And I think to myself: what a wonderful world

That was the song from the speakers after The Flaming Lips show ended yesterday.

(Only IPhone photos, sorry)

As I was proven yesterday, a Flaming Lips show is collective euphoria, the kind that keeps a goofy grin on your face and has you leave the concert with that same grin. Everyone familiar with the band knows that their music alone has the euphoric quality (finale song: 'Do you realize that you have the most beautiful face?'). Singer Wayne Coyne starts the show by walking over the audience's heads in an inflatable, see-through balloon, confetti and balloons are shot in the air, there are teletubbies on stage (plus a sun and a butterfly). This stuff has nothing to do with music, one might say. But in this case they belong. And Wayne Coyne WANTS it to be a celebration, encouraging the audience throughout the show. It was a show where there weren't many rock police present. You know the type: guys who stand close to the stage, arms crossed on chest, making sure not to show that the music moves them.

Long Hot Summer

I'm at a festival in Helsinki, called Long Hot Summer - aptly named, because it's bloody hot. It's held at the site of the old power plant of Suvilahti by Helsinki city center. Indie rock, electro, hip hop. Just now there was the gig of the American underground hip hop artist and political activist Immortal Technique. Amazing, among the best concerts I've seen. The message, the delivery, the beats. The day is going to end with The Flaming Lips who I'm especially looking forward to, because I love their music and their live shows are reputed to be not just concerts but Events.

The bliss

I had a good morning swim after 8 am, water already 20 C. Then I sat on the beach and finished the novel I was reading, one by Jose Saramago, who is rapidly becoming my favourite novelist after I read 'Blindness'. I had to go to the library to get all his books I could find. I love the brilliant satire and humanism in his often allegorical stories, sometimes pessimistic but not devoid of optimism either. A quick trek back home, just a few minutes' walk. Hoovered, because I have some dust allergy. Then back to the beach with another Saramago novel. It's sunny and warm but there's a wind so it doesn't get hot. Plenty of people on the beach, mostly families, but not crowded. Feeling hungry, I just went to the beach kiosk and bought THE best hot dog, with mustard, ketchup and fried onion, the bun properly toasted too (I don't like the kind that has a sausage slapped inside a cold bun). Now to the novel. Yes, it's a pretty good summer day.

The first dip

First swim in the sea just now! About +17 C. Nice and refreshing on this hot summer day!

I think I'll make this a habit. I'm getting up very early these days anyway - though not entirely by choice: in the summer I like to sleep in the sofa in my living room, because I can keep the balcony door wide open, so that the air is cool enough to let me sleep properly. I like the air very cool. The balcony is towards the front yard of this block of flats, which is fine - except now: they're doing work on the water pipes or whatever, in the yard, and they start work at 7 am with the big machines, tearing the asphalt and digging the ground. I don't mind though, because mornings are the best time in the summer.

My new favourite place

My new favourite place is the old port of Sörnäinen (or Sornainen, for those who can't view umlauts) beside the city center. Satellite view:

View Larger Map

This is also along the route by which I usually bike to the city center to go to the university library.

It was a cargo port until last year, when all cargo traffic was moved to a new, modern establishment built in eastern Helsinki. The coal harbour of the neighbouring power plant was left, and some ferries still moor there, in addition to which there are harbour places for privately-owned boats. Otherwise, the whole vast area is freely accessible, until they start building a new "naval" city district. The train tracks of the cargo trains have been torn out, there are half-demolished buildings, one with just the concrete core standing so that you can climb upstairs, another with remains of some machinery and used by young people as their graffiti art and hanging around place; one of those huge lifting cranes used in cargo ports is still there. There's all sorts of stuff around the area, so much to see including several chairs lying about the place - and photograph! I went there three days straight during the weekend: friday, saturday and sunday. I was so excited. I guess it's a kind of an urban wasteland right now, but I find it fascinating. It really is a fantastic thing that the city has kept the area open for now. Along with so much to see, it provides plenty of space for the youth, for things like skateboarding and BMX biking - and for older people as well: on saturday I stopped to exchange a few words with an older couple, who had also been tempted to come visit the port area by an article in the newspaper recently. The woman asked me if I had walked all the way to the other end of the port area, and explained that they were trying to locate the spot where she used to go swimming, "quite some years ago", she smilingly added. Really, the huge area would just go to waste if it was left to stand empty and fenced off.

I have to say once again that I'm so happy that I live in Helsinki, by the sea!

It's Midsummer's Eve again...

I'm not doing anything particular to celebrate it, though I did go visit this huge, exciting port area which is now torn down and open to all before they start building a new city district there. I also got some food treats, some cheeses etc which I'm going to enjoy later on.

The Midsummer's celebration is a bit of a weird one in Finland. Just about everyone who can goes to the countryside, to summer cottages, rented cabins, countryside relatives. That's sort of what one is supposed to do, it seems. It stems from an idealized image of some kind of a countryside elysium, where cities do not exist, where young men and women, pure of heart and mind, play in the fields (full of flowers of course) in the warm summer's night, where there are no mosquitoes, there is the scent of fresh birch branches in the sauna and the cuckoo cuckoo's. Of course there is a lake nearby.

