My imaginary friend

I´m pretty happy these days even if it snows and it´s dark. I´m never out taking photos when there is light and even at 12 o´clock there is no light anyway. Still I sometimes get happy when I see my small imaginary friend peeking from the wall in a dark room. He always has this crooked smile even though nobody needs him to do anything. I never know if he is happy or if he is slightly sad. It´s like he knows a secret. Like Mona Lisa.  

Winter lights

Every day morning lights.

Every year I´m asked to take a winter light photo in that rare moment when the trees and the sun meet in a beautiful way. That small lump of a branch in the front is not good but this will have to do.

Out on the streets

...I hope the lights change soon now...

...oookay, now I just wait...

...where all these cars come from?..

...I need a car ...

Snowmonsters

Pretty soon the snowmonsters will be alive
They will grow mouth, legs and hands
and start to prey on people
in the well lit bloody red darkness of the city

My World, Suomenoja roundabout

Suomenoja roundabout in Espoo, Finland is one of the busiest roundabouts in Espoo. Over 30 000 cars go around it daily and thousands of pedestrians walk under the roundabout. It was opened in 19th Septmeber 2006. It received finnish communaltechnic award in 2008. The neighbourhood is mostly known around Espoo because it has many large and cheap stores that sell hardware, furniture, electronics, plants etc. Over 90% of the people see the roundabout and the artwork inside the roundabout from a car.

There is 4 monoliths that point to north, south, east and west. Pedestrians come to the roundabout from 4 intercardinal directions. This was a revelation to me as I have gone by hundreds of times by car but this was the first time on foot. The monoliths contain places that are in that direction. This is funny as this was the first time that I understood what the artwork was really about. Unfortunately I couldn´t find any info about the designers of the artwork. The texts are only in finnish but you can probably understand most of the places.

Taaltä etelaan - from here to south. I will leave all dots on top of a-alphabets off, as they don´t show right in every browser.

Taalta itaan - from here to east. All russian places except the first one.

Taalta pohjoiseen - From here to north. Yes, if you go far enough north you end up in Hawaii.

Taalta lanteen - from here to west. Oslo could have been there too, just to get one better known place.

 

This was my My World this week. More there.

Cloudbusting2-13

Light as a rock - Solid as a feather

Blue snow - White sky

Sunny winter - Dark summer

Today everything feels better upside down

My World, ice

A walk in the sun.

A silvery scar tissue of the forming ice blocks.

Between the shore and small rocks the ice always becomes like large frosty pancakes.

That was my My World this week. More there.

Cloudbusting2-12

The clouds roll by in the south somewhere over Estonia while the sun makes the most out of the forming ice.

Still some ice free horizon left for few weeks.
I want to use the viewfinder of my camera but it looks mostly like a blur. I can think what the numbers are but sometimes it´s only a guess. When the exposure goes in the middle of the screen, that is easy to see. Still I can´t focus my eyes so close anymore. I got to learn to use the lcd-screen or buy glasses. I don´t want to do either.

Cloudbusting2-11

There is one totally harmless thing that drives me crazy. It´s the paper bag eaters. There are these greasy pastries or cakes that people buy and they put them in paper bags in the shop. Then these people come to bus and start rustling with the paper bags. They take the pastry out (HRRRRORR RRHHHHHHH KKKKRRR) and then they start to munch the pastry (KKKR RRRROOOHHHHH HHRRRR) and with every bite they keep on rustling the paper bag noisily. Eating is forbidden in a bus but that doesn´t stop them. They keep the paper bag on, so that there wouldn´t be so much clutter. I would usually eat these pastries with few bites but these people keep on munching the paper bag pastry longer than average. Dozens of bites really slowly with maximum rustle. (KKKRRRR HHHRRRR SSSRRR) Somehow they want all the other people to enjoy their paper bag pastries too. I´ve also had many co-workers at work who were paper bag eaters. At lunchtime they start the rustling and it climaxes when they make a ball out of the bag. (KKRRR HHHRRRR TTTTRRR) Longer it takes the better. Don´t even get me started on paper bag candy in a movie. People usually try to keep the eating noises down in public, but paper bag rustling is okay. I don´t know why.

My World, chair and snow

They didn´t have time to take it to the real dumpster. Maybe someone will take it. It´s not totally hopeless. Who knows?

It´s too late to get it now. Too much snow on top of it. Maybe it´s stuck in ice too. Probably gone anyway.

That was my My World this week. More there.

Cloudbusting2-10, Sky Watch Friday

A clear morning.

A not so clear morning.

 

That was my Sky Watch this week. More there.

My World, Devil´s Mountain

Näytä suurempi kartta

This time in My World I visit Pirunvuori (Devil´s Mountain) in Salo, southern Finland. Salo is between Helsinki and Turku. Devil´s Mountain is actually quite hard to see from the distance as it is covered in trees and the landscape is rolling forest everywhere. There wasn´t any good views from the mountain but it had a couple of notable features that make it a place worth visiting at the end of a 2 mile dustroad.

