leaving rationality behind - hello Ireland!

"It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade." (Charles Dickens)

And it is a cold, cold March this year. Despite the heat of the midday sun, there is ice in the air. I hurriedly close the balcony door and curl up on the sofa to eat some more Easter chocolates. Surely I deserve it. I have spent the month trying to learn my new job and adjust to my new life, and now, miracle of miracles: I have twelve days off to forget it all and go to Ireland!

Ireland, my second homeland, so well known and so much changed. I will look at it with eyes wide open, buy the Irish Independent and eat Cadbury Creme Eggs and breathe in the smell of turf fires. I will share drinks and stories with some people I love. I will moan about the lateness of spring in a typical Irish manner. And I, a rational person from a rational, logical country where nothing strange ever happens, will fall helplessly under a spell I didn't even believe existed. I will watch with bafflement the weird things that happen and the even weirder things I do myself under this spell.

There is ice also in the Irish air this March, and there is the smell of turf fire and the blaring of a burglary alarm that nobody bothers to turn off, and there is magic.

love is in the aftershave

My honed sense of smell doesn't only register pancakes in the building. I was walking through the supermarket today, tiredly ignoring everyone around me, intent only on stopping briefly at the cheese section and the yogurt section and then making it out of there as soon as possible.

Then it dawned on me that I was feeling loved.  Safe, comforted and happy. It's definitely not an everyday feeling for me. It was so distracting that I stopped in my tracks and couldn't remember where I was going anymore.

What had happened was that I had walked past a man wearing a lot of aftershave. Not only a very nice aftershave, but one that used to be worn by someone who loved me. I can't even recall who. My father? An ex-boyfriend?

Reeling from the experience, I came home with the wrong kind of cheese and entirely too much comfort icecream.

staircase delights

Pancakes! Was the smell in the staircase today.

I love the smell of food drifting out from flats as I climb the stairs ( if you take the lift you miss out ). As a hopeless cook myself, and with nobody who cooks for me either, I sigh with envy. But it's also a lovely, homely sign of human life.

Sometimes it's beef stew or cabbage rolls. I'm very good at identifying the smells. One day it was something with lemongrass in it.

The smell most likely to drift out of my own flat around dinnertime? Something burnt.

pinned down

My days are filled with work - or at least with loitering in the workplace.


My evenings are filled with a few workout sessions and a lot of Pinterest. I'm inundated with inspiration but it's not much good to me when I can't seem to get offline and actually go do something creative.

on wisdom and nervous breakdowns

I love new places. I love new jobs (and hate them, too). I love having a new life.

Spending 8 hours a day in a new place with new people, learning a trade I know nothing about. Stressful, and exhausting. But I learn something new every time I turn around: through glancing at the file folders I'm asked to archive, through eavesdropping on the boss explaining an invoice to someone on the phone, through listening to my workmates complaining about a difficult customer at the lunch table.

But there is so much more than the business to learn. I try to absorb it all. I learn what the boss is like, just by observing how he interacts with the others. I learn the history of the company by finding in the back of the storage room old products it used to import, rather unsuccessfully.

I have changed jobs quite frequently over the years (staying five years in The Little Shop of Harmony was a personal best). Being  the newbie  in the workplace always makes me feel like an inexperienced, insecure teenager again. But I notice, with joy and pride, that my experience and wisdom are slowly accumulating. I may be a newbie and I may be insecure. But I'm no longer inexperienced.

I learn, and I learn fast.

( And the most useful wisdom I have gathered regarding new jobs: awareness of the emotional dynamics. That the first week is the worst and that it gets better after that, but also that the adrenaline wears off at the same time and I get rather fed up sometime during the second week. It gets better after that, too. And when things finally seem to run smoothly, somewhere around the fifth week, I usually have an unexpected nervous breakdown. )

profane, not profound

Back in the normal world, after a few years in the spiritual and slightly magic air of The Little Shop of Harmony.

