It's funny... I realized today that as I go through each day and events occur to me, I narrate them in my head as if life were a book. I'm not going to compare my life to a movie nor a TV series, because let's face it, people wouldn't stay tuned in for very long, but I think inside my head there might just be a book hanging out in there somewhere. So after being awake for 8 hours today, this is what I've composed so far...
I woke up at 9am this morning, a little groggy but nothing too serious. I started my morning routine much like any other day: bathroom, make coffee, stir yogurt, check Facebook, etc. Juha got up at the same time and started his own routine: bathroom, check Aamulehti [lit. translation is Morning Paper], drink coffee, eat breakfast, etc. He looked up from his computer at one point to announce that today is supposed to be slippery. Instinctively I told him to drive carefully.
My morning was a little boring but that boredom was necessary to complete some university applications. I had to write something called a degree supplement... basically, European schools are supposed to write this for you so you can send it to schools you apply to after you graduate. Since McGill is not a European school, I had to write my own and ask someone to sign and stamp it. The purpose of the whole thing is to describe the context of the education system in your country and the nature of the degree, program, its structure... etc. I thought it would take me the entire day but it turns out, it wasn't so hard. It just involved some copy+pasting from the McGill website and some linking information. I even found an awesome chart for the Canadian Education system that made me really happy!
Click here to see this magical chart which won't actually impress you much.After finishing the supplement, eating lunch, watching an episode of Secret Diary of a Call Girl, eating a snack and studying some Finnish, I headed to the university to print off all my application documents and photocopy my passport. Just as I was walking down this little hill on my way, I thought about how I haven't updated my blog. As if by pure coincidence, at that very moment I find myself sliding down this aforementioned hill smack on my butt and I can actually feel the wetness through my pants. Last time I fell, I felt embarrassed. This time I just felt annoyed. I brushed all the snow I could feel off and headed along. So much for driving carefully - try walking carefully when a thin layer of snow covers huge ice patches formed by the recent BLAH weather. This brings me to a new point about Finnish weather, after all the beautiful snow has installed itself all over the city, it has to go somewhere when the weather gets warmer. Since the sewage system can only take so much, once we start dancing around the zero degree mark, we also have to start dancing around pond-sized puddles and deep slush. This exercise and bit of extra caution tends to put people in a bad mood. Understandably since I don't think anyone likes to have their feet wet.
I made it to the university unscathed by any more ice patches, met Juha, printed all my documents and turned them in at the near-by post office. It feels SO good to finally have three-quarters of my applications handed in! Of course, I still need to provide them with proof that I did actually graduate, but I won't be getting my diploma until June 2nd anyway so no point worrying about that. What I am worrying about is my progress in Finnish. I've been learning a ton of words lately but honestly, who wants to discuss how wide, narrow, fat, skinny, long, short, etc, etc, a book, person or day can be? How about food in general? [as if I don't do that enough] Or even the weather... yes, I now am armed with at least a dozen adjectives that relate to weather, seasons and more! So yeah, I learned all those words and many more, but I don't really have active use for them at the moment. I could write some stuff on here but that would involve BEARING my soul to you all AND boring you to death. So for now, I'll just keep doing what I'm doing.
The forward was written by Kurt Vonnegut and that's what originally caught my eye. The book is more or less a memoir of Lee Stringer's life on the street, which lasted about 10 years, and his transition from crack addict to writing addict. I, for some reason, take an interest in reading about addictions and I found this novel so much more refreshing than other seemingly-similar memoirs.
While James Frey evoked some really unpleasant feelings in his readers, Lee Stringer didn't attempt any of that. He describes his experiences with a nonchalant attitude that doesn't make anyone feel bad. He embraces his freedom from rent and taxes, even when life gets a little harder. He recounts tougher experiences with thoughts that don't exactly show a desire to be free of his addition and these feel honest. Nonetheless, Lee did clean up in the end and this collection of tales is proof of that.