I'm still alive...

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, your eyes are not deceiving you. That there is me, all formal and ready to go to my school's posh dinner & dance. And yes, that is the study / library / bedroom / Off-White Dressing Room of my apartment I'm standing in. It may be small, but it's cozy. And after tomorrow, free of all insects.

I tell you, the evening was awesome. String quartet, bubbly drinks, an excellent 5-course meal with appropriate drinks, waiters with white gloves and everything. I've never been on the receiving side of formal dinners, cooked a few, yes, and once even done the waitressing, if you can count the 6th December par-tay the president throws every year. Though I have to say we spent a lot of the time sneaking up to the ball room's balcony to criticise the gowns instead of actually working. In my defense, we weren't getting paid, so there.

Anyhoo, fun was had in copious amounts. The Finnish polytechnics generally do have a bad self esteem and try to copy the universities to the best of their abilities, and we had our share of wannabe academic pompousness, too. We even had to sing drinking songs, and I'm proud to say our table won the competition with our clear, harmonious renditions of Baarikärpänen and some other more traditional lieds. I think you've all been in some posh shindigs before, you know what people get up to in there.
thanksks St for designing and making the dress, it got plenty of positive attention.

Now I'll head off to soak myself in moisturizer, it's winter; therefore I turn into a raisin. The skin on my hands is so dry it's almost flaking off and it doesn't really help that I have to wash my hands all the time at work. Thank goodness it'll turn into spring soon and things will ease out until the summer begins and I dry up again. Woo for having a sensitive skin.

Today's top choices:
Madonna: Skin
Peggy Lee: I Don't Know Enough About You




EDIT: Whoah! 5 comments to the last entry! I really ought to pay more attention to my own blog... All advice on how to get rid of fur beetles are gratefully received! I checked out the wardrobe today and didn't see any evidence of them; still I made the difficult decision and threw out all of the tiny pieces of fabric I've been storing for who knows what purpose.

Nevertheless, I'm glad the exterminators are coming.

New hot chicks in town!

So I read the paper today and guess what it said? The eagle owls are back in town! Remember the one who lived practically next door to me and had regular concerts on top of a pine tree by the Hietaniemi beach (there are 2 churches on either side of my block, and the silly owl thought the towers were the hotspot of this city)? He actually turned out to be 2 birds, one with a preference to churchs, the other hanging out at the beach, probably wearing a floral-print shirt and drinking Mai Tais. In fact, instead of the 2 owl supposed to live in the Helsinki area, there were in total 8 of these beasts. Yes, eight.

Some of them even found love and formed couples, though only one couple managed to raise chicks. Sadly, my neighbour had to spent the year hooting all alone. I hope he's still here, and as the mating season is beginning, he'll start making himself noticed again. There must be plenty of fat rats around after the warm autumn and early winter so woo for urban rat-eating wildlife!

While the news about the invasion of the eagle owls was a good one, a couple of days back I got the news that my house will be fumigated as, apparently, there have been sightings of fur beetles. If this wasn't a public forum, where decorum should be maintained, I'd fill the next several lines with all the swearwords I know in all the languages I speak. I haven't had the courage to rummage through the closets and see if there's been any damage done. Stupid insects, eating cloth and causing trouble...

Que Sera, Sera...

So I finally had me a little talk with the old boss today. Usually I'm not a big fan of these personal evaluation thingies, though I do understand how valuable they are if one wants to advance in one's career. We had a nice chat about this and that and she promised to let out personnel manager know about my desires to acquire a position where I could take the most advantage of my education.

Funny how now that the actual time has come to make the changes in my life I've been wanting to do for quite a while now I'm more scared than excited. Not scared as in hiding under the bed and refusing to come out, or being unable to make the necessary decisions, but scared nevertheless. It'd be so much easier to just to live life just like before and not worry about anything new and unfamiliar. But that would just lead to the realization of one of my greatest fears - that I'd wake up 40 years from now and discovered that I'd have spent my life doing something I wasn't happy about. I'll never find out what I have potential for unless I try things out. And in the face of that thought I'm scared shitless, pardon the language. What if things won't work out? I'll never get a decent job, or decent pay, my fish will die of malnutrition and the dog I'm planning on getting will become the bully of the neighbourhood? What if I never succeed, measured on any scale of success? Can't I just rewind life and go back to being 5 and carefree for a day or two?

Although if I want to get started on the finding out / successing business I really should finish the three very short and easy essays I've been avoiding like the plague itself since early December. The deadline's on Friday. Go me!


