Work as a result of The Hangover.

Yesterday, thanks to my darling boyfriend, I clocked 3 hours of PAID work time. Basically he was too... ill... to drive himself and do his deliveries so I drove him and coached him to smile nicely and be polite to the customers even though all he wanted to do was hurl...

So it all started Thursday morning! The day was looking pretty busy but I was looking forward to the running around - even without the energy. I got up at 9am. Studied Finnish from 10am to 12pm and then I took a lunch break. This break was rather extended because I figured I wouldn't have much time to laze around later. I watched some TV online and ate lunch. Then around 2:50pm I left to meet a friend. We scouted all the second hand and Asian shops in the area; I spent 40 euros. BUT I bought: a really nice sweater, a soap holder, a candle holder, many spices, ghee, some warm GREEN mittens...and some other stuff... In total, I think we walked about 6 or 7km. I got home at 6pm, exhausted, ate a small dinner and ran out the door at 6:20pm to get to Finnish class... another 1km walking there and back... came home at 8:15pm to Nina, Juha and Juuso. Nina brought her brother's dog over for a visit so Juha could meet him too. They bonded before I got home :)
I ate another small, quick dinner and we rushed out the door to pub quiz... another 700m or so walk. We hung out there until about 11something and then Eeva drove me home. The boys said they'd be going for a drink at Semafori and they wouldn't be long...

I got home, exhausted, read a little, watched some Ugly Betty and went to bed around 12:30am.

3:30am - I am awoken by the sound of ... Juha. Anyway, long story short, I managed to get him to bed.

Okay so one down, one to go... I laid in bed... tossed and turned... Juha snored and his stomach protested the alcohol as it tried to make sense of what had happened... the stomach that is. I got up around 5am to check Facebook. I turned the light on in bed and read a little... before I knew it 7am rolls around and nothing. I felt wide awake. And my day went on from there...

I met Nina and we walked to Sokos together. I was impressively coherent all through the day and didn't even feel tired. I later realized that I have a really regular sleeping schedule and this tends to happen to me a lot. I miss a night of sleep and it's fine. If you start missing more, that's when it gets problematic. I was gone for maybe 3 hours or so. Once I got home I found a half-dead zombie-like version of Juha. He'd apparently tried taking the garbage out and walking around the building a few times to feel better but to no avail. Then around 5:30pm he started getting calls from the primary driver who needed help with his deliveries. Since Juha didn't feel up to driving, I drove and he delivered. We did 5 deliveries in 3 hours... one of them was to his co-worker who was also at the bar before.

I was pretty happy about the whole day's events! I earned the first bit of salary that I'd earned in the past ... well... let's just say over a year [because I worked for free in the summer.] And the money I earned offset my shopping splurge from Thursday! Not to mention I felt like I'd really been needed for something! [Which is a great feeling as you seek employment.]



To add the cherry on top of the cake, we made Indian spiced cauliflower and green beans with rice for dinner! It was absolutely delicious... but maybe could of used a few extra vegetables. We didn't take any pictures though. BUT then for dessert, I used the almond-flour waffles I am so fond of and added berries, banana and cinnamon! Awesome. And yes, there was some late night Yatzee! [note the dice.]

Now I gotta run! Päivi and Anna are coming over for lunch!

Recent inactivity.

So one of the reasons I haven't been blogging much lately, other than my recent passion for cooking, is because I've been generally overwhelmed. I'm not talking culture shock this time, but rather life-overwhelmedness. Days and weeks go by really fast, yet I don't feel like I'm accomplishing a whole lot so I'm trying a new approach.

I want to wake up earlier in the morning. Slowly start rising around 8am instead of 9am... that change can be gradual and I'm not sure if fully recommended since I can barely keep my eyes open around 11pm anymore. I do, however, often make it to midnight!

I want to study Finnish first thing every morning. I've been waking up and eating while I check Facebook and decided, that's just not a good way to start the day. I had emails and messages piling up all over the place and nothing was getting done. I wasn't even blogging because I couldn't be bothered at the time. I think a much better way to start every day is with a couple chapters of Finnish. For example, I did that this morning and here I am! Blogging and taking pictures of soup haha.

I want to start focusing my job hunting efforts into one field. I've been feeling like I'm spread a bit too thin. I have my English tutoring efforts, my applications to recruiting companies, my writing [which is purely for fun right now], my university applications [which are finally more or less done! - I say this because of my one lose end in Montreal], my language school applications... etc... As you can see, this can get quite out of hand. So I've decided to make goals and stick to them and gradually work my way through my top priorities first and then tackle all the other stuff.

And now, my next goal is to eat lunch and watch an episode of House!
Hyvää päivää!

Flavour of the Week!

Ladies and Gentleman,

I'd like to show you the very first soup I've ever made from scratch! It's a cabbage, celery, broccoli, cauliflower, green bean, onion and beef medley of awesomeness. Just thought I'd share the love.

Let me know if you're interested in the recipe. I won't go as far as to post it since I don't expect anyone to run to their kitchens, spoons in hand and make this today haha.

Friday.

You'll have to forgive my tardiness. I'm a little behind on blogging as I've had little energy to do much of anything lately.

Last week, my goal was to get to page 100 of my "From Start to Finnish" language book by Sunday. I proudly reached my goal Saturday afternoon and gave myself Sunday off. Of course, this made for a difficult start on Monday as I felt too tired to study much. But anyways, let's go back to Friday.

On Friday, I attended my very first demonstration. [Yes, this may shock some of you who know me well.] Anne invited me to come along with her and I jumped at the opportunity to try something different and do something useful. The event itself was an anti-fur demonstration. Apparently the fur trade has already been outlawed in the Netherlands and Ireland and the people we walked with wanted the same laws to be put in place in Finland.

