Forget about the time just close your eyes

This is where I work. Yesterday I could use the camera of the library and of course I had to use my chance and take some extra photos as well ;) I love how the light comes through the windows and roof, white surfaces and shadows. And this week I found out that I can continue working after my project finishes in September. I'm happy! Something always comes if you just let it flow.


I forgot to write about the visit to the Korean restaurant in Helsinki. It was the first time for me to go there and I'm definitely going to go there again. Kimchi was as spicy as I remembered, my japchae was excellent (mmm, sweet potato noodles and lots of sesame oil!) and the atmosphere was authentic, because just before we got in, a bus full of koreans arrived and came to eat, too :)

In the end I wanted to show off my Korean skills and of course it turned into an epic fail. I said
"잡채가 제일 맛있어요" (Japchae is the most delicious food) and the amazed waiter started to ask questions from me IN KOREAN. Of course I didn't understand and he tried to pronounce the questions as slowly as possible couple of times and I just looked at him and felt so stupid! In the end he said in Finnish that "I just wanted to know how long you've been living in Korea" and I said "2 weeks" :D Before my next visit to Korea House I'm going to practice a bit more...........

Another funny incident happened after the Batmud gala. One person mixed my character's name with my bf's character and after he saw me in the gala, he has been harassing my bf telling him "how cute you are, just my type of a girl" etc. I wonder when we should let him know that he has been whispering sweet words of love to my bf instead of me...But I don't mind, that guy was kind of creepy!

Wet snow coming from the sky, but I'll go to the quiz anyway.

(My favourite song atm, by Samantha James. Chilled and slow.)

No stories without a camera

There's nothing to say without nice photos.

Plain text is boring.


Lately:

*I've been teaching young and old people how to write their names in Korean, Japanese and Russian. I got lots of help from my friends, my Persian and Chinese skills are not so well developed yet...

*I was in Helsinki and attended Batmud gala. Photos can be found from here, I represent myself in a couple of them. In the party I met another LIBRARIAN MUDDER! I was so surprised! I also got to know many people RL, who I've only known in the game before. I really liked all of them :)

*My love goes out to Ivan and Jon, they brought me amazing teas and maple syrup stuff from Canada.

*Now I feel like I'm getting sick. Maybe it has something to do with yesterday taxi line, I was standing in the rain for over 1 hour after 3 am. I'll try to fight!

Korean style decorations

Big white stone walls and nothing to put there, that was the problem of this apartment for a long time. But once again Gmarket came to rescue and it doesn't look so white anymore :)


In Finland decorative wall stickers are extremely expensive (20 euros or more for big ones) and the selection is quite bad. Luckily in Korea the variety is much better and prices are very low compared to Finnish costs. For example the costs of my stickers were about 3 euros each! Of course some of the Korean stickers are quite funny with lots of writing mistakes (Bon Boyage?!?) and treacly love messages...But because there's hundreds of different stickers to choose from, it's easy to find something nice, too.

In fact I ordered the key stickers (above) accidentally, I wanted to have something green and leafy, but when the package arrived I noticed that I had put the wrong code into the shopping list...Fortunately I didn't get anything too romantic and pink and I was quite satisfied with the key stickers too (except there were also kind of note papers in addition to the key stickers and it says "am 2:00 beauty shop, pm 10:00 grace" in one of them...Grace? Beauty shop at 2 am? WTF?)

These telephone poles were something I ordered intentionally and now they're covering one wall in the living room.

I also joined Heiaheia. What's that? If you like exercising and want to follow your progress, you can join heiaheia and list all your activities there. It's kind of Facebook, but it doesn't have the same features yet, probably in the future though. I've never followed my training or the changes of my weight, maybe this gives me enough boost to start observing them :)

I'm waiting for Batmud's 20th birthday, which is held in Kaivohuone on 17th of April. To celebrate that I reinced out of a sudden and I'm playing a nuntarma librarian gnome at the moment :D My previous reinc was a nuntemplar ent and I made it to avoid any parties, but now I wouldn't mind having some...

Music of the moment: Marcus Schossow pres. 1985 - London especially from 2:30 :)

This month in pictures

Press Ctrl-Alt-Delete to begin.

First there was no snow and it was warm. So much rain and no minus degrees! There was a forgotten shovel on the yard one morning when I went to pick up the mail.

Then I was going to Jyväskylä to have a small xmas party with my mudder friends. This weird fellow traveller wanted to show off in a bus stop.

In Jyväskylä we spent our time with Rock Band, when I got the microphone I didn't want to give it to anyone else. I also learnt to play the drums. Also sauna, extremely powerful versions of Enter Sandman and big scary guys.

I went back to work, it was finally sunny and got colder. Sunshiiiiiine! Beautiful trees around the library.

We had an amazing console game day in the library, 100 people visited and almost everyone was happy. I liked especially ski jumping but also Guitar Hero and Buzz :)

It was "a bit" crowded next to the doors, luckily only one backpack got mixed with someone elses and we took care of the problem.

