Tuuttiturinoita

Primera

2005-05-15T21:18:00.000+03:00

Sold my old car. Trip meter of it had about 199 350km. The new one's count was about 143 370, is now 143 960.

Been selling lots of ice cream lately. Since the last update, an estimated driving amount would be about 1600km. This week, I'll have again six days of work, expect some hundreds of kilometers to come :)

History revealed

2005-05-15T20:53:00.000+03:00

Viewing some ancient events this time, how did I get this job of mine, ice cream van driver?

It was July of 2002. I had finished my compulsory military service 4th Jan, same year, and had been searching for job since. Less and more intensity in this. Lived at my parents', so it wasn't _that_ necessary to find job fast.

Every now and then, I searched for interesting job opportunities at mol.fi that is, finnish ministry of labour. They have this online job search and browsing possibility. Dropped several applications, most of which were never even answered.

Back to this July. I had noticed this job opportunity offered by Kotijäätelö, at mol.fi, and thought it might be a good choice. Didn't send an application then though, for some unknown reason.

Friday, 12th. I had arrived to Helsinki, for Tuska open air metal festival going to be arranged in the downtown. I was at my friend's place, when I came over to this same job ad, and wrote them a short mail, telling that I'm interested in the job. In the evening, at around 1700, me and friends of mine, were about to go inside the main festival area, the music and noise was quite loud there outside too. My phone rang, they called me if I would be able to arrive for a job interview on Monday, at 1100. I was over 600km away, and the festival was about to end on Sunday, at around 2300. I managed to move the interview one hour later.

Sunday night, when the festival was over, at around midnight, having not slept at all, this car of mine left the city of Helsinki, heading for Joensuu, to drop a friend there, and to pick up another one. After 900 km of travel, we arrived at Oulu at around 1000, so I had plenty of time to go take a shower and change my clothing from the one used at the metal festival :)

Arrived the job interview at 1155, it went quite fine, and for I was the last one being interviewed for this job, the interviewer was able to finish the talk with words "welcome to the company". He showed me the office and I also met some of my upcoming colleagues. After this, he told me I'd better go to sleep :)

I was extremely nervous of all this. And nervous of being nervous. New to me, this nervousness was. I was afraid, under pressures and felt all weird of a sudden.

I was first to experience a ten-day training period, where I was each day going on a ice cream route with an old hand driver. During these days, my nervousness disappeared, I relaxed and felt quite comfortable actually. In other words, I liked the job. And I still do, would I be doing this anymore if I didn't?

Gahh

2005-04-21T03:29:00.000+03:00

Should be sleeping. Am not. Work Tue-Sat and then yet Mon and Tue. Now, Wednesday's sale was about 1/4 of that of Tue. What a boring (and cold, too) day it was, it even snowed once in a while, but I didn't let those things let me down :)

wed km 198730
ice cream van 256: 300km

tue km 198696
ice cream van 256: 45km

xq

2005-04-15T21:57:00.000+03:00

Been a while. Starting on Wed night. Went to see this gig at Klubi, bands performing there that night were Korpiklaani, Turisas and Moonsorrow. Ticket price was 11€, not too huge price for those bands, and totally awesome (sweaty too, for me :P) Met lots of my friends there, some from a bit further away too. We left there immediatly after Moonsorrow had finished, because I had not much time to sleep, I had to be at uni at 0645. That resulted in about three-hour sleep for me, it wasn't so difficult to wake up, but to stay awake at some events of Thursday.

Ye, we had this xq = excu = excursion, which, for us, is a kind of student trip, bus full of students, officially going to visit some companies, consturction sites etc although not forgetting the fun part. I don't even wish to think how much (free) alcohol is consumed on those trips :P

Our bus headed from Tampere to Espoo, where we first visited the site of Sello, a huge mall, yet quite a bit under construction. After that we visited the headquarters of the constructing company, where we got free dinner and refreshing drinks, also spent nice hours at their sauna. Left there at around 2200 and headed over to Helsinki University of Technology campus, Otaniemi, for some student accommodation. Imagine about 40 totally wasted students there, in one room.. that noise. Most of the ppl left to downtown, to become even more wasted :P I was so damn tired, that I desperately tried to sleep there. I stucked earplugs into my ears so damn deep, that it was hard to dig them out in the morning :)

I managed to sleep over eight hours there, woke up only a couple of times when some jerk yelled again and again asking who had drank his beers, and also "asking" that from me too :P

Most people had returned to the campus by the time of 0600 friday morning, while our departure from the place was set to 0900. Surprisingly though, there was no need to carry anyone to the bus, everyone walked there with their own feet. We did make quite a deal of extra stops though :P

Our first destination was the construction site of Lohja Highway, part of the E18 road. In my opinion, that was much more interesting than the previous site (shouldn't be surprising), most ppl though disagreeing. I Asked lots of (non-)important questions about the schedule, safety, planning, etc :)

