent non-profit non-governmental humanitarian organization. In 2008 they supported 19 development projects in Mozambique, Angola, Malawi, Zambia and India.

This country has a very enlightened approach to recycling generally.  But I am pleased to think that my few items donated will have a positive impact on those less fortunate elsewhere in the world.

Comedy, the international language ...

Wednesday saw a global comedy performance at the Kultuuritalo, celebrating five years of comedy production from Laugh Riot. They put on a show with a good selection of comedians, some local and others from around the world, all performing (mostly) in English.

It was a fun evening. Two of the local guys, Tomi Walamies and Ismo Leikola, did a very nice job of overturning the Finnish male sterotype. Yannis Pappas from the US (no, really) and Steve Hughes from Australia were also very funny, but for me the highlight of the show was Nina Conti, the only woman and the only Brit on the bill. She was the last act and the funniest ventriloquist I have seen. If you don't believe me, check out her performances on YouTube.

It was only after I got home and looked her up on wikipedia that I realised that she is not only the daughter of British actor Tom Conti, but also a graduate of the University of East Anglia, my alma mater. If only I had known, she could have been the seventh drinker at our reunion the previous evening!