Helsinki is not the best place to search for top-notch brand children clothing, but there are a few places here and there. One of them is Pompii, centrally located in Simonkenttä — next to Kamppi shopping mall. Burberry is their main lure, and they carry also a bit cheaper brands, such as Timberland.

Pompii has an excellent selection of shoes. I haven’t seen such an amount of children shoes anywhere in Helsinki. So the chances are quite good that you find a pair for your child. Just remember that you should never buy shoes without having the feet with you… There is plethora of other stuff that makes a great gift.

Pompii, Simonkatu 9, Helsinki, Finland, +358 9 626 644

… would you wave back? Finland has been blessed with extraordinaly good weather for the few past days, and the good weather is going to continue until tomorrow.

The temperature has been around 25 Centigrades, and sometimes the humidity makes you feel like being in the Mediterranean region. There will be a few degree drop on Tuesday, but sun seems to be shining all week long.

This has been quite different spring: first there was a lot of snow and it stayed half an eternity, finally melting just before May 1st. Now we are basking in a constant sunshine and enjoying too good temperatures. At least Aapo is enjoying the new sandbox in our yard…

If you are looking for quality clothing for your children, pay a visit to Exit shop in Jumbo shopping mall. The Danish brand shop is stocked full with bright colours and nice designs for the younger generation.

There are clothes for both girls and boys, and some of the stuff can be worn by both — a welcome change to the usual disneyesque baby pink and baby blue gender-branded garments.

The clothes are of good quality and that shows in the pricetag. Finland is maybe not the best place to buy children garments, no matter which shop you go.

www.exitkids.com, Vantaanportinkatu 3 (in Jumbo shopping center), Vantaa, Finland, +358 9 2527 2200

Stockmann Jumbo is the latest and the smallest Stockmann department store in Finland — I’m not counting the outlets at the airport. Despite the size, the store caters for all aspects of living. There is also a miniscule Alko store next to the grocery department.

For the uninitiated: Stockmann is the top-notch department store chain in Finland, Baltics and St. Petersbourg region. Finns usually go there to find anything that they haven’t found somewhere else, including haute couture fashion, electronics, street clothes, etc.

The Jumbo store has an additional perk of being close to the Helsinki-Vantaa airport. If you are stuck there or have a couple of hours to spend, consider taking a taxi or a bus to Jumbo and spend some time shopping happily.

www.stockmann.fi, Vantaanportinkatu 3 (in Jumbo shopping mall), Vantaa, Finland, +358 9 121 251

I finally got enough time to upgrade Nomadig.com journal to the latest version of WordPress. The transition was soothingly smooth — these guys seem to know what they are doing — as there were not even minor hiccups.

To serve my readers, I decided duplicate the WP installation and upgrade the duplicate. After I found the duplicate working well, I switched the blogs.

The process required also duplicating the database, as otherwise the production blog would have gone haywire.

Follow these easy steps to upgrade from WP 1.5 to 2.0.2 with a duplicate settings.

1. Make a copy of the WP directory, for example, cp -a journal journal2.
2. Dump MySQL database to a file, mysqldump -u user -ppassword --opt database > ~/wp_backup.sql.
3. Create new MySQL database.
4. Add use new_database; in the beginning of the dumped file.
5. Upload the edited dump to MySQL mysql -u user -ppassword < ~/wp_backup.sql.
6. Change the blog and WP admin URLs in the new database to refer to the new WP directory. I used phpMyAdmin to find the rows and edit them.
7. Edit wp-config.php file in the new WP directory to refer to the correct database.
8. Edit .htaccess in the same directory to use correct rewrite URLs.
9. Test that you can view and log in the new WP installation.
10. Upgrade WP as instructed in codex.wordpress.org.
11. Test everything.
12. Change the blog and WP admin URLs in the new database to refer to the old WP directory.
13. Dump the new database to file, mysqldump -u user -ppassword --opt new_database > ~/wp_2_backup.sql.
14. Add use database; (the old database name) in the beginning of the dumped file.
15. Edit wp-config.php to refer back to the old database.
16. Edit .htaccess to use correct rewrite URLs.
17. Upload the version 2 db over the old database, mysql -u user -ppassword < ~/wp_2_backup.sql.
18. Rename the old WP directory, mv journal journal_old.
19. Rename the new WP directory, mv journal2 journal.
20. Test that everything still works.
21. Write an entry about the upgrade. Remember to be specific.

The 1st of May is on Monday this year, and the long weekend has been just bliss for the workers and students alike…

I spotted a small ad in Helsingin Sanomat on Saturday, about Skanno closing down their factory in Kirkkonummi and having a close-out sale. We hurried there (about 20 kilometers from our home) hoping to find a matching armchair for our sofa. No luck, but we could have bought a new huge sofa (1.5 x our current one) with 1000€ discount. Sanna found three rolls of cloth for our recently bought stool. That one was purchased from the Skanno’s store close-out sale a few weeks ago.

Skanno’s factory in Kirkkonummi.

Skanno is not closing down everything, but they have just collected everything under one roof in Ruoholahti. We decided to check out the new shop, too. It was such a bliss; there were a plethora extremely good looking pieces of furniture and a host of other stuff there. We spent some time in a very nice café on the premises. A full review of Skanno’s shop can be found in the previous entry. I’ll try to post the café review later.

Diet Coke in a Riedl glass, enchanting

My sister joined us on Sunday morning with her family. They were on their way to Croatia, to have some sun and relaxation. Wish I were there with them. The day was spent lazily, having two BBQs and sauna helps you forget the daily grind very effectively.

I drove them to the airport first thing on Monday morning and then picked a few friends from the city to have picnic on our patio. We usually go to Ullanlinnanmäki for the picnic, but Aapo has been a bit ill, so we didn’t want to take any chances. Last year we skipped the event, too, as Aapo was only a week old. Maybe next year.

The picnic was a bash! The weather was excellent and our patio was basking on the morning sun. There were enough food and drinks for ten and we were only five and Aapo. We skipped BBQ, as we were already full from the cold foods.

Aapo with dad’s student cap.

After eating, we spent a couple of hours chatting and then decided to go to see people in Ullanlinnanmäki. The place was really packed, we had to spent fifteen minutes in a traffic jam to get there. Fortunately we were lucky with parking, otherwise we would have spent a good amount of time circling around.

The excellent weather had lured people to the park, and there were people having picnic on the outskirts of the park, on boats and on the park itself. A lot of people were just walking or driving around.

Masses at the picnic in Ullanlinnanmäki.

We walked around the park, enjoying the sunshine and the atmosphere. The place was so packed that it felt a bit uncomfortable… We bought a Moomin balloon for Aapo and ice creams for ourselves before heading back to Espoo.

Skanno is the best store to buy design furniture in Finland. Their recently opened store, located in a refurbished factory district Ruoholahti, is an excellent place to see what’s hot in furbishing your home.

Skanno has both their own line of furniture and they sell a whole lot of other brands, such as Ligne Roset. The shop is built into an old warehouse and for once there is enough space to show the pieces of furniture without cramming them into a tiny showroom. The store is quite easily accessible through metro (to Ruoholahti station) and by walking a few hundred meters.

There is also an art gallery, a florist and quite nice café on the premises. The store has a lot of video art here and there, so it’s worth of visit even if you can’t fit the armchair of your choice into your suitcase.

www.skanno.fi, Porkkalankatu 13 G, Helsinki, Finland, +358 9 6129 440