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...

Animals in the wild

Yesterday morning I decided to take photos of the animals I see every day. I came up with the idea because I didn't want to spend time with a man, who comes to me every morning at the bus stop and starts to talk about jesus. Some mornings it's ok, but not always :) Snowy wolf and woody fish can be found from the centre of my city and the rest of the animals from the library where I work. I love especially that big bear, stroking it makes me feel relaxed and when you climb on its back, everything looks small and you feel like you can conquer the library!


Last week as well as this week I attended different meetings. This kind of meeting culture is very new to me and for example I didn't understand to take blank paper with me to the first meeting. And of course because I'm so newbie in my work, some things the others are discussing are just not familiar to me and I feel like an outsider. But as the time passes, I'll get hang of it, hopefully!

It's also a bit difficult to understand that there's always tea and coffee and something to eat for free. When I was unemployed, I didn't have money to buy cakes or pies - at least not often. When I went to a cafe with my friends, I usually took just tea. I don't know if I want to get used to this kind of change - it's a small thing, but for me it tells about the way of the world these days.

Sun is shining, music is playing (Rubik - Dada bandits!), new Ecologist is still waiting to be read, too many books to be read. Off I go!

The things I see when I wait for the bus, part 1:

Winter lights

I was feeling very tired yesterday but I decided to go for a small walk anyway. I needed a new mixer and Citymarket was the closest place to find one. Walking was so exhausting! I made it to the shopping centre anyway and came home with a new cheap mixer and a pair of discounted jeans, just 9 euros. I stopped to watch the cars driving on a motorway when I came back.

Today I've been washing laundry, cooking and knitting. I made fruity wok with all kinds of vegetables and pineapple and ate it with rice noodles. Quite tasty, although I couldn't taste much :)


It's so beautiful outside! The trees are white again, sun is so bright as well as the moon. Can you spot it in the photo above? I don't know if it was a good idea to go outside while I'm still a bit weak, but I just need to move and do something! When I was a child, I wanted to be sick, that's how I could stay at home and read books as much as I could. Too bad it doesn't feel so great anymore :D

I read the new Ecologist yesterday evening. There was one article about green clothing and besides buying organic cotton and washing laundry in 30 degrees, also swapping clothes was seen as one green way of making your wardrobe more ecologic. I'd LOVE to swap my clothes with people! So many of my friends have just amazing clothes and I wonder where they find all those beautiful garments :) There is only one problem -> I'm too small. So also my clothes are too small for most of my friends, so swapping would be more like "give me your clothes and I give you nothing" :(


Same thing with shoes, but usually it's easy to use shoes as long as they are worn out.

Time for me to drink more tea and knit, maybe I can finish my ribbed bolero today! If it doesn't fit me and looks like the previous "top" I made, I'll go crazy!!!

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 :)

Findings and old stuff

Yesterday I read The Ecologist on the bus when I was coming home from aerobic. I love reading in the bus and the one magazine in question is one of my favourites to take with me when I'm "travelling". The stories are both interesting and important and the balance between scientific and informal texts is very good.


There was a story about Karen Lubbock, who publishes a magazine simply called Karen. The magazine is the opposite of glossy celebtrity and lifestyle magazines, it mainly tells about everyday life. The newest number has photos about goose-pimpled bum, greasy fry-up and a story about local butcher. Doesn't sound like Cosmopolitan or Elle to me :) I don't like to read those basic women magazines, because I just don't find those stories about celebrities and makeup tips interesting, but if Karen would be a bit cheaper, I'd order it right away. In my opinion everyday life is a lot more charming than photoshopped pictures about models. Too bad there isn't such magazines like Karen in Finland or at least I haven't heard of any.


Yesterday I also received post from Interpedia with a photo of my godchild in Thailand called Saiyai. She has grown so much! She needs support, because her dad is dead and her mom is poor and tries to take care of the whole family. The situation for women especially is not very good in Thailand, but if girls get more educated and are aware of their rights, that will surely improve the situation.

I decided to take a godchild couple of years ago and although I'm short of money at the moment, I want to pay the monthly fee to ensure that Saiyai can go to school. There are also other international programs like Plan or World Vision which make life better for children living in development countries. I decided to choose Interpedia, because it's smaller and doesn't have christianity as its base value. I've received 3 letters from Saiyai already and it's nice to get a new photo every year and see how she gets that kind of adult look in her eyes.



I was reading one blog where was a nice photo of a borzoi. I found 2 old photos, where my grandparents old borzoi called Ville is first suffering from me and then feeling happy with me. If I'll ever take a dog, it will be borzoi :)