Can you believe that there are only 30 days left!? It is in fact remarkable how relatively quickly time has gone by here. I now have a couple of short weeks coming up (I'm off to the UK for a long weekend to attend my 10-year high school reunion) and then a visit from some old friends to the summerhouse later on in August. I have also been entered into the Finnish army's tennis tournament by my commanding officer, so that should keep me entertained for a week or so. So all in all, it's not too bad. Then once I finish here, it's off to Portugal with some old friends for 3 weeks of well-earned R&R before returning to San Francisco and the working life. It all seems so attainable now.

Not that the work is any more interesting. I am now single-handedly responsible for the weekend, holiday and transportation planning and organisation for the 240 gimps in my batallion. Last weekend was the first time they got to leave the barracks for the weekend, and let me just say, it was chaos. Those damn fools didn't have a clue as to what they were supposed to be doing, so pretty much all of last week I was bombarded with all kinds of questions: "Can I book two singles instead of a return?", "If I take a train to Bear Beach, can I continue by bus to Mole Hill?", "What time does the last bus from Buttfuck Nowhere leave for Even Further Afield?" Honestly, it's as if these buffoons have never travelled on planes, trains and automobiles before, and I'm supposed to know every answer to every question, right then and there.

Anwyay, enough complaining. At least it keeps me busy, and on the positive side, the gimps are all still saluting me and addressing me as "Sir Office Clerk, Sir", which keeps me and the officers entertained.

And now to the rather uninteresting factoid behind the title of my post. I always knock twice. Not once, but twice. You know why? Want to know why? Probably not, but I'll tell you anyway. I always knock twice because those are the rules in the army. Two firm knocks on the door, and wait for permission to enter. Take three steps in, salute, address the occupant of the room in the appropriate manner, state your name and your business. Done. With me, it's always very simple. Mail. I am the postman, riding around on my little green bicycle, with my mailbag slung over my shoulder. I arrive, I knock, twice, I deliver the mail. Sometimes I even receive mail in return, to be delivered somewhere else, to some other officer, where the whole exercise begins again. Most of the officers around the place know me by now, and I like to think that they are happy to see me. Perhaps I am a little breath of fresh air in their otherwise dull and meaningless existence. "Aah, Mountain, there you are. Anything interesting for me today?" they ask me. "Well, sir, we'll just have to wait and see, now won't we?" I quip back, deliberately mixing the formal "sir" with the more informal tone and sentiment of the message. "Oh, Mountain, you joker you, what are we going to do with soldiers like you?" they retort, in mock despair. And thus the exchanges on my postal route continue, developing an ever-deepening bond between myself, a mere office clerk of indeterminable origin and them, the elite officer class ruling the Finnish military from their little forest hideaway on the Western frontier, a safe 500km from the Russian border.

Wasn't that interesting? Aren't you glad you read this far? And now that you're this far, you can hardly stop, right? You might as well continue to the end. After all, what else are you going to do? Work?

I'll be kind, and spare you. As you may have gathered, I am a little short of material today, so a random purging of my random thoughts is what you'll have to make do with. Until next time, when I might treat you to a tale of Spreadsheets and Statistics, in the military style.

-You want answers?
-I want the truth!
-You can't handle the truth! Sir, we live in a world that has paper. And that paper has to be written on by men who have pencils. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Senior Lieutenant Leafhill? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for the soldiers of this unit and you curse the sleeping office clerk. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that my oversleeping, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my sleepy existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives... You don't want the truth. Because deep down, in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me in that office. You need me in that office.
Us office clerks use words like 'photocopying', 'pencil sharpener', 'triplicate order form'. We use these words as a backbone to a life spent managing paper and the inner intricacies of the office. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain my beauty sleep to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom from Russian paper aeroplanes that I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it! I'd rather you just said thank you and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a sharpened pencil and fill in a form. In triplicate. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think about my sleeping!
-Did you oversleep?
-I slept the way you ordered me to.
-Did you oversleep?
-You're goddamn right I overslept!

As you may have guessed, my military tribunal did not go down quite like this. It was along the lines of:

-Did you oversleep?
-Yes, I overslept.
-Did you not hear the wake-up call?
-No, I did not hear the wake-up call.
-Did the petty officer in charge of the wake-up call not wake you up?
-No, the petty officer in charge of the wake-up call did not wake me up. I'm a heavy sleeper. I like sleeping.
-I have spoken to the petty officer in charge of the wake-up call and asked him if he woke you up. Do you know what he said?
-No, sir, I do not know what he said.
-He said that he can't remember if he woke you up. What do you think of that?
-I don't know what to think, sir.
-Well, due to a lack of evidence about whether or not the petty officer in charge of the wake-up call woke you up, we have no choice but to dismiss all charges against you.

