Normal service will be resumed ...

First, an apology. It has been a month or so since my last post and I can only plead a lack of time. The last few weeks have been among the busiest of my time in Nokia, but hopefully things will ease up now, as we have publicly announced the plans to create a new mobile software platform and it was the planning for that announcement which was dominating my life since the start of the year.

The announcement was made at Mobile World Congress, one of the largest events in the mobile communications calendar, in Barcelona, which gave me a chance to escape the Helsinki snow and sub zero temperatures for a while.

After that, I flew home for a few days to the UK for some time with the family and the chance to pick up a new (well, new to me) car which we had bought a couple of weekends earlier. This is our second Land Rover Discovery; the first, named Disco Dan, has been fantastically useful for dealing with the large volume of garden rubbish which needs transporting from the house, as well as getting us through the unusual snow and ice during this British winter, when the advantages of a 4x4 were very easy to appreciate. The new one is 10 years younger, built in 2003 and has been named Brian (because the last three letters of his registration are ENO). The differences in 10 years are quite noticeable and he is rather more posh than Dan, most importantly for my darling wife, he has a decent heater and heated seats! We collected him from Milford on Sea, which had the added bonus of having a cream tea in the Needles Eye cafe, which had the view across to the Isle of Wight and the Needles rocks which you can see above.

It was also good while I was home to see how the latest addtions to the family are settling in. The new kittens, Darcy and Willoughby, are developing their characters (most notably along the "little b*gger" dimension) and are getting on well with Zippy, seen on the left in this phot curled up with Darcy (they are both Burmese, Zippy is a lilac and Darcy a brown).

The last week has been spent catching up on work, clearing the email backlog and booking flights home for the first half of the year. I'm hoping to have lots of visitors in Helsinki this year, including my godmother and also our friends from Sweden. And next week, I am hoping to meet up for a beer with my godson, who is in Finland for a few months, studying at Tampere university. Now it's time to get some life back in my work/life balance!

Taking the plunge ...

Tonight marked another milestone in my time here in Finland; I have now been here two years, seven months and two days. That in itself is not a notable fact. Tonight was my third time visiting Saunaseura, the sauna society on Lauttasaari. Again, not a momentous occasion event on its own.

No, tonight was the first time that I have taken a sauna and then dipped into the sea. Believe me, it was an experience I will remember for a while.

The ritual started with the customary shower and  then in to the first of the five smoke saunas for a warm. The atmosphere in a smoke sauna is rather more pleasant than the electrically heated ones and we spent a few minutes getting a good sweat up, before retiring outside to the deck to cool off, in the -8°C air, steaming gently and overlooking the bay. After a few minutes outside we returned to the hottest of the saunas. On entering, I lifted the lid of the stove and slowly ladled water onto the stones to generate the löyly (pronounced low-loo, or thereabouts), the word which means heat, steam, effectively the spirit of the sauna.

My companion then decided it was time for me to stand lifeguard while he took a dip. We walked along the path and then the jetty, both heated with electrical elements to keep the snow and ice clear. Antti descended the steps, took a dip to neck level and then exited the water. Idecided that now was time to show some sisu and do the same. The steps went into the water, with a handful of steps beneath the perfectly clear Baltic water. The first couple of steps were the hardest, once I reached the lowest step, holding onto the frozen handrail, I repeated his maneuvre. I emerged, somewhat surprised to find myself still breathing and climbed back up the wooden steps, noticing for the first time the icicles hanging from their undersides.

Parts of me were more noticeably more affected by the experience than others. Not, as I had expected, those parts roughly halfway between neck and ankle, but mainly my feet, with which I was beginning to lose sensory contact. We walked back up the path and into the third of the smoke saunas to thaw out, noticing as we did the board displaying the water temperature, -0°C. Yes, not a mistake, minus zero. So, not quite minus one, but colder than the freezing point of pure water, because, of course, the Baltic is saline so it takes Mother Nature just a little more effort to turn it solid in winter.

After a thorough heat and a chat with the other sauna mates about the benefits of ice dipping, we showered and retired to the snack bar for a soft drink and a bite to eat. A chat about holiday plans, weekends and the like followed (talk of work, religion and politics is banned in Saunaseura, along with the use of mobile phones), after which we showered again, dressed and left.

Sitting at home, I am feeling just a little pleased with myself for overcoming my anxiety and trying this. Now I can't wait for next Tuesday and another go! Oh, and that's not me in the picture, it is from the Saunaseura website, there are more showing the saunas and other sights (all decent) from the society.

All at sea ...

On Sunday, I finally got to walk on water. Well, strictly speaking it was the solid form, the frozen Baltic, rendered fairly solid by a few weeks of subzero temperatures.

Now, I was brought up never to try walking on frozen lakes, rivers etc. because any fool knows that is certain death. And in any other winter than this in the UK, it probably is. Perhaps at home this year, others will be trying this on bodies of freshwater. But sea water? I remember from school chemistry lessons that salt water freezes at even lower temperatures. So, how could something so wrong feel so right?

The image (you can click on it for a larger version) is actually a 360° degree series of 10 shots, joined using Canon's Photostitch software, which came with my camera. It's the first time I have used the software and it seems pretty straightforward. What I really wanted was to capture the feeling of space I experienced standing away from the island of Seurasaari, which we have visited in warmer weather to feed the squirrels. Just one photo would not have done that.

My native guide also explained some of the etiquette - don't walk on the ski tracks being the most important, though we did also keep plenty of distance between us and the hole in the ice used for the winter bathers.

The most eerie experience was standing on the frozen sea, on a cold but still afternoon and hearing the ships' horns hooting from a few kilometres away in the harbour - they sounded as if they were just around the corner.

Three, as it were, Woozles, and one, as it was, Wizzle...

I suspect my friends and family in the UK will be sick of pictures of snow at the moment, but this scene is one that I think will be rather more rare even there.

I walked out to get a haircut today, normally something done with little thought but when it is -18°C, it took a little more preparation, including the long underwear!

On the way back, I stopped on the bridge between Hakaniemi and Kruununhaka and snapped this picture. This is the sea, frozen and then with a few days snowfall on top. I rather enjoyed working out the tracks, a baby buggy I think and the accompanying adult, separately another couple of sets and then the gentleman you can see walking away.

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!