dribble drabble

Two weeks zoomed by and what happend? I haven't got the faintest idea since I haven't been keeping this blog up to date! Well, one thing that's turned around; final exams. One down, two to go. Pretty easy going it seems, but I still want to do these properly, if not for anything else, then for the fact that I haven't been doing anything else schoolwise! Would suck to blow those grades since I've not exactly been busy doing other stuff for the last couple of months. Tomorrow: work. Followed by Theater.

Thought of the day

Tolerance should not tolerate intolerance.

Arr

Re-exam today, went well. After that I went to the gym - damn place was packed, so I did a quick workout & tried on the running mat for size. I ran 3 kilometers in 30 minutes, then walked one km to ease down. It was fairly painless - I was surprised. Jogging's always been a pain in the ass for me... But of course, my pace was slow enough so it wasn't really straining... But I sweating like a pig! After having a shower, I went to the local Pizza place & got a badass superpizza of 8 fillings, ate it, staggered home & opened a big can of beer. That's living healthy for you. Over & Out.

Abacab

Saw Maisa's first gig a couple of days ago, go girl! 2 songs played acousticly @ the Velvet club in Semifinal.

Finished the Roman lectures. Now I'm doing the American history bit. It seems informative, even though a tad bit colored :( Oh yes, Civilization 4 it out - that game is taking whatever time I can give it (I'm trying to limit it! damn it's good). Right now burning a bunch of DVDs while updating my CV's and applying to various companies... Let's hope some of them catch the bait.

Sony service called a while ago, the finally have my Silver-coloured mp3 player. I just need to find the time to go get it... Bastards! Their products are still good, but they're really cutting down on all their personnel costs by outsourcing etc.. this can be seen in the shitty level of their support! This evening we're gonna see our upstair's neighbour's debut, a monologue he's directed. Looking forward to it.

It's that time again

So I've been lazy again. It's rather pathetic isn't it. Anyway let's get down to business. I am still on the lookout for a proper job, let's see what comes my way. The bitch of the matter is, I can't do full-time, really, knowing that I'll be swamped come springtime... And I want to get out of school. I recently got a good invitation, that I should apply & get into the IT business again, but after some comtemplation, I had to turn it down. It's better to finish what I've started in the International Business scene first.

Other news: I've started on a healthier path. Haven't smoked much at all since July (didn't mark the day into my calendar or anything like that). Smoking is all right by me though, not condemning anyone. Anyway, I'm taking a break at the very least... Haven't bought a pack since summer, and only taken a few drags since. It's going steady.

Been going through my gym program again. I managed to get one through doing a favor to a personal trainer back in 2002. Mananged to go to the gym a few times then, but dropped it due to being lazy... Anyway, I went twice last week, and this week it's gonna be the same. Met Martti on the field of glory (squash) today, he won 2-1, bastard! Next week's gonna be more intense, since we're gonna go twice, and I'm still gonna hold on to my 'twice a week' motto for the gym bit, too. It's great if I manage to get this gym thing to be a part of my life, I'll be so much the better for it. All the extra energy is welcome. It's that time of the year again, sun is rising around 7-8am, and going down around 6. Too much darkness around, it'll get to you if you don't start doing something...

Throughout & after the summer, I've been listening to audiobooks, mostly lectures on history. Roman times, baby. I'm not talking about any shitty 1-2 hour lessons. Each topic has been ~ 40 lectures -over a thousand minutes. Listening to music is all fine and good. But lately audiobooks have had more appeal. I've gone through many topics, here's a brief list of them:

Isaac Asimov's Foundation, books 1-2 (I have all 7, but got bored)
Hellenism
Famous Greeks
History of Rome
Rome and the Barbarians
Famous Romans
Early middle ages
High middle ages
The long 19th century, European history from 1789 to 1917
Churchill's biography

That's what I remember and what I still have. I've been deleting most of what I've listened to.
I'm looking forward to getting into the History of the United States, The Rise and Fall of Soviet Communism, The history of Hitler's Empire... there's tons of listening to be done! "When does he have have the time to listen to all that crap?", you may ask? While walking, @work, doing dishes, eating (note: only if alone), in a bus/train.. you get the picture. It has sort of become a part of my life, frankly. It's cool, because it's been increasingly difficult to find the time to get down and read a proper book. The current piece (btw) is, Albert Speer - his battle with truth. It seems promising.

Squash was good, but now I must attend to my sports gear, and eat something: Minna's been cooking and it's almost ready now, woohoo :)

Ave atque vale - Hail and farewell

Stress

Must finish a goddamn paper today. I remembered I had to do it only yesterday. Couldn't do much about it since I had re-exams today. School blues, even though I'm only taking like 3 courses now!

Btw, the fall came today. We were out @ a pizzeria & saw dark clouds approach. It got pitch black & cold - it also began to rain. Summer is over, RIP. I can feel the light running out, and my spirits following. Time to put some Anathema on Winamp.

Link of the day: Audioscrobbler & lastfm. Install it & start discovering new music.

Tomorrow - work.

Commercials

Interests elsewhere, update pending

Bd frenzy

"The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons", said Dostoyevski. What do you think? I'm sure he didn't think much of the level Imperial russian civilization after having been to Siberia! Whatever... anyway, I've been slacking. I need to find a new job, preferably one where I can do the rest of my work-practice & final theses - and get paid. Picking up a few free-electives & a 4th language would not hurt.

The Sony mp3 player is supposed to be fixed by this week. What a bunch of shit, only took them 4 weeks. Breakfast waits. Today's my dad's 59th birthday. Yesterday was my mom's 58th. We're going there with Minna later on today, to take part in the celebrations! On the topic, explore the wonders of the birthday paradox! And oh yes, do find out your half-birthday. Always good to have more excuses to be cheerful.

Good times.

