Finland Business Trip
---------------------
16 December 1999

Wednesday: 15 December 1999

Moving right along today. Currently residing in the middle
section of an airplane (Airbus A340) on the way to Chicago
from Munich. Perhaps we are half way through the flight. The
"Runaway Bride" is playing on the monitor/TV and it seems
quite a few people are watching. Just got done watching "Big
Daddy" not too long ago and the sound was all fucked up. I
suppose every 9 seconds there was a glitch in the
sound-really horrible but I managed.

I've got some stuff to read but figured I might as well
write something now while it is fresh in my head. Write
about this trip, what went down and such. Plus, I can type
faster than I can write this by pen so I'm hoping I can put
more detail into this journal or whatever one may want to
call it. The seat is a bit cramped and there is not much
space for me to stretch out so this is a bit of a pain.
Nonetheless, let's write.

Saturday: 11 December 1999

Got some last minute supplies before leaving: travel size
AOSEPT (for contacts), shampoo, and hair gel. [Bit of bumpy
air here in the skies and the seatbelt sign just went on.
There was a slight pause then about 20 or 30 people started
clicking their seatbelts. Interesting. In America they say
to keep the seatbelts on all the time. Bit different in
Europe. I tend to always keep the belt on.] Ate a little
lunch and completed my packing. Steve came by just before
noon to pick me up so we could travel together to the
airport. [Still lots of shaking going on with a few breaks
here and there.]

We checked in and the lady at the counter checked us all the
way through to Helsinki. Steve checked one bag and I took
both bags with me. Trip to Chicago was not eventful. No
movie but we did get a dinner-Chicken, rice, beans. [Later
in the trip I had A LOT of gas but I'm unsure which meal
produced these results.] My memory fades but I can not
recall anything about this leg of the trip other than it
taking close to four hours.

The Chicago to Munich flight (8-9 hours) found Steve and I
sitting in the section directly before business class. We
were seated at the bulkhead I think it is called. This gave
us plenty of leg room. Our original seats were taken by a
woman and her children-she wanted everyone together
(herself, daughter, and son) so that put Steve and I next to
the window so we were not crammed right up next to anyone
else. Much nicer. Steve flirted with some of the stewardess
a bit and one of them (from the business class section)
actually gave us some nuts and champagne. I suppose it was
for giving up our seats. She also gave the nuts to the woman
and her kids. Those nuts were actually very good. The
champagne was okay. Drinks, food, drinks, and more drinks.
That is kind of what it is like. A system of services.
Movies to keep the people occupied. Big bathroom breaks
between those movies. I'm surprised they don't run out of
water to flush those toilets or rinse your hands. I watched
both the movies. First one was the "Thomas Crown Affair"
about a wealthy person who stole a painting at a museum
which he was on the board of. Sure, no one would suspect
him. It wasn't very good, perhaps a two star movie. The next
movie was "Bowfinger." Now that seemed, from the
preview/trailer, like it would be a good movie. It stared
Eddie Murphy, and Steve Martin. It was awful. The plot had
Steve Martin playing the person running Bowfinger studios
(?) and he wanted to make movies and cast a famous person
but couldn't get that person so pretended to have him by
following him around and acting around this "star." The
movie they were making was called "Chubby Rain" which was
about some aliens. Piece of shit. Enough said. After more
reading, I was able to take in the sunrise-impressive. I
didn't sleep much. I figured I'd be better off not sleeping
with my contacts and figured this would make it easier to
sleep when we got to Salo.

Sunday: 12 December 1999

The time managed to change during our flight and we found
ourselves at the Frankfurt Airport trying to catch the
flight to Helsinki. The airport was archaic. A shithole. Not
only was it old and they didn't expand it very well (or at
all) but it was VERY difficult finding where our connecting
flight was. What gate? I believe it said it on our ticket
but we had much difficulty finding it on a monitor. And what
monitors they did have only listed flights up to a certain
time. Ugh. I did ask when we got off the plane but I was not
sure if the guy said B or D for the gate. German accent.

