Mikko>

Homing

2008-04-20T19:31:00.002+01:00

Three weeks back in Finland today. Doesn't feel too bad at all, and it looks good too - here is the view from my window right now, at my dad's house that is. The days are long already and I seem to fill them with even more to do than I planned. Prioritize, not procrastinate, is the answer of course. And what comes to next trips - it could be it's one on wheels in the west instead of sand in the east...

(Sent from my iPhone)

"When the Student Is Ready, a Teacher Will Appear"

2008-03-26T00:56:00.002Z

Warning: contains 80% introspection and 20% retrospection.

This is me on my last week, in NYC right now. Yes, I've been here before, as I of course had in SF where I hung out just before this, but it's a good soft landing, I'm learning. Instead of rushing off straight back to London or Helsinki and seeing the streets and scenes for the umpteenth time and risking snapping back into my old jaded self, this kind of a semi-familiar setting in between helps me keep up the curiosity and immediateness of the free exploration I've found so invaluable during the last year. If I can keep that up as I go back, good. There's so much to discover right outside the front door. In addition, my brother came over for a week, we drove around New England a bit and went to check out the Niagara Falls and had a blast although bad weather barred further voyaging into Canada (and our Dodge Charger was having electric problems).

Yet, here we are, at the threshold of heading home. It's time to look back a bit, though not conclusively, certainly: I'm putting together a collection of experiences from the trip in a different medium as we speak and hope to have something in a publishable order by summer (yes, I can always dump it online and count that as publishing).

Looking back, the steps I've taken form a logical path. The geographical progress was roughly dictated by my RTW ticket of course, but the introspective progress is at least as logical, and that wasn't planned out in anyway. I think it's fair to say now I left travelling in order to have an excuse to quit my job. Not the other way around. The Google job was a great thing indeed, so I needed something bigger to be able to leave it. A grandiose dream of a round the world trip was the ticket, and I started off with just those - a ticket and a dream, but no plan other than the immediate externalities.

After the month-long rock'n roll tour, the first countries, Mauritius, Madagascar and South Africa were exercises in randomness and extremes from all ends. Finally I was able to just go like I'd wanted and do weird and wonderful things. And I did. One of my favourite images from the whole trip is a hike in the nightly jungle in Northern Madagascar from a main road I'd bummed a ride to with an American tourist heading to a better hotel. I was to follow a road that soon turned into a bumpy spool of dirt paths to a hotel on the beach on a small peninsula, but I was risking getting hopelessly lost. There was no moon, and I couldn't turn my headlight on without attracting hordes of moths and mosquitoes, all headed for my head from above. After a while, I started to see candles and small fires through the trees of the surrounding jungle and saw people pass me in the darkness, some against me, some going the same way. I called out to some of them but got no reply at first. By this time, I was in the middle of a small village that consisted mainly of concrete hurricane shelters constructed by a UN agency where the locals had only open flames as their sources of light. There was not electricity on the island at night and there were no generators in the village. Just as I was about to get worried, someone replied to my questions phrased in (very) broken French and told me that yes, this was indeed the road, but that the hotel was far, but that the lights in the distance behind me were of a taxi that could take me there. Sure enough, there was a car - the smallest Renault I've ever seen, and possibly the oldest, already holding a family of five, who gave me a ride to the hotel itself, another 20 minutes away. It wouldn't have been bad to walk, I thought, but was later happy that I took the cab as the driver helped me translate from my imaginary French to the old nightguard who came out to meet with a stick and a stone. It was a weird week and a bit with many other adventures. I'd lost my bearings and I was playing it by ear.

Thereafter, South Africa was a testing ground. It tested my attitude, patience, persistence, prejudice and fear and taught me much of myself. I loved it, being able to space out in the African vastness as much as I wanted, but at the same time I was starting to get anxious for more meaningful things to do. I revisited my idea of a novel and shelved it after a few chapters, wrote a verbose short story to prove I can finish something, worked on a couple of business ideas and started pursuing one of them. The anxiety was a familiar beast and I was happy to have the energy to be able to tackle it doing creative things, but even these were external responses to an internal condition (existentialist crap which I'll strive to not name). So I got busy, again, and thought I was happy for a while. Which I guess I was, until a combination of hangover and a caffeine-overdose rips down the curtains and you look at yourself again in your essence. Well, something like that can happen to me at least.

I flew to Hong Kong, worked and snooped and shopped around first there and then in Bali, made my way to Bunaken to dive for a week and met my friend Ville for surfing (which I mostly didn't do) in Bali again. I was moving from wifi to wifi at this point, but I did a lot of creative work. By the time I got to Japan, it was getting clear that even the creative work wouldn't help me. I felt stranded in Tokyo and Osaka, the massive foreigness of everything in my face and stomach. Kyoto with it's temples in the woods were a breath of fresh air therefore and I stopped other things to breathe there for a while. I wasn't keen on going to India for the short time I could afford there, and the experience wasn't too pleasant (including people vomiting on our car) and certainly much less interesting and stimulating than Japan had been. South East Asia then I embraced.

