Review of 2011 and goals for 2012

Review of past year's goals

Lose weight to 55kg (BMI 20.7): Failed. The weight bottomed at 56kg. Then I moved to Helsinki, fattening to 60kg during the 2 months I travelled 5 hours a day, leaving little energy for exercise and gulping beer on evenings to wash out the "can you be so pissed off you die" feeling.

Main events:

• Got fired.
• Got a new job from Helsinki.
• No longer working with a dying technology.
• Bought an apartment.
• Got cynical, noticing that the only effect from 4.5 years of work was the balance on my bank account.
• Studied investing to find out how to increase the balance without working.
• Made progress in pole dancing during the 3 non-work months.
• Had fun during 3 summery non-work months, and unparalleled amount of social interaction by participating in The Club's event. No new social skills milestones reached, though.
• Wrote a very early prototype of a teaching game for Chinese, and an unpromising business plan for productizing it.
• Noticed that I'm too lazy punk to develop it while holding a job, abandoning it.

Overall, I'll remember 2011 as the year I studied investing, it is the only change which will still have effect in 2021. Nothing much lost or gained in other fronts.

Goals for the next year:

• Diet to 55kg.
• Re-establish social life in Helsinki.
• Start a regular sports hobby to stay fit.

Drum'n'bass evening@Venue

The biggest difference between Tampere and Helsinki rave parties are in security arrangements. At Venue, there were 4 security guards present, one of them huge freezer-refridgerator combination with tattoos. They had radio phones. At one point in the evening, one of them pimp walked into the bar room, shoulders wide, his whole body language screaming "I guard here!"

In Tampere, there were less guards, they tended to be regular guys - just taller, they didn't have special equipment and they mainly stayed on the background.

When exiting the bar at 03.45, police patrols and guards were visibly present around Kamppi. I took a taxi home, since the night routes of buses were cancelled for Christmas. When I mentioned the taxi driver about tighter security at Venue, he first emphasized that in his opinion any conflicts should be solved primarily by talking. Immediately after that, he played his part in reifying the badass violent reputation of security guards by telling how the steroid beasts have very short fuse, how a customer died in the hands of a security guard, and how he the taxi driver himself had 4 years of karate training.

Probably Helsinki night is more dangerous, as all night shifters feel the need to emphasize their capability for violence. I have to admit that I don't like Kamppi and railway station late at night. I wonder if it is due to diversity, or because larger density of people directly means larger amount of scum per square kilometer.

Happy Solstice!