Next up, free lunch at a local Golf course, and after that we headed over to Turku. There we made a visit to another construction office, again getting free stuff to eat and drink :P I had been planning to return from Turku by train in advance, because I'll have to go work tomorrow (Sat) at 0900, and the xq would have lasted at least till 1200. It happened though, that our bus driver had to return to Tampere too, so I got a free ride back to Tampere from him, and no need to hassle with schedules either. Lots of thank to that driver. Now I guess, I still have some need for sleep before the 11-hour workday coming up tomorrow. Same route as a week earlier, I hope no car wrecks this time :)

km 198588

Not my day

2005-04-09T23:49:00.000+03:00

Had good sale yesterday, and I knew to expect even better for today, so in the morning I had quite a lot ice cream to pack into the car, again had to use creative imagination while packing the car. Weekend routes usually start much earlier, at around 10-11, and end at 18-20, so the workdays are usually much longer, about 10-12 hours, meaning more stops and preferably more sale too. My route, one of the best ones around here, has its first stop at 1000.

Two first hours went extremely well, amount of customers was about double of that of last time. Then on one stop I was walking beside the van and I heard this slight noise... oh shit. I was soon to have a completely flat tyre. Left immediatly to find a decent place for changing the tyre, found a parking area of local bank quite suitable. First problem, I can't open the system that holds the spare tyre under the car frame. The van is only four years old, from 2001 but the wing nuts (meant to open by hand) had rusted so bad, that it was impossible to open them. I fought with the tyre stuff for about half an hour, which is quite catastrophical amount of time, being on such a good route. You see, we have stops about every four minutes, and it's definitely not allowed to skip any. Somehow I did manage to get the spare tyre out and change it. Luckily it had enough air pressure (4.5) to carry the load. I didn't bother even trying to switch the broken tyre to where the spare one had been, so I just took it to the cab. Half an hour late of the schedule. Next few hours, I hardly had time to breathe, not to mention thinking :) Never on that route I had seen so much customers. Managed to almost catch up the schedule, last 2-3 hours I was only about 5 mins late. Damn I was happy when I finally got away from the last stop. It's only about 15km back to the depot from there.

Three kilometers before I was back, I stopped due to red light, and when it gave me green, I took off and heard a not-so-good sounding sound. No more clutch in that car, and the smell was quite good too, not surprising :) There I was, so close, but still so far away, calling for a tow car on saturday evening at 2000. Took only an hour to travel the last three kilometers.

One could be quite frustrated, and something else too, for such. I didn't bother. Can't help, life sucks, so what? You might as well enjoy it, and live with positive attitude (believe me, you do need such when you're doing customer service work) Yet, the sale was as good as predicted, and for I'm working partly for commission salary.. nothing to complain about :)

km 198502
ice cream van 212: 95km

A bit tired

2005-04-08T23:49:00.000+03:00

Of Thu. I had this third math test, out of four. Didn't do so well, but that was expected, and is no problem, because it's 100% sure I'll pass the course. In the two first tests I did quite well. The rest is just for better grade.

Right after school, again work work work. This time, my route was a bit futher. And what a boring day. Cool weather, some rain now and then, not too much though. But the biggest problem was the lack of customers. And I began to realize, that the delivery of our ads/schedules had failed, that's because. Well, I didn't bother myself with that. After work, I went to check our CE students sauna party, free food and drinks. Some were quite wasted, war doch ja kein Wunder. You know how finns behave, when they get to drink with nothing limiting it :) At 0300 I finally left the place (as all others too), and walked back home, to sleep this amazing six hours.

More maths in the morning, over two hours of exercise and again work. Today I drove much closer to our depot, and the ad delivery had worked as supposed, and it was easily seen. The sale was over 300% of that of yesterday, and ice cream buyers kept me quite busy.

Tomorrow, 11 hour workday. Work work work. No, not complaining, that's just income for me :) And I'm quite familiar with this route, I began to drive it every two weeks in september, and I've skipped driving it only twice, because I had to be elsewhere those times. This summer I'll be driving the same route every Saturday. If you happen to be around Nokia/Linnavuori/Siuro, come say hello (with a shotgun?) to the blue van, to get rid of the annoying noise :P

thu km 198442
ice cream van 212: 185km

fri km 198473
ice cream van 212: 50km

Icy Creamy

2005-04-06T22:37:00.000+03:00

Up at 0918 and off to shower, I managed to get out from there in less than 30 minutes, that is somewhat fast. It takes a while, because of my not-so-short hair. Next up, math lectures at uni, some physics, nothing interesting.

This week I have four days of work, wed-sat. Today I drove quite close, suburbs of Tampere, so it was quite short day, about 8h. Our routes usually start at 14-16 and end at 21, add the driving there and back, and some work at the office/depot, and the days vary from 7 to 12 hours depending on how far you're driving that day.

