Tonight, I will mostly be drinking...

...Laitilan Kievari Humalainen, a lovely, hoppy, Finnish brewed IPA. Fully recommended for cool, dark, autumn evenings.

First ice...

If you are a climber in Finland, November is generally a pretty crap month. Dark, dark, dark, cold and wet. Drinking lots of beer is one option to fill the days but it's been chilly this last week and the snow hasn't melted so I thought there might be some ice at Kauhala. There was just enough. A couple of centimetres, but enough to take your weight. Don't swing your axes too hard though as they just bounce of the rock underneath.


But hey, having done the first ice of the season, you have to celebrate. So now I'm having some good beer and watching DVRed last season episodes of Flight of the Conchords on my own. Yeah, I know, wild. It's kinda sad how much fun you can have with some beers and old episodes of Flight of the Conchords. And, did you know that you can write "David Bowie nipple antennae" into Google and get exactly where you want to be?

How great is modern technology?

Brussels; Tehran. No connection.

I'm in Brussels again. It's a sad thing when you have to head to Belgium for better weather, but it's better here than in Helsinki! I'm back in a few days but minimal blogging this week may well be the result.

Apropos to nothing really beyond that I was listening whilst wandering around Brussels after finishing my meetings today, the BBC has a really interesting programme about religious tensions inside Iran and how the version of Shia Islam that President Ahmadinejad follows is increasingly being seen as heretical and anti-clerical by the Shia establishment putting them at odds with the authoritarian government and in league with the democracy protesters who took to the streets this summer after the stolen election.

Now out for what Belgium is famous for. Beer.

Almost summer

I swam in a lake today. It was bloody cold. But the beer was good after. The beer was some sort of german weissbier, the name of which I can't remember. I thought it was rather good despite being assured by my friend that actually it's a bit of a girls beer. Perhaps women just have good taste.

Thought for the day

A wise man, who is from Minnesota where they seem to produce wise men, once told me: "life is too short for bad beer". He is so right. So when I was in the supermarket last, I decided to try some Lia Fail which I haven't supped before and jolly nice it is too. Just try to get over the paint-yer-face-blue cliche Scottishness of the branding, which the continentals eat up with a spoon, and enjoy.

Today, I have been mainly listening to Stephen Fry podcasts, which accounts for my good humour despite the lateness of the hour and darkness of the night.