Here, there's the long time on the ground in cities and beaches and ruins, dissected by riverboat trips and night trains. By the time I got to Singapore, I wanted to head to Australia already, thinking the land to paved with gold to say the least. I'd seen amazing things and met great people, yet I wasn't comfortable in my own skin. With horror, I thought of a moment 20 meters underwater in the most beautiful waters in Indonesia among amazing fish and corrals - thinking to myself: "This should be the greatest thing in the world I'm doing. Everybody would want to do this. Why am I not having fun?"

Australia wasn't exactly golden, but the people were. I stayed with Tammy and Melissa in Coolum, Mike and Kate in Sydney and Jan, Karen and Jarrod in Melbourne. This was also a much-needed breather from the constant packing and unpacking, though I felt like I stayed in the country for too long. I didn't know what I was doing on the trip, keeping myself busy with externalities and pretty likely getting on the nerves of the good people who had opened their homes to me. My persistence was rewarded when as the result of a chain of coincidences a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend recommended a meditation retreat he had done. As if in a gesture of desperation, I signed up, did my 10 days of silence and meditation for 11 hours per day and whaddayaknow - it's all been uphill since then. I haven't changed my beliefs (haven't generated any, that is), my lifestyle or my attitude in a conscious way but my goodness if I don't feel better than I did a few months ago. This purification, a catharsis of a kind, helped me enjoy the rest of trip immensely more and I think it's the combined benefits of the internal voyage combined with the external progress I've made that are now ripening. I won't go into the details of the meditation technique because telling about it is irrelevant. Only experience can bring wisdom. Without experience, you must choose whether or not to take my word for it. Yet, with curiosity, anyone can develop experience and ultimately even wisdom.

Since then, New Zealand, Fiji, beautiful South America and North America now have been full of surprises and I've been handling them happily. It is strange - as if every day is better than the previous one. If that isn't progress, I don't know what is. It seems I had a goal after all, and it is the one that I have reached.

Peru: Lima, Machu Picchu, Nasca lines

2008-03-10T20:51:00.003Z

Finally, here are my thoughts on Peru: Lima, Nasca, Machu Picchu and the last leg of the full-time trip.

The Trip: Machu Picchu

After Buenos Aires and Santiago, Lima felt like a pit. The squander was much more visible, and the country looked like a war zone in some places. Which it has recently been in some places, some would say. Otherwise, the effects of recent earthquakes were the major contributor to the atmosphere.

I spent a couple of days in Lima, nosing around and indulging in the wonderful seafood that forms the foundation of Peruvian cuisine's fame. In Lima I had lunch with Kukka, a friend from my hometown who has covered a lot of socio-political issues and developments in Central and South America in the last couple of years, and she was able to shed a lot of light on the country and put my contrasting observations of the continent in perspective. Here is her blog (in Finnish).

The local buses certainly added to my impetus to conclude this bit of the trip. Seven hours to Nasca, quick fly-over at the Nasca lines and then 14 hours in the bus to Cusco overnight, then the four-hour train to Aguas Calientes. We flew over the Nasca lines in a tiny plane which gave me serious motion sickness which carried over to the bus and the train, but not having slept in a couple of days I was too tired to do anything about it. The lines themselves were cool to see and there's a couple of photos in the album. I don't think I made any reward miles on that flight, though.

The Inca Trail was closed for upkeep during February which was also the reason I meant to skip Machu Picchu entirely. Then I thought that it would fit my contrarian sight-seeing attitude to go there now, hoping that the crowds be smaller, and so I did. Even the three-hour hike (or climb, really) up from the town to the ruins was taxing enough, not to mention climbing the sheer stone steps of Wayanapicchu, so I don't feel I missed a whole lot not attending an overcrowded jungle-walk.

Up in the ruins, the mists persisted until about 11 am, after which the whole mountainside revealed it's glory for two hours until the rains descended again. It was a great - one of the highlights of the trip certainly, and rivaling Tikal for my number one ancient-civilizations-experience. I was sore in a big way the next day, and slightly worse the next. I can still feel my calves. Stretching would've been a much better idea than two beers in an Irish Pub harassed by drunk English teens and crashing for 12 hours. Very tired, but very happy.

And this I'm writing from San Francisco. Part work, part friends & fun, I'm here until next weekend, after which my brother Markus and me will throw a little New England / Canada road trip and spend the Easter in New York. What work, say you? There's a bold little venture called Turnleft Guides that I'm very proud to be a part of. We're in the process of launching the very first guides with a busy publishing schedule for the year. There will be a sign-up form on the website soon so you can stay tuned with the developments.

Rambling on the Ruins

2008-03-02T00:07:00.003Z

I've gotten on average five hours of sleep per night in all of South America. It's starting to show through. Here are my heartfelt from Machu Picchu. Rubbish quality courtesy of Nokia N80. More photos and a proper report on Peru (Machu Picchu, Nasca Lines, Lima) coming up!

