36 9 today, thanks to everyone that has sent a card or sms especially the friends with whom I haven’t been in touch with recently.

A couple of daily free papers you get on your commute are uutislehti100 and metro (which you can download in pdf format the latest edition). The big paper in Helsinki is Helsingin Sanomat but maybe thats too advanced for me yet. There is a weekly printed newspaper printed in easy Finnish called selkouutiset or clearness news, you can get from the academic bookshop can’t find a web link at the moment.

There is a simplifed news podcast released every day by TLE which I’m finding really useful.

A great links page at the university site.

Also see my first post about Learning Finnish.

My Friend Nick O’Neill just won the 2007 BD/Zumtobal photography competition with the entry above. You have to take the photos with a disposable camera and then send it in o the organisers before its developed, the results can be great. There were some other good photos there too so its worth checking out all the shortlisted entries at the article.

I am going to Copenhagen on an office trip in a few weeks time. Lots of Architectural sightseeing to do and maybe just walking round the city enjoying the atmosphere.
So I’ve been doing a bit of research and have to say that CopenhagenX is easily the best Architectural website for any city I have yet to see. Everything is mapped, there are podcast walks of the city, and its all tied up to real life exhibitions and publications. Also some other sites I will be checking out are visitcopenhagen, and the Danish Architecture Centre.

Does anyone have any recommendations places to see, shops to visit, a Danish CD to buy or some particular favourite place?

Shish Barak from Kamal Mouzawak serves 6 as a main course.

Ingrediants

Filling

• 2 Large Onions
• 3 Tablespoons of Sunflower oil
• 75g Pine Nuts
• 500g Lean minced Beef/Lamb
• Salt and Black Pepper to taste
• 2 Teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/2 Teaspoon Ground allspice
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1-2 tablespoons pomegranate molasses

Pastry

• 6 sheets of filo pastry(170g ish)
• 85g Butter, melted

Sauce & Garnish

• 1 kg Natural Yogurt (note this was too much when my brother cooked it try half!)
• salt
• 2-3 cloves garlic
• 4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tablespoon of crushed dried mint

Cooking Instructions

For the filling fry the onions until golden. Add the meat, salt, pepper, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, then pomegranate molasses and cook for a couple of minutes. In a small pan fry the pine nuts in a drop of oil for a short time then add the meat and let cool.

Cut the filo pastry sheets into half, into 2 rectangles approx 30×24cm and pile on top with long side nearest to you. Brush the top sheet with melted butter. Put a line of filling about 3-4 tablespoons, along the long edge, to about 2cm from each end, and roll up into a long thin roll. Then shape the roll into a tight coil, creasing it a little as youo do, so the pastry does not tear, and place it on a piece of foil (not greased) on a baking tray. Repeat with the remaining filo and the filling, placing the coils next to each other so that they are held tight. Brush the tops with melted butter.

About 30 mins before you are ready to serve, bake the pies in an oven pre-heated to 200 c 400f gas 6 for about 25 mins until golden.

For the sauce, beat the yoghurt with a little salt and the garlic, for the garnish, mix the olive oil and the dried mint. Serve the pies as they come out of the oven. Pour about 3 tablespoons ypghurt over each, and dribble a little of minty olive oil.

Variation

For Kamal’s veg. filling fry 4 large onions in 4 tablespoons oil until brown, add 150g, pine nuts, salt, papper, 3 tablespoons of ground mixed spices (cinnamon, alllspice, nutmeg, ginger, cloves, cumin,) and 1 1/2 tablespoons pomegranate molasses.

Update:

We won messily 2-1, so we are World Champions for a couple of days at least.

Update2:

Scotland were easily beaten 2-0!

I just noticed a new English language magazine now publishing here in and about Finland called freemagazine. So that makes three publications by my count (the ovi is pdf of website ony at the moment I think). The three are Six degrees the ovi freemagazine. All worth a checking out.

Update: Free magazine has an interview with Mikael Niemi who wrote Popular Music.

(excellent photo of centre of Tampere by vanikat)

Last weekend we went to Tampere and I had a quick guided driving tour of the city at night although I couldn’t afford any time for a closer look. I like the feel of the city, it seems to be thriving and well worth a visit. Reima and Raili Pietilä are the most famous modern architects who worked in Tampere. Also the Näsinneula tower sits in the centre of the city overlooking everything, and I think it’s still the tallest building in Finland. My nightime photos came out ridiculously badly, which is why we will be getting a new camera very soon.