There isn't that much school. And I'm starting to get used to it. Scary. Been a good few last days, mates. Been to Tallinn. Been Go-Karting. That's a lot of fun! Ali left us, he's pretty close to old London town by now. Cheers mate, see you soon :)

I bought a new toy: an HP DVD burner. Seems pretty nice. I got got rid of my old Pioneer DVD drive & an even older Plextor cd-burner. I wonder if they're worth selling even? Maybe one day I'll build a second computer... you never know! I'm due to go to town shortly, to catch up with Minna. She'll be coming from a job interview. We are to go shoe-shopping. Yee-haw! :P

Well

Tennis, Tallinn, tennishh.... and so on. Bloggin is not as easy as it used to be. I hope I haven't run out of things to say. That would be bad.. Stay tuned for better days. Btw. that Finnish history through books project (if I've even mentioned it), I'm in the years 1920-1940 now. Going strong. :) It's not so bad you know, knowing why some of the streets in your hometown are named after certain persons - even if that is not directly implied in the text...

The Dire Straits' song "Planet of the New Orleans" has just gotten a whole other meaning.

It has begun

School. I have 3 courses this period. What a joke. I'll have all the time in the world to figure something out for the final thesis, or get a better temp job. When you've gotten used to keeping busy, this going to school for only mondays and tuesdays is really fucked up. I'm not used to sitting around doing nothing. Though I tried pretty hard today. Didn't get out of the house for anything else than to buy some food across the road. I'm glad I managed to do something else yesterday. Ali asked me out to play tennis a few days ago, and so we finally went. Could have done it sooner if it was not for the weather. Anyway, I've improved my shots quite a bit in the last (and only) 3 times I've done it this summer. Too bad the season is starting to draw to a close. Indoor courts are too expensive imo. Soon it'll be possible to start playing Squash again. The two courts that me & Martti have been using were closed for the summer because of renovation. Let us hope they've fixed them & that they open them up soon!

Wow

My name is so and so, and I am an alcoholic. Not really, but that came to mind when I woke up today, around 10am. We celebrated Minna's moms birthday up till almost 6am. Doh. But nevermind that, I INSIST that you go right now, and download Google Earth, I'm absolutely blown away by it. I've been playing with it for a while, and it seems to be quite frankly the best possible Atlas ever made. If I were rich, I would buy Google stock :)

Reelin' and Rockin'

Well, we did not make it to the theatre, or to the movie. From around 6 to 11, we were with Emmu, making tortillas, eating, drinking & watching some DeviantArt her friend has shot (she knows everyone on those picture galleries, and is in some of them herself). Later on, At midnight - we went to Manala, a nice joint downtown. There was a show with "The Manala Allstars band" (Marzi Nyman, Pirjo Bergström, Mariko ja Olavi Uusivirta & others). They had selected 17 different lovesongs, preferably with lewd or suggesting lyrics, and turned them around & made new and cool renditions of them. I personally really liked "Sukkula Veenuksen" (Shuttle to Venus) and "Fiilaten ja höyläten" (different, finnish lyrics to the tune of "Reeling and rocking" by Chuck Berry).

After the show, we met Maisa & went downstairs to eat. Manala is an excellent place to eat while on a night on the town. They're making food all the way untill 4am. Saw Sauli Niinistö in the restaurant, and later on also in the mens room. He was not too impressed with the drunking urinal-users who wished to engage in conversation with him while releasing their bladders (I was almost expecting someone to be stupid enough to try to offer him their hand while doing the deed with the other hand - they would have later been able to exclaim that they had shaken the hands of two 'chiefs' at the same time! :P) Anyway, for those of you not in the know, Niinistö is running for president. I think he just might be the strongest competition the current president, Tarja Halonen has.

Today is Minna's moms 47th birthday. I expect that we will go over to pay our respects around 6pm for dinner. It feels just like Sunday today. Maybe it's because we are free from all work & study related engagements today. Quite often Sunday has been the only whole day we have together.

Run around

Yesterday we went to see Astrid Swan perform. She was good, let's hope she makes it. I bought her autographed cd for 15€. Sort of like Aimee Mann, if you've heard her. Helsinki is having a party week, celebrating, well, err.. Helsinki. There is a lot of free arts, music & theatrical happenings all over the town. Today we'll go out to see some play & a movie, the details for both of which are unsure to me. I'll comment about them later.

Now it is time to take my Sony Mp3 player to an official after sales service joint. The poor thing's menu button is stuck down. So whenever I try to change a song, it just pops to the menu. Great. First I called the company that sold it to me. They told me to talk to the importer. The importer told me to refer to the official Sony after sales service. (I really enjoyed the run-around, thanks guys. Goddamn incompetent, responsibility-dodging bastards!) Just look at that site. They haven't responded to my emails, but I got through to some clerk there, who just told me to ship it in. I'll deliver it personally and see to that they take a quick glance at it/fix it before I leave. I feel really comfortable giving them my baby to tweak/fuck around with! I guess Sony is running out of funds, or they just don't give a shit.

It would be nice to open the player and fix the spring that's bent myself (that's my SWAG, anyway) but the chances that it'll blow up in my face & ruin the guarantee are too high!

-- update 16:46

My impressions of the place were quite accurate. The clerk receiving my player & typing out the documentation refused to yield any relevant information. Nor did anyone take a look at it. They took it and gave me a receipt and said "don't call us, we'll call you". Haha, right on.. bastards!

Dear diary...

I will make no excuses, or apologies for lack of updates!

Summer is almost over, and I'm done with work, at least for a week. It was a nice couple of months, the weekends full of fun & enjoyment. I'll try to resume active updates from now on. During the course of this summer, I've read tons, and gotten hooked to audiobooks. Expecially ones made by The Teaching Company. History mostly.

It would feel shallow to me to start typing in detail about how my summer went, suffice to say, there was the Pori Jazz, many great weekends @ different summercottages, lots of barbecuing and a couple of trips to Tallinn. Not the greatest summer ever, but way better than the last one.

School & studies will resume at the beginning of September. Minna started in a private art school today, let's hope she likes it.

