Team Day

I've changed to a new team in NSN now am I'm responsible for the Asia Pacific customers. We had a team day out with the crowd to get to know each other a little better. It included a 8 hours training about various this concerning work(all in chinese) but after that we had some games. psychological.

The first one was analyzing an animal you got on a card and the gathering into groups of that same animal. Me and 4 others got a card of an Ostrich and had to play that until we found the other people who also o were Osterich. Wasn't TOO hard bot looked funny :P

The second game was building a ramp for a falling egg (yeah sounds funny) but we all had 20 minutes to prepare a box for the egg to drop down. We were given 2 meters of sticky teip and 3 boxes of straws and then come up with something. There were many kinds of "straw traps" but my team won the competition and we got a box of chocolate! ;) My team is the first egg below as the other teams follow. There were different "boxes" of catching an egg from the ceiling...

Above pics are my team!

Below are what the others tried and most failed...

After all the games we went to a Japanese Buffet restaurant where you could have as much Teppanyaki as you wanted. I seriously ate so much that I couldn't prove to the other's that I was a traditional Finnish drinking guy. Simply could not get the beer down! But it was a lof fun and awesome food. In the first picture you can see the chef making normal steaks and the second dessert with bananas and ice cream! Oosssuuuuummm!!!

Bananas and ice-cream....naaam!!!

麻辣烫 Malatang - What food can you get for 80 cents?

There is a street kitchen just next to the office and I decided to join some co workers and check it out today. Malatang is a traditional Chinese food, first you choose vegetables you want them to boil. You can choose it to be boiled in normal water or in spicy water full of really spicy chinese chili. Love the spicy food here so my "stuff" was boiled in the chili for a few minutes and then I added some meat sticks to it. The whole plate was 8 yuan which is under 1 euro, good and cheap. Doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the hygiene either because my stomach is perfectly fine even after 10 hours of eating.

It's unbearable hot here right now with 40 degrees and air humidity 80% but luckily the "restaurant" had a room inside air-conditioned.

Too much people

As Beijing is soon to reach it's 18 million population many things become very very 麻烦 (mafan). The air here hasn't been as good as last year, it's a lot of fog fog smug mist smug and whatever. Better stay inside...

One thing that bugs me in the morning are the people in the subway. There are CLEAR lines where to que when the subway arrives. Stand at the SIDE of the door so everybody can get out first, THEN go in. But NO, people block the door and as soon as it's opened there are people trying to get in and out bumping into each other.

Do they think that there's not gonna be enough room in the half empty subway when there are about 10 other waiting to get in. I don't just get it. Same thing with getting off the subway...

I usually stand just by the door because it's only going 1 stop from home to work. I get in the subway and wait, as soon as the door closes there are often somebody pushing his or her way to stand even closer to the door so they can surely get off the subway, just grand.

This weekend I went playing football with a bunch of foreigners. Most of them were danish but also a few british, swiss and americans. Haven't been with this many foreigners around in Beijing for a looooong time. The match was good but we lost 4-1, was 42 degrees and sunshine so running on the field for 30 min was kinda HOT. It's like Desert Ball.

Also did a 3h english teaching class and talked about a lot of random things, including what they had ben doing in the summer. Drew up my summer vacation and it looked something like this...

Last weeks friday my co worker gave me some breakfast snack...Something you wouldn't get in the west, a duck neck! It taste alright, kinda salty and like chicken.

Back in the JING!

I went to pick up my bags from the airport since Aeroflot doesn't have delivery service (great). Just for the heck of it I went to the Tax Free shop and bought a big bottle of Johnny Walker for 10 euros.

The receptionist was asking which flight I came with but I just told her that I dont remember the number and my boarding card didn't say it either. The airport was totally deserted and no other people were to be seen (kinda fishy). After a while she decided to sell me the bottle and just put in some random flight number to the cashier, Ching Ching! :D I don't think this would work in Finland...It was really easy to be let into the airport, they didn't even do a security check on me...Hmm, what if I was a potential terrorist? I think she knew that I didn't have a flight but guess she just wanted to get rid of me.

