the people of oblivion

The little plastic bag broke, of course, as I was loading it with apples. As it often does, in the little corner shop.

Red apples bounced on the floor and rolled among the feet of two men nearby who were waiting for the cashier to ring up their groceries.

And none of them lifted a finger to help me pick them up.

Yet, I know what it's like. The Finnish sense of independence and self-sufficiency, that strength and pride, is so powerful that the instinct to help doesn't even penetrate it. You see someone have a little mishap - nothing serious, just mildly embarrassing - and your Mind Your Own Business-gene only registers a mild relief that it's not you, and you move on without another thought.

Sometimes I hate my own people.

aux armes, citoyens

In the middle of a work meeting, we stop our discussion of quality control issues in order to listen to La Marseillaise on YouTube and marvel over its blood-and-entrails-heavy lyrics.

That's what you do when your boss' kid is in the office and needs help with his homework.

wish list - and what to do about it

* a dog - bookmark "dogs for adoption" website
* clothes in delicious shades of chocolate, russet and copper - raid second-hand shops (again)
* novels celebrating New York life - check Amazon lists
* downshifting - pray to God for a miracle in boss' attitude
* freedom from my mother's influence - grow up ( but how? )
* perfect boots - keep looking
* White Collar, season 5 - wait. And wait some more.

the happy highways where I went

For four blissful years, I drifted around Ireland.

Well, I worked hard. But work was fun too, more often than not. And when it wasn't, it was still intense, dramatic, volatile. Tempers flared and tears flowed and I seemed to be always madly in love or mad with rage.

No wonder that I was content, during my free time, to have quiet drinks in the pub with friends. Or take leisurely strolls in the beautiful valley. Or hole up in my attic room on wintry nights and watch science fiction on TV. And a boyfriend got me hooked on reading good novels - something not even my years of university studies in literature had managed to do.

Oh, the freedom. To hop on a bus or train ( or even rent a car ) on my days off and take off to the other side of the island with a friend or two. Killarney, or Donegal, or Belfast. Stay overnight in a cosy Bed & Breakfast, or talk our way to a cheap rate at a castle hotel. Do some sightseeing, have a nice dinner, maybe go dancing. Back in time for work on Monday morning. Money never seemed to be a problem those days.

I didn't even have to go far to have a good time. The thing about living in a foreign country is that even your most boring Monday morning at work is spent - in a foreign country. There are strange people, of a strange culture and with strange customs, surrounding your daily life. There is a new horizon behind every corner of the road, and marvellous things to discover even when you are just shopping for groceries in the supermarket. I felt as if I was on a continuous, four-year holiday. When I got tired of the valley, I treated myself to a really good meal at a local restaurant, a cosy picnic all by myself in the mountains, or a whole day exploring Dublin - and coming back always seemed like a fresh start.

Leaving, after those four years, was the most difficult thing to do. It was necessary, because life goes on. But I still hear the siren call of those green hills.

caterpillars, raspberries and other office items

Waiting for emails.

That's what I do at work. In high summer they are few and far between, because our customers in Finland are soaking up the sun on some beach and our suppliers in China are being hospitalized for heatstroke.

In the meantime, I have taken up tea-drinking ( but only in the mornings, afternoons are still dedicated to coffee ), and raspberry-picking behind the office.

Marvels to study in the workplace:
* A customer who has ordered 700 pairs of jeans in a size only a Barbie-lookalike could wear
* My desk neighbour's tales of strange Chinese customs
* A huge caterpillar in the parking lot
* The boss, who sometimes makes phone calls when he's in the toilet. Today I could hear him through the door, calling his teenage daughter to ask: "How much do you weigh?"

Music on the radio, Facebook, green tea with mint, practicing languages, news headlines, speculating what the new season of White Collar might contain, leisurely lunches in the sun, Pinterest, counselling my desk neighbour, online shopping, waiting for 4 pm.

I know what I did last August

Russian smoke and angel dreams (2006)
Endless corridors and meaningful dust (2007)
Black holes and trade secrets (2008)
Old enemies and an even older dollhouse (2009)
Hot players and a sleepy museum (2010)
A cute guitarist and job applications (2011)
White laundry and a blinking cursor (2012)

the no-love curse

I am single and I meet one perfect man after the other.

They are: Single, handsome, strong, smart, funny, caring. Everything that I like. AND then they have some other attribute that I find enchanting - like a talent for music, a love of dogs, the skills to fix anything, a taste for adventure and travel. Some of them even seem to like me.

And then I just, simply, fail to fall in love. Maybe I'm cursed.

on white denim and dead fathers

Things that seemed very significant today:

Being dressed in white lace and white denim, making the most of summer with a trendy terrace lunch on a workday.

