Home

Home.

That’s where I’ve been for the past 2 weeks, hence the lull in writing as of late.

What a journey though – train from Jyväskylä to Helsinki, fly to Frankfurt, fly to Montreal, bus to Ottawa and after a quick shower, jump in a car and drive to Thunder Bay…. (that last part is a 17hr drive across Ontario for those that don’t quite get the grandeur of the Canadian landscape).

This post is a bit more personal than previous ones, so feel free to skip if you don’t really know me but bear with me, the flow of more stimulating posts will come shortly – just figure I need to recap and reflect on life for a sec before jumping into the news and big issues. (I also am not at all up to date in the world around me at the moment… but I am aware that I should not eat Maple Leaf meats!)

North Shore the journey

For those that love a good road trip, the stretch between Sault Ste. Marie (ON) and Thunder Bay, along the north shore of Lake Superior is not to be missed. What a beautiful drive.  Be sure to stop at the provinical parks (Katherine’s Cove is a definite favourite.) The clear fresh lake to your right, rolling hills and a gorgeous sunset make it one of my favourite places in all of Canada.

Thunder Bay the destination

I grew up here, but I’ve often had this “ew, get me out of here!” feel for the city. (I guess many people have this feeling of wanting to leave – especially in an isolated city like TBay, 7-hour drive to get to a bigger city (100 000+) in every direction – easy to understand the need to get out! But as like most things in life, you don’t appreciate something until you step back from it.

So, this time I went back – I saw things a little differently.  The Sleeping Giant, one of the (controversial) Seven Wonders of Canada is just stunning and the sound of whispering aspen (the trees surrounding my house) is extremely relaxing.  I loved taking saunas and jumping in the lake at  “camp” (not a cottage, cabin or kesämökki), (funny how I’m praising lakes, trees and saunas of Northern Ontario while my current home is in FINLAND!). But I guess the real joy was spending time with my family- complete with great bbqs, good drinks and jazz on our new deck:)

And I was happy to see that the art scene is picking up a bit with more local art shops.  One thing that I will just never understand though… the lack of PATIOS! I sat at the beautiful marina and was in awe that the bar didn’t really serve alcohol on the patio (we managed it no worries:)  One of my joys in life is having a wine or a beer on a nice patio!!! Get with it Thunder Bay!

I was there for a family wedding and although I won’t elaborate on it here, for those that were there, I’m sure we can all agree that it was beautifully done and full of personal detail.  All the best to the happy couple:)

But, all in all, it was great to be home. The ihearttbay.ca website will be up shortly, and I’ll be sure to let you tbayers know when it happens.

My many homes…

I’ve always loved moving and living in new areas. I love the excitement of dropping my bags, exploring a city, and making a new “home” for myself. I’m usually pretty quick to accept my new surroundings – and I hope to continue doing that for a few more years yet. And hopefully one of those years will be spent outside of the western world. Need to shake it up a bit and get out of my comfort zone! There’s so much to see in this world!

Although I’d like to be more of a global citizen I’m feeling the Canadiana in me a little more as I get older… hence why I just picked up a book “A Short History of Canada” and I’m currently reading one written by a relative, “Life in a Thundering Bay“

So, although I have no idea where I’ll end up in life (still could be anywhere) I know where my roots are and I think that that’s important.

But, now to my second home – Ottawa. Patios, here i come!

And next week, to my third home – Finland. Nähdään pian! Mä tuun!

confessions of a font b&tch

Another post that has nothing to do about environment etc, but thought I’d share anyways.

There’s an article about fonts (yes, as in word processing etc.) in the National Post that made me laugh.  I’ve  tried to explain to friends my love for nice fonts but usually to no avail.

They don’t seem to understand my disdain for Times New Roman (I try to boycott with Arial sometimes, but even then, can’t say I’m a huge fan of Arial) or my new found love for Calibri (read the article – that’s where I started to laugh) or my fixation of playing around with caps, small caps, lowercase (my favourite), character spacing,  etc.

This is embarrassing but I often judge a company on its font choice. If you’re going to market a product/store and you choose an ugly font, chances are, I won’t pay as much attention to your company.  Yes, just as some people judge a book by its cover, I judge stores by their signage which of course entails their chosen font style.

For instance, in Lyon, I didn’t go into Printemps, a high-end department store, simply because I thought their signs, colour, font, were ugly.  I (wrongly) assumed that it was a ‘cheap’ store because they couldn’t afford better signs. Of course, the first time I went in and saw Christian Dior, Hermes etc. I was a little shocked.  But, it goes to show you that for some people (i.e. me) – fonts do matter and tell a great deal about the word (or company) it represents.