Today's soundtrack:
Depeche Mode: Stripped
Erykah Badu: Otherside of the Game
Hedningarna: Tuuli
Kula Shaker: Govinda

Tagged again

All right, at morgalou's request it's now my turn to continue the noble tradition and reveal 5 random things about myself. Like I hadn't done so in every post since I began blogging ;)

1) I can't concentrate on one thing at the time. If I start reading one book, I have to have another one nearby in case I loose interest in the first one. I surf on the internet and watch telly at the same time. Cleaning a 24 square meter apartment takes me the whole day because I get these brilliant ideas of doing something completely different every 30 minutes.

2) I'm turning out to be surprisingly picky when it comes to dogs (which I will get when I have any regularity in my life and incomes, which I don't expect to happen until after a couple of years).
- Absolutely no retrievers, I can't stand the constant worshipping
- No miniature dogs, or giant ones
- No couch potatoes, nor do I seek a 100% working dog which will destroy the world if it doesn't have something meaningful to do all the time
- No dogs which aren't in control of their instincts
- I want an intelligent dog which, while easily trained, can use its own brain (I'm well aware that they can use their brain to destroy the world if they don't have the sufficient mental stimulation). I also want a dog loyal to their owner and prone to guarding.
I'm slowly narrowing down with all the choices, and currently Rhodesian Ridgebacks, Dogue de Bordeaux, Dogo Argentino, and the ordinary Doberman are the ones holding my interest. Who knows, I might end up with a Chihuahua...

3) I'm prone to impulse shopping. I don't shop much, but when I do I usually end up dragging home more or completely different stuff than I originally meant to get. Like the other day I went out to buy myself some sturdy, sensible winter boots. However, when I got home I found myself to be an owner of a pair of calf-length, high-heeled, black suede boots which when worn with jeans makes my legs look about 10 meters longer. As people around me might have noticed, I also buy more CDs than strictly necessary.

4) I have some weird habits, though I'd like to see who doesn't. Like, I can't leave home without checking that the stove is not on (even if I hadn't used it all day) and that the coffee maker and the toaster are unplugged. Also, when I leave the apartment for longer periods of time, I unplug everything except the fridge and the filter in the fish tank which I would unplug too if I could get away with it. I fear they might set my home in fire if they are left unsupervised. Embarrassing, I know.

5) I still sometimes dream of flying to space. Ever since I saw the Sandmännchen flying away in his little rocket when I was a wee little toddler (I was such a fan of him!) I've wanted to go up there too. My mother has more than once wondered where I got my genes, she prefers holding her feet firmly on the ground.


So there. Five totally random things which were surprisingly difficult to come up with. Elina and Miti, you're next!

Fish Are Low-Maintenance Pets

Today I redecorated the fish tank by replacing the gravel with sand, putting in some new plants and generally sprucing it up a bit. The sand makes it look more natural, it's easier to keep clean and the bristlenose pleco (I hope that's the correct English name for the poor fish) should be happier - she swims with her sensitive nose pressed tot he ground, after all.

The experts make this sound very easy. First you take out the fish, then the plants and the machinery, remove the gravel and put in the sand. Put the plants and other decoration back, and release the residents to their new home. How hard can that be?

Yeah. Unfortunately I have managed to buy the sneakiest bastards ever to be my pets. The fish and the shrimps swam for their dear life to escape my catching attempts, hiding themselves under the most creative things the best they could. The pleco, to make things even more difficult, glued herself to every available surface, and when a pleco doesn't want to let go, it'll take a sizable crowbar to prize it loose. To my sorrow I only found three of the five shrimps I was supposed to have in the tank, so two must have perished at some point without me noticing a thing.

Then there was the matter of the sand. I spent yesterday washing the excess dust from it, all the while spreading it evenly across the bathroom and, as it appears, across the rest of the apartment too. There's sand everywhere. Plus, I think the nice guy in the aquarium shop made a mistake when calculating how much sand do I need, because there's probably too much of it in the tank now and there still is almost a third of it left. What do I do with a pile of extra sand? Build a castle? I haven't even figured out what to do with the gravel.

The result of it all was me, wet and covered in sand, some very upset fish and a better-looking fish tank. Although the water hasn't cleared out yet and it's been hours.

Damn. The pleco is still sulking in her corner, while the other animals are by now quite happily swimming around. I may have to give her a pea tonight to soothe her bad mood.

Sloooww...

Argh. I have most certainly not been my usual witty (ha!) self today. Writing simple messages have taken me more than fifteen minutes and I have been wrestling with this entry for about an hour, although to my defense I have to say that I've saved it as a draft a couple times before continuing to suffer the angst of creation. Some sort of late attempt at hibernation, perhaps?

