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A slow start today, I went walking on one of the frozen lakes in and around Jyväskylä. It was quite an experience, with the frozen ice largely covered with snow. Around 1:30pm I headed off to the local ski hill for some cross-country skiing. My first time at cross-country, I skied for about 2 hours, travelling around 6km making my way up to the top of a downhill slope. The view down the backside of the mountain was great with a sea of trees stretching out to the horizon. After a few photos I headed back down.

The trip home wasn’t so pleasant, thinking I would be home quickly I decided to only put on just enough clothing layers for the bus home. Unfortunately I got stuck out in the cold for over half an hour. From that day on I began to dislike the cold up here in Scandinavia; the only brief enjoyable respite being Copenhagen some weeks later, where the weather was a comfortable 0c.

That evening I was feeling very tired and I decided to have an easy night. I headed to the local cinema to catch the latest Bond film – Casino Royale. Earlier that day I had earned a free ticket after participating in a music psychology study.

I thought Casino Royale was a brilliant film, a real return to form for the flagging series. I had been thoroughly disappointed with the last 3 Bond films; despite enjoying Brosnen as the lead. Right at the start of Casino Royale there is a flashy parkour scene featuring famous Free runner Sebastien Foucan. Unfortunately the filming was done somewhat poorly, with the camera shots often changing angles just before they landed. This made it look the scenes were done with stuntmen, where moves were performed in controlled conditions with wires, nets or mats. The cameramen also tried to compensate for realistic human jumping distances with weird angles. Sadly movie audiences have become conditioned to expecting super-human distances from pulley-assisted actors. Still, it was nice to see parkour’s first entrance on to the big screen for the mass market.

Frozen lake at Jyväskylä