Screw Stahanovism

Hello, the weekend was a blast. Had an impromptu party later on friday, after shopping, going to Kiasma, and drinking cider outdoors.. Saturday we had 3 graduation parties to go to, with little sleep & both of us hangover. We pulled it off like heroes, though we left the last place before midnight. Sunday we slept late & went to my brother's place for some coffee & delicacies - it was his 29th birthday on saturday (but we missed it because of the grad parties). Our presents to him were a t-shirt & poster made by by M.C. Escher. We walked to Minna's parents later, and picked up my birthday presents, and something they got us from hungary.

I've been working for two days now, and let me tell you, there wont be much to write home about.

I

Work ethics

Nasty, I begin work in 5 days. Arbeit macht frei.

Bicycle

It's time to whip out the bicycle and go pay a visit to my parents. Minna's working, so I have all the time in the world to do whatever suits my fancy. I picked up a new memory stick today, the little bugger cost me 70€. My parents are thinking of buying a new digicam, so I'll have to go and talk some sense into them - so that they won't buy "the one on sale at Gigantti" or whatever. A good place to start www.dpreview.com... Anyway, I better get on the road, I promised to show for coffee between 2-3pm. I'll get a good 15km worth of cycling today, yay! One-way shouldn't take longer than 20 minutes. Adios.

Last week

If I nothing proper happens this week, I'll be doomed to go back to the warehouse on monday... that's when I'm supposed to start my 11-week grind there. Fucking hell, and I've tried to _hard_ to look for a job. I need to get out of this country. Where the grass is greener, and proper jobs plenty! Who am I kidding? Ahh... Maybe when I graduate, I'll be finally able to get a decent job. Not a proper job, but a decent one. This is my last week of freedom for the whole summer, unless of course I end the Odyssey short. I might be happy with working just 2 months, or just 1 month... to scrape together enough to survive the summer. Though how much fun is it just to 'survive'. Need skills to pay the bills, and preferably then some. Weekend went by fast, didn't even notice it. Picked up a few books from the library today. One is on war prisoners, it'll set the mood for going back the warehouse :X

Computers suck

Great day today. It's been sunny outside. But guess what I've been up to? Last night, one of my 512Mb DDR sticks decided to go nuts. To make a long story short, it totally fucked up my Windows partition with all the weird errors it was causing. Of course I didn't immediately figure out just what the hell was causing all the weird errors. Luckily, I had two sticks, so it was fairly easy to test which one was the evil bastard, by using memtest. Now all I had to do was just revert back to a backup copy of the partition. But guess what? My backup was almost 6 months old! But have no fear - I always knew I was a louse backup-cloner, so I had a backup batch file running nightly, which copies all the important documents, files, settings, etc.. that I have one the windows partition. Now I just have to do the grievous task of putting everything back in it's right place.

I could have been outside enjoying the sun if it was not for two things: 1) I managed to burn myself pretty damn bad already on sunday, when I went to the local cliffs to do some reading, for about 3 hours worth. With no sunlotion, or t-shirt. The night towards monday was spent in agony. Yesterday I stayed indoors for the most of time, except for going to play squash. I still resemble an indian with my torso, though it's starting to get better.

Tomorrow I'll have a job interview for a fund-assistant job. Let's hope all goes well. This friday I have a re-exam in swedish, have to find the motivation to study for it from somewhere. It's a 5 credit-unit course, which ran a bit over half a year. I do not want to re-take the course. There! That's my motivation. It's 22.5'c outdoors.. terrace time, big time. But alas, poor me has to study, pooey pooey. Might as well get to it. Adios!

School's out for summer!

Yes ladies and gentlemen. The exams are over, the coursework is done. It's time to relax for a while. I ended up with pretty decent grades I have to say. And it's not too bad to notice that you're already 2/3 done. I'm a little ahead of schedule, and things are going alright. One thing that's been a constant cause of concern for me, however, has been the summer job issue. Yes, so far I have not secured anything better than logistics work. Meaning very basic logistics, mind you.

I'm terribly sorry for the lack of updates, but I have no spine. Err maybe I do, but not enough for daily/weekly updates. I'll try to fix that. Honest! Let's see.... what has happened since the last post. First week I had 2 exams and finished most of the coursework. 7-8th May we were at my parent's summer cottage in Perniö. That was a great time. Sauna, burning brushwood, target practice with a "22 scoped rifle & walks in the surrounding forest paths. Just what I needed to recharge the batteries for the coming week! Monday I had Business Strategies exam, which was a bitch, I ended up writing 7 pages... On Tuesday I had another exam, this time in Quality Management.

Wednesday
May 11th was my 25th birthday. I did not celebrate it much, as I had a databases exam during the day, and squash in the evening. But behold! When I came home, Minna had fixed a wonderful meal, which we then proceeded to feast upon, accompanied by a rather good red wine.. When it got close to midnight, we went to the balcony and I opened a bottle of sparkling wine on the minute that I turned 25. Romantic? Silly? The bottle was expensive, but turned out it had a poor taste. And! I also managed to break a champagne glass, as I was reaching for matches which were on the other side of the table -- and the lapel of my leather coat tipped the glass... which of course went into smithereens. I hope broken glass does indeed bring good luck, as 'they' say. Thursday was a quiet day, spent studying for the final exam in Cost Management.

