Sporty Sunday and Starbucks

Today has been such a typical Sunday; a bit of basketball and a lot of yawning (not in any way related). Food, Starbucks and a walk. Now, at 7 pm, I am more than ready for bed but will try to make some sports of my own.

It's the last day of November, possibly the worst month of the year, woo! It´s so cold, dark and generally tiring that things can only get better (and lighter, and warmer...)



Things to do for next week:

send an e-mail to uni: it´s actually a scandal that ManU graduates have to pay for their transcripts after contributing to the uni budget with x-000 pounds, but sometimes you have no choice.

go the swimming pool + get things needed for swimming: goggles, hat + flipflops.

send christmas cards...

... and that´s it, not a very exhausting week in other words.

Photos here and here

Just an Ordinary Girl

She´s walking down the street, all covered up in teddy-fur and with a kettle in her hand. A little smile is playing on her lips as she thinks of christmas trees and other plesures of life. Suddenly her subconsciousness catches a glimpse of something in a window to her left and she stops as if hit by lightning....



... it is love!

Photo

Printing Oaves

The other day I was translating a quote for printing machinery when the word pummel came up. The more general meaning for this Dutch word can be found below, so just imagine my frustration when trying to figure it out in printing terms.

suomi (Finnish)	köntys, moukka, pölhö, pöljä, pölkkypää, pöllö, pölvästi, tollo, tolvana, tomppeli, tonttu
englanti (English)	boor, lout, oaf
espanja (Spanish)	patán m, zoquete
hollanti (Dutch)	pummel
italia (Italian)	bietolone, bifolco m
latvia (Latvian)	amurgalva, cietpauris, lempis, muļķis, rupjš cilveks, stulbenis, tevinš
liettua (Lithuanian)	bukagalvis, mulkis, mužikas, stuobrys
norja (Norwegian)	dust, klossmajor, tølper
portugali (Portuguese)	boboca, burro, imbecil, louco, palerma
puola (Polish)	cham, cymbal, duren, gbur, niezdara, przygłup, tuman
ranska (French)	balourd, balourde, rustre m
ruotsi (Swedish)	bondlurk, drummel, fåne, tölp
saksa (German)	Dummkopf m, Flegel m, Tölpel m
slovakki (Slovak)	hlupák, neokrôchanec, trúba
tanska (Danish)	klodrin, tølper
turkki (Turkish)	ahmak, aptal, aptal kimse
unkari (Hungarian)	bunkó, mafla, mamlasz, tökfeju
venäjä (Russian)	болван, дуралей, неуклюжий человек, тупица, хам
viro (Estonian)	molkus

Pummel is a test which is made to measure the adhesionn between PVB and glass. Who would have guessed...

Christmas Tea

Autumn and winter are definitely the best seasons for a piping hot cup of tea (it would also be nice to be drinking it while watching the snow slowly falling outside, covering everything in white...). It is also this time of the year that christmas-related products start popping up wherever you go.
Admittedly, the green Christmas tea from the Tea Shop* does manage to increase the Christmas feeling, it smells delicious, and the taste is not too bad either(could be a bit stronger)**. I would inform you about the ingredients (it is in an infusion of green tea, almonds... and a lot of other things), but unfortunately the webpage does not work properly.

* it took a fellow Scandinavian to attempt to change the lousy tea culture in this country.
** using a 20-year-old microwave for brewing tea will not guarantee the best taste possible.

Rambling About the Mind

Since finishing Haruki Murakami´s masterpiece (well, one of them), Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, I have been pondering upon the wonderful doings of the mind. What we have in our head is fantastic; it allows to create our own realities, in which we all live, within a greater reality that is shared by all of us. It ensures that we dream at night, and daydream during the day. We can remember past joys and suffering, we can plan for tomorrow. And maybe most importantly, we can feel. Not in an instinctive way, but with the mind. In other words, we can feel in colours. Passion is red, hatred is black. Love is pink and tiredness is grey. Happiness is yellow, and sadness misty blue. All in all, the mind is what makes us human, i.e. what makes us different from animals. This abstract construction made by our brains dictates our lives; how we behave, how we understand things, the way we love and hate.

This way to look at the mind poses some difficulties, though. If the mind dictates everything we do, does what we call the free will actually exist? Can criminals be accountable for their crimes? They could always refer to their mind being uncontrollable. Or it might even be the perfect excuse for a perfectly “normal” person to go out of their mind. And what does it consist of? Lots of DNA? Things we have learnt from our social surroundings?

I do not have any answers, but if anyone else does, I’d really like to hear your ideas and opinions.

Road to Success

To succeed in whatever you are doing you only need two things:

The right approach to the problem: know what you want, figure out how to get there and work hard. And never ever give up.

