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She has her first wee cold, very snuffly and choked up. Yesterday there was even a touch of green snot. 😦 poor wee peanut.

I’ve put a blanket under the mattress of her Moses basket and every night I run some snuffle baby on a muslin and hang it to the side of the basket. She has been coughing a bit and sneezing but mainly it’s been her runny nose. 😦 still eating and sleeping well. A healthy 13lb 7 oz now. 🙂

We had the weekend indoors because of her cold. Hope it clears soon.

Baby Sensory

Another class we have started is baby Sensory. Signed up for 10 sessions, it’s in Glasgow and we go on a Wednesday. The first one was great fun, they use baby sign too which I’m going to use with Jess. Was good talking to other mums and seeing mother babies. All babies are different and I try so hard not to compare or if I do compare it’s not in a way that puts down any baby. Just in a nosy out of interest kinda way.

Baby sensory was good, we sang songs and danced and got to touch and play with different things.

Books, stories, bugs oh my!!

Today was our first Bookbug session. It was fun, just some folk round a circle singing songs and listening to a story. There was also some time with a huge sheet of Lycra that the kids stretched. Jess stayed awake through it all and had a quick 15 min cat nap after it. 🙂 I loved being in a library again, we both borrowed books. I’m impressed that the first membership card she has is for the library.

It is so true that books play an important part in kids development. It’s amazing watching Jess look at books, her eyes follow first one page then the other, and I’m sure through time she will understand pages turning, if she doesn’t already. We have been having a story every night for weeks now and I’m going to start introducing them during the day so she knows it’s not just a night thing.

I love that bookbug sign traditional Scottish rhymes, and it’s so down to earth and come as you are. Def going back.

Out and about with bottles

So yesterday was our first day out and about without breast feeding. It went okay, I felt like I was having a flitting before we left though with the amount of stuff I packed but I’m guessing it’ll get easier in time. 🙂

We went our first walk round Culzean with my sis, bro and nieces. It was great fun. Not the clearest or warmest day but we wrapped up warm and away we went. Ended up having dinner out too which was great. Went to a nice place in Doonfoot, which was child friendly and food was Delish.

Since I knew I would be out all day I had to take a lot with me like:

2 cloth nappies and 3 sposies, i need to find out how others have days out with cloth- they are quite bulky in the bag, esp when all pooped on but sandwich bags from ikea are great to hold dirty ones, keep smell inside. 🙂

2 changes of clothes, just in case.

Another bag for food- I’m not sure about the do’s and donts of formula so here’s what we had- a thermos of just boiled water, a tub with three measured out portions of formula for 6oz bottles, three sterilised bottles, (taken straight out of solution, teat in, lid on, screwed together then placed in sealed bag) and hand breast pump also out of solution and in a sealed bag. Seems like loads but turns out I needed all of it, bar one bottle but used it straight away when I came home. Once I’m done with the pumping I’ll no longer need the breast pump either.

Was a good, easy, well supported practice run for when I go out and about on my own. I got a little anxious about how much she’d had to eat, but she let us know if she was hungry and she was great, didn’t throw any hissy fits or anything. She was awake most of the day, including when my meal was served but just popped her in the car seat where she giggled away. 🙂

Is it wrong to feel proud?

I often wonder if it’s wrong to feel proud of myself at being a mum, maybe proud isn’t the right word but to feel good, positive, happy and ‘right’???

It would seem the trend today, going by other blogs and listening to friends, is to put yourself down as a mum, say ‘I’m sh*t’ or ‘I’m just making it up, I really know nothing’ or ‘I’m a failure’. Even if this is said with a smile, in a self deprecating way, I don’t get it. I’m happy to say ‘I’m doing well with Jess’ Yes, proud of what I’ve accomplished these past few weeks.

I don’t think I’m being big headed saying this or arrogant, of course I don’t know every baby and of course I make mistakes , (why the other day I bumped the side of her head off the banister and on another day I caught her nose with my thumb when I was dressing her) but I’m a great mum to her. I play with her, talk to her, keep her clean, feed her, entertain her, encourage her and challenge her every day, and she responds by growing and developing and challenging me back. Isn’t that what parenting is about?

We will all do it our own way and surely having the confidence to feel ‘right’ ( whichever right suits you that is) will only help bring up a confident, calm little person? There is no wrong, apart from abuse, neglect etc. rather than try to fit your child into a book shaped mould I think parents should be encouraged to see the unique and individual baby shaped mould their children create.

What Jess likes

Well I thought another list was in order

What she likes:

Lying on me: I’m glad to say it’s still her favourite place. 🙂 she still nudges and nestles till we are cheek to cheek.

Chatting: non stop it would seem, especially in the morning getting her nappy changed or when she just wakes up, it’s like she really is telling me about her dreams.

The TV: I think a week at my folks has turned her into a Telly addict! 🙂 but we are amending this and a lot of the time it’s music I have on. It hasn’t stopped her sleeping or eating so it’s not too bad

Being out: she is so nosy, always taking everything in.

The bath:recently she has realised she can hang her head off the wee stand I have and her hair is all in the water, such a relaxed look on her face. Kicks all the time in the water.

Her cousins: she loves hearing their names and their voices.

What she doesn’t like.

Being left alone: the sling helps with this. Was quite bad when at my folks but in my house I can be in kitchen when she’s on living room, I just keep chatting to her.

Ending and beginnings

At 0938 on 6th January Jess had her last boobalicious experience. We have decided to stop breast feeding. Many reasons for our decision. She will continue to get my milk in a bottle till I stop producing it, and will have the odd formula bottle throughout the day. We will see how this goes. 🙂

So far what I miss is her wee full up contented face that she had after a feed, that silent little smile with her eyes closed. I haven’t seen that with any bottle feed yet. I think it’s because she would feed till she was full and no matter how much you have in a bottle she either has to rest or burb or the bottle runs out before she reaches that place. I’m still holding her close and giving lots of hugs during feeds.

Why have we stopped? Well the main reason is my energy, both physical and mental. I was rushed into a&e on the 28th dec with tubo-ovarian abscess. Though it took till a scan on the 29th for diagnosis. I was hooked up to an IV antibiotics and kept in for a week. I saw Jess for about an hour a day and was very very poorly! 😦 I expressed the whole time I was in to keep up my milk but it wasn’t enough I think and on retuning home I felt she was hungrier and having to work hard at the end of feeds, also the thrush pain reoccurred slightly and I couldn’t fight it again or start the whole business of setting up production all over again. Plus she was happy with my mum and dad for a week on formula so I knew we’d be fine. I have to conserve energy to get better as I don’t want to be that ill again or be apart from my baby girl for so long.

‘Missed her’ doesn’t even come close to the feelings I had when in hospital. It felt that a part of me was gone, I cried lots. For a while I worried that she would prefer my mum to me and that she would forget me but skin to skin and bf reassured me that was silly. 🙂 she got her jags on Hogmanay and my brother brought her in to see me. It was horrific: all she wanted was to be held, and walked, and cuddled. I couldn’t do it, I got upset and felt like such a woose! I couldn’t comfort my little girl on the one day I needed to. The nurses in the hospital were great and said that I hadn’t to worry, I was really ill, my body was done in by this infection and Jess would be cared for by my folks really well. I might have missed a day but I needed to get better for all the other days.

My new year, first one as a mum was spent hooked up to an IV machine, not great but just another day. I think it’s good that I don’t really care much for new year.

So that year is over and a new one is here. Me and Jess and are gonna have lots of fun. We have a fresh new routine to settle into and some new places to explore. Once I’m back to full strength again there is no stopping us.


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# Participant Score Points Time Points

Course Maps

Organizer: Thomas Nipen (Event Director)

Map: Downtown

The WET on October 14, 2009 will take place downtown, amidst theskyscrapers, giant sport facilities, and urban parks. The map is brand
new and should offer lots of route choice.

We will meet at the southwest corner of the big fake-turf fields just off Expo Blvd, between Quebec Street and Carrall Street. Here is a map: There is parking along Expo Blvd, and surrounding streets for $2/hour, until 8pm. There is also a parkade at Keefer @ Quebec Street. There is no hockey game on, so parking should hopefully be ok. The meeting area is easy to get to by public transit. It's only a few hundred meters from the Stadium skytrain station. Just exit the station by going down the stairs. Follow Expo Blvd eastward for 300m until you see the big fields on the left.

Mapping notes:
Due to some verybusy roads on the map, I have decided to make these out-of-bounds. Thatis you may not cross these even if the roads happen to be clear oftraffic, or by crossing at crosswalks. These busy roads will be markedusing the out-of-bounds symbol (purple vertical lines). Note that onlythe busy roads are marked as out-of-bounds. You may cross other roadsnot marked out-of-bounds, but do watch out as cars might be travelingon these too! Also, remember that in some cases you will need to runquite far around to avoid crossing the out-of-bounds roads.

Hereis an example. A large roads is marked out of bounds in the map on theleft. To get from 3 to 4 in this case you would need to go up thestairs and over the bridge crossing the busy road as indicated by thedashed line.

Point A shows how it is possible to run under abridge, as well as over the bridge. B shows a set of stairs that letyou get from the bottom to the bridgedeck above. C shows an underpassrepresented by dotted lines. D shows an example of an impassable walls.These are shown by thick lines. These lines are thicker than the bridgelines, which are passable.

Photos are from Flickr. To add your photos to this section, tag your Flickr photos with: whyjustrun552 (all one word)

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Archive for July, 2016

Lordi’s new costumes – a run down

Posted in Uncategorized with tags on July 31, 2016 by Sara Hammerzmith

A couple of days ago Lordi FINALLY posted the full images of their costumes and masks for us all to have a better look at the new costumes, so, finally, I feel a bit more confident about giving you my two coins of what I think of them.

amenbody amenface

So, let’s start off with Mr Amen, only because he’s the first chronologically when uploading the photos.

