Progress indeed

My teacher Pat praised my posture at the yoga class last night. This is a new experience for me - as you remember this is something that never happens to me: exercise is not something I'm good at. Yes, loved ones have praised my achievements before and it feels good too, but to have someone else who doesn't have to do it, who sees a lot of people each day doing this and still chooses to praise me in front of the class... that's different.

I know I have made progress. I've been quietly happy about my increasing flexibility and better asanas. But why does the fact that somebody else thinks so too suprise me so much? My exercise traumas are deep indeed.

Later: What can I say? At today's class my ashtanga teacher Karen praised the same asana than Pat: Baddha Konasana.

Mmm... potatoes

I definetly share the passion Maki's for potatoes. Really, you can make a full meal of potatoes, and they are so incredibly versitile too - they can practially be prepared in hundreds of different ways... But ahem, she's just given a recepie for Pommes Anna - and I was delighted to find out that this is one of my favourite recepies too.

When I originally came across this recepie it included one more step of boiling the sliced potatoes for couple of minutes in vegetable stock, and then include some of the stock with the potatoes. But it's good and definetly easier without that step too - I just love the crispy potatoes on the top and the wonderful succulent ones inside.

Now I'm hungry again. Need to make this dish again soon.

Learning new things

I learned a new word today: emetophobia, also knows as fear of vomiting.

It's really weird - you know what you are and how you work, but suddenly finding a single word to describe it all seems to change everything. I've always known I have an irrational fear of vomiting, but to read a long detailed description of emetophobia and say for every single point "yep, that's me" is... enlightening.

I'm not even exaggerating when I'm saying that I'm suddenly seeing the whole world in a different way.

May Day coming

This morning I felt quite good, so I'm back in the office today. Weather right now is pretty miserable, but they are promising some good weather for the weekend, which incidentally is also the spring's first Bank Holiday weekend, so I can't complain too much.

People in Finland are getting ready to celebrate vappu - which I think would translate as May Day, and is also the International Labour Day. In here, there's of course nothing going on, as it would be considered too... left-wing. The Spring Bank holiday coming on Monday is a fairly new bank holiday - it took the state a long time to recognise it as an official holiday... the roots for this holiday are pagan, which made it originally very politically incorrect for puritan Englishmen, and later on the working class association made it politically incorrect for other reasons.

I haven't made any sima (traditional drink for vappu), but I think if the weather allows we should go for a little picnic brunch in the park. Herring and egg sandwiches could be on the menu, as our local Waitrose has lately had some Swedish (very close to Finnish style) pickled herrings on their delicatessen counter.

Morals or work morals?

Thor told me off for working today. According to him if I was ill, I shouldn't work. At all.

I thought that since I'm capable of working, I should work. But because I wasn't feeling quite well either, I chose to work from home as I have that possibility. I know if I hadn't worked, I know I'd have felt guilty and couldn't have relaxed properly. It's not like I'm that ill - if I take painkillers I'm pretty good. Then I discussed the issue with Chu who said that I was absolutely right - if I felt like I could do some work why not. (She's a bit of a workaholic herself though, although taking a sickie today as well - we had a nice long lunchtime chat.)

But that got me thinking - is it my moral (I shouldn't lie to my employer - if I'm not ill I shouldn't say I am), or is it English work moral that forces people to work even if they are not 100%? For me this was a very natural decision to make, but I'm starting to doubt myself... has English culture warped my sense of duty out of proportion?

Kind of ok

I was still feeling quite ill when I woke up this morning, so I decided to hold still, have a couple of painkillers and some tea. After those painkillers kicked in I started to feel much better, so I decided to work from home today.

Strange, this illness I have - not a traditional cold at all, just a very sore throat. Which, of course, makes life very uncomfortable, but it's not as bad as it could be.

Childhood idol

Found this picture on the Net of my great Childhood idol Suursyömäri (I translate it roughly as the Grand Eater). Grand Eater hails from Hinku ja Vinku, an animated series shown in Finnish children's program called Pikku Kakkonen.

Most episodes of the show consisted of two piglets (Hinku and Vinku) running away from the Grand Eater, who would proceed to eat pretty much everything apart from the two piglets who would escape, usually by climbing up a tree. I always questioned this tactic, partly as it deprived the Grand Eater of his richly-deserved meal, but also as I found the idea of pigs climbing up trees highly suspicious.

In this touching picture, you can see the Grand Eater on the left. It is the great spherical creature voraciously consuming something that I believe is buch of apples where terrified Hinku and Vinku are hiding.

Grand Eater's existence had great many admirable qualities: single-mindedness (in chasing the piglets), dedication to its cause (to eat everything), reliability (it would never fail to eat everything it could, and a few things it couldn't), strong character, decisiveness, and in the end, capacity for love greater than life.

Truly one of my childhood heroes.

Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan

'When they ask you how I died,' I said, 'tell them: still angry.'

What does one do when they are ill, except sleep and read? Exactly.

So I finished Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon today. This is his first novel, but not that it shows in any way. Morgan has chosen one of the most difficult genres in sci-fi: cyber punk, and has created convincingly his own world and although it's full of typical cyber punk elements, the result is unique enough to hold interest which in cyber punk is not a trivial task.

It's a detective story: the narrator, ex-elite soldier Takeshi Kovacs is brought to Earth from penitentiary by a rich and powerful business man whose recent death police has judged as a suicide, but who refuses to believe the verdict and wants Kovacs to find out what really happened. This is a world where real death can be eliminated as one's consciousness is stored in a cortical stack and can be planted to any body (referred to as sleeves).

It's a gripping and with over 500 pages a very satisfying read. Plot is very clever, and although I guessed bits of it there were surprises on the way too. It's full of very gory action and lot of characters - most of the main characters are (surprisingly?) female, but my favourite supporting character was probably The Hendrix, Kovacs' hotel AI.

Now I can't wait to get my hands on the sequel, Broken Angels.

Biceps curls -new and improved

Biceps have always been one area that I find incredibly difficult to train properly. Due to all the martial arts I do, my arms are used to recover incredibly quickly, and therefore getting them properly trained with weights has always been a struggle.

However, I learned a handy trick yesterday: Change your grip on dumbbell curls.

Basically grasp the dumbbells so that your little finger touches the weight plates, i.e. you don’t hold the handle at the middle, but rather so that none of the handle is visible below your little finger.

Now perform any normal curls (except hammer curls) with this grip. Simple. But then simple ideas are often the best. My biceps now ache like hell, something they never used to do unless I’ve taken insanely long break on training arms.

It is NOT summer yet

Here's a tip for you boys and girls: although for two days in a row the temperature is above 20 C, it is not, I repeat: it is not, a good idea to sleep with your window open, even if the window is in another room.

My throat is incredibly sore, and swallowing hurts like hell.

Inca-ZUMA

Now on level 7-5 in Zuma. It's past midnight, I'm dead tired, and I have an early start at work tomorrow. Entering the next level.

Ribbit.

I'm gonna Kill Bill

It seems like life is really really returning to normal now. Not only did I actually cook yesterday (nachos and chili con carne), but we went to the movies for the second time in two weeks. Yesterday's chosen movie was of course Kill Bill volume 2.

