But something's telling me to

Busy with people, but now few days alone. It feels good to sit in the dark and have the headphones on, listen to Dusky's Lost in you very loud and feel the evening. It's autumn, once again. I love how everything slows down, green colour is bursting into the shades of yellow, red, brown.

I also feel some kind of longing for... what?

Maybe the old days.

I hope that one day I can try riding again. I quit my lessons when I was young because I was too afraid to call to the stable and make a reservation to the next level riding class. The stupidest reason ever.

I've learned from my mistake and these days I'm not afraid of calling anyone.

Old days, new days. There's time to do things in the future, but future is always running ahead of you.

I started working again, time started flying. Broken bikes, repaired bikes. Nightmares about earthquakes in Helsinki. Music on the marketplace. Dear friends who take the best photos, worry about my bike, carry small people in their backs, ask the questions which should be asked.

42 days and I'll be on a plane heading to Korea and Japan.

Catsmas

Please meet Irmeli, the curious cat, who found a hole in the wall and crawled in there. Too bad the hole was full of sawdust. The story ends in the shower.

Irmeli also liked to play with all kinds of things, especially with the string of my camera. My mother got so excited because of Irmeli that she said she's dreaming about owning a cat one day. Thank you Helena and Aliisa for bringing Irmeli to Kuopio with you!

And then meet Urpo, the huge cat, which spends a lot of time outside although it's extremely cold. When he wants to come inside, he just jumps on the door handle to make a sound and we open the door. My brother's family bought Urpo from local animal shelter and he has been a big part of their life ever since.

So my catsmas was fine and this is how a christmas tree looks like when you watch it through a glögi mug...Interesting. I met my friends, visited all relatives and ate vegan ham as well as casseroles and pizza. And chocolate. The most memorable moment must have been when I played Iskelmä (Finnish schlagers) board game against my mother and her husband. It's like Trivial Pursuit but all questions are about iskelmä music. It was so absurd, but in a weird way it was fun as well. Except when we had to listen to the music. TORTURE! (luckily the clips were less than 15 seconds!)

I also spent some time in the trunk of my brother's car with lots of bags and the greatest suitcase I borrowed from my grandmother. Sometimes you need to travel in challenging surroundings to appreciate the pure comfortableness of a basic car, bus or train seat.

Tomorrow it's going to be the last day of work. Kind of sad, kind of happy :) It takes time to get used to the fact that I don't have to wait for the (too often late) bus number 202 in the cold ever (?) again. Last week I also experienced how it feels like to be in a cold, dark bus for half an hour. The bus broke down on the road and the driver wanted to save battery (although the fault had nothing to do with it) and so he turned out the lights and heating (and of course it was -20 celsius outside). So it was me and 9 other people sitting in the dark bus in total silence...And I was thinking "this is all so Finnish" :D

2 weeks -> Korea.

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.

Just one hour thing.

I woke up at 6, felt SOOO tired and slept for one hour more. Life seemed so much better after that. How one hour can make so big difference. That's all, today. More laundry and Tampere soon.

Fate or faith

Just some photos out of focus. After total cleanover of my flat I've earned lots of tea and time for knitting. New Novita Puro yarn just sends me telepathic signals from my yarn box, "come here, come here, come here"...One hat is almost finished, another one is being planned :)

Have a beautiful week, I know I will!

That's what you get when you let your heart win

I was coming home on Wednesday after 9 and the sky looked like this. Beautiful, beautiful sky and black shapes of buildings and trees. Tomorrow it's going to be August and it's so nice, dark but warm evenings and stars and a crispy bite of what's about to come. October moon and rusty skies, like Chicane puts it...(seeds of autumn in my mind)

This week was enjoyable, laughing and removing books at work, not-so-early-mornings thanks to Tuula and the best strawberries ever! Yesterday morning while waiting for the bus I bought one container of organic strawberries from the market place and talked with the sales person, he said their farm is not big and they're only going to sell berries there until the end of this week. So today I called to Juha and he went to the centre to buy more red sweets for me. The taste is just HEAVENLY! And after eating these, I really know how real strawberries should taste like. Not bitter, not watery, just yummy.