Friday
I had the exam in the morning, and after it spent some time in school, drinking coffee, chatting & smoking cigarettes. It felt surreal that school was over. And that two years had passed. It took a while to sink in. Later on in the evening I went to Osku's place for a bit of pizza & alcoholic beverages; which was his & Jenni's way of saying "thank you for helping us move on Vappu, despite the fact that you were hangover/drunk at the time!". We had a blast, and I really didn't want to leave the place (I was there from 7pm to a bit after 10pm I think) - but I had to get to Valtava (or whichever way you type it --- the new 3-story bar/diner that has opened between the railway station & main post office - I think it used to formerly belong to Finnair.)
I met school comrades Ville, Carina, Tara, Niina & Leena there on the second floor. I ordered some Budvar. I don't think I had too much to drink. Conor showed up a bit after midnight, after he had finished work. (I see a pattern here, by the way... whenever Conor shows up after work to a bar where I'm at, all hell breaks loose later on..) - Anyway! I believe everything went fine & was under control until it got close to 1am, and the devil incarnate, senor Osku made his entrance (with Jenni of course). This evil man was on a mission to get poor me drunk as a skunk. To succeed in this fiendish task, he began injecting alcohol into me, in the shape of shots of varying kind. Frankly, don't ask me what they were or how many there were, because it all starts to get a little hazy for me after the 2nd or 3rd shot. See, I'm not even sure of that. Anyway! The 2nd floor bar closes at some point, so we were asked to move downstairs. Apparently while there I managed to stumble into a waitress - all apologies, miss. I didn't remember us going downstairs, so it's hard to say anything more about it. But we stayed there until the bar closed, and Martti, bless his soul, walked me all the way home. I managed to fall twice on the way. I also walked into a streetlight. Well anyway, I got home around 5. Minna wakes up. There's some hassle. I throw up, crawl to bed. 6am: Lights off.

Saturday.
Birthday party. I woke up initially around noon, feeling surprisingly okay given the circumstances. Minna went to the shop, and got some Jaffa (soda) & Sparkling water for me. She fixed me a meat pie with two sausages & brought it to bed, too. Ahh, lovely creature! I stayed in bed & managed to catch sleep again, while she left the house with our upstairs neighbors Karo & Eeva. They went to shop around, trying to find us a new garden table (for the whole house community), some plants & seeds, and finally some food and beverages. This Saturday was booked as a community effort/work party. The idea is to clean up the large wooden house where all of us (6 apartments, 10 people) live, and then after the chores are done, have a good time. I woke up around 5.30pm. This work party was supposed to start around 6. My birthday party was set to start at 8pm, with some of the first guests arriving a bit earlier. I rushed to the shop, bought some more sparkling/mineral water, and you know, the usual hangover cure-kit. After I had gotten all the stuff in me, I started feeling a bit better. The next two hours were spent cleaning, vacuum-cleaning, and mopping the place. I almost started to lose faith when it was a bit after 7pm, and it felt like the whole thing was so unfinished. I wanted to have the work bit of the work-party over by the time my birthday party was supposed to start. See, my idea was to have the work party & my birthday as a sort of combined grill-fest-free-for-all. The neighbors are such good people & friends, that I would have invited them anyway. The house budget really ran out after we had gotten the gardentable, the plants & a proper Winmau dartboard & something to drink (12-pack, some ciders). So the barbecue foods, salads & booli was on us. I am letting you know all this just so you kind readers are not tempted to think that: as there is/was a housebudget for the 6 apartments, of which some of it is commonly used for partying & boozing, that I would have the evil mind of putting my birthday on the same date to save money! There, I’ve said it. Anyway, moving on. The time between 8-9pm was a bit of a hassle, with half of the guest having arrived. I rushed out of the house to do some work on the balcony, or downstairs… But luckily it all worked out perfect. We fired up the grill a little after 9, and had a GORGEOUS time. The evening consisted of eating (duh), drinking, sauna, darts-games, playing Alias as pantomime. People started going to bed after midnight, but the some of us kept going. Conor & Jonna, my brother & Jarno were there until around 6am. Me & Minna stayed there for 3 hours more, just by ourselves. I guess we talked, danced & drank whatever was left. Sad affair! Oh dear… last time I checked the clock, was when we were already in bed: it was 9.30am. Ouch.

Sunday
Slept late, managed to go to Minna’s parents. Lovely dinner. Fairly uneventful day otherwise.

This week has been spent mostly on recharging batteries, applying for work and sneezing. Birch trees are messing with me, but I’ve got the meds now. It’s starting to level out. Long update, you can probably see that I ran out of energy. I typed it all in one go. Hooray! Thanks for reading if you made it this far!

Vappu

Wow it's been almost a month now. A lot of things have been going on and I just never got around to typing about them. I should get a phonecall early this week, to let me know if I got the job or not (doing purchasing at a publishing house). I skipped going to my swedish exam today, because three days of drinking and partying finally caught up with me. How lame. I'll take the re-exam date & ace it there. No worries. I did not have time to prepare for it anyway, what with Vappu and everything going on. Cross fingers that I get the job :D I'm hungover, tired, bored, and feeling guilty. What a great way to start a week! I have a couple of papers to hand in mid-week, plus it's final exams time.. Where's the motivation? Hello? Two weeks, and "school's out for summer", yeah!

I think I'll just fire up Stronghold II and built a few medieval castles.

Ursula!

Oh yes, my friends. It's time to go to Ursula. The weather is sweet, and Kaivopuisto awaits. I'm gonna go meet Ali there, it's a classic place for us.

Btw.It seems like fairly busy times again for me & Minna. We get to spend maybe like 1-3 hours per evening together. It sucks! It's been ages since we've last had a chance to cook properly together - with a little wine and so on... hrmm

Wellm we are going to see the play "Putoavia Enkeleitä" tomorrow, should be fun. Then I'm going to a gig on thursday (Ben Granfelt-Band & Crumbland), venue: On the Rocks. Then, it's time to work: friday evening + saturday morning, blah! Oh well, at least school pressure is starting to ease off a little. Today was a day off from school for me, but I still had to wake up at around 10am and work till 1:20pm doing *sarcasm* interesting *sarcasm* stuff like Fault-Tree-Analysis, Ishikawa diagrams & Pareto Histograms. The course is Quality Management. Iso 9001 and so on. Fantastic! :P

Anyway, it's time to Call Ali and go outdoors. Clear blue skies and +8'c wait for us. Plus a pint or two..