Update: My feed path has changed also so anyone subscribing to one of my feeds should check it and resubscribe at the same address.

I Haven’t been writing for a few week because we have a new arrival called Anna who has been keeping us busy but happy. She arrived on the 26th June and both her and Kirsi are doing really well. Eer and now I’m back at work and back online! I shall start to put a few photos out on flickr for those who are interested.

An interesting postcard came through our door a few weeks ago. It has a link to a website on it explaining the details (in Finnish only I’m afraid). It comes from a number of villages in Finland, and is an appeal to ex-members of those villages to relocate back there, and it seems to be part of a campaign to get families to move back to those villages, in short a counter-urbanisation strategy. My wife comes from Hartola which explains why we got one, and it seems they are backing up their PR with heavily discounted land prices to encourage people to buy and build there. It is interesting that Finland urbanised later than most European countries but very quickly after WWII and that now the paper industry (production at least) seems to be on the wain here that these villages want or need to try and keep their populations, and fight the general trend of urbanisation. Finnish people, you can’t help but notice also have a love affair with nature, or at least the Kesämoki or summer cottage, where the Finnish family can escape from the city for the summer and get back in touch with their country roots. This paper is really interesting insight into the issues for Finland for their urbanisation, ‘the great move’ in the fifties and sixties where the baby boom generation was born in the country but now mostly lives in the cities. The postcard is an interesting strategy to challenge the slow decline of the countryside outside of the Kesämoki lifestyle.
Also see Stats in Finland.

As an Architect you win some and you lose some, I took part with my office in a design competition for Aviapolis Tower which we lost. Davidsson won, and the winning entry image is top left. Its an interesting development mainly because of its height. At about 100 metres high it puts this project at a similar height to the tallest buildings in Finland, they just don’t build tall here. But the last project I worked on while in the UK has just won a couple of awards at the Scottish Design Awards 2006 , The Royal Bank of Scotland World Headquarters by Michael Laird Architects which I worked on for almost three years (see earlier post) Oh and I had to draw that helical stair so I hope you like it. Image is top right.

Also see rbs gogarburn_hq.kmz

I recently went to Frankfurt on a business trip. I would have loved to see more and get a proper sense of the place but I ended up with only a bitterly cold night to have a quick look round. Such is the dislocation of coming from a meeting room called Barcelona in Helsinki to one called Paris in Frankfurt. Norman Fosters Commerzbank looked like something from a Flash Gordon film of the thirties in the night with the bright yellow lights, not at all like the sleek hi-tech silver product of the daytime.See here my photos of Frankfurt.

• Boards of Canada-the campfire headphase
• Herbie Hancock-My Point of View
• Gilles peterson Presents -the BBC Sessions Vol.1
• Susumu Yokota & Rothko - Distant Sounds of Summer

Giftwish… ahhhh what a wonderful book! I still re-read it from time to time. True, I am an avid fantasy reader and a big Tolkien fan, but I think Graham Dunstan Martin is a great writer, comparisons apart. Giftwish is the archetypal story of a boy growing up and passing tests in order to prove that he is the “chosen one”. But don’t be fooled by the apparently simplistic storyline. The language is superb, the descriptions breathtaking. I can close my eyes and see myself riding in the woods with Evan. Martin makes you go there, and actually care for his characters. If you like good fantasy stuff, i.e. are tired of sad ripoffs, give Giftwish a chance. And in the middle of Harry Potter fever, a book containing a fair share of magic shenaningans (and an interesting explanation of magic) is surely worth straying far from the beaten track.

So what are you all waiting for? go order…..

The food was excellent, I always think its a good sign when the menu has quite limited choices, and the wine list apparently is very good as it comprises of wines you can’t get at alko which has the wine monopoly of distribution in Finland apart from Restaurants. Our wine really was excellent maybe edging out the food. Definitely worth considering if you have had enough of those trendy modern interiors most common in Finnish Restaurants

Most of the great men in history have loved cats : Churchill, Newton (inventor of the cat-flap), Dickens, Abe Lincoln, P,G.Wodehouse. By contrast, many of the villains have hated cats , or preferred dogs: Hitler, Napoleon, Mussolini, Stalin.

(stumbling & mumbling)