Personal

Flying into Helsinki I had a real sense of arriving home. Odd, considering where we’ve come from, and the fact that we don’t even live in Helsinki. Anyway, it’s nice to be back in Finland. There’s snow on the ground, it’s around 2 degrees, and we’re catching the last few hours of sunlight for the afternoon :)

We’ve just had a shower and change of clothes (at our friend’s house) and feel much better for it. We’ll be on the train in 2 hours. Looking forward so our nice big bed.

Our time in the lovely beaches of Gisborne is drawing a close. Tomorrow morning will see us driving back to Hamilton, for one final evening before our flight out on Friday. 30 hours or so later we’ll be back in Finland, after an excellent 6 week holiday in New Zealand.

Maija and I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and have a great new year’s celebration, followed by an excellent 2008!

We’re thoroughly enjoying our holiday. We’ve had the chance to hang out with almost all of the people that mean something to me, so that’s great. If we haven’t hung out with you and I mean something to you, give us a call :)

We’ve also been sampling all the good foodz, and have been loving the fine weather. Yesterday was a lot of volleyball and swimming. Also been playing a lot of Settlers, yes! Today might bring wakeboarding. The next few weeks will see us at the top of NZ, and then through the middle and the South Island.

So we end up in this hotel right, in Porvo? Turns out it’s a spa; quite a luxurious place. I spent the morning in the sauna, steam room, swimming pool and hot tub. In that order. Nice little bonus that was.

We eventually got back to Helsinki Vantaa and checked in once more. But lo, mysteriously our bags are now far too heavy! The new flights Finnair have us booked on have a checked baggage weight limit of 20kg each. I did my best to persuade the staff that the woman the night before had seen fit to take our bags without a question. Turns out she was likely in error, but Finnair offered to absorb half of the cost anyway. What cost, you might ask? Around 100 Euros. PER KILO! So we were looking at a bill of some 1300 Euros, just to get our bloody bags to New Zealand. At that point I decided no, I am not paying anything for this nonsense, so we began the time honoured tradition of repacking suitcases and underwear in a busy airport. “Luckily” Maija had brought a bunch of crap we didn’t need, like my Claymore sized Maglight, so we were able to shed 13KG (the half way point) and not lose anything we needed at all. Finnair upheld their end of the bargain and swallowed the rest, and gracefully checked our bags through to Auckland.

Mother.

From then onwards it’s gone pretty much to plan, except that neither of us got any sleep on the flight. Finnair offers Sony PSPs in flight (for “the younger ones”) so I spent much of the flight playing Locoroco. Which is honestly the WIERDEST video game I have EVER seen, but I rather enjoyed it. We had an otherwise uneventful flight.

Hong Kong is warm and hazy :) We took the airport express train into Hong Kong Island and walked around for a few hours. We had grabbed a bunch of maps and sightseeing brochures at the airport so we got to see a few local attractions. I hunted for the fabled underground video game and DVD stores, but all to no avail. Bah!

Anyway, Hong Kong airport is seemingly deserving of it’s “Best Airport” award. It’s massive, but I’ve not felt overwhelmed or lost at any point. And the interwebs flow free and fast. Respect! Another hour and we should be in the air.