the god of spring wants vomit

Finland is gearing up to celebrate Vappu/Wappen (the coming of Spring) this weekend. There will traditionally be lots of offerings to the god of Spring in the form of alcohol-based vomit. We will all be dressing in skimpy clothes and freeze our ***** off while having picnics in the rain. We will feel the heavy pressure of being absolutely obliged to have the Time of our Lives. Hearts will be broken.

Can't wait.

Anyway, it's Veteran Day today. To all of you war veterans out there who do or don't read blogs: Thank you. Without you, I would be scraping a living in a run-down, former Soviet republic. Now I'm scraping a living in a free and prosperous country, but at least it's our country. You are heroes!

intoxicated in Ireland

Editing my journal from my years in Ireland...

By the looks of it, it seems as if my time there was spent dating at least a couple of men simultaneously and flirting madly with men I wasn't dating. Was I really like that? I've certainly not been like that, before or after.

The place was mad. Airborne intoxication. That's the only explanation. I worked more than full-time, attended parties where people showered with their clothes on or set fire to themselves, intervened in domestic violence, had raging fights with my bosses, adopted a dog and had it kidnapped, played pool with a movie star and spent a night in a cemetery under the stars. Got my heart broken and I think I broke someone else's. (I'm sorry.) I was even involved in hiding people from the law.

At least I have something to brag about in my blog when my present life contains no news value whatsoever. But nobody needs to ever find out about that.

finished with the Finnish

I am a foreigner in my own country. I struggle when I speak to my neighbours. Linguistic minority: inferiority complex. Home is not really home. I'm so sick of this.

I am assaulted by the strange and threatening Finnish language wherever I turn but it runs away laughing when I try to make friends with it.

Perkele.

screwdrivers, old ladies and letters from the mafia

Weird things done this week:
Bought a screwdriver (not the cocktail, the tool!).
Received a letter in Russian (which I don't understand) from a stranger.
Got called in for a job interview.
Bought a bag of soil for my (dying) potted plants.
Took a picture of my house.
a) Went out for drinks with 2 men, b) got chatted up by a third, c) accepted a drink from a fourth, d) went home with none (d is not weird in my case, a-c are).
Watched a horror movie (Pitch Black, people say it's scifi, not horror but I was... horrified).
Cyberstalked my old crush again (OK, this does not exactly fit into "weird things" category since it happens regularly).
Argued with old lady over communal washing machine in my building. Old lady won.
Received threatening letters from Social Services.
Became instant Skype-addict.

sunday thought

I want to talk to God. I want to ask him to send more people who smile in my way.

lone wolf in lone wolf country

No gold for Finland these Winter Olympic Games. But...

The nation with most Olympic medals, throughout the history of the Olympic Games, is… Finland! If you count medals per capita, Finland is way, way ahead of any other nation. I read this with delight in Richard D. Lewis’ fascinating book Finland, Cultural Lone Wolf, a much-needed comfort after many Olympic disappointments this year.

This book makes me grow an inch or so as a Finn. The author (who is English) claims Finland ranks among the top few countries for global competitiveness, economic creativity, environmental sustainability, network readiness, water resource management, minimal bureaucracy, and least corruption. So there. (OK, I'm not so sure about the minimal bureacracy part.)

On Finns, he says we are independent, hard working, innovative, ultra-honest, shy and love our own space. We think before we speak and what we say, we mean. Finnish women are among the most highly educated and equal in the world.

Interestingly, the author also claims the Finns have a feeling of being outsiders, on account of our geographical remoteness, weird language and a few other factors.

I am intrigued. Having lived abroad for years and noticed characteristics in me that set me apart from others, I suddenly realise at least some of these can be explaned by the fact that I am a Finn! It's comforting somehow. That feeling of being an outsider has definitely haunted me - on the other hand, it's haunting me still, here in my home country and home town.

