In January my day started with a checklist: clear the OneNote inbox, the OneDrive inbox, Google Drive, iCloud. Four places where notes, receipts and half-finished thoughts landed, all to be visited before I could think about anything else.

The structure was already there: I had taken Tiago Forte’s PARA method (Projects, Areas, Resources, Archive) from his YouTube videos in December, and by early February the same numbered folders existed in three systems. I did not have an organisation problem. I had a too-many-places problem.

A video, and a file format

The way out came from YouTube again: in late February a long run of Nick Milo’s Linking Your Thinking videos showed me Obsidian. What stuck was not the app but what lies beneath: plain Markdown files in an ordinary folder. No database, no export button, no vendor deciding their fate in five years. Any editor or program can open them, including an AI.

Markup was not new to me. I have worked with computers since the end of the 1970s; in the 1980s, in my first training as a mathematical-technical assistant (Mathematisch-technischer Assistent), I looked at SGML and formatted mainframe reports, and later learnt HTML. New, and only in this decade, was one simple markup language as the everyday format for all my documents — which is also far cheaper for an AI to read than a PDF.

Obsidian became the editor, and the folder became the system.

Moving in, with help

On 26 February I told Claude, more or less: the plan is to move to Obsidian as the main organising tool — PARA, second brain. The next hours set the tone for what followed.

Claude converted 45 Word documents into Markdown, installed a connector (an MCP server, in the jargon) to read and write in the new vault itself, and planned the move of the OneNote notebooks. The next morning I asked it for a printable Obsidian cheat sheet, because I still did not know the keyboard shortcuts.

So the assistant had hands in my notes before I knew my way around them: from the first day, the vault was a workspace we shared, not a store I now and then asked a chatbot about.

A lesson from day two

I do not remember this one; my notes do. On 27 February one of the first automations, a script forwarding mail into the new setup, logged “Forwarded” for every message while nothing arrived. The log was accurate about what the script had done and silent about whether it had worked.

The lesson written down that day heads what is now a long list: working is checked where the thing is supposed to arrive, not where it was sent from. It comes back often in this series.

The pattern

Plain text as the durable layer, and an assistant with access to it. The app is replaceable — I later replaced much of what Obsidian did for me. The files stay, and they keep me independent: plain text belongs to nobody but me, and no vendor, price change or discontinued app can take it away.

Most of this series comes from that access. An assistant that can write in your notes can also write the wrong thing, in the wrong place, in the middle of the night. Deciding what it may do, and how I find out what it did, turned out to be the real work.

Part 1 of twelve in the series on how I built my AI OS. Why I am writing it: the preface.

Next: one month in, almost nothing ran where it should have — so I stopped, took stock, and let the AI interview me for my own requirements.

* Host names are changed (here: Yavin, my home server). The real ones come from a different saga.

Appendix — for builders

• Start with one folder, not an app comparison. I used PARA because it already existed in three places; with the AI as the folder’s main user, any structure will do. Put everything in Markdown.
• Let the assistant do the conversion. Converting Word, OneNote or PDF exports to Markdown is tedious, checkable work an AI does well; spot-check a handful of files rather than trusting its summary.
• Give access deliberately. A connector (an MCP server) that reads and writes the folder turns a chatbot into a collaborator. Decide early where it may write.
• Use version control from the start. I added git months later; Obsidian’s own file history works too. Either way, every change the assistant makes can be seen and undone.
• Keep a dated journal page a day. One line per topic became the backbone of everything after, including this series.
• Define “working” at the destination. For every pipeline (a chain of steps that moves something somewhere, such as mail into your notes), write down how you would see that it arrived.
• Learn from people who show their setups. Mine were Tiago Forte (PARA) and Nick Milo (Obsidian). Follow one teacher per step and copy the structure before inventing your own.
• What I considered instead: staying with OneNote (a closed format an assistant can barely reach), Notion (records, not files), or tidying the four places (they would have stayed four). I chose Markdown in one folder because the format is open, cheap for an AI to read, and mine whatever happens to any app.

I have spent a long career in IT, designing operating models and running transformations where systems and organisations meet. Since October 2025 I do that independently, with my own small company.

In February 2026 I turned the same craft on my own working life, with an AI assistant as my main collaborator. Tidying up four inboxes grew into notes, scripts, three machines, about a hundred scheduled jobs and an assistant working across all of it — what people call an AI operating system, or AI OS.

Why I built it

I wrote about the purpose earlier this year, in The Intentional Living Engine: I do well with structure and rhythm, less well on willpower alone, and the system keeps what I care about in view. This series is about the machinery underneath — how it was built, who built which part, and what broke.

Why I write about it

Three reasons.

I learnt the basics from people who showed their own setups, Tiago Forte and Nick Milo more than most. This returns the favour.

Building with an AI is new for almost everyone; the useful lessons lie in details that product announcements leave out: what went wrong, whose mistake it was, what finally held.

And writing is how I think: twelve posts about eight months of building make me say what I actually learnt.

How it is written

Every story comes from my dated notes, my daily journal and the commit history. Where the AI made the mistake, the post says so; where I made it, too.

For privacy and security reasons the focus is on the software, the technology, the patterns and what I learnt. Host names are changed.*

What to expect

Twelve posts after this one, the first on 19 October, then one every three days until 21 November. The English posts also appear on my family blog, where the German edition is published at the same time. Each tells one part of the story, names its pattern, shows how that part runs today and ends with tips for builders.

If you are building your own, tell me how — at martin@bilboconsult.com or on LinkedIn.

The first story starts with four inboxes.

How the posts are made: I go through my own record with Claude’s help, Claude drafts, and I review and rework every post before it goes out. I am the accountable author of everything I publish.

* Host names are changed (the stand-ins are Falcon, Yavin, Bespin and Dagobah). The real ones come from a different saga.