APRIL

Hey! Update time. What's happened? I got the English project done, finally! Does it make my life any easier? Guess :P We saw Scandinavian Music Group live at Tavastia on wednesday, for the 4th time now. I confess, I'm a fan! :) They had videocameras there, maybe we will end up on tv or on a dvd.. we were around 1,5 meters from the performers. It was a special setup: unplugged & acoustic, they had moved the stage to the center of the floor, with tables around it. Pretty neat. We finished watching the Napoleon DVD, it was a whopping 6 hours. It was pretty good, but they should have made it into a 25 hours series :P I hear there's a 3 dvd special version that goes up to 8 hours, damn. I'll have to keep my eyes open for it.. :)

I have still got a whole bunch of schoolwork to do (sorry for the whining) - it seems like they don't let off (anyone else tried to squeeze in 42 ECTS worth in a spring term?). It gets rough, I'm telling you. But hey, after this term's done, it's all steady sails from then on.

It's Saturday. I'm stuck inside writing papers, while Minna's already gone to the gym, and is now horseback riding. Later on she's going to go to Tavastia to listen to Funk with some girls. It is good at least someone is living it up for the both of us!

I had a great yesterday, so I'm all recharged and happy. I got the Kela thing sorted (they asked for some more information "or else", but I managed to get it, so there! up yours, KELA! Later on in the evening, we went out for supper, proper winin' and dinin'. You can figure out the rest... quality time.

I’m feeling pretty good both physically and mentally. The weather outside is fucking glorious. A walk doesn’t sound like a bad idea at all. I should fix Minna’s bicycle (the rear wheel’s blown). Hmm. I didn't go to work today. But I'll have to make this Saturdays shift up by working both next fri and sat. Oh well - then I'll see how it feels, whether I could stand it for another summer in a row. I think I already know the answer for that. You know, they've given me two weeks to decide if I wish to continue there for the summer or not. I'm pretty certain I'll say thanks but no thanks. I'll find something better. I don't see myself working there for another summer - I need to move on, progress. Maybe it'll happen quicker if I fire myself? Actually, I should let them fire me so that I can get unemployment benefits should I need them. So far, I have still yet to score a summerjob. I'm active and bugging people left and right, something's bound to come my way soon..

Anyway, life is good. Our London lounge lizard, Ali, is coming back to Finland this Sunday. Let’s go for a few beers on Tuesday, Ali? Monday’s hectic for me.

Conor & Jonna had their 1 year engagement anniversiry a while ago, and this picture is devoted to them! Sorry Conor old buddy :)

Easter holiday

Howdy. It's already Tuesday, is it? Geez. Time flies. Quick wrap-up: worked on Saturday, it was very tiresome and boring. Came home, and after a while we went to Maisa's 21 birthday party. It was a comfy affair, with food, wine and music as the main entertainment. On Sunday we cleaned up the apartment and went to Minna's parents for the classic Sunday supper. On Monday I went downtown and picked up three tickets for a Scandinavian Music Group unplugged concert (for me, Minna and my brother). I also Checked out Anttila because I had heard that they had quite a few good DVDs selling for cheap. Kill Bill volumes 1 and 2 were selling for 11€s a pop, not bad. I got myself something else though. Memento for 6€, No Man's land for 12, and finally: Napoleon, for 22€ (yes, that wasn't cheap, but hey - it's over 6 hours long!). I wonder when I'll ever have the time to watch them.

I spent over 7 hours today struggling with Sebbe, we were working on an investments project that's half the grade of the course. What a way to spend the 'holiday'. I've completed 1800 words / 4500 for the English project. Yay! I have a week left to do it. Better start the typing right after I'm done warming up my fingers with this blogpost!

Still no sight of a proper summer job, though I've been turned down from a couple of places. It's looking to be another spectacular summer. Fucking hell. I don't remember being this stressed in a long time. Looking for jobs which are hard to find is the worst, let me tell you. That, plus this totally unnecessary stress regarding schoolwork is getting to me. It's lowering the quality of my life. When did I start to care? Have I grown old? Well, I am turning 25 this year. Maybe that's it. Then again, maybe it isn't. Who is to know? All I know is - I'm on my holiday, but it is near impossible to enjoy it. You're NOT on vacation if you have serious shit to do. Anyone who has ever been worried about getting a career or hell, let's just call it "a job that doesn't fucking blow", must know what I'm going through. I'm sure I could have made it in the IT industry. I have the credentials to show that I can walk the walk. But it just got so boring.

Hell, maybe after I'm done with my current studies, maybe I'll just apply to study History at the University of Helsinki. Now there is a topic that's always been close to my heart. Computer stuff I know, but I don't read computer literature on my free time. History books, I do. I watch programs about it, browse websites... I'm hungry for the stuff. I had a conversation with my schoolmate and upstairs neighbour, Conor, about this. We both noticed that the respective fields that we are studying are not really enough for us to be even remotely interested in the literature. At least, not enough to read that stuff on our own time. For me, that's almost as good as saying I'll never make it in the field. For an example, the guys and girls on the TV show Apprentice or Diili make me want to puke. But then again, reality TV in general does that to me.

I suppose that if you want to be really good at something you should prolly have natural crawing to do so - and some capacity for learning it. Right now I'm basically semi-interested, and am just stuffing all these courses and all this material down my throat. I'm getting through the exams with decent grades, but forgetting most of it inside a few weeks. Economy and how money makes the world go around are still interesting topics to me. But perhaps my real interests lie elsewhere? I originally explained it to myself that it is better to keep history as a hobby, since I didn't like the idea of being forced to read about time periods and people that did not interest me. I don’t see how I figured that it would be more enjoyable to be required to read about shit that didn’t interest me half the time. Go figure! I have to end this rant, as it’s too long and I have to get back to the English Project.

My blood pressure is slightly on the rise, by the way. Is it possible that my body finds stress un-agreeable?

Telegram

Priorities elsewhere. Holiday starting soon. English project dragging behind. Work tomorrow.