First and foremost, I’m glad to see he got some bandages again! He’s really very on and off with those – some era’s he’s drowning in them, other eras he barely has any, but this era, it’s like, the perfect amount in a way. They are not everywhere, but still there, giving you some heads up that he’s actually a mummy and not some random zombie monster.

I like the decomposed flesh a lot as well – it’s getting gorier, even though it’s less blood. The mask… Well, I must admit I’m not a that big of a fan of his face. It’s very Get Heavy-ish, and personally, Get Heavy is my least favorite look of him, but the effects are pretty cool. However, I must agree with Sophie on one thing – his eyes. I, we, know that he’s sort of like, opening his eyes a lot in this picture, but its also about how the mask has been sculptured. I guess we’ll see more of it once it goes live and everything.

hellabody hellaface

Next up is Miss Hella, and now, now we are fucking talking alright. Excuse the french. First thing I noticed though, is that for every era it seems she gets less and less clothing, but seriously, this costume is nothing but mad! The naughty, burned school-girl meets Barbie and the 80’s, in a perfect mix. I love that she’s so feminine, but still a bit… sexy, you know? It feels like the wrong word to use, but on the same time, I don’t know what else.

And the face…. someone commented that she looks like a dead Pamela Anderson, and I can almost agree on that! She looks stunning though. And, personally, I’m excited and thrilled as hell that she’s going back, well, halfway anyway, to blonde. I was soooo gutted when she went black, so when I saw the blonde I was literally squealing. And the purple highlights are amazing. I love the fact that Hella always goes big when she changes. You never know what to expect from her.

manabody manaface

Here we go! The first thing.. am I the only one, or is he, Mana, as well as Hella, losing clothes? Either way, I love this look. I almost want to say it’s my favorite of all of his, but I don’t dare to just yet. But seriously, that cloth with the symbols on… and not to mention, Fleshy Bessy! The spider! The spider he has on his chest, or more in his chest. This is amazing. And oh, the fly on the belt… These details you know!

As for the face… and hair.. the first thing we all said was that he looks a lot like Awa, the previous keyboard player. Especially the “Demonarchy” side of the face. But aside that, the mask looks really great, and I’m glad his hair is down again. It seems everything went right with this fella!

And the big L. First of all. DAMN THOSE SHOES! The grins! Holy shit, if that isn’t intimdating, I don’t know what is (as far as Lordi goes). And I love that the silver boot still got some of the brown around the teeth… aside that… it’s pretty… It’s not a lot going on. If you compare it to earlier costumes of his, this one is very toned down. But you wanna know something? I love that. I love that it’s so “simple” in a way, and that’s more all about him rather than flashy costume pieces. And I love that the belt-skirt-thingy has this glittery touch to it. I love everything that glitters, you know?

The mask is probably the best one he’s had so far. I can’t really put my finger on exactly what it is, but I always felt that occasionally, his masks just became a lot of holes and not a lot of soul (oh that rhymes) but, now it’s like the perfect mix of the holy gory side, and still a more… Arockalypse kind of side, I guess. I don’t know how to put it better! But, I love it.

oxbody oxface

Say hello to Mr Ice-Cream! With strawberry topping! The first thing Sophie said to me when she saw this was that he looked like one of those duo-flavoured ice creams. And he really does, or well, the mask anyone. Jokes aside, this is OX for those of you who may not know – Looks absolutely incredible. Seriously, this is his best mask today, damn. Intimidating! And, for once, they gave him reasonable horns. Amazing.

And it just gets better when you look at the whole costume. Lepard skin, going all 80’s on the one side, and being clad in sewn together human skin on the other side… and the face on the crotch cloth.. Absolutely everything went right with this costume, I guess this is really my favorite of this era. I can’t stop looking at it!

So, with all of that said, I guess I can easily say that OX is my favorite, tightly followed by Hella, and Amen being my least favorite. But they all look really cool, it feels like a promising era. Now we just await the album.

// Sara
(All images in this blog belongs to Lordi)

PART EIGHT: Tuska Open Air, Helsinki, Finland 1-3/7 2016

Posted in Finland, Travels, Uncategorized on July 30, 2016 by Sara Hammerzmith

So… the last day. And this was REALLY the last day… It was with very, very heavy hearts that Nathan and I firstly almost overslept, and secondly, left the hotel for the last time. I requested very shyly of Nathan if we couldn’t go to Espresso House, which is like, my favorite coffee house, their Caramel Latte is to die for, really, so, after a few ifs and buts we finally found a place and we sat down to enjoy one last drink and meal together before heading to the airport.

After this, off to the airport we go. Nathan was getting rather stressed, and I was just there like “Calm down, it will be okay”. And once at the airport.. the line for checking in luggage was fucking massive. But, as the positive thinker I am, I told Nate that – “It’ll be fine, I promise”.

As we wait in line, we see some people with a lot of luggage approaching us, and I whisper to Nathan “Ey, it’s a band!” and when they got closer we saw that it was no other band that Gojira, that actually played Tuska the day before! It was intense!

The lane for bags picked up the pace, and we made it in good time for Nate’s flight. It was, again, one of the most heartfelt good byes outside the passport control for UK travels and after that I wandered off to my own gate only to see that the flight had been delayed. Awesome. Not.

But despite that – flight home when good, so did bus.

I want to take this moment to thank every single one of you people – Nathan, Sophie, Marianne, Nicolas, Nicolas, Lea, Niki, Vickie, Saana, Laura, Juuso, Markus, Elodia, the staff at Weird Antiques, Lordi, Avantasia, Toxic Rose, Swallow the Sun, Myrkur, Delain and Children of Bodom for this amazing weekend. We didn’t see a lot of bands, but we did have a lot of fun the entire weekend. And it’s all because of all of you people mentioned in this post. I love you all.

Thank you!

// Sara

Universal Death Squad, Give it Away, The Glory and the Scum

Posted in Music, Uncategorized on July 29, 2016 by Sara Hammerzmith

Ahh guys!

These past two days has been a song-releasing inferno, and it’s probably a lot more than the three songs I’ll be talking about, but, since these three songs happens to be each from bands I hold very dearly, I’ll write a bit about them all in this entry.

EPICA – Universal Deathsquad

Maybe it’s because it’s new, maybe it’s because I’m excited maybe it’s because I’m in love with the artwork of this whole era – but I seriously love it. I sort of feel it’s got everything to it – the heaviness, the melodic parts, the technological parts, all the different harmonies… Ah. Whatever it does, it does make me excited for the new album! Cannot wait.

DELAIN – The Glory and the Scum (Spotify)

Well, sadly, I cannot link you to a video for this one, but seriously, I LOVE IT. I really, really, really love it. I can’t even put my fingers on what it is exactly I love so much… it’s just the way it’s written, and the lyrics… they made it again, you know? I can’t wait, I can’t I can seriously NOT WAIT for the album to come! Jesus Christ.

SUMO CYCO – Give it Away (Red Hot Chili Peppers cover)

Ah. Very typical Sumo Cyco style, and seriously, all I can really say is that I’m getting really, REALLY pumped for their next album. “Lost in Cyco City” was pretty much perfection in an album, and I just want more. How is this band not signed yet? I don’t really get it at all. I love it.

Ahh. This is going to be a heavy autumn, mark my words… So much new and good music being released! And not to talk about next years tour schedule… Rest in peace, my bankaccount!

// Sara

PART SEVEN: Tuska Open Air, Helsinki, Finland, 1-3/7 2016

Posted in Finland, Uncategorized on July 29, 2016 by Sara Hammerzmith

So. The devastating, heartbreaking last day had come. I was originally supposed to get on a boat at 18, but the love and passion for my friends had me book a Monday flight home instead. I was excited to get on the boat, and I feel guilty about the cabin that was left unused, but I just couldn’t. I just couldn’t leave already.

I can’t recall us having any breakfast in all honesty, we planned to, but everything was closed. So, we got some stuff from the vending machine and then hurried over to Suvilathi to catch the first gig of the day, Myrkur.

As we approached the venue, it started to rain a little, well, I guess the weather couldn’t be perfect all of the festival, aye? So, we got inside the tent to watch the final half of the Myrkur set (our quest for breakfast took us longer than expected).

It was a very atmospheric show. Both me and Nathan stood there in awe, inhaling everything Myrkur, watching her every step, getting mesmerized by her entire being. It was an amazing set, and I’m so happy we made it out to see and experience this.

However, we were not as delighted when exiting the tent and noticing its pouring. Not like, raining, it’s a basic fucking rainstorm. And for this day only, we had both left our raincoats back at the hotel. We ran over to the merchandise so I could pick on the very important festival t-shirt and a running schedule before hurrying back home to our hotel. Gladly, our hotel was like what, ten steps from the metro station so we didn’t basically die.

When the rain lighted up a bit, we found ourselves some food and then headed back to the exhibition one more time. We figured since we were already in town, and we never know when or even IF this could happen again, we might as well seize the moment.

Once there, again, we were completely alone at the exhibition, and wandered around, taking silly and stupid photos before we heard voices. And this is the most hilarious story ever. Let me tell you all about it.

On our way there, Nathan joked a bit about “what if Mr L shows up” and I said, yeah, if that happens, and we made some bet I can’t remember, and when we were standing inside it, and heard the speaking in the other room, I swear to God I thought it was Mr L. The voice, the tone, it sounded just like him! We both looked at each other and were like “no way, it can’t be”.