The reality is something different, of course. Right now it's only about +12 or +13 C and it has been raining most of the day so far. The countryside is ALWAYS full of mosquitoes, that's a given. I'm pretty sure city kids often get bored out of their wits forced to stay in the countryside for an extended time. Quite possibly countryside relatives often get endlessly tired of their visiting city relatives. If there are problems in a family, extended holidays are a typical time to heighten those problems - not helped by the consumption of alcohol, which is quite excessive around Midsummer's weekend in Finland. Of course, it's excessive at other times too but Midsummer's celebration is a time when it goes absolutely over the top.

Actually, I quite like roasting sausages on an open fire on a summer evening. But not when it's like this:

Rainy Midsummer's Eve from Maria Niku on Vimeo.

Midday

I was trying to capture in a word the mood of a summer midday in a particular place (= the place where I happened to be just then) in a particular moment in the city. It felt like silence, which is odd because the city is seldom silent, and it wasn't silent then: there were the cries of the gulls, the hum of machinery (ventilation systems?) from the nearby business buildings, and so on. Stillness, that's it; stillness, as in non-presence of movement and action. It was an open space, with no one else going by just then; the heat of the bright sun, the empty benches waiting for someone to sit. It sounds like silence.

Nameless, number 238

Is this a comment about the capitalist economy, especially the billions of nameless workers in 3rd world countries who work day after day after day, often in menial conditions and with wages that are not enough to support their families, while the multinational corporations get bigger and bigger and their execs enjoy bonuses of millions because supposedly their already insane monthly wages are not enough to "motivate" them to do their work properly? Maybe.

Truth be told, I didn't notice the number on the doll's head until I was going through the photos, but it did remind me of the tattooed numbers of prisoners.

I've often been thinking it's really difficult to make moral choices completely free of problems when it comes to buying things.

Take the tomato, for instance. Here, you can choose between Spanish, Dutch, Finnish and Finnish organic (and just occasionally, I think, Dutch organic). The Spanish tomatoes are the cheapest - but they come from large farms tended by immigrant workers whose working conditions are really horrible. At the other end, surely it's beneficial to support Finnish employment and production by buying Finnish tomatoes? But then again, they are grown here in winter too, in green houses of course, so isn't it horrible waste of energy and natural resources to make them grow in a place and time they don't normally grow in, more so than shipping them from Spain? If you buy Finnish organic, you both support Finnish employment AND avoid all the pesticides and whatever they put in the tomatoes in industrial farming. But producing organic in Finland has an even greater what they call coal foot print.

Then there's the fact, with clothes, electronics and such that a consumer can't easily find out whether or not the product has been produced ethically, because the chain of production is so complicated. With clothes, the material, the fabric and the finished product are regularly made in different places, different countries. For instance, some time ago there was news that some - not all - of the pillows sold in Ikea had feathers that had come from farms (in Poland? not sure) where they are plucked from living geese. But which ones? Going to an Ikea, how can I make sure? And even if you COULD make sure that all the things you purchase are absolutely ethical, what's the right course of action? I might be viewed as hypocritical because I have an iPhone, and apparently some of the parts have been produced in unethical working conditions in 3rd world countries. But many organisations say that boycott is not something they recommend, because it won't make the corporations actively supervise the sweat shops to make sure the workers' rights are not violated. It only makes the sweat shops kick out the already under-paid workers, so the workers go from just barely hanging on to starving.

Back in Helsinki

Well, that's the early summer celebrations done, I'm back in Helsinki. My mother's PhD defence was on wednesday. She got through it really well, though she said she was really nervous (that's not a surprise). Lots of audience too: about 60. In the evening a small-scale dinner in honour of the opponent; just the official personnel connected to the defence plus immediare family. On saturday, a bigger family and friends celebration, with c. 30 people, at my parents' home. Looks like the faculty council will decide about the grade later this week, so it won't take long for her to receive the doctorate (the reason they are in such a hurry is that it's results and productivity that count in the university world today: so and so many doctorates aimed at per year etc). I jumped in the night train on saturday evening. Sunday had the metric party of my younger nephew. He has reached the impressive height of one meter. I got him a Spiderman costume, which actually looks authentic.

Now it feels quite nice to get back to research work and enjoy the summer in the city.

The mosquito

I am visiting my parents up north, due to my mother's PhD defence on wednesday. There is one thing I have forgotten - again - about the Finnish summer in the countryside: mosquitoes. The most infuriating critters known to man. One of them has sneaked indoors somehow. I'm lying in the sofa, reading a book, and there it comes: the quiet but insistent 'nnnnnnnn', drawing closer. The prudent thing would be to wait until the mosquito lands and then... Wham! But I'm too impatient. I just swat the air around my head whenever the 'nnnnnnn' seems to draw close. That helps for a moment, until... the nnnnnnn closes in again. I can just bet the mosquito will find me during the night, in the adjacent room! It can smell blood I think. Maybe I should hunt it down before going to bed, after all.