Best of all, I just love how this book describes the Finnish female: "strong-willed, adventurous, restless, often fearless, not without charm, and decidedly in love with life." I am guilty as charged. And proud of it.

shame and shamrocks

The Guinness looks the same. Other Irish beers look familiar but have funny names. Are they real? I'm too embarrassed to ask the barman who has had his face painted green. His huge weird hat looks authentic, as if he has come straight from the parade on O'Connell Street, Dublin. But he speaks Finnish and Swedish and some English, and his name is Jarkko. Welcome to St. Patrick's Day! We are in a medium-sized city in Finland.

I don't like beer anyway. I guess I could and would start liking it if I really wanted to, and sometimes I'm tempted to try. But beer is not good for the figure. Neither is cider, or wine, or vodka with a mixer... I give up and order a reassuringly sweetish Finnish cider.

I'm here with a guy who is clearly interested in me but who is trying to not to be obvious about it since he is a bit too shy to tell me so. Why are these things so complicated? He is sweet and I would love to get to know him better... but I'm still hung up on my ex, whom I saw yesterday and shared a lunch, some secrets and quite a few laughs with. How can I trust my shaky life to a stranger like this one?

There are no Irish people - as far as I can tell - in this Irish bar on St. Patrick's day. The closest you get is a few drunk Swedish football supporters who are having no luck trying to chat up some icy Finnish ladies. A band is playing "Dirty Old Town" but I can hardly hear them. I can hardly hear my date's voice when we try to chat. How embarrassing. What a boring evening. I can't even get drunk on the stupid cider. I hate the stupid ugly shamrock decorations on the wall. I want a real Irish bar in a backstreet in Galway or in a sleepy village in Wicklow. The only speck of light is the doorman who hands me back my coat at the end of the failed evening - I have a secret crush on him. I say a hasty farewell to my date and leave before he can get any ideas about kissing me. I'm not ready for this.

I'm not ready for anything. I want an easy life and no male hormones nearby.

God brought breakfast

Oh the bittersweet Longing of my soul. I dream of coercion and care and of what I cannot have. When I wake up I grieve.

I want God to ring my doorbell today. No, not ring the doorbell, he will have his own key and walk right in even though I protest that I'm still in my PJs and my hair is unwashed and the remains of yesterday's dinner still sit on the TV table. He tells me to jump in the shower while he makes my bed and clears away the dishes and puts breakfast on the table: fresh orange juice, coffee, cereals, fruit and croissants that he brought after having had to look for them all over town. When I emerge in my huge bathrobe with wet hair he tells me I'm beautiful as always. We sit down and eat breakfast. He gives me time to enjoy it. He looks at me with all-seeing eyes and asks how I am. He listens. I slowly start to feel better, I bask in the warmth of his unwavering attention. When I'm on my last mug of coffee we start planning my day together. I don't want to, but he is determined. After a while, I see a line of order appear in the chaos of my life - and more importantly, I feel a glimmering of interest.

Right, let's get started, he announces at last. Remember, I'm here with you. Any problems, just ask. You do your work for today while I work on your future. Short coffee break in two hours. And tonight, we'll rent a movie or something. You'll see, it will be fun.

And it is.

travelling to Andromeda galaxy

Science fiction. Should be watched on DVD in the middle of the night, alone, curled up under a yellow blanket. Sitting on the floor, really close to the TV screen, pretending this is the only thing that exists. A tear should be shed, a thought born in the mind. Sleep fallen into, to the sound of a familiar tune.

movers and shakers of the world

Doing good in the world

bombs, Lesbians and quadruple-dates

Read my old diary and was Shocked and Awed. The things I've managed to forget in only a few years!