I try not to have huge expectations when I go to the movies, because it usually just ends with disappointment. This movie wasn't a disappointment by any means, but it didn't have the same kind of impact on me than the first one did. I was trying to figure out yesterday why - maybe it was that I had some idea on what was coming, and the wow-effect just isn't the same then. On the other hand, volume 2 was very different to volume 1. There was very little dialog in the first movie, and lot of action - second movie was almost entirely the other way around.

But most of all, I'm in total awe of Uma Thurman. If she's not going to get some sort of recognition for this movie, it's going to be the biggest travesty of justice ever. Not only was she very convicing in the action scenes, she can also potray very sensitive emotions with the tiniest movements on her face as well as acting with her whole body when showing big emotions like rage or pain. I can't think of any other actress who can do this as Uma can.

Unfortunately Kill Bill volume 2 is not a movie on it's own right, it's quite obvious that it's just a part of a whole film. So we're left awaiting for the super-hyper director's cut DVD edition of Kill Bill as one movie, like it was intended. Hurry up Mr. Tarantino.

Ribbit

Zuma. Body Balance. Groceries. Zuma. Cooking. Smackdown. Zuma. Nap. Zuma. Kill Bill vol. 2. Zuma. Sleep.

I think we have a frog problem.

Boat trip

Last night after the quarterly company meeting we went out for a bit of a celebration. The company had rented a narrow boat, and we went on a little trip on the canals around Newbury. (With free drinks and food provided you might imagine how drunk (specially) the sales guys were by the end of the evening.)

But it was a very nice little trip - the weather was absolutely gorgeous, which was good because the boat had all the windows open. I've never been on a narrow boat before and it was fun watching the boat go trough the locks - Woja was explaining me how the whole system worked as his ex-girlfriend's parents used to own a narrow boat. It was really pleasent, sitting a bit further from the sales team, watching the ducks and swans swim along the boat, even saw couple of mallard chicks.

Challenge accepted

If you’re thinking about that other challenge meme started by samik, this is not it.

This is more of a personal kind – J-Ko challenged me to listen to Bodies Without Organs new song "Living in the Fantasy" on repeat for an hour.

My Goddess, I tried.

I could stomach only 27 minutes. And I'm still having bad 80's flashbacks.

Back to sweet calming Nylon Beat.

Roar of the Dragon

Joyous day, the official Battle-cry generator has come to Blogistan! I hearby charge all the Dragon/kolibri readers to generate theirs. Here is mine:

Lo! Who is that, running over the wasteland! It is Dragon, hands clutching buzzsaw hand extensions! And with an ominous bellow, his voice cometh:

"For the love of carnage and discord, I lay waste to all I see like the world's mightiest bad-ass!!!"

Don't mention the war

This news is one of those stories where you don't know if you should laugh or cry.

Apparently Express newspapers owner Richard Desmond went a bit mad in a meeting with his executives yesterday. For those who don't follow British newspaper politics, Desmond recently dropped out of the race to buy Daily Telegraph group - and one of the current prospective Telegraph buyers is a German newspaper group. But to the story - it seems that Desmond started off the meeting with moderately mild anti-German banter, moving on to claiming that they were all Nazis, and by the time Telegraph executives left the meeting he was singing "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles" with his Express colleagues while making sieg hail's and Hitler moustaches with his fingers.

His representatives are saying that Mr. Desmond's language is always colourful and that this was really just an average meeting with him.

But the image in my head is the "Germans" episode of Faulty Towers with John Cleese. "You started it!" - "No we bloody didn't, you invaded Poland!"

(Some details in this entry are based on a radio interview on the Today program this morning with one of the executives present.)

From the makers of Bejewelled

New excellent PopCap game, Zuma has arrived, and caused severe addictions all around at our studio. Comes with Dragon Seal of Approval.

Cunning plan

Now I know why they got me a new computer at work: while installing new stuff, I needed to reboot it so I decided to go an make a cup of tea. By the time I had walked to John's desk and exchanged couple of words with him, the computer was already back up.

My old computer took over ten minutes to reboot.

Patience

When we were browsing HMV with Chu on Heathrow couple of months back waiting for the flight to Helsinki to leave, I made an impulse buy and got George Michael's new CD Patience. I've always liked his stuff - especially Faith - but Listen without Prejudice was a bit of a disappointment and has been the last CD I've actually bought. At HMV they were playing Freeek and I just decided to get it.

I've been now listening Patience at work for quite a while. At first they were only couple of tracks that really jumped out, but I find that this is a CD that I can listen to on repeat for several hours, and this is sometimes at work quite useful - and it's rare to find a CD like that.

After about a months listen I had come to the conclusion that I liked pretty much all the fast tracks - especially Amazing, Cars and Trains, Round Here, Flawless and Freeek, but that the ballads were pretty much all the same. But after even more Patience on repeat, I've grown to love this album including the ballads.

In fact, I'd probably go as far as saying that it could be the best CD I've bought in ages. Lot of CDs I've liked lately haven't been as durable as this one - other ones on my playlist include Evanescence, Coldplay, Drowning Pool, Trio Niskalaukaus, Creed, Pink, Tom Jones, and some soundtracks: mainly Kill Bill vol. 1 and Donnie Darko. (And of course Rammstein for when I need to concentrate, but that's another story.) But I find that when I need music to block out other noises, it's Patience I seem to be choosing from the list time after time.

So there must be something in this.

Most of the songs have actually quite clever lyrics and opposed to what I normally do I've really only read them afterwards so my perceptions of the songs are much based on how they sound, pretty strange. I've tried to pick just couple of lines from a song that would in some way capture this album, but it seems pretty much impossible. Most of the songs seem to contain stories, most of them sound like biographical - there is a song about George Michaels previous partner, Anselmo (Anselmo's Song), and a story about his uncle who killed himself (My Mother Had A Brother), but I've chosen something from a one of the weirdest ballads:

"But the words that made me cry
‘Cos I knew just what they meant
He turned to me and said
“Hey boy, if Jesus Christ is alive and well
Then how come John & Elvis are dead?"

Ashtanga, finally

Karen had finally come back from her leave (she was on an ashtanga training course, of course) so I had my first ashtanga class in about four months. For some reason it was a very small class this time, but it was nice to see Linda and Emma again.

Doing ashtanga again just reaffirmed what I remembered - this really is my thing. Ujjayi breath came back to me like I hadn't been away and I was able to maintain it throughout the session. In the one-hour class we do the short version of sun salutation warm-up: three each of Surya Namaskar A and B instead of the normal five. I'm glad too that we didn't do more than that because although my flexibility seems to be where I left it, on the aerobic side I seem to be lacking a bit.

But it's funny, it almost seems like the break has been good for me. I felt that especially the stretches were easier than they used to be, and that I was able to easily wrap my hands around the soles of my feet whereas it used to be quite difficult. (I remember when I started a little over a year ago I couldn't even touch my toes.)

But I obviously made a mistake and did the up-dogs properly in the beginning when there didn't seem to be any pain in my wrist. After a couple it got painful so I reverted back to the beginner versions, but it was too late. This morning my wrist feels sore, which it hasn't been for months now. Next time I'll just follow the voice of reason.

Settling in?

