Jun 21, 2008

Midsummer fun - Updated with mortality statistics!


I'm spending this Midsummer long weekend mostly working. Could be worse though:

Every year at Midsummer, a distressing number of people either overestimate their swimming skills, underestimate the amount they have had to drink before plunging in from sauna, overestimate the depth of the water at the end of the jetty before diving headfirst, ignore the temperature of the lake (not likely to be too warm this year), or forget that it is not merely ecologically irresponsible to attempt to urinate off the back of a small rowing boat.
Please do not join them, or those who manage to spoil their weekend and that of the fire services by burning down their sauna.
(Helsingin Sanomat)

Sigh. Back to the whitefish ...

UPDATE! 24-06-2008:

Three people were killed in separate homicides over Midsummer. In addition three men drowned, two people were killed in traffic, and one man was found dead in a sauna. (YLE)

Plus two moose. Hyvää Juhannusta.

Jun 8, 2008

Instant flower garden at Turku Cathedral

Drove down to Turku yesterday for a city fix, and was completely charmed by the instant garden that had sprung up in front of the Cathedral.

Turku Cathedral is one of my favorite churches in Finland. A typical lovely view from the front is this one that I took around the same time 2 years ago:



To my complete surprise, yesterday it looked like this:



Hundreds, thousands of potted Gerbera were arranged on the courtyard, and spread up the steps. A sea of pink and white and yellow and green. Magical. I took a bunch of photos:








I found out this was an environmental art installation called Gerbera's Dream by Kaisa Salmi, who I guess does these sort of installations sometimes. Here's the details:


So another dreamy thing - all those flowers were given away this morning to the people of Turku.

I put my photos from this show on this web album. It made me happy all day.

Jun 6, 2008

Space Ninvaders

Just want to share that my desktop currently looks like Space Invaders.


Or maybe I just really need a holiday.

(At this point I'm probably supposed to credit NIN for the wallpaper. Thanks guys. Fight The Future!)