We walked around a bit and Steve exchanged $10 for some
German marks. Bought me a pack of gum and some soda/food for
himself. We looked around those duty free shops and then
took a seat to wait for our flight to leave. Our plane
wasn't at a gate but rather we had to take a bus to get to
the plane. Agh. I was thinking "what the fuck is this all
about." Take a BUS to the PLANE waiting somewhere on the
runway. Don't they EXPAND? They opened up the front and back
of the airplane and sure enough people got on from both ends
and caused a traffic jam within the plane from both ends. I
felt lucky to get my baggage aboard. Thank goodness this was
a short flight (under 3 hours). I was surprised to receive a
meal on the plane, this Lufthansa flight. It was more of the
traditional airplane food. You know, the shitty food they
use to serve on airplanes back in the 80's. Yes, Europe IS
behind. There was some meats, mineral water (ugh, who drinks
that shit), and some other stuff I nibbled on. My stomach
started hurting not long after I finished my meal. Not a
bathroom hurt but a pain kind of hurt. That and my gas
continued.

We arrived in Helsinki just after 5pm. Got to see the
sunrise and sunset from the plane this day. No bus this
time. Steve got his luggage back-lucky him. I say lucky but
really this is how things should work. We shouldn't have to
be concerned that our luggage won't arrive.

We navigated the airport without too much difficulty and got
to the car rental place (Hertz). One Opel Station wagon,
blue; all for the low price of a hundred dollars a day. WOW!
Steve kept thinking we probably should have taken the train.
I didn't like that idea-loss of freedom. Fuck that, let's
drive.

Steve was pretty tired so with the maps we had I decided to
take the wheel. It wasn't too difficult except there were a
couple problems. We couldn't figure out how to turn on the
dome light without opening a door-pain in the ass, all the
road signs were in Finnish/Swedish, it was raining and
snowing at times, the headlights on the car sucked in the
dark (I drove faster than I could see ahead of me), and we
had to detour because of an accident (we later found out).
That detour made the trip take about an hour and a half
longer. Not only that but we approached the city from a
different direction and had NO idea how to find the hotel.
Luckily Steve saw the hotel as we were driving (tall
building with our hotels name lit up on top). We had
arrived. It was just after 8pm Helsinki time. A ten hour
(ahead) difference from Portland. So, it was Sunday and just
after 10am in Portland. That put us around 20 hours of
travel time or 22 hours if you counted door to door. I was a
little tired but still okay.

We got our stuff unloaded and then proceeded off to a
restaurant. One the receptionist recommended that was near
by (300m). It had a mixture of foods. I ordered the Garlic
Chicken and Steve got some beef/salmon mix. Pretty good
food. We noticed service was a bit slow and they took their
time at getting us the check.

We walked back to the hotel and agreed on a time to meet for
breakfast. Got to bed around 11pm.

Monday: 13 December 1999

Both of us slept pretty good this first night. I woke up a
little bit before my alarm clock was scheduled to go off.
Had to go to the bathroom (Bowel movement) so I decided to
get out of bed a little earlier than I wanted.

Breakfast was much better than what I was accustomed to in
Europe. They had MUCH more than hard rolls and juice here.
They had cereal, porridge, scrambled eggs, bread, yogurt,
juice, milk, coffee, cheese, melons, etc. Too much variety,
but it was good.

We got to Nokia a bit early and had to wait around some.
Course we also showed up at the incorrect gate and had to
drive back around the building. Steve joked about me asking
the attendant in the INFO booth if he wanted our "visitor"
badges back. "DO YOU WANT THE BADGES BACK." I repeated
several times, perhaps being a bit loud. I don't think he
understood so we took them with us.

I got set up and shortly before the presentation we had a
coffee/tea break. Afterwards I gave what turned out to be
close to a three-hour presentation to perhaps 10 people.
With all the talking my voice/throat was bothering me a bit
even though I had water and drank a lot. I needed something
different to sooth the throat. I wasn't sure if I did a good
job on the presentation. Didn't stumble much and probably
did not say and/um/uh too often. However, I didn't get too
many questions and I felt that they were not
getting/understanding that much. Some of them had an odd
look on their face. A look someone might have if they were
thinking about what you were saying but were not really sure
what you said. None of them seemed very happy either. A bit
down. Not much smiling or laughing. However, there were a
couple times during the presentation they started talking in
Finnish, made some kind of joke and everyone laughed. That
kind of annoyed me because I wasn't sure why or what they
were laughing at. I was able to not let it affect me too
much. Not be embarrassed and not show any emotion based on
their discussion.