It feels like a relief, at the moment. I loved the shop, but I can't take too much spirituality. Right now, I need a workplace where I can hear bland chatter from a mainstream radio station and talk to men in ripped jeans who are not averse to the occasional four-letter word. A place where I'm not seen as a representative of something more lofty or profound and expected to act the part.

I'm not sure what I mean. But I'm enjoying being normal.

at the edge, the cutting one

And so I pack a bag with all the stuff that's been cluttering up my locker, and the little presents received from workmates. Last of all, I throw my own beloved coffee mug into the bag, hand over my keys to my boss and, after a hug and a choked-up "I'll miss you", I leave The Little Shop of Harmony.

I congratulate myself for all the things I leave behind. That smelly customer who always talks a mile a minute (but who is kind of endearing anyway). Always having to smile and be nice to everyone (but what a feeling when a sad face lights up in return). The knowledge that I will never get a raise or a real promotion (but always know that the money feeds a starving child instead).

The evening is cold and clear and there is a beautiful sunset in the western sky. People are heading home after work or hurrying towards the supermarket and I walk quietly among them with my heavy bag. The cold air speaks of winter but the evening light promises springtime. It's already March and today I'm starting a new life. A brand new life. There is so much to look forward to.

But right now, I just want to cry.

page 240 of dullness

At  which point do you give up on a book? One that you read for pleasure?

I usually give it at least a few chapters before I decide to stop reading a novel I find uninspiring. Sometimes I keep going for a while past that point, just to make sure it's not just my restless mind looking for new impulses.

But now I'm on page 240 of a moderately interesting one and my yawns of boredom get increasingly frequent. It seems to me life is too short to spend on the "moderately interesting".

But I only have about 70 pages left to the end. I could skim quickly to the last page. But that seems almost as bad as just leaving it.

What if I reach the last page, number 310, and realize I have wasted many hours with no pleasure and learned nothing? What a dilemma.

walking away from the troubles in my life

There's something about walking home from work on a Saturday afternoon that makes me peaceful inside. Like I'm leaving the world behind.

desk out of service

I dream of having a desk.

My  very own desk,  in an office. With a fancy computer and a large mug of coffee on it, and drawers where I keep my personal stuff like a bar of chocolate, a little notebook for jotting down creative ideas that don't necessarily have anything to do with work, and a novel that I sometimes read on my lunch break.

Around me are fun colleagues whom I sometimes share a joke with, or go for lunch with, but who don't interfere with my work or criticize me if I check Facebook on my break or maybe leave a little early.

A desk that I can leave occasionally to pop out for an errand and a latte or to have delicious sushi at the cute restaurant at the corner.

I see myself sitting there at that desk, wearing high heels because I don't have to run around much and cool, ripped jeans because I don't have to dress up for customers. I'm wearing nail polish in an outrageous colour. No-one can complain if my desk is messy but no-one has the right to mess it up either.

Above all, I can bury myself in my work because no-one can demand that I get up and perform customer service.

love song for Dublin

"I remember that summer in Dublin, 
and the Liffey as it stank like hell..."

I remember other seasons in Dublin  too ( although the river didn't really stink much at all ).

Chilly winter mornings when I came in on the early bus from the countryside and bleary-eyed stumbled down the sidewalk heading for the illustrious Bewley's Cafe for a real breakfast of creamy oatmeal porridge with honey or, more often, the traditional scrambled eggs with toast, fried mushrooms and hashbrowns. Wonderfully fresh, fragrant spring afternoons in the lush St. Stephen's Green park, watching the ducks. Dismal, grey autumn days when I ducked into an old, dark-panelled pub to avoid a surprising rain shower and discovered that a fire was roaring in the fireplace. And yes, hot summer afternoons when I walked for miles along dusty streets, exhausted in my quest for adventure - a good time to seek refuge in the air-conditioned cinema and sink into a comfortable velvet chair with a bag of popcorn.