• This posting is work in progress
• I’m writing in English, any other languages please use translation from the browser
• I have written a few more detailed posts about things which happened this year, but here is a summary

I haven’t blogged here for 12 years, so there’s a huge gap - maybe I can say since working on the supplier side of IT Services, my time to think and write on a personal side has been minimal, but that’s still just an excuse. However, things are changing!

My life is still sometimes tough, and yet all wonderful. The year started with the clarity that my project in Germany would come to an end, and no clarity what could be next. And then the next thing turned out to be a mini stroke I got in February, which was a very good blessing: I got a clear warning instead of a destruction of my brain, so a chance to change my life to better. Which has been happening since then, and still is going further, as changing lifestyle is a broad excercise.

As I had turned 60, I organized a big bilrthday party in May, see this link! It was a great weekend event connecting with many amazing people who are important in my life.

Over summer we did a great tour of Europe (Baltics, Poland, Germany, France, Switzerland, and back via Baltics) which was again full of great meetings and experiences. Liisa and I volunteered at Teenstreet in Offenburg, which was a blessed experience. We started the idea of having a caravan to support our travelling, and asked my Cousin if we can borrow hers - yet, she was just in the process of selling it. Well, we thought about it a few days and then decided that it’s best if we are the buyer.

So on our way back we picked up Samwise, which is the name of our new companion. Samwise is spending the winter time on a beautiful campground near by, where we regulary enjoy sauna, lake, and forest, so he basically provides us the long missed cottage experience!

The situation on the work side was evolving somewhat difficult, as there didn’t come any good new project, and my employer suggested that I’d rather take a package and leave. That had not at all been my plan, but after some discussions I decided to go for that option, and finally start my own freelance consulting.

So since October 2025, I started Bilboconsult and searching for my next project / contract myself. So far that’s work in progress, and I’m also learning about marketing and creating a market presence (see here on LinkedIn).

This is really a new phase of our life, and while we’re still finding out how exactly it’ll look like, we are grateful and excited about the opportunities and flexibilty this can provide.

So far for today, and the plan is to revive this as my personal blog, so stay tuned!

But then there’s more and better options than doing the same, so I started my own consultancy as a freelancer. The name is BilboConsult, and it refers of course to the hobbit Bilbo, doing an unexpected journey with lot’s of adventures… and even getting to have a share of the reasure the fellowship gains back from a dragon. So maybe a good name, and we’ll see where it’ll go.

We visited and reconnected with many friends and also had a wonderful weekend with my sisters <3

One highlight was our participation in the OM Teenstreet event in Offenburg, where we worked as volunteers and found many great new friends - it is quite certain that we will do this again.

For me it was a strong come back from OM events I had visited as a teenager myself in 1982 and 1983; these events have solidified my foundation in faith at the time, especially with the understanding that faith is different from culture, denomination or whatever we want to add, it has a core which is clear in the bible, and serves as a common ground with many diverse people.

Then we were thinking that it would be great to have a caravan with us when we do another event like this, so we asked my Cousin if we could borrow hers, as we knew she had a super nice one. Unfortunately she was just in the process of selling it.

Well - so after a little bit of thinking, we decided not to borrow, but to buy: And now our new caravan is called Samwise and will be a good companion on more trips to come!

But not only that, we found a great place near Nuksio (Naturepark, 30 min from our house) where the caravan stays and serves as our cottage with lake, sauna and forest....

One thing stood out to many of the attendees, the diversity of my “friend group” - which I can see with great happiness.

Here some documents from this weekend, the speech and even a small film:

embedded content(https://www.youtube.com/embed/aYdyGBIs6WE)

Now, it might sound strange, but I am very grateful that I got this “warning shot” and I have a chance to change. And none of the changes in lifestyle, stress management, healthy food and habits is any bad - it is good for me and my environment. And I have started that journey with a much better focus.

I do not think I am fully there, but the change has been significant and positive.

The family has grown quite a bit, meanwhile we have 9 grandchildren… and this is wonderful…

Here are 8 of them:

In 2017 we moved to Mäkkylä, where we’re still happily living (mainly Liisa and me)

Location

We did some major renovations over the years, and we had many visitors and guests staying with us for a while, which has enriched our life a lot.

As of now we have some thoughts on moving, but the project “Second last move” has been put on pause for a while. I will get back to the topic…

I have changed jobs a few times, and it’s been a good (yet somethimes tough) journey…

We’re also enjoying the fellowship of our international church

I’ll leave it with this as a hight level catch up…

P.S.: this post was made end of 2025 and is backdated.

Obvious disclaimer: anything I write is my own view at the time of writing. Not my employers view, not the final truth, it is what I think is the right thing to write just now. The links below direct to official company information though.

My experience in brief

After 4 years at Nokia (Enterprise Architect, IT Operations Management) I changed over to HCL in August last year. Since almost 5 months I’m Global Service Delivery Manager to the UPM account, being responsible for all IT services HCL delivers to UPM.

Why did I change?

Providing IT Infrastructure services was not really at the core of Nokia’s business, and overall Nokia has not been a success story over the past years. Both facts are very different for HCL: Professional, highly industrialized IT service provisioning is at the core, HCL is very successful worldwide, in IT Infrastructure, in the Nordics. Looks like a better match for me.

So, how is it then?

HCL is an Indian company. While it has a strong and great focus on transforming to be truly global and diverse, and it has very compelling and innovative thinking coming from it’s top leaders, it is of course, very different from Western or European companies like Nokia (or AXA) in many ways.

Which is no way bad, it just demands unlearning of old ways, openness to doing things different, patience and tolerance, curiosity, and a good deal of sisu to go through a successful integration process.

India, how about India?

I spend roughly 45 days in India since late September – quite some time; except some trip to Taj Mahal I was in Delhi, and mainly saw daily office life, not much touristic impressions. I experienced great hospitality of new friends, sun and rain, heat and cold (!), and quite some smog (which I didn’t like).

I like Indian food, unfortunately my stomach doesn’t like it as much. So I have to be careful or suffer from stomach pain and diarrhea. I usually carry some ten muesli bars with me to have safe fallback food. Maybe that’s a pattern – a lot of good, not easy to digest, and sometimes you need to find your ways to deal with it.