And thus I am once again a free man.

It appears that the Finnish army has a threshold beyond which they are not prepared to let me continue with my free-wheeling style. That threshold was crossed today. This morning at 06.20, to be precise. Once again, as per usual, I had stayed in bed beyond the wake-up call time of 05.00. You see, 05.00 is just soooo early, and I like my sleep. So there I was, happily dreaming happy dreams, all by my lonesome, enjoying the best hours of sleep that I get all night, what with all the snoring and sleep-talking and shuffling around and Satanic music listening that I have to endure when my dorm mates are there. Somewhere, far, far in the distance, I heard someone call my name. It fit in rather nicely with my dream, I think, something about leaping and frolicking through a field of corn on a sunny summer's day, and there I was, bounding towards the source of the sound. As I got closer, the shouting got louder, until I was rudely awakened from my sleep. I was all ready to get belligerent and shout back at whoever was ruining my beauty sleep, until I opened my eyes, looked up, and realised what the source of the shouting was. It was, of course, none other than the assistant commander, senior lieutenant Leafhill, and so I cut my belligerence rather shorter than I had hoped. When he realised I was finally awake (I think he'd been there quite a while trying to wake me up) he had but one comment for me: "not too impressive, is it Mountain?" I was left to ponder the meaning of his mysterious words (what, was the room untidy? should I have saluted him from my bed? was I ignoring some important piece of officer-soldier protocol? had my todger slipped out from under the sheets?), but not for long, because I realised that I should probably get out of bed rather sharpish.

To cut another long story at least a little shorter, he decided to launch an official enquiry, meaning I am going to be the subject of a military investigation for "unsoldierly conduct". I have already filled in my statement in front of a witness ("my defense, your honour, is that I was very, very tired because I unnecessarily watched crap television last night until midnight and, let's be honest, 06.20 is still pretty goddamn early if you ask me") and waived my right to a military attorney (was that wise? Perhaps I should contact the guy who got OJ Simpson off the hook - do you think he'd take this case on, pro bono?). I will, of course, keep you posted, but I hope that my punishment will be no worse than a warning. Though the amount of paperwork we need to fill in simply for over-sleeping has me a liiiittle worried.

What's the next logical step in the training of a Finnish army office clerk, once he has mastered collecting mail, photocopying, placing orders for toilet paper and writing out train tickets by hand? Why, it's off to the shooting range, naturally.

Indeed, that is what I did today. After biking 4 kilometres to the shooting range in order to finalise the train ticket holiday list for the coming weekend, I was told that I would have to wait half an hour before I'd be able to take down the final names for the list, and so I started having a little chat with some of the officers there. They were curious as to what I was doing there, a 28 year-old from San Francisco (they were aware of its existence, and that it was the "city of homos"), and so I told them a bit about what I was up to, how I served my basic training period 10 years ago, and so on, when the topic of conversation turned to shooting (as it so often does, naturally). They asked whether I still remembered any of my training from 10 years ago, and I told them no, so they decided that with the time we had to kill it would be fun to watch the office clerk fire some rounds. So they grabbed the machine gun and the semi-automatic, a boxload of ammo and hearing protection, and took me onto the range. Now, normally training is highly supervised, and safety is absolutely paramount, so soldiers are only ever given 3 or maybe 5 bullets at a time, and someone watches over them like a hawk, counting the number of shots fired. There is nothing more scary than an 18 year-old with live rounds left over after an exercise. But this time, since it was just me, and we were out to have some fun rather than to learn any skills, they loaded up both the machine gun (100 rounds of 7.62 mm bullets) and the semi-automatic (30 rounds of 7.62 mm bullets) and let me loose.

Holy crap, is all I can say. The machine gun was simply insane. It takes over 2 minutes to load a machine gun belt with the 100 bullets, but it takes about 6 seconds to empty the son of a bitch. And let me just add that it has a hell of a kick to it. I was, naturally, totally under-dressed for the occasion, in just a t-shirt, and so each one of the empty shells flying out from the side of the gun burned my arm to crap (they get rather hot, I discovered). My right arm now looks like I have chicken pox. The officer "supervising" me (though I'd characterise it more as "egging me on") told me to try spraying bullets from side to side, strafing three targets at once. I don't think he expected me to manage this, because he was thrilled when I was done, and told me that he was very impressed - not many people are apparently able to control the machine gun, and indeed, they don't let lightly-built soldiers handle the weapon at all, fearing that they might kill everyone around them as the bullets fling off in every which direction.