Log> Buenos Aires and Uruguay

2008-02-24T23:06:00.003Z

I've wanted to visit Buenos Aires for a long time, and it really is an experience. BA was declared a "City of Design" by UNESCO and where as I'm yet to make up my mind as to the merits of the design the city features (the Authority of Everything I so obviously am), it's does display a beautiful variety of styles and and even graces. In the number of local clothing brands alone it may well rival Hong Kong, with the Palermo market bustling with cafes-cum-retail spaces every weekend. I bought a couple of beautiful, quality shirts off a young designer whose label didn't even yet have a name. That's the right order of doing things.

I haven't taken that many photos here at all - somehow, after the picturesque Pacific Islands and the majesty of New Zealand's scenery, I feel a city is best experienced and appreciated by absorbing the vibe and consuming the energy all around. And I sure am getting by with less sleep I would've guessed I'd need. As these things seem to flip, now that I haven't been releasing the shutter, it's been set off on me a couple of times - some innocent nightclub photos and a street photo shoot I was pulled into as I walked past. Here's a log shot.

Other than this, BA is superbly accessible and very affordable, better value than any other place I've been this far when it comes to just staying and travelling. Outside of the hipper areas it is difficult to find veggie fare, as one would imagine, but I've had great food despite the common complaint that outside of steak and chips, Argentine cuisine doesn't have much to offer. And there's open Wifi everywhere. Yippee.

I did escape the city over the rivermouth to the east. Uruguay must be the best-kept of South America - at least sub-Equator. A beautiful small country with great infrastructure (best roads I've been on since Japan), a clean and efficient capital and gorgeous beaches. It's a step towards Brazil from Argentina, and you can tell that in the people. Ok, in the girls, no beating around the bush.

Finally, I had one tango lesson and was hooked. Too bad I can't stay here longer, but I'm surely coming back.

Log> Easter Island

2008-02-16T20:57:00.002Z

Easter Island took me for 3 days longer than I'd planned to stay there - the 4 day stay that I had planned initially, thinking it might be too much and leave me bored, would have been way too little. Certainly, the main monuments, the moai, are seen quite quickly in a day, but there is much more to the island to explore, including crystal-clear diving waters (visibility exceeding 40 meters). This is partly due to there not being other islands to contribute to the debris within thousands of kilometres.

But most of my experiences are terrestrial. It was a stroke of luck that I'd arrived during the Rapa Nui equivalent of Carnaval (in Rapa Nui scale, or course), Tapati, which featured nightly shows, parades, and daily competitions in boating, canoeing, sliding down a mountainside with a straw raft, cooking, weaving - all to select a queen from among three Rapa Nui candidates. The whole island was mobilized, and sleep-deprived, I'd imagine, since the parties were busting until 5 am every night. Didn't get to spend time in silence like I'd imagined. Tough luck, as you'll probably agree by these Easter Island photos...

The culture is a magnificent one, the island a perfect compromise between local color and modern services, and though it's clearly more expensive than mainland Chile, you're still looking at one of the most affordable islands in the Western Pacific. It is bare, almost barren in places, but that just adds to the charm. There are a couple of beaches and the reef break in front of the only town of Hanga Roa ranges from accessible to really rough. And it was the people who kept me there as well, of course, ranging from fellow travelers who'd been on the road for 8 years to returning Rapa Nui enthusiasts.

But this tramp is coming to an end. One sign was that I just cashed in some hard-earned miles and got my brother a HEL-JFK return to come and join me in NYC and surroundings for a week. That'll be fun before heading back up north. I'll actually have a few coupons left on my round-the-world ticket, so Finland, looming at the end of another month and a half is another long stopover. And I need to take care of some business at some point.

From The Trip: Eas...

Next, Buenos Aires and some Argentinian or Uruguayan coast or countryside, yet to be seen.

Log> Wellington & leaving NZ

2008-02-09T17:22:00.003Z

This is me enjoying a 5 hour delay in the Biz Class lounge at Auckland International before my flight (allegedly) departs for Santiago. I squeezed in 5 days for looking through the North Island, and while this was another wonderful excursion, I'm very happy I spent the bulk of my time in the country on the South Island.

I didn't get to do the Tongariro crossing I planned to (which would've equalled Mt. Doom, of course) due to some nastiness that I perhaps carried over from Fiji and needed to have myself checked for in Wellington. Unfortunately, it was Waitangi day (the country's independence day) and the hospital was chock-a-block. I got my antidotes and started towards Napier, Matamata and Auckland.

The day before in Wellington I took my first guided LOTR tour, which was worth every penny. This wasn't just for getting a ride to the locations and getting pinpointed the exact action spots, but also because of the wealth of technical moviemaking detail our guide was familiar with. Welliwood, indeed. I'll post photos soonish.

Wellington is a nice enough town with a good vibe to it, but unfortunately the latter 20-century architecture in the central areas is a proper eye-fuck. Ugly highrises, all designed with details painted with special fade-to-pastel colours dot the skyline sporting the most unnecessary features. Even the celebrated Te Papa museum (containing spectacular exhibitions inside) looks like a late eighties architectural vomit. It was opened in 1997, though.

Enough with the complaints. NZ is my favourite country this far, warts and all. Can't beat the frontier-town feeling you get in many places here.

Next post comes from Easter Island.