And, well, gladly, I guess, it wasn’t! It was my friend Saana and a couple of her friends. At first we didn’t really talk to them, and Nathan brought me out to the other room and said “I think those two girls are the girls from the Lordi Army UK” because well, we had noticed their UK accents. I told him I’d talk to them if it was really them, which it was, because he was too shy.

So, eventually, I caught them when they took some silly pics and figured “Do you need help?” was a good ice breaker. Which it was. Because the next couple of hours became known as the time when I got to know Juuso, Niki and Vicky from Finland and the UK, respectively. As well as catching up a bit more with Saana – the little time we had at Tuska was waaaay too short. It turned out we had a lot more in common than initially thought, so yeah, you could say we had a good time.

Eventually, we all had to part ways and Nathan and I headed back to Tuska to catch the very very last act of the entire festival – Children of Bodom.

Once back at the festival, we joined up with Sophie and Marianne and I suggested to them all that we’d go somewhere fancier, like a pizza ristorante after the show to have one final amazing dinner together, to which all agreed.

The show with Children of Bodom was intense! It was a great set, and a perfect ending for a very good festival.

Right after this, we headed to a pizza place in the center of Helsinki, half of our crew going home because of exhaustion. Left were me, Nico, Sophie and Nathan and we had literally the most delicious pizza ever, and we had the best and most heartbreaking dinner. Knowing that this is the last time we see each other until God knows when, it’s really one of the worst part about having friends like this.

After the place closed we stayed outside for a couple of hours talking about everything and nothing before we had to make it home, in the middle of the night. It was a heartfelt and tearfilled good bye outside the Forum shopping center, until next time.

Once home at the hotel, we packed our stuff and went to bed fairly early.

// Sara

PART SIX: Tuska Open Air, Helsinki, Finland 1-3/7 2016

Posted in Finland, Travels, Uncategorized on July 28, 2016 by Sara Hammerzmith

So yes.. after that incident, we decided to walk our way back into central Helsinki, or to be more specific, towards the Helsinki Cathedral. I’ve been in Helsinki many times, but never once have I visited the cathedral. We stopped halfway to get something to drink as our throats were still burning from the pepperspray. As I read my entry, I notice I failed to mention that it was pepperspray that had been sprayed inside the exhibition, so now you know. After walking for a bit longer, we reached the majestic building that is the Helsinki Cathedral. It is, honestly, quite the view.

We hung around for a while before we decided to go home to change our hotels. Nathan and I, booking you know, just a few days prior had two different hotels so we sort of needed to fix that. BUT. Not before Nathan could partake in the Vegemite challenge! He was objecting it a lot at first, but then he took a spoonful (why?) and then he kept chasing Sophie around the trainstation. Haha.

So, said and done, we changed the hotels, got changed, freshened up and then decided to meet up with Sophie and Marianne at the trainstation for some real late dinner. By Mariannes request, we headed over to Burger King and enjoyed a good meal. We had a lot of fun together before realizing what time it was… It was fifteen minutes until Ghost’s set would be over.

Well you know. That’s how it goes when you enjoy yourselves, I guess! Around midnight we parted ways and Nathan and I headed towards Bar Bäkkäri to catch at least ONE live show today – Toxic Rose.

There were various clubs that held various afterparties, mostly with gigs with smaller bands, which was very nice to see. I’ve been wanting to see Toxic Rose since I last saw them, so it was very convenient.

We came somewhere in the middle of the band playing before, got ourselves drinks and found a nice spot fairly close to the stage, but not up their businesses you know. They got on stage right on time and delivered a great and energetic set, despite the crammed venue. It was a decent amount of people, I must admit that were there so it was a good night.

toxicrose toxicrose2

After Nathan’s said a few compliments to the bandmembers we headed home and crashed on the bed, preparing for next day, which was heartbreakingly enough the last.

// Sara

PART FIVE: Tuska Open Air, Helsinki, Finland 1-3/7 2016

Posted in Finland, Travels, Uncategorized with tags , , on July 26, 2016 by Sara Hammerzmith

So, I think in all honesty we woke up a little later than we should have. We had made some epic plans for today – Lordi exhibition! So, we were supposed to meet Sophie and Marianne at the Kamppi square around, well, some time, but we decided to postpone it a little bit because you know, we are lazy as hell. But, eventually did we make it out there, and it was a nice day you know. Sun was shining, really warm, me and Sophie wearing the exact same Lordi shirt… you know, normal things.

We were supposed to go to McDonalds, but Marianne asked to go to this Finnish burgerplace called Hesburger instead, and you know, sure, why not? So, we went there, enjoyed a nice brunch with a lot of talking and laughing and planning and what not. After that, the “epic” journey to Weird Antiques started.

The place was a little bit off, or well, actually, the thing is, we decided to walk there. It is probably easier and more convenient to go to subway, but we figured “why not?”. So after a long walk, we finally made it to the place, and we were… very reluctant and hesitant at first. For some reason we were a group of super shy people. We forced Nathan to go first seeing he was the only guy, and after some waiting and more awkwardness we found the owner who let us in to the exhibition.

And let me tell you something about Lordi exhibitions. When you walk into it, at first you get taken aback. A little petrified, because of all the mannequins. And then, the next stage is joy. You feel the adrenaline and joy fill up in your heart, feeling it pound a little faster when all the things and people-less costumes you love so much and dearly are there. And then the excitement and mischiviousness comes. When you start giggling at everything and nothing. You are literally entering a world were it is a hundred percent Lordi and no one can take it away from you, and no one can touch you in this state of bliss.

lordiexhibit25lordiexhibit24lordiexhibit22 lordiexhibit23

Unlike the exhibition in Savonlinna, you could actually walk straight up to the costumes, touch them if you wanted to. We were very, VERY reluctant at first like.. oh my god, we don’t wanna break them, you know? But I guess that at some point we’d accidently hit one thombstone one too many times so as the hours passed by, we simply didn’t care anymore and that’s when face-swaps and goofyness enters. If Lordi only knew.

lordiexhibit21  lordiexhibit2 lordiexhibit3 lordiexhibit4 lordiexhibit5 lordiexhibit14

The exhibition consisted of three “rooms” – first room was more of a big room with two sections – first section consisting of a stage with a lot of random costumes, Mana seated (!) and some extra goodies. Paintings and thombstones. Second part of the room had all of Mr Lordis costumes – The Arockalypse and – Get Heavy in one line, as well as a few other costumes, the most noteable one being Otus’ costume being on display. A lot of random small things – Amen’s guitar case, Amen’s guitar, the Rock Police gear, some more paintings.

In the last room was, again, a lot of the costumes, Hella’s scarbie box, the entire set up from “Deadache” tour, Dark Floors props and some old goodies. The chainsaws, the old Monsterican Dream set up, Blood Red Sandman bed, Hella’s baby stroller… A lot of things! We had the exhibition all to ourselves, which made it even better!

lordiexhibit10 lordiexhibit9lordiexhibit1lordiexhibit20lordiexhibit3lordiexhibit7lordiexhibit16lordiexhibit13

We had a fantastic time at the exhibition, and after about three hours it was time for us to leave. We heard some shoutings out from the store, but didn’t think so much about it. Then I saw this guy spraying something and it was about the time when we saw the store owner grab a baseball bat and chase after the guy that we realized that this was actually a robbery.

Very, very quickly did we turn around and hurried back into the backroom, all the way back behind the “Dr Sin” autopsy table to hide. And you know… Things are really getting out of control when you hear yourself asking “Ok, so what Lordi props within reach are good weapons in case he comes in here?”.

It’s a surreal… surreal feeling, I tell you. We stayed in there for a while before we thought it was safe to go out. Sophie is starting to cough a little bit, but I didn’t think much about it. Then I started coughing and I didn’t think too much about it either – I’ve been crawling around on the floors, who knows how much dust and latex pieces I have in my throat! I figured I’d take a deep breath to clear the throat a bit, which would turn out to be the biggest mistake.

As I inhaled I felt my throat complete clogging up and getting difficulties to breathe. About this time, I notice Sophies coughing has gotten worse, and both Marianne and Nathan are coughing. Nathan rushed for us to get out of there, as he noted that every person who was in the store was, just like we, coughing really badly.

Once outside, we learn that it had indeed been a robbery, but gladly, the robber hadn’t gotten away with anything. The police arrived shortly thereafter, and we left our testimonies and then, when we checked so the storeowner was okay and everything, we left the scene. Nathan said afterwards; “First time in Helsinki and I’m already known by the police!”

Well, Welcome to Helsinki Nathan!

// Sara

PART FOUR: Tuska Open Air, Helsinki, Finland 1-3/7 2016

Posted in Concerts, Finland, Travels, Uncategorized with tags , , on July 25, 2016 by Sara Hammerzmith

So, right after the show the French people decided to leave for the hotel as Marianne wasn’t feeling very well, and Nathan and I took the opportunity to look at the merchstand, only to realize that Lordi did in fact not have any merch with them to this show. Oh well then. After this we headed back to the city to meet up with Sophie and Marianne at McDonalds.

It was a nice rejoice – Marianne was feeling better and we sat down and had a proper meal and chat about the amazingness we had really just witnessed back at the festival. We left fairly quickly after finishing like half the meal as I wanted to head back to festival ground to catch Avantasia live, but not before we had gotten changed.

And you know.. I always have a hard time deciding what to chose, and I’m very positive that this ultimately became the reason we got a little bit late for Avantasia. I was seriously beating myself up all the way back to Suvilahti, because the song “Avantasia” was the song I really, really wanted to see and seeing it was pretty early in the set, I felt pretty screwed. I remember how I even sat and checked to see how long the songs before it was, just to try to calculate, sitting and saying to Nathan “And then again Tobias talks so much so perhaps…” and Nathan seriously did the most amazing job calming me down.

