Forty years ago today, June 01, 1972, this then fresh-out-of-the-oven engineer and literally blue-eyed young man drove his bicycle through the gates of the Strömberg Industrial Park in Vasa, Finland and was then directed to the Large Power Transformer factory to design transformers and he is still there...

It is not over until it is over...

The header relates to the picture above. We had kind of an early spring in March, then the weather turned cold again in the beginning of April. After some days of promising weather it started to snow again the day before yesterday and yesterday it was still snowing when I came home from work as you can see in the picture above. The winter is not over yet it seems.

The Real White City

On the Independence Day of Finland Dec. 6, 2011 I was awarded this medal, First Class with golden cross, of the Order of the White Rose of Finland. Why I don't know, but I think it has to do with my nearly 40 years of designing large power transformers for the same employer...

I received the medal on Friday at a ceremony arranged by my employer to celebrate and honour employees working for the company for 20, 30, 40 and even 50 years, and all those who had received medals and diplomas. When the medal was attached to my jacket I got the idea of recreating the White City album cover, using a street of the city of Vasa, the real White City of Finland, as the background and myself as the centerpiece.

The city of Vasa became known as "The White City" during the Finnish Civil War in 1918 when the Finnish legal governement, the Senate, were evacuated out of Helsinki and moved to Vasa. From here the parts of Finland loyal to the governement aka "the Whites" administered all parts of Finland that were not being ruled by the communist rebels aka "the Reds" and plotted the scheme how to fight the Reds and stall the Bolshevik uprising and attempts to join Finland to the Soviet Union. Finland had declared its independency from Russia on December 6, 1917 in the turmoil after the abdication of Cszar Nicholas II and the October revolution. The Reds were defeated and the civil war ended May 5, 1918.

There are some nice interviews with Pete regarding the White City album and film on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKCJVPM5cAw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzT8NwdD31s&feature=related

The White City as Pete describes it in part one applies very much to the surroundings where Ingela and I had the photo session on Sunday. The place is called the Olympia Block, built in the late 1980's and 1990's and mostly inhabited by immigrants and students.

Pete x 2

Lukas and I went to the annual Vinyl Record Fair in Vasa yesterday. Last year I found  "All The Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes" at the very beginning of my search for interesting vinyls. I then browsed thousands and thousands of vinyls searching for some other of Townshends' solo albums but found none.

This year I was much luckier, we started browsing for albums and after 15 minutes Lukas came over and told me that he had found "White City" in a box further down the aisle so I went there and picked it up. I browsed the other boxes of the same seller and in another 10 minutes I found "Empty Glass" ! 

The envelope of "White City" was a little dirty and abrased but the inner sleeve and record itself were virtually unused. No scratches no dust. "Empty Gass" was in even better shape. Only 5 EUR each! Yay!

Season's Greetings!

It is darker here today at noon than in the middle of the night in midsummer!

I'm not kidding, It is unusually dark because we have very little snow this year and the sky is gray.

But the Christmas tree is spreading some light inside our livingroom.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all!

No. 3

This is my masterpiece no. 3:

A Very Cherry Chocolate Cake I made for my birthday today.

Yum! It is the kind of cake that makes you gain a few pounds only by reading the recipe. :)

Another cold morning

The weather has been really nice here the last few days, but the temperature drops down to several degrees below freezing point at night, so all the plants and trees are withdrawing into hibernation now.
But the frost gives nature a nice touch at sunrise.
The bright yellow and otherwise coloured spots are not hot pixels in my D90, they are miniature suns in the frost particles.