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It's Showtime!

It's now about two months I've been here. I have to say, after all the startup trouble, time has started to pass at a very fast rate. At the beginning, as I didn't have the internet connection, my other big hobby did give me something to do in the evenings, and also now as I am online, it's also present quite often. I'm talking about watching movies. When leaving Finland, I took some DVD's with me from my humble archive. At first I watched several movies which I had been planning to watch for ages, but for some reason never got to it. One of them was The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Stephen Norrington. It was a nice action packed film combining different elements of several fairy tales, for example Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I also wathced the mini-series Shogun, where Richard Chamberlain plays the role of Pilot-Major John Blackthorne. The series is based on a book by James Clavell with the same title.

I also ordered the 2003 version of the old classic sci-fi -series Battlestar Galactica season 1 from Play.com for 18£. If you didn't know, Play.com offers huge number of DVD-titles for quite cheap prices. Now I'm watching the old comedy series about the French resistance in a small village during the Second Wold War, 'Allo 'Allo.

My new bicycle

As I have ordered several items from the EBay, I thought to acquire a transportation method from there. There were many different looking and priced bicycles, or velos as they say in here, and as I didn't want to buy too fancy and overpriced bicycle, I tried to find something cheaper. After some thought, I ended up ordering the bicycle which is illustrated here. The price including delivery was 320 CHF, so roughly 200 euros. And the bike is new, so that wasn't too much, I guess. I hope the quality of the bike is more than the price might indicate.

Zürich Airport

At the end of September, it was time for my first trip back to Finland. I did get the tickets quite cheap from Blue1, which is some sort of cheap subsdiary airline to the Scandinavian SAS. The funny thing is, Blue1 has better in-flight services as the more expensive SAS flights. I paid total of 333 euros for round trip to Oulu. Most of the flight time went by solving remaining puzzles in my SuDoku-book. They are quite fun. Earlier I tried several SuDokus in the internet, but it's much more comfortable to play them with a book and a pencil. One thing is making some sidenotes, as it's not so easy to remove the markings from your laptop screen. Also following the lines is much easier with the book. In Finland, I spent some time with my friends and went out to have few drinks. The autumn had arrived to Finland, and the nature was brightly coloured.

I also have now the internet connection. I took 7 weeks living in the country until I got it, save the few days in the another apartment. Getting it is an another story, I didn't count how many times I phoned the service line to ask when they are going to connect it, but on one day I called them 3 times and they gave up and settled a meeting in my apartment with the technician who would see that the lines are working ok. Seems that you have to be persistent to get the connection. While waiting for the connection, I also figured out what was the problem with the router and WLAN access. As I had the cheapest broadband, it offered only one IP. As I had my computer on-line, it reserved the IP for the LAN network adapter, and both the router or the WLAN network adapter were unable to aquire an IP before the previous lease was released. Now I have a faster broadband class, so it offers several IP's, although I need only one now as I have set my router with NAT and it provides LAN IP's for the PC. Now it would also work with the Sony PSP handheld gaming console, so I could play multiplayer games with it. If I had one. The Sony PSP Value Pack costs here only 250 euros, so it would be affordable. If I travelled with a bus or train daily for longer distances, I would definetly purchace the console to have some sort of entertainment while travelling.

Autumn has come to Finland

Did you know, regarding the new copyright law in Finland, which was passed in the government reasently and probably will come to use in some near future, the law criminalises copying copy-protected content even to personal use. This means, that in Finland, it would be illegal to copy my own purchaced DVD's to PSP for watching. The biggest thing which this law makes illegal, is copying your copy-protected CD's to anything, even to your computer or MP3-player. One of the comments how the government tried to defend making such stupid law, was claiming that only small portion of CD's have copy protection. Only few days after the law was passed, Sony BMG declared that it will target 100% rate in copy protections in near future. I wish the record companies would understand that the piracy cannot be fought by making honest people's life more complicated. I think this new law might shoot back at the record company with record sales drop because of the bad publicity it had caused. It's funny as they claim that record sales have been dropping because of the piracy, although the sales figues show only normal fluctuation caused by the economy fluctuation. They should also understand that people have certain amount of money for entertainment, so when DVD and game sales are rising, it might have some effect on the record sales. Instead of investing to un-certain copy protections they should stop spending money on them and even try to cut also other costs and reduce the record prices a little, and make the internet sale sites like iTunes more affordable. Something like this might help the record companies. Fighting with stupid laws is not the right method to correct the problem.

Also here in Zürich I went for a few drinks in the town. I contacted a Finnish guy who also asked few his friends for a drink, and it was quite nice just to sit in a bar and chat with other Finnish people who were living abroad for some reason. Last Sunday I went to a casino in St. Gallen. They tell at their webpage that they have Texas Hold'Em -poker table, which I have played in the internet. After sitting 2 hours in a train, I arrived at the casino. The doorman asked for my ID, and I presented my driver's licence. He said that I need a passport. I told him my passport was at my apartment. He told he cannot let me enter, and after I tried to negotiate with him, he called another guy to explain me that I need a passport to be allowed inside. I tried several times to ask if it would be possible for me to enter with the driver's licence as I had travelled 2 hours to the location, but the guy kept telling me that I need to present my passport. After another hilarious 2 hours in the train, I checked their webpage, and it clearly tells in both English and German that a person must have an ID to prove age to be over 18, and that the ID can be driver's licence or a passport. It doesn't say that the Finnish driver's licence is not accepted. I wrote them e-mail and asked why I wasn't allowed to enter, and why the passport requirement isn't mentioned in the internet page. They have not yet answered me. I wish some other casino had this same poker, so that I could go to some other one, but I think I have to go there again with my passport.

Today I visited a gym in nearby town. They usually don't make shorter contract than for one year, but as I told the guy at the desk that I have shorter work contract here, he told me that he thinks in that case a shorter contract is allowed. I have to call tomorrow to an office to confirm that, but it would be nice to have some sort of sport activity in addition to sitting home. My parents are coming to Zürich this weekend, so I guess we'll go around driving the mountains if the weather is fine. I think it's now time for some hiking in the fairy woods of the World of Warcraft, the most popular massive multiplayer online game in the world.