I have an education

I finally have an education. We had the final examination today and I passed with flying colours. I don’t have the paper in my hand yet but I’m a power plant operator. I worked as that for the last 5 years but it’s nice to have it (soon) on paper too…

Dog show

We're going to a dog show tomorrow in Åbo (Turku in Finnish). We're bringing three dogs so let's hope somebody wins.

A Beautiful Winter Day

If every winter day was like today I wouldn’t mind if the winter lasted all year around. That was an exaggeration, I like a warm beautiful summer day too. Well yesterday and the night before we had a snowfall. I actually spent 2 hours shovelling snow from our yard. It was the first time this winter. It was a good exercise.

Today the sun is shining from a blue clear sky. It’s -5 °C. There is no wind. The newly fallen snow is lying on the ground. There is a light fog. Can a winter day be more beathiful?

We’ve got more snow at home

Last evening, night and today we had a snowfall. The temperature was around 0 °C. In the part of town were I live it was below 0 °C. It means that all the snow that fell is still snow on the ground, about 15 cm. However in the city a few kilometres away it was only below 0 °C last evening. All the snow that fell after that turned into sleet since the temperature was above 0 °C. Same amount of snowfall but in the city they’ve got 5 cm of sleet on the ground.

I’m not going to use a snow shovel. Instead I’m trying to drive in a different track with my car when I come and leave =). Works very well with this amount of snow.

2 out of 4

I’m doing my second night shift out of four. Other than that we ordered a fireplace stove today. It will be delivered in two weeks and then installed…

Tagged!!!

I was tagged by Canadian Kristin!

The rules of the game:
• Link to the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog.
• Share 7 random and/or weird facts about yourself on your blog, as we all want to know them.
• Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
• Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Seven weird/random things about me:

1. I love airplanes but I’m somewhat afraid of flying.
2. I’m afraid of the dark but when I do run into the entities that actually exist in the dark I’m like an ornithologist who’s discovered a rare bird specie.
3. I have never played Trivial Pursuit and not won.
4. I owned 3 different Toyotas from 1997 to 2007. They never broke down during those 10 years. Then I bought an Opel and it broke down after 2 weeks.
5. I can’t swim.
6. I have sung karaoke in Swedish in a Finnish bum bar.
7. I have an agnostic approach to EVERYTHING.

I am tagging:
You…

Why don't we speak English?

A question that I often dwell on is why we don’t speak English more often. Since I belong to the Swedish language minority in Finland I often run into the Finnish language majority. The minority should learn the majority’s language, right? Well in the region (landskap, maakunta) I live in the majority language is actually Swedish. You can get by pretty well just knowing one language in this region because there is no real necessity of having to learn the other domestic language.

I have learned enough Finnish to be able to get by at work. Every work place has its own vocabulary and I know mine in 2 languages. But if somebody asks me something that is not related to my work and would like an answer let’s hope they know Swedish or accept a short answer that makes no sense whatsoever. Don’t get my wrong, I understand Finnish but speaking it myself can be somewhat difficult.

But back to the first thing I wondered about in this post. Most Finns know some degree of English so instead of one speaking in very bad Swedish or Finnish and not being able to communicate with the other person in the conversation they could turn to English. But I know how it feels to speak English to another Finn. It’s feels ridiculous. It’s a sense of “I should know Finnish or he should know Swedish and we don’t”. It embarrassing not being able to communicate in the only two domestic languages we have and having to turn to a foreign language. It feels inappropriate. But maybe we should stop thinking about what is appropriate and start communicating instead…

If you don't know me...

...and I have written a comment to one or several of your blog post I have done this for two reasons. The first reason is purely selfish; I like comments in my blog. So if I leave a comment in your blog you’ll hopefully leave one in mine.