For lunch we ate in the Nokia cafeteria. I had some sort of
hot dog, cole slaw, and potato meal with an orange soda.
Everyone else, except me, choose water. The all ate with the
fork in the left hand and knife in the right to cut and eat
their food. I found it a bit odd, but even Steve emulated
their way. I suppose he did this to not offend or to blend
in. In fact all ten or so of these people were using this
method. I used bread in my left hand and the fork in my
right to help me scoop up the meal.

After lunch I gave the technical seminar to a few less
people. Perhaps there were four or five people. I had a few
glitches and problems. Got more perplexed looks and not a
lot of questions. One part of the presentation I wasn't able
to explain too well so I went briefly thorough it and also
gave them another demonstration I felt my alternative
demonstration was better but it wasn't a part of the
original presentation documentation.

We had another coffee/tea break halfway through. After a
long day Steve and I wrapped things up got out of the Nokia
office building around 5pm. Dinner was arranged for 7pm at
the restaurant next to the hotel with Steve, myself and a
few people from Nokia.

By 7:30pm we had our wine poured and placed our order. I
decided to be safe and go with a grilled pork dish. Steve
choose Reindeer. Also on the menu were snails, ostrich,
hare, perch, and whitefish among others. I was pretty amazed
with the selection. Everyone found that funny especially
when I said you couldn't find stuff like this in the US.
Steve contradicted me saying something like "you've got to
stop eating at Burger King" which resulted in a big laugh. I
was a little offended considering I've eaten out at a wide
variety of places and never seen hare or ostrich offered. I
did try some of Steve's Reindeer and it was good. I can't
really compare it too anything else except that it was
similar to a good cut of beef.

We didn't get out of there till after ten or perhaps closer
to 10:30pm. The waiter never gave us the check until we
asked for it. Something about that service. It is quite a
bit worse than the US. They take much longer. I felt our
meal lasted about an hour too long.

During the meal I was asked about my hobbies and then
discussed the CD project. They seemed to like that, perhaps
even amazed a bit. Thus ended day one with Nokia. Steve and
I went back to our rooms and agreed to meet for breakfast at
8am.

Back in my room I had nothing better to do than surf the TV
stations. What little they had. The TV standard is different
in Europe--they run the sets at 50Hz which had noticeable
flicker to me. After awhile I got use to it and it didn't
bother me. This hotel had some of those pay TV movies. Just
enter your room number and you will be billed ($10) for this
movie. What you could do was go to the channel and watch a
10 or 20 second clip of the movie before this pay TV notice
came up. After visiting the channels and watching the
preview once the "Pay TV" notice would always appear and you
could no longer view these previews. There were about four
channels of this but sometimes the pay TV channel would
appear in a non pay area. I discovered this as I surfed back
and forth through these few channels. I think two channels
were showing the Matrix and the other two were showing some
erotic movie. A little remote trickery and channel switching
at the right time and I was watching what ever movie I
wanted. Excellent. And I had it on the screen for a good
five to ten minutes without any notice appearing. Easy hack
I though, too easy. I tried several times and didn't have a
problem although sometimes it took a minute or two to get
them to come up--often I got the channel assigned to the non pay
area or snow/black static. My choice, erotic or the Matrix.
Come on, the temptation was too great. My biggest fear was
what if this wasn't a hack and indeed I WAS paying for these
movies each and ever time I did this. But hey, I didn't
authorize it. I didn't enter my room number. I was paranoid
so I shut it off. Damn. Then I was concerned if this would
appear on the hotel bill. Okay, who ordered the "name of
erotic movie here" and "The Matrix" four times last night.
Shit. Quite embarrassing. How would one explain that? "Uh, I
was hacking around with the TV, switching channels and
though I found a way to beat your system." Humm. Had a
restless sleep on night two. Maybe it was due to jet lag and
maybe not.