Another typical picture is road traffic: completely chaotic, very diverse, very busy, everybody honking, pushing forward in the smallest gap, and still it works quite well and there’s astonishing little accidents. So, what kind of work culture or project management would I expect from someone who grew up in this environment?

India has many – very many – people. Some are rich, many are well educated, also quite a lot are poor. There might be as much homeless people as people with homes, not sure. Labor is cheap, there is competition to get good jobs, and there’s also competition to get good people. For a middle-manager it would be very normal to have several servants to look after the house or drive the car. The concept of working hours, or for some even the concept of weekends is not quite the same as in Europe. The workers-movement part of Industrialization hasn’t made it so far east.

Nothing above is meant to judge, it’s more trying to catch the differences as I perceived them. If I chose two simple words to describe India, it is chaos and beauty.

And the company?

Big companies have good, great and crap managers. They have functional and some dysfunctional processes, they have politics and passion, they have support functions with dedication and with ignorance, they have their own cryptic language of abbreviations, they have highly skilled people, great friends and mediocre folks who just come and go. HCL is not dramatically different in any of these aspects.

The well marketed “Employee first, customer second” philosophy has some good impact, in its core it translates not into employees getting “nice service”, but into employees being in charge to take things in their own hand – be the change you want to see.

There is a lot of serious honesty and openness, I’m encouraged to speak up and drive the things I see as important. If I sit in the corner and wait for someone to pick me up, I most likely will be run over and drown.

So, is it good or bad?

It’s as good as you make it. It’s not easy, it is unlearning old ways, and adopting new and different ways.

Learning never comes without some pain.

Learning never comes without rich value and joy.

I think it’s a great opportunity!

At last some impressions from pictures of the first few months, mainly from India…

It’s way too big topic for one post of course, but some thoughts to start with.

My trigger tonight is actually the fact that the bacteria, which Liisa brought from her visit to India 4 weeks ago, has just revived and put her once again to bed with high fever. She’s been suffering badly from this; it started the day after we returned, and was found to be caused by some chicken meat she ate. It must have been one burger at the airport, as this was the only time I didn’t eat the same food (as I felt sick and very tired at that time).

So travel is not only great experiences and new insights, it also comes with some ugly side effects and “costs”. Most people we know come back somewhat sick from their first India trip.

India is different - great, but different.

But why did she go there in the first place?

This is something we did a lot last year, and it turned out to be a very good thing to do: As I was travelling to various places for work, we found it difficult and annoying not to share the experience and the excitement; so we set priorities on time and finances, and went together:

January - Dallas

February - Beijing

December - Noida

Obviously I did some trips “alone”, but travelling together turned out to be a great blessing. Liisa came much closer to my work life, found very good friends with my work mates (and their spouses), the thing just was more a “together” than me just travelling and slogging away.It is different if I hang on the phone with some work stuff for half of the night, or if I talk with Nelson. And eventually Nelson would tell me that someone is waiting for me and I should stop working now :-).

So one approach to the challenge of “work - life - balance” is to bring life to work and work to life. Not a silver bullet, but gave us precious treasures in our hearts.

Two side notes on blogging:

• Thanks for encouraging me, especially Prasanna and Georg! I have to say it almost feels more difficult to write knowing that someone will read this… but hey, I’m reading your stuff as well ;-)

• I absolutely need to do something on this editor, just using some standard Google Blogger interface; there must be a way to create posts a bit smarter without typing native HTML (I once learned to do this in SGML / DCF3, but that’s a while ago and ran on IBM Mainframes)

• Edit/addendum: Google guided me to this, so I’ll give it a go with Windows Live Writer

Another nice memory from business travel: bought this table from Agra (Taj Mahal) and had it shipped home as a Christmas present.

And the editor is much better

This is not just about going north that much is clear. In August 2012 I resigned from Nokia after 4 good and full years and joined HCL. Unlike Nokia, HCL is clearly successful, growing, and focused on IT Infrastructure Services, so I felt that the overall idea of this change was convincing.

I’m now “Global Service Delivery Manager” to the UPM account in HCL. The service commencement for this large contract was on September first, so with me joining in August 22nd, I really jumped on a racing roller coaster. If I’d need an excuse for not writing, this job is a good one.

So since September I spent almost 40 days in India, which is about 25% of my time (the distinction between weekends and workdays is somewhat endangered anyway, so I count gross time).

I took me a while to notice that from the scope, the size of the team and budget, and overall, this was actually a real career step; I had not thought about it that way (which tells a bit).

I’m learning a lot, and there’s a lot of great new experiences and people, and now it’s more east than north (even though UPM is still “north”).

Now, the idea is to start capturing some of the thoughts and learning here, for me, and “to whom it may concern”. We’ll see.

Obviously I’ve arrived meanwhile, and that’s true in many aspects - and I enjoy a lot!

Life is never without worries and hardships - but if context and proportions are right, it’s spice not bitterness. So I’m blessed and grateful.

My job role in Nokia for the past 2 years has been in Enterprise Architecture, with a focus on operational processes, IT service management and systems management. Which are highly relevant topics in a company transforming into a major global provider of various services for mobile consumers, all of them IT based.

From July 1st, I will change to lead the Computing Operations team, which I see as a great next step. And it marks a huge change for me - some topics will stay, but the multi-year strategic Enterprise Architecture view is now replaced with the most operational day to day challenge one could think of. I will lead a team which is mainly based in Finland (Salo), but also covers Dallas and Singapore. Which is another big change from the current role, where I sometimes felt a bit as “lonesome rider”, even though I was of course building my network in Nokia.

My first reaction to the proposal of taking this role was big surprise - I had not expected this at all. But it took less than a day or so, thinking about it and I saw the big honor and the great opportunities. It is a honor, because I see this being at the very core of Nokia’s goal to provide great service experience for consumers And I see opportunities, because there’s a strong team with a lot of history, and paramount changes, for sure both nice and uneasy ones.