Week went by

Hello there. Happy womens day, to those of you who it applies (I guess only one girl's reading this blog.) I've been keeping busy. School sucks as usual, it's taking up most of my time. So far no summerjob, but I've scouted quite a few potential candidates. I may end up working for the city of helsinki, of all places. Let's see what happens. I'm gonna send out a bunch of applications in the next couple of days..

Today was my investment's exam. I'm expecting somewhere between a 2 and a 4. We'll see. Next midterm is Business strategies. Enough of school. I've started reading Peter Englund's Poltava. Seems pretty nice. I've gone through three of his other books, and they've all been absolutely superb. If you ever want to get into the 30 years war & the 1600-1700 era, he's your man.

I bought Minna some tulips, and did the dishes, but ran out of energy and bought a frozen pizza for supper, sorry hon :P It's gonna be another of those busy weeks when it seems that you have no time for anything that you would like to do (outside your compulsory commitments).

I'm looking forward to week twelve, when I'll have a luxurious week's holiday. May it come soon.

Tuesday Whine

It's been great weather for the last week or so, it's really making a difference. It is light after around 7am, and gets dark only around 6pm. Plus it's great to see the sun. Blues skies rule!

On Thursday it was Minna's little brothers 17th birthday, and we went to eat some food downtown. Had 3 beers there. After having finished eating we come home, and Jake calls me up. We go to a nice local joint, Vanha Mestari for some 8-ball (games tied 3-3) and beers. On Friday I was hung-over and having cold chills. I went to my employers health care place and got a day's worth of sick leave for Saturday. I could have just called and agreed with my boss that I wouldn't show for Saturday - but since I was feeling sick I thought I might as well take it as sick leave. We had plans for the weekend, you see.

On Friday evening we set out to Hartola (~200km towards & beyond Lahti), Minna’s aunts cottage. It's a fantastic place and we had a lot of fun on the first evening. Good food and wines, sitting by the fireplace. We walked on ice (lovely frozen lake), and looked at stars. You can't see even 1/10th of them from Helsinki. While on ice, we played tag a little, it's surprisingly funny if you're in a jolly mood..

On Saturday, shit hit the fan. Minna works in kindergarten, with children from ~1-5 years old.
There's been a series of eye infections rampant
there lately. So Minna apparantly received her eye infection from there. She could barely open her eyes since because of the oozing, yellow colored eye secretion making it difficult! After a quick breakfast, Minna's parents took her to a doctor where they gave her some eye drops, which started to help after a few administrations.

Anyway, while they were at the doc’s, I stayed at the cottage and was typing away at my laptop (well, it's borrowed: my brothers work laptop), trying to get the Academic Writing Project rolling... I was feeling sort of weak and chilly. I measured my temperature and had a lovely 38.7'c. I continued typing for about an hour still, drinking hot rum toddy. I only got about a page done.

What a waste!

The rest of the weekend was spent mostly lying in bed, drinking both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks. I grabbed Burana's only before eating, because my appetite isn't the greatest if my temperature’s high.

Yesterday I went to the company healthcare place again, and received a throat culture (throat and tonsils swab). I'm about to call in for the results. It's possible I have a strep throat (forgot to mention it earlier). I'm getting sick of being sick! Fuck this, man. I got so much stuff to do and I can't afford it. It's starting to get so bad, that I'm starting to think of dropping one course. Guess which one? The Academic Writing Project. I'm not throwing in the towel just yet though.

Wish me luck, I'm stressed, pissed off & ill :P

Squashed

I got home a while ago. Played squash with Martti again. Ahh, I whooped him! Close & good games though, especially the last one (I managed to pull a 2-0 out of my ass..). Heheh. Now to other things: nothings changed as far as school goes, I'm still lagging behind on the Academic Writing piece of shit.. no matter, I'll get things rolling tomorrow and on friday. That's the plan, anyway!

A sidenote: Kela's trying to rob me out of ~ €2000. Isn't that sweet of them? But I got the fuckers cornered. I have the proof that will set me free. Basicly the situation is this: they know I made XX'XXX amount of money in 2003. I started my studies in the autumn of that year. They don't know which months those salaries are spread onto. So they try to get back their 4 month's of study aid + the works... But as I said, the situation is under control, now I just have to mail the damn complaint with all the documents that help my case.

By the way, there's nothing quite like having a cold one after squash :P

Over & Out.

Busy times again

ahh crap. I worked both days last weekend. I have tons of stuff to do. School's keeping me busy, I'm lagging a couple of weeks behind on my english project: I'm supposed to type out 5000 words in 'academic style' on some business related topic. It's basicly practice for the final thesis. I'm planning on doing it on business ethics, should be easy enough to bullshit my way out of that one! Then there's projects for quality management, investments and cost management. I also need to prepare a presentation for a Seminar course, and so forth..

So far, I haven't scored as far as summerjobs go. I really have to call some companies up and ask what the hell is wrong with them, if I'm not good enough! :P

Something's wrong with me since I can't be efficient with me studies while I'm home. I do schoolwork best when I'm at school. Maybe it's because there's less distractions there (I sometimes stick around after lectures, and do stuff for a couple of hours).

I've been reading quite a lot lately, finished Troiat's Rasputin, Clostermann's Big Show, and Brown's "Bury my heart at wounded knee".

Apologies for the lack of updates, but I have my priorities - and right now they are elsewhere.

Wednesday wining and dining

Hello again. Yes, I know I've been a bad blogger lately. Apologies.

The workload has been easing up a little now, and life is starting to win again :)
I've been listening to a lot of 'new' music lately, provided by a classmate, Tara. She borrowed me ~10 cds of music from 'up and coming' irish bands. Good stuff, I haven't heard anything new in a long while, and was frankly getting bored of listening to the same old songs over and over again.