I watched Sam Mendes film "Revolutionary road" today and oh, the mixed feelings! The movie was excellent story about a marriage in the 50's, life so stuck on gender roles and expectations. But I felt both angry and sorry for the couple, who tried so hard to leave the "normal" life behind just to realise it's easier said and planned than done. I'm just happy the society is not like that anymore...Older people so often long for the "good old times, when everything was simple", but what if simple too often means lack of choice?

Now time for tea, thinking of the old times (when Hyeyeon was here, all the nights we danced, drank wine, played card games in our commune, watched eclipse of the moon, talked, talked, talked, did the things we now smile at...) and the music, how it brings back the feelings of those times.

"You know when you feel it
You know when it hits you
There's no mistaking when you fall
You don't anticipate it
And you can't calculate it
It just comes crashing through your walls

You lose all sense of reason
You have no sense of danger
It's like you're living in a dream.
It lets you float through crowds and
Makes you smile at strangers
It's just the greatest state of being..."

(Oceanlab - Sky falls down)

But you don't have a clue...

..how much we miss you Minhye! Have a safe flight and we will meet again, I'm sure. For me it still doesn't feel real that you don't come to our place and wait in the hallway and come to sauna with me.

This summer feels unreal also in other ways. I don't have any holidays and I've been so busy at work that in the evenings I've just watched TV brainlessly and then gone to sleep. I don't like this! I don't have time to meet my friends, they're doing all the nicest things when I'm too tired to do anything. I don't need all this money, I'd rather be poor but have time to do the things I enjoy the most. Now I'm spending my money on colourful clothes and special foods I could easily life without. Why there's no middle way? Less money and less work, I'd be happy with that.

After saying goodbye to Minhye in the early morning I went to the market place cafe to have breakfast and watch people. Pikachu appeared there as well and it wanted to have a little of my tea. Merja blossoms.



Last week I visited Kuopio and Jyväskylä. Sunny days, football, countryside, trains, flowers, lovely people, all those things I can't enjoy this summer. Maybe goodbyes make me feel this way and I realise once again what's important and what's not.





Moona hides her eyes, because then happened something completely different...


...they fell down!



I love Spotify though! All these songs I've already forgotten and now they're playing in my head and speakers. Yesterday Minhye, Teemu, Monika, Merja, Sejin and Shahram were visiting our place and we listened to horrible songs from Spotify, for example "Pikku-Merja" by Jamppa Tuominen, "Pikku-Taina" by Tapani Perttu and " Monika, Monika, Monika" by Reijo Taipale. Why on earth all those songs tell about cheating and evil women who have left the men :D Nice women don't deserve songs named after them?

Next week starts the summer season of aerobic, I'm already waiting! Although it means that I only come home to sleep...But I hope I have one evening this summer, when I feel like these Röyksopp "You don't have a clue" lyrics:

"It's late in the night, dancing is done
The music has died, you're ready to run

But you don't have a clue, this party hasn't ended yet
Not for me and you, now you're just pretending

You're hiding from yourself,
Yes you are, yes you are
Like golden rays of sun in the cloud"

Är du lycklig nu?

Early morning at the market place, people setting up their stands, so many things to be sold. I'm in the centre already before 7am and I think that's the best time to be there, when it's still calm, only couple of janitors cleaning streets, busdrivers waiting for people to get in, no-one is running.

This week, busy as always. There was one customer at the library, who complained about the small quantity of books in Estonian and said that it must be because "you have so many black people here". Where's the logic? People like that make me angry.