Last weekend was time for our own pikkujoulut (xmas party) and I baked these gingerbreads for the event. I also made potato and carrot casseroles and rosolli (traditional finnish christmas salad). Thank you guests for your company and foods!

This week it got colder, around -20 celsius every day. I heard so much complaining, but I was feeling so great. Finally real winter, white trees, freezing nose and stars at night. The most beautiful time of the year :)

Thursday morning I had my last shift in the mobile library, it was so cold that my breath came out as a white steam. All my photos looked like this :D

The view from the front seat is nice and I liked to wave at the other bus or truck drivers :)

Today, cold wind. We had 2 Korean friends (Kitak & Hejin) staying at our place for one week and today we all woke up before 1pm and decided to go to the shop. Notice red faces and ultimate protection!

I want to wish everyone a happy xmas and see you next year :) I'm going to spend my xmas in Kuopio and have my last work week before New Year's eve. Then it's time to just wait for our flight to the land of hangeul and kamsahamnida!

Waiting for

My first tiny small flax flower! My other plants don't seem to be comfortable in my terrace (but I can't blame them, I also don't feel comfortable there!) so they are not making any flowers. I had to take a photo of this beauty, though!

This week is nice. First of all, my much loved friend Hyeyeon is coming to Finland next week! In fact she arrives to Helsinki on Sunday and spends the night at my uncle's place, but on Monday she'll be here! So happy so happy so happy so happy! I took 3 days off next week, so I can spend time with her and all our common friends. Warning, lots of photos incoming...

I also don't have to wait for the bus to get to work this week, because I can get a ride from our summer worker, my friend Tuula. Yay!

And my evening meal is (hmmm...was...) the best ever! Bread with avocado paste, organic pear, mysli, liquorice and sweet coconut chai tea :)

Also today at work I got one visitor I didn't expect; my ex-boss! She just wanted to know how I'm doing and we talked almost half an hour about life. What else is there to talk about :) It was so nice surprise, I felt warm the rest of the day. I also carried and removed so many books that my hands are hurting...

There is one nice girl who always comes to the library just before closing time almost every day. She likes to be the last customer and talk with me about birthdays, books, friends. I can somehow see myself in her, I was just like that when I was in elementary school :)


A bit of mudding and never-ending undead turning now, my beloved Conquer (also known as) Ivan from Canada is also coming to visit me in the end of August. Last time I caught him before he fainted on the floor after too much sauna, maybe this time I'll finally save his whole life! Und meinen Gurth (also known as) Vladimir treffe ich auch im August :) Wunderbar!

B

Today I've been playing a bit Batmud. Why? 1) I love computer games 2) it's totally free and you can log in from every computer 3) I have friends there 4) it has lots of things to do 5) I don't have to listen to women speaking about women things (but I don't know if it's any better that I need to listen to men speaking about men things...). Batmud was created in 1990 and it's kind of predecessor of World of Warcraft. It's text-based, so there are no pictures in it contrary to WoW. The language used is English although the game itself is Finnish and most of the players are Finns, but there are many players from the US and other foreign countries as well.

I've been playing Batmud for 2 ½ years now and during that time I've got lots of friends. I've met several and for example one year ago my friend Ivan came from Canada and spent one week at my place. These days Batmud is more like a chatting place for me, but occasionally I still play a bit. At the moment I'm playing 90-level nuntemplar and my main things are to turn undeads, dispel evils and as a member of Synod (council of the 5 nun leaders) I keep prayers couple of times a week. I don't like "real" roleplaying and I'm not acting like I'm a real nun in the game. There are not many roleplayers in Batmud and that is very good.

Batmud is going to celebrate it's 20th "birthday" next year and I'm sure there's going to be a big party where lots of people from all around the world will gather. I'd like to go there myself too :)


Today I also received a copy of my favourite magazine of Bitch. It's an American feminist magazine, which I ordered one year ago and I haven't been disappointed. It's published 4 times a year and every magazine has about 100 pages of interesting articles to read. Most of the time I agree with the topics these articles write about and I'm just happy that someone else thinks the way I do too :)

I also order Finnish feminist magazine called Tulva, but it's just not as good as Bitch. Sometimes the opinions in Tulva just go a bit too far in my opinion. For example I just don't think that voting for a women candidate in election because of her sex isn't a sign of proper feminism...If that would be feminism, I wonder if feminist women in USA should have voted for Sarah Palin instead of Barack Obama just because Sarah is a woman. That is a scary thought.



It's cold outside and I finished my fingerless mittens. I love the colour and also the Icelandic yarn called Létt-Lopi, which is very warm outside although it's minus 10 celsius. I tried them yesterday when I went to the centre and I didn't need other gloves :) I found the yarn from discount basket in a local yarn shop and when I saw it, I just had to have it. I can't resist anything bluegreen or icelandic. I've been to Iceland once when my uncle got married with an icelandic woman and I loved the nature, people and animals in there. I wish one day it would be possible for me to visit that country again :)