New Year

We had planned to celebrate New Year´s Eve somewhere in SanFran, and so we did. For some reason the plans changed a little, so we actually celebrated it at home, the two of us.
But Sirpa made some great food...
... and together with the pretty decent champagne, wine and port it was quite delicious.

Flying back to SanFran

We took the 7.45am BA flight back, and everything went fine again. Due to the time difference, we arrived at 1.35pm the same day. The weather had been really warm and nice, and it was not too bad when we arrived, either.
Dinner at Town´s End was nice, and that place is just unbeliavably cheep, at least for SanFran standards. They have 3-course meals for something like $30. At it´s quite good, too.

Some friends of ours, Mikko and Hanna had just had their first-born (Luukas), so went out with the guys and Mikko after that to Harry´s Bar, but I have to admit that do not remember anything from that. And it was not due to the alcohol.

Nastola

We drove to Nastola the next day to meet Sirpa´s folks and saw for the first time during the trip lots of snow. But damn, I took one photo, and it failed completely! So now I can not prove that we saw lots of snow.

Christmas Day

We predicted that we would be dead tired, and at least I was. The jetlag was just killing me. So we did something very unusual - we did not "book outselves" to meet with Patti & Kika, as we usually have done (sorry!). And I guess it was as good, since we almost had a traffic accident on the way back when I fell asleep at the wheel... But Sirpa had some warm - and funny - socks.

Christmas

If we were in the U.S., December 24th would be the day before Christmas, but that was now irrelevant. It was Christmas in Finland, so we picked up Pete in Helsinki in the morning and started driving towards Turku-Åbo. It was great to meet the folks again
...have some great food...
...and more great food.
And I even received several Christmas presents!
It was a little different Christmas this year, though, with some memories from my past. The first one was a book written by one of my old classmates, Karin. She happened to be the daughter of General Ehrnrooth, whom everybody in Finland knows.
The other was a picture of another classmate, Yvonne, who is from a well-known, very musical family in Finland. And Yvonne had passed away.
But a great Christmas - once again!

Apartment and car

The apartment had a separate bedroom, a sauna and balcony (not shown here),
a small kitchen, and living room. And it was very quiet, since it was towards the inner yard, even if it was next to Kaisaniemenkatu.
And then it was time to go and get the car from Hertz... It is always an adventure, since they really seem to believe I am an American, since they always upgrade me to some American crappy car.
Or then they do not have any other cars with an automatic. Well, the Chrysler 300C was enormously big, so I had both a hard time getting into it at Hertz, as well as parking it. Sirpa was scared shitless when we drove around. But it turned out that this was the best American car I have had so far, in Finland. Quite good on the road, extremely silent, and the diesel had quite a lot of torque.
I would never buy one, and I am not sure if I would take one for free, but anyway.

Celebrate with great dinner

I spent the day at work, and Sirpa went to finish her studies by taking her last exams - and she passed! Congratulations, darling! And to celebrate that, we went to one of our absolute favorite places - Savoy - for dinner.They had some interesting things, like this bread.
And here are pictures of lots of great food.
...
...
A great wine, and we actually started with a Bollinger 1999, which was great. Not as good as the 1996, but definitely good.
...
...

Some walking and meeting with friends

To me it was somewhat of a wonder that they had an outdoor icehockey rink (even two) in SanFran, and for some reason I was surprised to see one next to the Railway Station in Helsinki, too. What a tourist I have become.
It was hard to find a restaurant that was open that day, but Ana and Uupa had found Papa Giovanni, or actually Spagetteria di Giovanni. And when I said that I had forgotten how good food can taste in Restaurants in Finland, well, I had also forgotten how bad it can taste. This was really, really bad. We all thought so.
On the other hand, the coffee in Cochon, next to Forum, was pretty good.

Flying to Finland

We took the BA flight at 7.50pm from SFO through Heathrow to Helsinki, so started on Friday night and arrived on Saturday night. The flight went quite smoothly, and we found our "hotel" called City Apartments easily. Quite nice we a balcony - and sauna. It was cold and dark in Finland - just as expected. So at least we needed some warm food, so we walked a few blocks to Maya for dinner. I had forgotten how good food can be in Finland - and how bad American wine can be in the U.S....
Sirpa had naturally brought enormous amounts of Christmas presents with her.
And City Apartments had provided us with some Finnish chocolate, so we had dessert, too.

Colder!

We had fantastic weather until the beginning of December with day temperatures almost at 20C. I am glad we received the 2nd heater that I ordered, because day temperatures started to fall down to or below 10C last week, and now it went down to about 5C. We even had a hail storm on Monday, and so damn cold in the office. I am glad I live in a quite new house, listening to people having inside temperatures of 15C, or so...

A few parties

Sirpa and I had dinner at South before going to the the Hidden Wine Bar, located at at ½ Cosmo Place at Taylor Street.
Auste (not in the picture) had invited me and Sirpa to a party through Gerard, who actually knew where to go.
The rule was to buy something for max $2 and/or something that you do not want/need. I received "Shakesparean Insult Gum" from Gerard, so people certainly were innovative.
The place was just a few blocks away on Post street, a really nice apartment in an old building. And definitely packed with people. And an enormous amount of food and drinks - for free.
Gerard knew about another party, so somewhere around (or after, maybe) midnight he, me and Sirpa took a cab somewhere towards Ocean Bach, to some wooden building next to Golden Gate Park. An enormous apartment and more people we had never met before. We were home quite late that night, well, next morning.
Oh, yeah...
... the bubble gum!

Gas prices, and advertising policy

Remember last summer when the gas price was almost $5/gallon? Well, it is definitely lower now!
But wait a minute, if you see that sign and stop at the gas station, you realize that this price is cash, only.
If you are paying with credit card, this is the price for that.
Interesting...

Gingerbread on Independence Day

We have some traditions. One is related to the (Finnish) Independence Day. This time we started the morning by waking up early to watch the Gala from the Presidential Palace in Helsinki. We saw it live, but streamed over the internet instead of watching on TV (in the evening, as they did in Finland).
So, usually the days starts with Sirpa making enormous amounts of gingerbread, but this time that happened later. The "glögg" that we found was ok, but the molasse Sirpa used instead of sugar syrup (which could not be found anywhere), made this Beta version look quite interesting.
Well, this version was made the night before (good thinking), so Sirpa was ready for a new try when Robin arrived. First we all needed a good brunch, including Finnish rice porridge with cinnamon.
And then the ladies started working...
... and soon we had lots of ginger bread. The American version as shown here...
as well as the Finnish-American version, as shown here. And about 300 of them. And good!
And we all rewarded ourselves by going for dinner to Orson´s in the evening. Oh, and Robin brough beautiful flowers. Thank you!

Holiday Party

I guess most of this is company confidential, so will just mention that we arranged the Bay Area holiday party at Dave and Buster´s at the Great Mall this year. It was quite fun having that in conjunction with a game mall, and to be honest, it did not hurt my budget too much, either.

More medicals

As I wrote in an earlier post, we had a kazillion of needles stuck in to us, but they could not take all the tests that day. So we went there again for the Tuberculosis test.

It was supposed to be "just something we take on your skin", but naturally we got "needled" again, and since this leaves a big mark (which you are supposed to see how big it remains), it was not that nice.

You were supposed to get back 48 hours later, and they would measure that mark again. My mark was quite big so I was afraid that they were going to take new tests, but we were apparently "within the boundaries" and received the papers.

What happens to the papers when they go to UCSIS (or wherever), and how they interpret them, well, that is another story. Time will tell within a few (or more) months.

But they are very professional at the center, I have to say!