Just yesterday I realized that there are some other aspects also about living in the countryside. One weekend we came back home from the summer cottage after the vacation and noticed that post office had tried to deliver us a letter but we weren’t home (registered letter so they cannot leave it to our box without a signature). It was Sunday evening (about 4pm) and then I realized that actually we can go to the “post office” and pick it up.

In the Finnish countryside we don’t have official post offices any longer as the Post is saving some money; so they have given this task to the local companies, in our case it is handled by a small grocery shop. And these type of shops are open also during Sunday and even open until 9pm. The official post office would never be open at that time so actually living in countryside has it’s positive sides very much – we get much better service compared to the people living in the city.

We have been living in the countryside for some time now. So what does it mean in practice? Hmmm … nothing? We have cable-TV, there are some bigger grocery shops in here and everything works just like you would expect them to work in the city. Actually, we have something the city people do not have. We do not have a real post office but local shop is acting as a post office and that means that our “post office” is open longer than many post offices in the city. Open even during the Sunday.

But this morning we got one reminder what does the countryside living mean in practice. We got a power outage! Apparently a small animal caused it, maybe a bird hit the power line or something like that. But the electricity went out in the morning and there we were without electricity. After couple of minutes we received text messages from our electricity company informing that they are now aware about the situation and while I plugged our mobile Internet modem (ZTE中兴) and opened the electricity company’s website we already saw all the places which were out of the electricity in their map. Pretty impressive. And it was also nice to notice that the break was actually very short one, after about 45 minutes we already had electricity.

This reminds me that we should get some candles and flashlights for the Winter, maybe we will get some Autumn or Winter storms and then it might take longer time to fix all the problems. And besides, living in the countryside means that you should have candles at home. I think I read it in some guidebook.

These squirrels proof that it is always a good idea to try again if you fail.

Here it is again, May Day. I am trying to relax a bit, I spent most of the week in the Helsinki and this upcoming weekend will be cut short as already on Sunday I need to fly to Nice, France.

We recently moved to Kyröskoski to a semi-detached house. I am once again back in the countryside and enjoying the longer drives every day to the office. Instead of the usual 15 minutes of driving, it now takes about 40 minutes to reach the office but that isn’t that bad actually. When you have a nice car and a mug of good coffee then what else could you wish for? Which reminds me that I am running out of Starbucks coffee beans. I should try to locate a Starbucks from somewhere.

Sometimes we have very bad days in Finland during the Winter. Just very cloudy and very cold. Sometimes you don’t see much sunshine. And then just when you lose your hope for sunshine then you will have this kind of day like some time ago. Clear blue sky, almost no clouds, bright sunshine and bright, white snow.

This photo is not from today, today was quite grey day so it is nice to have these memories in the photos to remind us how the good days look like.

I am getting used to our new Efficient BMW.

The new car was delivered yesterday, after a long waiting it is finally here.

While I am flying sometimes more and sometimes less, I sometimes wonder how many airplanes there are in the air at the same time. I found this nice presentation of this, the video shows 24 hours and all the flights flying. Watch it, pretty impressive!

Autumn has arrived to Finland, Fangfang has noted that most of the leaves are now actually in the ground compared to the situation few weeks ago. Funny how life changes when you start actually living family life – suddenly you notice that you are much more busier than before. Not a bad thing at all but just different.

Besides private life, also my work life has been keeping me busy and the next month is looking quite full already in the calendar. But that is okay, I like it busy and exciting.

I have been experiencing so busy life after returning from China and from holiday. I guess that is quite okay because isn’t that something what is supposed to happen after the holiday? But work has been keeping me extra busy now and it looks like nothing will change during this Autumn regarding that. Or next winter … something I am very used to and it belongs to this profession.

It is nice to see how Fangfang is enjoying the life in Finland and how she is experiencing some of the Finnish things, which I am not thinking so much as a special things. Still, while we so often think that we don’t have so many special things in Finland then we actually have many. We just don’t see those when we are spending all of our time around those things.