The thing is, we made it to Suvilathi/Sörnäinen exactly when they started playing, but then we had to get to the festival and inside the gates as well. I kept saying to Nathan “I swear to God, they are going to the last ‘Avantasiaaaa’ when we get in”. I was so stressed, Nathan telling me it will be fine, me stressing a little bit more… and finally we made it in and we heard Tobias say “This is ‘Ghostlights'”.

“Ghostlights” was the song ahead of “Avantasia” in the set, and I don’t think I’ve ever felt as relieved as I did in that very moment. And then.. it was time for the big moment… “Avantasia”.

And like.. I fell in love with this song the moment I heard it. You know how you sometimes have these songs, that as soon as you hear them everything simply makes sense, when you get chills all over your body and you enter this euphoric state where it’s just you and the music? Yes. That’s it. That’s what is going on with this song.

And it was just as perfect as I imagine it would be. Yes, I did see Avantasia at Sweden Rock, but I wasn’t a fan then you know.

The show continued on, and I enjoyed every moment of it. I’m not going to go in depth, but seriously, I sure as hell enjoyed myself! Which is sort of fun – At Sweden Rock I got bored very quickly, but I guess we can all agree on that being because of the cold rather than the show. They put on one hell of a show, Thank you Avantasia!

After the show we headed back to the hotel. We contemplated for a moment to go to Bäkkäri for some shows as a part of an afterparty, but decided against it when we both were really tired. So instead, we went to a store, bought goodies and went home, put on some music on the speakers and laid in bed talking about everything and nothing and planning for tomorrow.

Quite a pleasant night, don’t you think?

// Sara


text:
Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Waiting for a frame...

I also finished this little stitchery last year...once again it was a gift in a swap...already traced onto the fabric, and the threads were included, Carol was the giver.....(her tracing is fantastic)...my son Josh has promised to make me a couple of frames next week, well maybe I better not say promised, how about indicated....

  1. I just love your little stitcheries!! They are all so sweet.

  2. this is just so cute!
    love the smile on the kittie!
    ps what a nice gift from Carol

  3. Josh has a lot to do.
    Lovely stitchery. Lucky girl.

  4. Another gorgeous stitchery. Oliver loves the pussy cat.

  5. I love your site and your quilts are just wonderful. This little stitchery might make a cute pillow topper if Josh doesn't get the frame made.

Thank you so much for taking the time to leave a comment, I do enjoy reading them all...take care, keep safe, happy quilting .. Peg


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Visiting Sherlock Holmes Museum in London, England

The Sherlock Holmes Museum is located on 221B Baker St, the fictitious address where Sherlock Holmes lived with his friend Dr. Watson.

I have yet to read the remaining series of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but my brother and I have decided to visit the Sherlock Holmes Museum for our shared fervour for a Japanese anime heavily based on the famous character. To a non-Sherlokian visitor, the museum resembles am exquisitely furnished 18th-century British apartment with every interior detail directly materialized from the novel.

The story behind the establishment of the privately-run museum proves the international fame of Sir Doyle’s creation. The Scottish author’s descendants were unfavourable to the idea of the museum and its bearing the address of 221B Baker Street for suggesting that the fictional detective had really existed. Geographically, it is located 239 Baker Street so it was a nearby building that had received letters from Holmes fans from all part of the world until 2002. It seems like such letters are still being sent to 221B Baker St, now the property of the museum.

Richly furnished interior. In many ways the museum is more like a well-kept residence of an absent inhabitant.

I have seen this famous portrait of Sherlock Holmes from the wing of my unread hard-cover book. For he’s never been a real live man, I’d never be sure if he had beard or not.

The signature symbols of the fantastic detective.

The top floor was full of wax figures depicting the scenes and characters in the novel. Yes, it’s wax I’m mimicking, not human!

The adorable maids (i.e. costumed female guides) were my favourite feature in this museum. It was minutes before the closure, so they looked a bit exhausted from the day of long-queued visitors.

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Creamy Polenta w/ Balsamic Strawberries

Creamy Breakfast Polenta w: Stewed Balsamic Strawberries(DSC_1188)

Before I moved to Italy, I had only heard of polenta, I had never actually tried it.  It’s not something my in laws ever make, so I didn’t actually get around to eating it until I had been here for well over a year and I decided to make it myself.  I was still eating dairy back then and followed a simple recipe that called for stirring some feta cheese and dill into the polenta near the end of its cooking time.  It was utterly delicious.  Even hubby who is not a polenta fan loved it.  But then again, I think the feta had something to do with that.

Polenta is a classic Northern Italian dish, originally a peasant food, made of cornmeal or historically millet, barley or buckwheat, before Christopher Columbus brought corn back from America.   It’s cooked into a porridge and served immediately or spread into a casserole dish, allowed to set and firm up and then sliced and baked, fried or grilled.  It’s usually served with a sauce made of meat, mushrooms or a variety of vegetables depending on the region. Sometimes cheese is cooked into the porridge.  It is usually associated with being rich and heavy and decadent and most certainly not considered a breakfast food by the average Italian as I’m proposing it here.  But I’ve discovered that it makes a tasty breakfast porridge indeed, especially when topped with stewed fruits.

Nutrition 101

Polenta today is mostly made from corn meal which is made by grinding corn kernels down into a coarse powder.  It is naturally gluten free and perfect for those with Celiac disease or gluten intolerance.  However, as most of the corn in North America is genetically modified, it’s best to look for non GMO organic cornmeal.  Luckily Europe and Italy have outlawed GMO foods for human consumption, and while the cornmeal we find here does not have the risk of being genetically modified, I buy organic anyways as a personal preference in general.  Whole grain cornmeal is a great source of protein and dietary fiber, as well as B complex vitamins and iron, magnesium, phosphorous, manganese and selenium.  It makes a great addition to baked goods, either in a coarse or fine grind and makes a wonderful sweet or savoury porridge.

Creamy Breakfast Polenta with Balsamic Stewed Strawberries

  • Servings: 1*
  • Time: 30 minutes
  • Difficulty: Easy
  • Print

Recipe & Photography by Nissrine @ Harmony à la Carte

This creamy breakfast polenta with balsamic stewed strawberries, chia seeds and flaked almonds makes a wonderful and satiating breakfast. It’s loaded with dietary fiber, protein, iron, and B complex from the cornmeal, a healthy dose of vitamin C from the strawberries, omega 3 fatty acids from the chia seeds, and many other vitamins and minerals overall.  It’s vegan, refined sugar free, naturally gluten free and made with non GMO organic cornmeal.

*quantities given for 1 serving, can be multiplied to serve more.

  • 1/4 C Cornmeal for polenta (not cornflour), preferably organic
  • 1 1/2 C Filtered Water (to cook the polenta)
  • 1/2 C Plain Oat Milk (or other milk of choice)
  • 5-6 Strawberries, halved or quartered, preferably organic
  • 2 Tsp Balsamic Vinegar
  • 1 Tsp Filtered Water (for the strawberries)
  • 2 Tsp Brown Rice Syrup
  • 1/4 Tsp Pure Bourbon Vanilla Powder
  • 1-2 Tsp Chia Seeds
  • 1 Tbsp Flaked Blanched Almonds, for serving
  1. Bring water to a boil and pour cornmeal into the boiling water, slowly in a water fall motion.  Stir vigorously with a whisk to prevent clumps.
  2. Reduce heat to low and cook for 20 minutes, stirring every minute or so to prevent clumping and sticking, until a thick and creamy porridge forms.  You may need to add a bit more water as you go along.
  3. While the polenta is cooking, add the strawberries, balsamic vinegar, filtered water, brown rice syrup and vanilla to a small pot or pan and stew on low heat until lightly caramelized, about 7 -10 minutes.  Let the strawberries cool slightly, then stir in chia seeds.
  4. Once the polenta us ready, turn off heat and stir in oat milk, whisk vigorously to prevent clumps.
  5. Poor polenta into a shallow bowl, top with stewed strawberries and flaked almonds. Serve immediately.

2 responses to “Creamy Polenta w/ Balsamic Strawberries

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PS Experiment

Posted in New by Harsha on May 2, 2007

There is a pretty cool group called PS Village in the Bay Area, CA founded by Terry Jansen. She recently led a successful monumental effort to gather insights from 100 Professional Services leaders from various organizations (and sizes).

This eBook is fantastic! Each tip from the PS leaders is succint and focused on a specific idea or principle. The contributors speak from experience, which in my opinion, is the best flavor of learning; and they share their "experiments" with the reader. The ebook is free to download.

I was hoping to write a similar ebook but Terry beat me to it. However, this collective wisdom yet highly individualized and personal, is really great. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did.

This is PS Village. Download the book from here. Read Rajesh Setty’s interview with Terry here.

– Harsha Raghavan

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Won’t Be Doing That Again!

So, last week, I published a post containing a poll and said I would make polls a regular feature if they were popular enough and got enough feedback.

Well, let’s just say there wasn’t an awful lot of voters. There was only 6 voters, whom I thank for their vote.

So, for the benefit for the voters and anyone else who wants to know what 6 peoples’ favourite day of the week is, here are the results [Click to view larger image]:

So Monday’s the favourite, a rather surprising outcome.

I’m not saying I’ll never do a poll again, I just won’t waste my time on doing it regularly.

Anyways, I was actually scheduled to publish this tomorrow (Saturday) but I thought I’d do it tonight and give you the next, scheduled chapter of “The Boom” as it always was.

I’m also really excited for tomorrow as I am going to see Sister Act the Musical with my sister! I can assure you, there will be a blog post related to that at some point of the week…

Anyways, for now, Good night!

