Nothing the Finn did made any sense to me, he was pulling codes from parts of the network I never knew existed, a slight tweak for some, a total rebuild for others. I could see the Dane was struggling to keep up too.
Then I understood it, I’d seen these parts before, never like this, they gleamed here, shiny, newer than any I’d seen before. The Dane saw it too. He flipped. Copenhagen. Trying to walk the Finns footsteps, but the environment held us back. Finally we launched it, the screech of raw processing power, the flashing of log files, faster than anything back home. He flipped again. Tokyo now. Response slow, it was never like this before, impossible to drive. Flip.
We could sense the Finn was forging ahead, new information, more to rebuild. None of us could understand but we’ll just copy him when it happens to us. Hideo was here now, he understood the Finn, knew how we could do it, if only we could drive Tokyo.
Copenhagen again. Quiet now, not the same, it can’t finish so soon. Try to launch again. Getting closer. Flip. The errors fly past, the Dane had missed something – we need to see the maker.
She told us nothing, but gave us all the information we needed. Our farm wasn’t large enough, we need to double the cycles.
We came back and the Finn had done it, all wrapped up in a simple package, as if he had known all along.
…thats enough of that.
I probably already said a little about Tampere itself – the hotel we stayed in was just over the way from a papermill, lending it an industrial air, with smoke (probably actually steam) billowing from chimneys and the low hum of machinery everywhere in the area. It was good to see the offices there, there are several buildings on a number of sites, each with its own canteen. A whole lot of Nokia makes more sense now.
The countryside is beautiful, covered in trees, lakes and little rock outcrops.
Friday night we stayed in Helsinki, in a hotel near the centre. The hotel itself was an 80s interior designers dream, with a huge semicircular restaurant with a set of glass and chrome lifts in the centre.
We had some time before our flight at 5pm to take a look around.
The city itself has a rugged feel to its architecture, in some ways Alpine but not really, most of the buildings are made from the dark local stone. There is a much greater variety of shops than in Tokyo, lots of little independent stores. There was even a shop dedicated entirely to selling wheels, castors like you get on the bottom of furniture.
The cathedral is set on a mound on one side of a square. The square has a statue of Alexander (the 2nd I thnk) in the middle, is surrounded by government offices and has a very Russian feel to it. The cathedral is an imposing white structure, a good deal more welcoming than many of the churches back home.
We wandered down to the seafront where there was a fishmarket going on. Its amazing how much difference it makes to the smell when the fish really are fresh – in the UK I find it difficult to breath close to fishmarkets. There were some little stalls attached to the backs of boats, so they were floating next to the harbour edge while their customers were on dry land.
Further around we could see the port properly – there are some huge ferrys that run from here over to places like Copenhagen and Estonia. The harbour is unlike others I’ve seen, it doesn’t need a man made wall to protect it from the brutality of the ocean since there are a number of islands in the bay.
The people in the country all seem quite friendly, invariably mistaking me for a local – there are quite an amazing number of guys with long hair there. It was weird to go somewhere with so many blonde people after living in Tokyo for a few months, where the only blondes are loud Americans I would generally prefer not to be associated with. Its also good to see some more rotund people – Tokyo is full of people who are so skinny you think they’re going to snap in a gust of wind, I feel positively large here.
We got to the airport with perfect timing then managed to spoil it by getting complaicent when they announced a 15 minute delay to our flight…they called our names over the tannoy while I was still waiting for everyone else to come through passport control – its so much easier as an EU citizen.
After a long and boring flight we landed in Tokyo – where the passport control was a good deal easier for me now that I have a reentry permit.
And now, I’m back and jetlagged to pieces, hoping to get back to a reasonable sleep pattern before returning to the UK in a couple of weeks and breaking it all again. At least flying that way is easy.
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