Well, it’s quite a nice day to focus not on the things growing on my head, but rather on what’s growing inside.  Madness !!! I have an idea, but I know it’s mad. Utterly mad !!!! I can feel it, it’s a voice in my head saying “hello you, Mr. Face, I am coming out of your head, and the only thing you can do is eat more or less cheese…it makes no difference, but it makes a huge difference, start now !!!”…. Yeah, the voices generally speaking are fairly incoherent. In any case, I can’t run from it, I can only run with it. And you’re going to get involved, whether you like it or not.

So, stay tuned. I will go ahead and concoct the details and come out with these in a few weeks time. All relevant announcement made here. It’s feeling explosive like houmous.

well, I decided to use a couple of silly hours to put together a taster session, a quick sneaky peaky preview cheeky video thingy, bobby, what?, nothing….

And I’ve fairly randomly chosen stuff, as I quickly was running though some of the videos. I still haven’t had the time and the guts to start going through all the video material. There is a hellovalot of it. And that’s just my stuff, and not even the stuff from Miss Tuohikumpu. And then we can have some multiple cameran angle action going woohoo !!! Yeah !

Anyways, here’s the video. WATCH IT IN HD BECAUSE IT WILL MAKE YOU HAPPIER AND BETTER LOOKING !!!!

Kyykkä 2010 rändöm clips from Manu Raivio on Vimeo.

Disclaimer: I don’t know these people, and I had nothing to do with any of this. However, I wish I had, because it’s quite funny

Note: click on the pictures to see them in original size ! Taken with Pano-app on the iPhone.

This first one was taken on Thursday evening towards the Irish sea which can be seen in the distance. This is literally a five minute walk from where I am moving to and it’s quite a nice prospect. I am very much looking forward toi going running on the beach with my dog like in the movies. All I need is a dog. And a film crew.

Low tide at Sandymount beach

And this second one is from Friday evening, just outside the new Grand Canal Theatre. The place is also a 3 minute walk away from Google Offices and  not too far from city centre, either. I think those giant red pillars growing out of the ground represent the country’s traditional ginger population and they imply if Dublin could grow hair, it would be red.

Grand Canal Dock in city centre

I prepared some brine in which I put in fresh thyme, one anis star, 500 g demerara sugar, more or less 1.5 kg of sea salt, 4 cloves, 4 bay leaves, 1 tea spoon of ground white peppercorns, covered with 4.5 litres of water. After boiling this concoction for about 5 minutes, I let it cool down and submerged the beef brisket in it. I used a brick wrapped in two plastic bags to push the beef down as it wanted to float in the salty water.

Left is the one in water, right is still in brine

After 6 days in the Fridge I drained the brine away and soaked the beef in fresh water for a further 24 hours. After the 24 hours, I removed the beef and rinsed it well, and it then looked like this.

Before cooking

I chopped up 2 carrots, 1 onion (not peeled, just cut in 4 wedges !), 2 celery stalks, 1 leek, 2 garlic cloves, some parsley and some fresh thyme to the bottom of a large sauce pan, placed the beef on top and filled with water so that half the beef was covered. I brought this to boil and then let simmer for 2 1/2 hours.

After cooking !

And presto ! Serve with mash… It’s delicious.

In other, much more important news: I got a job at Google and will be moving to Dublin on 12th April.

I think this is very exciting, potentially even a ‘little bit’ more exciting than a week-long beef-brining project. Google is one the big three in IT and it’s really the place to be to working now in the industry. I obviously don’t know yet too much about what the work entails, but I will be working with AdSense-customers in UK and Finland…So here I go, bye bye Birmingham….hello Dublin!