Slow movement is gaining interest all over the world. It includes for example slow food, slow cities and slow travelling- all  of them including performing slowly. What I did not know that my new computer belonged to the trendy category of slow computing.   I started to copy some of my files from the external harddrive to my new computer. A  little bit surprising and a slow message appeared to the screen as you can see from this image.

And for those that cannot read Finnish: “jäljellä” means “time left”-so time left for copying: 845 days and 19 hours…

I have started a new hoppy: doing woodwork. I just build a climing frame with slide and a cottage for my two hyperactive children. While doing woodwork I have familiarized myself in shopping at hardware stores (almost as well as shopping in shoe shops). This amazing selection of groceries was spotted in Starkki, one Finnish hardware store. You can buy there coffee, tea, sugar, bisquits, sugar rusks; so stuff that you need to get to keep your energy level up while building. Unfortunately, I could not find any beer from the store

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I spend once again my holiday in Finland’s dear neighbour country: Sweden. And of course, spotting oddities is my obsession. So here are two case examples of Swedish waste management from both extremes. Here’s an example of poor waste management: a litter box with only a lid.

And effective waste management: a trash bin train for effective collection of waste (picture from Stockholm)

It is nice to notice that I am not the only person with problems in spelling (specially with foreign languages). This sign was spotted at construction work place at Estonia. With almost perfect Finnish it warns about the sharks at the construction site (haita=sharks, haittaa= inconvenience).

A science book for kids. Topic: poo. Spotted from Suomalainen kirjakauppa.

A sign on a wall of the most boring bar I have ever been….

Today I was recording a BBC Culture Shock show at YLE (Finnish radio station) facilities at Helsinki. I am happy to have been a trusted person for two programs to spot weak signals from Finland. In the recording studio there was a interesting button. It was called a cough button.( sorry the blurry image and my poor mobile camera resolution) I did not quite get it that if by pressing it you can add cough effects to your talk

or will you just press it when you start to cough and want to mute the microphone. Anyway the name of the button just got my attention.

..as did the sign in the door when coming out from the studios (Warning: dropping items and danger of ice!!)-and there were no ice or snow nearby-nor did I get any dropping items in my head…

While visiting the housing fair last weekend I spotted interesting version of saunas. As we all may know Finns are grazy people when it comes to sauna. In the good old times women gave birth to babies in saunas. In the modern times we jus enjoy the 100 degrees of centigrate and then jump into an icy lake and roll in the snow… This new concept of sauna really got my interest. This rock looking sauna is totally movable and in the stove you can also make food like barbecue sausages. Next time when go to ice fishing why not to take your sauna with you? Also, I think that there is a big similarity of this sauna to Stonehedge. Maybe Stonehedge is a goup of Finnish saunas after all

I visited last week Glitnir, a bank that which offers universal banking and financial services. In the front desk, where visitors signs in, there were some small gifts for visitors. They had for example pens, and chewing gum. Surprisingly they also had simple sledgers for sledding (sorry, I do not know the word in English, and did not have much help from my dictionary). Unfortunately, there were not snow at Finland then…
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Image: Matching colors and patterns. Picture from housing fair, Helsinki