One Comment Add yours

  1. angelnicki says:

    LOL! Don’t you hate when you have an idea that you think will be fun for your blog, and then everyone is just kind of like, “Eh…” Happens to me all the time!

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Message and Muscle: An Interview with Swatch Titan Nicolas Hayek

From the March–April 1993 Issue

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Nicolas G. Hayek is a rare phenomenon in Europe—a genuine business celebrity. In his home country of Switzerland, and increasingly across the continent, he is an engaging presence in newspapers and magazines and on television talk shows. Hayek, 64, has earned his fame. He and his colleagues at the Swiss Corporation for Microelectronics and Watchmaking (SMH) have engineered one of the most spectacular industrial comebacks in the world—the revitalization of the Swiss watch industry.

The dimensions of the turnaround are staggering. SMH took shape in 1983 when Hayek recommended that Switzerland’s banks merge the country’s two giant (and insolvent) watch manufacturers. That year, the new company generated revenues of SFr1.5 billion ($1.1 billion) and lost SFr173 million ($124 million). Last year, SMH generated revenue of about SFr3 billion ($2.1 billion) and posted profits of more than SFr400 million ($286 million).

Nicolas Hayek has been involved with SMH from the beginning. In the early 1980s, the banks named Hayek their chief adviser on the troubled watch industry. He was already well-known as the founder and CEO of Hayek Engineering, a Zurich-based consulting firm that is something of a cross between Arthur D. Little and McKinsey & Company. In 1985, the banks proposed that Hayek buy a controlling equity stake in SMH. He assembled a group of investors, retained the single largest stake, and became CEO.

The original investors paid SFr100 per share. Today SMH trades at SFr1,500 per share. Its market value exceeds SFr4.9 billion ($3.5 billion). Hayek’s personal stake is worth roughly SFr1 billion ($700 million).

But SMH is more than a turnaround story. It is a case study of Hayek’s management philosophy and strategic thinking, both of which are strikingly at odds with the prevailing wisdom about how companies should compete in the new economy.

Conventional wisdom suggests that global companies should become “stateless.” They should seek low-cost production wherever they can find it and build operations in many national markets. Yet SMH is committed to its Swiss home base. The bulk of its technology, people, and production remain anchored in the towns and villages around the Jura mountains on Switzerland’s border with France—the traditional heart of Swiss watchmaking.

Companies also hear endless advice to become niche players by focusing on ever more- narrow market segments. But SMH is everywhere. Its brash and playful Swatch (whose basic models sell for $40) has become a pop-culture phenomenon. Last year, SMH sold an estimated 27 million Swatches. The company’s flagship brand on the high end is Omega, whose models retail for anywhere between $700 and $20,000.

Watches in the hotly competitive middle segment sell for between $75 and $350. This is where SMH battles most directly with Seiko and Citizen, the two Japanese giants. SMH recently acquired Blancpain, a niche producer of luxury mechanical watches that retail for $200,000 and higher. SMH has even extended its presence in watches to new product categories such as telecommunications.

Finally, managers increasingly believe they should dismember their companies and retain only those core activities crucial to success. But SMH is a vertically integrated fortress. It assembles all the watches it sells, and it builds most of the components for the watches it assembles.

William Taylor, former HBR associate editor, conducted the interview at the Zurich headquarters of Hayek Engineering and at SMH headquarters in Biel.

HBR: The revitalization of SMH has generated tremendous attention across Europe. What are the most important lessons?

Nicolas Hayek: There are two main lessons. First, it is possible to build high-quality, high-value, mass-market consumer products in high-wage countries at low cost. Notice I said build, not just design and sell. A Swatch retails for 50 francs in Switzerland and $40 in the United States. The price has not changed in ten years. Yet we build all of our Swatches in Switzerland—where the most junior secretary earns more than the most senior engineer in Thailand or Malaysia.

In fact, it’s not just possible to build mass-market products in countries like Switzerland. It’s mandatory. This is a principle I am passionate about—and a principle business leaders in the United States and Europe don’t take seriously enough. We are all global companies competing in global markets. But that does not mean we owe no allegiance to our own societies and cultures.

Not so long ago, I was in the United States for a meeting with the CEO of one of your big companies. We were discussing a joint venture to produce a new product we had developed. He saw what the product could do, he reviewed the design, and he got very excited: “Great, we’ll make it in Singapore.” His people had done no research or calculations at all. It was a reflex. I said, “No, we’ll make it in Alabama.”

But I’m sure you understand the reasoning. In a global economy, companies must source wherever they can get the best people at the lowest cost. Asia is bursting with smart, well-trained workers and engineers. How can you afford not to look there for manufacturing?

We must build where we live. When a country loses the know-how and expertise to manufacture things, it loses its capacity to create wealth—its financial independence. When it loses its financial independence, it starts to lose political sovereignty.

We have to change that reflex: the instinctive reaction that if a company has a mass-market consumer product, the only place to build it is Asia or Mexico. CEOs must say to their people: “We will build this product in our country at a lower cost and with higher quality than anywhere else in the world.” Then they have to figure out how to do it.

We do this all the time. We agree on the performance specifications of a new product—a watch, a pager, a telephone. Then we assemble a project team. We present the team with some target economics: this is how much the product can sell for, not one penny more; this is the margin we need to support advertising, promotion, and so on. Thus these are the costs we can afford. Now go design a product and a production system that allows us to build it at those costs—in Switzerland.

“If labor is less than 10% of costs, there’s nothing to stop us from building a product in the most expensive country in the world.”

That means focusing on labor. If we can design a manufacturing process in which direct labor accounts for less than 10% of total costs, there is nothing to stop us from building a product in Switzerland, the most expensive country in the world. Nothing.

But you know consumer markets are fiercely competitive. How can you absorb even a modest cost disadvantage?

This is not commodity competition. Let’s say you have three similar watches. One says “Made in Japan” and sells for $100. Another says “Made in Switzerland” and sells for $110. A third says “Made in Hong Kong” and sells for $90. Which watch will consumers prefer? In Europe, between 75% and 95% of all consumers will prefer the Swiss watch—in spite of the 10% premium. In the United States, depending on which region you are talking about, between 51% and 75% of all consumers will prefer the Swiss watch. Only in Japan itself will a majority of consumers prefer the Japanese watch to the Swiss watch.

What does that mean? If you have a manufacturing process in which direct labor is less than 10% of total costs, you have eliminated those costs from the competitive equation. When we created SMH, our direct-labor costs, on average, were more than 30% of total costs. Today they are well below 10%. If we paid our workers full salaries and the Japanese paid their workers nothing, we could still compete.

This same logic applies beyond watches. CEOs must understand this point. If you can design a system in which direct-labor costs are less than 10% of total costs, it is cheaper to build mass-market consumer products in the United States than in Taiwan or Mexico.

What’s the second lesson of SMH’s comeback?

It’s related to the first. You can build mass-market products in countries like Switzerland or the United States only if you embrace the fantasy and imagination of your childhood and youth. Everywhere children believe in dreams. And they ask the same question: Why? Why does something work a certain way? Why do we behave in certain ways? We ask ourselves those questions every day.

People may laugh—the CEO of a huge Swiss company talking about fantasy. But that’s the real secret behind what we have done. It’s an unusual attitude for Switzerland—and for Europe. Too many of Europe’s large institutions—companies, governments, unions—are as rigid as prisons. They are all steel and cement and rules. We kill too many good ideas by rejecting them without thinking about them, by laughing at them.

Ten years ago, the people on the original Swatch team asked a crazy question: Why can’t we design a striking, low-cost, high-quality watch and build it in Switzerland? The bankers were skeptical. A few suppliers refused to sell us parts. They said we would ruin the industry with this crazy product. But the team overcame the resistance and got the job done.

The Swatch is based on radical innovations in design, automation, and assembly, as well as in marketing and communications. One of our plants in Grenchen makes up to 35,000 Swatches and millions of components a day. From midnight until 8 a.m., it runs practically without human intervention. Swatch is a triumph of engineering. But it is really a triumph of imagination. If you combine powerful technology with fantasy, you create something very distinct.

Let’s go back to the beginning of SMH—the dark days—and work forward to the two main lessons. It’s the early 1980s. Swiss watchmaking is on the brink. The banks call you in. What do you find?

A chaotic jungle. An absolute mess. Most people who analyze the destruction of the Swiss watch industry in the 1970s emphasize price and technology. They point to the arrival of hundreds of millions of cheap quartz watches from Japan and Hong Kong and our decision to ignore quartz, a technology we invented. But we had huge problems beyond technology. There were problems of strategy, structure, management.

The two companies that became SMH were the flagships of the Swiss industry. One was SSIH, a company that had Swiss-French origins. Omega was the crown jewel of SSIH. Up until the early 1970s, Omega was one of Switzerland’s most prestigious brands—more prestigious than even Rolex. But Omega was so successful for so long that it ruined SSIH. The company got arrogant. It also got greedy. It wanted to grow too fast, and it diluted the Omega name by selling too many watches at absurdly low prices.

SSIH had no discipline and no strategy. It had its own distribution in countries like Germany and France. It worked through agents in other countries. It even let some agents contract with outside manufacturers to build their own Omega models! It made no sense.

Then there was ASUAG, a company with Swiss-German origins. ASUAG was a manufacturing company. ASUAG owned a few brands, including Rado and Longines. But its heart and soul was an operation called Ebauches S.A., which supplied components to the whole Swiss watch industry. Ebauches was very capable. Over the years, however, as various small Swiss brands faltered, they went to ASUAG looking for a rescue package. ASUAG was the rich uncle: “Please, we are going broke. Why don’t you buy us? It won’t cost much. You can’t let us disappear.”

