Is this still working?

Trying it out.

Automatic writing

Gosh, how embarassing. I got a new computer some time ago and thought that i had forgotten the password here ... a convenient excuse not to write for a couple of months. But to my surprise, got in here at the first attempt.

I guess mine was the nerdy version of walking on hot coals ... you think you cannot do it but actually you not only can but it is much easier than you expected. Maybe i should try red-hot coals next.

Today should be the rainiest day for 50 years, apparently...

Gosh, I am out of form in blogging. It must be one of those days -you know you have those days you are maybe a bit absentminded, forgetful, let's face it ... not feeling very clever. Often that is after a ... jolly night in the pub. In my case, maybe it is a bit too much working recently. Boring - and it is reflected here.

The funny thing is that during these four months i have had some decent ideas to write about (at least better than this!) but now ... well, i pretend there is so much to write about that actually it is better not to write anything as it would be unfair to those other things that i would not write about.

Let's consider this as an attempt at automatic writing. You know, the thing where people claim a divine intervention makes their pen fly like a ... diving eagle? ... in pursuit of making philosophical, if not literary, excellence flow freely.

Only in this case it is the keyboard that is suffering from my speedwriting exercise.

That stalled now ... my channel upwards seems to have been blocked ... well, as i said, today was predicted to be the rainiest day for 50 years.

That, if something, sounds like a divine intervention to me.

First Andy Murray was punished with a wrist injury (no writing for him for a while i guess), and now Tiger Tim must be restlessly waiting to be unleashed in front of the eyes of erm, suspecting SW17 public. Merciful rain, after all?

Between the floors

En route to my desk from the canteen it happened.

Into the lift I went, the relevant button I pushed. The doors closed as they have thousands of time before in various places and countries. And then nothing.

Pushed the open the doors button. You guessed it. Pushed other buttons. You are clever!

A glance upwards, and a red text next to the control panel was lit up, saying "The lift is out of order". Helpful.

It was the time for the magic button. The one you always wanted to push as a child but did not quite dare (I was a rather well-behaved child).

But now. ALARM!

Gherkin also sports "ground-breaking"
lifts made by the same company

Ring it did. Phew!

In a while I was talking to someone in a control room somewhere (I still have no idea where). The problem was he hardly heard me. I managed to raise my voice for a sufficient Rod Stewart -imitation (a sore throat) and the guy finally understood I was ... stuck in a lift! Then the conversation kind of died.

I was alone. Not cinematically trapped with an attractive lady. Except that I did have my (canteen) dinner. It was not time for that yet, though. Better try to get the rescue mission underway. I check my mobile phone. No signal. It must be the steel cage surrounding me. So after some minutes had to ring the alarm again.

This time an automated female voice greeted me. "All our customer service officers are busy. Your call will be ..." That was a bit surreal, but unfortunately true. And yes. The wait-in-line music did not feel too uplifting at all. Then I hear a voice. "Fire brigade is on its way" At the same time I will hear another voice greeting me, from the lift's loudspeaker. Confusion ensues as at first I am not sure who said something about the firebrigade. Then I realise there is a security guard outside the stubbornly shut lift doors whose voice I can just about hear inside the lift (with what seems solid steel chassis) making - pardon the pun - an uplifting promise, finally.

I end up trying to shout both to the guard outside the lift and the lift-alarm man in the intercom relevant sentences and whoever I am not yelling at gets confused. As a result I get confused. Finally I manage to tell the lift-alarm man that firebrigade should be on its way. He says an engineer is on their way.

I sit down in the lift and start to eat. The meal is not great but it gives you something to do, a bit like on an aeroplane journey.

Unfortunately the lift-alarm starts to make calls on its own. One of the two or three people reaching out fron the loudspeaker sounds angry. "Who arr uu? Wherrr rr uu calling frrrom? In fact, every time a different person answers the phone which kind of the alarm bells ring to me.