Tribewanted: Vorovoro

2008-02-03T05:06:00.000Z

The rains over the last two days seem to have washed my mind off the island paradise of Vorovoro, and today the retreating tide finally took me with it. Our intrepid boat captain Johnny just dropped me off at Labasa after a trip navigating the low-tide mangrove channels back to the mainland. With the rain beating on our faces the boat made quick nudges mowing through the brown water to avoid the driftwood visible only within meters of the boat, unloading us in the Saturday noon hustle and bustle of the Fijian port town.

From The Trip: Vor...

The last two weeks, to summarize, have been blissful. Vorovoro is the paradise island it promises to be, with pleasant surprises and simple living to keep one content for the couple of weeks most people choose to spare. A wave of publicity about the island and the Tribewanted project has rolled on in the last two weeks, primarily thanks to BBC's airing of the Paradise or Bust documentary series. We watched the first episode on the island and tried to imagine how we would have felt had we seen it back in the UK or US or wherever before coming to Vorovoro. But the island would still prove to be better than any idea you could get over the TV, the website and people's recommendations. The nicely BBC-ized one hour bit we watched felt, at least to me, like the grinding sound of a distant world too busy with its own turning.

On paper, Tribewanted looks like a holiday timeshare for backpackers. There's an element of ownership involved, projects you can vote on online, plan, propose and discuss. Then, on the island, you can play chief and get your hands dirty with all kinds of more or less measningful activities. Or just lay in the hammock like I did. Well, I did write dozens of pages of poetry (or "poetry", rather) in a mad gush of inspiration that lasted for days. The rains must have helped. And as I digress, the point here is that you can make pretty much whatever you want of your time on the island, and it can be just another eco-retreat or no-frills resort (or would that be a new travel niche?) if you wish it to be so.

But the best part of the arrangement is not what Tribewanted does on Vorovoro. It's what Tui Mali's local tribe brings into the equation. They are an integral part of the experience, not only because of the work they do, but because of the local culture and lifestyle that they embody, effortlessly and seamlessly and all the time. Too often when a cross-pollination of cultures is planned, the result is too clinical: tourists watching a Maori haka, carving jade on the coast of the Yellow Sea, sipping cups of Kava outside a Denarau resort. On Vorovoro, we're all friends, we have time, nothing is forced and all interactions quickly become very natural, very balanced. The locals were genuinely happy to host us, and I'll miss them the most (if you've any idea of how cynical I am, you'll know this is big thing for me). There were only from seven to a dozen of us "vulangi", or visitors, at any one time on the island and this felt like a good number as it kept things natural and laid-back. Surely Ben and the Tribewanted management would like to see more people in the Tribe and on the island, but the current infrastructure can only take that much. One night I had a chat with Teavita - another living legend, almost a myth, this man - about how he feels about the project finally getting more exposure: Tribewanted should be about five times bigger than it is now. "Yes, I'm very much looking forwards to it," he said, after a pause adding "I'm ready." And there is space to build more.

The daily life on Vorovoro is splendidly effortless. There are things to do if you wish to do something, or you can just as well opt for not doing anything. I did nothing for the first week, then started feeling a bit guilty about it and in the end maybe put in a total of 8-10 hours of work during my whole stay. Not much at all. Not like our chief Carol, who had picked rubbish and driftwood off half of the island by breakfast, or like Julia and Lottie who were cementing the hurricane shelter in the village with Pupu for days. But I didn't feel exactly energetic for most of the time, either. I try to be a vegetarian (pescatarian to be exact), and the diet on the island just didn't feel like it sustained me. For whatever reason, my lethargic mood and energy levels were slowly accompanied by painful mouth ulcers, sides of the mouth cracking and skin peeling off around the fingernails by the end of the two weeks. I'm guessing vitamins are needed in the diet: the two basic meals per day don't really provide this (yes, the kitchen bell is rang five times per day, but breakfast, morning tea and afternoon tea are mostly just coffee and cake, with porridge on some mornings). I'd ran out of vitamin supplements a couple of weeks ago, which would intensify the effect. For a tropical country there's not much fruit, and this seems to go for all of Fiji: we had banana, pineapple and watermelon exclusively, and only in small quantities. Va and Francis do a stellar job in the kitchen, though, I just wish the raw material situation would be better. With the current state of farming and gardening on Vorovoro, the island has little hope of self-sustainability. More needs to be done, and a part of my apathy was due to a bit of a disappointment upon seeing the gardens for the first time. But apathy is not the way forward, of course, and any example I'm setting is surely not a good one.

So during my two weeks, I read five books, finally succumbing to Dan Brown's garbage (nicely researched, terribly written, simplistic plot: millions and millions of copies sold?) and recovered with poetry and great travel writing from "Worst Journeys: The Picador Book of Travel". I wrote so much I scared myself out of it upon counting the pages one morning. I took 570 photos (about 70 photos are in this album). I went snorkelling five times, climbed the Four Peaks, pounded Kava, mixed the drink and served it, showered under a waterfall every day, played chief for one night on my birthday (thanks for that, it was amazing). On the work front, I weaved coconut palm leaves for roofing, partly replaced the roof of the Sustainability Hut (can't imagine what the hut is used for, though), helped move a pile of rubbish five meters to make way for a path (this felt particularly pointless as it could only be a temporary fix), inventoried, cleaned and fixed the toolshed area with Marau, and braced the buildings for the coming and going cyclones. I wanted to build an lo-fi observatory on one of the cliffs, but the weather stopped this. I'll have the plans ready when I come back.

