Check

Folks in Finland: ask your granma about these, if you can. This is how I get payed for my work and this is how I pay my bills. Or more exactly: this is how my wife pays our bills - I haven't quite yet mastered the art of checkery.

breakfast New York style

This breakfast place had the most extensive selection of bagels I've ever seen. I presume some of them are a little bit unorthodox.

Sharpener

I don't think I had ever used one of these electric pencil sharpeners before coming to the US. This model is my favorite one at the office. It looks like it could eat fifty pencils a minute; without breaking a sweat. (Yes, it works extremely well and yes I sharpened my pencil a couple of times while making this drawing.)

real life escher

me-turn

breakfasst outside

This year's "breakfast at the terrace" season has been officially opened! A full hour of newspaper reading was pushing it a bit, I left the spot shivering (the umbrellas were rather unnecessary, it was overcast) but I'll try to take the best out of these moderately warm days - before it actually gets hot.

A day at the Racetrack

Today I bring you special coverage from the Belmont horse racing track, NY city, where my father-in-law (everybody calls him Sunny because his always on such a good mood) kindly took me.

The day started with a hearty breakfast and some research on the racing paper.



The parking lot at the track is so big that you take a bus from your car to the entrance.


Sunny's whole posse was already waiting at the table. Although we were at the track we were in fact following "simulcasting" from other tracks on a little screen.


I got lucky right on the second race of the day - very lucky.


The food was plentiful.




Sunny kept his cool the whole day. Winning or loosing - you couldn't tell the difference on his face. Some people at the other tables were quite a bit rowdier.


Needless to say: betting on horses didn't turn out to be an ingenious way for making money.

Shaving

Gilette has come up with something that will revolutionize the way we shave - a fully disposable razor. Instead of disposing just the blade, you throw away the handle too. The ads for this magnificent product scream "Enough said". I agree.



On a second, related note: no matter what kind of a razor blade you're using, micro corrosion will eat the best edge of it if you constantly leave it wet. I heard about this six months ago, started drying the razor after shaving, and have used ever since the same (disposable) blade.

Delivery Vehicles

Many of the American delivery vehicles look extremely old school - and boy I like them! These include school buses, UPS trucks, and many of the freight trucks but my favorite one tends to be the type of van that the mailmen use. Nothing beats a boxy tuna can finished with rivets!

Sunday Paper

The Sunday New York Times weighs about 5lb (2.3kg) and could be used as a murder weapon.

Entering a Restaurant

One of the New Yorkers' favorite activities is to wait on line in front of restaurants. I my self just gave it a try last Saturday morning. Nearly 1.5 hours of waiting. It was fun in the company of my wife and two nice visitors from Finland. I can see my self getting addicted to waiting on line - like so many in New York.

One little detail related to this experience: New York restaurants often have these temporary looking steel-and-tarp structures by their entrances to help keep heat in (or out, in the summer time). Not very elegant but somehow I like them.

Super Bowl

Giants won the Super Bowl. Yahoo!

I got prepared to the big game by visiting the MET. As this Mexican figure from 100 B.C. - A.D. 300 demonstrates the tradition of playing ball in this region goes way back in time. (Note: just like in FOOTball around here, the players carried the ball in their HANDs.)



There was plenty of great food available during the game (thank you very much S&R!). The 3-foot hero sandwich was just about the most American thing I've seen so far.

Landscape

sitting and writing

I think that these kind of chairs - often found in class rooms around here (but for some reason nearly unheard of in Finland) - are just awesome. A perfect union of sitting and writing.

morning routine

In the morning my wife often makes her curly hair a little bit less curly with this sort of hair straightener. One of these mornings she noticed that she can also use it for ironing the collar of her shirt. Those looks! That efficiency!

Dukes

I recently learned this great expression "put your dukes up" which means: raise your fists, prepare to fight (yes, has come in handy on a daily basis). Then - not long afterwards - I learned that John Wayne was called the Duke.

Knob

Why are the Americans so obsessed with having knobs on their doors while handles are far more functional? How, for example, are you supposed to open a door when you have just put lotion on your hands and you don't want to get the knob all greasy?

This is not the first time I've clashed with American doors.