Activities

A quick look around the corner and a glimpse of enemy inside the next building. Taking a good grip on my rifle and as soon as the other guy peeks from the window hole, a burst of ammo sets flying towards him. Miss. Now he knows where I am, I cannot go forward, have to go back and around the building. I turn around, and as soon as I leave the cover I feel sharp pain in my butt and learn another lesson in the game. Should have shot another round before leaving the cover, to buy me some more time. Game over.

A few weeks ago we spent a sunny Saturday playing paintball with a group of friends in the town-like field of Jämsän Paintball. Most of the group were at about the same level, played never before or only few times, and everyone had the same kind of rental equipment, which made the games even so that everyone could enjoy it equally.

Many people may think that pointing a rifle towards a person and pulling the trigger should not be fun, but hey, this is a game, sports, safe - and fun, lot of.

I've found another great new skill to learn. It is fun, it is good exercise and it is a wonderful way to have good time with nice people. What's that, I hear you asking, and the answer is fusku. What's that, I hear you asking again. It is a Finnish dance, simplified form of jive. It is fast, easy to learn and fun to watch, too.

I've been taking dance lessons since the beginning of this year, in ballroom dances like waltz, foxtrot and tango, and also humppa and jenkka which may be less known outside Finland, as well as some samba too. I don't know but I guess that the usual Finnish variations of them are more casual than what foreigners might first think about.

Dancing was very important for my parents' generation, and many of them have first met in open-air dance pavillions that once existed in every village. This culture was suffering in the past decades, but now my feeling is that it is coming back again. Nowadays there are more and more young people joining the scene, including me (Hey, I'm still young. Really!). It's fun and it offers a nice way of spending the weekend nights socially, meeting people you might not otherwise have met.

First, take a cold enough temperature (-15°C will do just fine) and a frozen lake. Then, make a hole in the ice, big enough to swim in. Because that's what it is for. You can have a hot sauna too, but that is optional.

Winter swimming (or hole-in-the-ice swimming) is fairly popular in Finland. The usual pattern is to go to a hot sauna (at least 100°C) to warm up, then you go and dip yourself in the ice-cold water and swim around for a little while. Before going back to sauna, you stand or sit a moment outside. Then repeat the cycle until you are saturated with endorphines and feel totally relaxed. Some people go and swim first, before going to sauna, and some don't bother going to sauna at all.

I used to do this regularly, 1-2 times a week years ago. At some point I left the scene, but this winter I've started again. The feeling afterwards is just amazingly relaxed. If you haven't tried it, I strongly suggest that you try it if you get a chance. You can come and visit Finland in winter to increase your chances. Of course the usual disclaimers apply, consult a medical professional first if you are from the U.S. etc. etc. Most people survive it alive.

I have now played canasta twice, three years ago and last Friday. In case you didn't know, it's a card game for two or four players. It is an interesting game, but calculating points takes some effort especially while drunk.

Happened when I was working at Nortel: I didn't do any exercise, I was so not in shape. Until my coworker Basvi made me try the new kickboxing class at the company gym. Twice a week for one hour, total torture in the beginning but it always felt so good after the class. After a while I noticed a change, I wasn't totally exhausted afterwards, and better yet my shirts were getting tighter at the shoulders. Something was happening.

These Jivoni's Jam classes included a lot of cardio exercise, pushups, situps etc in addition to kicking and boxing. And kicks and punches are not just done in the air, but you actually hit the pads held by your partner, or sand bags in well-equipped gyms, which makes it all the more fun. It is excellent stress relief, in addition to excellent exercise.

After quitting at Nortel I continued Jivoni's classes at world champion Cung Le's gym once a week, all the way until I left the USA. My getting in much better shape is all thanks to Jivoni, who helped me find pleasure and fun in sweating.

Cung Le

This is again one of those activities that you wouldn't want to report in the life insurance application. High risk, according to the insurance companies. But all divers I have talked to are always so enthusiastic about it, so I thought I have to give it a try.