The last day came exactly when it was meant to come. I did feel like I wanted to extend my stay (not quite like Jim, who decided to apply for the 4-month gapper position on his fifth day or so), but the road still calls me and the world grinds away closer and closer. I gave Ratu, chief Tui Mali's grandson and a regular bane around the camp, my Tribewanted dog tag that I'd been wearing since it arrived in the mail in my London flat a lifetime ago. That small piece can be but symbolic of the huge chunk of me that's left on Vorovoro.

There. Next, North Island NZ for five days, then Easter Island. Over nine months on the road now. Or seven years soon, depending on whether home is still home...

In Vorovoro tomorrow!

2008-01-18T09:06:00.000Z

It's windy and wet in Fiji, and if planes fly and boats run, I'll be in Vorovoro with Tribewanted tomorrow, finally! But it's all tentative - tropical cyclone Funa, as of writing this, is pretty close to Fiji, and otherwise it's the wet season anyway. I just took a pretty bumpy ride back from the Beachcombers resort island, and I hear the north of the country is worse. I think the macbook stays on the main land.

NZ adventures, pt. 3

2008-01-15T07:57:00.000Z

The Trip: NZ, pt. 3

South Island Adventure has been finished, 10 days later. Next, I'm recovering in Christchurch and then flying to Fiji, where two paradise islands await me - very different in nature. Tribewanted's Vorovoro is the main attraction and the apex of my trip, but the extra days I have in the country I decided to go and waste at the Beachcomber Resort island - a full-board backpacker resort island. I'm guessin' it's messin'. Very recently, Guardian featured this reportage, which has raised eyebrows both in and outside the community. Whatever the shortcomings and challenges may be, I'm happy to be there soon.

New Zealand is the most attractive, accessible and rewarding country I've experienced. If I were to make my semi-hemispheric lifestyle a reality, I'd alternate between New Zealand and a Northern European country (Finland, UK, Sweden, that axis - funny, I've found the polar opposite, now I have to find the primary base still...). The skies are frequently breathtaking, be they dressed in clouds, stars, hues of blue or shades of grey; the drama of the sheer mountainfaces, cliffs, gorges, sounds and crevices is transcending at its best. I'll try and verbalize it better with more time soon.

In other news, Wikipedia's Today's Featured Article is Reign in Blood. Go on and catch up on your Slayer trivia.

NZ adventures, pt.2

2008-01-13T08:28:00.000Z

The Trip: NZ, a few more days

Uuh yes, New Zealand gets better and better. Quite nothing like boating with dolphins jumping under a waterfall, is there? The above photos are from a few nature/special reserves: Milford Sound, Mavora Lakes, Deer Park, and Fantail Falls (the dolphins are from the first one), in addition to beaches, wineries, low-impact camping (you'll find the photo) and river surfing, which equals bodyboards plus grade 3-4 rapids, and feels like trying to swim in a washing machine on spin cycle.

But this is just a fraction of the visual evidence gathered this far. I have been lucky to be able to construct an itinerary which covers 80%-90% of the Lord of the Rings filming locations. There will be large posts detailing these experiences later. I wasn't sure if this would be a good way to spend time here until I got to the first one - walking up the hill portrayed as the rugged country south of Rivendell was like remembering something I thought I'd known.

G'day Kiwis, bye bye Aussies

2008-01-08T20:46:00.000Z

Greetings from Middle-Earth. Uh, I mean New Zealand. I've already mixed up the two in my head more than once, and Middle-Earth seems to stick. So be it. Minus the cape and mediaeval replica weaponry, I'm soon in full LOTR-nerd mode having planned out a pretty good itinerary for checking out most of the filming locations - without tours, thank much. And there is so much to see and do here, such beauty and variety that I'm almost wondering why I stayed in Australia so long. That was, of course, due to my need for a contemplation break and because I was with good people. Jan, Kas, Jarrod, Tammy, Melissa, Mike, Kate, you rock. Thanks again. I hope I get to return the favours many times over.

And over here in Kiwiland, I've rented a car with a couple of fellow travellers, Lily and Mike, in order to circle the South Island in about 10 days. After two days only, it's clear this has to be one of the best places I've been to, if not top-of-list immediately. Here's a first blast of photos from Arthur's Pass's mountains, a rebuilt ghost town and Franz Joseph Glacier, where we just did a 13 km day hike. Icy beauty, when it's not pissing down rain like it does most of the time on the West Coast...As I post this, we're stuck in Franz Josef due to highway 6 south being closed for an indeterminate time.