Sharing an evening cider with someone who knew exactly what I meant when I said, with tears in my eyes, "there is never a right time for a father to die".

Longing for someone to say, "I'm stronger than you. You can't ruin me."

glittering days

I grumble a lot over my home town. But I must admit, in the summer it has its bright spots. Mainly the  seaside cafés.

You can have a salad lunch by a trendy art museum and follow it up with a pavlova outside the ancient pavilion and a drink on the deck of an old ship. All without ever losing sight of the sunlit sea, the tanned people and the happy smiles.

Your company should be giggling friends or a mysterious man who is telling you his darkest secrets. Everything works when the summer sun is shining over this town.

after all that, I became English

( Another lost tale from my wasted youth coming up. If you can't bear it, go away. But be advised that there may be a mention of Johnny Depp in there somewhere. )

Finally, the relative quiet of a B & B room in Oxford city centre after a very, very long day. A day when I moved from one life into another.

The morning had involved a quiet, chilly walk in the most peaceful of places, the magic valley between the mountains, and saying goodbye - maybe forever - to some of my dearest friends. Two of them took me to the airport and chose the scenic route across the mountains to entice me to come back soon. The rest of the day consisted of sobbing on an awful flight, being nasty to a screaming toddler in the next seat, feeling lost and confused in airports and bus terminals, and lugging around a suitcase as heavy as my heart.

I moved to a foreign country that day ( for the second time ). With no job and nowhere to stay, only the ghost of a promise of a job interview. I got off the bus in the beautiful city of Oxford and dragged myself to the nearest guesthouse I could find.

Later that mild February evening, a slow walk through the city centre and the lively but intimate atmosphere of a university town - birds singing, a bright evening sky, students cycling past along cobbled streets, normal people shopping at Sainsbury's. Yes, there were some of those "dreaming spires" I had fantasised about, but at this particular moment I was more cheered by the sight of a real Starbucks. Compared to the previous two countries I had lived in, England seemed filled to bursting with cities, roads and people - of so many races and looks and accents.

Buying a few groceries in the nearest store, I was struck by a moment of fear again: What had I done? What if there were no jobs? Shouldn't I really buy a cheaper loaf of bread than the one I had just picked out?

Still, to be HERE. In Oxford, in a new country.  In a new life.  Texting a few friends from the privacy of my room later, I felt comforted.

The next day I breakfasted on cheese and the cheap bread and went out to buy a British SIM card for my phone. My first call a few minutes later, made in the relative quiet of a back alley near the Sheldonian Theatre, went to a local hotel that I had emailed a couple of weeks earlier and which had tentatively offered me a job interview if I ever came to Oxford.

"Well, sure, come and see me", said the assistant manager on the phone. OK, that was vaguely promising at least. When he heard that I was staying at a B & B he offered me a room in staff accommodation for the next night, as his hotel was outside the city, in the picturesque Cotswolds area. So I took my suitcase to a storage facility, packed a smaller bag and headed to the bus stop. The logistics of setting up a new life are very complicated. At the hotel I expected to get my interview but was just shown to a room, and the next day the manager drifted past once and only asked me one question: "Can you start tomorrow?"

Well, the strange and wonderful world of hotel work has never been much bothered with things like employment contracts, salary negotiations or compliance with regulations on working conditions. The general rule is: start working, and you'll find out. ( Sometimes even things like your salary, or your boss' last name. )

So that was the beginning of my stay in a cute Cotswolds town. A place where I used walkie-talkies, was bit by a parrot, took long walks in spooky palace gardens and had the worst ( and almost only ) hangover of my life ( which also unfortunately happened to coincide with a fire drill ). It was also the place where I felt very lonely and spent many, admittedly cosy, evenings in bed in my tiny room with thick English novels and trying out various English delicacies. Haunted all the old-fashioned tea houses in town ( one of them had been an inn ever since the 12th century ). And then finally made many lovely and weird friends.

I lived in an attic room in the hotel - a gorgeous labyrinth of hidden rooms, creaking narrow stairs and forgotten passageways. I became an unlikely expert at beating the receptionists' computer back to life, having whistling competitions with the resident parrot and avoiding the weird manager. I also roamed around Oxford and became an authority on its history and where to find its cutest pubs and most bountiful second-hand bookshops.

My workplace also turned out to be a good place to meet celebrities - if by meeting you mean sorting John Malkovich's laundry or accidentally snarling at Johnny Depp for getting in your way in the hotel lobby. ( And yes, he apologised very politely. After that, I was the envy of every woman in town. )

That turbulent and wonderful spring in a medieval English village ended three months later when I got on a bus again, irresistibly drawn to another new life in another new city. I cried all the way there.