Tuesday: 14 December 1999

I got up around 6:30pm, got packed and decided to take a
walk around Salo for about an hour (7-8am). Because the sun
does not begin to rise until closer to 9am it was very dark.
It was also snowing a little. Very few people were on the
street and not many places open-a small grocery store, bagel
shop, and a cafe or two. I ended up going into the grocery
shop to look around and buy some chewing gum. To my surprise
I was unable to use my old Finnish coins. They had changed
currency and my old coins were no longer usable unless I
went to a bank and exchanged them. So, I decided to go back
out and try the ATM. I was able to get one of my ATM cards
working. Requested 100 FIM (exactly $17.26) and got the gum.

I got back to the hotel just after 8am in time for Breakfast
with Steve but Steve had pretty much already finished
eating. I had a little less than yesterday, cereal, bread,
and some juice.

We checked out of the hotel and I glanced at my bill but
didn't catch the total or see any movies present. I do
believe Steve's phone calls came close to $100 and the
dinner the night before close to $250. Wow, so much for
saving money on the road.

Back to Nokia for 9am meeting and further training. We had
an early coffee break before starting (again). I had their
software person install the SDK and helped him out with
learning the system and getting things running. That
training lasted until a little after lunch.

Lunch was interesting because this day Nokia was serving
traditional Finnish food (their big Christmas/Holiday
lunch). It was free for all employees. There was an amazing
selection of food-much of which I decided to try and taste.
This included: liver, raw fish, fish eggs, pork, turkey,
some berry dessert, and a few other "odd" dishes. One of
this fish things I tried and didn't like to much so I didn't
finish. The fish eggs (orange) didn't have too much of a
taste. Steve said the meal was delicious. Well, I wouldn't
go so far as to say that. I said it was "different" when
they asked me my opinion. I couldn't rank it as good or bad
but I was glad to experience this type of food.

After lunch we went back to the software/SDK discussion
before turning to hardware. Around 2:30pm we had another
coffee/tea break before going into the wrap up meeting. We
wrapped up the visit with issues to resolve in the next
couple of days/weeks. Finally got out of there around four.
The sun had already set (around 3:30pm).

Since Steve hadn't slept well the night before and was tired
I drove us back to the Helsinki area. We made it back to a
hotel near the airport without much difficulty. Steve didn't
want to go with me to visit someone I knew in Espoo just
outside Helsinki so our arrival to the hotel was around 6pm.
No dinner. We checked in and went to our rooms. Steve wanted
to get to bed and I wanted to see if I could contact the guy
I knew from Remedy (game company).

After a couple tries I got through. He gave me some
elaborate directions which seemed to take about 15 minutes
to explain (spelling out all the road names). I took his
directions to the reception desk and was able to get some
help and a map from a lady there. With a little more insight
into his location I proceeded on my journey.

About three wrong turns and an hour later I had arrived at
my destination which was a small gaming company called
Remedy. Samuli propped open the lower doors and I made my
way up to the third floor where they were located.

I gave Samuli a couple "audiophonik" postcards. Met him and
Peter-a musician I tried to get for audiophonik. I got to
see a preview of the game their company is working on "Max
Payne." Quite impressive. In fact, the characters in the
game have faces of actual people. Faces photographed and
digitized. It looked VERY good and they had several facial
expressions. I was to be photographed and perhaps would
appear in the game (as a bad guy) but they didn't have the
camera at the moment. Damn.

When, perhaps if, the game ever comes out it will be very
impressive. Right now they have been working on it for a
little over three years and still have a lot left to do. We
talked about the game and other computer related stuff.
Samuli gave me a shirt, a few note pads and I left sometime
after 10pm.
It was a worthy trip. Samuli was quite impressed I was able
to find the place without calling him for more help. I made
it back to the hotel without making a mistake. Got some gas
(2 gallons) at a horrible self-serve pay cash into the
machine gas station. Didn't seem to work very well.

I got back to the hotel close to 11pm and in bed sometime
around 11:30pm.

Wednesday: 15 December 1999

Got up around 5:30am this morning after a restless night of
sleep. Took a quick shower, packed some stuff up and had to
hit the toilet just as the phone was ringing. Damn. It was
Steve wanting to eat at 6am (we had originally agreed to
6:30am which is kind of late). I said I was almost packed
and would meet him downstairs around 6am. Got back on the
toilet, finished up, packed and made it downstairs just
after 6am. Ate some cereal, bread and juice. Steve checked
me out.