Pleased that I was such a natural with the machine gun, I switched over to the semi-automatic, a weapon that I actually used to be quite good with (this was the first time I'd fired a machine gun), and emptied the clip into the targets with joyful abandon. When I was finished, I asked the officer how I'd managed. He was quite frank, and blankly told me it was shit. Fair enough, I thought. Sharp-shooting was unfortunately not a core class at business school.

Well, let's just hope I won't be needing a semi-automatic in my little office any time soon. Though I might make a request to set up a machine gun nest behind my desk.

Like all good stories, this one, too, has a moral, raises questions, and provides answers to some of the key questions in life. And the question I hear you all asking yourselves at the end of all this: "Is the pen mightier than the sword?" That, I am afraid, I cannot answer, but I am fairly certain that, no matter how good your penmanship, you would come in a distant second to a gimp with a machine gun.

Thanks to Mike and the Bala for their opinions - please, others, let's get some healthy debate going on. And, yes, perhaps it is true, Mike, that I have a biased eye. But I can't help but feel that Israel has squandered every bit of goodwill it had after the Holocaust and at the time of the formation of the state of Israel through its heavy-handed tactics in the region. While it is by no means the only brute there, it is by far the most heavy-weight brute, due to the US backing it gets, both in terms of military assistance (Israel is the largest single recipient of US foreign aid) and in terms of the legitimacy that the US gives Israel by never criticizing its actions (the strongest message Bush has sent out so far is to say that Israel has a right to defend itself, and he "hopes" that civilian deaths can be kept to a minimum).

In my opinion, the strongest always has a responsibility to exercise restraint - after all, because it is the strongest, it always has options available to it. The weaker side often has no other choice but to lash out. They have been backed into a corner, with no other way out. Denied a political solution by Israel, the US and to a lesser extent the EU, the Palestinians, Hezbollah and indeed all disenfranchised Muslims in the region are turning to the one thing they have left - violence. Of course no one is condoning terrorism, and it is cowardly for terrorists to hide among the general population, but do Israel's means justify its stated end, which is to rescue its captured soldiers, secure its borders and safeguard its civilians? Not by a long way. Every day the news of civilian deaths in Lebanon gets worse, and the body count just keeps on growing. The latest figures from the BBC have Lebanese deaths at 280 and Israeli deaths at 28, mainly civilians. That, as you may well be able to work out, is ten times as many. Are Israeli lives worth ten times as much as Arab lives? Of course not. But is this ratio any surprise? Of course not, because Israel is pounding the whole country of Lebanon with its US-funded and US-supplied military arsenal to flush out the Hezbollah terrorists hiding among the population, but also to mete out a collective punishment on the entire country for what Israel sees as tacit support of Hezbollah aims and activities. But Israel should stop to ask itself: will killing ever more Arab civilians stop the terrorist actions directed against it, or make them worse?

This may have gone slightly off the topic, but I guess it clearly answers Mike's point: yes, I am biased, but biased for a reason. Just as a neutral observer will often support the underdog, so I too find myself compelled to give my support to the Arabs, now reduced to living as second-class citizens in an apartheid state. There is no justification for terrorism, acts of murder against Israeli civilians committed by non-state groups. But there is even less justification for the murder that the Israeli government, a sovereign state, is committing against the Palestinian and Lebanese civilians at the moment. This ongoing violence is the very reason that Israel is hated by its neighbours in the region, and the actions in Lebanon are only going to make it worse. Two wrongs never make a right, and I believe that the onus is on the democratically elected government of the sovereign state of Israel, not the rag-tag collection of Palestinian and Hezbollah fighters, to halt the escalating violence.

You should read the blog and check out the pictures in The Angry Arab News Service, which has quite a following online. Some of them are pretty horrific, and will of course never be shown in the mainstream press.

From: "The People of Satakunta County" daily newspaper, Wednesday July 19th

Stolen Moosehead Recovered, Police Seek Owner
Police are seeking the owner of a stolen moosehead, anonymously delivered to them last night. There are few moosehead owners in Satakunta County, so police are hoping to identify the owner of this piece promptly. Mooseheads in good condition can fetch up to €1,000, though this particular piece has been damaged, presumably by the thieves. The police are, however, also in possession of the missing antler.
In a similar robbery incident last year, a stolen deerhead was recovered by the Pori police, and returned to its owner.

