Yoga on Father's Day
Hello from the Senate Square in Helsinki! This is NordLetter #12, a weekly newsletter on living and walking in Finland. Previous editions can be found here.
The International Day of Yoga is celebrated on 21st June every year. This year marks or will mark the 10th edition of this celebration. The Indian Embassy in Finland celebrated the same at Senate Square this year.
We had to get up a bit earlier, at six, on a Sunday! We left home and took a bus to Kamppi. We got down at Ruoholahti and took the #7 tram to Senate Square. We registered ourselves and got the yoga day t-shirt. Then moved to a good spot and spread the mat on the ground.
The event started at 8:50 with a short address by the Ambassador of India to Finland. At 9:00 the instructors started us with a breathing exercise. The whole session lasted for around an hour, where we did a bit of everything including surya namaskar, downward dog, some stability asanas and some more breathing exercises.
We ended the session with paying gratitude to ourselves, the Mother Earth and to each other.
Yoga allows you to be at one with your body. You recognise how it feels. You feel every stretch. You notice every breath.
For this one hour here, I felt all of that.
/techStuff
WWDC happened this Monday. Apple announced a bunch of stuff. Here's some of the things that I found interesting.
- You can arrange icons on your home screens in iOS/iPadOS.
- Apple Passwords app for all platforms (including Windows).
- Two fun demos: the Maths Notes one and the MacOS phone-mirroring one. The phone mirroring thing will be useful. There are many times when I am sitting with my Mac and I don't have the phone nearby. Being able to just run the phone from the Mac will be useful.
- Apple Intelligence/Smarter Siri: will have the context and the data to actually be useful. But it will be limited on the phone side at least to iPhone 15 Pro or higher. There are other generative AI features coming (custom emoji, autocomplete, etc.) but none of that is exciting to me.
- Mail app is getting updated. I wish I could add the smart filters I have on the Mac to the iPhone. But it will have filters similar to what Gmail has. Not sure if it will be any useful.
/reading
Being kind is an important quality, perhaps the greatest one. We should all strive to be a little kinder. The world would be a better place for it. This article talks about being kinder in the context of a meeting. But whatever. Be kind.
This Sunday was also Father's Day.
I became a father this year. There are things you understand only after you became a parent. Everything before you are a parent, is just stuff people say. It's stuff that's on paper. Theoretical.
There are so many things I understand now. About my father. And how a father feels, in general. And so, here's to my father. Whoever I am today, is mostly because of you. I love you.
Until next week.