Fuck Crawley

I'm in Oulu, in Finland.

I love flying, and I love the feeling you get when the plane leaves the ground. The fight last weekend was that little bit better, leaving the miserable town which had not been my home for the last two years. I spent the whole weekend with a complete feeling of unreality - I said I would go back and I did go back, but two months ago I didn't know I had any chance, and just a little while before that I didn't want to go back, so a lot of the time I felt like I was just floating. It is sinking in now though, I guess.

The journey up to Oulu was good but pretty routine. I flew from Gatwick to Helsingfors, then got the train up to Oulu. Originally I was going to hang out in Helsingfors and then get the night train to Oulu, but on reflection decided that coming up in the day and staying over at a friend's place was better. I changed my sleeper ticket for a Pendolino ticket, and was about to ask if there was any change when the cashier coolly slid 10 cents across the desk. So I saved money already.

First week at work has been great. I am working as a consultant in a small sub-contractor company who work for a larger IT company, and am based on the client's premises. The client are providing me with computers to work on, and gave me a laptop and a ludicrously powerful computer when I got there. They then said “install any operating system you want.” If you aren't in IT you may not get just how amazingly cool that is.

To an extent I still feel that Oulu is the second prize, in that it is good but I preferred the other option. Oh well. Life sucks. Deal with it. Either way, I hated living in England and I hated my old job. I used to loe technology, and I think that I am going to rediscover that love of technology in my new job, so career-wise - irrespective of my past, like break-ups or having lived in Oulu before, but focussing purely on my career, then I have made an excellent move.

My former employer was a defence company called Thales. My grandfather was a conscientious objector during the second world war and I always felt so ashamed to work for a defence company, even though I was in the civil part and not defence. Even if that wasn't an issue, project management and engineering standards at Thales really suck, and I am glad to be out of there.

Slightly random picture. I got this new hat – it's grey and warm, and I wanted to get a picture of it. My friend Matti is a good friend but a rubbish photographer, so I had to make my own pictures.

ANYWAY. This is the penultimate post in this blog. I no longer live in Crawley, so need a new blog about Oulu. Maybe next week though.

The Changing of the Light

Everybody want to have the exciting life that I have. And who can blame them?

AT the moment it isn't very exciting. I have nothing interesting to write in my blog. I'm packing my room up into boxes during the week, and visiting friends who I am not going to see for a long time in the week. Very exciting.

I had a couple of vouchers which work gave me for being awesome about a year ago. I had to use them before I went, so I took them to a hairdresser who accept them in Brighton. It was a posh hairdresser so i'd hoped for a good job, but actually it's shit: it is really hard to find a good hairdresser, isn't it? I'm pretty sure that I'll be able to make my hair look good before I come to Finland because I'm usually OK at making something of it. Otherwise, sure it'll grow back. 

There was a cracking sunset over Brighton when I got there. It seemed like it was saying something to me.

Nothing to report

You'd think that a new job and an international relocation would give me plenty to write about. But actually not. I've spoken to a lot of friends in Kråli, and they all said “oh no, don't go.” but I think that they are just being polite. 

I spoke to my ex, but she doesn't talk about much. She speaks more when I talk about starting a family, but I don't want to talk about my family with her.

I left my mantid with my ex. My mantid died. 

I don't have any pictures, so sad songs from Finland instead.

So much to do and yet so little to do as well. So little time but all the time in the world. Nothing I do or own is of any value, any more.

Soooooo tired

It is 8.20, I'm waiting for the flight to Helsinki in Oulunsalo airport.

Got to sleep at about 1 last night, up again at 6 this morning. I don't think that I'm too old for this, I'm just frikking tired from late nights in Oulu. 

I've got a hotel then a couple of days hostelling in Helsinki before I get any rest. Although that isn't going to be much in the way of rest, as I have a week of packing, three weeks of more packing, flight to Oulu then settling back into the city: I'm not going to get any proper rest until November.

I didn't take a whole lot of pictures of Oulu. It's my home town, and I have 1000s of Oulu pictures already. Here's one I made earlier.

Slightly more in depth

Oh my Cod!! I spoke to someone in Oulu who said she had heard all of these things off of my blog!!! I'm kinda pleased that someone reads all this crap, but slightly shy about it too. Jeypers.

More in depth update for what I am doing in the Republic of Finland.

Week 1. Helsinki and Lahti. 

Watched a lot of football and hung out in Lahti. Injured my anterior tibialis muscle by running too fast up and down the hills in Lahti, and played with a baby squirrel which the owner of the Matkakoti Patria hostel in Lahti was looking after. 

