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Thursday, March 17, 2011

Arrival part I


What is in a name? Is a person’s success or failure attributable to the name of that person? What about certain products? The easy answer is, as always, “no, now leave me alone”, but think about it for a minute. Would Brad Pitt still be Brad Pitt if he had been named Melvin Van Dinkleboffer? Sure, he would still be the same guy, have all the talent, good looks, and general awesomeness, but somehow I don’t see Angelina Jolie running her fingers through some guy named Van Dinkleboffer’s hair or whispering lustily into the ear of a Melvin.
Then there is Engelbert Humperdink (or something). You have heard of this guy, right? You probably do not have any idea why (he’s a singer I think) nor could you name any of his songs and you probably couldn’t pick him out of a lineup. Yet, you know his name. A name, by the way, that he invented. Yes, friends, someone actually changed their name TO Engelbert Humperdink (or something). Why, why would someone do that? Well if he was named John Smith and you still had no idea that he was a singer nor name any of his songs he would just be another shmo, named John Smith. The name Engelbert Humperdink (or something) makes him a celebrity (sort of).
A name can make an ordinary thing seem exotic too. Nobody would ever go into a fancy restaurant, see “shelled slugs” on the menu and think, “mmmm, that sounds good”. But call that same plate of disgusting, slimy, horribleness “escargot” and they are magically transformed from a common pest that you kill on the sidewalk with salt into a delicacy that people pay good money to eat. I also, heard that Toyota almost named a car “One which pulls the wool over well-intentioned tree hugger eyes so we can sell it for a premium even though it may one day speed out of control and crash while also depositing huge lead-acid batteries that are a hazmat and will never decompose into landfills every where, ha ha” but went with “Prius” instead.
Clearly, labels matter.   
In Finland, or more accurately Europe, or more accurate still; the entire world outside of the United States, things are labeled differently. For example, a mile here is a bit shorter and called a “kilometer”. A “kilometer” is made up of 1000 “meters” which is made up of 100 “centimeters” and that is broken down into 10 “millimeters”. I only hope that the randomness of it all makes sense to me one day.
Weight is also different. In Europe a “pound” is what they use for money in the UK so the bathroom scale here it tells me how many “kilos” I weigh. A kilo, incidentally, is less than a pound so I have hatched a sure fire, can’t miss, money making scheme; the world’s greatest weight loss plan EVER (to be sold in the US only). It requires no change in diet, no exercise, and best of all no lifestyle modifications whatsoever. You can now eat all the fatty food you want, sit on the couch forever and still “lose” weight. Simply switch your bathroom scale for one of our amazing “weight-loss” models. This amazing product combines modern European technology with real old world craftsmanship (made in China). These amazing scales will instantly show you a dramatically smaller number when you weigh yourself and best of all it will be completely accurate! I personally went from a sagging and portly 150 pounds to a lean and mean 74 kilos just by moving to Europe, eating lots of pastry, and using one of these amazing scales. Send your money today and I will ship them tomorrow or as soon as I can pop down to Ikea and get them. 
Also, hopping on the crazy measurement bandwagon is temperature which here is expressed in terms of something called a Celsius. Apparently there is a scale of temperature measurement where 0 is the point at which water freezes and 100 is the point at which it boils. Instead of the more obvious and common sense based scale in the US where water freezes at 32 degrees because, erm, because, well it’s obvious why and needs no explanation. Just as obviously, water boils at, um, well it boils at, oh wait I know this one, uh, it boils at 454. No, that’s when paper catches on fire. I know that because there is a book, which I did not read, with something about that in the title. So if water freezes at 32 and paper burns at 454, again for obvious reasons, then water must boil at, uh, oh heck with it, lets just go with 212 degrees because the whole thing seems to be random anyway. Whatever! Who needs an easy to figure out and remember system of measurement based on units of ten? Nobody needs to remember or figure anything out anymore. We’ve got the google for that.
The point is that in Finland temperature is measured in these, so called, Celsius (is it celsiuses or celsii?). Currently in Finland we have negative Celsius. As in below zero, as in it’s so cold we have completely run out of degrees and are currently running a deficit. It has been this way for so long that the locals don’t even say the “minus” when discussing the temperature anymore. It’s assumed. Instead they say things like, “it’s supposed to get all the way up to zero next week” with a cheerful smile, or what passes for a cheerful smile in Finland which is not, as it happens, very cheerful or smile-like. This is not because Finns are unhappy it is because if they smile their teeth will freeze.
