Archive for the ‘Travel’ Category

Having finally arrived in Helsinki after an exhaustive day of travelling there was really only one thing to do – find a local Toastmasters meeting. Actually, I had already found the club online. There are half a dozen in Finland but only one was meeting while we were there. Stadi Talkers is a President’s Distinguished Club, the highest honour a club can earn.

Meetings are conducted in English. Although some clubs speak in their own language, Toastmasters is generally like the British Empire – they go into other people’s country and insist their speak English. You have to learn Swedish as a second language in Finland. That means that the people at the meeting who were speaking more eloquently than I was were mostly doing it in their 3rd language.

People were friendly and welcoming. It was a mixture of Finns and immigrants, and the standard of English was high. A lot of cool people there too. I got chatting to a guy who used to work at Rovio, the maker of Angry Birds. They have something like 900 people working their now, which I assumed meant they were branching out into more games. However, it turned out that was 900 people all working on Angry Birds!

The meeting format only had minor differences to ours. They had Table Topics in the first half and a seperate person from the Grammarian introduced the word of the day. Every time someone slipped it in they pounded on the table. They even had an educational on Easy Speak – it would have brought a tear to Euan’s eye. Guests were only introduced at the end of the meeting, after they had had time to settle down and get comfortable.

I spoke twice. I did the toast of the meeting, which we do not have in Leeds but makes perfect sense when you are in a pub. I also did a Table Topic and came away with the ribbon. Not a bad start to the trip!

Suomenlinna is a fortress island in the bay of Helsinki. It was originally built by the Swedes to stop the Russians from invading. Ultimately it did not work, but it is now a UNESCO world heritage site (one of two we visited on the trip, the other being Old Rauma).

The island has a selection of bars and cafes, six museums and a few shops. It claims to have a memorial to prisoners of war as well but it clearly is not where it is supposed to be according to the map. The island also has several hundred permanent residences ensuring a good ferry service. During the day it runs every 20 minutes and the day runs from 5am to 2am the next morning.

You have to walk on Suomenlinna, there is basically no disabled access due to the cobbled streets, hills and dirt tracks. However, the mile to the other side of the island feels a lot shorter because there is so much to see and do.

Some panoramas too. Click for a larger version:

After years of talking about Moominworld we finally managed to schedule in a trip. It was not easy. We visited on the 20th of August. It closed for winter on the 23rd of August. Short summer.

You park up round the back of a petrol station and then get a bus over. Or at least near it. It’s not very clear. It drops you off and then you wander over this little park, down a harbour side and eventually over a bridge to the island where Moominworld is located.

As the bus pulls upped, one little kid screamed “Moomin! Moomin! Moomin!”. As Elina pointed out, if he was that excited about the arrival of the bus, he was going to have an epic day. Simultaneously, his parents were going to get rather sick of the word “Moomin” quite quickly, and then be forced to endure it for several hours more.

In fact it seemed that everyone there had small children. Except us.

We went to Snufkin’s Camp for story time. There were quite a few kids there listening to the Finnish version, then they all left and it was just us and Snufkin listening to the English version. Good news for me, though I think Elina felt a bit weird at this point.

Next door they have a napping area. This consists of an area shaded by trees filled with bean bags and hammocks. Why don’t more places have this?!? I have long campaigned for business hammocks in the office but what Mumminworld had surpassed even my expectations.

They have lots of buildings to explore, including the four flours of the Moomin house, and all the Moomin characters that you can take photos with. They also do shows every half an hour.

I also had my first entirely Finnish-language conversation. I asked for two tickets, she told me the price, I said “card”, she said yes, I paid, she gave me my tickets and I said thank you. Hardly Academy Award winning dialogue, but a conversation none the less.

In summary, Moominworld is awesome.

Earlier this month we visited Hayfield for a weekend of catching up, relaxing and enjoying the British summer, such as it is.

The Spring 2015 Toastmasters District 71 (UK & Ireland) conference took place in Nottingham.

Nottingham is quite a happening city. There was plenty of people out in the evenings and a good range of restaurants. We also did a walking tour lead by Robin Hood. He told us that the city was originally called “Snotingaham” which it turns out is true.

Workshops

The workshops were a mixed back. You get a lot of professional speakers and motivational coaches running workshops, and they send to speak a lot of shit. Erick Rainey for example started his speech with a slow motion run down the aisle. I thought to myself “brilliant, this is going to be a sarcastic post-modern take on how stupid a lot of the motivational crap is”. But then he did it all seriously. He’s a great communicator, and has loads of good stuff to say, but then he mixes it with nonsense like NLP.