Dublin is a small city, by comparison, but it has a big-city atmosphere. It has no skyscrapers. Neither is it particularly pretty in the eyes of a foreigner who expects all of Ireland to look like a postcard. It is grey, worn-down in places, eye-poppingly modern in others and sometimes downright ugly ( it does have its picturesque spots, though ). I hated it at first.

But Dublin doesn't allow anyone to hate it. Its raw, abrasive charm got to me pretty fast. Maybe it was the buskers in the streets - incredibly talented musicians, performers, and comedians who had everyone in stitches. Or the mix of trendy coffee shops and ancient pubs. Or it could have been the fact that you can walk into a beautiful old church and discover that it holds the sacred remains of St. Valentine.

What definitely got to me though, were the intense evenings spent with friends over good food in lively restaurants, followed by a jaunt in the  Temple Bar  area filled with pubs, music and chatty people.

As I lived far outside the city, Dublin was for me the place where I came on a day off and spent the entire day before catching the evening bus back home. Arriving early in the morning after a tiring ninety-minute bus ride, breakfast was always the first priority ( and Dublin does do some marvellous breakfasts ). Afterwards, I strolled through the city, taking my time. It was a heaven filled with great bookshops, pretty clothes and some fantastic traditional markets - like Moore Street with its crowd of fruit stalls where Irish matrons call you "love" and some of them still get their wares in using a horse-drawn cart, or the boho chic George's Street Arcade. In the early days, I did a lot of exploring, sometimes with friends, sometimes alone. Later on, my idea of a perfect Dublin day would include at least an hour in one of the internet cafés that were all the rage at the time ( this was in the days before everyone got their own laptop, smartphone and/or iPad ). Sitting in front of a computer with a latte, the whole world was at my disposal.

Lunch would preferably be had at the Winding Stair ( what could possibly be better than a bookshop-cum-café with great food? ) and after more leisurely strolling and shopping - don't forget another latte - I often went to the cinema.

Dusk often found me walking back through town, enjoying the lively early-evening bustle as people did their after-work shopping and socializing. There was always a great atmosphere in Grafton street, the main shopping street, and many buskers to be admired. And before you go back to your tiny village, you have to visit a grocery store to stock up on the essentials - chocolate, fresh mushroom salad, a bottle of wine, fruits and cheese, The Irish Independent newspaper. If there was still time, a T.G.I.Friday's with lovely milkshakes - made by a juggling bartender, of course - was conveniently located near the bus stop and I could count on finding friends also waiting for the bus there.

Still, there were sides of Dublin I didn't like. The fact that I always felt nervous and insecure after dark, the times I chose to stay over with a friend. The cold, restless nights trying to sleep in a poorly heated spare room in some suburb. The absolute madness of the traffic when I made the mistake of driving a car through the city - and I always got lost.

But Dublin is irresistible. Because there is nothing like going to see the magic library of Trinity College, or the zoo, or the fishing village "suburb" of Howth, with the one you love.

( Pictures: bicyclebandit.deviantart.com, visitdublin.ie, dubhliving.com )

fabric and not-quite-a-helicopter

Cut out pieces of fabric and glue them to a paper.

That was the first task given to me. First day on a new job. At least the pieces had pretty names: aubergine, anthracite, chocolate.

I cannot believe I have moved on to yet another trade. I have to abandon the book shop and the charity work and instead learn the clothing business and how to make money.

Is there a more awful day on earth than your first day at a new job? You don't know anything or anybody. Everybody else in the room knows everything and everybody. It doesn't matter if you are smarter and better educated and more skilled than they are - you feel like a ten-year-old and have to prove all of the above.

You have to be charming all day and get to know dozens of people you've never met before. You have to ask all the right questions and pay attention to everything to find answers to even more questions. There are so many unwritten rules in a workplace, obvious to everyone except the new girl, like where to park your car, who makes the coffee, can you use that shelf in the fridge, how long exactly is a coffee break?