The way in things are measured is not the only thing that is different here. When I got on the airplane in Los Angeles I was a person of average height, heck, around the old “barrio” I was even considered tall.  So it seems odd that as soon as I stepped of the plane I was instantly rather short. Well, not compared to the average five year old, but it did seem that no matter where I stood it happened to be several inches lower than everywhere else as if I was always standing in a hole. This became glaringly obvious when visiting a public men’s room (which is called a WC) for the first time. The urinals had been mounted so that the bowl was at around mid-chest making it, quite literally, an uphill battle to pee. I thought for sure it was all in my head until upon my exiting the WC I found Mixo laughing, “holy cow, I feel short”. It was not an illusion, it was true, we were now short. So we scampered off and tried very hard not to get stepped on.
We have been living in Finland for a couple weeks now and the time has mostly been filled with the usual tedium associated with moving to a new place; bank, cable, internet, cell provider, finding a decent happy hour, you know, the necessities of modern living. We have explored our new surroundings and started to settle in. 
So far I really like it here. Sure, its cold outside, but that’s easy to deal with; don’t go outside. Truth be told, I have not been cold yet even though we don’t have a car and have been getting around the city on foot. That’s because the Finns have developed an ingenious way to keep warm; they walk really, really fast. I mean, like, super fast and not just the young business types who are always in a hurry. Fancy women in high-heeled boots, little old ladies with canes, small children, a drunk guy with a severe limp, they all passed us on the sidewalks like Rossi passing a trackday hero, like Schumacher passing a French guy on a bicycle, like me passing gas (easily and often). Bear in mind, also, that the sidewalks are covered in a thick layer of ice with only some gravel spread around for traction. Clearly we were going to have to step up our game if only to keep from getting run over by a group of marauding 1st graders on a field trip. Mixo had no trouble tapping into her Scandinavian blood and picking up the pace, but I have a long, proud, history of ambling along. Still, I made the adjustment and soon found that in a very short distance I was quite warm. So warm in fact that entering any shop, store, or café in which the heat was on (all of them) resulted in my long johns spontaneously combusting.
There also exists in Finland a fantastic (if a tad expensive) public transit system, which I have dubbed “the skinny train” because it looks like, um, a skinny train. The real name for it is Raitiovaunu, which is pronounced “skinny train”.
The cats (remember them) survived the flight and have now made what must have been a very difficult and traumatic transition from sleeping on the couch in LA to sleeping on the couch in Finland. They have come through the ordeal with typical cat stoicism; by complaining loudly and shoving things off the table before licking themselves and falling asleep. Very heroic.
We are now looking forward to our car arriving as it was wisely packed with all manner of necessities for life in Finland; shorts, Hawaiian shirts, and I kid you not, flip-flops. Look it was a very stressful time when we were packing and we may not have made the best decisions, ok. Fortunately, the following shipment has our snowboarding clothes and my hockey gear. Unfortunately, it won’t get here until May.
Up next, in two weeks, will be our long awaited trip to Jerez, Spain for the second race of this year’s MotoGP, but this weekend will be spent on the couch watching the opening round from Qatar. We will be able to see practice and qualifying for all three classes as well as all the racing action. This is exciting to me because in the US there is only one channel that shows motorcycle racing and they only show the Moto GP race. No qualifying, no practice, no 125’s and sometimes no Moto2. To put that in terms most people can understand it would be like your favorite team being in the Super Bowl and it not being televised. The only way to see the game would be to buy a ticket and go to the game. And the game was in another country. That would suck, right? Welcome the world of the American fan of motorcycle road racing.
On that note I would like to congratulate Jason DiSalvo and his ridiculously hard working team for their victory last week in the Daytona 200. I would also like to point out because its my blog and I’ll do what I want with it that before Mr. DiSalvo was a top-level professional motorcycle racer he got lapped by yours truly in a solo 20 race at Summit Point. Twice.  
Pictures and with any luck video to follow. Thanks for playing along and see you next time.

-Josh    

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