* * *

( PS. For all the weirdoes out there who believe in serendipity - I count myself among them: Much later, reading through old diaries, I surprisingly discovered two earlier mentions of this same little Cotswolds town. On my first and only trip to England, thirteen years before, I had travelled through it and even made a brief stop. And forgotten all about it. And about four years before, when I first started applying for hotel jobs all over Ireland and the UK, I had received three job offers - one was at the Irish hotel where I ended up staying for four years, and one of the others was in the Cotswolds town. I forgot all about that too, but by complete chance I ended up there anyway. Coincidence? )

( Maybe my destiny was to settle down there with the parrot and Johnny Depp? Huh. I blew it. Is it too late now? )

the year I lost control

Flashback to the year 2000: My first days in the  Magic Valley,  a quirky hotel in a historic and intensely beautiful valley in the Irish mountains, surrounded by the sweet fragrance of spring. I'm overwhelmed by the strangeness and intensity of everything. I have never met so many weird people in my entire life. They are so unFinnish: they shout, they laugh loudly, they are openly rude, they are intensely alive.

One of my first days at work, I'm standing next to my coworker in the hotel reception as she is being yelled at by the assistant manager. "Around here, we are not allowed mistakes," is her sarcastic comment to me when he's done. The manager fixes steely eyes on me and says calmly, "Don't make mistakes. Ever."

With this in mind, I take a walk later that evening. A winding path takes me high up on a mountainside, through a fairytale setting of crooked trees, bubbling brooks and wild flowers. Unused to the wilderness, I belatedly realise I really should get back to civilisation before nightfall, and it's already getting dark under the canopy of trees. I stumble back along the uneven path, getting nervous. Looking back along the valley, I see dark clouds rolling towards me, the wind picks up and there is the roar of approaching rain.

Maybe it is in that moment that I understand what a sheltered life I have led so far. As an urban girl, I have never experienced the danger in being out in the wilderness at night, chased by a storm. Raised among the polite and coolly friendly Finns who never raise their voices, I have never been yelled at or threatened during my first week at work (or any other week ).

( Although I did realise later that with the Irish, the bark is worse than the bite and you shouldn't take them too seriously ).

As the storm finally catches up with me there on the path I turn around and face it, heart beating wildly from fear and ... exhilaration? The rain and heavy winds sweep over me and threaten to knock me over. I throw my arms out, breathe in the world. This coolly polite Finn laughs out loud and feels, down to her very bones, threatened and unsafe and gloriously ALIVE.

who can be lonely when you're loved by grass?

To leave this, last Sunday evening, to return to the city and a new work week, felt impossible:

This piece of land is home and I've been coming back every summer since I was born. It consists mainly of a lot of grass, lodged between a dark forest and a quiet, beautiful bay. Two tiny and very primitive cabins, plus the mandatory Finnish sauna, house the family in the summer. It seems to me a miracle that this paradise has not yet been ruined - by pollution or noisy neighbours or, even worse, the vague feeling of unsafety that often disturbs a woman when she is alone in the middle of nowhere.

And I was alone, last Sunday evening. This happens so rarely in this particular place that I expected to feel lonely. Instead, I was wrapped in a feeling of warmth, as if the very air and grass and water were breathing love over me. This is not something a pragmatist like me usually expects. It was enough to make me understand what the Celts mean when they talk about  thin places.

the dragon vs. the silver jeans

I know I'm bored at work when I'm cheered up by the prospect of compiling statistics in a spreadsheet.

But: things are looking up! A coworker has gone on maternity leave, earlier than intended, and her most difficult and complicated project has been dumped on me. As much as I've been dreading this, I feel the same way I used to do when I worked in hotels and for the first time was entrusted to take a shift unsupervised: it's proof that I'm no longer the newbie. That I'm capable of doing the job for real. It's scary but you know that once you've  slain your first dragon,  nothing is really difficult anymore.

So now I'm sitting down to work through a list of all the difficult and complicated details of this project. And I'm wearing silver jeans so nothing can go wrong today.

on the courage of men

I'm fascinated - from a strictly socio-anthropological point of view - with the two men in the office, the boss and his brother. The boss is a macho guy, the Alpha male. He is generally well liked but all the employees cower a little when he walks into the room, just because of his assertive body language and don't-talk-back-to-me voice. His younger brother cowers most of us all because he is at the receiving end of a lot of unfiltered older-brother rudeness. He quietly obeys the bossy instructions, and the rest of us pretend we haven't witnessed his humiliation. Even though it's hard to miss anything that happens in our tiny office.