I listened, I watched, I asked questions, I was charming. I didn't learn much about the clothing business. But I learned that the company has expensive computers and a messy storage room. And that the sound of an army helicopter about to land just outside the window is just the boss arriving in his monstrous SUV.

with Marc and the Radio Doctor

Listening to: Marc Cohn
Promise of the week: "I'll take you in to town and let you try out an office chair."
Phrase overheard today: "I would stick my finger in my mouth but the  Radio Doctor  said you shouldn't do that."
Thinking about: How to work full time without dropping dead. And what I'll buy for all the money I'll make.
Waiting for: Spring.

yawn and Valentine's Day

Got up at: 8.50 AM
Breakfast: Muesli with yogurt and honey
Weather while walking to work: Overcast, minus 2 degrees Celsius, snow on the ground
Work: Opened the shop. Sold books and second-hand clothes. Spent hours at the computer entering books into the database.
Mood: Cranky (morning), peaceful (afternoon).
Best things today: Chocolate mousse pastry brought by ex-workmate; the simple, pleasant task of monotonous computer work; taking a break to watch the penkkis tradition of students in fancy dress going around town in open lorries, screaming and throwing sweets to spectators.
Evening activities: Fanfiction and Pinterest browsing, a glass of wine.

And the award goes to: Me, for most boring blog entry of the year. Yawn.

a pile of phrases

What I collect:

( Not much. Usually, I try to get rid of stuff as fast as possible. )

* experiences: everything from trying an electric cigarrette to long journeys.
* personal photos and journals.
* quirky / funny things people say. Example: "You look very oriental today. There's something of the Taj Mahal over you."

And now I have unexpectedly gone back to the habit I had in my student days, cutting out words and phrases I like from magazines. I don't quite know what to do with them.

Just now, as I was brewing a cup of tea, I looked at the teabag and then grabbed the scissors and cut out the words "tea blackcurrant" from the label.

Phrase that caught my eye and my heart today: "When I'm feeling weird or sad, the city looks after me."

someone has to stand up to those green pigs

When the going gets tough ... the tough play Angry Birds.

Instant stress relief. Because how can you keep worrying about work, money and love when there are grunting green pigs to blast to pieces?

Angry Birds is the first - the ONLY - game where the sound effects are part of the entertainment. Nowadays, I can't look at the fat sparrows in the tree outside my window without wondering what cute little "Ow!" noises they would make slamming headfirst (willingly, I should add) into a wall, feathers flying everywhere.

in the land of smiles, starvation and sullen elephants

"... never would have thought I would buy an expensive smartphone just to get addicted to it, but this one was worth every cent! I have loads of apps already, just for travelling. Just a few touches and I can read about a city I want to visit, then book a cheap flight there and check in using the phone, as well as look for inexpensive food and accommodation ... Not to mention the currency converter and various dictionaries. Just having Spotify in the phone makes it worth the money." 

Came across the blog of a young Finnish girl, name of Tess, out backpacking alone in Thailand. Funny how it seems so EASY.

I was nineteen when I went to Thailand. It was like going to another planet. But then, that was the '90s ... I went there with a group of friends, and like Tess our plan was to stay a few months and volunteer for a charity organisation. Unlike Tess, I had never even been on a normal two-week vacation in Southeast Asia before - so common among Finns now - so I had no idea what to expect. Unlike Tess, none of us had a smartphone or a phone of any kind, not even a credit card - in order to make travel arrangements to another city, you went to a travel agency and used your traveller's cheques as payment. If you wanted to know something about the places you were visiting, you referred to your friend's dog-eared copy of the Lonely Planet's guidebook and hoped that the information was up to date.