We got in the car and headed to the airport some 5 minutes
away. Made two wrong turns--one in attempt to get gas and
the other as we were going to return our vehicle. We never
filled the car up more. Parked it in the Hertz area and at
the return desk they said they would check the gas and bill
us. We could have got gas given we had about 20-30 minutes
of waiting to do once we got checked in. However, there was
about a 20 minute wait to get checked in and they would only
allow one carry on so we both had to check some baggage.

Both Steve and I had some Finnish money left over so we both
shopped and purchased a few items. I got some Finnish candy
for the guys back at the office and some Moomin merchandise
which is apparently a big deal in Finland. It is a character
that looks like a hippo.

After our shopping we went to the gate and waited for our
BUS to take us to the airplane. It was cold enough out that
our plane had to be deiced before take-off.

Got to see another great sunrise. Read most of the trip
and almost finished my "Bloomberg by Bloomberg" book.
Decided to skip the breakfast they were serving.

This time our flight landed in Munich, Germany. We pulled up
to what appeared to be a terminal but was no more than a
small docking house with escalator and stairs. A bus awaited
us on the other end. Damn.

Again we had the problem of not being able to find our
flight because they only displayed flights by time and ours
was late enough that it didn't fit on the monitor (11:30am
and we had arrived shortly after 10am). So we looked around
the duty free shop but didn't find anything interesting
enough to buy--chocolate, liquor, perfume, pens, watches and
a few other odds and ends. We finally found our flight and
waited with the others.

Boarding was a cattle call. Everyone moved up in several
lines without regards to rows. No rows were called. It was
first come first get on. Quite disorganized--totally
different in the US. I was glad to be going home after all
the crap.

This was another Lufthansa flight which served, once again,
the traditional (gag), airline food. Nothing very good. And
got to watch a glitchy movie (sound). Had several drinks
(mostly water) and read/skimmed the "Oxford book of Work" I
had. We arrived in Chicago shortly after 2:30pm.

We went through Customs (show passport and declaration
slip), got our luggage, and then proceeded through another
Customs area where they took the declaration slip. Steve got
his luggage fairly quickly and got through this customs area
a little bit before me. This was unfortunate because a
little bit further he dropped his luggage off on another
baggage claim which would go on our flight scheduled for 5
hours later. I suggest we try for an earlier flight. When I
got there I mentioned this again just before considering
putting my luggage on the conveyor belt. We were able to get
a 4:15pm flight out (instead of close to 7:30pm one). My
luggage made the flight whereas Steve had to sign a
"Voluntary Separation" paper.

On the way to the main terminal we had to wait for a train
to take us there. I got on the wrong one for about 5 seconds
and jumped off just as the doors were closing because Steve
wasn't coming with me and said something about me being on
the wrong train. We caught the correct train and found our
terminal about a half-mile away. During our wait I drank a
small soda and had a McDonald's hamburger. Ah, America. I
was glad to be back.

We eventually boarded around 4:15pm and took off a little
later than usual. This time Steve and I were not sitting
together due to the packed flight. I sat next to a vet who
was coming from Germany because he was invited to give some
talks on Llamas. Strange.

We got to eat and if we wanted, pay, to see the movie
"Mickey Blue Eyes." I choose Chicken as opposed to Pasta. It
was a pretty good meal. I mostly read a couple magazines I
had, talked a bit with the vet next to me and dozed off a
couple times. Most of the flight was very rough. The end was
quite a ride. As we were coming down to land the plane was
moving from side to side, and dropping or jumping up and
down. It was quite scary especially as we approached the
land--last 100 feet. We were still rocking up to contact
with the runway. Once we had safely landed on all wheels
there was applause. It was good to be home and in one piece.

My luggage was like the third one out. And we were off. We
parked at this place called "Park and Fly." It was $7 a day
plus surcharge. I didn't get a definition of the surcharge
but our bill worked out to be close to $35. Humm, I thought.
This actually worked out to be MORE expensive then the
normal airport parking. I suppose its advantage is that it
might be quicker because you don't have to wait very long
for busses. The prices will be going up though so this
"alternative" for parking really is not a cost saving
alternative.

I arrived back to my apartment around 7:50pm. Steve and I
departed and I said I'd "try" to make it in at 9am for the
conference call to Italy. Amazingly I made it even though my
alarm clock never went off.