The ability to focus. Have a clear image of what it really is that you are trying to accomplish.

Food to Make You Happy

According to the Finnish wannabe-tabloid Iltalehti, research has proven that some types of food make you happier than others. Does eating chocoloate to drown your sorrows sound familiar? Or stuffing your mouth full of pizza to make that evil little voice in your head to shut up? Be happy, you are not alone.

Happy comfort foods include
-ice cream
-chocolate
-pizza
-spaghetti

Unhappy food (eating this stuff will make you cry, so don´t even try)
- avocado
- soy
- tofu
- salmon

Let´s make some completely headless conclusions based on this utterly important research.

- Italian people should be by far happier than the Japanese.
- This is why unhappy people gain weight. Just imagine the following scenario "I just got dumped by the love of my life, give me some avocado". Likely? Well, not exactly.

Helsinki Here We Are

Here we are in the middle of stormy Helsinki! It´s been a good day today, I really like the city (one of my all time favourites) and we have been doing interesting things, too.

The plan for tomorrow is to learn more about nanotechnology, go for a big cup of tea and eat sushi. If I´m lucky, I´ll have enough time to find a Russian scarf too.

Apart from this, I don´t really have a lot on my mind, other than... zzz. I´ll skim through a magazine I bought today, after which I will sleep like a baby.

Choco Tea

Yogi has a tastyyy tea named Choco tea, and just as the name indicates, it does indeed have a nice flavour of chocolate. Other spices include vanilla and cinnamon. Can a mix like this be anything but delicious? Well, the first time I drank it, the taste was a bit strange... but little by little I got used to it, and now it´s part of my lunch – replacing other sweets as dessert.

Me Me Me

We all have our own quirky habits that make us special, unique and sometimes a bit strange.


1) I have a strage fascination with the sky and clouds. Really, I slept through geography so I wouldn't really be able to explain to you what clouds we are talking about but still... you don't really need to talk about them, just watch.

2) I am not able to do anything if I have someone standing behind me, looking at what I am doing. I once told off one of my maths teachers, and god forbid that a workmate is standing there. Just. Can't. Function.

3) I would love to be mascot that's messing around at sports event. Hiding in a hideous custome, I could do all sorts of crazy things that I would not do otherwise.

4) There is no language that I speak without a foreign accent. When I speak any of my two mother tongues, I sound like someone from the other country... It's quite sad, not being able to be part of a certain community 100% because of linguistic differences, but at the same time quite funny. Nobody has ever been able to tell which country I come from.

5) My eyes are strange, but apparently in a good way. At least they have earned me a lot of compliments, which have not been the typical "I love your eyes". Yesterday my optician told me that it is interesting to examine them because my pupils are so huge,

Right Now

... drink: green tea '+ vitamines
...listening to Fernando Alonso
...feeling: stomach ache + nervous for tomorrow
...looking at: sunset
...done today: read a book
... wish: attack my boyfriend who looks very yummy
...mood: could be worse, a bit naughty

I Need, I Want...

As a typical woman, there are millions of things that I believe I need, or just want...

Clothes
- jeans. Preferaby light blue, tight but not skinny and without any frills or holes or glitter. Actually I´ve seen a pair at Topshop.co.uk but am not sure that I dare to buy something online without having tried it on first. Besides, finding the right jeans is always tricky.

- "lounge wear". I refuse to turn myself into a slouchy housewife type (something I realised this morning when seeing myself in the mirror). It'd be so amazing pretty and sexy stuff to walk around in at home. The only problem is that our flat reminds more of a fridge than anything else. And has "warm" and "sexy" EVER been mentioned in the same sentence?

- cardigans. This is a must as layering can be very useful in this country, which is supposed to be warm but really isn't at this time of the year.

- leopard shoes with a bit of red or black. These are so typical, but how come there are nowhere to be found?

- lots of overknee socks. Have an addiction.


Beauty stuff

- hair straightener, even if it might end up hidden somewhere, only to be used once a year or so.

- YSl highlighter. Because it works...

- An eye-liner. Recommendations, please...



To the kitchen

-scales for food.

- a kettle: we didn't need to buy anything when moving into this flat, which means that everything, including the microwave, is from the past century. And really, I do not want to spend five minutes heating a cup of tea.

-teapot... teaparty, anyone?


Randoms

- something colourful for the livingroom. It´s brown, black and white. Not boring but adaptable.

Lazy Days

After practically throwing people out of our flat at 4 am, our halloween party ended and we could fall into bed. The party itself wasn't such a disaster- we even had two pumpkins. There might be pictures coming later.

Today feels like Sunday, and as any typical Sunday, we have done absolutely nothing. An episode of X-files, searching for books at Amazon and clothes at Topshop.

The rest of the day will be about wathicng footie, making soup and reading in the sofa.