One man even asks are you the bloke stuck in a lift in such and such place in London [can't remember the name] and I tell I am not. Then he asks my post code, well, the postcode of the lift, I suppose. I tell him I am not sure, but that the street address is this and this .... Obviously they do not have fancy displays pinpointing the location of the lift where you are stuck.

...

Finally I can see a crowbar reaching through the doors and can hear the sound of someone trying to force the (normally) sliding-doors open. They do not slide. A voice tells me they have to try to manually force the lift to a floorlevel to get me out and that should take 5-10 minutes.

Some minutes later, the lift feels moving a bit, but then grinds to a halt. Here I am, my colleagues having no idea where the heck is the guy. On a Saturday evening. How long for can you get stuck in a lift? Just as the annoyance levels are about to rise alarmingly, the happy end beckons. The lift starts moving. In what feels quite a normal way. The doors open. A firewoman's smile greets me. She is the observer of the happy end.

I am at the starting point of my journey.

By a weird coincidence, I know a guy who works for this particular lift manufacturer, the nationality of which also happens to the country of my origin (bizarrely and slightly worryingly to our reputation) .

I send him a text. "The firebrigade just rescued me from a rather new model of your Ecodisc-lift that got stuck between the floors in my London office. Its emergency phone also played its tricks on me." (Poor guy, to get such a message on a Saturday evening)

His reply: "It's great the firebrigade is up to its job. I always use the stairs, for a certain reason ... Have a great evening in London!"

PS. Someone might be interested for how long did I actually spend in the lift? Well, I did not finish my dinner - not only because of its lack of taste or the constant shouting to the speakerphone and the mysteryperson outside the lift. I was trapped inside for 20-30 minutes.

PPS. Thank you for everyone I did not have the chance to thank for getting me out of there so quickly. I did not want to end up being a celebrity whose claim to fame was "got stuck for the longest period known for man in a lift". It would have been unlikely that this would have gone unnoticed as the lift happened to be in a rather well-known media establishment in central London. Who knows, perhaps just for the sake of a good news story on a slow news day ... week ...... two weeks it could be tricky to ... get me out of there!

After all, an old hack I came across just after having got out of the cage seemed to genuinely treat me with respect when having queried if someone was really stuck in the lift I exclusively revealed to him that it was me who was stuck in the lift.

Something out of ordinary - for the workplace, anyway - my unconventional dinner-break was.

Erm, breaking the silence after 'breaking the long silence'

Embarrassing.

What else can you say after such a long silence ... after a long silence?

Well, many things i suppose as i haven't written here for quite a while.

First, happy 2007! (it is still January, after all)

My excuse is that i have been editing other people's texts quite a lot recently. This is the dilemma, i think. Using your energy to trying to clarify what someone has said in often [hopefully] beautifully constructed manner (not least thanks to "ink stop" number two, the offline subeditor) in excactly 87 characters - or 57, or whichever space you are given. That is yourspace.

It is a bit like going to a quiz show every night, i suppose. Filling the empty space as effectively as possible, as impressively as you can in the space provided, using every time a bit differently shaped news items. And really, using your brain in trivia sort of way. Something is often not investigated (12) but probed (6). The fewer points, the better. Here, it is January sales. 50% off!

Selecting "something interesting" for the readers. Sometimes the best advice is also the simplest [thanks Richard]. Obviously considering that you keep up to date what is considered "interesting".

There are now intoxicating doses of celebrity administered, no glitter and glory, nor - if it all goes pearshaped - too much gore either, i suppose. No fear to get jaded (sorry) in that certain way. Really, the best you can do is to act as an oil of the highest quality, worthy of Formula One. To lubricate the engine to run smoothly.

I suppose it is fair to say that everyone of us likes to think we have something worthy enough of our own to say. If you are a former spin doctor, it is not much of a twist to become a columnist.If you are a former scientist, it can take more to become a journalist. A bit ironic. As you should search for the truth.

But being boring is not an option. That is the tricky bit. How much can you assume the educated reader to know already? Not to say pike is a fish (which probably about 60% of people aged over 12 know) anyway.