Yoe wrote yesterday about an interesting subject close to my heart, about moving into a different country and settling in. She says the change hasn't been big for her and that life goes on as it always has done.

At first I was going to write that it was quite different for me, seven years ago when I moved here. Maybe it was that I had a very busy social life back in Finland: I was living in a shared house with about seven other people, and our house was practically a headquarters for a LARP and a Star Trek club, with all the associated people coming and going all the time. I tried to study at the same time at Uni (failing miserably), and work to cover the living expenses because the student grant didn't (mainly because of the aforementioned failings).

From that I moved to England to be with the love of my life, but otherwise to a social vacuum. At first, I didn't even have a place to study - I had a vague plan, and luckily it worked out so I started Uni here quite soon afterwards. But the social vacuum has never been filled properly, even now, and probably never will.

On the other hand I agree with Yoe - meeting numerous people from numerous different countries while studying and working here, I've come to the conclusion that people are people, no matter where they come from or what they look like. I know it sounds obvious, but really, it isn't, not when you are in a totally different place and culture and nothing around you is familiar (and I'm talking about Europe here - I can only imagine how something like Japan is). The moment when you realise that you've met another human, who is under the surface actually quite a lot like people you knew in Finland, things start to get better.

But on the other hand - I think that although there is the basic human layer in all of us that is always going to be familiar wherever you meet, the cultural differences often count more than you'd first imagine. I've really only made one close friend - outwardly someone I would have never believed could be special: a middle-aged man from Yorkshire.

When you first start to talk to people, you find that initial "human layer". But when you get to know people, you come across the "cultural layer", and it turns out that common language is not the only thing you need. You need someone who deep inside believes in the same things that you do, that has similar memories to yours and has similar ethics to yours. And finding that common ground in a different culture, even something as close to ours as another European culture, has proved very difficult.

But I realised that after several years, I find myself in a similar situation to what Yoe was describing: life goes on. You get into a routine - you learn to use little words like "please" in every other sentence, address people by their names, and look right when crossing the street. You get into a steady lifestyle with regular classes and timetables and doctor's appointments and Eastenders and life is good.

I find that it's going to Finland for holidays that shake things up. You meet your dear friends and you see their lives, and for a second there you remember how your life used to be and your heart is filled with longing to have it all back. Back home you feel sad and confused for couple of days, and then you get back to the routine. And you start to appreciate things that are better here and you know you would miss and you're happy with your life...

I know we'll move back to Finland someday. For a brief period last summer it looked like I was going to get a job in Helsinki, but the moment passed and I got a new job in Newbury instead. So for now we're here - I don't have regrets, I've never had any, but it is a strange life.

(BTW - I've been following Yoe's blog Shining Harmony Times for long enough now that it deserves a special mentioning - and a place in our blogroll.)

Technology - who needs it anyway?

Technology is letting me down. Where are the good olde days when you bought a bit of electronics - like a telly or a fridge - and it lasted for twenty years? Our previous TV lasted about seven years - think about, seven years for a wide screen TV that was quite expensive in the first place. When I explained the symptoms to the repairman, he just said that the tube was out, and replacing the tube was so expensive it was just better to buy a new telly. So we got a new telly last August.

Now it looks like the DVD player is on it's way out too - and that's only four years old. It still plays DVDs, but lately has been refusing to play VCDs: when watching Backlash last night (which, incidentally I would have ordered on PPV - but our digital cable box remote control is also broken, so I couldn't enter the PIN code to verify the order - so I didn't) the first VCD played after re-inserting the disk once, the second disk played after about 5 re-tries and the third only played after about 15 re-tries. I'm going to call couple of repairers to see if it can be fixed, of course. It was a bloody expensive player too when I bought it - at a time when Tesco's "50 quid for a multi-region player" offers didn't exist.

Piece of home

Haj just gave me an Oreo cookie. Well, it's called Oreo here, but in Finland it's known as Domino. It's funny, Dominos have never been one of my favourite cookie (and by the way the real way to eat them is to take little bites - all this twisting the cookies apart to eat the fondant first business is just plain wrong), but eating it now just takes me back to my childhood. I can vividly remember in the summer sitting at our kitchen table in Haaga and eating Domino cookies and drinking Mehukatti juice.

And did you know, by the way, that Oreo cookie is the best selling cookie of the 20th century. No, I didn't either.

World today

I assume that most people read this blog because they want to know what I'm doing. And lately I've been mostly writing about myself and what I've done, but I feel that I should write about something else today. As I've said before, I want this blog to also be a record for myself so I want to write down some of my thoughts on what is happening in the world today.

Certainly Iraq has been on my mind for the past few weeks. It seems that there was a somewhat organised campaign to kidnap foreign civilians, which I find particularly loathsome. They are of course easier targets that the military, and also evoke lot of emotion in their home countries, mostly probably against the war which is what the terrorists want. Still, I do not believe that end justifies the means, even if the end result is what I'd like to see.

And talking about ends justifying the means, what really gets under my skin is the situation in Israel and Palestine, and Ariel Sharon's deal with George W. Bush. What I don't get is, how it's possible to have two such unsympathetic leaders, who are so blind to cultural differences that they just can't see that what they have elected to do will just inflame the situation even more. Bush is of course looking out for the number one, and knows that within US his decision to back up Sharon's plan is the popular one (and I can't believe how far this man will go in the name of populism). In the end of the day, he's just looking ahead for few months, and is counting on the fact that whatever is going to happen in Israel is not going to be as big news as the deal itself. His regard for human suffering fills me with deep disgust.

Blair seems to have been left out of any negotiations, and I don't think he was consulted in any capacity. It should be a clear signal for him how much Bush really values him and his opinion, but it doesn't seem to have made any difference, not yet anyway. What I would like to see, of course, is UK coming closer to EU and moving away from US - but to be honest the referendum about the EU constitution coming up doesn't fill me with hope.

Oh frell, thinking of all this got me really depressed now.

A romantic comedy. With zombies.

We went to see Shaun of the Dead last night. If you liked Spaced, you're bound to love this movie - it's been written by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright, two men behind Spaced, and it stars lot of the actors from the series too. Indeed, the main character Shaun is played by Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson makes an appearance too.

Anyway, the film. Plot is quite simple: people start turning into zombies and Shaun and his friends need to survive the experience. I was slightly worried whether the crew was going to be able to make an entire good film when their background was making half an hour TV episodes, but fear not, the film held together very well. The jokes were funny, acting was hilarious, characters brilliant... Editing and direction was very fast and clever, and the story was original in it's own right - the end solution was to my knowledge a first of it's kind what comes to zombie movies (but I might be wrong too - zombie films are not exactly my speciality).

It's also a very British film - the whole environment of pubs and cornershops and suburbia was all very British, and I have to say that this might be best comedy coming out of this litttle island since Monty Python. Just go and see it, you won't regret it.

Polystom by Adam Roberts

"Polystom climbed into his biblane one morning, having made up his mind to fly to the moon. It had come to him upon waking, the sudden whim to visit his uncle Cleonicles - the great Scientist Cleonicles, none other - in his mansion on the moon. It so happened that Cleonicles, the revered old man, the great scientist, had only three days of life left to him. Polystom new nothing of this, of course, any more than did Cleonicles himself."