I haven't cooked a meal since friday evening. We basicly spent the weekend at mine and Minna's parents - stuffing ourselves. From monday onwards this week's been pretty hectic, and frankly there's been no energy nor interest to do housechores. Today, as it's payday and the studies are starting to release their stranglehold, I think I'll prepare something nice to eat (instead of eating bread and fuits.. or warming something up in the microwave). Minna's coming home from work now, and is gonna stop by Alko for a couple of bottles of wine.

She's later on today going to go to the gym, so I've got time to fix something proper..
Things are starting to brighten up a bit, baby!

Hi

I've been out of steam but steaming on anyway.
The soundtrack to the last few days has been Tool.

"Mention this to me
Mention something, mention anything
Watch the weather change."

I can't believe it

I just typed a whole fucking essay, and then started doing something else... forgot which browser window the damn blog thing was on.... and closed the browser window(s) later on. So there you have it, cruel fate. No update for the whole week, I can't be bothered to type it all again. Let's pretend last week never happened. Now, towards new challenges!

That day of the week again

Went to school at 10am, came home at 7pm. Ouch. I'm doing 42 ECTS this semester, and I bet there will be more days like this to follow. I can't afford to lose time or miss deadlines. Gotta have the discipline to do the work in time - or even ahead of time.. because otherwise the workload will pile up, and it'll get difficult. Anyway, the highlight of the day: I managed to go and play squash at 9pm - I lost 2-0, damn you Martti, you know it coulda gone either way! :P

Quick wrapup of the weekend:

Friday evening: It was most pleasant. We arrived at my parents house and were led straight to the dining table, where we proceeded to eat quite a bit. Me & Jarno (my big brother) had brought over some wine, as we knew our cousin Anne had carried some exquisite danish cheeses with her... The evening progressed, and wine flowed. It was nice to catch up again. We left for home around 1am.

Saturday: I didn't go to work this weekend, as I had other things to do (studying, recharging my batteries). Later on in the evening we had our ex-neighbours (the engineer fellow, who used to live in Connor's apt) housewarming party in Viikki. We stayed there for only around an hour, but it was good times! Our timing was sort of off... and anyway, we had another party to go to. Martti's long-time 'better half', Pia (or is it with two i's?) was having her going-away party. She's going on exchange to lovely Spain, for 6 months, grrr. The party was cool, great punch.. and an excessive number of potentially lesbian floorball players were there (the shame...) We left 'early', and were sleeping by 4am.

On sunday morning Minna went to a gym to do some neck/shoulder exersizes, and then riding, and later on cleaned the corridor! What did I do? I slept, I read, and catched up on some schoolwork - hoo-fucking-ray. Later on we went to M's parents, as seems to be the case almost every other sunday. All was okay untill me & M's dad went to our customary after-supper cigarette. We had the usual smalltalk about weather and all kinds of nice things like that, but after we got back, M's mom was trashing M's little brother's girlfriend (he's 16, she's 18), who had just left the house mid-supper to see a friend. It was like walking to a warzone. I'll not go into any gory details, but let's just say that voices were raised, tears were shed, and there was more than one storming out of the room-kind of thing. I stayed at the dining table and tried to talk & figure out what was going on, but it was difficult and generally speaking the whole thing sucked. What a fucking waste of a sunday evening. We ended up taking M's brother to our place for the night...

And of today, I already typed about. There you have it, folks. I haven't had any time to play HoI2 lately. That is not necessarily a bad thing - there's lots of better ways to spend (I wouldn't say waste, as it is a good game!) ones time. I've found it quite true that when there's lots of stuff to do, time does fly - indeed. Of course, it is presupposed that you do the things that need be done, be they house-, school-, or just regular work.

Screw this, I'm starting to sound old. I feel tired, I'll catch you all later.. got a long day of schooling to go to again, this time from 9.45am to 6pm.

History takes a strange turn

Let's start with the game update, since that's been asked for! Well, it's 1943, and I'm engaged in a two front war. One good thing though, I have the USA in my backpocket, and they will not attack me. I begun my campaign by grabbing Hungary (blitzkrieg style), then Austria with dirty politics , and finally Czechoslovakia (creating Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia + an Independed, Axis Slovakia). Then I tried to appease all the allies and spent a lot of time and money on diplomacy, all the while still of course building my army :P

I managed a huge breakthrough, and got an experimental nuclear reactor going on around late 41, and I if all goes well, should have the a-bomb by 44-45, depends how things go. It would be neat to nuke London and Moscow, buwhahaha :P (as if I have the resources for building two bombs..) Anyway, France is getting pounded hard, I've already got Paris taken. What's left is just the cleanup. I used the proven, dirtyBelgian trick.. Btw. a nasty thing the Russials pulled, they declared war right just a little after I had taken Paris, and are now trying trying to cross the polish border (I went through the Ribbentrop plan)

Also, as soon as I got through & behind the Maginot line, the Italians wanted to join the Axis. I turned them down. They'd get run over by the Brits in Africa and I'd have to go bail them out. And I can't spare Rommel to play around in the sandbox of sahara. We'll see what he can do vs the Russian hordes with 9 divisions of Tiger tanks (which will not run out of oil.)

------- ahem, back to real life

Busy school week. I got 3 papers to do for next week. I canceled tomorrow's work shift. Got other things going on right now. My cousin, Anne has come over from Copenhagen. We are just about to go and see her. It should be a nice evening, and I'll be sure to update later.
Cheers!

Loose

Saturday was pretty neat, I was surprised. Work went by pretty fast. The evening was filled by the following events: sauna, supper and wine & conversation. Today's been pretty alright, I've gotten some things done. I filled out a huge job application to Fortum and put up a little webpage for recruitment purposes, it has just the basic information about me, a picture + a cv. We shall see if I can score a proper job for the summer. I've already sent applications to Wärtsilä, ABB, Nordea and now Fortum. I also emailed a couple of CEO's I know, asking if they'd have any use of me. I will make follow-up calls during the week. You can't trust email to be read. It's too easy to skim & delete.