Personally, I think the fur trade was useful before synthetic fibers started being used for warmth and I can see why people would be attached to it historically. On the other hand, if you think about it, it's a little useless and causes unnecessary harm [aka. death] to animals and needn't be killed. So although I can't pretend this issue is something I think about on a regular basis, I saw merit in demonstrating against the fur trade and trying to incite some change.

I felt a little funny being there at first. It's really hard for me to separate real protesters from fake ones in my head but this was a challenge I knew I'd sort of have to confront while being there. By fake protesters, I mean people who just like to protest anything. For example, there were individuals at my university who were in favour of abolishing tuition AND the teaching assistants' strike to increase their salaries from $32/hour because this is Canada's lowest TA wage. UNBEARABLE! Those poor starving TAs... and where should the money to fund such wage increases come from if you abolish tuition... Anyway, I didn't mean to get all riled up. But I'm not a big fan of those people... so back to the anti-fur demonstration!
It was really interesting and I really enjoyed myself. I was a little sleepy and Anne felt the same. We were both in dire need of a nap but still, we were given a sign [I wish I had a picture of it] and we marched with it. We were both annoyed at one of the protesters who decided that drinking a beer while demonstrating would be a good idea. I guess Anne and I saw eye-to-eye on what should and shouldn't be done at these things. The march took us up the main street, down a secondary street and in front of a department store which sells fur. Standing in front of that store made for an uncomfortable 10 minutes or so as we chanted "Shame on you Halonen" in Finnish. [Halonen is the name of the store, and incidentally, the Finnish president's last name. But that was only coincidental.] We then headed back to the main square. There were some speeches but we ran home because after over an hour outside, our feet were numb from the cold.

It's hard to really reflect on everything because the demonstration was in Finnish so I couldn't tell how people were feeling. Anne mentioned there was some hostility in the air and people seemed pretty angry. Yet Anne and I both felt that the right approach would be just to smile and inform people, instead of being angry at them. Since everyone was there with friends, we all joined up in little groups and took what we each thought appropriate from the experience, and gave what we thought was appropriate in return. I'm probably not making much sense now and I have half a mind to delete this whole post but I'll keep it anyway.

Point being, if there are any policy changes, they won't be instantaneous but if you hear anything [Anne!] then let me know.


Post-nap, I hung out at home in the evening and then went to see Janne Laurila in concert with Anne! [It was indeed an Anne-filled day!] I was really excited for this show because I'd heard a few songs by him [ok seriously, just one but that day two!] and I liked his style. I was pleasantly surprised when he played a whole set and I enjoyed every single song. I guess it's handy he works at the bar right near my house and plays shows there pretty often. I definitely want to see him again.

That's it for my Friday update. I'll write more later but for now, I have a date with a handsome fellow named Juuso and his owner's sister, Nina.

Randomness.

Finnish people make some pretty funny sounds:
Ai! Ui! Höh! Jeeeeee!

... okay maybe "Ui!" is my own weird noise. But I just wanted to start my post on a random note. And point out the funny sounds that Finnish has, ALTHOUGH all languages have them. It's just hard to be aware of them. But I say all this with love and warmth. <3.


In other news, I need to be employed so... employ me?
Kthx.

I just made some tasty coconut macaroons! And by tasty I mean, they smell good, but I haven't tried eating them yet haha.

Janne Laurila tomorrow following an anti-fur demonstration! [I don't think it's the kind where you throw paint on people or anything haha. I'll keep you posted.]

Narration.

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.

GO CANADA!!

We had a bunch of friends over last night to watch the game and sadly, disturbed our neighbours, who sent us a message at midnight that the rules indicate that quiet time begins at 22 o'clock and old people live in the building. I guess the TV being on max at midnight gave our youth away...

Sid Kitchen attended the party and made blueberry pancakes for everyone! I made raspberry waffles and TOOK PICTURES!


These little almond-flour waffles almost made me jump for joy and cry because they taste soooo good and are so easy to make. I really wish there were more sporting events to bring friends together and get them to cook for one another like we did last night. However, I guess we don't need a sporting event to do that though... we could just make dinner dates haha. But there was something super awesome about yesterday too and it wasn't JUST the fact that Canada won and everyone skipped home :).

In other news, I AM A MEMBER OF SOMETHING IN FINLAND NOW, and that something is the public library. I strolled in there today and they gave me a library card! Just like that! All I had to do was show my passport. And not only that, but the woman let me speak Finnish with her, and translated when I looked confused [even though Juha was there.] Which was really nice, because often they either speak in Finnish with Juha or in English with me. I took out French, English and learning Finnish books and you can extend the 4 week due date online and I'm so excited!!!

In a less exciting turn of events, it seems that I can't get permanent residency right now after all. We went back to the poliisitoimisto today to see whether you can apply if you have sufficient funds to support yourself and the woman told us everything we already knew, and then discouraged us by adding that we can apply if we want to, for a 45e fee, but SHE wouldn't approve such an application. "Työ on paras." [Employment/work is best.] GAHHH! That was annoying. Juha and I both had to put in effort to be nice to her, especially after she made me feel like crap last time I was there. But what can you do? Either way, I hope to receive acceptance to universities soon and THEN I'll go back and be sure that I'll be approved.

After that fine morning, we ate at the uni and ran into MUTUAL FRIENDS! and put up posters everywhere for my tutoring position. I also applied for an internship today that would be my very first choice for a job this summer! [Global company, summer intern, logistics, Tampere-based!] I'll let you know if I hear back. The deadline was March 31st so I'm early on that so it might take awhile to contact candidates.

I think that's it for now. I'm a little brain-dead from learning too many Finnish words today! >.<
... I just hope I can remember them all tomorrow!