Tourists Surprised By Sunshine In Finland, Couldn't Care Less About European Union
Tourists visiting Finland this summer have been surprised by the sunshine they have encountered here, but have not shown interest in Finland's chairmanship of the European Union this year.
We decided to speak to some Americans, so our eyes were on the lookout for elderly couples with nametags. American tourists can also be identified by their waddling walks, the result of spending their lives in cars. Mr and Mrs Hobock were duly spotted, from San Diego, Southern California.
"The European Union? What is that?", asked a stupefied Mr Hobock. "That kind of thing doesn't interest us", added Mrs Hobock.
The Hobocks are just the kind of American luxury cruise tourists that Helsinki hopes for. They stay in the most expensive hotel in town, Hotel Kamppi ("the beds are as comfortable as back in the States", Mrs Hobock notes) and go shopping.

Thieving Trio Caught
A three-person gang attempted to steal €80 from an elderly woman's purse on Tuesday in Korpilahti on Tuesday. The two young men and one woman attempted the robbery in broad daylight in the center of town, and were apprehended after bystanders foiled the ambush.

The New York Times To Shrink Its Page Size
The New York Times is to reduce its page size in an attempt to cut its costs. The newspaper announced on Tuesday that it will abandon its traditional broadsheet format in favour of an almost 4 centimeters narrower page size. Previously the Washington Post, USA Today and the Los Angeles Times have all reduced their page size.

And that was that. The main news in central Finland today. There was also a piece about children learning how to do laundry the traditional way, how the peat harvest is early this year due to the warm temperatures and how Finland may have been tapping the phones of the Indonesian embassy in Helsinki. The moosehead story was frontpage news.

I did like the interview with the San Diego Hobocks though. I can assure you that I translated the piece word-for-word, right down to the waddling walk.

Would you believe it? Of all the posts in all the world's blogs, the one that makes the headlines in dealbreaker.com, that famous finance blog from the creators of CFO Magazine and CFO.com, is the entry about Fishboy talking back to the drill sergeant on day 10, denying being queer. In order to protect his privacy, I have removed references to his actual name as per his request, but my own pride and vanity will not allow me to entirely remove the entry. And, unfortunately for Fishboy, the dealbreaker blog copied and pasted my entry, so his name is there for all to see. But it can't be a bad thing, right? What's the old adage in show biz - "any news is good news"?

You can read the dealbreaker blog entry here. You'll note that RandomHookup, in the comments section, has tried to make some kind of witticism about a "Finish" MBA being a porn joke, but I'm not sure that this kind of CFO humour really works in the real world.

A little military formula:

An army of young gimps + A 10-year age difference = R-E-S-P-E-C-T

While age has numerous drawbacks in the army, it does provide one little perk, especially with this new batch of gimpy recruits. They have no idea what is going on, who is who, what is what, where is where and when is when, and so they are playing it safe. Which means that whenever I walk by, they salute me. It's actually quite enjoyable, and while they are by no means obliged to salute me, as I don't actually outrank them, I am in no hurry to correct their behaviour. As they snap their heels and raise their hand to their foreheads, I walk by with purpose and pomp and circumstance and nod my head in acknowledgement. They sometimes call me "Sir Office Clerk, Sir", an honorary rank they have invented, but one that really should be bestowed upon me for my fine service to this nation. I've even had a couple of occasions where the military police guarding the main gate have mis-identified me as an officer from a distance, and leapt to attention, only to realise upon closer inspection that I am, in fact, also a gimp. Mostly they laugh off their own mistake, but one MP decided to vent his anger at me, accusing me of impersonating an officer.

This whole getting institionalised respect malarkie is something I could get used to, so I hope the gimps continue with their greetings and salutations. And I also hope that it is something that catches on among you people - after all, I really do deserve to be respected a little more, right?

On another note, I see that no one has responded to my call for comments on the Middle East situation. Too controversial, is it? During my perusal of the news headlines I noticed that while the BBC, the Guardian and most Finnish news sources I have been reading are generally leading with how many civilians the Israelis are killing in Lebanon, most US news sources, including the New York Times, are leading with the Israeli civilian deaths in Haifa. Does anyone have anything to add on this cross-Atlantic polarisation?

