Drive-In

Drive-in weddings were held at a local shopping mall parking area on the "magic" day 11.11.11

I must have missed the rush hour because I didn´t see anyone getting married.

Café Esplanad

When I feel like getting out of the house but want to be by myself. That´s when I jump into the car and head to a café downtown. Last night I was craving for Finland´s largest Cinnamon roll and it didn´t disappoint me!!

Karl Fazer Café

A great 50:60 ratio of Apple pie and Vanilla sauce.

Today I played my first handball game in 6 years

We won by 5 goals so that was a good start.
Here´s our team´s webpage. Nothing in swedish or english yet but hopefully very soon.

Är det här ett Aprilskämt mitt i Oktober?

Didn´t know that Indians follow Ice-Hockey..

The entrance fee was free of charge so that might explain it...

My car has arrived!

And so did the sand in the engine...

This is what I´m working on at the moment

Have a sneak peak at my food picture book here please

Some pictures from the last couple of days

My favourite dog Emma eating home grown Apple

Playing with the camera...

Nice and quiet.. I love it!!!

Nytt jobb?

Hittade två intressanta job på arbetsbyråns sidor. Får se om det blir att ansöka..

Alastonmalli, Kymenlaakson opiston kannatusyhdistys ry, Kouvola.


Joulupukin tuuraaja, ProSanta Oy, Rovaniemi, Ansökningstiden går ut: 18.10.2011, Varaktighet: 1 - 3 mån

Vad satan! Tänker julgubben faktiskt ta ledigt över julen?

As per today I´m officially again part of the Finnish population

Mondagen den 19.9

Jo jag vet att det inte alltid är så lätt att stava rätt..... Jag har själv svårt med att stava rätt på Svenska och Finska när jag blivit van med att skriva det mesta på engelska de senaste åren.

Greetings from Helsinki!

My first McDonald´s visit in Finland in many many years

For those of you being familiar with the Big Mac Index, a BIG MAC costs around 3.95€ in Finland.

My cargo has arrived

Twelve pieces, 145 kg. So that´s 155kg below my free allowance of 300kg. The next question is where should I place all this stuff?

My new crib

This is where I checked in today. Here I will stay for the next weeks, months or years. No hopefully not years though...

This is how it looks like before I mess it up completely.

My neighborhood

Yeah this is close to where I´ve lived for the last 6 years

Arbeit macht frei!

A couple of days ago was the day that I´ve been waiting for a long time. It was my last flight for my current employer. It was a short night flight to Karachi and back but it was still extremely hard to motivate myself for the flight. I even considered taking a sick day. That´s how tough it was to go to work. But as I´ve never taken a sick day without being sick I decided to stay professional until the end and go on the flight. The flight was uneventful and I stayed as professional as possible. No pranks with colleagues, no foul language towards the passengers. Even though I´ve said to myself many times that on my last day I will let it all out to any complaining and difficult passenger. Afterwards I was happy that I did the flight so that I could end this chapter in a good way. Now I´m spending the last week here arranging the last few things before moving back home beginning of September.


Will I miss my job? No not the job itself but the nice and funny people I got to work with is one of the few things I will miss. I will definitely not miss the flights departing at 3am and getting back at noon. I will though miss the discounted business class tickets.
Will I miss the country and the city? Yes I will miss wearing shorts and flip flops all year around. I will also miss the weather in winter which is close to a European summer. I can always come back on holiday but I will never move back. Never say never but yes I will still say never.

So what will I do next? Well the plan as for now is to do as little as possible for the next few months. If I get bored of doing “nothing” only then will I start thinking of what to do next in life. But as for now I need to catch up on all the sleep I missed on for the last 6 years.

So now for the first time in 6 years I can say that I feel completely free and I also feel happy for the first time in a very long time.


Some things from the last 6 years:

-Had two major food poisonings. One in Zürich and one in Luanda Angola.

-Witnessed one cardiac arrest

-One bird strike.
No there wasn´t a group of birds that went on a strike. If a bird flies into the engine it´s called a bird strike.

-Hundreds of passenger complaints but only a few good feedbacks from passengers

-I´ve done around 800 flights which make 800 take off´s and 800 landings.

-Visited places I would otherwise probably never have visited: Luanda Angola, Lagos Nigeria, Calcutta India, Accra Ghana, Tripoli Libya, Manila Philippines

-Crossed the North Pole once.

-Never had any very famous people onboard. Except for some Bollywood actors but they don´t count.

-Have learnt how to speak fluent Indian

-Spent hundreds of layover dinners with colleagues from over hundred different countries

-Spent several days off in bed or on the couch doing nothing

-Several sleepless nights due to the odd departure times

-Many many flight delays but only 2 cancellations

- Met a lot of annoying people. Started disliking many nationalities (including my own nationality) due to bad public behaviour.

-Got robbed by gunpoint


This is something that I listen to a lot lately..

My car is on it´s way to Finland now

Det här hitta jag idag

Det är roligt vad allt man kan hitta när man går igenom sina saker inför en flytt.När jag gick igenom mina saker idag så hitta jag en lapp som jag har skrivit för några år sedan tror jag. Kan någon vänligen förklara åt mig vad jag kan ha menat med detta!? Jag har ingen fans aning varför jag har skrivit ner detta...

Att ett sånt här ställe har de satt min mamma på..

I have a new Idol

One of the world´s best neurosurgeons Juha Hernesniemi.

If you understand finnish language then check out his extremely interesting interview by Maarit Tastula.

Summer in Tunis

The flight itself to Tunis is never a great one because it´s so extremely busy from boarding until landing but the destination itself is really great, especially in the summer. When we arrived in the afternoon the weather was cloudy but very hot due to no breeze what so ever, so most of the afternoon i spent just indoors resting after a busy day. In the evening together with a couple of colleagues we went for a nice dinner to one of the touristic spots by the sea.

After I came back from TUN on Monday I´ve been doing mostly nothing for 2 days. Tonight I´m off to Bahrain and back. Yeah and by the way tomorrow it´s K´s birthday. It will be a quiet night though because the day after I have a flight to India and back that departs at 4am.

The guy down in the water wasn´t too happy about me aiming the lens at him so he started shouting something in Arabic

What a great view someone has from their pool

Finally some cooling breeze

Nice warm weather at 1 am

Casablanca

The flight was very tough and challenging as usual but at least the weather was perfect when we landed into King Mohamed V International Airport in the afternoon. For once after the flight I didn´t stay in the hotel to rest but headed out with some colleagues to look around the city and to try out a Moroccan bath for the first time. There´s no better way to unwind after a long and tiring flight than to have a 2 hour scrub, massage and hot mud treatment.

The day after tomorrow I´m back to the same region when I´m off to Tunisia.

The view from the hotel room. Taken with my phone camera so the quality is not the best.

Moroccan bath

Arabic doughnuts

The market. I usually try to avoid markets in this part of the world due to the chaos and the salesmen´s aggressive style so I was very surprised by how peaceful it was here.

Cactus fruit. A first timer for me.

A sweet tooth´s heaven

Moroccan mint tea