Rav Chambers presented a good workshop on video. It did not teach me anything I did not know already, but it was valuable to have a reminder of all the things I know I should be doing when shooting film.

Vinay Parmar’s workshop on personal branding was interesting. However, for someone who focuses on how you present yourself, he really needs to spell-check his slides as there were several errors in them.

International Speech Contest

The district final of the International Speech Contest took place on the Saturday afternoon. It wasn’t the best venue for it as it was in a lecture theatre. The speeches were good, but I am looking forward to getting back to competing. Two years ago, in Torquay, I felt out-classed (to be clear, I wasn’t competing). Here, I sat there thinking there are a bunch of us in Area 15 that could compete at this level.

Opening ceremony

The Friday evening is a buffet and fancy dress party. Of course the theme was Robin Hood!

Gala dinner

The Saturday night was the Gala dinner. We had the Sheriff of Nottingham as a guest and for one of the raffle prizes, she let someone wear her robes and hat! Best of all, Gillian took the prize.

Earlier this month we visited ICE Totally Gaming to get to know potential customers and suppliers. It was my first trip to the ExCeL centre which is predictably huge.

Many of the stalls were very impressive. One had a slot machine connected up to a Oculus Rift headset and when you won you got taken on a roller coaster ride.

Not surprisingly, there were lots of men in suits and women in far less clothing. I was very proud of the good twenty minutes we spent discussing sexism and objectification of women.Then we had a good stare.

London was as horrible as ever. It took me an hour and a half in a taxi to get there the first morning.

While in Ullapool, we took a Summer Queen Cruise to the Summer Isles. I totally recommend it. We saw loads of dolphins. Loads!

Some awesome scenery too.

And we got some beautiful sunshine in the Summer Isles. We hiked up to the top of the hill and then I ran up to the very top of the island. This is us at the top of the first hill:

Then this is everyone from the very top of the island:

And their view looking up at me:

A couple of years ago, Norman charged George and I with planning a suitable celebration of his 30th birthday. So, in February this year, we began planning a trip to the Scottish Highlands. Seven months and a thousand miles of driving later, and our mission was accomplished.

It is a mission to get to. It took 11 hours to get up there and 10 hours to get back. It was worth the drive though (I say now the back pain has faded). We got incredibly lucky in that we had no rain all week and enjoyed sunshine for most of it. The cruise staff were very keen for me to stress to everyone that I had to use sun cream in the Highlands!

Amazing weather, amazing company and an amazing setting – what more could you possibly want from a holiday?

The view across the loch. The town on the right is Ullapool.

Norman swimming in the loch. I only made it to the river that ran down beside our house into the loch and that was absolutely freezing.

Corrieshalloch Gorge. The photos do not do it justice. It is 200 feet deep.

Our beach-side home for the week.

Best of all, spending a week with seven amazing friends.

Earlier this month, Norman was kind enough to host us for the weekend at his new flat in Cardiff. It’s a nice place and just round the corner from Cardiff city centre.

On the Friday evening we ended up having a meal at Chapel 1877, which was very good. On Saturday we went to St Fagans National History Museum which was an outdoor museum with some traditional buildings and a large manor house and gardens.

There was also a bird hide where we saw some mice. I should have brought my telephoto lens!

We had lunch at a pub just round the corner from St Fagans. It was a Vintage Inn, and lived up to expectations. Despite it being Cardiff, we actually had lots of glorious sunshine on the Saturday and it didn’t really rain (much) until we got back. In the evening we drove to Cardiff Bay had had dinner at a Turkish restaurant on the peer that I didn’t think much of.

On Sunday we spent the morning looking round Cardiff Castle in very heavy rain before heading to the fish and chip shop. I was very pleased to get fish and chips because I had tried to get them on Friday lunch time (they had run out), Saturday lunch time (their fryer was broken) and Saturday evening (we went to a Turkish restaurant instead) but you can’t go to the seaside and not have a fish and chips, even if it is a highly industrialised port.

On our way to Cardiff we dropped by Warwick to see Collegiate Church of St Mary. It is a pretty cool church, most notable because you can go up the church tower and get a great view over Warwick from the top. We also had chance to grab lunch with Kat while down there and it was great to catch up. Oh how fast life moves these days…