New shoes

The disadvantage of new shoes is that they are new. This means that they haven't been worn in yet and are prone to pinch.



[ after a long walk I'm blessed with two grazed heels... ]

Both my left and right foot have this mark...

I refuse to give in. I'll get those shoes worn in, you just wait and see!

Finnish cars

Fantastic! In Finland cars have number plates with 3 letters and 3 numbers. That might not sound very special, but it is; especially the 3 numbers part.

[ my favourite number can then appear: 431... ]



Since the moment I notice the 3 number thing, I kept an eye on the number plates. This is the final count:

• EXT 431 - small white car
  
• SHI 431 - big black jeep
  
• EOY 431 - black taxi
  
• YHI 431 - black taxi

Here you can see the YHI taxi...

When I use some statistics on these observations, I can conclude that I've spotted some 4,000 Finnish number plates.

[ and that one out of every two Finnish cars is a taxi... ]

Finnish micromuffins

I have made some additional strange observations in Finland. I will post these the coming days.

[ the first one is about food... ]



During the conference we were well taken care of when it came to food. Both in the evening as during the lunch and thee/coffee breaks. Although the food was good, the portions were sometimes small...

[ with the muffins on thursday being the absolute high low point... ]

Very small, very nice, very small...

I felt myself forced to eat more than one of these...

Finland: day 6

Time to return home. My flight left at the end of the afternoon, so I still had some time to explore a bit of Helsinki.

[ and to do some shopping in Finland... ]



After having a cup of coffee with some fellow HCI participants in a trendy Helsinkian bar, it was time to do some sightseeing and have a souveneer-hunt.

A bit of Helsinkian architecture: train station

[ and than off to the airport, checking-in and waiting to board... ]

Finland: day 5

Last day of the Mobile HCI '06 conference. After the last panel discussion, it was time for the closing reception at the Nokia house.

[ Nokia was the main sponsor of the conference... ]



It was a very good reception: beautiful surroundings, good talk, short speech and excellent food!

Nokia house its glass ceiling...

When the reception ended, we headed to town with a fairly large group to have some goodbye drinks...

Finland: day 4

After a full day of lectures and discussions, it was time for a boat trip and a dinner.



When we finished eating, there were enough people left that wanted to go into town to have a last drink. The Zetor bar became our destination.

Just put your beer on the tractor...

Zetor is a strange bar in the centre of Helsinki. It has the look and feel of a big barn where they play '60's rock-and-roll and you sit on loggs.

[ behind tables that are real tractors... ]

Finland: day 3

Today was the second day of the Mobile HCI '06 conference. There were three different subjects. In the morning the talks were about mobile entertainment, in the afternoon it was about mobility in everyday life and later on mobile usability.

[ again I learned some interesting things... ]

After the talks it was time for some drinks and a cold buffet.



For one reason or another the Finnish decided to stop the party at 21:00. Luckily the supermarket was still open, which sold beer in a 12 pack!

Karjala: Vatten, Kornmalt, Kornstärkelse, Humle, Antioxidationsmeldel :-)

With some fellow congress people it was nice to sit outside by the lake and have a beer Karjala...

Mobile throwing

Today I followed a tutorial on how to create a good experience for users of a mobile device. After the first day of the conference it was time for a social event: mobile phone throwing!



This offical Finnish sport basically boils down to being able to throw a mobile phone as far as possible...

[ freeing the thrower of all frustration of using a mobile phone... ]

These are the phone we could throw...

Eventually I was able to throw a Nokia approximatelly 38 meter far. The record is more than 94 meter, so a new record was out of my league...

Finland

Today I arrived in Finland for Mobile HCI '06, a conference on human computer interaction (hci) on mobile devices.

[ like telephones... ]



After I found my hotel, I made a small walk, checking out the surroundings...

Finland, water, trees, rocks and some Finnish people...

Gingerbread nuts

In the Netherlands we celebrate something on the 5th of December called 'Sinterklaas'. A traditional treat on that day are gingerbread nuts (pepernoten). Although it is still three months until 'Sinterklaas', stores have started selling pepernoten...

Sinterklaas hasn't arrived in the Netherlands yet...

Luckily I like these nuts so much, I could eat them the whole year round. That's why I bought myself some...

Chairs

It took me some time to get them, but I've got some now: chairs...

Want to sit..?

[ I've got four, so enough sitting opportunities... ]

Double dumb

You would expect that I would be able to learn from my mistakes, but today I proved that this is not always the case cake.

In January I was busy eating a spoiled chocolate cake. Well, I managed to repeat this eating feat...

[ I really need to learn to inspect a cake before starting eating it... ]



This time it wasn't a chocolate cake, but an 'Indische cake'. The second slice tasted very aromatic. It didn't taste really bad, just weird, a bit musty...

The red squares denote the moldy patches...

[ why doesn't real cake have these red warning areas..? ]

Dislike shopping

There is such a thing called 'fun shoppen', but when I need new shoes, the fun part is very hard to find...



I have difficult feet (extreme narrow) which makes it though to find a fitting shoe.

[ I also have a very distinct taste in shoes... ]

After more then 4 hours of going into stores, trying on shoes, not being able to find anything and leaving that store disappointed I was able to succeed...

Both left and right shoe are new...

Powermoves

It has become sort of a fixed ritual. After lunch we make a brief stop on the 7th floor to play a quick match of foosball.

[ first to reach 10 points wins, no holds barred... ]

11 red versus 11 blue players on a stick...

My speciality are the following powermoves:

• Far kick from the goaly
  (shooting the ball in a high curve towards the enemy goal)
  
• Keeping the bal in own penalty box
  (until someone falls asleep)
  
• Wall 'o' death
  (5 defenders creating an almost impenetrable wall)
  
• Using the backwall
  (no one knows what will happen, including me...)
  

[ and onces in a while I do not score an own goal with these moves... ]

Pyromaniacs beware

Do you like a good fire? Get a kick out of the sound of fire alarms..? Do you like the feel of sprinklers..?!

Well, I just saw a very nice invitation on the 5th floor of an office building:

Fire safety mechanism out of order

Be quick, before someone beats you to it...

Strange thieves...

I always used it to safely cross the street when I was going shopping in my lunchbreak. But all of a sudden someone took it away...

This was the location of 'mine' traffic island...

[ luckily we moved office, otherwise I had to cross unsafely... ]