After a tiring trip thru Montreal and Munchen, I finally arrived in Helsinki, Finland–first time in a Scandinavian country, and so far, all’s good! Lufthansa neither broke nor lost my luggage, I collected my Helsinki Card, obtained a Saunalahti SIM Card with Unlimited Talk, Text, Data for one month (5.9 Euro SIM, 24.95 Euro plan–can’t get that in Canada, no sirrah, you can’t!) and met a new baby friend, a five month old, on the bus from the airport to the city.

So, why suddenly write into this blog, after neglecting it for mumble mumble years? Well, it’s a funny story. Last year the website got infected, webhosting company temporarily suspended it, I cleaned up the infection, re-scanned it myself, and told them it was good, but apparently I was supposed to ask for THEM to re-scan it before they would un-suspend it, unbenownst to myself. Not that I updated the blog all that frequently, as in, almost never, but you’ve gotta start somewhere and since TravelPod closed up shop, I guess this becomes the default go-to for blogs travelogue as well as blogs science fictional. Or at least that’s my story and I am sticking to it!

Finland is comfortably cool–a nice 21 degrees Celcius compared to the furnace I left back in Ottawa. My AirBnB hostess was waiting for me when I arrived with germanic precision of 1 minute before she said she would meet me there, and I like the place–small, cosy but very well situated in the city–it’s walking distance to a travel nexus of busses, trams and metro trains, as well as grocery stores, bars, fast food and possibly other things I have not yet seen because did I mention I am tired from running thru multiple airports?

I am also trying a new thing–after the recent security bans on laptops, tablets etc., this is the first overseas trip to a convention I am making without a laptop. This blog and any other communications from is coming to you the courtesy of an Android smartphone and a bluetooth Thinkpad keyboard with Trackpoint–and working much better than I expected. The next time, however, I might want to invest in a ChromeCast device or some kind of USB-to-HDMI hub/cable/connection since all hotels and most AirBnB locations I have been lately have large screens with HDMI/USB inputs begging to be utilized.

I am going to spend the rest of the night planning for touristing tomorrow and at one point will have to post my WorldCon schedule, but so far, things are looking positive–yes, I said positive, and no, no aliens have kidnapped me and replaced me with a pod person–I am allowed to be positive once in a blue moon, after all…