This is how we do things here

We have now lived in Nigeria for six months. This is how we do things here ... this weekend.

I'm flying to Addis for a conference in a couple weeks. There are two airlines that service Yola to the capitol, each of them flying at a random time (it follows a Poisson distribution) in the "morning" and "afternoon". My flight from Abuja to Addis leaves in the early afternoon, so I need the flight that really is in the morning. I dropped by the airport to buy my ticket (which you can't do online) in cash (another necessity for the time being).

There I was informed that they are no longer doing morning flights. This has been the case for ... 3-4 days now. They'll probably start up again, another source informed me, sometime this week. So I asked them, if I come back next week and you do morning flights then, can I get a ticket then? Yes. Okay. So I'll go get my ticket next week. If they still aren't, I'll have to fly out the night before and overnight in Abuja.

World Map of Touristyness

EDIT: This version shows New Zealand, unlike the smaller picture on the website.


Hat tip: MR and Aid Watch

The Cathedrals of Helsinki

The Uspenski Eastern Orthodox Cathedral (Uspenskin katedraali) rests on top of a small hill looking over downtown.




With a good view of The Helsinki Cathedral (Helsingin tuomiokirkko or Suurkirkko - Lutheran Evangelic) across the way. The rest of the pictures in this post are from this other cathedral.

I would like to acknowledge the good weathermen of Helsinki for predicting rain the entire time I was there and instead providing me these wonderful, varying skies to shoot against.

A peek between the columns

The Resurrection. Another mural next to it depicts the crucifixion, but my shot wasn't as detailed as I'd like it.






I wish blogspot would let me arrange these pictures so they lined up. Oh well.

Off for Finland

Tomorrow I will be traveling to Helsinki, Finland for WIDER's 25th Birthday - a conference on the triple crisis (food, fuel, and finances). Those involved in our upcoming project on the political economy of food price crises will be meeting there to kick things off.