The Trip: NZ, first 3 days

Blissfully back

2007-12-25T10:58:00.000Z

The Vipassana meditation retreat was an excellent experience. Not only were the 10 days themselves the perfect envelope of silence and reflection, the days after the retreat have been notably good as well. The technique seems to deliver, although I also feel the distinct sharpening of the senses developed during the 10 days slightly dulling now - but this should be just the beginning of a long road. And before you think I've gone off and joined a cult, no, I'm talking about a non-sectarian, mostly secular meditation technique that does base on Buddhist heritage, but that is also completely physical, experiential and non-denominational. Buddhist teachings and anecdotes were included in the few discourses the course contains (it's mostly just meditation, a good 10 hours a day), but they are not essential to the efficacy of the technique. I'm aiming to continue putting in at least 2 hours per day while I'm travelling - not an unreasonable dedication, especially as it seems that my need for sleep dropped dramatically during the course. I may not be able to maintain that, but continuity of practice is the key to success. And, I'm happy not to have to observe the holidays in anyway - haven't even heard a Christmas carol. Bliss.

Log> Vlog #3

2007-12-11T06:13:00.000Z

Hi from Melbourne, still. I'll be taking off on the 10-day Vipassana Meditation course starting tomorrow which includes total silence, so I'll be even quieter than normal. So I'll speak now.

Also, here's some photos from a roam across the outback and the Southern coast with the Belgians. Ta-daah for now.

The Trip: Windswept

Thoughts> Cabin fever

2007-12-04T05:33:00.000Z

The sound of the opening road is thunder
and inside the windows marked in burning code
are maps with dragons and horizons asunder
in the house where my restlessness has overflowed

A raging moon now kept awake by crickets
in the pregnant air of the morning floodplain
clouds smuggle out the sun in their pockets
and of heat the road roars again

A bridge extends, a sky opens up
the droning noise of all steps ahead
gyrates around this heating hub
as progress bites its tail in dread

This is me boiling in Adam's brine
a green thought on the black plain
scalding the back nothing but straight spine
a shadowless man may over the sun reign

For this day are clouds summoned
a shelter built of sea and rain
water-wound the time thus released
the inert heat no longer the stock, the cane.

--

I've been a bit sick lately, which is unfortunate since these are the only days when I had any kind of a schedule. I can't make it to Uluru anymore, so I'm concentrating on the Southern coast and Tasmania over here. It's great being stuck - the movement feels much better after that again. And I need the movement to clear my head before the Vipassana retreat starting in a week.

Oh, and send me your address if you want a cool postcard, potentially featuring me, a motorcycle, and a scenic location in Southern Australia.

Surreptious Voyage of the Gallant Lost

2007-11-11T10:51:00.000Z

Picking up posting after a long pause is always a bit difficult, especially when there's not that much really really exciting stuff to say. I've stayed in Melbourne for the last two weeks and borrowed friends apartment in Sydney for a week before that. Both stays have been excellent and the people very nice. I'm hoping I can return the favor at some point.

My arrival (well, second arrival) in Melbourne coincided nicely with the Melbourne Internation Arts Festival. I saw 4 plays / shows from the latter part of the program, the highlight being Merce Cunningham's dance piece with music composed and performed live by Sigur Ros. By the end of the set, the Icelanders with their inscrutable instruments (I think one was a music box driven through a distortion box) had created a pulsating massive wall of sound, noise with a will of its own, which seemed to drive some of the elderly culture crowd in the hall into agony. I loved it (the noise, not the agony of strangers around me so much).

There were disappointments too - a Barcelona-based troupe threw on European House, supposedly a modernized prequel to Hamlet with a three-storey set of a house complete with a functional warm shower on the third floor (this is all on stage). Unfortunately, nothing happened in the play and the complexity and completeness of the set greatly deducted from the minimalism and muteness of the performance itself. As a soundtrack they used overplayed Radiohead and the theme song from the movie Piano. If I would've been 14 years old, I would've probably found it profound and provocative. Now, well, that's enough said.

But other than that, it's mostly been routine, good books, great coffee, great music - just living in one place for a while. It's also helped rein in some more megalomaniac plans, and to engage in things that ensure I won't find myself home empty-handed. And as this happens, as time goes by, there's also the chance to enjoy it as it passes and to study its subtle path.

I don't think I'll be posting a whole lot in the near future - there's some work, some long rides and a longer retreat in nature in the cards next. I'll just let all of this oscillate in silence.

Sights> Enslaved download a sheep

2007-10-22T01:10:00.001+01:00

I love these guys. As a response to Norwegian Venstre-party leader Lars Sponheim's suggestion that all music downloading should be made legal, the two founding members of the progressive black metal band Enslaved "downloaded" a sheep from Sponheim's ranch. There's a video (scroll down for it) in this article (in Norwegian) that features footage of the cunning fjord-commandoes in action and the sheep shopping for legal music in Central Oslo. The wooly quadruped was later returned to its owner at the Parliament. That should drive the message home.

