Guess Who Am I

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.

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!

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.

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. The following photo is from my office window over the rainy city.

I like really nice commercials, which just don’t simply present the product but also market it a nice way. Building a real brand around the product and giving the customers a really good feeling their choice is sometimes a difficult job. But when it is successful then it will be very efficient. I am usually quite easy person to get to like the product if the commercial is very well designed.

Look at the following example, it is a pre-commercial telling you that something is about to change in the world.

Who could not like that kind of nice, peaceful but at the same time exciting commercial? The next commercial in the line actually showed the product already.

The same continues with some other companies, take a look at this example, which actually recreates an old game in the real life:

Or here is one very funny commercial but it works very well and you will be smiling after seeing that:

Coca-Cola has always been good at this, how to create an idea inside your head about the product. How to present the product in such light that it will make you feel good about it. And good about the whole company.

By the way, the first commercial was a pre-commercial of the new BMW 7 Series sedan. The second commercial followed the first one revealing the new car, the commercial is now live in many BMW web sites. BMW surely knows how to great some great commercials promoting the whole company.

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.

This week after I returned from China, I was able to register our marriage to Finland. Surprisingly, it was pretty painless operation after getting all the papers ready. When calculating, it took just about two months and now everything is ready on that side.

Now we have already entered the next larger project, Fangfang’s residency permit application has been submitted to consulate and now we are going through that process. Let’s see what kind of different steps there are waiting for us.

Many of you have asked about wedding pictures. Current schedule is that we will be getting pictures next week. So stay tuned and come back again to see those. I will try to put some of the nice ones online as soon as possible.

Fangfang onboard the Finnair flight on our way to Finland.

It is funny how you experience Hong Kong. While the British have given the area to China you will experience the British culture here very strongly. This isn’t the China you experience in the mainland, some things are missing and some are replaced with Western style. Taxi drivers want to speak English with you for example.
All the time I am feeling that I am in London instead, just that there more Chinese restaurants than in London. So, Hong Kong isn’t China just like that, Hong Kong is Hong Kong and nothing else. It is a unique place.