Yearly Archives: 2005

Scotty has beamed up

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I wanted to write since a long time about the TV serial Star Trek, which I associate with fond memories of childhood. Oh! How I admired Captain Kirk :p. He looked like such a dream… My aunt even made a fool out of me by telling me that he came to her office one day and the next day I blabbered it at school (I was in the I or II std) and eventually realised one of my first lessons in life. But this isn’t about childhood innocence. This isn’t even about those childhood memories of TV/sci-fi fascination which have been revived because I watch that same series of Star Trek here in Finland, now. This is about Scotty, the chief engineer aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise, who died Wednesday morning at his home in Redmond, Washington, at the age of 85, the cause being pneumonia and Alzheimer’s disease. In my mind he’s still the same young Scotty, I saw just a few hours ago on TV, dutifully beaming Capt. Kirk, Spock, Uhura, Chekov and the rest, back to the Enterprise.


With his sad demise, ‘Beam me up, Scotty’ has a new meaning now.



Midsummer’s day in Nuuksio National park 2

This entry was posted in holiday personal travel on by (updated 1978 days ago)

On midsummer’s eve, I went out just exploring the city and some of its islands. The next day (the actual midsummer day), I went to Nuuksio National park which has a range of activities for all. This is the park where you can supposedly spot the flying squirrel though we didn’t see any since it comes out at twilight. This park is really amazing. Not only is it like a forest, it has well marked trails which you can trek on and mini lakes within it. It also has some campfire sites and cooking shelters. The cooking shelters have the provision of grills. There are huts which contain wood, which you can chop further to break down into smaller chunks. Then you light this wood and use the provided grill for your cooking. We were carrying our lunch with us which we heated on the grill. Unfortunately for us, it started raining the moment we got to the park. So trekking went for a toss and we quickly settled in a cooking shelter to escape the rain and the sudden cold which resulted. It was great fun heating our food on the grill. We were not aware of exactly what cooking facilities we would be getting in the park otherwise we would have carried sausages, potatoes, cheese and other stuff to be grilled as well. We made up with just heating our ‘rajma-chawal’ but even they were heavenly. It was almost like “daal bukhaara” or something. Because of the rains, there were more people in the cooking shelter than it could accomodate. There was a pair of guys, who were going on making tea (the delicious smell wafted towards us quite often) again and again throughout the day. We really felt like trading some rajma-chaawal for tea. We decided that next time we would come prepared with everything and have tea and pakoras. I tried grilling a marshmallow (richie-rich style). As I suspected, it shrunk in mass the instant it was kept close to fire. Ultimately it tasted like cotton candy that we get back home. I prefer the spungy marshmallows. We did heat up some tortillas on the grill and they were just lovely. After gluttonizing all day, we set back for Helsinki. The rains had stopped by this time. The natural beauty here is amazing. Even the weeds have pretty and colorful flowers. There are a lot of wild larkspurs growing around this place. They bring a lot of colour to the panorama. One thing that one instantly notices here are the nature sounds, that go with the place. Incessant twittering and cooing of birds, a whole lot of insects buzzing and at places, water slowly making its way – all soothe and calm you.

Miss-identity

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Now it’s confirmed. I just have to step in at the international airport and out of my country, and I cease to look like an Indian anymore. While in India, people get surprised to learn that neither am I a Kashmiri nor am I a sardarni. I am not a mallu either. I get compared with many ‘personalities’ of ranging ethnicities. Many Indian ones of course, but some others include Justin Shapiro, Kate Winslet (Yes I know that person was probably blind) and Benazir Bhutto (that’s still closer home in terms of ethnicity).

One of my friends told me very long back that she met some Spanish female who looked and talked in exactly the same way that I did. In other words she was my lost twin. Anyway, I did not have to wonder for very long how on earth I looked Spanish. When I was in Roppongee (Japan) on one particular new year’s eve, I got accosted by a desi who was keen on wishing me a ‘happy new year’. Only when I spoke Hindi with some other friends of mine, did he realise that I wasn’t Spanish as he had thought but an Indian. And with that his license for trying to be fresh with me got revoked immediately. For some reason the moment an Indian (or is it all) guy happens to spot a non-desi female, he seems to think that he has suddenly procured a license for ogling or rather that the female wouldn’t mind an extra stare. I have seen that transformation in people around me too well to miss it. Not to forget my own experiences. The moment I reached Frankfurt airport this time, I literally got holes drilled in me because of the stares that I was getting from, guess who? Yes, Indian guys. I had left my colleagues somewhere else and probably there was little that could hint to me being an Indian. No salwaar/kameez and no bindis contribute to that I suppose. My guess is that being all by myself misled them more. I wanted to ask them ‘Bhaiyon kabhee koi ladki nahi dekhi ya phir mere sar par seeng hain?’ (Brothers have you never seen a female before or have I sprouted antlers?)

Fast forward to Finland. An Indian female in a grocery store asked me which label (in Finnish) was for which vegetable and I just told her my best guess. She was surprised that I didn’t know Finnish! When I confirmed her exclaimed-in-surprise doubt, she slowly and hesitatingly asked me whether I was from India (Ah! the sun finally shone). I told her that I am and that I thought it would be quite obvious at least to her since she was from the same place. She told me very matter of factly that I looked Russian. Another incident – I was commuting by a tram here in which an African female was creating quite a ruckus with her kids. Suddenly she directly looked at me and said something, which broke my concentration, which was till then on gods gift to these ppl (their hair). What she spoke was obviously gibberish to me as it wasn’t English. But I understood that she wanted me to help her with the pram when she alighted. After I helped her with it, I realised that my indianness was again lacking. Either she thought I was African like her or she thought I was a Finn like the rest of the junta. Whatever it was, it wasn’t Indian. All I have got to say is, shakal jaisi bhee ho phir bhee dil hai hindustani :).