Sure, it was exciting to be able to breath under water. I did the pool training, but I had trouble equalizing my ears. I tried the usual tricks, but somehow the pressure didn't equalize fast enough. Maybe I didn't do it the right way, or maybe my sinuses were not completely open thanks to allergy and wall-to-wall carpets or whatnot, but in the end I got blood behind my eardrums and wasn't able to complete the course in the ocean.

Some time later I tried again, with similar results. I still had problems with ears, but not so much as last time. I opted to try to do the open water part anyway, but then I caught cold just the night before. Apparently it's not meant to happen, so I gave up. The funny part is that I still got the diving licence a couple of months later by mail. Instructor's mistake, or he just wanted to get me off his files. So now I have an open water diver licence even though I have never finished the course in the open water. Perhaps I'll try again some day.

When living in the US with the hectic work life, I felt I need some exercise for my brains too. I figured learning a new language would be interesting and useful at the same time. Because all the languages I have studied so far (English, Swedish, German) were European and more or less related to each other, I wanted to try something completely different. So I looked west (from California) and decided to learn an Asian language. Chinese would have been most practical from the training point of view, because many of my coworkers were Chinese. But Chinese felt too difficult because of the intonations and having to learn tons of characters from the beginning. Japanese provided a slightly easier learning curve, and I was already interested in the Japanese culture, so the choice was clear.

I began by browsing the net and reading some introductory tutorials. Pretty soon I bought a Finnish Japanese text book and a dictionary which have been very useful. For learning some common phrases and improving listening comprehension, Pimsleur's language courses have been a very good help. They are expensive, but you can always sell them later. Of course taking a class with an actual teacher would have been best, but because of time constraints that was not an option for me. So I have only done self-study, and even that not regularly.

Now I'm in a point where I can speak Japanese somewhat, but my listening comprehension is not very good. Also reading is difficult, because I have already forgot many of the hiragana characters, and I haven't yet learned all katakana characters, not to mention kanji. Pronunciation of Japanese is quite similar to Finnish, and I've been told that my pronunciation is very good. So I think I have a good start, and yet again just need practice, practice and more practice. More dorama, more anime, maybe a class if they have them here, and I definitely want to go and visit Japan some day.

I have skied (downhill) since I was 9 or 10 years old, so by now I consider myself a pretty good skier. But none of it helped when I first tried a snowboard. Both feet tied to the board I couldn't stay up for a moment. Now, after taking a couple of lessons and using a snowboard for maybe five or six times I'm finally getting better. I can often exit a ski lift without falling, and do several runs without hitting the snow with any body parts. One trick is just getting a bit more speed and letting go, boldly leaning in turns. With a little bit of confidence it goes much easier.

Compared to skiing, snowboarding is definitely more fun. I feel that there's more variety when you can go facing uphill or downhill, left or right foot in the front. I really should do it more often than my current average of once a year.

For some people learning to fly, free as a bird, can be a lifelong dream. I'm not one of them. I just thought it would be cool to have a pilot's licence. So I entered a flight school, did the training and - got the licence.

Training at the San Jose International Airport and sharing the same airspace with big passenger jets was exciting, challenging and very rewarding. At first, everything was so overwhelming. I didn't remember what to say to the air traffic control, and I didn't understand half of what they replied to me. Taking off and controlling the plane was never a big problem, neither was learning the navigational systems, but learning to land smoothly took more practicing.

The learning process, challenging myself, was the most rewarding part to me. After getting the licence I didn't use it much because I didn't have any real need to, and there was not much new to get from it. And when you don't fly often enough, the skills get rusty and you don't feel comfortable any more, which reduces the chances of going flying even further. That's what happened to me, and in the end before moving back to Finland I didn't go flying at all. Many people have asked if I will continue flying here in Finland. I don't know. I kind of want to, but my understanding is that getting a licence and flying is here even more challenging and expensive than in the US, and it is not practically possible to convert an American licence to a European one. Due to the weather conditions, an instrument rating would be practically mandatory. Now that would be another challenge of course, so I don't rule it out yet, but not in the near future.