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.

Excuses

Christmas is hell, what can I say? I have been busy.

Let's see, on friday: I beat Martti 2-1 in a set of pretty good games. When I got home around 10.30pm, Minna was just getting ready to go party with a friend of her, Anu. As warmup, she had already finished a bottle of wine which we started on earlier (well, I had a small glass only, as I was going to go play squash) during supper. As Anu was running late, she had time to consume 3 warm gloggs laced with 80% vodka. She seemed ok when she left. But things took a bad turn for her when she and Anu + a few others were walking to their club/pub of choice ('System') - and Anu produced a bottle of sparkling wine out of her purse. The girls proceeded to engulf the contents inside a very brief walk of only a few minutes. Minna managed to get into the club, and ordered a cider, and that's just about where the memories start to blur for her.

I was woken up by Minna's call at around 3am (I had work that saturday, my wakup at 6.20.) Luckily the girls had stumbled onto my friend Osku, and he had eventually escorted Minna to a bus homewards.. The problem was, Minna didn't know which bus she was on, or where it was going. And I was trying to figure it out, and she wasn't making any sense, being very much off her chops, seeing her visuals in triple (I'm not joking, it has happened once before) and so forth... Anyway, I kept talking to her as she was getting closer to our place -upon her insistance, mind you- when suddenly I hear a noise as if the phone was dropped, followed by some drunken woman noise (screams, you could call them). I knew she was only a few hundred meters away, so out of bed I went, cursing like a mad sailor, put on my clothes and started on a dashing jog of rescue. I found her almost immediately. The girl was zig-zagging her way as if it was ww2 and she had a few enemy fighter planes behind her. The thing about the screams and all was related to her losing balance and keeling over onto the pavement :P

After this latenight episode I didn't sleep much. I'm lucky if I got even 3 hours in that night.
Woke up at 6.20, had a quick breakfast and went to work. Once there I pulled my shift, and agreed to come work on sunday as well. Got home, ate a little something, and then me and the now sorry hangover-queen of the day proceeded to go pay a visit to my parents. We got home from there 2-3 hours later. I went to bed almost immediately, tired as used up old bastard.

Sunday: woke-up, went to work, got home. Then a little bit of tidying up the place, going to the local shop to buy some foodstuffs, shower and -> ultimately entertaining guests. I had 4 classmates (Carina, Tara, Leena & Ville) + my upstairs neigbour, Connor (he studies at the same school, in industrial management) come over for a nice little get-together. We had a great evening - the atmosphere was warm and pleasant. We had a laugh! Carina has roots in Lebanon, while Tara & Connor are Irish, the rest of us were barefoot finns - lots to talk about..
Party ended around midnight, as some of the participants had work on monday.

Monday: Shopping hell. Minna's work shift got canceled, so we had the whole day for.... you guessed it... christmas shopping! Yayer! We only got to downtown around 12. First thing we did was to get us librarycard's to the University of Helsinki - it's free. Minna needed to get some books for her examinations on Jan 17th.. After that, we visited a million shops and spent plenty of euros. We got together with Minna's sister & brother at Iguana (a bar) and later on spent some time with Minna's friend Hanna, ultimately coming home around 10pm. Same evening still, I started to install the videocard heatsink I purchased recently, but I couldn't get my computer to boot with it. Maybe I was too tired to make a proper effort, because when I took it off the vidcard and attached the old noisy piece-of-shit heatsink+fan combo onto it, the bastard booted as if nothing was wrong with it! I shrugged, went to smoke a much needed stress cigarette (don't you just hate those moments when after installing or putting something together into your computer, you don't hear the damned monitor get signal and make the familiar noise it does when you start the computer - that's when you know you've got trouble!), and read one of my classic late 80's Conan comics and went to bed. Later on I think the only reason it didn't work was that it must have had poor contact with the GPU. Installing the thing was a bitch, you'd need 4 arms or a proper toolbench for it.

Today: Well, nothing much happened today. Highlight: I went to a new library in Arabia (an area of helsinki named after a somewhat famous finnish pottery company of the same name) and got a ton of goodies from there. It'll take plenty of hours to skim through all the books & comics I got from there (mind you, I don't loan Donald Ducks or anything silly like that - I mostly prefer the, ahem, adult themed comics: Milo Manara, Frank Miller, Art Spiegelman etc..) Minna managed to go see her aunt, and to go to a concert in a church with her parents, where they performed Adiemus-style music. I'm sort of glad I missed it :P

There's the update (~1000 words!) - worth the wait!