There weren't even any Internet cafés yet, much less any Skype. When a scared and homesick teenager wanted to get in touch with her family, she had to go to one of the little shops that advertised "overseas calls", order a call at the counter and then wait by the phone until it was connected. (Collect call since it was so expensive.) Or she could write an old-fashioned letter and hope it didn't take much more than a week to reach Finland. Whenever one of us received a letter from home, we were so excited that we read it out loud, regardless of the fact that we were from different cities and didn't know each other's families at all. Everybody "oohed" and "aahed" at the news that somebody's little sister had performed in a school play or somebody's dog had got a new toy. We tried to comfort ourselves by listening to an old cassette tape with music from home.

We were all homesick. Thailand was lovely but too overwhelming. It was full of sun, people, strange bugs, an incomprehensible language and weird rules. Just taking a bus was a mystery as we didn't know where it would stop, what the fare was or how to get the driver to drop us off at the right place. Once, we jumped off a moving taxi ( of the open-back pick-up variety ) because the driver got mad and refused to let us off. The few Western food-places in existence were American ( Burger King, Swensen's, Dunkin' Donuts ) and seemed only slightly less alien to us than the hundreds of street stalls selling local fried rice.

We did weird things like talking to prostitutes (who only spoke three words of English), singing Christmas carols in sex bars and hiking for hours in the mountains to reach primitive villages. On these mountain expeditions, which sometimes lasted for three days each, we filled our water bottles in streams and just popped a purification pill in the bottle before drinking. In the same streams, we took our baths ( with our clothes on, out of respect for the local tradition ).

And we alternated between starving and being horribly sick to our stomachs.

And what an adventure it was:
* Sleeping in a huddle on the floor with six other girls to stay warm in a chilly mountain hut, with a water buffalo for a neighbour.
* Going to the toilet in the great outdoors.
* Trying to communicate with people without a common language.
* Riding an sullen elephant. Visiting crocodile farms and snake farms. Chasing cockroaches.
* Walking down dangerous back streets in a city at night.
* Sunbathing on white beaches.
* Singing a lot.
* Meeting a Buddhist monk.
* Seeing the sun rise over the mountains and the coffee plantations while driving down perilous mud paths.
* Eating chicken feet and condensed milk.
* Getting to know my weaknesses and learning to love my friends.
* Driving a motorcycle for the first time on my own. Riding a motorcycle with two other people on it, in the mad Bangkok traffic.
* Witnessing a violent assault on my friend.
* Walking along a beach at midnight, the surf caressing my bare feet, on Christmas Eve with a beautiful man.

Not to mention breaking up a fight between  a dog and a monkey  ( without contracting rabies ). Oh, the things you do for charity. Probably a good thing I didn't have a blog back then, like Tess. My mother would have fainted.

I don't think I envy Tess so much after all. With her blog, Skype and all-knowing smartphone, I'm sure she is missing out on that terrifying, dizzying, absolutely exhilarating feeling of being lost on an alien planet.

the art of art

The best film I saw last year was The Intouchables (everyone, see it!). After having laughed and cried my way through, one of the ideas expressed in the film stayed with me.

One of the main characters said that people are interested in art because "it is the only thing one leaves behind".

Not sure I agree completely, but it struck a chord.

I'm obsessed with creating right now.  It's welling up inside me and I don't know how to let it out.

a door opened

And the feeling when, after eight years of ( mostly ) failed job interviews, an email starts with the words "we would like you to come and work for us".

I am an anxious, unambitious worrier who can hesitate endlessly over small decisions. But when the door marked  "Huge Life Change"  suddenly opens I barge straight through it without looking back. My family and friends, unaware of how long I have been brooding in silence next to it, are usually left in shock, coughing in the dust cloud I kicked up.

Gone are the days, though, when I used to pack my bags and go, not just to a new job but to a new country and new friends. This time I cling desperately to my old friends, old home and old habits while going off to face a new job. Because huge life changes get huger the older you get.

let the answer be no, please

Another random question at a job interview:

"Are you extremely religious?"

Even without hearing the tone of voice (carefully neutral), you realize how the interviewer feels about religion, don't you? I tried not to grin, I really did.