The second reason is that, well it’s actually part of the first reason but I mentioned two reasons, I like to communicate with people that entertain me. So if I have found your blog interesting, funny exciting, intelligent or in any other way interesting chances are that I have left a comment in it. I like the way you write and I would like you to leave a few comments in my blog since those comments are likely entertaining. And in order for me to continue reading you blog it would be a good idea if we exchange comments every now and then so I remember you and your blog.

Friday night

First of all it's raining, the snow is raining away. This is not exactly a classic Finnish winter but at least the weather is warm. I'm doing my last evening shift and tomorrow is off before I start doing mornings shifts on Sunday. That was this weekend's program...

Customer of Murphy's Law

When me and my girlfriend goes to a restaurant it's Murphy's law in action. During the 2 years we have been together this have happened in restaurants we've been to: The have forgotten our orders several times, the staff doesn't speak Swedish or Finnish, they forgot part of the meal, the printer in the kitchen that collect orders from the cash register broke down (around 20-30 people had ordered food before they noticed that, guess who ordered first) the rice boiler broke down...

I have also noticed from a company viewpoint how certain customers seem to have extremely bad luck or being victims of Murphy's Law. They order something or they are having a service done for them and the first few times it's forgotten, then when it's done the first time(after a few angry calls from the customer) something goes wrong and it's usually not noticed by the company providing that service. A few more attempts are performed by the company that usually breaks something else in the process before the customer get what he wanted in the first place.

This might be a very professional company but the customer of Murphy's Law thinks that the people in the company he contacted are complete fools. Seeing this happening is watching Murphy's Law in action. Everything that can go wrong goes wrong, every person in the company the customer contacts forgets or makes a mistake or do the right thing and the process still goes wrong. And when you are part of that company and involved in this issue you see what is happening and you know how it's going and you try your utmost to help that customer and it goes wrong anyway.

Let's face it, some people are cursed by Murphy's law...

2 out of 4

It's my second evening shift out of four...

It's January

You now it's January and that you live in Finland when the first thing you do in the morning is going outside and plugging your car to an electrical outlet...

This is it

Well this is it, Christmas is over. I threw out the Christmas tree. Well it's actually still leaning against the the house next to the porch. But they usually have a Christmas tree collection and have a huge bonfire with all the collected Christmas trees on Mardi Gras. It's not quite the celebration they have in New Orleans or Rio de Janeiro. Here we spend the day at the beach (it's still cold enough to be able to walk on the ice) and among other things burning our Christmas trees. We also eat wheat buns with almond paste and whipcream and thats about it.

But back to the Christmas tree. I haven't read or heard where you can take your Christmas tree yet but as soon as I find out I will take it there...

Back to normal

It's late and I'm still up. There is a reason for that. I've just (well yesterday morning) done fine night shifts and I have 6 days off now.

To my Facebook viewers

I have succumbed to the Facebook phenomena. I finally figured out how to bring order into chaos and I set it up the way I want it. Anyway Live Blog is gone. I have an excellent blog(4 actually) at Blogspot and I found a nice application that made it possible for me to put my blogs on my Facebook page.

Our Christmas

Due to security reasons we had to put our Christmas Tree behind a fence. You can see one of the reasons why sitting in front of it.

Nina, Nina's dad and mom and my mom sitting at one table. We were on a few Christmas dinners this Christmas but the only one we took pictures of was coffee at our house.

Join the Facebook revolution

There are things I do not like about Facebook, the new Internet revolution. I like order and on occasions I like chaos when I can bring order into it. However Facebook is uncontrollable chaos. Application upon application is sent to you by your friends and you do not know what to do with them. However recently I have tried to put the applications I tend to keep in some sort of order on my Facebook profile. And new applications that are sent to me are tried out and either kept for a longer tryout or deleted. So I have brought order into chaos or it’s more of me mastering chaos because there will never be order in the Facebook universe.

But then there are things that seem have a strange attraction on me. The messages, the superpokes, the vampires and all the other things on Facebook is simply good old fun. And I’m slowly beginning to see the charm of it all and I think I like it =).