I'm in sight of finishing my PhD thesis and submitting. That doesn't actually mean it will pass of course, but even submitting will be a huge release. It's boring, boring, boring, but there you go - someone told me a long time ago if you're not totally bored with your PhD subject by the end it suggest you don't know enough about it.
Anyways... pretty poor blogging performance has resulted. But whilst skiving from making yet more changes to chp. 3 today, I found three really interesting new blogs about Helsinki in English. So it doesn't matter if I don't write much, because -at least on Helsinki- these folks are more interesting. Check 'em out.
Jees Helsinki Jees - architecture and urban design, but not in a boring way. Everybody lives somewhere and when you start thinking about whether where you live works or not, it's really interesting.
Instant Kaamos - Seems to be another English bloke who has been here for sometime. He's totally right about the stupid give way to the right sometimes thing.
Helsinki According to PPUsa - a Helsinki photo blog. Loads of great photos.
They're all a bit downtown-hipster feeling, which is absolutely fine, but remember there is more to Helsinki that the inner suburbs (although most of my hipster colleagues wouldn't agree). Downtown is the interesting bit of Helsinki, but somehow it is quite different to the suburban reality of many Helsinkians. Maybe I should try and blog about that myself sometime.
Thanks to Jonas at the ever interesting Svenskfinland in English blog for pointing the way.
So which suburbs would you like to see photographed in my blog? Any particular subjects?
ReplyDeleteI haven't emphasized intentionally on Southern Helsinki but it has a lot to do with practical issues.
Thanks for the kind words. Did you notice how anxious I am to please that I immediately dashed out to blog on Vuosaari despite the photos being so dark!? Not being quite that intrepid on a bike in the Helsinki winter as you my horizons aren't quite as broad. Maybe I'll try to go deeper - and I don't mean underground.
ReplyDeleteEverything is relative of course, but "Being an Alien with little in-depth experience of the Finnish winter, I am still quaintly delighted by snow" doesn't SOUND like it is written by any kind of bloke who has been here for some time.
ReplyDeleteUnlike some of us who can recall the -34.3C in Helsinki in January 1987. Now THAT was a winter.