Unlike most areas in Nokia, we’re even hiring, as the capability urgently requires strengthening.

And looking at Nokia’s challenges, it’s not wrong to worry about the long- or mid-term strategy, but it’s at least as relevant to ensure success in current operations.

So this really feels like a clear step closer to “the heart of Nokia”, and with a mostly finnish team, also to Finland. Which will bring back the topics of learning vocabulary… :-)

Exciting times ahead, I look forward to this! Yet the next weeks will be vacation in sunny Mallorca!

It will be a bit of a logistic challenge due to numbers, but we’re all looking forward.

So the plan is:

• Thursday, 8 people flying to DUS; Lissu and me, 5 kids and one friend of Essi
• Saturday is Lukas “Abi Ball”, which nicely fits into our schedule
• Sunday, we’re flying to Palma di Mallorca with a group of 10, so Ida and Lukas are joining from Germany; unfortunately Chrissie and Tim still have school, and the German school system is not open to “early vacations” (mildly said, don’t get me started)
• Then we’ll have about 2 weeks in a nice Villa - hoping for sun shine, fun and rest
• We’ll get back to Germany on Saturday, July 10th in the afternoon
• Then we have a few days to be with old friends, ride motorcycle (Lissu and me!), go shopping etc., before we
• return home on Thursday, July 15th

We started to pack, and planning is obviously well advanced. And I can’t remember my last vacation outside Finland or Germany, and now even 2 weeks!

THANK YOU

I’ll try to respond at least to some of the messages individually.

Why is this birthday in difficult times?

My dad is in hospital since many weeks; after an operation his condition continues to be very serious, he’s now in vigil coma. It is very unlikely that he will survive for long time.

So obviously this made christmas, new year and also my birthday not “happy days”.

This is also a reason for me to stay in Germany more often and for longer times, so I can support my mother and help in many practical things. As the last thing before going to hospital my dad had finally sold his firm, and the new owner started on Jan 1st - which is good, but leaves many practical things to be organized now.

So it is sad times, nevertheless I’m very grateful for my dad, and all that he tought me, gave me, means for me. Making sure his loved ones are under good care had always been top priority - and I can even see this now in the way he’d “prepared” for the most painful situation we have to go through now.

Life is tough, and life is rich.

My best birthday present: my both sons sang for me today, Tim playing his new e-guitar, and Lukas performing with an impressive voice, which he has developed and trained in the last months. Wow.

Recently discussed with Lissu that we tend to have quite many things that would require 100% focus (buy a house, change your Job, learn a language, …) Just we have them all at the same time.

So we bought the house, see Picasa for pictures. Everything is so much easier than in Germany, it is really amazing. We got the loan and saw a couple of houses from the net, and vistited two.

Then it was a question of risk management:

• how are chances that the deal is riski or bad (house value dropping)

• what could go wrong when we live there

• how likely will we find a better one in the center of Klaukkala (where we wanted to be)

That made it a fast decision, yet I’d claim it was good quality decision.

I missed my language course quite often in the last weeks, project at Nokia was taking many hours and “intelectual capacity”. But now there is a break until September, which I should use to rehearse a lot of the grammar and vocabluary. I wish I would :-) :-(

I learned a lot about Finland and the culture too; I’ll write a seperate entry soon.

And of course I will travel and fly around more than I expected from the blog some days ago.

This weekend a short 2-day trip to Germany (my budget), and most likely another 1-2 days in UK before easter (Nokia budget).

Just hope to get enough sleep…

Yesterday we had an appointment at a bank to ask for loan conditions, and a first visit to a potential house in the center of Klaukkala.

Today we were there second time.

And signed the binding offer. If the owner accepts (we know tomorrow) we’ll own a house by end of march.

So we might move in April.

I remembered a talk with Lissu some years ago. We had thought that when we live together, nobody will push the break, so we’ll be just tooooo fast.

So we were right then.

I wouldn’t want to have a different live.

YEAH

As of now I have no flights planned in March and April, the next one is mid May to Germany.

So Nokia’s travel ban and the fact that my kids come over here in April, leads to most likely the longest period without going to another country since years.

And, as I like to be here - that’s quite a good thing!

Of course plans can change quickly, we’ll see.

This morning I saw quite many small caterpillars driving around on the streets and other ways, pushing away snow. The guys driving them looked like they had great fun. And I wouldn’t hesitate a second if I could have a ride with those machines…

I’m working on a picture library from our Germany / Carnival trip, and I will write more about that later.

One thing just occured to me: In Germany I never really thought before dressing if I need to go outside or not. I just took my pants and shirt or whatever, and would stay inside or go out (wearing a coat). Here I tend to have quite different sets of clothes, and I think where I will go before dressing.

Not only that it is colder outside (some might have guessed), but usually it is also warmer inside.

Finns don’t like to be cold, and they’re usually prevent to be cold.

As a part of this pattern I also have a different pair of shoes in the office. Its a different thing to have boots for standing at a bus stop at -15 degrees, and being inside all day. I’ve also seen people being in the office - especially in meetings, and just wearing socks.

Funny thing, but I like the culture…

But I’ll have some more ideas now what I should report on, so maybe this can improve…

Christmas went as planned and was mostly great time with many people in the two countries.

Now we look forward to carnival in Cologne, travelling next tuesday with 5 of our finnish kids… That week will be quite full and hopefully fun!

I look very much forward to meet lot of my dear AXA colleagues.

One item about Finland now: There’s snow!

Which is great, as it isn’t so dark (not a real issue anyway), and especially I love to drive on snow.

With the right tyres, you can break speed limits on any ground. And isn’t that what driving is about? (Playing with some German stereotype :-))

Anyway, I enjoy a lot!

We even got (finally) a finnish number plate, so the car is inspected and registered!

Maybe I should write a brief summary of the year (especially for those who see this blog the first time after getting a christmas card), but now I want to join Lissu in the other preparations for our christmas party. Starting tonight we’ll have her seven kids in our home, and there will be great finnish christmas (food, sauna, … not sure what’s coming).

