Category: For Friends & Family

A friend here let me tag along when he took his family out to the airshow. We walked down to the harbor, and watched planes of all vintages and models tear up the sky for 3 hours. There were tens of thousands of people there, and it was awesome.

There was a lot of amazing planes to see – but for my money the biggest showoff of the night was the pilot of the Airbus A350. He came in so slow and low his entire instrument panel must have been lit up red and screaming at him. Then after taking what could only be called leisurely laps, he slowly wiggled his wings and flew off. It was like watching a bear doing ballet, but good ballet. Your brain just didn’t know what to make of it.

My mouth was hanging open during his lower fly-bys but here is the airbuss. The seagulls were thoroughly unimpressed by all the planes.

Later when the Euro-fighter or the Saab 35 Draken were flying they were definitely faster, more agile, and in every way the owners of the sky still – hard to forget someone flying an airbus in a way I want to describe as languid. The Draken did make good use of that afterburner though, that sucker was loud!

The red arrows came screaming in with 9 planes and spent like 20 minutes making alternating between making you think they were going to crash into each other, or literally telling stories in the sky with smoke trails. At one point – two of them drew a giant heart, while a third turned his smoke trail on and off to put an arrow through it. Totally bad ass flying.

All in all this was a lovely Friday night. Unfortunately the drugs I was taking for my jet lag and for my cold both wore off on the way back from the show. My friends wife is a delightful woman, and I recall having an interesting conversation with her, but the last 10 minutes of it are a total blank. I was just shot. I needed to run some tests while I had the office to myself though – so I went out for Rammen before hitting work again. Thats when I discovered another Gin and tonic mystery garnish – basil leaf served mulled like in a Mohito. Have people been drinking their Gin and tonics like this all along? Maybe it is just living in Australia for so long – but I have always been a lime wedge and good jin and quality tonic or nothing guy. Finland’s doing its best to convert me though.

I went to a shop up the road from the office to buy something quick for lunch, and saw this
– American Burger!

Walking to work this morning I saw this statue – three guys working iron buck naked. I don’t care if that’s hot or cold worked bar stock they are pounding on – that’s going to get painful in places every metal working I have ever met cares about deeply, and fast! Who made this statue and why are these guys naked?

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Smiths_Statue)

The other thing I kept finding on the walk to work was beautiful little details on the older buildings. The embossed trees on this building a fairly typical example:

There is actually a lot of detail there for no other purpose (that I can see) other than it looks nice. There are details like that on the inside hallways of some of the older buildings as well.

This has to be my favorite building so far. Tiny little factory, that has long since been repurposed and had the new city grow up around it. Stubborn little guy.

I hope it will pass but the last two years of politics in the US seems to have everyone worn down, picking sides, and yelling at each other. It is uncommon back home for people to just listen to other people anymore, but I did not realize how bad it had gotten until I got outside the system for a few days.

Last night I watched two people in the Lobby of the hotel I was staying in have an argument. Both were obviously furious based on suppressed body language – but neither raised their voice, spoke over the other person, or failed to listen to what they had to say. They went back and forth in a pattern of “this is my argument” and “ahh, but this is why I disagree, this is my argument” several times. You could tell they were listening to the other person, as their counter arguments addressed points the other had just raised. Then when they started to repeat one of them said – “I am sorry, but you have not convinced me – unless you have a new argument we are at an impasse”. They both walked away pissed, but they resolved the issue and they whole thing was incredibly civil, and polite.

It took me a while to realize that I was waiting for one of them to start yelling, or to totally loose it, because that had become sometime in the last two years that had become a, well not acceptable option, but certainly one you were likely to encounter frequently.