And so it begins. Polystom is the first book I've read from Adam Roberts, but I think I can safely say it won't be the last. Polystom is a story about the fiftieth Steward of Enting, named Polystom and how his uncle's death changes his life. Roberts describes vividly a strange and unique but familiar world. There are humans and other familiar earthly things, but the world is clearly not ours - there is no vacuum between the planets and the moons, and whole culture with nobles and servants is very medival. The main character in the book, poetry loving young Polystom, is quite an unpleasant man - no doubt very much a product of his culture, he is arrogant and naive.

What can I say, I thought this book was pretty fantastic - I fell in love with the world - not because I'd like to live there, or necessarily even visit, but because it was so beautifully described to the most minute detail. Roberts doesn't have scientific background but a literary one, and I'm sure his "science" in this book will drive many science elitists up the walls. I've said this many times before - for me, a huge fan of science fiction - science is just the backdrop, and the story and storytelling is what matters to me. And Roberts is a tremendous storyteller. This book is highly recommended.

Balance substitute

I went to Body Balance again this morning, and found out that Gary was standing in for Elaine. Now Gary is not one of those men that look like they are into soft values and yoga and tai chi - and true enough, it was his first time running a Balance class.

I've been to Gary's Body Pump classes which is all about power and lifting weights, and he's quite a good teacher, very motivating. So it was weird seeing him doing tai chi, and he didn't have good flexibility and was just crap at balance moves. Which is not to say he was a bad teacher - he just needed to do some moves in a very basic level, which is probably better for some people in the class.

Enjoyed the class, as always.

Hair update

My salon called me this week to tell that my hairdresser Claire had left - so Becky, their senior hairdresser, did my hair today. After my previous experiment with red failed, I decided to go with chocolaty brown again. The result is very good I think - the red had faded into a golden colour, and with the dark brown highlights on top of it makes it look like I've had blonde hightlights. Very sleek and pretty.

Full points for Becky.

The worst game of all time

I’ve hunted high and low, but no game has ever come close to be as bad as this. Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to the Big Rigs Over the Road Racing.

Please download the gameplay movies, and witness the horror of publishers trying to save money by moving games industry into cheap labour countries. Be warned however, I laughed until I cried, and it took me hours to recover.

Truly diabolical.

Gyms 'not making the nation fit'

Ok, this is an important issue I kind of talked about earlier, but I've seldom read as badly written story from BBC. Or it could be that professor Biddle either doesn't know what he's talking about, or is unable express himself clearly.

What he seems to be saying is that since we didn't have gyms in the olden days and where fit and healthy back then, we don't need them now, and that we will be better off by walking and climbing the stairs.

I'm not even going go there. What utter rubbish.

My gym is making me fit. I would never ever achieve the same results by walking and climing the stairs. In fact, my gym has helped me to find a sport that I enjoy, and is encouraging me to do more.

Later: Telegraph actually reports the same news in a more sensible way.

Ranting Dragon

I miss my old gym.

It had no air con, the paint on the walls was falling off, the mirrors were mainly broken, and most of the members grunted while lifting and threw their weights on the floor when finished. But it had something better: atmosphere was always welcoming, all the members were dedicated to train hard, you could always get a spotter, and the equipment was geared towards a more serious trainer.

But since I have to work such ridiculous hours, going to a gym after work is really not an option. Therefore I now frequent a modern gym across the road and train during lunch hours.

This gym is expensive, does not have a squat rack, and getting anyone to spot you is chore, as practically all the other members of the gym never use the free weights. On the bonus side there is a decent selection of weights, you never have to queue to get to the bench, and there is a boxing ring and gym instructors I can spar with.

But the other day, while I was doing decline bench press, I noticed in the corner of my eye how one of the ladies training in the gym was speaking animatedly to one of the gym instructors and gesturing at my general direction. I paid no heed, as I thought she might just be curious about the exercise I was doing. I had enough in my mind anyway (a big weight on your chest tends to do that).

But as I finished my set, the gym instructor approached me and said: ‘One of the other members complained. She feels threatened by you and the weights you use. Could you use smaller weights please?’

For a moment, I just stood there, speechless and staring incomprehensibly, thinking that this must be a practical joke. But the face of the gym instructor that had just delivered the line remained grave.

With all the politeness I could muster, I explained that I pay a lot of money for my membership, I was completely quiet while I trained, I was not in anybody’s way, I certainly did not place any other members in danger, and the weight, while reasonably heavy, was something I can easily handle without a spotter, and I was using good form. I then concluded that I would carry on.

The gym instructor, clearly embarrassed, went back to the lady in question with my answer. She got visibly angry, and shouted about making a complaint and soon stormed off the gym swearing that this would not be the last I heard of her.

Now I understand that I am not the typical customer of the gym: the gym makes its money out of women who come to sit in the rowing machines to chat to each other –I am cool with that. I understand that for somebody looking to do some light fitness I might look out-of-place in their cosy heath spa doing big compound movements with a barbell. But this really goes too far. If you can’t take the heat, stay out of the kitchen. If you cannot stand weights being lifted, stay out of a gym.

Night off

Had a really peaceful and relaxing night last night - I didn't go to the club as I'm giving my body some rest before the yoga tonight. Dragon came home relatively early, so I made dinner (chips and pork escalopes on the grill) and we had a little peaceful moment together which felt really nice. Later we watched some new indy wrestling I had found, and I went to bed early - as I always do nowadays since I need to wake up at six.

What can I say, life is good.

.Hack Infection (PS 2)

Just when I thought I had seen everything in gaming, those wacky people of the Rising Sun go and create .Hack Infection.

Real on-line games have never really been popular in Japan: losing face publicly is humiliating in Japanese culture, and you will publicly fail in MMOGs a lot. Therefore the Bandai games designers came up with a brilliant idea: they made the world’s first single-player massively-multiplayer game.

In .Hack Infection, you have virtual friends, you play a virtual game that takes place in virtual world, and your virtual character has a virtual character in the game world. I can only admire the creativity of the designers and their guts to pitch this idea, and the publisher who picked it up.

The story of the .Hack Infection in a nutshell goes something like this: Having sold 20 million copies, the World, a new on-line game made by a huge corporation, has become the world’s most popular game. You play a Japanese youngster, and you have just started playing the game with your friend who is a veteran, having played the game since the beginning.

On your very first adventure you get attacked by a monster that is clearly buggy and cannot be damaged. It takes out your friend in combat, but back in the real world, your friend falls into coma and is rushed into hospital. No-one is never able to explain what happened. Any messages you post on the Internet boards of the game enquiring what is going on get deleted. You must then play the game to reveal the mystery. You must balance your time between playing the World and while keeping your friendships in the real world via email going strong so you have allies in the game itself. Without spoiling rest of the story, it contains hackers, evil mega-corporation and cyber-technology galore –all good things in life then.

You check your emails, customise your screen background, select the music you play in your CD etc. on your ‘desktop’, and once you log onto the World you can check the message boards of the game for hints and tips as well as story information and just good-old-fashioned spamming, trolling, fan-boyism and elitist whinging –just like real MMOG then.