ASUAG felt a certain responsibility. Also, it didn’t want to lose its customer base. By the late 1970s, then, ASUAG owned much more than Rado, Longines, and Ebauches. It owned all kinds of brands. It also owned lots of little companies that made components and had run into trouble. Many of these companies had been family-owned for generations. ASUAG rescued them but left most of the family managers in place.

By 1982, ASUAG owned more than 100 separate companies—some big, some small, some modern, some backward. Most of these companies did their own marketing, their own R&D, their own assembly. It was crazy.

The banks agree to merge SSIH and ASUAG to create SMH. It’s time to sort through the jungle. Where do you begin?

We began with the products themselves. We had to understand our strategic positioning, where we stood in world markets. We made a big study, written in German, that became known as the Hayek Report. As you can imagine, the report got lots of attention in Switzerland. It was very controversial.

In the report, we drew a diagram to describe our competitive environment. It looked like a three-layer wedding cake. Back then, the world market for watches was about 500 million units per year. The low-end segment, the bottom layer of the cake, had watches with prices up to $75 or so. That layer represented 450 million units out of 500 million. The middle layer, with watches up to $400 or so, represented about 42 million units. That left 8 million watches for the top layer, with prices from $400 into the millions of dollars.

The Swiss share of the bottom layer, 450 million watches, was zero. We had nothing left. Our share of the middle layer was about 3%. Our share of the top layer was 97%.

We were cornered. The Swiss spent much of the 1970s reacting to quartz by retreating: “Why should we compete with Japan and Hong Kong? They make junk, then they give it away. We have no margin there.” Of course, as we retreated, the Japanese moved up to the next layer of the cake. Then the retreat would start again.

I decided we could retreat no longer. We had to have a broad market presence. We needed at least one profitable, growing, global brand in every segment—including the low end. That explained why we had to control and sell Swatch ourselves rather than license it or sell it through agents, as some people had proposed. It also meant we had to reinvigorate Tissot, the only global brand we had in the middle segment.

The banks studied our report and got nervous, especially about Swatch. Some of them worried that Swatch would cannibalize Tissot. Others were more emphatic: “This is not what consumers think of when they think of Switzerland. What the hell are you going to do with this piece of plastic against Japan and Hong Kong?” But we were adamant: if we did not have mass production, if we did not have a strong position in the low end, we could not control quality and costs in the other segments.

The banks thought Swatch would fail?

Not fail, necessarily. Many thought it might survive—but barely. After all, we were going to battle at the low end. Who could make real money there against people from Japan or Hong Kong? That’s when they proposed that I buy 51% of the company.

What did you see that others didn’t?

I understood that we were not just selling a consumer product, or even a branded product. We were selling an emotional product. You wear a watch on your wrist, right against your skin. You have it there for 12 hours a day, maybe 24 hours a day. It can be an important part of your self-image. It doesn’t have to be a commodity. It shouldn’t be a commodity. I knew that if we could add genuine emotion to the product, and attack the low end with a strong message, we could succeed.

How do you “emotionalize” a watch? Do you mean to say that Swatch turned something that was mundane and functional into a fashion statement?

That’s how most people describe what we did. But it’s not quite right. Fashion is important. The people at our Swatch Lab in Milan and our many other designers do beautiful work. The artists who make our Swatch special collections design wonderful watches (see the first insert, “Franco Bosisio: In the Eye of the Swatch Storm”). But take a trip to Hong Kong and look at the styles, the designs, the colors. They make pretty watches over there too.

We are not just offering people a style. We are offering them a message. This is an absolutely critical point. Fashion is about image. Emotional products are about message—a strong, exciting, distinct, authentic message that tells people who you are and why you do what you do. There are many elements that make up the Swatch message. High quality. Low cost. Provocative. Joy of life. But the most important element of the Swatch message is the hardest for others to copy. Ultimately, we not just offering watches. We are offering our personal culture.

You mean people can look at a watch from Hong Kong and then look at a Swatch and sense a different culture?

It’s not just the mechanics of the product. It’s also the environment around the product. One thing we forget when we analyze global competition is that most products are sold to people who share our culture. Europeans and Americans are the biggest groups in the world buying products from Asia. So if you can surround your product with your own culture—without ever denigrating other cultures or being racist in any way—it can be a powerful advantage.

We are offering our products to a sympathetic audience. The people who buy Swatches are proud of us. They root for us. They want us to win. Europeans and Americans are damn happy if you can show that their societies are not decadent—that every Japanese or Taiwanese worker is not ten times more productive or more intelligent than they are.

What is a concrete example of embedding culture in the message around Swatch?

How did we launch Swatch in Germany? Did we saturate the airwaves with paid advertisements? No. Anyone can do that. We built a giant Swatch. It was 500 feet high, weighed 13 tons, and actually worked. We suspended that giant Swatch outside the tallest skyscraper in Frankfurt, the headquarters of Commerzbank. It was really something to see!

I remember asking the chairman of the bank for permission. He thought we were crazy. We were crazy, but we had already gotten authorization from the city engineers and the local government. And we persuaded him that this giant Swatch would show his customers that his bank had heart and emotion. So there it hung. And all it said was: Swatch. Swiss. DM60.

That outrageous display communicated the essence of the Swatch message. It was high quality—Swiss. It was low cost—what could be more affordable than DM60? It was a big provocation to hang a watch from a huge, grim skyscraper. And it was funny, fanciful, a joke—joy of life. Believe me, when we took it down, everyone we had wanted to reach had received our message.

We also hung a giant Swatch in Tokyo, in the Ginza. This message can work in Japan as well. By value, Swiss companies account for more than 50% of all the watches sold in Japan. SMH accounts for 75% of that 50%. Do you think we broadcast these figures? Or that we act arrogantly in Japan? Of course not. The Japanese are sympathetic to us. We’re nice people from a small country. We have nice mountains and clear water. They like us and our products, and we like them.

So you’re really talking about advertising and promotion?

I am talking about everything we do. Everything we do and the way we do everything sends a message. Let me give another example—our “Swatch the World” celebration in Zermatt last fall. This was a huge occasion for us. It celebrated the production of our 100 millionth Swatch. It was a very public event. Political leaders came to Zermatt. There was lots of hoopla, lots of excitement.

We could have spent millions of francs on champagne, caviar, and dancing. Instead, we created an artistic event, a tasteful event, an honest event. It was set in a village at the foot of the Matterhorn, the symbol of Swiss authenticity. But it was lively and offbeat. We had street musicians, artists, reggae, clowns. We also had Jean-Michel Jarre, the brilliant young composer from France. He wrote original music for us and beamed a multimedia light show against the Alps.

More than 40,000 people came to Zermatt from all over Europe. The newspapers and magazines and television stations carried big reports. It was a critically important statement of the Swatch message. And what were we communicating? Our culture. Our sense of ourselves and what we stand for.

Do you use the same logic with all of your other brands too?

Each brand is different, so each message is different. But each brand has a message. My job is to sit in the bunker with a machine gun defending the distinct messages of all my brands. I am the custodian of our messages. I review every new communications campaign for every single brand.

Let’s talk about Omega. We built Swatch from the ground up. We had to rescue Omega from near oblivion. Omega is a crucial brand for SMH. We make as much money with Omega as we do with Swatch. Yet no one ever discusses it.

So why was Omega near oblivion?

Omega is one of the Swiss watch industry’s great brands. Its history goes back to 1848. You should visit the watchmaking museums and look at the pieces Omega made 50 or 100 years ago. They are wonderful. Few brands had or have Omega’s potential power.

The problems started in the early 1970s. There were bad business practices. The people there became arrogant. They treated their agents and dealers badly. If an agent from, say, New Jersey needed 200 units of a particular model, Omega would say: “You’re crazy! Don’t bother us with such nonsense. We’ll give you 50.”

Second, and much worse, Omega became greedy. Rolex sells 600,000 watches per year. That’s about as many as you can sell before a luxury brand begins to lose its prestige. That’s about how many Omega was selling in the late 1970s. But Omega wanted to grow more rapidly. So they took the easy route. They figured, “If we can sell 600,000, why not a million? Or 2 million? Or 3 million?”

Which meant, of course, they had to lower the price radically. A jeweler would say, “Omega is wonderful, but it is too expensive for my clients. How about giving me an Omega that is cheaper?” Now, if you are crazy, or I guess if you are greedy, you agree.

That was the kiss of death. Omega was everywhere: high price, medium price, precious metals, cheap gold plating. There were 2,000 different models! No one knew what Omega stood for. By the end of 1980, the company was again in a deep crisis, its deepest ever.

How did you develop the recovery plan?

It was very painful. Early on, before the SMH merger, we spent days behind closed doors with the company’s managers and bankers. Some of the people suggested that we sell Omega to the Japanese, who had offered to buy it. It was still a powerful brand despite the problems, and it would fetch a lot of money. Of course, that would have been tragic for Switzerland.

Some managers from Omega were pleading that we take the brand down-market to face Citizen and Seiko in the middle segment. That was absurd! I fought them tooth and nail on that. At one point, the people at Omega would not even let us on their premises. It was bitter.

“We don’t offer an image. We offer a message.”

We made the investment in SMH in 1985, and we were free to act. I pushed out practically the entire management of Omega. I fired a lot of people. I got the reputation as a brutal guy. I am not a brutal guy. But the organization was so full of arrogance and stupidity that I didn’t have much choice. Then we implemented our strategy to give Omega back its message. Not an image, a message. We had to be clear, consistent, and credible.

What is Omega’s message?

Omega is an elite watch for people who achieve—in sports, the arts, business, the professions—and help shape the world. It is a watch for people who are somebody because they made themselves somebody, not because their grandfather left them a trust fund or because they made money from insider trading. The astronauts who landed on the moon achieved something. They were smart, healthy, courageous. They wore Omega. So did the Soviet cosmonauts. That message had been destroyed.

