A short trip to Porkkalanniemi
Hello from my home in Matinkylä! This is NordLetter #62, a weekly newsletter on living and walking in Finland. Each week I share some of the interesting things I found on the web.
To follow the series, you can subscribe here. A new NordLetter will land in your inbox every Sunday. Not a fan of newsletters? No problem! You can read previous editions here. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed.
You can reach out to me by replying on this mail or adding a comment on this. I am also posting on Mastodon.
Sunny days have been too few and far in between. We would have sun one day and then gloomy cloudy days the rest of the week.
It does not rain as it does during monsoons back home, in India. Rain here is a soft drizzle most of the time, a mist more than rain. But it keeps on, for hours at a time.
Last Saturday we had one of those sunny days. The plan was to visit Turku, but one of the toddlers fell ill, so we had to scrap our plans. Before that could rain a parade on our good moods, we decided we would go somewhere, anywhere. We needed to get out of the house, soak in all of that sun! I guess we are closer to the natives now.
I asked ChatGPT. It gave me a few suggestions - Porvoo, Nuuksio, Suomenlinna, Fiskars Village, Kirkkonummi & Porkkalanniemi, Lake Tuusula, and Hanko.
We had been to Porvoo, Nuuksio and Suomenlinna earlier. We were planning on visiting Hanko beach with a couple of our friends later. Between Fiskars Village, Porkkalanniemi and Lake Tuusula, we decided to go on a one day trip to Porkkalanniemi.
Porkkalanniemi is in Kirkkonummi which is a short 40 min drive from Matinkylä. It has forest, sea and rocky beaches, all in one place. Kirkkonummi also has the Fyyri library and you must know by now, I love libraries. It received the prestigious Finlandia Award for Architecture in 2021.
We left home at around 10:30 and after picking up our friends from Suurpelto, we were in one of the parking spots in Porkkalanniemi at around 12:35.
There was a small trail, which seemed accessible enough for Savya and his stroller, so we went off on it. Branching off of it was a little rock formation. I could not help myself and climbed to the top, hoping to see if the route we were on, would be accessible or not. I could not find that out, what I found instead was this.
The trail we were on, ended here. Past some trees, there were a couple of benches to our right, a family was having lunch there already, and sea in front.
From here, one could, as did many hikers, walk through the wilderness and go further toward the peninsula, but not us, not with a stroller, so we returned. Then drove further inward, toward the Teledergetin lenkki, which ChatGPT had said was an accessible trail.
After a short false start, we crossed the road from where we had parked the car and found the trail.
It was a good start. We walked through the jungle through a fairly accessible trail, past some grassy trails and this stone thing.
Till we reached this hut. It looked like its where people would rest or barbecue stuff.
Our luck ran out as the trail ahead was not accessible with a trolley. I ran up another boulder and found a place where we could sit and eat.
We sat and ate our lunch - sandwiches and parathas, while the sea kept swooshing against the rocks, and making we want to dive into the water.
Did you think I forgot about the library? Here it is.
A stone’s throw away was a church under renovation. There was a marriage going on. Or so it seemed. I did not ask. That was our last stop for the trip. We got back in the car and rode back home.
One may summarise the trip as - we went to a place to eat lunch. But that’s what most Indian trips are. We love food!
/five things to share
1. Seth Godin - Agency and contribution
Skill is a choice. Talent is overrated, and if we choose to get better at something, we probably can.
2. OpenAI’s next big launch could be an AI web browser
OpenAI is planning to launch an AI web browser in the “coming weeks,” according to a report from Reuters. Sources tell the outlet that OpenAI could build its Operator AI agent into the browser, allowing it to book reservations, fill out forms, and complete other tasks on a user’s behalf as it moves toward an “agentic” future.
Quite a few companies are working on building AI browsers - Perplexity, OpenAI and The Browser Company. I have not tried any by now.
All these companies seem to have the same vision - they will use the browser for us, book stuff, search stuff, etc. I don’t know how I feel about that, tbh.
3. Average age of cars in Finland nears 14 years amid sluggish sales
The average Finnish car is 13.6 years old — compared to 11 years in Sweden, 9.6 years in Denmark, and 11.1 years in Norway.
I am a bit surprised by this. I see newer cars on the road. Or maybe what I see is well-maintained cars. From time to time I do see some old cars too though. Super old Yaris and so on. I guess there is a market for those.
I recently bought a car. It’s a 3 year old Qashqai. It’s good to know there’s a market for selling it again after I’m done.
4. Finland backs Nokia-led plan for AI gigafactory
The European Commission’s InvestAI initiative is targeting 200 billion euros’ worth of investments in AI and high-performance computing (HPC), including a huge push for AI infrastructure. The petascale supercomputer Lumi is partly funded by the Union’s EuroHPC Joint undertaking.
I was just reading about this yesterday, the different types of funding government can do to guide deployment.
“Now is the right time to influence the development of the European artificial intelligence infrastructure,” she said in a statement last month.
The government bills Finland as “an ideal location for an AI gigafactory, largely due to clean energy grids and land availability”.
I wonder how much new electricity is coming up in Finland, so that there is no impact on electricity prices for normal consumers because of all these data centres that are coming up.
5. Gmail’s new tab is made for unsubscribing from emails
The view will show you who’s sending the most emails and exactly how many messages they’ve sent in the past few weeks so you can be better informed about who’s clogging up your inbox the most.
I use gmail’s current implementation of this aggressively. Anything that I do not want another email from, I immediately click on unsubscribe.
I get so many spam type emails that tracking any useful communication has become a challenge. Inbox zero is just not possible.
This would be a welcome addition.
If you enjoyed reading this, and know someone else who might, please consider forwarding this to them. It would help this grow and make me happy. ��
Until next week.