They put a box with my name at work, the only foreign name there :) The picture is kinda unclear because I used my phone...

Good to be back, a little warmer here but Finland's sun was much hotter, nothing "extra" in the air there.

Bye bye Finland, see you on 18.12.2010 again

1 week goes by so fast when having a good time and a very tight schedule! I didn't have time to meet all the people I wanted...BUT I just got myself a new ticket and coming back to Finland the 18th of December to spend Xmas! This time not doing any trips elsewhere so I'll have more time to chill out at home.

The flight Helsinki - Moscow - Beijing went smooth, it's so much faster this way than do a connective flight to Amsterdam like I've done the last 4 times. To Moscow it taks 1,5h and from Moscow to Beijing only 6,5 h. Save a lot of time there...Only downside was that Aeroflot forgot my bag in Moscow but I got it back today broken and a lot of melted chocolate :P Well it was time to renew my 10 euro travel bag anyway after using it for 2 years in don't know how many flights.

Estonia for a day cruise, again

Every-time I've been to Finland I have travelled with some friends over to Estonia for a day cruise, to keep that tradition we went this time as well. It was the hottest day in Finland since 1914!

Since the weather was so nice we just sat on the beach chilling for a few hours and getting sunburned because I kinda forgot to apply sunscreen…So now I look like a panda-crab because I wore sunglasses all day and back is itchy.

Thanks guys for an awesome cruise, I haven't had this much fun for a long time :)

Back to Finland

The road trip was really nice, I should have done it LONG time ago. And I got the warmest weather in 50 years, heard that it's been raining in Beijing most of the time I've been away.

The trip was made with a Volvo V50 and it ran on Ethanol, first time I drove a "flexifuel" car.

1600 km didn't even seem like that long a trip with a good car and AC.

Rune stones

I found some ancient rune stones from Vikings, cool to think that they are over 1000 years old already and still very clear. Today my granny told me that her grandparents had been pirates and my grandpa's relatives were sailors traveling around the world selling stuff. So my ancestors were probably Vikings sailing the seven seas, wonder what they wrote here...

Even the airport had got a rune stone. I'm not sure if it's real but looks as authentic as the other one's.

Random stuff on the road of Swealand

While driving those 650km from Stockholm to the south I stopped at a lot of different places...

Just by Stockholm there was a castle called Ulriksdal, they had a nice restaurant and lunch at the palace yard wasn't half bad. The yard was like a miniature of Paris - Versailles.

Hallsjö church ruin about 300 km from Stockholm, was the best air-conditioned church I've been to :)

Stopped by a gas station by Brahe ruin, it was originally build as a leisure place for a Lord about 1640. Not much left of it but the view is still great, wouldn't mind living in a place like this.

Royal Stockholm

After 1600 km of driving in 2 days it was time to go to the Capitol City of Scandinavia - Stockholm. Driving here wasn't really that great, got lost a few times when the navigator was kinda unclear and there are tunnels build under the city everywhere which turn into highways who takes you out of the city. Took me about 45 minutes to find the hotel. The room at the hotel was kind of a disappointment since it didn't have a toilet or shower. Nothing like that was mentioned on the website. So if you go to hotel IBIS in Stockholm make sure you have a room with a toilet. Apart from that it was very nice and clean...

Downtown is so awesome here...I really have to say that Helsinki doesn't stand a chance to our Royal neighbors. They got castles, old buildings and shopping has a lot to offer. The royal palace looks beautiful in the evening and in the daytime they guards had some kind of drill or parade with music and marching.

Gamla Stan. Streets of old town at 1.30 in the night, love this place.

The Nobel house is also located in Stockholm so all you smart people who are gonna receive a Nobel Price in the future, this is the place it comes from!

Found this in one of the shop-windows, means "A cigaret is a stick with incandescence in one end and an idiot in the other". It doesen't

really sound that good in english but some things can't be translated so well...