This week in perspective

A great week for weather here in Oulu, but many emotional ups and downs.

As Joanna, Samuel and Daniel were leaving for Newcastle on Wednesday morning, on Tuesday evening Annikki and I asked Joanna and family over for dinner where we got in stuff we thought each one liked best.

I brought the great food that Tingting has introduced me to, Chilli Beef and Chilli Tofu from Ravintola Hai Long (I have a card written in Chinese of what to order) which is prepared especially by the restaurant for the Chinese audience! I brought the fabulous Pailin glass noodle salad (vegetarian) which is made from noodles made from beans (carbohydrate free). This spicy salad is especially loved by Annikki and me. As Joanna is on a sort of low carbohydrate diet, I brought Pailin's great tossed salad that Annikki thinks is really great. The kids wanted egg fried rice from the Royal Garden as Samu says they use a different soya sauce when making this dish. Tony enjoyed everything on offer as he patted his stomach lovingly after the meal!

All enjoyed the food and ate their fill.



When we had finished at around 10:30 pm, Pailin and Unnop closed their restaurant early to come to say goodbye to Joanna and they brought her a lovely gift, the carved soap made by the outstanding Thai artist, Ann.



The real down feeling was the departure of Joanna and her two boys as they will not be back for almost a year. They left last Wednesday and it was difficult for me to hold back the tears to see them go. Maybe one gets more physically emotional as one grows older!



It is always difficult to catch Joanna's face in a photograph with her long hair.

Oulu is a small airport serving just around 120000 people. But what I saw at the airport really appalled me and convinced me that Bush and Blair are the biggest terrorist idiots in this world and have destabilised this world.



These long queues which must be being replicated in every airport around the world is just plain stupid!! Remember the number of planes that were being turned around in the air ever since the latest security alert!! They have made life more difficult, more expensive and totally inefficient - and, of course, these two terrorists are not subjected to the controls they have imposed on innocent people around the globe!

On Thursday it was time to take Annikki's mother in for her time at the Old People's Home. From there it was straight to the flea markets.



After a quick visit home, Annikki was off to the beach to collect more stones.



It was surprising to see so few people enjoying a great evening on the beach.



I took some snaps of the sunset - 21:05 now.

Friday was also flea market day followed by an early evening visit to the beach to collect more stones. No sunset to observe today as we went quite early.





I was shocked to see that even the evergreens are burning up this summer.



Plenty of seagulls were around the shoreline. The water line has receeded this summer by over a couple of metres!

On Saturday I went to see Soda play for the Tervarit Reds (instead of the Blacks). Although they lost 3-1, Soda played one of the best games that I have seen him play. He missed a couple of goals by a hair's breadth. He was outstanding in passing the ball to his team-mates and also getting in a lot of tackles - something he had been scared to do till yesterday. His fitness has improved leaps and bounds but he still needs to go for his morning jog and also control his eating habits as they are plain dangerous for a young sportsperson.

I did not have my camera, but I took some great shots using Pailin's camera. I will upload them when Unnop sends them to me.

I will have a good puzzle next week. Still no-one has sent in the Matricies formats used to solve Einstein's puzzle.