Midsummer eve 8

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The 24th June was midsummer eve this year. This is a festival associated with the summer solstice. Midsummer is thought to be a very favourable time to find a partner. In addition, many weddings take place at Midsummer. Most of the Midsummer “spells” (more of a pagan ritual) have to do with seeing your future husband’s face. According to one of the spells, you were supposed to pick nine different flowers and to put them under your pillow and in this manner you would see him in your dreams. Tradition also has it that females wanting to see their future partners should go naked to a well and peer into the water to see the face of their future partner in the reflection. Needless to say, this would attract a lot of men around the spot and obviously these encounters might result in alliances for some. Shakespeare captured this night of supernatural wonder in his play “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” when humans and other-world fairies mingled on a night when love and mischief was definitely in the air.

In today’s day, the midusmmer festival is celebrated by ‘raising the pole’ or by burning a bonfire (much like lohri back home – Only this is done in daytime). (The picture is courtesy Wikipedia). During Midsummer Eve, i.e. the night before the longest day of the year, people light these huge bonfires to symbolize light triumphing over darkness, and life over death. It is also believed that they are driving out bad spirits by doing that. There is a lot of cultural stuff like folk dances, games, songs, fortune tellers etc at this event. The date is not fixed. The government decided that they would choose the closest friday to midsummer solstice as the midsummer eve. This way people get a long weekend. They also have a tradition of hoisting the finland flag (Almost every building has a pole for that) on this particular day. This is a much awaited event especially in Finland. Nature is one of the main elements of Midsummer. Practically everyone who has the chance will spend their few days off in the countryside. This is the time when people go out to their summer cottages and have a nice time just relaxing. The city wears a deserted look all of a sudden. This was one day when we noticed that only the ‘foreigners’ in Finland were left behind as they didn’t go anywhere.

Midsummer is an ecclesiastical celebration, the celebration of the mid point of the summer and it has also been the National Flag Day ever since 1934. The funny thing is that all these are celebrated on the day before – Midsummer Eve is somehow more important than the actual Midsummer Day. This day has actually been a battle field for religion in Finland: it has been debated as to whether it is originally a pagan or Christian celebration. This is a popular day for getting married.

Midsummer is the time when you are allowed to go a little crazy. Some people do that by trying out the magic that their forefathers were so ready to believe in. Other people may try to achieve that same feeling with the help of alcohol and that causes trouble for the police and hospitals. One can see shards of broken bottles everywhere and people lying drunk on the streets.

Though I didn’t go “out” anywhere and neither did I visit the Midsummer celebration in Seurasaari island here, I enjoyed my long weekend. On midsummer eve, the weather was absolutely great and I was walking on the streets till 1:30 am (something I have been doing quite often). The sky was a deep blue and was covered with clouds as seen in the pic I have clicked of the Esplanadé at that unearthly hour. The next post would be on what I did on the weekend.


Töpsy türvy 10

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A lot of things here are quite the opposite of what my senses and sensibilities are used to. The traffic is obviously right hand driven with the driver’s seat on the left hand side (unlike Japan). It takes a while to get used to it. Some of my colleagues have in fact been so baffled, that they have ended up taking transport in the wrong direction – the very direction they came from in the first place! Thankfully I am still sane. People walk on the right hand side of any street. They stand on escalators on the right hand side (Unlike Japan where they stood on the left). All doors open on the outside. That’s a real mess. We have made fools of ourselves several times by pushing every lever attached to the door in every possible direction (at times there are some weird ones attached), when all we had to do was ‘push’ the door knob instead of ‘pull’! Even the handles are pulled up (anti-clockwise) instead of being pushed down to open any door.
The electrical switches here function in exactly the opposite way. The ‘Off’ position would mean ‘On’ here and vice versa. Those who don’t know this, get quite confused at first.
The letter ‘j’ is pronounced as ‘y’ here. So the name ‘Jari’ becomes ‘Yaari’ as in “yaari hai imaan mera yaar meri zindagee’ and not “jaa ree”. Similarly ‘Jani’ becomes ‘Yanni’ as in the composer and not “jaanee” as in “jaanee yeh chaku hai”. Well at least they write it with the same letter. The japanese even *write* ‘r’ for ‘l’ and ‘English’ becomes ‘Engrish’ there! It’s written that way and pronounced the same way. In fact as a conclusion, ‘Rohit’ becomes ‘Lohit’. I dont know what a tongue twister ‘Rahul’ would become!
I have barely been able to pronounce the name of the place I am staying in. It took me two days to get my tongue used to other words apart from Helsinki (where I stay), Espoo (where I work) and Vantaa (where the airport is). ‘Pursimiehenkatu’ is not such a big deal now. Neither is Leppävaara. Nor is Linnavuorenpuisto. Want some more tongue twisters? You would be barely able to pronounce these words, when they assume that your memory is volatile and vanish from your memory. It takes a while to learn to pronounce a word and then *remember* it so that you can reach that place.
The first thing that every PC user from India asks is – where the @ symbol is. Obviously everyone has to send email and the @ symbol is not visible in the first look or in the second (neither are a whole lot of other ‘normal’ keys). Some ppl assumed that finnish keyboards don’t have a provision for one, so they started the ‘typical copy/paste from other mails and make do’ kinda stuff. My typing skills have gone töpsy türvy as well! Normal symbols like even <> / etc are now typed with a different key combination! The ‘normal’ places are now occupied by ö ä å ü € and the like.
The TV remotes here seemingly didn’t function. Only later we realised that the power does not come on by pressing the same button which was pressed for switching it off. Instead you have to press any channel button and it comes on! Weird.
Thankfully one thing is still not totally awry. The toilets here are equipped with jet sprays and toilet paper both! Phew!