An Eventful Day

Today was a very cold day for a late March day. It was -15 C in the morning.

I played simultaneous games of go against @gamer00 and his son at the go club today. @gamer00 took a seven stone handicap and won!

I waited patiently for the young photographer to finish his work.

@erikah inspired me to take some shopping mall photos the other day. I had some stuff to buy and figured I could make use of the opportunity because this mall was on the way home from the club.

That's a great selection of craft beers. There were many more shelves like that.

Few of the shops were open at the time.

This one was but I did not need anything.

The Turkish parliament voted 176-0 in favor of ratifying Finland's bid to join NATO today. 30/30 of the member countries have ratified. Joining the alliance is now a technicality involving a bit of paperwork with the final step being delivering the accession documents to Washington, DC.

I bought this beer for the occasion yesterday:

OTAN is the French language acronym for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Organisation du Traité de l'Atlantique Nord) and also a Finnish word literally meaning "I take" and best translated as "I'll have" in this case.

OTAN is a West Coast style fresh and hoppy IPA.

"We live in historic times, and as you know, historic times are our thing. Olaf is always there when it is time to raise a toast to co-operation and new friends."