Day 9 Ramblings

Calvin: "A bushel is a unit of weight equal equal to four pecks." What's a peck?
Hobbes: A short smooch.
Calvin: You know, I don't understand math at all

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What I'm really doing here in Finland is having a holiday. My days have usually started with a couple of cups of excellent Finnish coffee out on a little balcony overlooking forest, the forest that the city maintains within its limits for the enjoyment of its citizens. Then I've travelled into the city centre where my friend (call him Travis) works teaching english to Finnish business people. Helsinki feels entirely European to my now North American centric perspective, though the city is only 150 years old (a young'un, by European standards). Coblestones and coloured stone buildings built in polygons corresponding to the angles of intersection of the streets around them are commonplace. Yesterday I took the elevator up the tower at the stadium built for the 1952 olympics. It was misty at the top, but the city was visible, a small, unassuming town dotted with treed granite outcroppings and subdivided by meandering inlets of the Baltic sea.

Tomorrow I leave Finland, travel back through London's Heathrow (where my bag will probably get lost again) and take a direct BA flight to Islamabad. I'm trying to anticipate what it will be like to step out of Islamabad International into the hot, thick, loud morning for the first time since April 1999. It's been a while. I keep running useful Urdu phrases through my head trying to get the grammer right, deciding whether or not to try them out on unsuspecting customs agents. I think I'll stick with English.

There the real adventure begins. Finland has provided a much needed lull in my life. Conversation has often involved my and Travis's shared experiences in Pakistan. Travis's parents still live there and I'll be spending my first few days in the country with his uncle and aunt. So there's some continuity between my stay here and the next phase of my journey.

My gastronomic experiences in the two countries will lack continuity, but I'll be sure to report on them just the same.

I realize I tend to ramble on in these posts. If there's something you're not hearing about and would like to, let me know.

Cricket, for example, has not graced my posts for a while. Those of you in North America especially are feeling withdrawal, I'm sure. Pakistan is asserting herself in Enland after a dismal performance in the test matches. The first one-day match (that's right, as I've mentioned before, the short version of cricket takes a mere day) was rained out. In the second, England appeared water-logged, despite the improved weather and in the third England finally showed up, but Pakistan was able to hang on for the win.