Silly Season – Part 2

The last Friday I was in Finland I went to the Baltic Christmas party which I attended slightly under dressed. I would have been overdressed for the work Christmas parties I’m used too but this was a fairly formal occasion. No problem, I just looked a little out of place in my jeans and short sleeve shirt. The dinner that was served was a very large buffet and was delicious. The desert was not so great, but there was plenty to drink. We were entertained by tales (in Swedish) from Mr Winter while we ate. They also had a band and then drinks didn’t seem to slow down until they finally kicked us out at about 12pm.

On Saturday I drove to Vaasa and competed in bouldering competition (this is rock climbing but without ropes and not more than a few metres above the ground). Caj had heard about the competition from some of his climbing friends in Vaasa, apparently a yearly event this was the first year competition had been open to people outside of the Vaasa climbing club. The competition was held in the Vaasa local climbing gym which is built inside a water tower. The competition went for 4 hours and was based on an honour system of ticking off the routes that you had completed. This was a little difficult at first as the instructions and route descriptions were all in Finnish. After a little bit of help I could soon manage to work out what was what for most of the climbs without having to ask too many times which one I just did. It made for a really fun afternoon with about 20-25 people attending. Caj did very well to get the highest score of 134 and I did pretty well with a score of 104.

The Sunday I basically spent packing and working out what I would take with me back to Australia, this included my bike which involved some very careful packing. On Tuesday night I had a few people around to help me finish off the food in the fridge. After some last minute packing on Wednesday morning and a stop in at the old factory in Bosund on the way to the airport I was off on my way. I had a couple of hours to kill in Helsinki while waiting for my flight to Hong Kong. I used this time to try and find some Christmas presents, have something to eat and do some sketching on a part of the boat that I’d been given to engineer. I was a bit disappointed that when I found the Finnair lounge that I had already eaten. The business class ticket that I had somehow been gifted with got me access to as much as I wanted to eat. As well as a relatively quite space to sit and do a little bit of work before I got on the plane.

Flying Business class is a bit of an experience. You get champagne or orange juice before you even get off the ground. This was a nice treat given that it took 20 minutes to de-ice the plane, a delay that I’ve not experienced before. There is acre’s of room for your legs and a seat that is electronically controlled and almost goes completely flat. This is before mentioning the 3 course meals that got served with real metal cutlery and a wide selection of drinks. The Finnair flight was very good except that I needed to sleep and I wanted to stay awake and use as much of the perks as I could. The Qantas flight I ended up on after a slight delay was just as good except that their orange juice was real Australian juice and was just so much better than any that I’d had in the past 6 months. I kept myself awake on this flight and used the time to watch a movie or two and try and get some work done (not the most effective but I made progress at least).

Nic and Alex picked me up from the airport and I stayed at their place during my short time back in Sydney. Thanks heaps guys, it was a great. I put my bike together so I could ride to work in the morning and then tried to get some sleep. I was up as soon as the sun was though (I hadn’t seen it for a while) so I left early and got to work in plenty of time. Stopped to get some breakfast from the green grocers and bought some mangos which could have kept me going all day on the smell alone. The banana’s I bought were fantastic also. I sailed my boat over the weekend before Christmas and was at work again until Tuesday afternoon when Alastair picked me up with a large box behind his tiny Barina. Inside the box was my Christmas present to myself – a brand new boat, which I had just enough time to take a peak at before leaving in the shed at Balmoral to go catch a flight for Melbourne.

Christmas was a pretty quiet one at home and after a couple of days I followed mum and dad out to Donald to visit Jen, Harry, Xavier and my newest nephew Hamish. I then proceeded to head north again with the car to spend a week playing with my new toy and had spent new years in Sydney (which was an interesting experience – the fireworks were good though). I worked from the 5th to the 9th and also the mornings of the 12th and 13th. I drove back to Melbourne on the 15th with the new boat in tow. On the 17th I flew to Sydney for a dentists appointment and also had lunch with Ross and Gemma who were up there for the weekend. I also fitted in going to an engagement party in Melbourne on my return. Then on the 19th I went to Geelong for the moth national championships. After 5 days of racing in variable conditions I finished quite respectively and even managed to get a win in heat 2. This was a pretty good effort given the preparation that I had. Sunday afternoon was spent packing up the boat so that Marty could take it and the car back to mum and dad’s place, and then the evening was spent at the presentation night. Australia day was spent travelling back to Sydney; I shared the driving with Les to avoid paying for yet another flight (Thanks for the lift mate!). I finally caught my flight back to Finland on Tuesday the 27th.