Cycling and 9/11 / Traffic / Dinner and poetry

Cycling and 9/11

3 years ago I was with S, Julle and Mammu in Darjeeling, India. We were having our daily gin tonics in the hotel and then we saw what everyone else saw. It was a bit shocking and we had indeed some problems with the "war on terrorism" when trying to get back to Finland. They were trying to bomb the terrorists into oblivion in Afghanistan at the time. As we have seen, USA failed. The "war on terrorism" is still on and every day tens of totally innocent civilians get killed in vain. I do not believe that we can remove the reasons for terrorism by killing more and more people. We (everyone living on Earth) have never been as rich as we are now. We do have the means to get rid of worst poverty, to give everyone hope and reason to live, but we are clearly lacking the will.

Today, while cycling around Helsinki, I ran into Peik, who had been attending a meeting about 9/11 in Vanha Ylioppilastalo. There is (in the net and also in some books) a conspiracy theory: it was the US government, who blew the WTC into pieces. Sounds a bit too far fetched for me. See the pages and decide what you think. There are English pages somewhere in the net - use google.

Helsinki is quite an empty city. There are countless parks and small forest for one to cycle almost alone. In some places, not far from the center, one can cycle several kilometers without seeing anyone else. After cycling 1.5 years in China this feels odd, but nice. Most streets are also empty: no cars, no kids, nobody, nothing. I would find it hard to live in any of the countless suburbs, not to speak of Espoo or Vantaa. I really need to see, hear, and even smell people around me. In Kallio it is easy and natural!

This was most likely the last summer day this year. I had to get out, cycle around (Viikki, Mellunmäki, Marjaniemi, Kauppatori, Pitkäkoski, Kannelmäki etc). I had lunch with S in Kauppatori: deep fried herrings and small white fish (muikku). This is Helsinki at its best: sunny, quite many happy people in the center, having lunch outside, meeting friends. I met also PG with his kids in the Prisma supermarket in Kannelmäki. The kids are nice!

Traffic

I thought for some time about the traffic policy both here in Helsinki and also in other places. One of the main difficulties here in Helsinki seems to be, that Helsinki and Espoo cannot decide whether to build a subway from Helsinki to Espoo or not. Most people in Helsinki support expanding the current subway network, some people (and most politicians) in Espoo are against it. This has led to a situation in which we have several alternative ways of solving the Espoo-Helsinki traffic problems: subway, trams, busses, or wider streets for private cars. Now they are making some studies about the different alternatives. It today occurred to me, that one of the fundamental lessons we have learned in systems engineering (in which I am a kind of expert) is that the first thing to agree on is the set of requirements. If we skip the requirements phase and start to define and debate different solution alternatives immediately, we will encounter serious problems. For example: how could one compare subway to trams, if one does not have a set of requirements? I am really puzzled: why have I never seen any requirement for the traffic system here in Helsinki, or elsewhere? I think I could define a general set of requirements for any traffic system. It could be fun. Actually, I have been toying with the idea for the last 3 years and have some ideas, but I have not had time/energy to write them down. Let see if I have time now.

Dinner and poetry

We had late dinner at home. I cooked Italian risotto with truffles and olives - it was surprisingly good, but it did look a bit dubious: as if there would be some poppy seeds in rice porridge. The best risotto I have cooked so far contained cold-smoked salmon and cherve-cheese with a hint of basil. I might start cooking risotto in some restaurant during weekends. Weekends are sometimes so boring. Especially when it is raining and I am too tired to read or write.

I tried to cultivate my literary skills and knowledge by reading some poems by Joseph Brodsky, my favorite poet. S told me that I should read also poems by Lauri Otonkoski and Raymond Carver. I obeyed, of course, and found both men quite good. And alcoholic. Brodsky was no alcoholic, but he was chain-smoker. There is a price to pay for being a poet, I assume. By the way, the favorite city of Brodsky (not counting Leningrad or Peter as he called it) was, I think, Venice, which is also my absolute favorite. I wonder if I ever have a possibility to stay one year in Venice.

Alun perin julkaistu kuukausikoosteessa "Blogs from September to October 2004".