Did I really go on a date with four (4) Syrians at once?
Was my house really bomb-threatened and had to be evacuated?
Did I actually play Pictionary with a vague acquintance who is now my ex-boyfriend's ex-girlfriend?
Was I in fact almost run over by a bus?
Did I really once listen to a certain unknown band playing live - The Rasmus, a few years later world-famous?
Is it true that I witnessed a man being stabbed almost to death?
Did the entire crowd in a pub I only went to once actually sing "Happy Birthday" to me?
(Was that why I only went there once?)
Did my lesbian friend really swear she would kill herself if I didn't love her back?

All this in one single year. Jeez. My life today suddenly seems so dull. Oh wait - it is dull.

crying hockey tears

Finns, stand united in sorrow.

But we love you anyway, Leijonat. Nobody plays ice hockey like you do. Not even those who claim to have beaten you.

two souls in orbit

You, who look at me like that
You, who stand on the rock of history and soar across the sea with the wings of the eagle
I, who avoid your gaze
I, whose restless soul roams the earth

I, who desperately look for the sun
I, who howl with wolves in mountain forests
You, who stand strong in a storm
You, who treasure the freedom of sky meeting sea

Here in this world or there in the next
Always coming together

when your joy hurts me

Jealous of people who got it all together.

Don't want to be happy for them. I want to be happy for ME!

Why are some people just happy? Why do they say God fills their lives with joy and peace and why, on top of this, do they have big happy families, good jobs, loads of friends?

When I ask them, they reply that God wants me to have all the good things too. And though they don't mean it like that, to me they are implying that I must be doing something wrong. Can they not understand that there are people who devote their lives to God, do everything right and still suffer? And people like me who are trying to get it right, who muddle along, run off to do the wrong thing occasionally, suffer, but still hang on to God for dear life because He is all they've got?

Feeling lost. But I think God knows where I am.

arrival of asian angel

He is four years old. He has travelled for the first time in his life, travelled for a day and a night from his hot home country to the other side of the world - the cold and Western side. He stumbles out into the airport at the end of the journey and smiles hesitantly as he looks around with wide eyes at all the hurried, pale-faced people around him. He says something in his own language to his new mother who understands only his body language and answers with her own foreign words. But she smiles back at him.

His new sister and brother, a few years older, show him how to put on thick coveralls, a woolly hat and, strangest of all, woolly mittens. He accepts all of it and studies his hands in the mittens with wonder. When they leave the airport building, an icy wind hurls itself against his face. He squeezes his eyes shut against the brightness of the snow. Around the airport there are only fields, vast and empty and snowy fields. It could not be more different from the hot and crowded Asian city he has known all his life.

What is going on in his head? He looks, he smiles at his new parents when they hug him, he finds a toy in the car and starts playing with it.

Welcome to Finland, my new nephew. We all love you already. And listen to your mother when she tells you not to eat the snow.

to put yourself to sleep, read this

No, dear friendly lady from the Unemployment Office, I don't have time to go out and look for a job. Why? Because all my time is spent filling out forms for your office, Social Welfare and the other establishments who might be kind enough to pay for my next meal.

It would be easier if I was a full-time unemployed. Don't take a part-time job if you don't want the Paper Monster to come and get you.

Still. I have seen too many people begging in the gutters of the world and freezing to death while desperately looking for shelter. I have warmth. I have food. I even have wine, blogging, TV. How dare I complain?

You can take a girl out of idealism but you can't take idealism out of the girl. Weird, how it survives disappointment, bitterness and too many punches from the Real World. A little cynic and a little stubborn idealist fight for the space in my confused soul.

Self-analysis completed. God, how boring - can't even be bothered to read through it myself. I need to be funnier. Funny people have all the fun!

the meaning of winter

Decided to combat my anguished feeling of stress over all the things I need to do by postponing everything and write my Great Novel instead. So now I'm holing up with my laptop and loads of wine and ignoring the phone.

I mean, you are not really expected to do anything useful in winter anyway. Winter is for cuddling up.

freaky deep-freeze dreams

I dream about Labradors being charged for murder in ancient Venice and flocks of Comodors attacking me. I don't even know what Comodors are but my dream tells me this is how it's spelled. Feeling a bit nervous now. I think they can fly and look a bit like seagulls with teeth. Anxiously watching the sky and staying indoors just in case it was a premonition.