I am officially past the half-way mark - it was on Friday, day 47. Hooray! Doesn't time just fly when you're having fun?

On a more dark note, and relating to military stuff, the situation in Israel, Lebanon and Syria is looking pretty bleak. I do believe that it cannot possibly have a good outcome. Israel is going to attack Syria, Iran will get involved, there will be mass death and destruction, the US and Israel will attack Iran and the whole region will descend into chaos. A depressing prospect, and not good for anyone. Already the civilian death toll in Lebanon is over 100, and now Hezbollah is hitting Haifa with rockets. All this over a couple of kidnapped soldiers. Someone has to stand up to Israel - a controversial statement in the US, I know, but the sentiment in Europe is almost entirely on the side of the Arab underdogs. There were even demonstrations outside the Helsinki Israeli embassy, in peaceful, neutral Finland, which just highlights the antipathy and frustration that Europeans feel towards the stubborn stance that Israel and the US are taking in the region. The strongest statement thast Bush has managed on the subject is that he "hopes that the Israelis are able to keep civilian deaths in Lebanon to a minimum", basically giving the Israelis a carte blanche to continue what they are doing.

I know this blog is supposed to be about my exploits in the military, but I couldn't help bringing this topic up. I am curious to hear what the view in the US is, and how the media is reporting the matter. Like I said, here it is an exclusively anti-Israeli light.

The army has decided that I would be better prepared for a war against the Russians, and the Swedes, if I go and play tennis for a few days. You see, the Russians and the Swedes have both been producing quality tennis players for a while now, and Finland only has the one guy, Jarkko Nieminen, who can't single-handedly keep the flag flying. Though he did manage the quarter-finals at Wimbledon and is now ranked #12 in the world.
So, as of lunch time today, I have had my request to play tennis with my dad and brother approved. Beats sitting in the office.

I'll be back next Monday. Enjoy your weekends!

The food here in the army has generally not been awful. It's not good, that's for sure, but not a disgrace either. Most of the time I would call it "passable". Relatively healthy, lots of potatoes, meat, that kind of thing. Sometimes it is worse, sometimes it is better, but usually I always eat it. Today, however, was something of an experience. Dinner, you see, was what we in Finland call "liver pie". It's quite Finnish, and can actually be good, despite the rather unappetizing name. But generally I would argue that putting chopped liver in a pie is not a good idea, especially when cooking for thousands. I found this out the hard way today.

I got to dinner late, as per usual, in order to avoid the mad rush when all the new recruits pile in by the hundreds, clogging up the queues, staring blankly at food, spilling milk when filling up their metallic mugs (not crying, though - there really is no use in crying over spilled milk), complaining voluminously about everything and anything that is on offer. Usually my late strategy works quite well - there is always plenty of food left, and I can dine in peace and quiet. Today, however, it all went a little pear-shaped, as the English like to say. A bit Pete Tong, if you will (that's "wrong" in Cockney rhyming slang, for the uninitiated). There was almost nothing left, and what little there was looked nasty. All I could get my hands on was a cold serving of liver pie - actually a harsh form of punishment in Saudi Arabia, ranking right up there with getting your hands chopped off for theft and public stoning for adultery. It looked... shall we say, not nice. The best way to really describe this mound of stuff on my plate is through an analogy. A rather vivid one, so be prepared.

Imagine that you have been on a week-long boozing bender. For some reason your bowels aren't working too great, and you can't go for a dump for the entire duration. Then, on the seventh day, the shit-Sabbath, if you will, you finally manage to let it go. You have little time, as the turtle head is already poking, so you grab the item nearest to you - a white plastic plate. The relief is a delight, and you stop to admire your fine work. It probably looks like a chocolate mousse, but with chunky bits in it. It's probably not quite firm, from the effects of all the alcohol, and there will likely be some rust-coloured liquid seeping from within the heap to the sides, settling itself as a kind of sauce along the base of the mound. You think to yourself, "not bad, but it could use a little something extra". So you notice there, by your side, some gelatin. You think, "hmm, maybe I should gelatinate this sucker". So that's what you do. Afterwards, you need to cool that little beauty down in the fridge, to allow the gelatin to set, in order to give your work of art a little firmness, some consistency. When cooled down, it looks pretty good, you think, but it's not quite there yet. "What could be lacking," you ponder. Ah yes, of course, we should torch the outside, to give it a crispy crust! A little later, you are done, and you stare at your handi- (and assi-) work with admiration.

