Alexey Smirnov's blog

I would like to describe what I am doing on weekends in Helsinki. Life in a city is certainly different from the life in a smaller town or a countryside. One of the challenges of this life is to do outdoors activities or at least some kind of sports to stay in shape.

This is why I start my weekend from attending a swimming pool, or in fact a Roman bath at Yrjonkatu. The definition of start of the day is quite relative because I am going there typically at 2PM. Earlier during the morning I am reading magazines mostly Communications of ACM or listening to radio. Not so long ago I have discovered Radio Freedom which features prominent journalists such as Vladimir Kara-Murza as well as lots of independent analysts. They often express interesting opinions. One thing that I have noticed is their use of references to literature or books that they have read recently. They are trying to apply the lessons learned from those books to modern life. This definitely characterizes this radio as that of intellectuals.

Anyway, in the swimming pool I am practicing fsreestyle wimming. I am swimming 500-1,000 meters depending on further plans. As of now, I can swim arbitrary long distances but not very fast, pretty much as fast as I could do it in breast stroke. However, the idea of swimming freestyle is to swim faster. But my body is experiencing tough resistance of water I am basically making my way through it. Instead I guess I need to flow through it, integrate with the water. But that takes lots of practice. Anyway, I have bought a 10-time ticket that allows me to get to any swimming pool in Helsinki for 36 Euros.

Then after the swimming pool I spend a few hours reading. For example, last weekend I was reading Economist magazine which I like quite a lot. I have bought another issue because of the funny cover image. There was a special report on social networks. Its main points are:

• MySpace was most visited social network until last year Facebook attracted more visitors. This is because MySpace was focusing on music and movies, whereas Facebook built a platform for content sharing. As broadband Internet spread through the world people got more interested in their own content.
• Twitter is very different from other social networks because it is like a broadcasting framework, not content sharing. The latter always assumes a certain degree of privacy, for example only your friends can see your pictures. In Twitter everybody can subscribe to your tweets.
• So far social networks have been barely profitable because advertisers don’t think that people will click on ads placed on social networks. This is because people are concentrated on their or their friends’ content, not on ads. But the special report argues that people trust their friends’ recommendations most, thus an ad saying that your friend has bought product X will likely influence your decision.
• Many smaller enterprises are using Twitter to advertise themselves. For example one bakery was tweeting upcoming donut sales and soon got over 50,000 followers. Another example is using Facebook as a game distribution platform. A classical Cafe World game has attracted over 10 million players in just a week. This is because of Facebook’s status updates. When your friend says that (s)he has become a Pizza Tycoon you think you should also become one. The network effect takes over. Gaming industry has never seen such growth rates before.
• People are increasingly using mobile devices to access social networks. Most of these devices are GPS-enabled. This opens another avenue for advertisers: location-aware ads.

On Sunday I am going to a lake to skate. I am preparing for a ice-skating marathon which will take place in the end of February in Kuopio. It is a funny thing which I will definitely describe in another post if I take part in it. The idea is that you have to skate as much as 200 km! But of course there are smaller distances such as 100km, 50km, 25km, and 12km. I will try to skate 25km. Because I am using traditional skates, not speed-skating type of gear my speed is not that great. A speed skater can maintain a 30km/h speed during the whole 200km race. Last weekend I skated 15km on a lake at Munkkiniemi and my speed was less than 10km/h.

Last but not least, I got used to going to movies. There is a gorgeous movie theater near my home in Tennispalatsi. I have bought a group ticket that gives access to 5 movies, each priced at 8.5 Euros. This is quite a big discount, as a single 3D movie is priced at 13 Euros. So far I have watched Avatar 3D, Up in the Air, and Sherlock Holmes. All are gorgeous movies.

My apartment is located in the center of Helsinki. This studio is of course not the cheapest one but there are numerous advantages in living there because Helsinki is a great city.

For example, within walking distance there are several art galleries including Ateneum which nowdays hosts Picasso exhibition and Helsinki City Art Museum in which Tretyakov Gallery is showing its collection. So every weekend I have to make a tough decision whether I want to enjoy Cubism or Russian art of 19th century.

This Saturday I went to Tennis Palace, a building on Fredrikenkatu. It is unique in the sense that it hosts a big movie theater and two museums. I could never imagine Tretyakov Gallery next to a movie theater. In Moscow the museum is a building worth admiring itself, so nothing is located near it except a few other historical buildings. Here in Helsinki before you get to the Tretyakov Gallery you have to make your way through empty Coke cans, and popcorn, and trash.

The Enchanting Beauty exhibition contains works that you would not typically see in the Tretyakov Gallery. There lots of big paintings are displayed that occupy the whole wall and can stretch as far as 10 meters in length. The works presented here are typically in the storage of the Tretyakov gallery unless they rotate the paintings which I doubt they do.

Therefore, those who have not been to Tretyakov Gallery before this exhibition would not get impressed. In other words, these paintings do not represent the Tretyakov Gallery to the full extent. But if you have visited Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow then you would definitely appreciate these works because you will not see them anywhere else.

The content of the exhibition is mostly oriental which includes works of Vereshagin, Bryulov. But there are a few paintings depicting traditional Russian life. There are portraits of famous people including a portrait of last Tzar’s wife Alexandra Feodorovna Romanova and merchant Tretyakov’s wife.

The price of the exhibition is very low – 9 Euros. I guess it costs more to get into Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. Thus I also bought a book showing the content of this exhibition along with explanatory articles.

Very good exhibition and I only wish I could go there again. I should have bought a yearly pass to the museum which costs only 20 Euros.

But after attending the museum I went on to explore other parts of Tennis Palace, in particular its movie theater. I decided to check out Michael Jackson’s This is It. Interesting movie. It is easy to notice that Michael suffers lots of pains, that he could either dance or sign but not both. But he is still the King of Pop. It is good that he was able to record all his songs before dying because the concert theme is quite global and goes far beyond the traditional entertainment show. For example, Michael explains that we should take good care of Earth otherwise it will deteriorate, etc.

There is another museum in Tennis Palace which I guess is called Museum of Cultures. Tennis Palace is a place where you can spend the whole day and enjoy a variety of activities!