Hello from my home in Helsinki! This is NordLetter #114, 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 to this mail. I am also posting on Mastodon.
Hello from my home in Helsinki! This is NordLetter #114, 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 to this mail. I am also posting on Mastodon.
On Sunday, at 22:00 EEST, Spain will play Argentina to decide if Messi will be a two-time World Cup Champion or not. I am typing this as I’m watching England play France for the bronze (England won). This is not the first time I’ve had this thought that this match is just so damn pointless. Is either set of players motivated to play this match, when they are already knocked out of the competition?
As with my love for Jagjit Singh, my love for football started thanks to my father. I loved cricket before then. I played cricket - mostly gully. Everybody played cricket.
It was the 2010 World Cup hosted by South Africa. Dad was a fan of England and Rooney, and I became one too. The other team I loved during the tournament was Germany. I think because I had their jersey.
From there, I followed Rooney and his club, Manchester United. But I was still into cricket, and back then, watching football was not practical. The matches happened at weird times. I was still in college. There were no streaming services. And I did not care that much.
Germany won the 2014 World Cup. They famously beat Brazil 7-1. But the funny thing about following nations in the world cup or otherwise is that we don’t really belong to any nation that is competitive. India is famously very bad at football. If and when India does get into the world cup, I know who I will be supporting. But till then, it’s the bonds I have formed from elsewhere. England - from that first world cup. Germany from watching them play during those first years. Portugal because I love Cristiano.
And so watching a world cup is usually weird. There is no one team that I am behind. It feels transactional. Like I don’t care who wins. A bit like IPL - where you’re there just for the spectacle.
Germany has been bad since their win in the 2014 world cup. And England got bronze. So, I don’t really care who wins this World Cup. I am not a fan of either Spain or Argentina. But Lisandro plays for Argentina, so go Argentina!
After dilly-dallying through the entire summer, I went and got a fan from Tokmanni. It was the cheapest one I could get, because we don’t use fans that much here in Finland.
I had gone with Savya to pick it up. He tried picking it up after we had gotten home, but thankfully put it down. He was buzzing around as I set it up.
After I connected it to the power plug and turned it on, Savya was so damn happy. He pointed at it, laughed, put his hand up in its direction and laughed some more. I wrote about this a little while ago in [[202504280924 Noticing the little things|noticing the little things]], and Prerna said the same thing when she said, “he just brings so much joy and attention to the little things”.
He does. We tend to forget these things from time to time. Savya provides a nice reminder from time to time.
Speaking of, we took Savya to get a hair cut. Prerna told me you’re supposed to take appointments before you go for a hair cut. Which was weird to me. I’m used to just going to the barber and asking them to give me a cut.
Anyway, I called the shop and we went their after reserving a time. When we got there, there were more people in the shop and then expected so the barber asked us to come back in an hour.
We went on a walk after that. This was not our usual time and there were a lot of bees and bugs in general getting in our face than usual. It was a different experience than usual.
Savya asked me to take pictures of the water. So here they are.
I took pictures of some ducks because I wanted to.
Halfway through, we returned toward the barber shop. Somewhere before the Arabia library, I found another barber shop which was open and mostly empty. We took Savya there, who started crying almost immediately. The barber thankfully put a laptop in front of Savya, so he stopped crying. And then he had his haircut.
I took a picture of a lovely mural on one of the buildings on our way back.
I returned and made some veg manchurian. It took time but was great.
I am reading The Complete Guide to Fasting right now. A part of me is worried that it reads a bit like the diet fads of yesteryear. I don’t like diets in general. But this book is not really about diets, but rather fasting.
And we do have fasting in our context. My mother used to do fasts during Chhath Puja. Her fasts did not even include water. And little me would look at her and think I could never do this.
I still think the same. But the science (logic) of it is making sense to me. This is after I had read and finished The Diabetes Code and wrote about it in NL112. I wanted to read further and understand the different fasting regimens and what I was supposed to eat or not.
Usually, in the mornings I don’t feel hungry. Still, I eat because I have to. So many of the hunger pangs and mindless eating are linked to triggers. Like, having Coke with Biryani, or munching on something while watching TV, or sports. We, Prerna and I, have done this so many times in the past. We would eat dinner even though we were not hungry, thinking what if we get hungry in the night?
Hunger is ok. It feels like the end of the world - but it is not. Hugh Howey talks about it in his routine as well.
We often don’t even wait to get hungry. We wake up, and it’s breakfast time. We eat a full meal, or some junk like a bowl of cereal. We crush a large coffee full of milk. We snack on something before lunch. We eat lunch, because that’s when we have a break in the day. More snacking in the afternoon. A full dinner. Snack before bed. Any slight hunger pain is a mere itch compared to the real deep hunger we are designed to experience before getting a meal.
The first thing to learn is that hunger should not equal panic. Instead, hunger should be celebrated as a sign of a healthy, functioning body. Sit with the hunger a while. Learn to associate hunger not as something wrong, but something right.
There are some practical considerations of course. And hence, why I’m reading this book, but it’s interesting and something I would be willing to try.
I have started maintaining a daily affirmations diary. This came from BK Shivani and her videos regarding what we consume and how that trashes our sleep.
The idea is to not use our phones when we wake up. To use the earlier moments in our life better - do some meditation, write down the things you want to do and be. I was already doing pranayama, the diary is something I have started doing after that.
How do I do this?
On each page, I write today’s date and then just list out the things I want to do or be. I add a line marker after I’m done and do the same thing at night before sleeping.
It has been a good practice. At least I figured out being a better human being was more important than the other practical stuff. So I made some changes to my list.
Also, I get to be a bit more thoughtful in the morning. The push to start this was this Craig Mod interview. I have not seen it yet - just the introduction.
Both the things happened on the same day - Prerna came back from the Brahmakumaris event and talked about this and I saw this video’s introduction.
This is of course something I have been wanting to do - not using my phone when I wake up. It felt cosmic, like someone somewhere wanted me to do this. So, I did.
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.
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