A smoke test trying to submit a blog post from my mobile. Featuring summer, sauna and a butt print.

Here’s a spoiler:

This species failed. No s**t, Sherlock.

Viacom is currently taking all-too-familiar action removing all the clips from Youtube quoting their usual copyright issues. And more cold water to the Finns – I tried link to the full episode in South Park website, but got this message instead:

Fingers crossed South Park manages to get rid of those pre-existing contractual oblication jerks asap.

The recent promise about the full movies and TV shows to be made available in Youtube sounded great, but don’t believe it, wrote Mark Hachman yesterday in PCMag:

Partners like Crackle, CBS, MGM, Lionsgate and Starz made thousands of TV episodes and hundreds of movies available on Youtube for consumers to watch for free beginning on Thursday, in a bid to challenge Hulu for dominance in the online video space.

Don’t believe it. Google has amassed a TV lineup only a sick old retiree could love, with movies that belong in the dollar VHS bin. At this point, the shocking lack of content only highlights how competitors like Hulu can and will succeed in a cutthroat market where content is king. Quite frankly, it’s a little embarrassing.

The full episode isn’t available in Hulu either, so it looks like Viacom is simply trying to prevent earthlings from watching online how Finland gets nuked. Luckily, all Scandinavians are taught in elementary school where to search for the full South Park episodes.

Museokatu, my home street today

These mentally unstable kids are looking for becoming popular and famous in no matter what and as long as they make it to the news. And the media follows. The shooting only took place today, but it already has a dedicated Wikipedia site online. According to the news, Matti Saari only received a permit for his handgun yesterday after being interviewed in person by the police. Over the past few weeks he had systematically uploaded shooting material and massacre warnings to Youtube and IRC gallery, Finland’s largest Internet community for teens and young adults (60% of the users are older than 18). In the IRC homepage there is a link to information pack for parents about the rules of the site – still, I bet most of the parents haven’t even heard about IRC.

This tragic incident has again reminded the nation about guns and the olk-skool gun laws: only the United States and Yemen have higher levels of gun ownership per inhabitant. And yet, Finland wants to paint a picture of a modern, safe country with flawless education system and uncorrupted democracy. According to the Finnish Ministry of the Interior there are currently 1.6 million legal firearms in Finland. The population is around 5.2 million so that adds up to 32 privately owned legal firearms per 100 civilians. And as if that wasn’t enough, many households also store guns brought back from the frontiers of the second world war:

There may be as few as 50,000 or as many as 500,000. The majority of the unregistered firearms are personal war booty Soviet or German firearms dating to WWII. (Wikipedia)

Why does a nation need that many guns? According to the national broadcasting company YLE only 60% of firearm permits are issued for hunting weapons. That makes 40% – 840 000 guns – to be used for other purposes. Both these kids had licenses for their guns and were just avid hobbyists. Dang! There is a big margin for other ones with similar interests.

The last year Jokela massacre began a discussion of what could and should be done to prevent further similar tragedies and now it will get louder again. Ironically, the official group that has been analysing the reasons and consequences of last year’s incident hasn’t even published their results yet. And the online forums are already burstign with the macho comments of “one idiot spoils everyone’s fun.” I would just change the laws now and get the handguns out asap.

So what is wrong with this country? What’s with all these Columbine copycats? I only moved back to Finland two months ago after spending 11 years abroad, so I am still rather outsider myself. However, world is very different from the times when I was at school in the 80′s. Traditionally Finland was a socialistic country, where school, health care and basic services were free and available to everyone. There was a general sense of being a part of society, which has radically changed since. Today’s Finland is no longer even trying to promote services for everyone, same thing that has happened to the whole world. Money rules. Every doctor wants to work in the well-paid private sector. People prefer paying for fast private services. Money doesn’t get spent to support families or preventing problems, but rather gets spent on fixing the mess afterwards. So, the money is spent to too late in the chain instead of preventing the problems in the first place. A good example is the increasing amount of kids that are taken to foster families or temporary shelters due to the abuse and problems in the family. The preventive work for supporting the families doesn’t get the cash, because preventive work does not show in the statistics. It prevents the problems

Single parents, low income households, people with mental problems, old people and people who are depending on social services are not media sexy and therefore not interesting for the politicians and decision makers. They are silent part of the nation, almost invisible. The society no longer looks after people; everything needs to be profitable. This week’s news was that Finland is no longer the least corrupted country in the world – now that political parties got caught of accepting money from businesses. Only naive people believe in common goals, justice or liberty. Everyone’s too busy trying to save themselves from the economic slowdown and the spiralling expenses. Schools, doctors, towns, cities, we all need to be profitable. Money needs to make more money.

What will happen tomorrow morning when the dust begins to settle? Internet, American violent culture and heavy metal music will be blamed, Jack Thompson will release a statement that links the shooting to GTA series (to get hassled less I would rather work as a meter maid than the PR person in Rockstar games), but I doubt that this business oriented culture of stress, overworking, greed and profit hunting will change radically in one night.

When my 60-year old mother Kaija saw today’s news, she immediately said that we are all responsible for this. First and foremost she blames that her generation brought forward the wrong values and we all get to pay for it. I don’t think it is her generation only, which cocked up – my generation bought the values and enhanced them. This is not a righteous world of flawless superheroes, justice isn’t for all and good guys don’t win. Hmm, this rant starts to sound somehow familiar. What if Rockstar Games has just managed to nail the time we live in right between the eyes?