Another reason for staying indoors is that the mercury shows -21 degrees Celsius. I braved the weather yesterday and on my way through town felt like a tough chick who is not beaten by silly sub-zero temperatures. On my way back the wind hit me and I felt my body heat being blown out of me. SHIVER. Ran through town without stopping once for a red light - I would rather be run over than turn into an ice statue even though that would be a beautiful death. Had to go into a department store halfway home to thaw out. Ended up buying stuff I don't need - blame it on a frozen brain and misguided survival and hoarding instinct.

Still, the sun is shining low on a clear blue sky and no Comodors in sight yet. Maybe I should just test my toughness one more time and then enjoy a lovely sauna... From -20 to +80 in two minutes. That's a hundred degrees difference. They should give me the Nobel Prize for that. Or an Oscar. Or a beautiful headstone.

absent friends still present

Strange thing, this, friends. Old friends, new friends and friends in between. I try to be myself but my best friend from school who hasn't seen me for years knows me as a different person than the people I am currently trying to get to know, and my confidante during my years in Ireland has seen other sides of me... I function differently depending on whose company I am in. I think differently. It is not pretense. It just works this way. But I'm bound to surprise or even shock all of them sometimes.

But to all my friends out there that I once knew and who are now too far away... I miss you.

from a Manhattan emergency room to Santa Claus Land

Okay people, let's have one of those tacky looking-back-on-the-year-just-passed, melancholy reviews. It just has to be done - we have to analyse what we have learned in order to go on.

Year 2005:

Started off with a week in New York. It's scary the way this city just hits you with its beauty and life-loving dynamics even though you are determined not to be impressed - determined to dislike it, even. There is just no way to avoid a knock-out by New York. I particularly remember a vodka pizza in Little Italy, an argument between an Englishman and a Brooklyner who were both buying me drinks, a freezing train ride to Bronx with a cream cheese bagel clutched in my nervous hands, a long surreal wait in the emergency room of a downtown Manhattan hospital. (No, these events had no connection whatsoever, except they all happened in New York and I was there.)

After that week, a visit in a hidden valley in Ireland, a valley deep in its winter sleep. The complete stillness of the mountains after the buzz of the city was another knockout. Then an international move. It was time to leave dreamy, quirky, snobbish, beautiful Cambridge (England), the town of no winter (Cambridge seems too sophisticated for barbarian things like blizzards and sub-zero temperatures), and the gang of funny and slightly demented hotel people I had been working with. A last coffee in Starbucks and then I saw the blue and white of my homeland again - a sight not seen for more than a year, a sight I would not escape for the rest of the year...

So. The rest of the year uneventful. Struggling to find a job, struggling not to hate Finland, struggling to learn languages, struggling to adapt to being home, struggling not to kill my parents, struggling not to feel lonely. Struggling with the man of my dreams.

Skiing on the mountain with good friends again, being out on the open sea and being thorougly afraid and at the same time happy, sitting in front of the fire during the long, white nights of the summer while sipping wine and writing. Building a huge maze as an art project, laughing over the madness of it with new friends. During a confusing autumn, breaking off with my man and building up a new, independent life that has me thrilled although it's not quite what I had in mind.

I have learned to love pesto and mozzarella cheese and to make a fabulous omelette. To dress warmly enough to enjoy rolling in the snow for hours with kids. I have realised the Finnish people are depressed and that I am very, very different from everybody else in the world. Not a bad thing to realise...

And New Year's Eve was not unusual. I had one of my anti-new-year's-eve-parties reactions of course and sulked for a while. Then I was relieved to find the new year was here and I could finally stop pretending to have fun and just relax.

There. I did it. The Summary Of My Year. Now I can finally go and make an omelette.