Helsinki: Fun in the Sun... or Not

It's been a bit longer between updates than I had hoped; busy with Maemo 6, random hacking projects, and of course (attempting to) have a life away from said activities. I have finally booked my vacation back to New Zealand (and will also be visiting a friend in Melbourne, Australia.)

I probably picked the worst day to do my pre-vacation shopping; the weather in Helsinki has warmed up just enough (+1 degrees C) that everything on the ground has turned into a slippery slush:

• Number of times almost doing an unintentional back flip (or other such acrobatics): ~6.
• Number of times sprayed by passing cars: 2 (one of which I saw coming, but couldn't move out of the way...)

However, it seems the Finns are not totally immune to walking on slush; I saw one unfortunate person do a back-slide into a melted puddle.

This was just walking from Kaisaniemi to Rautatientori (Forum) and back; I still need to pickup a few things at Verkkokauppa. Unfortunately it doesn't look like the slush will be freezing again any time soon (more likely it melts slowly over time) so my vacation has turned out to be quite well timed. I'm leaving on the 10th.

Since I tend not to get out nearly as much as I should, I'm going to attempt to try some things I've never done before. Currently tandem skydiving is something I'm considering; I figure jumping out of an airplane is about as far away from software engineering as you can get. ;-) (Yes, I know about n900fly)

Anyone who has some ideas for things to do in Australia or New Zealand, please, leave a comment. :-)