I think I'll now reward myself by getting absolute immersed in Hearts of Iron 2, perhaps the greatest WW2 simulation/strategy game ever. The game starts in 1936, the buildup. I'm gonna play as germany, with a non-historical strategy in mind. I'm thinking of keeping my belligerence to a minimum, while secretly building a very competetive fighting force that'll be technically at least 2-3 years ahead of any allied technology. I'm gonna scrap the Bismarck & other marine projects (except submarines, maybe) and use the extra resources on tank & fighter research and manufactoring.. of course I'll have to keep my army techs up-to-date as well. I'm not going to occupy Rhineland untill 1940 or so, and let Poland and Czhechoslovakia take it easy while I proceed with the Anschluss, and make a drive to the oilfields in Bulgaria, effectively grabbing Jugoslavia, Romania and Hungary in the same campaign. That should keep me well stocked when the Allies start blocking my ports :) I may give some updates on the game situation during the days/weeks on how I manage. (Anyone out there interested in the "what if's of history?)

Update - 10.37pm

Nothing is as simple as it seems. But neither is it otherwise. I didn't get around to do any HoI2, but instead ended up typing silly little text for school (in swedish), and later reading Leon Goldstein's Nuremberg Interviews, pretty interesting stuff... Gotta love those Nazi bastards spilling their guts out to the psychiatrist author :) Now it's getting late but I still feel like reading the book. I guess you could consider this as getting some backround information, e.g. I won't be appointing Wilhelm Frick as minister of the interior :)

Blues, anyone?

Five days zoomed by. Who gives a shit? Tomorrow, work.

Weekday morning number one

School started. I didn't go. I only had swedish, and I just couldn't be arsed about it. I managed to get a book for that swedish class. I chose Henri Troyat's Rasputin - it's around 200 pages, but well-written in a good style. Why read Astrid Lindgren or some other shit, children's stories? What good is that for language-learning purposes..

Tomorrow I'll be getting down and dirty with Quality Management and Investments. On wednesday I got Business Research Methods and Environmental Engineering. Thursday's it's Environmental again + some swedish. On friday it's just Cost Management. Not a bad period. I still have to finish a paper for Business Ethics, but it's almost done.

I really didn't want my holiday to end, it's a sad story isn't it? Getting back to studies is not so bad, starting the regular saturday shifts at work is. I've been working mostly only sundays for the last few weeks, with double pay. Now it's back to shitty saturdays, with shitty saturday pay. Guess my real worry is about summerjobs.. I'm rather going to starve than go back to where I was last summer. I'll take any pencil-pushing piece of shit office job they put my way. I'll work at a bank, at an insurancy agency, anything, but not that place. Down to earth logistics suck balls! That in my case has meant low-level *but medium pay* warehouse stuff. It was a huge leap down from my years in the IT sector, where the pay was good, and the benefits spectacular.

Today I woke up around 11, had breakfast.. went to the library to pick up the Rasputin book, proceeded to read a bit of it (it's hard) and later on made some chow with Minna. The daily grind, nothing much to write home about. You do your everyday chores and then try to cheer & stimulate yourself by doing something you think you might want to do. Most of the time it works, sometimes it doesn't, and you end up with a light case of the finnish disease, depression.

The modern day man is so busy keeping time and making time. But what's done with the time that's been fought for so hard? It's spent on dicking around doing nothing of any purpose.

Ain't it cool?

Partied out

We had a little party with the neighbours. A group of us (7) begun with blacklight bowling, then came back to our little cellar conference room, ordered some food.... and started drinking! The whole night was free, as it was sponsored by Nuorisoasuntoliitto (the Youth Housing Association.) I remember going to bed around 7.30 in the morning, after eating breakfast.

We woke up a while ago, at 4,15pm. I don't really like living like this. Yesterday was cool, it was fun, but it took away a big chunk out of my sunday. Of course I could have woken up at say noon and made do with a little less sleep.. To make things absolutely clear, I'm not in a bad hangover of any sort. Minna was fine when she got up, but no she's a bit worried that she might not be. We should start heading off to see her parents soon. They're preparing us some food. Let's hope we make it.

Tomorrow, school starts.

On the mend

Hello there. I've been sick the last few days. Some strange flu struck me on sunday, accomppanied by a lovely addition of coughs from hell.

I managed to get outdoors today: first to the post office, to pick up the just arrived new li-ion battery for my digicam, Canon S40. I ordered it from digitarvike. Later on me & Minna went to Arabia's mall, where we shopped for some groceries and did some odd purchases (a 150cm tall mirror) and a flapjack pan :)

Later on today, we're going upstairs to my neighbour Connor's, where my buddies Ville & Ali will also be joining. The evening will consist of drinking (less for me, I'm still not 100%), going to the sauna, and who knows what.. Knowning Connor, there's gonna be lots of listening to Pearl Jam at least!

Minna & her friend Maisa are making Karelian Pies behind me as I'm typing. Let's hope they manage it, as it's supposed to be one of the more difficult types of bread/pie to make.

Link of the day, Dragon Illusion! make sure you watch the video.

January 4th, 2005 already!

Christmas came & went, so did new years? What's new? I can't be bothered to type too much about it, and want to focus on more current issues. I've been reading a lot, and basicly relaxing my holiday of 3 weeks. Have been working on sundays, and drinking perhaps a little too much. Some books I've finished during the past couple of weeks:

- Berlin 1945 - The downfall
- a book on Robespierre by Albert Manfred (in finnish)
- "Kirottu Sota" a WW2 ace biog by Pierre Clostermann (now I just HAVE to get my hands on this)

I'm currenting on page 160 on "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee"
Add on top of those a staggering pile of various comics (including the stellar MAUS) that I borrowed from the library.

My plans for this year? Get a good summerjob, go tour eastern Europe... and try to maintain the decent level of effort that I have been able to exert in my studies. Let's hope this year rocks. I'm looking forward to big, enjoyable, funny things happening in the summer.