I asked my wife to change me as the nominal client of our telecommunication contract with Telefonica - which just changed its brand name to Movistar - because that would be easier for my accountant – the broadband  is used for my studio too.

This week, I received the first bill sent to Rikko Hakkinen. It’s not so bad thinking that my wife spelled my name to them on telephone and I’ve seen much more errors in the orthography of my name. The worst version has been Rikko Sannen on a group show invite. I think Rikko is even more common spelling than the correct Riiko.

Obviusly, I called to Movistar’s infamous 1004 to correct my name. The call center girl I talked to told that it’s easy but warned me that then we might loose all the special deals we’ve got (like the almost 200 Imagenio internet protocol television channels we just got for free for a year). She made clear the system is programmed this way and she is not able to overpass it or know exactly beforehand how it reacts to the changing the name of the client.

Are we living in a Matrix-like dystopia where the human beings are just devices in the service of computers? Maybe I'm ingenuous asking this and everybody else understood this long ago – and accepted it as the best of all possible worlds.

When we landed in Madrid, I was feeling awful. I thought I was getting sick but my wife said that it was the result of the cuba libres, gin tonics and vodka shots consumed at Krista's dinner, Raoul's birthday party, and Eeris and Elina's wedding. I said that I was feeling typical flu symptoms like body ache and nasal cogestion. I was still able to drive the family safely home from the airport to the village (120km) but then I fell down on the bed and couldn't get up before this morning.

During the days in bed, I was sure it was ebola or Marburg virus (previously known as green monkey diease). My daughter suggested that it must be chickenpox. I told to my wife that I wanted to give her some (detailed) instructions to manage my legacy and how to organize my post mortem retrospective. I was thinking that could I phone to Pirkko or Janne , the directors of the most important art museums in Finland and propose them the show. But then I really would have had to promise that I was going to die. The good thing is that now everything is perfectly planned and I'm going to put the plans in an envelope that can be opened only in the case of my death.

It's a strange vacation. On Friday, I was in my grandfathers funeral, on Saturday it was the turn of a Jewish birthday party and yesterday I assisted in an informal wedding of friends.

I also had a meeting with Suvi at Kunsthalle Helsinki, where my solo show Encyclopedia will take place in October. I need some Chinese noodle boxes to cover  the projectors that are used for the slide show and Suvi promised to start collecting them because there is a fancy Oriental restaurant in the Kunsthalle's building. Unfortunately, I had only ten minutes for Isaac Julien's mindboggling video installation Ten Thousand Waves. I didn't have time to get much about the content (China)) but it was superbly beautiful and undoubtedly the best way to show a multichannel (nine) video I've ever seen.

After the Kunsthalle I had a meeting with Eeris about the series of screen-print series we are doing, and then I rushed to a Nepali lunch with Raoul to talk about the paintings that I made with Judas last year in Beijing and are being now shipped to Helsinki. Some of them go to the Art Copenhagen fair and then we are planning an Arrieta Vs. Sakkinen show at Korjaamo next year.

I've bought several books during the last weeks but it's difficult to concentrate in reading even during the vacation though I'm I´m here beyond the broadband connections in the paradisaic summer place of my family- I'm a father to two small kids.

Some people tell that reading is their hobby but it has seemed always strange to me because I consider it a very basic act, almost like breathing. Maybe a yogi could be an aficionado of breathing. I love to spend hours with newspapers but now I want to read some essays and especially fiction. Recently, I even told in an interview that my hobby is contemporary Chinese literature but maybe I did because I couldn't point any other spare time activity.

These are the books I've got and hope to be able to read during the next week:

Roberto Bolaño: 2666
Mikhail Bulgakov: Morphine
Mikhail Bulgakov: Notas en los puños / Ivan Vasilevich
Chun Sue: Beijing DollXiaolu Guo: Chinese - English Dictionary for Lovers
Xiaolu Guo: Lovers in the Age of Indifference
Xiaolu Guo: Village of StoneSiri Hustved:What I Loved
Danilo Kiš: A Tomb for Boris Davidovich
Carlos Labbé: Locuela
Jennifer 8. Lee: The Fortune Cookie Chronicles
Liu Heung Shing: China
H. Lorelli: Kamo
Mian Mian: Candy
Masahiko Shimada: Me convertiré en momia
Tao Lin: Eeeee, Eee, Eeee
P.L. Travers: Mary Poppins (found in our summer cottage)
Pablo Vázquez: Las chicas terribles

Like all the immigrants, we don’t have to think about vacation destinations. We come to Finland every summer, although this time it’s not like other years. My mother phoned me when we were packing that my 98-year-old grandfather had died. Just in time to put n the suit case a black suite and not only Hawaiian shirts. And just not in time for my grandfather to meet my son who was born in April.

My wife says that I'm a countryside hick because I get exited of the luxury. I spent my Finnair miles to a business class upgrade for all the family. I wanted that my son air travels for the first time in style and comfort. I don't care that much about the complimentary champagne but the smooth treatment that the wealthy and the privileged receive. In the economy class my kids would have been labeled misbehaving but in the front side of the magic curtain they were called vigorous.