The article ends with:

“A lot of people say, ‘Fonts are the clothes that words wear,‘ and that’s true,” she said. “But type is about more than just making things look pretty on a page. It’s about making it so the meaning of the word comes through.”

Couldn’t agree more.

I love to think about the big picture (as this blog usually portrays) but sometimes, well, it’s all about the small details.

I guess you’ll never shake the marketer out of me;)

Stellar Classic SG Regular - a nice 30s choice

my current favourite

a grey saturday, enlightened

Summer in Finland seemed to come and go within a matter of two weeks – unfortunately back to the greyness of November.

Highly unproductive day (no thesis-ing as of yet…) but instead wasting time watching  TED videos. Nothing on environment, business, politics – just ones on the art of culture and story telling.

Take a look. The world is a truly fascinating place.

Especially loved the “shit knife” story from the National Geographic speaker:)

Eat that Republicans!

For a girl who loves her veggies, I’m all about the “low-hanging fruit” (def. here for int’ls).  So yes, eat that Republicans;)

TIME has a great article about how the Republicans are making fun of Obama for his suggestion that if all Americans inflated their tires properly and took their cars for regular tune-ups, they could save as much oil as new offshore drilling would produce. Of course, the Republicans are having a field day with this comment.

But the TIME article suggests that there could be truth in the statement.

The RNC is trying to make the tire gauge a symbol of unseriousness, as if only the fatuous believed we could reduce our dependence on foreign oil without doing the bidding of Big Oil. But the tire gauge is really a symbol of a very serious piece of good news: we can use significantly less energy without significantly changing our lifestyle.

The article is about tackling the “low-hanging fruit” (one of my all-time favourite expressions) – which is naturally, in this energy context, CONSERVATION.  Study after study shows that the cheapest way to alleviate the energy crisis is to fix the demand for energy, not the supply.  But as I even mentioned in yesterday’s post, most Canadians think give their municipal governments a failing grade for energy conservation.

Of course, some people are now citing that the TIME article is wrong (notice that the link is from the Free Republic – a very right-winged, Dixie Chick hating site) – but I’m not going to try and dismiss the facts of the tire gauge vs.  offshore drilling as the TIME article could very well be wrong and Obama could be easily wrong. (I’m sorry, I don’t care enough to start calculating the actual results of the comparison…and it’s NOT ABOUT THE TIRES!)

Tackling the ‘low-hanging fruit’ is not wrong.

Understanding how much energy we use and where we use it – and then trying to decrease that use – that’s just being sensible.

Looking forward to a cleaner Ontario

Ontario, my home province in Canada, is making me proud.

Lots of renewable energy investments going on in the region. Enough so that we’re making waves in California – the mecca of tech (and now cleantech).

So, while the West tries to beat out the (enormous) amount of bitumen from the tar sands (profitable sure, sustainable, not at all), I like how Ontario is positioning itself.  A good question now would be what the government is doing towards smaller generating renewable power for the First Nations up north, where access to the grid is limited. Also, maybe we need to do a little bit more in terms of conservation… looks like Canadians in general aren’t so happy with government action in this regard.

Remember, both US Presidential Candidates are pretty pro-environment.  (Although Cleantech investors back Obama over McCain six to one). So, once the policies come in – companies who are ready to pounce will benefit.

The winds are changing…

And on that topic, the winds are changing here. It all of a sudden feels like Fall. But, I’ll be home in less than two weeks (first time since I left for Finland last Aug) and I couldn’t be more excited.

Un beau photo de Lyon

Lyon, France, my old dwelling place. Je vais être de retour bientôt!

Lyon at Night

Always a joy to see Stuck in Customs on my feeds. Beautiful photography and interesting way of disseminating them – “creative commons license – feel free to use photos with credits and links – no commercial use without permission”. Especially for those out there that love to travel, go to the site and take a look around.

Great, this is now my backdrop.

The ridiculousness of Facebook

Still love it but saw this on my friend’s blog and made me laugh so hard…

Enjoy.

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On another note, great weekend here in Jyväskylä – the Neste Oil Rally was here although can’t say I enjoy hearing loud cars (seems like even the non-racers want to join in…) the city was alive and colourful:)

Probably one of the funniest moments was watching two drunk Finns tackle each other on the main street in Sumo outfits (like a carnival game)- naked – then proceed to get out of the sumo outfit and continue wrestling naked on the street…  That’s the funny thing about the Finns, sometimes extremely quiet and shy, but when the opportunity comes, completely willing to drop the clothes (ala sauna) – and especially, once alcohol is involved, the shyness disappears fast!