I am slowly progressing with my studies regarding Asian style cooking. Sometime ago I got a bamboo steamer box and yesterday I found some frozen dumplings (Hsiao Long Pao – dumplings filled with pork and vegetable filling) from the local Asian grocery store, Siam House. The next task is of course to learn how to make dumplings by myself.
Here you can see the bamboo steamer box on top of the wok pan.
I have had so much fun during the weekend; on Friday it started with a visit to friends who just got finished their smoke sauna. It was very nice experience, I haven’t been in smoke sauna for many years.
On Saturday there was a visit to Pori Jazz festival in the program, due to the different schedules we actually didn’t go there until the afternoon but then spent almost whole night there. Pori is quite close to Tampere so it is easy and very nice drive there.
We wanted to see the festivals and get a glimpse to the world of jazz. Pori Jazz has both free of charge and non-free concerts and at least this year the main event in Kirjurinluoto was sold on many nights so we just concentrated the Jazz Street and free of charge concert along that street. The stage along the Jazz Street featured Jippu on Saturday night. The weather was sunny and provided the best for the visitor during that day.
The evening turned into a night and continued in the Voodoocity, which then featured another kind of music more into the younger people’s taste, orchestrated by DJs.
And on the positive side, it was very quiet drive back to Tampere between 3am and 4am – you were only able to see few cars on the highway and most of the time it was just you, a car, a highway and a sleeping passenger. 
I like the quiet and peaceful drives during the night, of course as long as you don’t feel sleepy yourself while driving.
And I just came back from visiting my family from the summer cottage – it was time to celebrate my little sister’s birthday.
Very nice weekend with lots of different things happening.
Pori by night. Unfortunately, there isn’t enough light for a camera phone to make clear photos but you get the point.
Recently I have been again spending some time in the air. Last week I visited Paris for a day (morning flight there and evening flight back) and yesterday I spent a day in Brussels. These quick trips are fun especially because I still like to fly but of course you do not see very much about the city when visiting only briefly the city. It was my first time in Brussels and I can pretty much tell you about the airport. But these work related trips are not about sightseeing so I need to return to these cities later again to actually see and experience them.
When I was flying back to Helsinki yesterday evening we started to land and during the approach we flew through a thunderstorm and storm clouds – suddenly there was a bright flash and quite odd sound, kind of rattling. Some of the lights inside the airplane blinked for some time and then everything was back to normal. Later my colleague who was seated near the wing told me that he was able to see the strike to the wing – we actually were hit by a lightning. Well, now I have experienced that.
Travelling to the airport in Brussels. Once again busy day and you don’t see much about the city.
Morning and sunshine at the Pirkkala airport.
Yesterday I visited a close friend to whom I have promised to visit so many times already. Well, finally I actually did that. Of course being me I had some difficulties to actually navigate myself there as it seems that the area in Ylöjärvi develops very much at the moment and new roads and houses are built everywhere. But finally I managed to make all the correct turns and found their house.
It was very relaxing Saturday, we had a nice meal and we were able to see how much fun the little kids can have in the sunny day (which was supposed to be rainy) when there is just some water around them to play with. Sometimes it would be nice to be little kid again as the life is certainly much more fun during that time.
One of the best parts was dumplings. I certainly need to find those now also to my fridge and also the steamer box. It can be a little bit challenge in Finland but I have now some pointers where to look.
Yesterday I went to Museum Centre Vapriikki to see the China Exhibitions: Jade Princess, Pieces of China and Ni Hao. All of these exhibitions are absolutely fabulous, you can see the burial suit made from small pieces of jade and all the developments happened during Han Dynasty. Pieces of China exhibition will show the development of the China during past years, in photos. Huge collection of photos and posters presenting different aspects of life. Ni Hao presents some of the traditional Chinese dolls from two collections.
I definitely will recommend these exhibitions to everyone who are interested about Chinese culture. In addition, you can visit the other exhibitions too. Velomania presenting the history of bicycles, Hockey exhibition the hockey history in Finland and Poko Records exhibition the history of music industry in Tampere.
I had great time, the afternoon was very perfect and not just because of the museum.
I was spending some time in the Nuuksio National Park on a work related day. After hard-working day there was time to relax a little bit and we had for example some competitions between two teams. We had competition in the following funny categories: archery, air gun shooting, fishing, water boiling and blow tube shooting. It is obvious that my team won.
And here we are waiting for the fish to be cooked and ready for the dinner.
Some of us got bored waiting for the fish and we spent the time in the sauna. The place was just very quiet and peaceful and old hidden cottage for the former President Kekkonen. The place was very excellent, the only problem was the mosquitos, which I hate.