Thursday Lissu and I fly to Germany to have the next round with my three kids…

So busy time with lots of very important persons.

Before noon I walked along a corridor in a Nokia building. Some people went in the other direction, and someone asked me in finnish, if that would be the right way to the cantine. I understood what he meant and knew that it was the right way. Quite good.

And so my immediate response was: Oui.

Unbelievable.

We’ll put one rack with servers to the Lobby of a building where the application development sits, so they can go and hug a server whenever they wish to. Makes the process to virtualized environments mentally less painful.

Cool point to the old Servers to Service melody of mine.

I believe they’re serious with it. I’ll post a picture when it’s done.

It is not as great that we didn’t change the tyres last week, so it’s all-year tyres that are ok for german roads. Not the Spikes that everybody around here has.

Hope we can get somehow to the next garage in the morning. This evening we only made it about 250 meter, and we were happy to get the car back to our place after 1 hour.

After being to Prague (and I yet want to upload some nice pictures), life increased speed again.

Lissu has started to work 5 days a week as Student Secretary in a kind of University / Polytechnique for social work. She enjoys that a lot, but of course she’s now busy most of the time, and she has to travel either to Helsinki center (by Bus) or Järvenpää (by car).

So one side effect is that I’ve learned to go by Bus to all places I need to be, so I now know how to find my way around also outside the Helsinki area. That’s a bit difficult as the great Journeyplanner I have in english covers only the area of Helsinki / Espoo / Vantaa - and our home is a few kilometers outside. Plus the busses are quite expensive as soon you cross the Espoo or Vantaa border… I bought some tickets for many trips now, spending some hundreds of Euros. Hope that lasts for about a year.

I need these tickets quite often now, as I’m travelling to the center of Helsinki for my finnish course! So I’ve started to learn finnish 3 times a week for 90 minutes. It is a very good and intense course offered by the International evangelical church in Helsinki. It is a group of 8-12 students from all different countries, and it’s lot of fun. Not easy though, I feel I can understand and learn, but I forget everything within 30 seconds.

The teacher said that’s normal (probably in my age), and I will learn with 500+ repetitions. Ok, I’ll take time.

One more thing is a bible home group we started recently at our place. This is also part of the church mentioned above, and it’s quite interesting to meet with this small group of three couples, covering 5 countries and languages.

In summary I felt just too busy in the last weeks. We struggle to see each other and talk enough during the week, and weekends are then sometimes spend travelling 8Germany) or doing other activities - today we’ll have Ida’s birthday party (finally 18 years) in our home.

The good part is that everything got nicely cleaned and organized (relative term), of course I’m not sure how it’ll look tomorrow :-)

See today’s Diesel price in Klaukkala!!!

I’m happy Lissu and I are leaving this Friday evening to stay there already for the weekend.

So besides work, we’re busy with preparations…

I never would have thought that much could happen in 5 years, but we both really got moving. And although it’s never ending roller coaster, I would and could not have done different.

Times got quite busy recently, but neverless good. I’ve posted some new picasa picture galleries (see link on right), telling a bit about the things we did since July… Actually I wanted to write more about some adventures, but I don’t know if I get to it.

The picture from Outlook shows too many items (although Outlook 2007 shows them in nicely organized  colours), meetings are in tight schedule at various places, reading happens in the bus to work.

So I have to establish better priorities to be focussed.

The major project i now started to be involved is a lot of fun. Ok, bit crazy fun, as most participants have strong opinions about it (madness, impossible, big business case, we have some time, etc.), depending on different perceptions, interest, culture and character. I feel at home. :-)

Beginning of the week was great only a bit much.

Sunday I flew to UK, met old workfriends from AXA (Thanks for the great time, Kelly), started my workday on monday at 7am with “working breakfast” and going on until I happily caught my plane to Cologne at 8pm in Stansted. My capability to drive in UK has improved since last time, so I had a manual car now and was exceeding speed limits from time to time.

Tuesday I spent in Germany seeing Ida and Lukas (for breakfast) and working at Nokia in Ratingen. I was pretty done when I came home (!!!) to Finland Tuesday night.

Not sure when the next travel starts, but it’s ok if that is some days away, don’t need the stress.

Nokia has good promotion activities to advertise NOT to travel like crazy. I will listen.

The project combines most of the different initiatives I worked with at AXA over the last 10 years, just now it’s condensed in 1-3 years, and time and experience has improved. Wow.

Actually I want to send out a message to you, or at least those readers who can imagine they’re meant. Maybe you watch this little video (sorry for the commercial at the start), and get what I talk about.

It is time to get the band back together. This will be big time, guys. And one doesn’t need to move to Finland to play in this concert (although it’s nice here).

In a week I have a one day UK trip; checking the flight cost for a return flight from Helsinki I found it very expensive. So I developed a creative improvement (so I hope).

I’ll fly sunday noon to UK (blue1 to LHR) so I can visit AXA friends in Bristol. Monday evening, after my workshop in Southwood I fly to Germany (Germanwings to CGN), so I can bring some stuff for family members there, and also I can meet some Nokia people in Ratingen on tuesday. Tuesday afternoon I fly back to Helsinki (Airberlin). Savings are about 300€ compared with the simple return flight. I call that a win-win-win, and I’m not sure if anyone of my colleagues would have even checked the price. The cost saving attitude from AXA is quite deep in me.

Later in October I’ll be going to a conference in Prague. I found quite cheap flight tickets, and I will go there on the Friday, together with Lissu. So we have the weekend in a cheaper hotel, and will enjoy seeing this great old town together. From tuesday to thursday I’ll be on the conference, so Lissu might be a bit “alone” - so we started ideas who could join her for these days in Prague. That is still underway.

I love making nice travel plans.