Game is full of weird, wacky and wonderful characters who play the World with you: little Japanse girl under the nick-name Mistral who is obsessed by collecting all the items in the game (though she is so young that sleeping times restrict her gaming), insecure teenager who plays the game to boost her confidence, European Samurai buff, and even an alter-ego of one of the designers of the game who plays to view how people react to the game he has created, and many, many more. You must bribe them with items in the game, give them hints on cooking and dating in email, and generally build up a strong base of supporters so you are able to solve the mystery of your friend's coma.

Technically, the game is very competent: the AI of your friends is excellent, story is a fine mix of cyberpunk and fantasy, and the graphics, while not exceptional, serves its purpose. Most importantly though, you find yourself shouting at the virtual players behind their characters as they argue with you, leave you to go on a date just as you are in the toughest combat of your life, and constantly moan because you don’t give them enough stuff, just as if they were real people. I never thought this could be pulled off, but I am enjoying .Hack Infection a lot.

Childhood traumas

Minttu writes (in Finnish) about an important issue - about how failures at school when you're a kid stay with you for years or even the rest of your life. I did always very well at school except for one subject: sport. And this has indeed stayed with me since then, and probably will do for the rest of my life.

From 3rd till 6th grade we had a particularly sadistic PE teacher who pretty much killed any joy I ever took from physical exercise. She had the habit of pointing out the worst pupils in the class, picking on their misfortunes and forcing kids to do things they were afraid to do (like gymnastics). She was without a doubt the most hated teacher in our school, and according to the latest new from my old school she still is.

We had better teachers later on, but by then I had learned to associate sports with fear, failure and pain, and I just tried to get away with as little as I possibly could. I was too honest to skip any lessons, so I muddled along but I never enjoyed any of it. I must have tried at some point, but the only times I can remember trying never made any difference in teacher's attitude towards me or my grades. I was always one of those kids who were chosen for a team as one of the last - and the other two where girl who was missing a chromosome and the only fat girl in our class.

It was only years after I finished school I started to take any interest in exercise. For years I was feeling guilty because I wasn't doing any, so I had in my mind chosen couple of things I might want to try if the opportunity rose, and those were Tai Chi and yoga. So when we moved to Bishop's Stortford, and it turned out that 50 meters from our house there was a regular Tai Chi class, I didn't have any choice but to go.

And I'm very clad that I did - I did Tai Chi for several years, and getting into doing some exercise - even if it was only something very gentle and only once a week - and taking pleasure out of it was something that enabled me to start doing more serious exercise later on. I joined a local health club couple of years ago, Dragon wrote me a program, and that started me off on a new path.

Since then I've picked up new favourites: yoga and ashtanga, swimming, Body Balance and Body Pump, and I've (practically) stopped going to the gym (due to my wrist my doctor has recommended that I shouldn't use heavy weights, and where's the fun in that? I'd rather do something else) and I don't do Tai Chi anymore as I don't currently have a teacher.

But still… When I had to take a break this year due to my work, and the recent memories of good experiences had faded I was left with a distrust and dislike again, and this could be something I will never get rid of. That was the reason I kept putting off going to the club, and I'm getting rid of that feeling only very slowly by getting the endorphins flowing again.

Pool behaviour

Went for a swim last night, and I'd just like to vent a bit about pool behaviour that really annoys me. The pool at my club is not the biggest, and it can have about 5 to 6 people swimming there at the same time comfortably, depending on the people on styles. And most people come there to swim.

But then there is a group of people - of all ages and genres - who come there just to talk. They gather around in groups - the worst ones in the middle of the pool, or just somewhere on the sides. Dodging them is a pain, especially when they position themselves in the end of the pool where I'd like to turn around, and they seem totally oblivious that they are in the way.

What I don't get is, if they want to have a chat, why not just go to the bar - plenty of more room there. Yesterday there was particulary a middle-aged couple and their friend, who were there when I came in, and hadn't moved by the time I had finished. When I was relaxing in the jacuzzi later on, they moved in for the kill and dragged their butts from the pool and came and disturb me again. At this point I resigned and headed for the shower.

(Whether they consider this hanging by the poolside exercise, is anybody's guess.)

In the Kingdom of Gorillas by Weber and Vedder

Those who know me are fully aware how fond I am of Gorillas -I basically believe they are the coolest creatures on this entire planet. Thus when I picked up In the Kingdom of Gorillas from Monkey World, I was expecting a delightful read. I did enjoy and appreciate the book, but it was quite different than I thought.

The book tells story of two idealistic wildlife conservationists, Bill Weber and Amy Vedder, who travelled to Rwanda in 70's, to work and study under the legendary Dian Fossey, and their subsequent work to establish the Virunga national park and the eco-tourism that saved the mountain homes of Gorillas.

While the writers are not professional novellists (a certainly think involving a seasoned author would have helped), their scientific background allows them to write in clear and concise manner. They tell of their first meeting with gorillas, the history of the Rwanda and its colonial past, and the two native people, Hutus and Tutsis.

Perhaps the most shocking part of the book was the material on Dian Fossey, the celebrated Gorilla conservationist. So unbelievable were the stories in fact, that I had to do some checking on my own to verify them. Unfortunately, by all accounts the stories in the book are true.

Dian Fossey was of course a very important icon for the women's movement, and became an idol for an entire generation of western women, but her much vaunted legacy is somewhat tainted. Her policies for protecting the gorillas were an enormous failure -her decision to hire guards to shoot any black people who entered the national park, submitting suspected poachers to hideous tortures, mistreating her staff on basis of their race, all these things earned the wrath of the local people, who murdered gorillas as revenge for her brutality. She was suspected to spend large proportion of the research fund to buy ever-increasing amounts of alcohol to feed her habit.

By the end of her life she was but a sad, racist, alcoholic shadow of herself, who died in her cabin with a machete wound through her skull, a loaded gun next to her. Her killer was never caught.

Dian'sreal importance was as an icon that brought the plight of gorillas into attention of the world. Her intial research on Gorillas was ground-breaking, and her pioneering work opened the possibility to save the Gorillas, so perhaps she should not be judged too harshly. She did devote her entire life to saving Gorillas, however flawed her methods might have been.

Weber and Vedder built the Gorilla program from nothing, making it the third most important revenue source for Rwanda. They quickly realised that the only plausible way to save the gorillas was to make sure that the local people, depserately poor farmers of Virunga, benefited from the conservation effort. Therefore the hired locals as guides, guards and trackers, and through their efforts the gorilla numbers rose from 260 to over 600. Then the disaster struck: in a single bloody year the Rwandan genocide erupted.

The book covers the background and the events of the Rwandan genocide much clearer and better than any study I've read on the subject. I now finally understand the history and the events that led to the appalling mass-murder of some 800,000 Tutsis. During the Rwandan genocide the world press were often more interested in how the gorillas were faring than hearing about the plight of the Tutsis. Most criticism of the book is directed towards the Western powers for not intervining -hardly surprising as there is no natural resources in Rwanda that the west covets.

But throughout the book, the main characters are always the Gorillas: gentle giants who share 99% of their genes with us. Their family lives, personalities, reactions to the eco-tourists, these are the real soul of the book. Dry scientist they may be, but Weber and Vedder are clearly moved by each encounter with the majestic creatures. It certainly made me resolute to donate more money for the cause of saving gorillas, and at the same time help the native people to rebuild their lives.