Miksi taas? Why again?

Home sweet home

Whilst unpacking my bags I find both my mobile phone and laptop mouse missing. The phone was hidden deep in the structure of the rucksack, so someone has spent loads of time and effort going through the bag. Right next to the phone was my external hard drive, which contains all my commercial work files over the past four years… and no, the thief didn’t take it. Hahaha.  Had I lost that hard drive, that would have been a nightmare, and I would have cried for weeks. Besides, I never really liked that phone anyway (I always wonder why people praise Nokia so much), so the thief actually did me a favour.

I find a replacement phone from my mum’s drawers; her old phone is a proper old-skool Nokia with no mp3 player, camera or 3G. Perfect.

Baby, call me on my new mobile

The thief also took my old, no longer valid passport. The only reason why I hadn’t thrown it away is that my Australian visa was registered to it. Wonder if this mysterious thief will get to Australia using an out-of-date passport and my not-quite-Asian mugshot.

Altogether, the travels went remarkably well and it is time to get organised again. First thing is to set up a room for myself. Every nerd needs a private nest with a wi-fi. After being away from Finland for so long time I do not have any permanent presence here. Now it is time to  introduce you My New Room:

A peek to my peräkammari

I am now a proud peräkammarin tyttö, adapted from Finnish expression peräkammarin poika, describing those hopeless mums’ boys who have never moved out from home and instead choose to live in a room in their parent’s houses.  A very good start…

The room is not just any kind of space – check out these amazing views over Kotojärvi (Homelake). Yes, that is its real name. Someone once was in a very creative mood.

A room with a view

It is now time expand my territory to Helsinki. According to all-knowing Wikipedia:

The population of the city of Helsinki is 569,892 (31 March 2008)], making it the most populous municipality in Finland by a wide margin. Foreign-born population stands at around 10%.

First thing is to go and say hello to the popular but unwelcomed new inhabitants, who breed so fast that the city’s population is rising rapidly. Citykanit, the abandoned pet rabbits have learned to survive through the harsh Finnish winters. They love sex and their new freedom and successfully have taken over all the Helsinki central parks.  They are currently migrating north towards the suburbs. They prefer living around the main train lines – smart rabbits wanting good connections to the city.

I was expecting that the rabbits to come in all colours and fur lenghts, dotted, striped, limp eared and so on, but I only see these plain brown ones. Plenty of them, though.

Citykani huntress watches its prey and prepares for the final attack

For their credit, the dull brown fur matches the Finnish landscape most of the year, so I guess it makes sense to wear brown and modest oufit. Blending in and modesty are two main traits for surviving in Finland.

A walk around Töölönlahti was nice. Everything feels smaller than the last time I was here. During the past few months I’ve travelled through dozens of big cities in South-East Asia and have realised before, how small the buildings in Helsinki are. The city also feels quiet: the Asian never ending streams of scooters and constant noise were overwhelming and never made me relaxed.

A view over Töölönlahti towards Helsinki Railway station

I am staying in Museokatu, Töölö, a neighbourhood most known for its challenging inhabitants, Töölön mummot. I liked this definition I found:

Töölön mummo on ikänäköinen rouva hyvältä asuinalueelta Helsingistä. Hän tietää useimmat asiat muita paremmin ja mieluummin, ainakin kun tieto on kerättävissä kotisohvalta käsin.

Töölö granny is a mature old lady from a good neighbourhood of Helsinki. She knows most of the things better and more eagerly than the others, at least when the information can be gathered sitting on the couch at home.

‘My town, my street, give me peace of mind that can’t be beat, yeah’ (Buck-O-Nine)

Room in the countryside is sorted, room in Helsinki is sorted – the next thing I need is a vehicle. Aunt-Paula’s old faithful Jopo has been gathering dust in the basement all these years. Its tires need air, the chains some oil and I also need to buy a new heavy lock (who could resist trying to steal that beauty), but the bike is solid and its orange colour makes me smile. Helsinki is a compact city and has very little traffic. Good bicycle roads are everywhere so a bike is an ideal mode of transportation… at least now, when it is summertime and living is easy. When the autumn rains begin and later snow covers the streets, it will get more extreme sport. But there is nothing like a bit of challenge. Bring it on!

Paula-tädin Jopo

Now it is the time for the last and the biggest challenge; getting my website and CV up to date and start looking for a job. Helsinki has a good reputation in the digital media and it is going to be interesting to see, how work compares to Australia and England. My design style is a grungy and not quite the soft and round Web2.0 – even though I have learned to design in that style fluently as well.  Finnishness brings out the raw metal and edginess to my designs.

Talking about metal and edges, last week we went to a Indie-iltamat in Tavastia, the most famous live music venue in Helsinki. The line-up was Propagandhi from Canada and three Finnish bands No Shame, Anal Thunder and Deathbed. My mate Jere spent Propagandhi’s gig in the mosh pit, but I really enjoyed Deathbed, where my brother’s friend from recently-split Endstand is playing guitar. Of course, the name sucks, but their sound doesn’t. Their Myspace page states:

We gave back to hardcore what it gave us – heart, sincerity and a chance to be heard.

It was a really good night and this autumn I plan to see loads more gigs that have heart and sincerity.