Had a telephone interview with a company based in Oulu for a position. They decided that they liked the sound of me, and suggested a face to face interview asap. An interesting position in a great city!

Soccer:

Finland – Denmark opener, 1-0 Finland.
England – Italy opener, 2-1 Italy :(
Finland – Holland on tele. Finns won.
Norway – Iceland, 1-0 Norway
England – Russia, 3-2 England, v. exciting match.
Finland – Ukraine. 1-0 to the Ukraine in front of a crowd of 15,000 Finns. 
Norway – France, 1-1 slightly boring match.

Top Hostel!! Matkakoti Patria in Lahti. Recommend it 100%, although book early to avoid dissappointment.

Week 2: Turku

Week opened with a series of emails between me and an invitation to interview on the Tuesday. The company were offering to fly me up to Oulu and back to Turku for the interview, which was cool. 

This came right before the England -Sweden 1-0 draw. The England team usually hang out with the fans after the match, which is cool. Stuck around until about 11.30, had to be up at 5 the next day to fly to Oulu. 

Made it though, and got the job :)


No more football until Thursday, when we watched England beat Finland to get through to the quarter finals. An exciting 3-2 win, but in front of only 7,500 Finns.

Friday back to Lahti to watch Germany win a lack-lustre game against Italy, 2-1 but Italy were inches away from equalising in the last minute and taking it to extra time. A real shame, would have been great to see Italy take the Germans out.

Saturday to Helsinki to hang out with a friend and his v v cute kids (as in picture).

Sunday was the England semi-final against Holland. I was up in Oulu by then so missed it, but saw the last five minutes of extra time on telly. Jill Scott – who is gorgeous – scored the winning goal on a cross from Karen Carney just about 4 minutes from time. Amazing!


Week 3

Oulu.

Not much done this week. Hung out with friends. Seen all the friends that I need to see, well, still a couple that I have to see yet but will do today.

Back to Helsinki tomorrow to watch England take on the mighty Germany for the final. Winning would be to much to dream for, it is Germany after all. Just getting to the finals is enough for a big celebration after the match. Woo hoo!!!

QUICK QUICK!!

Time for a quick blog update:

-Watched lots of football, had a great time.
-Explored Lahti, Helsinki and Turku.
-Got Flown to Oulu for a job interview.
-Been out drinking with lots of England fans, and had people ask us the score while in the pub. “3-2 to England,” we said.
-Explored gay Helsinki and Gay Turku.
-Got offered a job in Oulu.
-Had an invite back to the hotel with a whole load of other England supporters to meet the team. The coach, Hope Powell, saw me looking a bit shy and came up to me. “Hi, I've not seen you before. I'm Hope Powell.”
-Invented a new dish, Helsinki Mushrooms. Potato, onion, mushrooms, tomatoes and mustard. Recipe on request.
-Signed a contract for a new position in Oulu.



I'm in Helsinki Vantaa airport, on my way to an interview. 

Miss my ex, but I'm moving on now. I have to go and visit her in a couple of weeks, but after that I am never going to look upon her beautiful face again. It sounds really dark and sad, but really it's a good thing.

Sports, sports and more sports

It's one of those weekends where there is a lot of sports. Late August and September: height of the sports season, well, not really. But that's probably why I don't sleep much in August and September, that and other things.

I'm currently watching qualifying for the European GP in Valencia, with Lewis Hamilton on top and whooping some ass - first pole position this season, meaning that McLaren have finally got their car to work. It's an awesome track but I shan't see the race as I will be travelling to the opening match of Euro 2009, as foretold here:

A blog post from last year about football

I'm watching the opening Finland-Denmark game at the Olympic Stadium in Helsinki tomorrow, then next match is England's opener in Lahti against Italy. AWESOME, and will take my mind off of the faintly hollow feeling that I have inside all the time these days.

<--Stuart Broad, England's current golden boy, leads the team off for a nice hot cup of tea. Broad did some serious damage to Australian hopes on day 2.

Elsewhere, England Men's Cricket team have, after a pretty bad start, been spanking the Australians in this year's Ashes Cricket Series. The Ashes is the longest--living Cricket rivalry in the world. We play it every two years, the women usually win for England but the men haven't be so lucky. This year's season has been good and bad for the boys. The next few days will be gripping, but the great thing about test cricket is that you don't have to pay attention......

So, not much in the way of blog writing for the next few weeks. I am going to be too busy doing other things. Expect a half arsed write up sometime next month.

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