What you have here before you is liver pie, a la mode. This is basically what I bit into today at dinner - burned on the outside, cold and gooey on the inside, with nondescript chunks and bits set in gelatin embedded within the superstructure. A crusty, gelatinous turd.

Needless to say, one bite and I was done, fighting back the gag reflex. The piece of bread I had for dinner instead has never tasted so good.

Well, they're not really "roomies", now are they? More like "fellow inmates", I suppose. There are eight of them in total, all low-level sergeants, and new to my battalion. They have been brought in to help control the rowdy bunch of new recruits arriving today, and they themselves arrived at the end of last week. Having now spent a night with them, I am already getting some unnerving vibes. See, it was so pleasant sharing a room with only two others - no mess, no fuss and best of all, no noise. Last night I feel I learned a great deal about them. Allow me to expand:

Low-level sergeants #1, #4 and #6: Snorers, every last one of them. I was privy to quite a cacophony of noises last night, ranging from the old-fashioned "kroooh-pewh" (also known as the "in-and-out") to the more modernist and 21st century "shneef-pip-pip-pip-pip" (known as the "slightly-in-out-out-out-out"). There was also a "krw-krw-krw-krw-ooooofh" there too. I don't think that one has another name.

But snoring is, of course, just the beginning. That's why I have it as the first item on my list. I am sure that, by now, you know that my list items tend to get a little more esoteric and, I like to think, amusing as I move on down the list.

Low-level sergeant #3: Sleep-talker. While neither loquacious nor voracious, he makes up for it through his impeccable timing. I counted at least three minor soliloquies last night, all of them coinciding with the very moment when I was just about to fall asleep. I have no idea what he was saying, because he was quite the mumbler, but I did make out the word "flower" uttered with great pizzazz amidst the garbling. Perhaps a somnambular dream reference to the age-old anti-war symbol? A subconscious guilt emerging in the dead of night at being a trained killer of Russians and Swedes? Who can say. If only Freud were still around.

Low-level sergeants #2, #5, #8: Tossers. That is, they toss around in their beds, hence making a lot of noise, thus causing me to be unable to sleep, thereby causing me to include them on this list of things that my fellow inmates do in their sleep that mean I cannot sleep properly at night. What? You thought I meant... not... surely... no, it can't be... you wouldn't think that... no no, you're all civilised people... but.. could it be... you thought... well, you knew what "shmegma" was... so why wouldn't you... you did think it, nooo... it was on your minds... tossing off? God, you filthy, filthy people, you have dirty minds. Though, what with all the other noise going on, they may well have been beatin' the ol' bishop. Bleeding the weed. Burping the worm. Boxing the Jesuit. Choking the chicken. Dating Mother Palm and her five daughters. Holding the sausage hostage. Making the bald guy puke. Oiling the pogo stick. You know, peeling some chilies. Whatever it was, it made the sheets ruffle and the bed frame squeak.

Low-level sergeant #7: Satanist. While I have no direct proof of this, such as "666" tattooed on his forehead, or a picture of Beelzebub in his wallet instead of the happy family photo of the wife and kids, who else would lull themselves to sleep by listening to death metal at full volume on their iPod? Truly incredible. What's more, nobody said anything, including myself, even though it is impossible that we didn't all suffer. Maybe we were all thinking "Satanist", and didn't want to push our luck. Maybe he has a hotline to the big horny man downstairs. Or maybe he was simply trying to block out the noise of low-level sergeants 1 through 6 and low-level sergeant 8. Whatever it is, we were clearly not prepared for a confrontation. But if it continues, I may need to take on a new foe, in addition to the Russians and the Swedes I am currently battling: the Satanic hordes of the dark underworld. Wish me luck.

There's a tradition here in the Finnish army whereby the departing batch of recruits leaves a little gift for the incoming batch. I thought, how nice. What a lovely little tradition. My battalion decided to leave the incoming batch an emergency cigarette, hanging from the ceiling from a flowery ribbon. I still thought, how nice. Not the healthiest present, but it's still a lovely little gesture. But there is something special about this particular cigarette. No, it's not menthol, if that's what you were thinking. It does, however, contain an additional substance not usually associated with cigarettes. It has, in fact, been coated with the cheese that collects under a man's foreskin. This, I thought, was not so nice. Not so pleasant anymore.

I was wondering why flies were collecting on the cigarette...