Sounds> Ziltoid and other things I'm hearing

2007-10-21T09:27:00.000+01:00

Goodness, how much fun metal music can be! I just bought Devin Townsend's latest disc from an unassuming Sydney record shop and have now listened the concept album through three times. On the disc named after the galactic coffee-connoisseur, Ziltoid the Omniscient lands on Earth in search of the perfect cup of coffee. Allegedly, the record evolved from... a puppet show project. Alright. The story features the omniversal guitar hero Ziltoid, jumps in hyperspace, planet smashing, Captain Spectacular ("who sets out to expose Ziltoid for what he really is: a nerd"), and blisteringly fast guitar solos and double-kick drums grooves (courtesy of Toontrack's Drumkit from Hell). And along all the funny stuff, the compositions are ingenious. This is an album that makes me want to get rest of Devin's productions. The 2001 release Terria almost had that effect already.

In addition to Ziltoid, really good stuff I've recently ran into (linking to pages that provide samples) are:

Om: Pilgrimage (third album from zoner-rock heroes and my daily addiction)

Boris: Pink (track: Farewell) (a punky release from Japan's drone/sludge/experimental royalty)

SunnO))) & Boris: Altar (track: Etna) (drone rock with just enough variety to keep things interesting)

Giant Squid: Metridium field (progressive metal/punk. myspace page, since they seem to have missed a hosting payment in the last 5 days)

Wooden Shjips: Wooden Shjips (prog / stoner rock)

Alamaailman Vasarat: Maahan (progressive fictional world music)

Log> Sydney Versus Melbourne? Anybody?

2007-10-18T05:50:00.000+01:00

My local friends haven't been too helpful with my dilemma of whether to stay in Sydney or in Melbourne the few months I've planned to spend here. Everybody, quite naturally, seems to prefer home turf.

Riding around this beautiful country I've also run into the most charming little mountain towns and rural villages, and during my frequent lapses have even planned to rent out a cabin somewhere in the bush. But that's escapism, which usually follows a bad day here or there, and is not a solution. It's better to just sit down for a while and count breaths.

Sydney and Melbourne have a good, healthy rivalry between them. Sydney is a lifestyle-city; Melbourne is a people-city. Fringe arts and experimental culture abound in the latter, the former enchanting me with its beaches and modern edge. I love both.

There's plenty of comparisons between the two, too. Having lived in California, I immediately thought of Sydney as L.A. and Melbourne as San Francisco (handy comparison, since you could feasibly compare Brisbane to San Diego in the same run). Or Sydney is like Helsinki and Melbourne is like Tampere. There, that's a definition to end all comparisons.

I still need to figure this out. In the meanwhile, I've been staying in both (appropriately, in a bohemian garden shed in Melbourne, and in a beautiful cutting-edge flat right on a marina in Sydney, courtesy on my friends) and mostly just living: working a bit, writing a bit and enjoying both the waves and the roads - the mountain passes are pure motorcycling bliss. I was actually heading to Sydney before the weekend of the Moto GP held in Melbourne, and I must have had over a 1,000 bikes come the other way on my way up. I almost turned around to go down there, but after Mika Kallio came off in the early part of the 250 cc race, I was happy I didn't go. I would've been fairly disappointed at that point. I'm not a big motorsports person anyway. I just love being on a bike. Here's some shots from the way - the best ones are never taken because that's when riding is too sublime to stop.

The Trip: Around Oz on Bike

Go> Some theatre for you, if you're in Helsinki

2007-10-12T14:09:00.000+01:00

I'm not in Helsinki, but if I would be, I'd go and see Ahmija (The Glutton) in Teatteri Jurkka. It sounds to be a great experience, but unfortunately undiscovered by the larger audiences. Check out this thoughtful review if you need more on it.

Log> Quickly from Sydney, and Melbourne next

2007-10-02T11:53:00.000+01:00

I didn't mention I got down here safely, so maybe that's in order quickly - completing this leg without an accident greatly increases my touring trip safety ratio. I've stayed with friends in Manly, a yell north from Sydney, which certainly is one of the top cities in the world. But I'm still hesitant to make any judgement before I can put it in context - by checking out Melbourne. Taking off tomorrow, I'll head down there for about a week, and then back up here again. I'll post the route soon. And photos. Yes.

And no, my shit bank still didn't get my card to me... In fact, they lost it, had to cancel the new one they sent me too, and send a new one. From the UK. Again.

Sights> Towards Sydney

2007-09-24T11:02:00.000+01:00

View Larger Map

Here is the first mow-down in Australia. I meant to spend much longer exploring the north of the country, but the circumstances dictate (read: my shit bank, per below post) that I need to go to Sydney this week. Fine, let's make the most of it then. I've been on the beaches quite a lot (duh, having lived in a beach house), so there's a fair amount of inland travel in the route, and I feel I've been given good tips.

Oh, and here is the tool for the trade - my CBR1000F, as of today legally registered to me. I've put 200 km on it this far and it seems to have been a good buy, and luckily, my helmet, jacket and shoes work really well with the color scheme. :-) The photo takes you through to a small album of dogs, kids and friends.

