Tag: oulu Posts

From North To South

 Journal

Next weekend I’m off to visit the southern most city in the entire world, Ushuaia, Argentina. From there, many people hop on a cruise ship and head down to Antarctica. It’s an expensive trip to Antarctica, starting at around $5,000 a person, but spending a day or two visiting one of the most remote parts of the world is apparently well worth the price. I will not be visiting Antarctica, but I will be visiting the Antarctica Hostel, located close to the Beagle Channel and in the shadow of the tail end of the Andes mountain range. Ushuaia will obviously be the most south I’ve ever been in the world, but I was trying to figure out the most north I’ve been today. I did a road trip up to Dawson City years ago, which is at 64.04 degrees North. I also went to northern Finland a few years ago […]

Let the good times roll

 Journal

Now that I’m officially done what I came to do here in Finland, it’s really time to let loose and party it up a bit… I just demolished my first beer here in the Oulu airport, and am now working on beer #2 waiting patiently for my plane to board. I’ve spent the last hour researching cool spots to go drink beer tonight in Helsinki, and I have a few in mind that I’m going to check out later.. I can’t be too drunk or out too late tonight since I have lots to do in London tomorrow, but I’m going to do my best to drink as the locals do. Jari and Seppo impressed me with their drinking ability the other night, and I imagine the locals might be able to keep up with me tonight (perhaps even best me, although I haven’t been bested in years). I remember […]

Around Oulu

 Journal

I’ve been in Oulu, Finland for a few days now, and thankfully last night I actually got to go out and see a few things. Jari and Seppo were nice enough to take me to a pretty fancy Russian restaurant last night where we had some great food, nice wine, and of course some type of random vodka shot. Afterwards, we sort of started our own mini pub crawl, checking out a few of the bars in the Oulu downtown. I really love the architecture over here. I’m not sure how you’d really describe it, but everything is really quant and different looking. Last night was pretty cool because there was this fog over most of the city, and it made everything feel slightly dreamy (or maybe that was just the beer?) Poor Jari had to get on a plane at 5am, and around 1am (after ample amounts of liquor) […]

Live from Oulu, it's Wednesday morning…

 Journal

So my body decided that it would take a brief unscheduled break from sleeping at around 2am this morning.. I decided in that time I would throw a few photos up from yesterday (I don’t have that many). Oulu is pretty quaint so far, and I’m actually really eager to walk around and see some things (since the architecture looks really cool from my hotel window). I have to be on-site around 9 this morning (which means I need to get back to sleep), but afterwards I think my hosts are all taking me for dinner. For the most part, my digital SLR has been in my backpack most of the time. I took a few shots with it in Helsinki, but my little powershot has had more use on this trip. I should be able to post some photos from dinner later, and maybe a walk around. I was […]

Far Away From Home

 Journal

When I lived in Ottawa, there were times when I used to get a little homesick and miss Vancouver and Chilliwack. When that happened, I was fortunate enough to stumble across a little website called KatKam.ca. It’s a live webcam that points into the direction of the evening sunset, only a block or so away from my apartment in Vancouver. To this day, I always religiously check it out from time to time when I’m out of town, just to see what I’m missing back home. Here’s a shot of the sunset tonight that I missed. I’m heading to the airport now to fly up North. See you guys in about a week.

The Quest for Santa

 Journal

As most of my faithful readers now know, I’m currently in Helsinki, Finland with work. So far, I haven’t really seen much of this city, although walking around it was really awesome to see the old style buildings and narrow walkways. Someone asked me what the buildings were like, and I stopped myself before saying “they look European” since I guess that’s obvious. Yesterday someone flew down from a little town called Oulu to hang out with me for the day and work on some stuff. One of the things that we discussed was me going up there for a few days, since there are more people up there that understand what we’re working on. So today, I have to get on another plane and travel even further North and spend a few days in Oulu. In fact, I’ll just be a stones throw away from the Arctic Circle. Right […]