The blog of a person who loves Japanese puzzles and mathematics and wants to share the wonderful experiences these addictions can give. Also introducing Finnish habits and the life of a dog owner.
I have clearly neglegted my blog this year. I hope I will continue blogging soon to tell all about mt activities meantime. Now some Christmas photos.
I actually found a department store window which was designed for Christmas. When I was a child it was more usual but stores have given up these themed windows.
Our Christmas tree is very thick this year! Thank you Tuula and Hannu!
Taking photos of the dogs was not very succesful. The best one I got when I had actually given up.
The beautiful lights on the graveyard. We went there to light candles for my father, grandmother and aunt. This is a place where they don't put stones with names on them. My family has preferred this option.
Tomorrow I probably have to rethink my way to work. Before yesterday Turku had 5 bridges for crossing river Aura by car. Yesterday morning one of the bridges, Myllysilta, started to fall down. Here is a picture of the bridge taken earlier.
The bridge was built in 1975 and it developed many problems for the city in the very beginning. It was praised as the the most beautiful and the cheapest bridge ever built but the arch like structure was not as strong as it should have been. The engineers had made a mistake in the calculations and the bridge fell some centimetres before it was even taken in use. The bridge was finally repaired in 1987 by Turku with 4 million Finnish marks.
Yesterday morning someone noticed that the bridge had fallen and it was taken off use. In the morning it had fallen 15 cm but by the end of the day the middle of the bridge was 94 cm lower than originally. Here is a short video of my walk near the bridge about noon. I could not get any closer because of the police tapes.
Here is the situation in the evening. The picture is taken by my friend mvallius.
Now it is not certain if the bridge will collapse or not. It probably has to be rebuilt and it takes more than a year before the new one can be taken in use. Meanwhile, the other one-way bridge nearby has to be converted to two-way traffic. A chaos will be expected anyway. I do not use the bridge in question very often, but the traffic will be transferred to the one I use. I think I will start driving the motorway instead of the shortest option.
I have been featured in a Sudoku book. Conceptis Japan made a book for a Japanese publisher, Kasakura Shuppan. In the book they introduce a puzzle friend who has solved four of the puzzles and his/her solving time is revealed beside the puzzle. Chie, the manager of Conceptis Japan, asked me if I knew someone who would like to get introduced there. I decided that I could as well do it myself.
So here are two of the puzzles I had to solve. Solving them as fast as possible was more stressful than I thought. I usually pay no attention to the clock. The hardest one took me 28 minutes!
With the sample books I got this note from Chie :)
When I showed the book to my family, no one was thrilled to have the book with my autograph!
The winter in Finland is as nice as it can get. Snow and around -20 degrees Celsius. The nature is so white and clean and beautiful.
For some people this is really the time they are excited about the cold. My husband is one of those people who loves swimming in ice. I never do this, not because of the cold, but the water. I hate water and don't swim even in the summertime. Here is a picture of my husband having fun yesterday at sunset and that was about 3 pm.
Wikipedia has an article about Ice Swimming, in case you got excited about it.
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