I cut the grass just before it started to rain again, so that was a good work ;-) Well, the meadow is not small, and it’s partly a bit steep. We have a motor mawer (no idea if that’s the english word); I was happy I found out how it works and that it did the job quite good. Although it’s heavy to push uphill…

The other thing is that I could videochat with my son Tim from Germany, showing him our apartment. We both have WLAN/Camera equipped Laptops, so that’s very convenient. That started then the wish to be able to chat from my Nokia Laptop. Coming from the AXA background I didn’t really think that could work - BUT: Connecting people is meant serious at Nokia. Of course there’s a clear warning that IM Tools like MSN are not to be used for business (fair point), there is even some support on how-to in the Intranet (Most IM clients do not work). So I configured MeeBo, which is a nice web frontend combining different Networks; So I can chat via MSN or ICQ, plus I also installed the Camera for my Nokia Laptop, so I can Videochat.

Eventually I can install Skype too, but I didn’t see the need.

Funny was the test sitting between two Laptops and talking with myself. Lissu wanted to tape that for youtube (but none of the cameras were free ;-))

On the other hand, it is really amazing HOW they do it. I never saw anyone working there, although I was driving the road on different times during the days. So they must do it during the nights, and they romoved like 5km of roadcover from one day to the other (so that the traffic could continue the other day). A couple of day later there was a new cover and everything was done, again without interrupting the traffic.

So whoever got these new machines to try out - they seem to be very cool and capable machines!

P.S.: Yep, I’ve been to Germany last weekend, and it was very good to meet everybody. It is exciting, yet sometimes stressful times; being at the different places, saying hello and good bye again, going through the various emotions and then being far away from Lissu… not just easy. No big complaints still about my decisions, just recognizing that a roller coast life makes your stomach hurt from time to time.

This weekend is quite another one; as all the kids went to different places, Lissu and I are alone at home for the weekend. Funny situation if one thinks that we’re having 10 kids in total.

Looking forward to this weekend (and the rest of my life)!

The new world ain’t bad either. My “official” office is in Ruoholahti, very much in the center of Helsinki. I don’t have a fixed desk there, but usually I was quite alone in the room, so I always took the same desk. Only now I can have a much nicer desk and “office” to work, if I’m not meeting others anyway - that’s the desk in our bedroom and to there I don’t need to commute. I might even have lunch with Lissu and discussion with kids!

But mostly I go to work in Karaportti, which is 15km (or 30km if I take the motorway) from where I live. Most of the Nokia IT work there, and most of the meetings are there (plus in telephone like always). Again there’s no specific desk for anyone; just all different kinds of rooms, desks, workplaces - and all you need is a powerplug, and maybe a network plug (there’s WLAN but sometimes the LAN is more stable for voice over IP). Fixed phones are definitely outdated in Nokia.

Of course it was a big step that I learned how to reserve rooms, so I can prepare and secure places to meet and work.

The bookshelfes are replaced by the Internet, the personal pictures are now on the Windows desktop, and work just became much more flexible and often more comfortable.

The office workspace with nice rooms and places (and lots of coffee and kitchen areas) are fine to create the human touch in the work environment, so it’s not all electronic and virtual.

Now I’m just wondering how I will organise my getting to work on the long run. To Ruoholahti I’d take a bus and Metro, everything else is crazy because of traffic and parking. But that’s not cheap, although Nokia pays most of the ticket if I buy a year-ticket. To Karaporrti I need to find out if there’s any bus, but that’s difficult direction. When Lissu finds work, she might need the car too… Somehow there’s many variables and options, and I don’t really know what I will do with that.

One other thing is new with the workplace: it’s also a work-out place, a Gym (and Sauna of course) is at each office, with complete fitness center; that’s free for all employees and open from 6.00 - 22.00; I’ll check that out in the next weeks!

• It was very nice experience to see that the kids get the stuff they need for school from the school. There was maybe one folder we were asked to buy… Comparing with Germany that’s day and night - we spend 50-100€ per kid per half-year on all kind of stuff (e.g. bring your own head set to learn languages. I understand that I have to pay tax in Finland, and I understand it’s reasonably used.
• Onni wanted to go a bit earlier to his school in the morning, so he could be already in the classroom and read and learn; probably also meet his new friends. Amazing…

The dinner was very nice, we’ve been to a old restaurant in the old town of Porvoo, very finnish, very excellent food. The name is “Wanha Laamanni” which I found funnily constructed. “Wanha” is finnish written in an old (german) way, “Laa” can be understood from the english language (Law) and “manni” has again swedish/german roots. So a real mixture representing the history. The place used to be owned by a law counselor.

Onni is going to the German school in Helsinki, as this is the best option to keep up his German language skills. He’s going there to the second class, as this better fits to the Finnish system and ages. The German school in Helsinki is a private school that is run in the Finnish system, just many of the lessons are in German and the kids ultimately achieve the Finnish AND the German “Abitur” alike. Very cool thing. And Onni likes it from the start; as he’s got a new e-guitar, he especially looks forward to music lessons. He now plans to become a Rock star (and has started to refuse haircuts).

Roni was a difficult one; we wanted him to go to the same German school in Helsinki, but they made some first tests and were not sure if the idea is good. Roni is rather “Finnish” - he doesn’t like to talk a lot, and he never liked to talk German. And he is stubborn like a rock; so now he’s also going to the Finnish school in Klaukkala, which is for sure a good option for him. Luckily they were open to take him on this very short notice…

Essi also has changed schools, she is now in Lukio (“Oberstufe”), her last 3 years in school. But that wasn’t any big question now, she had chosen that school a while ago and she’s happy. Funnily it’s in the old building of where Lissu went to University, so it was nice to see when I drove her to school this week.

Maybe I stop now, there’s more kids and more schools, but not so related to our move ;-)

But since today I’ve got my new phone and internet working at home, so that’s the time that I set myself to continue. I will write in the next days about the different things that happened in the last month, it was rather a lot. I want to split this in multiple stories.

Tonight I’m not going to Sauna, although I could ;-) (I love that)

But being home now means that we start to pack everything, decide what to throw away, what should go where, cancel all local contracts etc. Feels strange.