The Dumas Club by Arturo Perez-Reverte

Myself and Dragon, we very rarely read the same books. His genre is fantasy and historical novels, and while I like those too, my passion is sci-fi (and the other way around). So when he suggested I should read The Dumas Club I was undoubtedly suspicious - but he described it to me as a crime novel, so I decided to give it a go. Immediately I could see why Dragon loved this book so much. It's a book about books - about a book hunter who is investigating a rare Dumas manuscript and a satanistic antique book, and leaves behind a trail of bodies.

I don't know if it was about the translation (from Spanish to English) or the original text, but I found the language quite heavy and a bit difficult to read. The main character Corso was quite unpleasant man, and the subject of Dumas, his books and his private life wasn't such an engaging factor for me. Those reasons were probably enough that it took me better part of a month to finish this book.

But while the beginning was a bit slow, things started to happen towards the end, and the ending was actually quite exciting and clever. Perez-Reverte obviously likes to give clues to the reader, and this book was full on illustrations of different copies of the book "Nine Doors". There was something Christie-like in his methodology and approach to the mystery which appealed to me, but unfortunately the characters in it didn't really do anything for me. While I think it's not necessery to like characters in a book, I think I would still like to admire them in some way, or at least the way there were written - but in case of Corso I just didn't find him appealing in any way, and didn't think that the character development was overly logical.

But all in all, not a bad read. But I think Dragon is a better person to sing the prase for this book.

Bandwidth theft

Yes, I do read my webserver logs. Mostly out of curiosity on what people are looking for on our site, and what is popular. I'm always interested to see who's linking to us. This is how I found out that someone had been stealing our bandwidth - not much, but (for me) that's not the point. Now I understand that my screen caps of Gronda are quite hot, and I have no objections to someone copying them (it's not like I own them in the first place). But for courtesy's sake, either link to my page or copy the file to your own server.

I had by accident read yesterday melankolia.net's entry on bandwidth theft, so I knew what to do. My caps are now protected (and in a more polite way than what Mikko did, not that I didn't find his way funny!) - I would have left a comment on the thief's blog (who might or might not be a friend of a well known indy wrestler and a wrestler himself - but if he knows Gronda, why can't he get the photos himself?) but he had disabled anonymous comments so he's left to find out what happened himself.

Easter traditions

When I was a kid, we always went to my grandparents' place in Hämeenlinna, where my grandfather would hide the eggs on Sunday morning and when we woke up we would look for them. Later on we used to go there just for Sunday, but eggs were always hidden and we would always look for them. I never dressed up as a witch - I know some people had this tradition, but I never wanted to do it.

Obviously since I moved to England this changed. One of our newer traditions has been that Chu has often spent the easter with us - it's a good time to come as you get couple of extra days of holiday, and by easter the spring is quite a bit further here than in Finland where there's often still snow on the ground. And I used to keep the egg hiding tradition alive by hiding eggs for Chu and Dragon to find.

This easter has been a bit different. Chu couldn't come this year due to all sort of reasons, but J-Ko spent a couple of days with us which was very nice. I didn't hide any eggs - but we have eaten quite a few chocolate bunnies.

Body Balance 24

I'm continuing to live my new life almost surprising myself in the process. This morning it was new Body Balance class with the lovely Elane who's probably my favourite Balance teacher. They had moved to program 24, which after one try I have to say must be one of the best ones I've done. Here's what it was like:

Tai Chi warmup: Elaine warned that the hand choreography was quite complicated, but when she showed it, it turned out to be just a variation of make hands like clouds (or wave hands like we used to call it). Not to say that it's not complicated - beginners spend quite a long time learning that move in Tai Chi, it was just familiar to me. Otherwise the track was quite typical Balance Tai Chi warmup with wide stances and choreography mainly for hands. Music was Moby's wonderful Porcelain.

Sun Salutation: Again, normal Sun Salutation, but hey - if it ain't broken, don't fix it. I didn't really enjoy some of the previous twisting salutations they had, so this was pretty perfect for me. Music was Sting's Desert Rose.

Standing Strength: Mostly yoga and different Warriors - starting with Warrior A and B, triangle and finish with Sun Warrior. Good thing about the Warriors is that you can do it just as intense as you want, and chicken out when you feel like it - like I did: after four months complete break from any exercise Warriors are a killer. Music was Heather Small's very fitting Proud.

Balance: I absolutely loved this new balance track. Some Tai Chi - style standings on one leg and bending over in different speeds, and the good old star. Choreography was quite simple - mainly just the same series over and over again - but then again I think Balance is about simplicity: you don't want an overcomplicated choreography because then you can't concentrate on... well, the balance. Music was the beautiful Paul Schwartz and The Joyful Company of Singers' Miserere.

Hip Opener: This was quite painful too because I seem to have lost all the flexibily I used to have. Quite complicated postures, but it felt very effective. I also notice that my left side seems a lot stiffer than my right side - I'm sure it didn't use to be so. Music was Streets Of Philadelphia by Bruce Springsteen.

Core: I don't usually like the Pilates-based Core and Back tracks, but this was quite bearable. Some extremely tense moves here, for the sides and the abs, but not too many cycle kicks. Music was My Love Is Your Love by Whitney Houston.

Back: This could have been worse too, but it was actually quite nice. I need to remeber to take another mat with me next time, as my hips are far too bony for this stuff and I don't do the moves as effectively as I should. Moves were basic: lay on you stomach and lift your legs and upper body. Simple but effective, I can feel it in my back. Music was Ain’t It Funny by J-Lo.

Twists: I like the twist tracks - I often find them quite easy and relaxing. These were standing twisting postures, some from yoga, some Body Balance. Music was very cheesy So Amazing by Clark Anderson.

Hamstring streches: By this time my legs were trembling like crazy, so hamstring streches really hurt. But in a good way, and it was quite nice to have one track just for them. The streches were done lying on your back while holding your leg and moving it from side to side. Music was Angel by Sarah McLachlan.

Class ended with meditation as always.

Really enjoyd this class and I think I'll try to get it into my Sunday schedule permanently.

When two tribes go to war

Here are some things I ran into while browsing web over the issue of obesity, I've put in links from both side of the argument, hopefully representing a fair share of data:

Over half of Britan's population is now overweight or clinically obese. In fact Britain is poised to challenge US soon, though at the moment America is still unchallenged. It is no wonder WHO has declared the obesity crisis an epidemic, despite US resistance. The bill the society has to foot every year is staggering, and the tragedy of the people dying of lingering illnesses caused by their condition is of course beyond any amount of dollars. Despite this, resistance to any action against junk food continues.

Equally worrying for the doctors is the trend of young children who are getting very overweight as well. Espcially girls seem to be very prone to ballooning out and suffering serious health problems as a result.

One of the magazines I read just ran a competition on best ideas for losing Here are some choice ideas:

Ban all advertising for junk food.

Take Viagra off perscription -the increase in the amount of sex will burn off the calories.

All of these ideas above are of course more or less tongue-in-cheek, but the fundamental problem remains: the cost of the nation being so overweight is unbearable, and not tenable in the long term, according to scientists.

