This is the thousandth post in Nomadig.com! More than four years have passed since I created the first incarnation of the site.

During this time, I’ve got two sons, moved to a new apartment, changed my employer twice, and finally established my own company.

The site has not fulfilled its original promise of freeing me to be a digital nomad — and now the times have changed. With the kids, you do not want to wander around, but stay put. Of course, it would be nifty to have gained enough capital to be independently wealthy, and be nomadic at least in mental sense. That hasn’t happened yet, but Exove is on its way to a bright future.

Despite not meeting the targets, Nomadig.com has given me a lot of good openings in both privately and business-wise. So let’s call it a moderate success.

I’ll plan to continue writing here, and reviewing the interesting places I’ve been. Stay tuned for the next thousand articles.

I and Sanna are going to visit London for the forecoming weekend, this time without the boys. Sanna’s parents arrived yesterday to look after the children while we are gone.

I’ve been counting days to the trip and soon we have a couple of days selfishly for ourselves only. I’m dreaming of luxurious long, undisturbed sleeping in comfy hotel bed and a breakfast with nobody wanting attention all the time.

Hopefully we are able to enjoy the trip. This is the first time Sanna is away from the boys, and Niilo is spending the first nights without his parents. We are probably pretty worried about the status back home, and boys are longing us. Monday will be a difficult day, as then all built-up pressure will erupt — on both sides. Fortunately, I’ll be working again that day.

I’ve just experienced one of most luxurious weekends in my life; yet, I’ve been at our home. No fancy five star hotels with huge rooms, comfy beds and out-of-this-world service. Just time with the family.

I was allowed to sleep late on Saturday, and then I woke up in an empty house. Sanna had taken boys out, so I had the house for myself. I decided to return the favour, and made lasagna — I’ve been recently making more and more of our lasagnas. Sanna’s still better, especially this time, as the chicken was a bit tasteless.

Then we went to swim in the nearby swimming hall. It was the first time for Niilo, and he loved it. After that it was nap time for boys, and we could do our own things. Then we visited crazy days in Stockmann and had a good dinner with my younger sister and her sons. Some sauna and chocolate were the program for the rest of the evening.

Today, I’ve been able to do a couple of work related items that have been pending since late August, and then made a meal of tenderloin beef and potatoes with black pepper sauce. Sanna baked an apple pie that was consumed late afternoon when my cousin visited us with her family. Then I played some football with Aapo, and retracted to my den to write some reviews from past trips and this entry.

Nothing beats good family time. You don’t do anything special, but feel special all day long.

Sanna and the boys are visiting Sanna’s parents in Taivalkoski — they’ve been there from Wednesday, and tomorrow I’ll meet them in Helsinki railway station and bring them home.

I’ve been mostly alone during these days, except while working. Of course, I’ve met people while doing shopping but that is not really counted as being not alone.

Being alone feels great and depressing, sometimes even simultaneously. I’ve had all the time in the world for myself, and that is part of the problem at the end, too. Time has dragged sometimes, as there has been nobody to talk with, except on the phone.

Usually I’m pretty productive when having some time for myself, but this time I’ve mostly surfed the net, and done various errands that have been waiting for some time. Nothing major has happened (outside of work that is, there we’ve been kicking ass) and no big thoughts this time — last time I figured out a good strategy for Exove.

I’ve also come to the conclusion that less work during the weekend would have served me better — this hasn’t happened before. Maybe I’m getting older or I’m more tired, but weekend working felt like a chore and not something exhilarating creativity session they’ve been in the past. It might due to the nature of the work — mostly documentation and paying bills, instead of happy hacking.

The silver lining with the chores is that they are mostly gone now. I can spend rest of the evening writing reviews from our recent trips that have been mostly undocumented so far.

Once again, it has been a while before I’ve got enough time to jot down a few notes from our past trip to Iceland and the States. As you may recall, we visited Reykjavik, Boston and New York in the trip.

The main reason for the trip was Sanna attending to a conference in Boston. I could combine my own business needs with the trip quite well, too. Our parents are turning 70 this year, so it was also a pretty nice way to celebrate the new decade. They doubled as caregivers to our children. All in all, very action packed trip.

The first destination was Reykjavik, pure holiday for a day. We got the best price to Boston and New York from Icelandair, and a stopover in Iceland was practically free. We booked a bus trip to Blue Lagoon thermal spa, and swiftly missed the bus. I was in restroom with Aapo and Sanna hauled back our buggys that we left in the conveyer. Fortunately, the helpful ladies in the Reykjavik Excursion counter called the bus and it came to pick us (and another party) to the spa. The spa itself is pretty nifty experience, do go there if you ever visit Iceland. As almost everything else in the nature of the country, it is pretty unique — blue hot salted water is emerging from the ground, and people are bathing in it.

After relaxing bath session, we took the bus to our hotel in Reykjavik. This time we were warned that the bus will leave and won’t come back. We were sitting inside almost ten minutes early, just be on the safe side.
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We’ll start our trip to Iceland and the USA tomorrow. This time the posse is our extended family; four of us and my parents. We’ll visit Reykjavik, Boston and New York.

Our choice of airline is Icelandair, they made an excellent offer for flying to Boston and returning from New York. We’ll pop over to Iceland for a day, boys and grandparents have never been there, so it will be a nice experience. The program there contains visit to Blue Lagoon and some walking around Reykjavik, nothing major.

In Boston, we’ll do some shopping, visit a couple of museums and so forth. I’ll have also some business to do there. After four nights, we’ll board a train to New York. I’ll run more business errands there, and then try to enjoy the city, too.

After a week of travelling, we’ll fly back from New York City to Helsinki through Reykjavik. Waiting for the trip, anxiously.

Our boys have been sick for a while. They are better now, but we were confined to our home for two weeks, and thus my update frequency got sloppy again.

Anyhow, Aapo got chicken pox a couple of weeks ago. It took eight days from the first pimples to be fully healed and go back to the kindergarten. Then it was Niilo’s turn after a couple of healthy days. The disease was much stronger now, the poor baby was fully covered with pimples. Fortunately, he doesn’t know how to scratch yet…

I do hope that there are no permanent scars left, as sometimes chicken pox may leave really bad marks to face or upper body. I and Sanna had had the disease as children, too. Fortunately so — as chicken pox spreads in 90% certainty in fifteen minutes or so when visiting a room with a patient and it is really bad disease for adults.

I took one photograph worth publishing in our recent trip to Miami and Turks & Caicos. The photo was taken on the second to last evening in Turks & Caicos, when the hotel had their weekly “come back soon” festivities on the beach. Sun was setting, and someone had already put the torches on fire. The Caribbean breeze was blowing ever so gently, moving the flame constantly. I took three frames, and one of them was pretty good.

When I went through my photos, I also learned that I haven’t updated my artistic photos for a while. They’ve been standing still from early 2005 — it looks like that I’ve changed my subjects a bit when Aapo was born, so the surrounding objects do not interest me as much as the boys.

However, I made one finding. This photo was taken almost two years ago, when I, Sanna and Aapo were visiting San Francisco and San Jose. We paid a visit to Muir Woods, and I took quite a bit of photos there. When I looked them again, this photo looked a bit magical. The red, almost lilac colours make the view wonderlandish — at least for me, as we don’t have that much of lilac stuff in our nature here in Finland.