And hopefully we can arrange some “Good bye meetings” with friends.

We will sign a rental contract tomorrow, so by Mid August we’ll move here. I will bring up pictures from the house later to a Gallery; it’s nice big, has a spacious Sauna, a GIANT fridge, a nice garden, quite enough rooms, etc. It should have enough space for all of the guests we’re looking forward to have. It’s not very near to the office for me, and also not close to the German school where the two little kids will go, but public transport is very good. And Miikka will be going to the school we visited in March - that visit started the whole process. So it seems things are coming to their places.

I also plan to create some Galleries about the gorgeous vacation week we had in Virrat and the days in Helsinki with my mom and others. It’s been very good time overall, we feel quite blessed. Especially the wedding ceremony we had as our “Finnish” Christian wedding in the beginning was touching and the right thing to have. There’s more than thousand pictures overall, so I have to take some time to sort through.

Work situation is good although not just easy. Due to vacation time in Finland and unexpected changes, things are not starting off that much. I’m using time to be prepared, and I get to know the team at least in the UK. A company starting their strategy presentation for employees with a Dilbert cartoon ain’t bad for me ;-) I’m quite sure I’ll have busy times soon, and for now there’s lots of stuff to organize with the Relocation.

In general I enjoy Finnish culture, but of course I can recognize bad stuff too. A girl starting her sixteen’s birthday in Hospital because she was drinking so badly in the night before - not what you want to have. Hope she’ll never forget that lesson.

Friday night we’re going back to Germany by ferry and car. I just hope to catch enough sleep on the boat, we’re getting to Rostock at 11pm on Saturday night, and from there its 600km drive home. Sunday will be sleepy. Then we’ll have to do a full inventory of everything in the house and decide where everything should go. I heard from colleagues that the third or forth relocation becomes then a bit easier ;-)

Sometimes it feels a little tough, but I just know that it’s good for me to follow my heart and not my butt. So I’m on the move, not on the sofa.

I got some nice feedback from people about this Blog - paljon kiitos for that! I like to write from time to time; also, everybody is invited to comment here, so that’s less one-way communication.

Nice: the Leningrad Cowboy style pub Zetor also offers free WLAN:-) I enjoy Helsinki, tonight with my son Lukas.

So we finally reached our destination after 3 days of travel. If the picture makes it to the blog: this is from 1am last night, just before we jumped in the water. Now the sauna is ready. BTW, there is no running water, may be 3 hours electricity and wood heating. And many of our kids. This is finnish forest, this is close to paradise!

Mobile email powered by Nokia Intellisync

Well, it’s a bit more than a toy. It’ll help me to stay in touch with everybody (synch & asynch), organize my work, find my ways, etc.

My N95 showed up in my (new) mailbox today…

Its amazing that it can take the maps of western Europe in offline storage. I liked the message “Saving Europe 1/3” when downloading that ;-)

And the toy has a very good camera, so here’s a picture of my current desk!

Admittedly it’s not totally easy to use, at least when one tries to install everything within 2 hours while playing with it the same time. It’s Symbian based, but still needs to boot from time to time.

Actually I didn’t feel like spending a “night”, as it wasn’t dark. I had not noticed this in the nights before, but this time I was in the kitchen with clear window (the unprotected WLAN access from the neighbourhood I use to VPN in, is best to catch in the kitchen).

So Saturday was sleeping long and then ging for a walk around the island where I live for now. What is very nice is Mustikkamaa, which even has a beach (water was yet too cold).

Tomorrow I’ll get a rental car from the airport, go to the international church in Mellunmäki and then see some potential places to live:

• Matari, Vantaa
• Vallinoja, Vantaa
• Tuusula

At least the first two places are close to rail and airport, which ist handy. The first one is my favorite for now, see the pictures of the kitchen behind the link…

It’s difficult for me to know what I should write, there’s too many impressions, and many things I still have to find the right evaluation for. I general, it’s all very positive, procedures to get to work are fast and easy, new colleagues are open and nice, of course I can see some obvious issues in the organization, but I feel its too early to judge… (am I getting old?)

So there’s a streamlined and automated process to order software and user rights. With a choice of some hundred different sw packages and also a ridicolous number of user-ids in different systems. Probably that’s finnish: highly professional, but even more highly individualistic.

It is very nice to walk over to the cantine, and smell the sea in the wind.

I like it a lot.

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“Nokia research center as seen from the Ruoholahti metro station entrance”

The Internet is a funny thing.

This friday I had my farewell party from AXA, which was big joy and quite touching. Nice pictures are here. And finally I got a Blackberry as a present - I had whined to get one for the last three years at AXA. Only now I have no idea where and how I should use it. Nokia might not consider that being a cool idea. Funny friends I have…

Actually that is what makes my live rich: relations like I enjoyed today.

Many relations will be impacted by my move, but they will change, not die. Hearts don’t know much about geography.

So this is the “new” car we will have. I hope to get it registered on my name and organize everything around it before tuesday afternoon. Actually I have to.

It’s a Toyoata HiAce, which the finnish custom office most likely will accept as a fair replacement of the old car, and let us go in without (ridicolous) taxes.

The other issue solved today is an appartment for Ida&Benni, who will stay in Germany when we leave. We found a nice 2.5 room place about 200 m from where we live now. That will also serve as a convenient “landing place” when we (mostly I) visit Germany.

It feels good that some things are moving; I’m still insecure about the quantity of stuff to settle before Tuesday, and the “moving” also applies to my bank account. The German saying would be “Keine Arme, keine Kekse” - proposed translations are welcome in the comments ;-)

So Lissu and I had nice and great days in Paris, me attending some last meetings with the global architects team and saying “Good bye” to Paris for some time. I’m sure I’ll miss many of the great fellows I worked with, and our crazy discussions. Having a team of “strong personalities” from all the different countries was always valueable.

So the usual annoyance about the technical roadblocks to get reasonably connected (the major reason why these posts are coming just late) was mixed with melancholy. I just hope that the Nokia promise “Connecting people” also applies to their staff.

