Here I am in Beijing. Guess what kind of surprise waited for me when I arrived to the luggage claim area? The carts were nicely positioned in a perfect row waiting for the passengers. Very nice service.

The next aircraft is already at the gate waiting for us. I am currently in Frankfurt after two flights and next airport will be Beijing.

I am traveling to China again after staying in Finland already for two months. This time it will be a special trip because we are celebrating our wedding there.

So, everything starts with small steps, this trip with small Cimber airplane. Other updates from Tampere-Pirkkala airport are that the roadwork is still going on in nearby highway making sure you need to be extra careful reading those signs, I almost missed an exit while driving here. And security check was extra difficult today.

It has been quite rainy and rather cold weather for a Finnish summer. Sure, Finnish summer isn’t that hot ever but it could be a little bit better than this. Oh well, at least it isn’t that bad to be working. :-D The following photo is from my office window over the rainy city.

It has arrived to Finland, the new Apple iPhone 3G. Actually I was so excited that I opened the package right away and took the pictures later. Hehe. But it is truly a nice experience, the phone, which is very fast and has the usability to help you to use it without too much learning. Actually the manuals, which came with the phone are really thin and I didn’t even open them.

After the thunderstorm we got hailstorm. After that there was some snow left on the ground.

Or in the air … or if we are completely correct then at the airport while writing this.

I am currently in the cloudy Frankfurt having a long layover. But I spent the time very well, I got registered to the pilot project of Automated Border Control. The registration process was easy and fast, you will register your passport and then your iris will be scanned without eyeglasses. After that you should be even able to use eyeglasses in the future scans and it did work for me. This pilot is currently available in Frankfurt airport for EU citizens and I already skipped the traditional passport control queue by using the automated process. This will again make traveling a little bit easier and faster if you travel through the Frankfurt airport and are having international flight.

Otherwise the traveling is going well so far. I wasn’t exactly jumping from the joy when I had to wake up too early (02:30) and then drive to Helsinki to catch my early flight to Frankfurt but I have time to sleep again onboard the airplane. And traffic isn’t actually any kind of problem in Finnish highways during those hours and it is already so bright outside that you don’t feel tired like if you would be doing the same during the winter time.

Fangfang received her residency permit yesterday. That was actually surprisingly fast process, only three and half weeks where the most of the time was spent while waiting the papers to arrive to Finland or consulate to finish the paperwork before sending the papers to Immigration Service office in Finland. After the Immigration Service office received the papers, they proceeded with the decision in one week. All of this is in my opinion just amazing and I wouldn’t have thought that government would be so efficient.

I guess all it requires is that you see how the government works to proof you to believe that your tax money is well spent. So far I am quite amazed how well Finnish Embassy and Consulates work in China and also how efficient our Immigration Service is. Good to say that I am a proud tax payer now.

Next step will be the actual move to Finland, which is going to happen in August.

We got the wedding photos today. I like them a lot, they are much better than I hoped for. Here are some samples, the complete selection of photos is over 50 different photos.

Not yet moving but we started the next big project. We already went through getting registered in two countries and now we are going through residency permit process. Last week Fangfang submitted the application to the consulate and already had the mandatory interview. The surprising information from the consulate was that I could speedup the process by requesting it from the Finnish Immigration Service, surprised to see that our government would be doing that but it is a good idea anyway as we are moving with a little bit tight schedule.