Today is the last day of military service for all of the people in my battalion. Every last one of them will be heading home tomorrow morning, and I will be the only one left with the new batch of 243 fresh pieces of meat arriving on Monday. I have a feeling that the discipline levels will change drastically (though hopefully not for me!) once the new recruits arrive - I'm sure you are all familiar with the "break them down and then build them back up again" philosophy in order to develop that strong unit cohesion and indoctrinate the poor unsuspecting fools into thinking the "army way". I have been privy to the secrets of the first six weeks of basic training, and I must confess, it looks brutal. There is no free time at all, not even in the evenings, for the first two weeks. There is no leaving the base, even for weekends, for the first three weeks. The recruits are expected to be out of bed by 05.15 every day, running by 05.30 and at breakfast by 06.15. The exercises for the day begin at 07.00 and run through until bed time at 22.00. The second week, if I remember correctly, is spent in the forest, in full battle gear, carrying about 25kg of equipment. And considering the weather is currently as hot as it gets in Finland (30C), that's quite an unpleasant prospect. There is a 30km march, again in full battle gear, somewhere in there, and a whole range of nasty obstacle courses, fitness tests and other assorted events designed to make you hurt and ache and sweat. Every second of every day is mapped out for the poor buggers - there is no time to think for yourself. Which I suppose is the point. I am expecting to hear a lot of swearing and bitching around the barracks.

Which brings me neatly on to another topic entirely - I am now able to use most of the modern Finnish swear words, some of them even in a grammatically correct sentence. While back in the olden days, when I were a wee lad, most swear words were old-fashioned curses, involving either taking the Lord's name in vain, or invoking the Devil, or one of his minions. I tell thee, the youth of today - it's all changed now, and almost all swear words are variations of the word for "female genitalia". It's impressive how creative some of them are, though I fear that this is probably not the place to discuss them in depth.

Anyway, I will be off tomorrow as well, but just for the weekend. My dad and brother are arriving in Finland, so I'll be catching up with them to enjoy the delights of the Finnish summer. Which basically means that there will be more chopping wood, more moving earth and rocks, more saunas and more beer. Which is nice. Toodle pip.

Last night between the hours of 22.00 and 00.30 I may have spent the most unpleasant 150 minutes of my life. For each minute there was a person. And for each person there was unpleasantness. It was, you see, a hot, sultry summer night. Nice if you're with a lady, not so ideal when shared with 150 18-21 year-olds. Especially not so ideal when the space that you are sharing with those 150 18-21 year-olds is a cramped basement lecture room with low ceilings and closed windows and doors in order to respect the military notion of "silence" after the hour of 22.00. To compound the issue, it had been a particularly hot day, during which the wearing of heavy boots over heavy socks is a less than hygienic practice. But unfortunately a practice required by the army - no flip-flops allowed, alas. All 150 bodies in that room were therefore at varying degrees of ripeness, and due to the nature of the entertainment on offer (no, not a stripper, though that would have produced similar squeals of glee, I am sure), i.e. the World Cup semi-final between Italy and host nation Germany, as excitable as a group of schoolchildren on their first field trip to a nudist colony. As if this weren't enough, dinner a few hours earlier had been some kind of meat stew, producing potent gases surely banned under the Geneva Convention. I believe this may actually have been the Finnish army's secret weapon against the Russians in WWII - forget Saddam's WMDs and those dodgy-looking dual-purpose centrifuges in Iran, send the weapons inspectors to Finland, for goodness sake.

Anyway, to cut a long non-story a little bit shorter, there we all were, all 150 of us, stewing in a bitches' brew of foot sweat, body odour and farts, with nowhere for the gas to escape and no way for the air to circulate for 150 minutes. As the match progressed, and the oxygen levels dropped, people began to giggle deliriously. Every fart was accompanied with shouts of encouragement and wildly waving hands, attempting to spread the odours for all to enjoy. Socks were taken off and waved around in the air, creating impromptu windmills of death that even Don Quixote would have been struggling to fight off. I was praying for someone, anyone to score during regular time, but it was not to be. Another half hour was needed to break the deadlock in the match, and nearly knock me unconscious.

If there is one thing I learned last night, it is that farts can kill. They really can. So, you civilians out there, be careful. Take heed from a military man who now truly knows the dangers of FMDs - farts in moderation are fine, but consumed to excess they are deadly.