It was somewhat a boring day today, I drove the same route last week, and the sale today was half of that, not too bad anyway.

Four days of work a week plus studies take quite some time, so I have not too much time for relaxing, nor sports. I'm having this sports competition with my friends, 45min of sports is one point, and we're counting the total points. Currently I'm still leading, but this week I won't get too many points.

I used to do competitive swimming for years, though I quit that in spring 2000, mainly because of lack of time, we had already 13 practices per week. Add 20km trip to swimming hall, plus other 20km to school, to travel several times daily. Yet I didn't feel being good enough to have motivation to continue on so serious level of active sports.

Not suprisingly, my physical condition started to go down because I hardly did any sports after this. I didn't like this, but it was so hard to get up and work out, when there was no one telling you to. Lately though, partly because of this competition of ours, I've started doing sports again, and I can't tell you how happy I'm of this :)

km 198408

ice cream van 212: 45km

Of today

2005-04-05T22:01:00.000+03:00

Fine day. Drove up to TTY to pick up a couple of my friends, went to Sauli City to buy some refreshing drinks (beer etc worth 306.60e), all that did fit in my car. We even got some goodies for free because our purchase was that big. Back to TTY and to lovely math lessons. After that back to home, and we watched some Happy Tree Friends etc random stuff with Manteli, who was still spending her time here. Threw her over to downtown bus station at 13:40 and wished her happy 5-hour bus trip back to her home. Visited Lidl and bought some food. At home some minor snack and clothing change, jumped over my bike and drove back to TTY (not so direct route :P) for math PC lessons. Got away from there at 17, then again some biking around before it started to rain, and I was tempted to go back home.

It's the ice cream van day today. Meaning, that blue van drives around this area today, again I went to get some filling for the freezer, yum yum :)

And the daily statistics for my Hiiva :P

kma 198338
kml 198372

Annual Norway Trip

2005-04-05T20:08:00.000+03:00

It's becoming a tradition, to visit Norway annually. Last year though, it was quite close to not happening. Me and my friends visited Karasjok the 30th of Dec'04, about 15min from finnish border. We started our trip from Kuusamo, Ruka, where we were spending new year's, at about 0530, and were back after about 20 hours and 1100 km of driving.

This year, I travelled there a bit earlier. The departure from Tampere was on april fool's day, at 1100. First, we headed down to Lohja to pick up one more passenger, and then via Helsinki to close to Mikkeli, for another one. First night was at Keminmaa, at friend's place. Departure at 0720 and over the swedish border at Tornio. Luleå - Tärnaby - Hattfjeldal - Mo i Rana - Narvik - Kiruna - Pajala - Pello - Haparanda - etc. About 3500km of driving, of which 2066 by me. Car was 1994 Opel Corsa 1.2 3d. Economic, not too big but adequate. After all, quite nice car. And the trip was of course awesome, although the weather in Norway was too bad for taking photographs at all.

Yes, photographing is one of my passions.

We returned to Tampere on Sunday, 3rd of April, at around 2100. One of my friends decided to stay at Tampere for a couple of nights, so I offered her a place to stay. Had a nice 4½-hour walk with her on Monday, watched two old Pink Panther movies.. Thanks.

Introduction

2005-04-05T19:26:00.000+03:00

Calling myself px. Am a 22y-old student, residencing currently at Tampere, Finland. I'm studying construction engineering at the technical university here, aiming to specialize in traffic and society technics planning. Thesis might be gleaming on the horizon already after about 5-6 years, so it's lots of work before I'm done here.

Beside my studies, I work as a part-time ice cream van driver, had this job for about three years now. I believe, not so many would stand this job for this long, but I do like it. Meeting new people, driving around and so on. Tight schedule, much stress, customer service. Not a problem for me.

And here you see, one of my beloved interests is travelling, especially by car. Got my license about 4½ years ago, driven about 320 000 km since. Just an estimate. My current car is a 1997 Honda Accord 1.8iS, bought in april 2004. The trip meter stated 151500 km that time. Now that I'm writing this, it tells me about 198300. I've tried to spare the meter, I've been intending to sell this car, and buy a newer and less driven one. Currently I'm a bit undecided of this subject.

Car travelling. June 2003, I started this project of photographing myself beside each finnish municipality's border sign. I finished this project one year later having driven tens of thousands of kilometres. Currently, Finland has 432 municipalities and the amount is bound to decrease. I'll probably enlargen my area of interest to Sweden, Norway and/or Denmark some year.

The main theme for this blog, it might be traffic, driving and related. Most of my posts, though, probably will just tell about my days, like a diary, or nothing like that. I'm intending to include my car's trip meter output here at the end of each day, hopefully I'll manage to do that.

Thank you,

-px