I’ve spotted this ad in today’s newspaper which instantly reminded of an art piece from the good ol’ days of net.art (pictured below, but unfortunately the original Alexei Shulgin’s FuckU-FuckMe site is not available anymore).

Placing very lifelike (but fake) FuckU-FuckMe alongside the just-as-much lifelike (but fake looking) Wii fit only makes one wonder how long before Nintendo decides to launch a new product line for mature audience. Games would naturally need to be accompanied by appropriate controllers, you know, for seamless gameplay and natural suspension of disbelief.

Whoever decides first to transform FuckU-FuckMe from bits to atoms will probably have to polish the usability aspect a tad. However, if I’d have my pick, I’d want to see Nintendo do it rather than Microsoft.

Mladen

Kaizers Orchestra played in Tavastia in Helsinki last night. Their first show in Finland was outright brilliant. Not only because they took questions from the audience during the gig and were selling their own merchandise after the show, but also because they brought Geoff Berner along. Although Berner performed only a handful of songs, his sharp satiric wit delivered the punch line of the night. Geoff Berner is the Woody Allen of music, period.

And just in case if you know Smashing Pumpkins personally, please tell them to go see Kaizers Orchestra. Pumpkins could definitely take a lesson or two from the Kaizers about performing live (the picture above from the last night’s gig might already give a hint or two).

Mladen

One of the most annoying things when traveling these days is finding an open wireless Internet access. You’re in a foreign town, wanting to check your email, see what’s worth a visit and check out what’s on tonight, but you can’t find the net access anywhere.

Alternative to looking for open wi-fi signs, which are rarely posted or barely visible, is to fire up your notebook and walk around. It works, but it is both incredibly inefficient and a bit dorky.

I was exhilarated when I learned about a year ago that Helsinki city center is quite efficiently covered with free wireless Internet spots courtesy of the city of Helsinki. So next time before you visit Helsinki make sure you make a screen-grab of the Helsinki WLAN hotspots map.

I’ve heard that the cities of Vantaa and Espoo, which together with Helsinki make the Helsinki metropolitan area, have started planning a similar free Internet access too. But don’t hold your breath as it might take a couple of years before it materializes.

Alternatively you can also check the Omakaupunki service provided by Helsingin Sanomat newspaper. Yes, the service does sort of resemble Steven Johnson’s fantastic Outside.in, but is not just yet as valuable and user-friendly. (By the way, it would be nice if guys and gals at Outside.in would expand their service to Europe at some point, wouldn’t it.) Unfortunately the Omakupunki page is only in Finnish, but you should be able to find your way around by following this link displaying the free WLAN spots around town.

However, I must also mention a couple of favorite spots that I frequent when in Helsinki: Kiasma and Sanomatalo. Both are smack in the center, just a stone throw away from the railway station and both stunning pieces of architecture absolutely impossible to miss. But what I like best about them is that both are semi-public covered places, which is perfect when it’s raining or cold (which in Helsinki is often).

Internet being the new TV in terms of how easily you can spend time (waste, really), make sure you actually go out and explore Helsinki too.

Mladen

If you’d want to know about the weather conditions in any part of the world, you’d find that information easily yourself, I know. So believe me, the last thing I’d like to bore you with are weather reports. But due to unbearable weather conditions one is definitely due.

It’s January and even though they tell me the average temperature in Helsinki should be low enough to turn off the freezer and move its contents to the balcony, it’s so warm that it won’t do to cool the sauna beer. Actually I don’t even care so much for the temperature itself. What hurts is that pathetic amount of white stuff on the ground only meteorologists could call snow cover.

In many respects this is the first winter I have decided to actively embrace the harsh weather of the north, but it turned its back on me. For the first time I’ve changed the summer tires for a pair of these beasts with 240 studs. Then I got myself some seriously practical literature on building wintertime shelters (How to Build an Igloo And Other Snow Shelters). Just in case. But what nailed the last nail into the coffin of my winter plans is skiing. It rained cats and dogs for a whole week after I got a pair of skis. When former miss Finland Ninni Laaksonen enunciated her understanding of the climate change by admitting that she has only seen the headlines bearing these words and that for all she knows it means that it’ll bring us longer and warmer summers, she was painfully right: last year’s summer did stretch all the way into January.

Even ice fishermen who with their Jesus-like craftiness usually somehow manage to walk onto the middle of lakes and sit there the whole day, when for the rest of us there is no ice whatsoever, are not only disappointed with this year’s winter, but warm weather might decimate their ranks this season. Yet what truly speaks of the unbearable conditions is that the guys who thawed their freezers to make the only cross-country skiing track in Finland, and managed to keep it open for the whopping 36 hours, were charging a formidable 8€ for a half kilometer loop. How many visitors they got remained unknown, but I bet it wasn’t crowded.