And yet, I have to conclude that the younger brother is  the braver one  of the two. When I was new in the office, he made an effort. He made small talk, asked about my weekend, tried to get to know me. The macho boss displayed the typical behaviour of a shy man hiding behind a tough facade: avoiding situations where he might have to make small talk to a stranger like me, because he doesn't know what to say.

Most women like strong men. I like macho men, but I admire even more the quiet, genuine strength of men who dare to be themselves.

stringing up my Julys

The month of July, as experienced the last few years:

Sipping espresso in French seaside towns and lying to myself (2006)
Smiling at tourists and longing for a blanket in the sun (2007)
Singing bitter songs and fleeing the city (2008)
Strolling on quiet streets and plugging my ears (2009)
Sizzling in the sand and snarling at married people (2010)
Staring at fighter jets and rejecting novels (2011)
Spinning around and running scared (2012)
Seething over snake's beard and living slowly in an office (2013)

poetry in motion (and icecream)

Another slow day in a cool, quiet office...

At the strike of 4 pm I will be out of here. This evening will be spent in the stands watching the beachvolley championships. There will be a hot sun and loud music. There will also be exciting action and some really good icecream.

Not to mention some incredibly beautiful and inspiring people.

self-pity and snake's beard

FaceBook, these days, is chock-full of status updates with exclamation marks. They are all on the same theme:

"Happy days! Four weeks of summer vacation starting now!"
"Last day at work - for the next six weeks, nothing to do except eat strawberries and read novels!"
"An eternal summer holiday ahead!"


A normal Finn gets four weeks of summer holidays, some even more (not to mention my teacher friends, who have something like eight weeks). A normal Finn, having suffered through a freezing winter and a rainy spring, needs every single minute of it, now that glorious, joyful summer has finally arrived.


Choking on rage, I shut down FaceBook and vow to never log in again ( a couple of hours later, I'm back, reading more of the same updates ). Having recently changed jobs, I haven't earned more than one week of holidays, despite having worked as hard as everybody else the entire winter. Even that one week I had to squeeze out of my employer.

And having spent most of that week sniffling from a summer cold and feeling miserable, I feel entitled to more than a little self-pity. I returned to the office this morning, hating everything in sight. Most of my coworkers were on vacation, anyway, so I was free to seethe to my heart's content.

I spent yesterday, the last day of my meagre holiday, dreading the return to work. Went cycling around some back streets near the railroad tracks and found some strange and marvellous things, like a mountain of sand and the place where household appliances come to die.

But my mind finally found rest when I wandered into a garden centre to breathe the scent of flowers and stare at snake's beard and the vivid colours of pygmy paprikas.

I didn't know there existed such things as pygmy paprikas or snake's beard.* So, not an entirely wasted holiday week after all.


* ( Actually, snake's beard doesn't exist, not as a name anyway. Ophiopogon planiscapus nigrescens is called black lilyturf or black mondo grass. But its Swedish and Finnish names both translate as snake's beard and I like it that way. And I get to decide, since I only got one week of holidays. )

by the seaside with strawberries

Coffee, wild strawberries, waffles with jam and cream, a cheeseburger.

The day in a menu, on  the Island.

The entertainment consisted of a vintage boat race of the type that is popular around here, with traditional old fishing boats being sailed or rowed, the crews dressed in vintage fishing garb. We only witnessed the start of the race, as the finishing line is across the pond, in Sweden.

 But the sight of twenty-odd wooden boats setting sail towards the horizon is awe-inspiring. Even when the day is grey and overcast.

The company consisted of a pathologist who handles corpses for a living ( no pun intended ), a politician on his way to Brussels to do some lobbying in EU headquarters, and true Islanders: chatty, motherly women who always try to feed you and men of the strong and silent type.

secrets and sense-making

Seven years and seven hundred entries in this blog.

I'm celebrating with hot honey water.

You may not know it, but this is  a secret blog.  None of the people I spend my real life with know I even have one. I can't explain why I haven't even told my best friend - I just know that I couldn't write as freely as I do if I knew that she (however unjudgmental and supportive) was reading it.

Why not? Most of the things I write are no secrets to her anyway. And why the need for a public blog, as opposed to keeping a normal diary (which I do too) or letting my writings just sit on my hard drive? I like getting comments from strangers but I write even when I don't get any.

I use this blog to catalogue my life and try to make sense of it. To reassure myself that there are patterns and reasons and meaning in it. To be able to look back and see that interesting and funny things have happened, even though I doubt it sometimes. To remember the days of my life in Finland. To encourage someone. To leave something behind (if the internet doesn't die before I do). To have a creative outlet.

To survive, even.

time for the magnets

You know you're on vacation when you stop to rearrange your fridge magnets.