Troy! Troy! Troy!

Thanksgiving was not the first American holiday I have spent in Finland, but for some reason this one bothered me more than Halloween. Don't get me wrong, I missed dressing up in a costume and eating lots of candy, but I missed Thanksgiving more. In Burkina, the holidays didn't really bother me, but I think that's because it was different enough to recalibrate my feelings about what 'should' be happening at different times of the year. Here, everything looks and feels pretty similar to what I'm used to in America (excepting the cold and dark of course), and there are Christmas decorations everywhere, but I missed that milestone of the start of 'The Holidays' which Thanksgiving gives us in the US.

But! On the weekend of my first major bout of homesickness in Finland, I got a package from my brother. It contained two discs full of interesting and new (at least to me) music. Among the ear candy: James, Art Brut, Margot and the Nuclear So and So's, and a bunch of Bowie. So thank you, Troy! In your honor, I just watched the terrible 2004 film that shares your name.

Greg Oden eats a lot

from Greg Oden's thanksgiving blog post:

To everyone whos (sic) reading have a Happy Thanksgiving and know that today is about giving thanks, not turkey, but i will eat a full turkey myself.

bon appetit!

Well done dad

This made me laugh quite a bit.

My friend: 16:26:25: my cousins had one [Commodore VIC-20]
My friend: 16:26:44: they also had the first vcr system that i ever saw
My friend: 16:26:56: and really strange dad
My friend: 16:27:17: when we were visiting and watching tv ..
My friend: 16:27:44: he always switched the channel if there was couple kissing,
My friend: 16:28:13: my mother asked if the tv was broken .. because it kept changing the channel ..
Me: 16:30:23: that's great
Me: 16:30:52: so did he save his kids from ever knowing what kissing is?
My friend: 16:31:52: kids are 32 and 34 now , i have never heard about any gf's
My friend: 16:32:00: well done dad

Well, I'm ready.

Good thing someone keeps us grounded:

"I think it's sort of stupid to talk about it (going undefeated). I did say `sort of' so if you talk about it, you don't have to say I said you were stupid but I'll say you're sort of stupid." -Roy Williams

Porobaari

Here is me outside my neighborhood bar:

I call it Porobaari, which means 'reindeer bar' simply because it has no real name.

I just went for a swim in a public pool. Naked.

That's right -- Helsinki has nude public swimming pools. Today was the first time I gathered the courage to go. It was surprisingly relaxing to move through the water without clothes hindering me. I went to Yrjönkatu, which is a beautiful building built in 1928 with a nice big pool. Here is a photo I found online (because clearly snapping photos with my personal camera would not be okay):


There are separate times for men and women, so you just go in to the pool area, strip down, rinse off in the shower, then dive in. There are three lanes: one for water running (which was full of people -- I had no idea it was so popular), one for slow swimmers, and one for fast swimmers. I never felt fast at the pool in Hartford, but that was definitely the lane for me today. Anyway, there was one woman who was much slower than everyone else, and we all had to pass her. The only time I felt awkward during the whole experience was when I needed to pass her. First of all, coming up behind someone who is swimming naked and doing the breast stroke gives one a pretty intimate view, so I was already blushing. Then I had to negotiate getting by her without touching her or touching the person coming in the opposite direction on the other side of the lane. I pulled it off, but I was very nervous.

After my swim I rinsed off and went to the sauna. It was my first time experiencing sauna and it's a large part of Finnish culture, and I think I may have fallen in love with Finland. It was wonderful! If I can get in the sauna at least a couple times a week, I may make it through the winter without killing myself from depression.

Hello Chicago

i'm sitting at my desk at nokia in espoo, finland. i got here before 7:00am to go to the gym, but then i stopped to see if the virginia results are in. i'm watching obama's acceptance speech and crying.

Showtime at the Apollo

Saturday night I went to a club in Helsinki called Apollo (this is pronounced similarly to how French people pronounce it, which means that every time I hear the name, I think of the conjunctivitis breakout in Bobo-Dioulasso in 2003 (for some reason, there are a lot of people in the world who refer to pink eye as 'apollo', and Burkinabe are among those people)). Anyway, Apollo is an old theater that has been converted into a club. Like many of the popular clubs in Helsinki, there are a lot of little rooms, each with its own bar and music. At Apollo, however, the room that clearly used to house the movie screen is the main gathering place. It's gorgeous:


When I arrived in the main room, there were lots of people on the dance floor and I was expecting to hear the DJ continue to play current rock all night. Instead, a band came onstage, and began to play 'Living on a Prayer'. The band is apparently called Bad Influence and they are a Swedish cover band. They played 80s rock covers all night! Their performance was high-energy -- I'll give them that. Also, the crowd was totally loving it.

I found this clip on youtube. It's not from Apollo, but you can get the idea. Watch the singer throw up the sign of the goat at 0:26, and you'll see what I saw about a million times that night.