Anyway, I had an actual point to this entry: yesterday I did it. You may call me whatever you like, but I went and bought the poles and started the much ridiculed sport of Nordic Walking. In your face, you nasty painful lumps in my shoulders! I took a test ride yesterday, and I swear that during the 45 minutes I spent trying to stay upright on the glaciers which are currently serving as pavements I worked up more sweat than I'd have done had I gone for a 90-minute normal walk. Maybe that goes in some way towards explaining today's sluggishness.

Had a meeting with A today about the bachelor's thesis and it seems we've officially started doing the bleeding thing. I went as far as to mark the June 16th in my calendar as my graduation date (I'd appreciate some collective wood-knocking here, thank you). Do you think celebrating both graduation and my birthday would only jinx the whole event? Or should I have two separate parties just to be sure? And yes, we've still to write the first sentence of the thesis and I have 2 more exams to go - here I still am pondering the important questions...

A also informed me that on March 9th the Helsinki Filharmonics will perform both the Symphony N:o 3 by Aulis Sallinen and Mein Herz brennt by Torsten Rasch, which is, basically, Rammstein songs and lyrics converted into modern classical music. Me and A are quite probably going there, anyone else interested are of course warmly welcomed to join us. Bizarre will be the word of the day then, I presume. It'll be my first classical concert (I guess the few Finnish schlager stars I've seen won't count).

I may also have promised to join a Bollywood dance course. I'm not sure. We'll see, we'll see.

One should never leave home if the brain is not working properly.

Anyway. Should I go rent a movie? If so, which one? Popcorn or candy, or perhaps both? I'll keep you posted as events occur.

Oh, and in case you were wondering about the Noodles of Doom incident, all's well which ends well. The rug was in need of a good scrubbing anyway.



Soundtrack for today:
Janus: Ein Hund, der sich hinlegt, wo er will
Murderdolls: Graverobbing USA
Rammstein: Hilf mir

Yah...

Ever wondered how it feels like to drop a plate full of shrimp/vegetable/coconut milk & noodle wok on the floor?

Not worth the trouble.

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

I guess it's time to take a look at the last year and list some of the good and some of the bad things about it.

Overall it's been an OK year. Nothing radical happened, not in a good nor in a bad way.

Financially, being a student is a Bad Idea, even though I worked more or less steadily throughout the year I got my fair share of cent-stretching. There's only one course left, however, and the bachelor's thesis, and then I'm done with it (on today's paper was a small story about people wanting to change the translation for ammattikorkeakoulu from "polytechnic" to the "university of applied sciences" - the ministry of education wanting to stick to the old name, how surprising).

My grandma is slowly getting worse, and may not be able to live home for long now. Christmas went surprisingly well and she was more alert than in the previous Christmas, but a couple of days back she started talking to my mother as if she was her sister. Sad.

Then there were the definite highlights.

- Seeing that my friends, some after some rough stuff, are all doing pretty well in their lives.

- The Sziget festival, and the entire trip there and back again. One must be mad to voluntarily sit in a bus through 5 countries. Damn good festival, amazingly well organized, and of course the city of Budapest is worth seeing in its own right.

- The Berlin experience. Thank whoever invented tax refunds (and student loans) so that I could make it there. Last year I traveled more than in couple of the previous years put together, I usually end up doing the obligatory cruise to Tallinn and that's more or less it.

- Finding the best damn sites the internet has to offer. Being asked to moderate the General Forum on Herzeleid.com, which for all its insanity and chaos is a very entertaining place to hang in (though I must admit I'm kinda waiting for the Rosenrot-born hype to wane, the flood of new users registering there is starting to be a bit overwhelming - which reminds me that be the new live DVD will be released shortly. Oh, dear). To balance things out, I go to the Verboten! Forum on the Rammimages.com to enjoy the virtual company of intelligent and witty people posting there. there are several meetings scheduled this year, one of which is held in Finland. I hope I'll be able to make it to the Berlin meeting as well.

In any case I expect this year to be much more dramatic, for want of a better word, than the previous one. I'm graduating, and hoping to get a new job. Finding a bigger apartment wouldn't hurt, either.

And before I go, here's 2 pictures of Himpula, my sister's and her fiancé's cat, who took over their apartment on New Year's Eve. She's a bit clumsy, but otherwise an absolutely adorable creature.



Today's soundtrack has included:
Eläkeläiset: Humppaan itsekseni, Sortohumppa
Janus: Anita spielt Cello (The entire Janus album makes me want to crawl under the duvet, curl up on fetal position and never come out again - Anita spielt Cello, for example, is about a woman who survives the concentration camp only because she can play the instrument; and don't even get me started on the song Kinderkreuzzug. So depressing but also so captivating that I can't help but listen)
Megaherz: I.M. Rumpelstiltzchen, Heute schon gelebt?