I looked around a bit more and seems like the catastrophic obesity levels were already under scientific study as early as 1994, but the ferocious lobbying of the food manufacturing industry lobby blocked any public records. The drive to increase excercise was similarly blocked by the all-powerful car-manufacturers' lobby.

Interestingly, there is now a 'Camp Two', a lobby for fat people who feel that the issue of negative image of fat people is like that of racial hatred or religious intolerance. There is even a blog and international organisations to defend the cause. They dispute the claims that being overweight causes any health problems and aggressively challenge anything they see as discriminatory against the fat, including health campaigning against obesity.

So the battle lines are drawn and swords of the fat and the slim are being sharpened. I actually think that the fat lobby will win in the long run, since they now represent the majority in the Western World and their numbers will continue to increase.

Welcome to Colinwood

No matter what Dragon and J-Ko say, I very much enjoy watching Welcome to Colinwood. It's a movie about pathetic bunch of petty criminals that agree to do a job that will guarantee them for life. The boys were squirming uncomfortably when one thing after another went wrong, but it seems I was watching an entirely different movie. First of all - the morality of "crime doesn't pay" appeals to me (yes, there were exceptions but it doesn't matter). Secondly, it had one of my favourite plots ever: boy meets a girl, boy falls in love with girl and girl falls in love with the boy (and I believe they lived happily ever after). Yes, everything goes miserably wrong but it that's really the beauty of it. Great acting from all involved, great characters, great directing.

So there. It's a good movie and it will make you laugh. Just watch it, ok?

Thought for the day

Style before purpose.

Good service

Some people (myself included) have been talking about bad customer service lately, but in the spirit of keeping positive I thought I should share with you the good experience I just had.

Last week I decided I wanted to order a Bluetooth USB adaptor, and after a little research I decided to go for TDK's adaptor as it was apparently well suited for the Nokia 6600. This device however is 2-3 times more expensive than the cheaper adaptors, so instead of buying it from Amazon I shopped around a little and found a decent-looking little internet shop called NickKnows.com that offer the adaptor (with taxes and p&p) about the half the price from Amazon (we're talking about savings of £30-40). So I made the purchase last Thursday. On Friday they called me apologising that they didn't have the item in stock, but would be getting some middle of next week, and did I still want the item. Well, since I didn't even have the phone at that point, I had no objections (and honestly even if I've had the phone, the price was good enough to wait for).

Come this week, I had also decided on a Bluetooth headset I wanted to buy - and again NickKnows.com had a decent price for the Plantronics M3000 headset I had chosen. So I decided to try if I could add this headset into my current order - it was Tuesday so I figured the order probably hadn't shipped yet. Gave them a quick call, and I was told no problem, and I was also informed that the order would leave that day and I would have it tomorrow.

On Wednesday my order arrived, everything I ordered, just like they promised. No this may sound like trivial thing, but I've had enough experience with bad companies to know that although this is how it should happen, it doens't always work that way. So if you're in a need of networking products, I'd wholeheartedly recommend NickKnows.com.

Just keep swimming...

Went for a swim again last night, this time I did the full mile. When I was in the changing room later drying my bikini, a lady walked past and started singing Dory's song from Finding Nemo:

"Just keep swimming
Just keep swimming
Just keep swimming swimming swimming
What do we do we swim, swim, swim
Oh ho ho how I love to swim
When you want to swim you want to swim"

So ok, she didn't sing more than the first two lines, but it totally cracked me up.

My new life

I've finally started my new life after about four months of lack on any exercise. For the past couple of weeks I've become increasingly anxious about starting to exercise again - for some reason it has seemed difficult and unpleasant.

So I decided to start of easy by going swimming yesterday at my club. Being back there just reminded me how much I enjoy coming there - one of the reasons I really used to like going to classes. The whole athmosphere of my club - the building, the staff, the changing rooms, people, sauna... it's just a very warm and nice place to come to. I was going to go straight to the pool, but passing the sauna was too tempting and I nipped in for a quickie - it's been since Christmas since I was in a sauna last time, and it felt so good.

In the pool I was quite shocked when after hunderd meters or so my legs started to beg for mercy - my usual distance I used to swim was about a mile, and the only reason I didn't do two was the fact that I got so bored of going back and forth the little 25 meter pool. Luckily the feeling passed, and I did my intended kilometer. (And then some more sauna)

Today I was supposed to go to ashtanga class, but my teacher is on annual leave - so I guess it's back to the pool for me. But I'm starting to feel I can actually do this.

Work damnit!

Ok, so there's something I need to blog relating to my new toy (Nokia 6600 phone in case you didn't catch the reference). My old phone was the traditional "I can call people" phone with no extra gimmicks. The new one is the fancy "I sing and dance and make coffee" type of phone... so to get all out of my new darling I needed to enable GPRS and MMS on my account. Easy, you'd think. So did I, and I was already composing the funny photo in my head I'd be able to send Thor once I got MMS working.

So, I call O₂ happy in the belief that surely they will make it easy for me to offer them more money. First the young man explains to me the difference between GPRS and MMS (yes, yes, I know what they are) and then asks me which one I want enabled. "Both", I say. "I'm sorry ma'am, you can only have one of them enabled", says the boy.

Say what? "Our system only allows you to have one of them enabled", repeats the boy. "But I can transfer you to another service provider that allows you to have both." Say what!?! "It's just a different service provider, your operator will still be O₂ and all your details will remain the same" says the boy helpfully. "Would you like me to do transfer you to our [insert fancy department name here]?"

So ok, what the hell. It escapes me why I need to go trough this sing and dance if nothing changes, but I'm going trough the motions. Next I get to talk to a young lady who takes my details. "I will get the papers going today, and we'll call you in about 3 to 4 days to confirm the transfer."

At this point I'm resigned the fact that this isn't going to be easy.

But this is taking the piss.

Can't blog

Can't. Blog. Too. Busy. With. New. Toy.

Go with the flow

Wu-Wei has always been one of my favourite philosphical principles. Basically, it is a a philosophy of going with the flow, positioning yourself in any situation so that without any percieved effort or action things will turn out for the best. 'A good travel leaves no mark' as one of my martial arts instructors used to say. There are obvious uses for Wu-wei in martial arts, the most basic being rolling with the opponent's punch rather than bracing yourself against it and trying to absorb its full force. But this principle can be applied to many other areas of life, too, be it social life, managing people or organising your time.

Perhaps there is something here for Blogistan as well. Sometimes I despair reading through the blogs filled with angst and suffering (though I do suspect quite a few people do this simply to gain sympathy) and tales of the writers working as hard as possible to 'fix' what is wrong with their lives, causing ever greater chaos and grief to themselves and those around them.

Perhaps little Wu-Wei is exactly what is needed.

Still got my leg and arm

The car repairs didn't cost me my leg and my arm - the problem was just with a loose connection. For a while there - when they said "The light doesn't come on but we know it's not the bulb" - I was afraid this was really going to sting me. Sigh of relief over here.

"SCI FI Brings Back Farscape"

...after first taking it away from us. But this is as official as it gets, we even have a name: Farscape: Peacekeeper War, which doesn't quite ring true to me. But hey, I'm not picky. Not that picky anyway.