You also reorganized manufacturing, assembly, and distribution. Did these changes play a big role in Omega’s turnaround?

We did all those things. We paid closer attention to logistics and quality and inventories. We redesigned the manufacturing process. Omega gave up most of its manufacturing when we created SMH and centralized production. There was a lot of resistance. People said we would destroy the brand.

We do treat Omega specially, however. ETA makes movements for Omega as it does for all our brands. But we sell those movements to no one else inside or outside the company. Because those movements are specially made, ETA stamps the Omega name, not ETA, on the movement. This way, when customers or dealers open a watch to repair it or change the battery, they still see Omega. By the way, this is true only for quartz watches. Omega designs most of its own mechanical movements and buys them from Frédéric Piquet, as do most high-class Swiss watches. We own Piquet.

All these reforms were important. But they’re not the main story. The main story is the message and the discipline the message imposes. We immediately reduced the number of models from 2,000 to 1,000. We have since cut back to 130. We don’t allow anyone to make Omegas under license. We stopped building lavish or showy watches—people who achieve don’t care about those things. We stopped making Omegas with gold plating. We make smart watches out of real metal: platinum, titanium, gold, special steel alloys.

“At Omega, we stopped building lavish or showy watches—people who achieve just don’t care about those things.”

Omega started making sense again. This is what an Omega looks like. This is what Omega stands for. We gave Omega back its message.

Swatch and Omega have completely different messages. Why does it matter strategically that SMH owns both brands? How does the success of Swatch help Omega?

It’s not just Omega. Swatch has helped the entire Swiss industry. It has restored our credibility with the public. It has restored our credibility with the trade. The perception of Swiss watches today is so different from ten years ago. Jewelers and department stores beg us to carry Swatch. If customers come for Swatch, and the shop doesn’t have it, they won’t accept anything else. They leave disappointed. This has a big psychological spillover to all of our brands—including Omega.

I really believe the phenomenal success of these $40 watches helps the climate for selling $500 watches—or $5,000 watches, for that matter. We have reestablished our technical superiority over the Japanese watchmakers. If we can build beautiful, high-quality watches that sell for only $40, imagine what must be the quality and accuracy of watches that sell for $2,000!

Let’s move from products to production systems. This is the age of the lean corporation. Why is SMH so vertically integrated?

We are vertically integrated because it is the only way to maintain our strategic independence and freedom to maneuver in the market. We can’t be broad in the marketplace without being deep in our production systems. And we can’t support deep production systems without a broad presence in the marketplace.

Here is the strategic reality we face. There are three centers of watchmaking in the world: Switzerland, Japan, and Hong Kong. But only the Swiss and the Japanese build movements, the complex micromechanical and electronic components that are the “guts” of a watch. To build electronic movements, you have to master semiconductor technology, quartz, batteries, miniaturization. For mechanical movements, you have to master intricate micro-mechanics and the old art of watchmaking in the luxury segment. You either commit fully to the business or get out.

We have some advantages here in Switzerland. We have hundreds of years of experience in the technologies and techniques of watchmaking. Families have spent generations in our factories. They have a feel for this business, a special touch. They are masters at working with parts so small you need a microscope to see them. Not to mention the tooling to build these parts. There are plenty of toolmakers around the world, but not for parts with these dimensions.

When we designed the Swatch factory, we built special machines for injection molding, automated assembly—virtually everything. There were only a handful of people in the world with the know-how to build those machines. They all lived in this part of Switzerland.

If you had all this expertise, why was the company so troubled?

We spent much of the 1980s reinventing our production systems to leverage our expertise. I’ve already described the mess we found at ASUAG and SSIH. So we made massive reorganizations. Brands no longer build their watches. Our production divisions have full responsibility for manufacturing and assembly. We standardized as many parts as we could among the brands: quartz resonators, stepping motors, and so on. We standardized much of the tooling for these parts. We made huge investments in high-tech operations like semiconductors and batteries. We made huge commitments to automating our assembly lines.

Our cost structure today is completely different from when we created SMH. It is not merely because we are more productive. It is because we have totally changed the logic of our business system. We have radically decentralized marketing and thoroughly centralized manufacturing. There is no comparison between what exists at SMH today and what existed at ASUAG and SSIH (see the second insert, “The Many Faces of SMH”).

SMH has invested more than SFr1 billion in technology and factories. Why such enormous investments?

We have been making up lost ground. Throughout the 1970s, as companies in Hong Kong assembled hundreds of millions of cheap watches, Japan made investments to supply them with movements. They built big factories and slashed prices. A movement used to cost, on average, between $8 and $20. Today it costs between $2 and $5. The Swiss couldn’t play that game. We sold movements only to very special people in Hong Kong—companies building watches for brands like Timex, who wanted to market to customers in the United States that their watches had Swiss movements. We were uncompetitive on cost. We just didn’t have the volume.

So we decided to get much more aggressive. We had to confront the Japanese in Hong Kong. We seized every opportunity we could. One day, for example, I was seated with an entrepreneur from Hong Kong who sold finished watches. He bought all his movements from one of the giant Japanese companies. He was begging me for an Omega agency in Asia. I said, “How can you expect me to give you an Omega agency when you buy 20 million movements a year from a competitor of mine?” He told me, “I will buy from you if you give me the same price.”

I agreed to the order on the spot because the price was profitable for us. ETA worked night and day to produce those movements. But it was an important opportunity for us. We could not allow the Japanese to control movements in Hong Kong. They would have developed enormous leverage over us.

What do you mean?

Imagine if we got so uncompetitive in movements that we had to get out of the business altogether. And imagine if, like so many companies in other industries, we then focused on design and marketing and final assembly. And then imagine if we designed a great new model for Tissot, a watch that was going to be a big hit in the United States and hurt our rivals.

Now, what if our Japanese supplier recognized the appeal of that new model? You can imagine what might happen: “We are very sorry, but we are having capacity problems at our plant. We know we used to charge you $3.50 for that movement. It is now $12.” Well, that destroys the economics of the watch. So the next thing the supplier says, “Of course, we can make special arrangements in our plant. But we prefer to deal with partners rather than customers. We are prepared to become 50% owners of the brand and supply movements at more favorable prices.”

That sounds conspiratorial. We heard that argument about Japanese leverage in computers because they dominate flat-panel displays and power supplies. The Japanese compete fiercely among themselves, why should they conspire against European companies?

Let me correct myself. It is wrong to talk about “the Japanese” in our business. In movements, there are only two Japanese companies that really matter—Citizen and Seiko. The moment you get five or ten Japanese companies in the same industry, they do fight like hell. But there are plenty of industries where that is not the case, and ours is one.

By the way, I am not suggesting that movement suppliers would single out Europeans or Americans. We sell lots of movements to watch companies in Japan. Why? Because Citizen and Seiko sometimes can’t or won’t supply them. We sold movements to Casio when it started making watches. Why? Because Citizen and Seiko couldn’t or wouldn’t supply them. That’s the reality.

You also invested hundreds of millions of Swiss francs to make semiconductor chips. But the world is flooded with chips. Isn’t that a case of unnecessary vertical integration?

No, it isn’t. The world is flooded with five-volt and three-volt circuits—the chips used in computers, televisions, and VCRs. But watches use 1.5 volt chips. There are three companies in the world that dominate production of 1.5 volt chips. One is SMH. The other two are in Japan. We must make our own chips to maintain our independence.

We considered all the options before we made this investment. Some of our people wanted to close down the operation and find other companies to build chips for us. We visited companies from Norway to the United States. We showed them our designs and said we would cooperate with them. The best quotes were three times our costs. So that didn’t work.

Some of our people wanted us to diversify into computer chips as well, but that was crazy. How would competing in memories or microprocessors help us in watches? And how were we going to go up against companies such as Intel or Motorola or Toshiba?

So we decided to make our own chips and to make them in huge volumes. That meant mass markets—Swatch. It meant pushing harder on movement sales—Hong Kong. It also meant creating new markets for 1.5 volt chips. Today you can find our chips in hearing aids, pacemakers, cellular telephones, even the monitor switch for antilock brakes. In fact, more than 50% of our revenues from 1.5 volt chips come from markets outside the watch industry. Those revenues and profits help us keep investing. And they also keep volumes up and costs down.

Can’t you take this too far, though? Why risk diversifying into products like pagers and telephones and building them yourself?

What risk are you talking about? Our pagers grow directly out of our experience with watches. There is tremendous proprietary technology in the Swatch Pager. It uses high-precision injection molding that requires specialized tooling—just like the Swatch. It uses very advanced stepping motors, a technology we mastered in our watches. Who is better suited for this market than we are?

Look at the wristwatch pagers out there today. They have digital displays. They are ugly. They are heavy. It’s no accident we will market the world’s first successful analog wristwatch pager. We have the technology. We know how to design manufacturing systems that make us competitive. We also know how to design attractive products—and how to market them.

How many worldwide brands can you name for telecom products sold directly to the end customer? Alcatel or Siemens understand how to sell to governments and big companies. We understand how to sell to people. This is going to be a big business for us.

I understand the strategic case for integration. But how do you guard against the bureaucracy it always seems to create?

We don’t need elaborate planning bureaucracies or corporate staffs. If we have a big decision, we assemble the best group we can and let them go at it. Then we move on to other things.

Organizational structure is the most inhuman thing ever invented. It goes against our nature as people. So we have clear boundaries and targets. Our brands work independently of one another. The people at Omega and Rado and Tissot have their own buildings. They have their own managements. They are responsible for their own design, marketing, communications, and distribution. They are emotionally connected to their brands, not just to SMH as an entity. I want people at Rado to love Rado. And I want people at Longines to love their brand.

