Aleksi Kallio - My simple old fashioned homepages

Very briefly: living in Helsinki, Finland with my girl friend Tanja, a graduate student in computer science at the Helsinki University and working as an application architect in The Finnish IT Center for Science CSC.

I have been here since 1981. For most of my life, I've been located in Kajaani, which is a smaller town in Northern Finland. Nowadays I'm living in Helsinki with my girlfriend Tanja and a bunch of aquarium fish.

My hobbies include the normal stuff. I read "regular" books now and then and generally play around with computers. With good music I mean mostly jazz and rock, favourite artists being Dire Straits, Johnny Cash, Neil Young, Pink Floyd, Rinneradio etc. While programming all music with enough energy works fine: hard rock, punk, electronical and such. I go to gym, jog and play volleyball occasionally.

My athletic hobbies include also Scotch single malt whiskies. And other kinds of good whiskies. Collecting different types of whisk(e)y is one of my most significant money wasters. I don't have any special favourites, instead I appreciate the varying characteristics of different products. But still, Laphroaig is closer to my heart (or tongue?) than the others. Besides whiskies, I'm also a very eager home bartender. Actually the interest for whiskies was a spin-off of the cocktail hobby. From this department, my favourite is the legendary Martini. Not the Vodka Martini James Bond prefers (or is paid by Smirnoff to prefer), but a proper Martini with 1 part high quality gin (Bombay or Tanqueray Ten), 1/2 part not-so-dry vermouth and an orange peel spiral, shaken with a lot of ice.

Quite recently I've got myself into a third liquid related hobby, gourmet coffee. First there was a humble espresso machine, followed by a not so humble grinder. After that it really got going with a hunking dual boiler espresso machine that is nowadays paired with a new grinder of the same caliber. These and a large assortment of different coffee accessories take up a large part of our kitchen. I drink quite solely straight double espressos from different type of fresh roasted beans.

I'm also active in a student organisation called Pohjois-Pohjalainen Osakunta (North Ostrobothnian Nation). I've done a lot of different things in PPO, the most important being Chairman of the Board in 2004. In February 2007 PPO celebrated the grand 100th anniversary. I was one of the two "masters of ceremony". It sure was a one heck of a party - in academic style of course. In my opinion everything went very well after all. I sure wish I could have participated in full instead of spending most of the time organising.