Olivia Aino Helena Hirviniemi

The baby's name is Olivia Aino Helena, and usually she'll be called Olivia. (usually, at least as long as we are concerned)




All things have gone great with her, and the boys are still exicited and really into taking care of her. The first night Joonatan insisted to be woken up if the baby cries. We did not promise, but so it came. At some point of the night he had come to sleep between Sarita and I, and as the baby cried, Joonatan jump up from the bed... seemingly still half in sleep... stroked her twice and went back to bed.

Baby comes home

more baby pics

Boys investicate the 11-hour-old new-comer. They just love her, and can't wait to get to see her.





We visit them daily, and if everything goes smooth the ladies move back home by Thursday.

it's a GIRL

3:53 am this morning, we got a beautiful little girl. She measures 3350grs and 51cms, and is absolutely gorgeous. Needless to say, all the boys in the house are excited and proud.

Everything went really well and Momma and the baby are doing fine.

about cameras and other stuff

While we're still expecting the baby to be born, I've been shopping online - consuming the sort of paternity leave - the days that I was able to arrange free. (they are running painfully short though, while the baby is running overdue) - nevertheless, I've used the days effectively and done quite a bit shopping on cameras, which I dream of buying as we get our flat sold. (we are not quite selling the house to get the camera, but I'm planning to pull some money off and go for a decade's dream.)

Nothing super-extraordinary, but a Nikon D70s, with 18-200 vr zoom, and a sb-600 flash, that D70s can remarkably command wirelessly. This should give me a number of advantages to further the hobby that I've had since I was 15.

It all began, as my father asked me to choose between a moped and camera for the 15th birthday. I picked camera (only afterwards, I realized that selling a moped would have brought me three of those... but that's not a way to pick gifts from your dad) So, I got nikon fg-20, with 35-70 zoom, that some have ruminated for pages here. It's a manual -nearly-everything. I only used the lightmeter, and set aperture and speed manually.

I jumped over to digital world this spring with supercheap Nikon L4, which appears to be just fine for everyday snap-shots, but cannot be compared to digital slr's, of course. So, for now, I just shop online, and watch out for my mouse not to click on anything I can't afford.

While shopping, I run to a remarkable guy, Ken Rockwell, that one could well call a true enthusiast. He has tested nearly all nikon cameras, lenses and accessories, and posted his opinions on his site. I bet he has an enormous headache by now for digging too deep to the stuff and especially to posting it. I get headache for just reading it. But it's a worthwhile site if you are buying slr cameras. (might convert you to nikon, though)

Another thing that really took me by surprise is that you find the cheapest cameras online IN FINLAND - even when the eastern europeans and germany is taken in the count. That's really something because I though we'd score near the most expensive in everything. A good site to make the comparisons is mbnet's hintaseuranta, but for some reason it doesn't include verkkokauppa.com which seems to offer everything the cheapest.

Robots

It's been really hot around here for a couple of weeks, and they promise us it'll go on like this for some time... so I thought it's the time to invest 19e€ to a fan. The boys wanted me to cut out a whole in the cardboard box for them to be robots. This is Benjamin.

scary

Spielberg's Munich

Sarita and I watched Steven Spielberg's recent film Munich, commenting the touchy ever-continuing Israel-Palestinian conflict. The story builds on a couple of historical facts - the event in the olympic games in 1972 that resulted in death of 11 isreali sportsmen, and the following deaths of the 11 suspected terrorists, and it fills in the blanks between these events, following a Mossad's (isreal's CIA, sort of) agent team head out to assassinate the suspects.

The movie on its own, if there'd be no real life conflict in the near east, would not be really interesting - more like a short film series "10ways to assassinate a terrorist, and how it feels like" but I bet it would not be directed by Spielberg then either. But now, especially with the introduction by Spielberg (that at least on our dvd was enforced to be viewed first) the movie is a tought provoking commentary on the current politics and their probable outcome - not too hopeful, but realistic though.

It's worthwhile seeing, and especially interesting right now, as the discussion on the Isreal-Palestinian relationship seems to waving high in european politics as well.