The Trip: Oz, first week

It's been a good first week down here - trying to skateboard and surf (progress with both but still much practice needed), getting work done and important decisions made, and hanging out with good people. I'm actually a bit weary packing the bag again and heading on the road, I wouldn't mind staying in one place for a longer time... counting in Battlelore's European Tour, I've been on the road for 5 months now, and I'm feeling it. Yes, I'm dropping hints that I'm planning to stay here. I am, after all, dreaming of a lifestyle that would allow 6 months up north and 6 months down south in the long haul - here's a good place to try and figure out how to make it happen.

Stupidity> Citibank and me, a farce in infinite parts

2007-09-21T12:45:00.000+01:00

Citibank UK has now screwed me over for the last time. Trying to use the ATM two days back, I found that my card had been blocked. Fair enough, I'd been pulling out large amounts in order to pay for a motorcycle, in cash. I called them from Australia, on a UK number, and after a long wait got connected to their call centre in Bombay. I described my problem to the business-process-outsourcing person on a cheap headset on the other end, gave them a total of 9 security checks, described my problem again, got put on hold and was finally informed that everything had been taken care of.

"That's it, Mr. Jarvenpaa. We have now cancelled your card and will send a replacement to your mailing address within 5 business days."

"You did WHAT?"

"I cancelled your card. You told me it was captured by the ATM, right?"

At this point I started alternately screaming at the poor BPO person on the other end, and laughing at the absurdity of the situation. I only needed them to remove the ATM block from the card, not cancel the damn thing, which she could no longer undo. And of course, I'm in Australia, sending it to my UK address which gets redirected to my dad in Finland would be of little use.

After more screaming and being on hold, I was informed that they could courier the card to the closest branch, which is in Sydney. That's over a 1,000 km from where I am now, thanks very much. The call cost me $65 US.

The idiots also cancelled my online banking access, since everything with the shit bank is tied together and can't be unravelled without disrupting the entire system of Excel sheets on someone's old Pentium where they try to keep a tally of everyone's account balances. I called about this and went through another security-check hell, twice, since the first person was only able to give me details about their fax number, and the second person was able to give me details about my account. In the end, the only thing they could do for me was tell me to send a fax with all the details I had just given them. This call inly cost me $51 US since I didn't scream to them as much. I need to stop using this horrible bank as soon as possible.

Uh... just when I was about to post this, another pattern emerged. I had previously received two voicemails prompting me to call the bank, and just got a call in the same vein. The messages were crackly, but I distinctly heard it was not my name the person mumbled out. Now that I got the call, it was clear that they were looking for someone called Malone, Ely or Ellie or something like that.

What the hell is going on with my account details? Why would they confuse the phone numbers and names? I have no way to check what's going on, given the blocks in place, and I'm on the other side of the world from the branch these idiots are courteously telling me to visit.

Log> Screwed over in international trade?

2007-09-17T12:12:00.000+01:00

What should I think of this: after approving an initial set of product samples, a supplier in China tells me that there is a shortage of raw materials for this particular product, and that the price per item would need to be increased to 13 dollars (which happens to be very close to a nice, round 100 yuan). They offer to use a different method, which would produce unacceptable results (and would also cost them about 5% of what the original material would). The raw materials are mostly simple petrochemicals, so I can easily check whether they have in fact increased in price.

I think it's the first round in getting screwed over in international trade. Luckily, I've covered my bases and gotten quotes from multiple suppliers, but it's lost time and lost money anyway. This probably wasn't the right supplier to build a longer relationship with anyway. And, the product was definitely the highest-risk in terms of sheer oddity and was a bit questionable in terms of sustainability, so maybe this was all for the better.

Goodness. I was so pissed off when I started writing this, and now I'm all serene and zen and stuff. The therapeutic effects of blog writing in action.

Sights>Log>Blissfully in Brisbane from SE Asia

2007-09-16T04:52:00.000+01:00

The Trip: Thai, Malaysia, Singapore

Yeah, down under finally! The guesthouse, hotel and backpacker circuit was getting a bit old for me by now, so getting to Oz and to friends is like a breath of fresh air. Quite literally - it smell like spring, yet the weather is consistently like the best summer's day in Finland would be. Above you'll find a few photos, mostly from the latter part of the trek.

Closing the books on SE Asia with Singapore was appropriate. Whereas I logged so bottom time and some jungle time, I was happy to hang out in a big city again, as I often am. Especially a new big city. People who prefer rural peace often say cities are all the same - for me, it's almost as though rural peace is all the same. Singapore was big, busting and trying to find its niche, which was cool to tap into.

Kuala Lumpur was probably the most multicultural city centre I've witnessed, maybe excluding New York. A tall order to compare to, sure, but Malaysia, being a predominantly muslim country, attracts visitors from all over the muslim world which contains a wealth of ethnicities a cultures. This influence mixes with the westernization of the country, the British influence (the country being only 50 years old) and the regional variety of peoples and cultures. It's a highly recommended experience in a very accessible city.

And it's worth doing the countries in a string. You get a better idea of the general regional commonalities and can contrast the local cultures to that as you go along. I'm happy I did the long ground leg. The buses and trains just killed my lower back though, and I'll seriously avoid them from now on. Given that the VFR800 was pretty good to my back despite the semi-crouched riding position, I think I'll go for a bike like that for the long, long ground legs in Australia.