setting fire to things seems to be pretty popular so far this year here in finland – makasiinit went up a few weeks ago and there was a few more over the following week or so – then some time early today the church in porvoo went on fire. (the cause of the porvoo fire is unknown at the moment – idle speculation on my behalf as to its cause.)(update: yeah arson – someone has been detained.)

one thing i noticed at the lordi celebrations the other night here in helsinki was the presence of a pelastuslaitos (rescue department) film crew – at one stage of the evening two fellas decided to try to swim across a narrow (10metre) channel just beside kauppatori – they spent a few minutes getting out of their clothes and a few people on both sides of the channel started to cheer them on – they took so long prepare for it that by the time one of them jumped into the water there was already two official boats in the channel (one a police boat, the other a coast guard (i think) boat). the film crew ran over and filmed what was going on – then a few minutes later (pictured) reviewed what film they got. i wonder how much of this was a follow on from stuff they learnt from the makasiinit incident a little while back.