"Watch it closely you see it begin to flicker"

This week I've seen someone trying to find something useful (food?) from the garbage bin next to a bus stop - TWICE.

This week on a local school there was a boy who was drawing swastikas and telling the teacher how he wants to be a skinhead, hammer all negros and have Finnish flags tattooed all over himself. This boy is 5th grader in an elementary school.

Those things have made me sad, of course. Doesn't sound like an affluent society to me.

Teabag had this message last weekend: You are unlimited. And there are days when I feel like it!
(You should, too!)

This week can only get better. I'm especially waiting for the quiz and all the shamefully stupid answers escaping from my mouth. How that kind of quiz can make you feel happy and foolish at the same time! And tomorrow, bubbly conversations between people who are here now but who might be leaving too soon.

Sunshine for the weekend, absorb some from this photo ;)

Cakey

Today I was surfing around the net and looked for all kinds of cake blogs. It's so amazing what kind of cakes some people are able to do! And what kind of products there are these days for making the cakes look so beautiful; glitter spray, pasta colours to name few. Most of the time I'm trying to make all food as natural and E-free as possible, but today I decided to try something completely different. You can see the result below...

Shahram, my iranian friend turns 25 today and this cake should be his birthday cake.

I'd be very satisfied with the result IF ONLY I didn't read baking blogs and compare my "cake" with all those Hello Kitty and Halloween cakes.

What can we learn about this? NEVER COMPARE ANYTHING WITH ANYTHING or at least never compare the things you do yourself with something that's done by professionals.

Birds are eating rowan berries and flying like crazy outside. Maybe that's a wise thing to do, because it's going to be snowing later.

I'm mostly dreaming about some luxury hotel in Seoul, where I want to spend one night and see all the lights of Seoul at nighttime. So tempting! So expensive! So shallow!

Time to get going.

Blue wings

So I've booked tickets to Korea now! And suddenly tiny excitement is starting to grow inside me, this time I'm really going there for 2 weeks! One travel guide came in the post on Friday and I've been reading it all the time, I also have some (old) books about Korea from the library at home. I'm trying to absorb all the information I can get before going there!

But that's all from my plans. Except that I'm going to watch Lost in translation this evening, just to enjoy the sceneries, which are similar to Korea :) My 4th time to watch the movie, which gets better every time.

(and I was cleaning today, also washed sauna for the first time. I never want to do that again, please give me just public sauna where I can go once a week and I never have to wash it!)

I keep my blog so that my friends and relatives can keep up what's going on in my life. But which blogs are my favourite ones that I read often? Or which pages I check almost every day?

1) Grand Narrative tells about Korean pop culture in an interesting way. I accidentally found this blog in summer and I've been reading it since. I like especially the writer's bloggings about Korean women and the world they're living in.

2) Liivian Talossa (in Finnish), just because I like the photos :)

3) Ravelry is for knitting addicts, countless amounts of patterns that are just waiting to be made for someone or for yourself. I go there and dream that I had more time to knit.

4) The Ecologist was a magazine which came to me until this summer, but the paper version was turned into e-magazine so I have to take my daily dose of Ecologist from the net these days. My favourite part of the magazine is "Behind the label", which explains everything you need but don't want to know about basic products, which are not good for you or the environment.

5) Blogilista (in Finnish) is for those days, when I don't have anything to read. Then I check for some fashion blogs (and it just can't stop amazing me how some young girls are so interested in fashion!) or any blog that has been updated that moment.

and finally

6) Osmo Soininvaara 's blog (in Finnish) is one of my favourite's because I like his books and most of the new ideas he has. The best part is the lively conversation which brings lots of different perspectives to the things he's writing about.

and

7) Kemikaalicocktail (in Finnish), which is just basic stuff for people, who are interested in environment and their own health.

Tomorrow there might be snow on the ground, so maybe these are the final times of taking this kind of colourful, stormy and leafy photos :) I'm waiting for snow SOOOO much, so let's hope I'm surrounded by white in the morning...

More to read!

That's how my working room looked like two months ago. Luckily there's a bit more room these days :)

Today I ordered 4 books about Korea from the cheapest internet bookstore. I'm going to get travel guides and Korean phrase book, so that I can try to remember some of the things I've learned before but which are now completely forgotten.

I love books, except when I'm moving, 2 full bookshelves are not the easiest movable objects. For me books are not just books, they are worlds of information and imagination. I don't know why I feel so strongly about them. It's just that if I could and had time, I'd buy new books every week for myself and stayed home and just read read read read. I wonder when I'd get bored, is it even possible?

Now self-made apple pie (looks so ugly I don't want to take a photo about it!). I'm hungry.

PS. Happy birthday Hejin and Huynjae!

October moon and big plans

Long time no words.

Busy busy busy b-u-s-y. I hope I had more time to be, like the title of this blog is emphasizing. Photos from Tampere are so old that I don't feel like putting them here anymore.

Besides, it looks like this now.


Not in the centre of Joensuu, but on the countryside. Winter's one breath away. And the limpid air has the scent of snow, which I totally love. Snow snow snow!

Earlier, I spent time with the children of my brother. Nea is 5, Moona is 4. My brother and his wife were enjoying the sun of Crete and after watching the aeroplane leave, I was adventuring with the girls a bit; first by train, then by bus and finally by car. We also visited the library, which was also a big adventure for all of us ;)




On the last sunny day of the autumn we walked to a local bird tower, everything was so blue and water was low. Huge reeds were filling the beach and we saw no birds. It was +19 celsius that day and the next day the weather changed suddenly, only +5.





To get through these busy times, I have something to wait for. I'm going to travel to Korea (please don't ask if it's south or north, everyone should know that it's (almost) impossible to travel to north!) in January. To spend time with my lovely friends, to experience the huge masses of people, to visit Panmunjeom, to eat kimchi and drink tea and soju (oh, the taste is so horrible!), to adore old buildings and temples and yes, I thought about stopping by at the local library :)


(photos from here)

I'm not so fond of travelling, I consider myself more like a person who likes to stay at home (and besides, flying is very bad for the environment...) and find interesting things from everyday life. I was travelling a lot when I was a child, I was in an aeroplane for the first time when I was 3 and I've been flying around in Europe at least 20 times. It's not much compared to people, who fly A LOT, but for me it's much.

All this time I've had bad conscience that Hyeyeon and other Korean friends have been telling me to come for a visit, but I've never had enough money or will to decide that this time I'm going...until now.

I guess you just know when it's time to go :)


"Deep river runs its course
to a warm horizon
shadows of falling leaves
october moon and rusty skies
ever changing feelings
seeds of autumn in my mind"
(Chicane : Autumn tactics)

But now back to this moment, there's apple pie to be baked, hats to be knitted, clothes to be washed.