First time skiing this winter

I have been skiing every winter since my childhood here in Finland, except two winters, first winter1964-65 when I was in Cyprus in the Finnish Contingent of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force, and second time last winter when I made my round the world trip. I knew only cross country skiing until I was almost 30, when in Cristal Mountains, in Washington State near Seattle I first time tried downhill skiing and almost killed myself on the icy steep slopes there.

So today, first time this winter, I took my skis and went to the nearby forest where there were already good trails for skis, and after half an hour came back home refreshed and reinvigorated.

Otto and Kingi

My younger son, Otto, has a black puppy called Kingi, which is a mixture of rottweiler and labrador retriever. Otto is 27 and alone, and I think he took the puppy just to have someone to hug and embrace, because he is too shy to contact any good looking girl of his age.

Here are some photos of Otto and Kingi, the woman who holds Kingi on her arms is Otto´s mother.

My home is my castle

I took today this picture of my house. On the left is my sailing boat under rain cover and snow.

The other building behind the boat is my sauna. My father built this house for 60 years ago.

Tomorrow I plan to start my skiing season of this winter, and maybe I also try skating after many years. I can ski right away from my own backyard to the nearest forest.

Thailand 2

Yesterday I arrived back to Bangkok and decided to stay in Khao San district, where I have never been before, but about what I had read in some magazines.
And I really like it here, athough it may look somewhat worn out. Streets are not wide and there is not much motor trafic. But the streets are full of small shops, cafes and restaurants, and the prices are really low. And the best is the people, mostly young people from all over the world.
Most of them come with a backpack on their shoulders, and that is why this whole Khao San area is called "backpackers paradise"!

Thailand 1

At the end of November I decided to make a surprise visit to Thailand to see some old friends, who have apartments there, and to play a few rounds of golf with them there.
So I reserved a room in a hotel in Cha Am, and looked for the flights to Bangkok. I have been employed by Finnair, so I can get special discount tickets not only from Finnair, but from many other airlines as well. The only prerequisite is that there are vacant seats on the flights.
Because the direct Finnair flights from Helsinki seemed to be quite full on November 29, I took first a Finnair flight from Helsinki to Oslo, and changed there to Thai Airways flight to Bangkok, where I arrived the next morning.
I took an airport express bus nr. 4 to the town (150 bahts), and got off at Victory Monument and started to look after a minivan to Cha Am, which I soon found and which costed only 160 bahts.
The trip took two hours and the driver speeded like a rallye driver about 130 km/h almost all the time despite the 80 and 100 speedlimits! And at the beginning of the trip he tanked the car with something that was not petrolium, but some kind of gas.!
In Cha Am I was left on the main street in front of 7 Eleven. The driver negociated for me a motorcycle or actually a moped transportation from there to my hotel for 40 bahts(1 euro).
So with my backpack on my shoulder I hopped on the backseat of the moped, trying to grap hold from somewhere, and off we went! The driver was a young man under twenty, and after about 5 minutes we were in front of my Hotel California. I gave him 50 B, and he seemed to be happy with that.
The hotel was situated on a side street, so under normal circumstances there would be nice and peaceful. But now they were building a new house just opposite my hotel, and the sounds of the contructing work were too much for me, so I changed right away to the other side of the hotel from the room I was designated.
Then, when I thought that I shall call my friends, I realized that I did not have their telephone numbers with me. I sent a text message to a friend of mine in Finland, who knew these people, and got their numbers. But when I called them, it turned out that Jonas had left already a week ago back to Finland, Seppo the same day I arrived here, and Helena and Pekka did not answer my calls. When I called Helena or Pekka there came a message to my cellphone telling "ei sallittu", not allowed. Maybe they were monitoring their calls so that only certain numbers were allowed.
Anyway, I stayed two days in Cha Am and left then via Bangkok to Pattaya.

I had been in Pattaya once about twenty years ago. What I remember, it had not changed a lot.
It was still the city of three s, sand,sex and sun, or maybe sand, sex and sin! By chance I managed to find a nice hotel there, La Fontaine. It was at the end of the Walking Street and it had the luxory of an own swimming pool! I paid 1000 B for a day, but I learned that the price for two weeks was only 6000 B and for a whole month 10 000 B!
The Walking Street was okay in the daytime, but in the evening and at night it was almost like hell on earth, similar to Patpong in Bangkok, or Batong Beach in Phuket. The next day I left for Jomtien, a few miles to the south of Pattaya.

Also there by chance, I happened to find a decent low priced guesthouse on Soi 4. It was named A.A.Guesthouse, and I paid only 400 B per day for a room with balcony and seeview!
And on this same street, Jomtien Soi 4, there were a Finnish guesthouse with a restaurant downstairs, called JP House, and also a Finnish bookstore and diving center!

The owner of JP House, Jouni, talked me to take part in the golf competition of the local Finnish expat society and a dinner in his restaurant afterwards. I really enjoyed playing after many months, and I opened all 18 holes with a driver and had slice only twice and hook once!
And in Jomtien there were beaches for miles and miles to both directions, to the left and to the right, and lots of people and whole families everywhere, and lots of Russians everywhere!
I stayed there for almost one week enjoying of the beach, the sea, the sun and the good food and the good life!