“Organizational structure is the most inhuman thing.”

We are big believers in decentralization. This company has 211 profit centers. We set tough, demanding budgets for them. I personally participate in detailed budget reviews for our major profit centers. Then we track performance closely. We get monthly sales figures for all profit centers on the sixth day of the following month. We get P&L statements about 10 or 15 days later. The moment anything looks strange, we react very quickly, very decisively, very directly.

And we are big believers in project teams. Find your best people, let them tackle a problem, disband them, and move on to the next problem. I suppose this comes from my consulting background. Every company needs certain functions. You have to watch costs every day. You have to watch quality every day. But you don’t decide every day whether to launch a Swatch Pager or whether to build a new chip plant.

Of course, this approach works only if the whole management team is totally focused on developing products and improving operations, not fighting with each other. Last September, Goldman, Sachs in London issued a report on our company. It said our management is “obsessed with productivity.” We’re not obsessed. But we do keep our eye on what matters. We don’t spend a penny that we don’t have to spend.

Is SMH corporation a realistic model for other companies to emulate?

Everything we’ve done can be done by lots of companies in Switzerland, or France, or Germany, or America. All it takes is the will to do it. Which is, I admit, no small matter. As a consultant, I had been preaching, shouting, writing for years about how European companies could compete with the Far East. At SMH, I got the chance to practice what I preached. But there were some special factors at work here.

For one thing, the Swiss watch industry was completely devastated. People had given up; they were ready to sell our most valuable brands to foreign competitors and sell our factories for their real estate value. If ASUAG or SSIH had been making one franc of profit, they would have thrown me out the window: “You’re crazy, what do you know about watches anyway?”

Second, I put my own money on the line, along with money from our investors. The fact that our group controls a majority of the equity means we could make decisions that other people were scared to make.

I inflicted pain, made controversy, created worry. Nobody believed the targets we set back in the mid-1980s. People thought we were crazy to invest SFr1.1 billion in one of the highest cost regions in the world. But it was our investment on the line. There was never any doubt who was running the show—or, for that matter, who would get blamed if we failed.

A version of this article appeared in the March–April 1993 issue of Harvard Business Review.

Bill Taylor is the cofounder of Fast Company and the author, most recently, of Simply Brilliant: How Great Organizations Do Ordinary Things in Extraordinary Ways. Learn more at williamctaylor.com.


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Anyone treated Endometriosis successfully?

Hi everyone

I started experience pelvic pain, abdominal pain, GI problem in April this year. After a whole lot of tests, scans, and colonoscopy, everything came back clear. Then my GP suggested I may have endometriosis. So I went to see an advanced laparoscopic surgeon who sepecialises in endometriosis. After I told him my symptoms he said I have (suspected) adenomyosis and endometriosis. His suggested treatment plan for me is laparoscopy to diagnose and excise the endometriosis (if any), hysteroscopy and insert mirena. I am not doubting his expertise, and I accept that my uterus is bulky and that I may have endometriosis in my pouch of douglas because I can feel the pain is from the left hand side of my rectum.

From the posts I read here it seems everyone is having a hard time trying to be taken seriously and have to push for a laparoscopy. My problem is opposite to everyone else's. Sure, I experienced pelvic pain most days since April and get bad back pain during period which I used to never have. But none of those pain are enough to stop me from doing my daily routine. I don't have to take any painkillers for them.

I don't want to take the risk of surgery, or have any hormonal drug which could potentially give me more grief (from side effects) than I currently have. So I told the gynecologist that I don't want to do anything about it for now. I am not sure if it's the right decision because I am not sure if any downside of not doing anything about it if the pain is manageable? For example, is it possible to have really bad endo that is damaging my organs and I don't know because I didn't go for a diagnostic laparoscopy?

Also, all I read is everyone is struggling with the side effects of the drug or had multiple surgeries. It seems surgery is just another temporary fix. Does anyone know anyone that has had 1 laparoscopy and they are pain free indefinitely?


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Facial Hints Sharpen People’s ‘Gaydar’ [livescience.com]

by Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer

People can judge with surprising accuracy whether someone is gay or straight — even when they’re looking at a black-and-white photograph, cropped of hair and identifying marks, and presented upside down.

The findings from a University of Washington study suggest people use a combination of clues from individual facial features and from the way those features fit together to make snap judgments aboutsexual orientation, said researcher Joshua Tabak, a graduate student in psychology.

“We may be doing this so efficiently that we may not even have to try to make this judgment,” Tabak told LiveScience.

Guessing sexual orientation

Tabak’s is not the first study to find that people can correctly guess a person’s sexual orientation from a photograph more often than just by chance. This “gaydar” isn’t infallible: The rate of correct guesses is usually in the high 50 percent to mid-60 percent range, Tabak said.

Still, that’s pretty impressive, he said, given that researchers use cropped faces without hair, jewelry or other possible hints about sexual orientation. [5 Myths About Gay People Debunked]

What earlier studies had not done was to tease out how people make these snap sexuality judgments. They might base it on individual facial features — nose or eyes — or they might look at how the features fit together in the face, such as how far apart the eyes are. Or it could be some combination of both.

Click to read the rest of the article…

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My Proposal Story

Ok so I am engaged and honestly, its been a long time coming.  After 5 years and 9 months…to be exact, he popped the question. Here is our story.

Now, my fiance is a perfectionist and it is much appreciated.  However for months leading up to the proposal, he interrogated me on how I wanted this whole engagement to occur.  He would ask questions like:

Do you want it to be a surprise?  yes.
Where do you want it to be?  someplace I like.
Do you want an audience? no.
Do you want it to be elaborate? doesn’t matter.

Then he would ask me to rate all these criteria by most important to least important.

Yea, I know. He’s a bit cray cray.

But honestly the most important thing to me is that I wanted it to be surprise. So here’s how it went.

On Sunday September 8, 2013,  he and I had been working a long day together for his small business.  We were starving.  He asked me where I would like to go, he said pick anywhere.  So I chose someplace full fat, high carb, and delicious. So naturally, I chose Olive Garden.

He told me that prior to going to dinner he wanted to stop at his Pro Shop to check on some work for one of his employees. (Little did I know that he had my engagement ring stored in the safe at his shop and he went in to retrieve it while I waited in the car.)

So we went to dinner and I had absolutely no clue at all of his plans.  I was not expecting anything but to gorge on chicken fettuccine alfredo and bread sticks… of course.

So we had dinner and were waiting for dessert to be delivered. Because I always eat dessert. always.

We ordered zeppolis – they are these fluffy donuts you dip in chocolate sauce. SO GOOD.

Olive-Garden-Zeppoli-with-Chocolate-SauceAnyways, back to my story.

So as we were waiting, Craig started talking about how he wanted to ask me more questions about how to propose and that he wanted to “practice” a little bit.  Now because this is his personality I didn’t think anything of it.  I went along with his little game thinking this would help him become more comfortable with proposing.

So he asked to see my right hand ring that my mother gave me as a graduation gift to practice with.  I was a little nervous because I never take off my mothers ring but I took it off and he put it in his pocket. Then we commenced with the “practice.”

He took my hand and started to say the sweetest things I’ve ever heard.  His voice was shaking and I thought to myself, dang, this is some legit practice.

He reached into his pocket, did not grab my mothers ring, but instead, took out the most beautiful diamond solitaire engagement ring I ever saw.  And instantly, I started crying…ok I was bawling. He asked me to marry him and I choked out a yes under my tears of joy.

I really couldn’t believe what just happened and I couldn’t have been happier.  Because in the end he listened and made it a big surprise.

Please ignore my hairy knuckles lol

2 thoughts on “My Proposal Story

  1. Oh my goodness that’s a awesome story I would have been super surprised. So happy for you two I wish all the happiness for you guys! Awesome restaurant by the way lol

    • Mavis! Thank you so much! It’s interesting write it out and then later reading the story. I definitely recommend that all future brides write out their proposal stories. It will be such an important keepsake. I’m just happy that the blogging world allows me to share it with everyone too. 🙂

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Rifle Scope Mounts

  • Sale
  • $ 27.50

To optimize accuracy, Henry Scope Mounts are available for all Henry H004 series Golden Boy, H006 series Big Boy and H005 Mini Bolt models. Each of these rifles now come drilled and tapped for easy scope mount installation. Our H001 series lever action rifles do not require use of these mounts as the receivers have a 3/8th inch groove to accommodate scope rings. The Golden Boy and 1st generation Big Boy rifles are drilled and tapped under the rear sight. Current production (2nd generation) Big Boys are drilled and tapped on the top of the receiver. To determine which generation of Big Boy you have refer to the serial number table provided so you select the correct mount. Instructions on installation of the scope mounts is provided in the packaging. All Henry Scope Mounts accept Weaver style detachable 1" top mount rings (rings not included).

All models of 30.30(H009) and 45.70 (H010) are drilled and tapped to take a Weaver 63B mount or the pickatinny style HEGW9/10PR

Note to Big Boy owners

In September 2011 we began shipping the 2nd generation Big Boy rifles which feature receivers that are drilled and tapped for the scope mount. In previous production 1st generation the barrels were drilled and tapped if rollmarked Bayonne NJ. First generation Big Boys use the BB-CSM Cantilever Scope Mount. 2nd generation current production use the new style BB-RSM Receiver Scope Mount. 2nd generation Big Boys start with the following serial numbers: H006 = BB0047222 H006M = BB0015530M H006C = BB0021188C

*The new Picatinny Scope Base for 2nd Generation Big Boys. Will fit all 2nd Generation brass models and all steel big boys.

Have any questions about our Henry Pride items? Email Allison using this form, or call toll free 844-451-1899