As we’re leaving central Europe soon we took a “last chance” to see Disneyland with the smaller kids....It’s a combined trip with work I have to do in Paris from monday to wednesday, and we made this a surprise trip for the kids; actually we told them we’d go to coal mine and they’d have to work hard all day ;-) We enjoyed great days in Disneyland and in Paris, and we also enjoyed great hospitality from Patrice and his family - a big KIITOS! Some nice pictures from these days are here.

There also was a surprise for us, which was far less pleasant. The motor of out car broke on the way to Paris, so we’ll have to buy a new car this week; as if we had not enough to organize… (Not talking about the money we lost by this). Fortunatly for our trip we could get a rental car free for one week from ADAC, so we reached Paris (just few hours later).

As an additional complexity, cars in Finland are much more expensive - and that’s why one has to pay lots of toll for a car brought to Finland, unless you have owned and driven in it Germany for at least 6 months. That was true for the old car. We try to convince the finnish customs that they accept it also for an equivalent “new” car; So the topic goes on the list with “finding appartments for everyone in the right country”, “booking all the travels”, “organizing continious health insurance in different countries”, etc. I’m not sure if I need all this.

Just drafted the poster to “formally” invite to our wedding week in Virrat. Actually most people who come should know by now anyway. Still nice picture!

We first met in summer 1984.

Lissu was with a finnish church group visiting Germany for a week; as the Pastor from Forsbach (where I lived with my parents) and Kulosaari (where she lived with her parents) were friends, they visited Forsbach for some days. I was helping and guiding in some issues, and so we met and started to talk. We talked for almost 3 days (and nights), and thought that we found really good friendship. After her return to Finland we continued to write letters for a few months, but then somehow stopped. (There was no Internet or SMS at that time)

Then we made our separate ways for many years, both being married and having kids (I have 3, she has 7) , both going through good and bad times;

Lissu started to study Business Administration, and in 2003 got an offer to visit Germany again for a week. When she had decided to take part in that, she remembered my former home adress (by heart after 19 years) and wrote that she would be coming. And of course I immediatly knew who could have written to me from Finland. We changed some mails and made an appointment to meet for an afternoon in Rastatt, where her school made the visit.

On 29/09/03 we met and continued our intense way to talk just like the 19 years would have been one day. After 10 hours we knew a lot about each others lifes, and we could see that we both were quite badly crushed and desperate in our current situations.

It was only when I drove home after our meeting I understood, that this was not a “good friendship”. Same for Lissu and me, we were totally struck by the discovery of LOVE. We had not known, and we had not expected anything like this.

Then followed a very exhausting time of mails, calls, millions of text messages and untameable emotions. We tried to re-establish something like friendship (we slowly realized that we never had been “friends”), we tried to fight for our marriages and against breaking our current families.

After 6 or 8 months we started to accept that this wouldn’t work.

So we both had to make cruel and tough decisions, and went through very unpleasent divorce processes - for us, but of course also for our families. Yet there was also understanding from people close to us, many could see that we both had been totally crushed and that something new broke its way.

We had not met for more than a year, but then found some opportunities to meet again. First for just a few hours, then for some days early in 2005.

In the summer of 2005 Lissu worked as an intern at AXA Tech for some months, living with me and also bringing some of her kids to my small appartment, where I was then living with my oldest son. We worked together on her thesis, which covered topics about service quality and culture, being important for both of us.

After many flights back and forth between Germany and Finland, Lissu finally moved in summer 2006 to Germany with 4 of her kids to live with my son and me in Bergisch Gladbach.

Since then we were working on many practical integration topics, Lissu went to 6 months language training (which brought lots of great international friends), and each of the kids had to face their own difficulties with the german school system. Actually the school was the domain that we had grossly underestimated. It is public knowledge from Pisa and OECD reports today, that the german school system as a whole is not overwhelming, and that it is especially bad when it comes to integrate migrants or any kids whose parents cannot help out with many things. We made some really awful (unbelievable) experiences with schools and teachers, but also found some to be very engaged. Yet, all good attitudes from single persons won’t change a system.

The year 2007 was the worst roller coaster I had seen so far in my life - besides major worries with the schools, life threatning sickness, and many other troubles, we also saw great evolutions with new friends and also with our kids. And: we legally got married, which also had been a surprisingly difficult project.

In 2008 her oldest daughter switched back to the finnish school system, doing that as remote / internet based courses. At easter we were visiting a finnish school to investigate options for the second oldest son (of the kids who moved to Germany) - it seemed just so much better for him to return to the finnish system. We then faced the question, if we would send the kids (one by one) back to Finland, or if we all would go.

After many hours of intense discussions between us and friends, we decided to give it a try. One major prerequesite would be for me to find an equivalent job in Finland, which didn’t look at all easy.

I worked for 2 days on my resume (see LinkedIn), filed it to the Nokia career pages and got a call the next day. Nokia was just building a new enterprise architecture function, and they were strongly interested. I had an interview in London after 3 weeks, and an assessment in Helsinki another 2 weeks later. It took a total of 10 weeks from the first thought to me writing my termination letter to AXA. As my current job role at AXA had forced me to hand over all direct staff responsibilities to other departments, and also I didn’t lead any huge projects, I could organize a very quick “run-off” period, that will conclude before mid June. The 11/06/08 will be my first official day at Nokia in Helsinki; we’re pushing forward to clarify all terms of our relocation, finding schools and an appartment to live, and the current plan is to move with the family by end of August. Funny enough, it is quite likely that at least two kids will go to Deutsche Schule Helsinki, which is giving many lessons in german, but mainly follows the finnish structures and styles for schooling.

As if these plans were not enough for this summer, we also had planned since months to have a week of (wedding) festivities in Virrat, Finland, where we’ll be together with many friends and family members to enjoy fellowship and nature. This of course also needs some more preparations - and is another event to look forward too.

Most of this blog will be in english, as this is the most likely understood language for potential readers.