First snow

I have been following the career of the rock band Nightwish with great interest as they were among the first Finnish rock bands to become world famous. With MTV it has been made easy and I an especially fond of their latest promotion video for their song Amaranth. In the video there is a living replica of one well known Finnish painting, the wounded angel and I think this is a nice way to honour your own heritage.

The Wounded angel painting was first painted 1903 by artist Hugo Simberg and is today to be seen at the Ateneum Art museum, the Finnish national Gallery in Helsinki. The painting has also been repainted as a mural in the Tampere Cathedral with small variations in order to replace the painting to the vicinity of the city.

Anyway, two not so fun events took place today. And that is never fun in one single day.

I do not consider visiting the dentist as fun, at least not when having cavities to fill and even worse is when you have to remove and old filling in order to replace it with a new one and having to tell your optician you need new glasses to replace the ones you were given last week is not an easy thing to do. Well this time it all went with less difficulties than I had anticipated, the optician was just amazed at the ability of my eyes to lie, to adjust to their uttermost resulting in a renewed prescription. But the dental work done was then harder to cope with, the work was done swiftly enough but the after pains have been agonizing despite heavy painkillers and have kept me up all night.

And today the first snow for this winter is expected to fall upon southern Finland, which is much earlier than it has used to be during my years here. At least it will only be a swift encounter as the ground still is fairly warm and the weather is expected to turn a bit warmer again.

And strikes are expected in many industrial areas, the food workers union is planning an action around the country to protest against something, and the nurses in the university hospitals around the country are considering whether to hand in their resignation en masse or what they will do and I am beginning to review my thoughts about the Finns not being as strike prone as in some other European countries.