I have a project to visit most of the known giant kettles of southern Finland. Giant Kettle is a cavity or hole which appears to have been drilled in the surrounding rocks by eddying currents of water bearing stones, gravel and other detrital matter. This giant kettle is 3-4 metres wide (10 feet) and 7-8 meters (23 feet) deep. The size is larger than average size at least to me. The hole was pumped empty in other blogs I have seen but now it was full of water. There is also ladder to the bottom of the hole, if you MUST visit the bottom when it´s empty. I wouldn´t have done it if it had been empty. There isn´t much people around and falling to the bottom might require lengthy rescuing operations.

Giant Kettle was the main attraction here but there was also more interesting stuff: shore stone field or devil´s field which is the local name. It used to be a former beach long time ago but the water went away and all that is left is stones of similar size. They can be far away from the beach now. Quite large and impressive field in this place. There is only a very small part of it here as it was impossible to fit it in to one photo.

See more My World-posts there.

Cloudbusting2-9

I follow some newssites and sometimes I even comment on some political issues. When I was younger I thought that when I grow up I will have a certain solid view on those issues. That I could have a view and stick with it. Now I´m pushing forty and I still don´t know where I belong. Politics to me, like life, is so wonderful because every day is a new day with new issues. It´s so easy to change my mind about something if I need to. I think it would be not right to come up with an idea and then 15 years later, when I feel different, still feel the need to stick with that idea. That is not growing up. Some people think that a politician who changes a party is a deserter or something, but to me that is okay. He or she just can´t follow the same path anymore. What is wrong with that when I change my mind almost daily?

There are all these small parties in Finland. Like 10 parties and none of them have over 25% of the pie. Most of them have good issues, but none of them think about the big picture. It´s just playing with the details. Change a small issue there, cause a bigger disruption somewhere else seems to be the most common agenda. There is none that tries to work an issue from all sides. Some imply that they are yet it doesn´t look like that. That kind of approach is dead here. Maybe everywhere else too. It´s probably too complicated to handle but I can dream that it is possible.

Cloudbusting2-8, SKy Watch Friday

Fleeting moments

Days or even months apart

Then it hits me again

that the best things in life are free

See more skywatching right there.

Cloudbusting2-7, first snow

First snow of the winter yesterday.

My World, Star Wars

Be a good boy and you will be just like me and my buddy when you grow up.

Blue light sabres are a must-have fashion accesory for the dark autumnn nights.

 

Thank You Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Finnish Toy Museum and all the people behind the Star Wars exhibition for a fun and free night out.I´m sorry but Darth escaped me in to a dark corner while breathing heavily.

That was my My World- post. See more of them there.

Cloudbusting2-6

I missed the first 2 hailstorms of the winter today
I didn´t exactly miss them as I was out standing in the middle of them
for 5 minutes or so for both
I just didn´t have my camera with me and I was so disappointed
Better be prepared next time

Cloudbusting2-5, Night of Light

All those office and parking buildings
with their bright logos and lights
Glowing in the rain
in the eternal darkness at the edge of the town
All looking for my attention
with their smart semantics and rules
Transforming in to one long endless middle aged blur
No end in sight in the night of light

Cloudbusting2-4, Skywatch

I see this watertower often. There is a restaurant upstairs but I haven´t been there yet as it´s a pretty expensive place. Some day I have to go because it´s just the kinda place where I want to go. To take a couple of photos, of course.

This was my Skywatch-post. See more skywatching there.

Cloudbusting2-3, The mystery lady of the 7th floor

I have moved twice this year. A lot of stuff has been throwed away to the trash bin. Now I finally managed to sort my old paper photos, that were stuffed in a shoebox. It seems I liked the photos with white outlines back then and why not, they look pretty. I scanned these and used them as cloud backgrounds for all kind of architecture renderings many times in the late 90´s, so the white lines never made much difference. Now they look great here on my swanky dark parquet floor.

I remember taking these photos on the carpet cleaning balcony of the large apartment house where I had a teeny weeny rented apartment. I lived in the first floor but I often went to the balcony in the 7th floor, because there was so good views over the city. Trouble was that there was this old lady who didn´t like me being there. She usually just yelled from her window near by the balcony that I can´t clean the carpets at that hour or she would go to the landlord to make a complaint on me. Strange behaviour as I didn´t even have carpets with me, I just took a roll of photos and went away. This happened many times but I never saw her as she was hiding behind the wall so I couldn´t see her from the balcony. The mystery lady of the 7th floor. Little did she know how uninterested I was in human interaction back then. I have the photos here to prove it!

Cloudbusting2-2

It´s so good to have friends who drag me out to the forest
every once in a while
To see old places with new eyes
To see new places with old eyes
This birdwatching tower feels a bit shaky for me
but it´s not going to fall when I´m on it

Cloudbusting2-1

I knew it was going to be beautiful
but eventually I had to run to get the best part
Luckily I remembered to turn on the auto focus too
This is the start of something new and something old