Something Finnish winter and Indian summer have in common

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Originally uploaded by tormave.

Winter cycling in Finland is a major drag due to the sharp stones spread across the roads and bike paths. Flat tyres are a constant nuisance. Mountain biking in India surprisingly has the same drawback - there are very sharp needles on some plants and trees and once you run over fallen ones punctures tend to result.

The ride I was on was quite fast that for me after almost a year off the saddle so the stops to fix punctures were welcome breaks to get my breath and legs back.

Crosstown traffic

You're just like crosstown traffic 
So hard to get through to you 
Crosstown traffic 
I don't need to run over you 
Crosstown traffic 
All you do is slow me down 
And I'm tryin' to get on the other side of town...

Me and the farmer

The papaya tree in our yard is soon ready for fruity harvest. For a Finn (or at least for me), having fruits grow near where you live is a pretty special thing. A couple of the papayas we'll soon be eating are properly huge too.

Playing around with DSLR

My father used to have and SLR camera when I was young. It was fully manual of course and usually the feeling when getting the pics back from the photo shop was that of at least a mild disappointment even when trying to shoot normal scenes.

After a couple of hours of playing around with the 550D it seems the automation makes much better settings choices than I do, but it's still fun to have the fully manual features there for old-fashioned tricks like this, new way being achieving the same with Photoshop of course.

Water + sand = art

Here's a couple of beach snaps from our recent visit to Khao Lak. Tidal waves make interesting things happen to the sandy surface. Just chilling out on the beach away from the office gets at least me into the right head space to notice these things. Good thing I was carrying a camera.

Taking more and more of these kinds of pseudo-artsy snaps got me all geared up to buy a DSLR. Then last Friday I figured out that the longer I am without one in this part of the world where every day something special seems to be on display, the less value one will eventually have when finally end up buying one. So now I'm anxiously waiting for a courier to show up with my 550D with 17-55mm optics so I can  spend the evening pressing all the buttons to see what they do. I bought one from Indian eBay, which weirdly feels less risky than getting one from a camera shop on the street. Somehow an online shop feels more solid in this place than one made or bricks and mortar.

This wouldn't really be me if I didn't research this online first. At length. I want to do video too so the options were luckily a bit limited, but there aren't many reviews on the net about either of the two products I haven't read before making the purchase decision (and re-read since).

Which brings me back to the topic of art and photography. Being and engineer the whole thing turned all techie as soon as I really got going, which I guess is OK for an engineer. I think despite lugging much more gear I'll be stuck with the pseudo-artsy genre. At least there's going to be all those buttons to keep me occupied.

Sneaky pic

A picture taken of a cool motorbike rider dude from the backseat of a car through its' tinted windows via the rearview mirror of the scooter rider in front of him. The silly American-style safety warning was an unforeseen upside :-).

The missing link

Here's a walking, breathing freak of a fish we saw while canoeing near Phuket.

The lagoon we saw him (or her?) in is only accessible through a narrow tunnel full of bats. During low tide the lagoon water flows back to the sea, so this species learned how to walk (using front flippers) and breathe on the dry lagoon bed.

Hello, Darwin.

Sun setting in Khao Lak

We spent a wonderful week in all-but-deserted Khao Lak a week ago. After one week back in the office it does feel like we were there a year ago.

Our hotel was opposite to a small island lighthouse, which was accessible by foot during low tide. The locals used the opportunity to go pick up clams from the rocks.

Silly western tourist only took a moody picture.

Bike with a roll cage

I don't think there is any limit to what people will transport with the light motorcycles so popular here. Self preservation instinct just doesn't exist and/or people don't play what-if scenarios in their head before mounting the bike and taking to the road full of huge trucks, speed bumps, potholes and so on. I mean, just look at these two heroes riding with a fixed A-ladder that looks pretty heavy. They were happily riding at 70km/h along with the rest of the traffic (downhill).

If these guys did end up in an accident (and I'm certainly not hoping they would) it would probably be very interesting to try to figure out afterward what had happened.

Life, all boxed up

Our stuff was delivered a week ago and tomorrow they're supposed to take the empty boxes away. It's amazing how attached to stuff you can be. I didn't really miss a lot when the house was empty, but now that all the familiar things surround us, the place does feel a lot more like home.

I had heard horror stories about the customs process, but it was quite pain-free and didn't cost half as much as I was told to expect.

The best bit is nothing's broken. A couple of power cords are still missing and critically the other one is for the Wii console so Joona is not a happy camper about that. Come to think of it, wouldn't mind to bang the drums with Guitar Hero myself...