On Friday night a bunch of us from work took Jari and Seppo out for one last night on the town in Vancouver. Since we basically accomplished everything we set out to do this week, we started drinking at around 4pm Friday afternoon at work. From there, we made our way to the Yaletown Brew Pub for dinner and some more drinks. I wasn’t really sure what these guys would like to see (apparently at the end of the night it turns out they kind of wanted to see a strip club, affectionately called “The Titty Bar” in Finnish), so I sort of did a mini pub crawl with them. After YBC, we decided to hit ...

Now that I’m officially done what I came to do here in Finland, it’s really time to let loose and party it up a bit… I just demolished my first beer here in the Oulu airport, and am now working on beer #2 waiting patiently for my plane to board. I’ve spent the last hour researching cool spots to go drink beer tonight in Helsinki, and I have a few in mind that I’m going to check out later.. I can’t be too drunk or out too late tonight since I have lots to do in London tomorrow, but I’m going to do my best to drink as the locals do. Jari and Seppo impressed me with their drinking ability ...

I approximately 24 hours, I’ll be stepping off a plane at Heathrow and rushing madly to see some of London before my connecting flight to Vancouver leaves in the early evening. I think I’ll probably only have about 3 and a half hours to see London, which I’m sure doesn’t give me much time to see very much. With the time constraints, it looks like I’m gonna shell out $100 for the express train that goes from the airport to Paddington Station near central London. From there, I’m really not sure what I’m going to do. It still seems like quite a haul to get to any of the attractions, ...

I’ve been in Oulu, Finland for a few days now, and thankfully last night I actually got to go out and see a few things. Jari and Seppo were nice enough to take me to a pretty fancy Russian restaurant last night where we had some great food, nice wine, and of course some type of random vodka shot. Afterwards, we sort of started our own mini pub crawl, checking out a few of the bars in the Oulu downtown. I really love the architecture over here. I’m not sure how you’d really describe it, but everything is really quant and different looking. Last night was pretty cool because there was this ...

So my body decided that it would take a brief unscheduled break from sleeping at around 2am this morning.. I decided in that time I would throw a few photos up from yesterday (I don’t have that many). Oulu is pretty quaint so far, and I’m actually really eager to walk around and see some things (since the architecture looks really cool from my hotel window). I have to be on-site around 9 this morning (which means I need to get back to sleep), but afterwards I think my hosts are all taking me for dinner. For the most part, my digital SLR has been in my backpack most of the time. I took a few ...

When I lived in Ottawa, there were times when I used to get a little homesick and miss Vancouver and Chilliwack. When that happened, I was fortunate enough to stumble across a little website called KatKam.ca. It’s a live webcam that points into the direction of the evening sunset, only a block or so away from my apartment in Vancouver. To this day, I always religiously check it out from time to time when I’m out of town, just to see what I’m missing back home. Here’s a shot of the sunset tonight that I missed. I’m heading to the airport now to fly up North. See you guys in about a week. ...

As most of my faithful readers now know, I’m currently in Helsinki, Finland with work. So far, I haven’t really seen much of this city, although walking around it was really awesome to see the old style buildings and narrow walkways. Someone asked me what the buildings were like, and I stopped myself before saying “they look European” since I guess that’s obvious. Yesterday someone flew down from a little town called Oulu to hang out with me for the day and work on some stuff. One of the things that we discussed was me going up there for a few days, since there are more people up there ...

So I have a few minutes to kill here at Heathrow, so I thought I would write a quick blog entry. The flight from Vancouver to here was relatively uneventful. The guy next to me was sort of a prick, and unfortunately for me I don’t think he brushed his teeth yesterday, but I survived. I haven’t slept a wink, so I’m hoping I can sleep for an hour or two on the next flight to Helsinki. I think my next flight is delayed slightly, which means I probably won’t get into the hotel until around 10pm or so. One thing is for certain — I’m definitely going to be ready to have a nice long sleep ...

So, there are a million things I could say about this week, but I’m just too tired.. It’s been long, and I have to get on a plane in less than 24 hours to head to Europe.. It’s nearly 15 hours of travelling, and when I get there it will be cold and snowing. I went out with Derek and Cisco for a few hours tonight, despite being completely bagged. We ended up at Salt in gastown (which is a really wicked wine tasting place). Here’s a shot of me tonight. And here are a few more from the night. Special thanks to Van for lending me his 24-70 f/2.8L for the week in Europe. ...

This morning I came into work fully expecting to have a long day and then go home to bed. But it now appears I have to go home, do laundry, and pack for a last minute trip to Finland. Which is cool I guess, since I’ve never been anywhere in Europe before (which in itself is strange considering how much travelling I’ve done). It’s going to be a work related trip, so I probably won’t have too much time to relax, but I’m taking a few days at the end (I hope) to explore a little bit and see what it’s like. ...