On Wednesday I also missed my connection bus, because the driver in the previous bus didn't let me out...There were 2 teenage girls, who travelled with flawed tickets and when the bus arrived in the centre, there was only 3 of us in the bus and the driver didn't open the doors and was shouting to the girls. I went to tell to the driver that I have to catch a bus and he should open the door for me, but he did nothing! So I had to stay 2 minutes in the bus and missed the next bus.

I guess that all that is unfair in my opinion makes me so pissed off. Life is not fair but it should be!



But small (and bigger) misfortunes are something I forget so fast. What I like to see are all the children coming to the mobile library and borrowing lots of books! In these photos the bus looks quite in order, but after one class everything is a big mess and we barely have time to put all books in their places before the next class arrives. Most borrowed books are of course animal books (especially about dogs, horses and dinosaurs!), comics, fictional horse books and Risto Räppääjä -books. And while the mobile library was moving, I had time to knit my everlasting woollen scarf...


Yesterday Esko was here! He's my favourite astronomer, who brings astronomy closer to normal people, both young and old. His books have been excellent and I like his way of writing, although sometimes I don't agree with him. His main goal, to make us understand how tiny creatures we are here in the universe, but how much we have already done, is very refreshing and I really enjoy his lectures. Also yesterday! Once in a while his jokes were (again) a bit too stereotypical, however his sense of humour is so self-ironical that it compensates everything :D I enjoyed especially the huge naked photos of himself he projected on the screen ;) People applauded heartily for so long time after the lecture that Esko had to say "please stop already, this is not North Korea" :D

Now I'm listening to (both Clark Kent and) Kent and the strong wind blowing outside. Weekends go too fast, I wish I had more time to just be...Maybe I should change the blog's name, too :( I have so many ideas that my mind is overloaded, my time is limited and I don't know if I can put some of them into practice. But it's better to have too many ideas than no ideas at all?

"It's time to go
hold my hand you should know
that the road we follow
ends the day we grow old
'cause there is no life
after you've given in
age can't define what we are deep within

Away from harm here in my arms
safe in my heart, my only, that's what you are"

(Clark Kent : In my arms)

5 km.

Today I wanted to save 3 euros and walked to the centre instead of taking a bus. Walkway goes in the middle of the forest and I took my camera with me and took a few photos. It took me 45 minutes to walk 5 kilometres.

Spring is coming, so trees don't have any snow on them anymore and it looks very grey. Also the roads are starting to be bare, but still I saw many crosscountry skiers and the tracks seemed to be in good condition :)



I signed my employment contract today, so it's officially true that I'm going to be working as a leader of the library until the end of this year. I'm most afraid of all kinds of meeting I need to participate...And writing strategies! I don't know anything about that. So I have so many things to learn this year.

Last but not the least, I finally finished my pair of socks! It took me 2 months to knit them both, but it was worth it. The colours are lovely, green and purple :)

Tomorrow I'm heading to Kuopio to watch Skijumping World Cup. I'm going to take Juha and Liang with me, so more tea ceremonies coming!

Announcement

Meet the new head of the library, Taina! This is still so hard to believe...

How wonderful it is

Yesterday we took the bus to the centre and it was so sunny! Our dear friends are leaving back to Japan and we wanted to buy some small gifts for them. The place to visit was Taitokortteli, where you can find local handicrafts as well as tourist souvenirs. I love the atmosphere in the old wooden building and small shop rooms :) And as I expected, we found everything we needed from there.



I also went to aerobic and how my muscles are hurting now! 3 weeks without any exercise really makes you weak. Next week I'm going to get myself in shape again :)

When I was in Kuopio, I decided to cut my hair (with tiny help from my mom and Yuki!) and now it's oh, so short! But spring means change and I'm not afraid of changes. I also got a job offer, but let's see what happens.

"How wonderful it is that two minds can meet". I got that card from Ursula K. Le Guin, one of my favourite authors. It's so true, meeting even for once can change lives and basically everything. Lifelong friendship is a beautiful thing, but short encounters shouldn't be underestimated.