The only thing that makes this godforsaken snow-free place feel like winter are the measly amounts of sunshine. If I were to ask you how many hours of sun you think the residents of Helsinki could have seen in the whole month of December (assuming that that’s all they wanted to do), what would you say? 80 hours? 60? 40? Wrong! Twenty! Yes, twenty hours spread over 31 days. Most likely I have overslept all that sunshine as I can’t really remember seeing any at all.

But life is getting brighter after all. There’s absurdly more snow in Dubai than there is in the whole of Finland right now, but yesterday was the first time I left the office while it was still light outside–and I leave work at 4.

Mladen

Already on several occasions I wrote about the peculiar relationship between Finns and alcohol. Even though some of the readers find such topics worn out, interestingly enough there are some intriguing observations about this that continue to make my head spin.

I don’t have many vivid memories from my early childhood, but when I think about it I still rememer the first time I encountered Finns when I was five and they were intoxicated. It was on a hot summer night on the coast of Istrian peninsula in what was then still Yugoslavia (now Croatia). My parents, my brother and I were on our summer vacation in a bungalow village and during the course of our stay we got new neighbors who already during their first night assured a Finnish-Yugoslav get-together. I remember being awaken by short bursts of loud exclamations in a strange language. After this had lasted for a while I heard my dad speaking in another language that was unfamiliar to me and the noise subsided, or I had fallen back asleep.

Without a single trace of doubt this was the event of the week in the sleepy village. In the morning dad explained how in all their drunkenness our Finnish neighbors’ volume meters became unbearably thick-skinned. Since the shouting lasted too long, he had to get up to calm them down. I can imagine that they probably woke up the whole village before they reached their hut in the wee hours.

Fast-forward twenty some years. Not long ago this and other accounts of similar type suddenly all make sense. It was like staring at scattered pieces of a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle for two years, and then solving the puzzle in two minutes. Only recently I have begun understanding what had happened that summer night and why.

Despite the fact that many prices were being readjusted for the pocket of a foreign visitor, Yugoslavia was still a budget traveler’s dream. Whoever could afford to get there, didn’t have to worry about prices once they got there. Nowhere else, but there, have I seen anyone light up their cigar with money, a Yugoslav Dinar bill. So you can imagine that in a place like that stocking up on booze couldn’t present a financial burden. Especially not if you came from any of the Nordic countries where one suspects some sort of a fine has been added to the price of that watered-down pint of beer. While in Yugoslavia for that same sum you’d get a liter of delicious šljivovica and still have some left. The decision is all too obvious: you quit drinking beer. And that’s probably what our neighbors from Finland had decided already during their first night there. Who could blame them?

However, I can imagine that such vacation alone might instigate a month without a drop of booze, even though it is the month of January that is traditionally reserved for serious detoxification. Even though it might not be the quantity, but rather the method of consumption that makes this peculiar relationship problematic, excessive alcohol ingestion is a serious issue in Finland and many are very somber about it. A third of the population, to be more precise. That’s roughly how many have decided in the beginning of January that they will abstain from alcohol during that month. I’m quite sure it takes a steady diet of something a tad bit stronger than Coke Zero before you decide to resort to sober life for 31 days.

But where does this type of secular nationwide month-long ethanol renunciation come from? There is a dispute about who exactly had instigated the custom in Finland, however, it is most plausible that it originated in the 1970s when a gentleman named Niilo Hakkarainen, a CEO of a paper factory, suggested to his workers to stay clean for the month of February. Obviously some took it seriously and more than thirty years later that humble proposition acquired a status of a serious national challenge. It even got upgraded; the challenge shifted from the shortest possible to the longest possible month.

According to a recently conducted poll 35% of responders promised themselves to stay away from alcohol, but only about a 17% of the population has managed to keep that promise until the end of January in 2007. If they don’t manage to spend the whole month without a drop, it can be at least something to look forward to for January 2009. The good news for those is that the rate of success is on the increase.

If you think you can’t make it, worry not, there is plenty of support out there, if you need it. Finnish Center for the promotion of health and Paihdelinkki (English version AddictionLink) are just two inspirational and supportive examples. The former organization even set up a separate Web site Tipaton tammikuu devoted solely to the challenge. There you can track your daily progress or even challenge your friends or family to do the same. Information is abundant and support is offered in different formats ranging from vibrant forums and various self-tests to plain fact calorie counter for those who need to crunch numbers before they act. Center for the promotion of health even created a desktop calendar, if for some reason that’s exactly what you’ve missed in your previous attempts to stop drinking (both PC users and Mac users served).

If none of that helps, then as a last resort it might help to know that the tax on alcoholic beverages has again been substantialy increased at the beginning of the month.

I admit, the forbidden fruit of January can be a tough nut to crack. At least it was me who got cracked before I cracked it; I had blithely enjoyed my sauna beer just a couple of days ago. I lasted eight days. But then again that kspt sound the beer can made when I opened it definitely did not cause any moral introspection.

Cheers to all those who will last for three more weeks.

Mladen