Monday morning stress

This morning is not one of those encouraging ones.

I took my little lowrider in to servicing this morning, and they've already called me to say that the brake light is not working and just having a look at it will cost me £20. I have a bad feeling this is going to be expensive.

Pinseri's Päivän Pamaus doesn't like me anymore - apparenty samik has done some new work on it and if I have Norton Security enabled (which is my firewall so I'm not going to disable it permanently) I can't follow the links. I sent him some post and found that the same Norton Security apparently prevents me from using the feedback forms, so I had to disable it again for couple of seconds. I'm just hoping at least one of my messages got trough.

My new mobile phone finally arrived at work - and I'm working from home today because of my car. I finally listened to the voice of reason and took Thor's advice that 6600 would be better choice than 3660. I sincerely hope so. Next I have to decide on a suitable bluetooth headset - if anyone has recommendations I'd like to hear them.

But at least there are some good news. J-Ko is the next visitor coming from Finland, and I agreed to meet him at Heathrow on Thursday evening. He promised to bring rye bread and salmiakki. Mmm...

Later: Thanks to samik, Päivän Pamaus is co-operating with me again. Or Norton is co-operating with me. Or whatever. Google provided the solution.

Lazy Sunday

Very lazy Sunday: woke up early but ended up just watching endless hours of documents about Monkey World (as Animal Planet has a Monkey Business Sunday) before dropping off Mikki to catch his train to London. It was very nice to have him here.

More Monkey World

After all that talking about apes yesterday we decided to actually go and see some today. So last night I headed to bed after 11 o'clock after we'd finished watching Equilibrium, but apparently boys stayed up until 4 to play Dragon's new game... which made trying to wake them up at nine this morning challenging. But we managed to head of around ten, and after only one little detour we arrived in Monkey World just in time for the keepers talks to begin.

Now if you're going to Monkey World, it's well worth planning your trip so that you can hear at least couple of the talks. The keepers know their stuff and gladly answer questions from the audience (I asked how Hebe was doing and apparently she's doing ever so well) - they tell you a bit about the species in the wild, the illegal pet trade that is driving them into extinction, and a bit about the each group the talk is with.

It's a good place to visit, but it continues to distress me how many of the people coming in are clearly thinking they are visiting a zoo - they're not, it's a sanctuary. These people think that the moves some disturbed apes do are funny - like Rocky the ex beach photograper's chimp was begging for food by doing funny gestures it had been taught, for me this is just an indication that this poor chimp's life will never return to normal. I can only hope these people learned something (but even if they didn't at least they paid to get in).

Saddest talk of all was maybe the keeper who was talking about orangutans. The situation in the wild is critial, and the keeper said she didn't believe the species would survive in the wild. Both the loss of habitat and the illegal pet trade are not giving these gentle creatures a chance... Monkey World has been successful in breeding orangutans though, and we also saw the latest addition to the orangutan family - Hsiao-ning (which means peaceful sunrise) who was born last August. Perhaps the cutest thing I've ever seen - this tiny and yet perfect little person, with a beautiful peaceful gaze... and she came very close up to see us.

All in all, a trip worthwhile.

Ape business

After watching Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back yesterday, I find to my amazement that I've had to explain to several people why using apes in movies is a bad thing. Truth is that had I known there's a live orang-utan used in the movie, I wouldn't have bought it in the first place, so strong is my dislike of this issue. (And if you thought it was just a funny thing that I have adopted an ape, think again - this is in fact a subject I've done some research on.)

The thing is - apes are intelligent self-conscious beings that should not be exploited for cheap laughs, it's degrading for both the ape and the audience. No matter how well the animal is treated, the fact that it is made to do things against it's natural behaviour will make it suffer. Because their natural behaviour includes things that humans don't like, they are taught - or made - to behave more like humans than like apes.

All species of apes are different, of course. Orang-utans are solitary and don't generally come to contact with other orang-utans unless looking for a mate or taking care of offspring. Gorillas live in troops with one male and many females and spend a lot of time just grazing. Chimpanzees and bonobos live in complex communites with many males and females and bond with other members of the group. Facial expressions and complicated vocalisations play important roles in ape societies and cultures. These typically include howls, growls, roars, stamping and tree bashing to express their moods. Apes build nests where they sleep, and take care of their young ones typically for years.

As you must see, this is quite different to dogs or any other pets that humans have that have been especially bred to cope with restrictive lives humans impose on them. Let alone the fact that typically after the cute and cuddly baby ape reaches puberty they become extremely dangerous too - all apes are typically 5 or 10 times stronger than humans, and are just as boisterous as human kids at that age and want to try their boundaries. This will often end up the ape being killed.

For me this is really important. While I understand that due to ecological and human catastrophes preservation of the species' might not be possible in the wild, I believe that it is still possible for the great apes to live ape-like lives in zoos and sanctuaries. And this means not being used in films.

Art goes Dragon/kolibri

I have a great pleasure of working with a tremendously talented artist named Jerry Smith (I'll add a link as soon as I get a go-ahead from him) and he has kindly agreed to do some art and graphic design for Dragon/kolibri. Here is a little teaser of things to come for our readers.

Swooning praise and thunderous applause welcome. :) Watch this space as we start to incorporate his work.

April fools

I've been almost tricked twice today. Worst jokes are the ones that are coming from respectable sources that you are used to trusting... like Pinseri or the BBC. I think I would probably have fallen for samik's little story had not my fellow bloggers spotted the joke before me.

Another clever one came from Radio 4's Today Program that claimed that The Archers theme tune was going to be re-vamped by Brian Eno. The whole article was very cleverly done - they interviewed several high-profile people and all the other facts were clearly true. It was only when I heard the "new" tune I started to doubt - it was absolutely horrendous: the same tune as before but they had added an 80's beat to it. It was only when the presenters were laughing in fits that I was sure that I had been fooled.

Volcano High

Last night we decided to watch the South Korean "X-Men meets the Matrix" superhiro flick Volcano High that I had picked up from the airport. We knew absolutely nothing about this film except what the DVD cover said, so we had no idea what was waiting for us...

At first I tried to take the film seriously, but quite soon it turned out that this was the wrong approach. The story was simple (I think) - Kim Kyeong-su, the hero of the story, gets transferred to a new school where all the pupils have superhero powers where he falls in love with the captain of the Kendo team, Icy Jade. There was lot of other stuff in the movie too, like secret powerful manuscript that might or might not have existed, rivalry with Jang Ryang, the Dark Ox who kept repeating his name every time he spoke (we think his real name was "soy bean"), poisoned principal, a guy in (school) prison that was (wrongly) accused of poisoning him, mad vice principal and five powerful teachers that were hired to clean up the school from rebels.

So, suffice to say the movie was at times very confusing. This in itself is not that uncommon with Asian films - I sometimes find that you'll pick up the plot after the first hour or so, as the beginning of movies can be very... fractured. I liked it though - it had us laughing in fits at times, and I'm pretty sure it meant to be funny. Special effects were cool, and action was good too - maybe not quite as good as top Hong Kong movies - but especially the final battle between Kim Kyeong-su and Mr. Ma was very entertaining.

Maybe not for the average movie fan, but if you want to try something different, give it ago.