Who is your reader?

Are they or are they or are they or are they or are they an intriguing combination of everything? (most likely)

These days that is not too far from being the holy grail. Class A, B, C readers. How big is your wallet?

Doing the night quiz 50/50 at two different locations makes you think. Strange things.

Laters. Hopefully sooners.

Long silence broken, because of the eternal ...

Today began grimly. A school friend, now a policeman, shot someone dead, . Admittedly, it was a dream. Usually see a nightmare once a year, this was second night running.

Which enables a jump to the murder of the "Finnish John Lennon". Well, he drank too much, did not die at the hands of a maniac, was ill for the last 20 years or so, but did die yesterday. And it is an honourable death for a top musician. He wrote a song about dipsomania, too.

Especially about Andy McCoy, a distinguished member of the Hanoi Rocks. He did not climb to a coconut tree as did Mick Jagger but fell of a balcony already some years ago (I'm not claiming he would be in the same category music-wise but in the, erm, backstage scene he might be able to hold his own). Anyway, I know the Hanoi Rocks is/was famous in Japan as an ex-girlfriend was a great fan of Michael Monroe, another member of the band.

Especially if you are the greatest. People who know me would not necessarily consider me as a great music fan. Well, here we go.

Juice Leskinen was not the eight greatest Finn as was Lennon a Brit, he was number 38. But to get that high being so much of an anti-establishment person is quite remarkable in Finland, believe me.

He was a musician, a poet, a novelist. The greatest person using the language, in my opinion. One of those people who just by writing in the language revives it at the same time, makes you realise its possibilities. And making it as evasive topic for me as any to write about in English.

But trust me. Juice Leskinen is a true great and will live on, even though he only wrote in a language spoken by fewer people than there live in London.

In his memory (cannot do in English i'am afraid, not skilful enough in the language. If i could ever be ...)

Mittaamatomilla turuilla (Beyond Narnia/Whitehall/Rowan Williams/Reason [you get the message - the alike in Finnish!])

Maailman turuilla

Ikävillä, ajatuksilla, suruisilla

Sanat ei riitä, yritystä on

Pääse siihe en mikä muistosi on

Se on tavaton

Sillä luuloni ovat joskus suuret

Uurteet kasvoilla, elämän ahoilla

Ehkä tahoilla oikeilla

Ei nähdä mitä teit

Mutta parempaa on se kuin norjalainen sei

Roskaa ei

Kuten tämä täyttyi

Mitta

yOU oNLY lIVE tWICE

Spying for mother Russia, being the unwitting Rasputin, or similar.

But why is a Russian spy dying in London bigger news than over 150 people in Iraq?

Real politik. Real politics.

It is more comfortable, and most importantly, more accommodating, to observe unwelcome foreign influences in your country, even if directed at foreign citizens of the same country.

After all, the UK intervention. Yes, over there. Has cost so many lives. Even if the intentions were good, it is Absolutely clear that the execution(s )can be described as nothing but shambles.

Oh yeah. Maybe Channel4 was not too wrong?

I am ashamed I have voted for Tony Blair.

Carbon in my mind

Sorry about the longish silence ... working a lot these days ... try to write if anything interesting comes up though ...

I am currently writing a column for a magazine in Finland about Carbon footprint and thus did some research online. The results were ... well, judge for yourself if there is any difference in the environmental awareness between the UK and USA.

This table shows the number of hits on the respective organisations' websites when I searched for the keyword ... yeah, you got it!

PRINT
The Guardian 69
The Independent 33
The Times 22
Telegraph 12
New York Times 6
Daily Mail 2
Mirror 2
LA Times 1
Daily Express (The World's greatest newspaper) 0
The Sun 0
Daily Star 0
Washington Post 0
USA Today 0

TELLY
BBC 30
Fox News 1
ITV 0
Sky News 0
Channel 4 (malfunctioning search)
ABC 0
NBC 0