Trop d´amour

Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away...when I took a bus in the morning to Helsinki and went to Sibelius Academy to listen to the young contestants of the 10th International Jean Sibelius Violin Competition.

Beautiful music, Paganini´s and Bach´s solos for violin, some of the players were only 14-15 years old, but played as good as the ones over twenty. But this is only the first round, the finals are sometime next week.

After lunch I visited an art gallery, Galleria Duetto, where there is an exhibition of Kuutti Lavonen.

He makes mostly all kinds of graphics,and I have not been interested in this art form before, but his works have changed everything. I reserved 3 of his works, even one big serigrafia, which is named "Trop d´amour". I believe that after 50 years Kuutti will be as famous an artist as Helene Schjerfbeck, who was one of the most famous Finnish artists of last century!

In the evening I had more music. I went to Järvenpää, a small town some 30 kms north of Helsinki, to see a kind of musical about tango. Two Finnish popular music singers, Anneli Sari and Amadeus Lundberg sang Argentine tangos accompanied by bandoneon, guitar, piano, violin and bass viol, and a dance group danced tango Argentine style on the stage at the same time.

America revisited

I returned home yesterday from a nostalgia trip to New York. I travelled there together with my old friend Alan, who has been living before in the west, in Washington, Oregon and in the Canadian British Columbia.

We both had been in NYC last time for about 10 years ago. The Big Apple had not changed very much. We walked along the Broadway, 5th Avenue and the streets of Upper Westside watching people and breathing City air.

We visited a private club, NYAC, New York Athletic Club. We could do that because Alan was a member of a sister club, Washington AC.

We stayed quite near the Lincoln Center, and we thought about going to see Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart´s "Cosi fan tutte", but we were too tired that evening.

Also Time Warner Center was just around the corner from our hotel. The photo on this page is taken from the second floor balcony of that building, and you can see the Columbus Circle and a corner of the Central Park in the picture.

A grey day, not a ray of the sun today!

Almost all the snow have now melted away. I left my car last night in front of my house and in the morning the windscreen and other windows were all white frosted in ice. But by midday they were almost clear again, though it is only +4 degrees centigrade now.

Watched an old, 2001 made, travel story about California, where Justine Shapiro visited among other places the yearly Gilroy Garlic Festival. Got so excited about it that I decided to travel there next year and visit the 33. Festival, which is held this year July 29, 30 & 31.

The homepage of the festival is: www.gilroygarlicfestival.com

And the life goes on...

I bought about 35 years ago in NYC a record of Giannis Kalatzis and one of the melodies was called "Ke i zoi sinehizete", which means "And the life goes on".

I have today just that feeling, my last writings on this site are almost a month ago. The life just goes on. I don´t even remember anymore what I was doing after October 15! But if I look at my notebook, I remember that there was the Helsinki Book Fair at the end of October and it lasted for four days, and I was there every day. Then, November 3, I flew to Canary Islands together with about 150 other dance freaks, and we had the 7th Baile Retro Dance Course there!

We had pasodoble, rumba, salsa, cha-cha and other Latin American dances every day. First the teachers showed us how to dance in the lessons before and after noon, and then in the evening we had free practise in the Casbah Square with music.

I came back home last night.

And today I attended a lunch for Finnair retirees in Helsinki, and one of Finnair managers, Mr. Turtiainen, told us that last year, first time in the history, the sales of Finnair tickets in Japan was bigger than the sales in Finland!

And Finnair is now the third biggest carrier between Asia and Europe, after Lufthansa and Air France/KLM!

So, we can say that, like Nokia, also Finnair is now an international company, and "connecting people"!

First snow

Last night fell the first snow of this winter here in South Finland. In the morning the roads were a bit slippery, but by noon the main roads were almost dry. However, I changed winter tires to my car, for safety.

There is only 1-2 cm of snow on the ground yet, so it is not possible to ski, but as soon as there is enough snow I shall take my skis and start cross-country skiing. Later in the winter I´ll travel to North of Finland, to Lapland, to do some down-hill skiing.

I like winter and snow, but I don´t like the darkness of the Finnish winter. That´s why I´m planning to fly to Thailand in December or January for one or two months. Some of my friends have been there many times, about 100 kms south of Bangkok, in Hua Hin or Cha Am. I have been there once for many years ago, and I liked it there. Even the King of Thailand has a summer cottage there on the beech of Hua Hin. And if I go there I´m gonna play some golf, too.

Saturday morning fever

Usually I´m sleeping at this hour, but now I´m still awake, writing this blog and listening to radio. When the radio is on, it doesn´t feel so lonely. I am too lazy to go anywhere, so I just wait for a miracle, that some beautiful woman would call or contact me. For David Ben-Gurion has said that "Anyone who doesn´t believe in miracles, is not a realist!"

Restaurant Sonnenberg, Zurich, Switzerland

I started a new blog this evening. This is my diary, where I´m going to tell you about my life.

Yesterday afternoon I came back home from a short visit to Switzerland. I stayed 3 nights in Zurich, in a romantic hotel "Sonne" by the lake Zurichsee, with a few old friends. On Wednesday we visited mount Rigi and had a pick-nick there. What a wonderful view down to the city and lake Luzern!

Then we drove to Zurich and had a lunch in FIFA´s restaurant "Sonnenberg", and had again a nice view to the lake Zurichsee. Here is a photo I took from our table.