Five weeks ago, when I started in the army, I submitted an official request for reimbursement of my flights to and from San Francisco, and for three months of "rent" that I am currently paying Jo-Jo for our house on Mariposa Avenue. I was told it would take a month. Today I was told that not only has my paperwork been lost somewhere, but that because I officially still live in Kuopio, central Finland, I am not eligible to have my flights and foreign rent reimbursed. This gave me a shock, naturally, especially considering that this was the first news that my commanding officer greeted me with upon my return from the UK. He said that I need to sort this out with the Finnish social security office.
Something to do, I thought to myself, and thus today's adventure through the mazes and blind alleys of Finnish government bureaucracy began. I will not recite the entire journey, as that would probably bore even the most resilient of you, but I will leave you with the tintillating climax, at the two-person social security office in Huittinen (never heard of it? Neither had I until today) after playing telephone tennis with a variety of Finnish government agencies:

-Hello there, I would like to register a change of address, please.
-Very well, when are you moving?
-Twenty-seven and a half years ago.
-Excuse me?
-That's right, I moved from Kuopio at the age of nine months, to Denmark.
-Oooookay, and is that where you are living at the moment?
-No, after Denmark I moved to the United Kingdom, and most recently to the US. Oh, and I had a few month stint in Malaysia at the age of twelve.
-I see [not seeing at all - that I could see].
-And so I would like to register a change of address. You see, the Finnish army won't pay me the approximately US$5,000 that they owe me until I officially live abroad.
-So what would you like me to do?
-I would like your records to show that I have never lived in Finland, beyond that nine month stint after I was born. I want the records to show that I lived in Denmark and the UK and now the US. We can skip Malaysia if that would make life easier for you.
-Well, I am afraid we can't do that.
-You can't do that? But that would reflect the reality fo the matter! And then the army won't pay me! Is the Finnish government interested in their records reflecting the truth?
[This is where I really wanted her to say: "You can't handle the truth" - but she didn't. Instead she said:]
-Well, let me tell you the best that I can do. According to the law, the furthest I can backdate an Application to Register a New Address Abroad is one month.
-What do you mean, one month? One month from what? From when?
-Well, from today.
-So you are saying that I moved from Kuopio on the 4th of June this year? One month ago?
-That is correct. That is the law.
-But one month ago, on the 4th of June, I was in the middle of my first week in the army! Do you not realise that if I moved to the USA on that date, it would be desertion, and I could be put in military prison? Trust me, I know.
-Well, according to the letter of the law, that is the furthest I can backdate an Application to Register a New Address Abroad. One month from the date of the application.
-So on the one hand, the law says I lived for the last twenty-seven and a half years in Kuopio and only moved to the USA on the 4th of June. On the other hand, the law says that if I did that, I should be put in military prison. Does the law not strike you as a little, what's the word, silly?
-Well, I am afraid that's the law.
[This argument continues for a good while longer, with the answer to my increasingly agitated and annoyed questions always a firm "It's the law"]
-OK, fine, let's get this over and done with. So the official records for the Finnish government now have me as living almost my entire life in Kuopio. And on a whim, a few days into my military service, at the age of twenty-eight, clearly fed up with barracks life, I escape the country, board a plane on the 4th of June, fly to the United States, and then inform the Finnish authorities of my new address a month later. Because that is basically what the so-called legal facts are stating. Are you not worried that Interpol will be knocking on a door in Berkeley, trying to capture a deserter?
-Well, at least we are obeying the law.

And with that, my past has been changed. I am a Finnish country boy, born and bred in the land of the lakes and the trees, probably a lumberjack, like my entire family (because we are apparently all still officially living in Kuopio). I am now a fugitive, living on the run in California, the land of the free, the home of the brave. How ironic that it is the 4th of July today. Happy 4th of July to the USA! If you see a lost-looking soul answering to the name Niko Vuori, military deserter, talking with a strong accent, then you should probably tip off Interpol.

The wedding is over, and what a wedding it was too. Beautiful day, perfect venue, everything went according to military precision (see the logical link between Tom and Kate's wedding and my experiences in the Finnish army?). Andy managed to not kack his pants during the best man speech (although he did include a five-minute anecdote dedicated to poo), which was very good and went down excellently with the crowd. Well done to everyone involved, and a big congratulations to Tom and Kate! And happy birthday to Richie!

I have uploaded the pictures to my Yahoo site, but here is a small sampler:


Anita, Dave and Heike posing at Cain Manor

Tom & Kate catching a very brief breather

The best man (that'd be Andy) and Claire

Tom and Kate strolling around the grounds

Anita and Dave

Zoe and Rich

The sultry wedding tango