28/04/2005

Goodbye neighbour !

We heard great news this week. The spinster next door is going to move away. That suits us well. She is a typical complainer, maybe every house has to have one.
We have lived in our home for 9 months now and the moment we arrived she started to complain about our dog. A dog-hating spinster, that is.

My brother thought that he might be interested in the appartment, but he was too late. It was sold instantly. I think this tells a lot about the area, there are mostly villas and detached houses. No appartment blocks.
I just hope that the new neighbours like dogs...

We were at the cinema yesterday. We went to see the William Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. It was interesting. Shakespeare makes the women rule the world with there wisdom. Men just follow their instincts like animals.

Al Pacino was good. He always seems to play same types of roles. Either he is a gangster or a bitter aging man like in the Scent of the Woman where he played retired colonel.

26/04/2005

Nobel prize winners

So,
today at noon I was in the same room with two Nobel Prize winners here in Helsinki, Finland.
Dr Richard J. Roberts, who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine 1993 for his discovery of split genes, and the winner of the 2000 Nobel Chemistry Prize, Dr Alan J. Heeger. He has done pioneering research in the area of semi-conducting and metallic polymers.

Well, they were nice fellas. I especially liked Dr Heeger's argument that science needs to be more and more interdisciplinary.
They made some brief introductions and we got the opportunity to ask some questions.

25/04/2005

Tea and sympathy

I was doing an interview today. It started like this:

" Do you drink coffee or tea?"
" Tea please, can't drink coffee anymore"
" Same here, stomach has been ruined with all that coffee drinking. I started drinking coffee when I was doing military service. You needed coffee to get up so early."
"I see. You have nice some tea bags here. I shall take Indian spicy"
" Yes, we have a lot of tea drinkers - that's why we have a good selection"

I always drink my tea with milk. Some people find it peculiar, shouldn't it be with lemon slice and honey.

And I can hear the lark somewhere waiting to sing about it... Posted by Hello

April, the cruelest of the months

Went to see old Porvoo (Borgå) today. It's amazing to have an old wooden town so near Helsinki. We went to eat to this snail restaurant the former Miss Finland runs. Quite nice. Food was tasty and chardonnay was excellent.

My dog is dreaming - you can tell, he's very quietly barking and a little bit restless in his sleep. Some dogs run while asleep. Don't know if my dog runs, he doesn't move his legs though.

Spoke with my colleague at work about poetry. Ended up with TS Eliot and C. Aitken. Then I remembered I haven't written any poems here. And I probably wont - my poetry is sort of dead. I rather cite someone else.

.. a car crawls slowly across the plain
in the dim light the radio blares jazz
the heartbroken salesman lights another cigarette..."
-A. Ginsberg-


Would like to have one now. right now. A cigarette, the flaming end.
Miss the tango with alfa. nirvana mornings. Ardilla.

22/04/2005

Between winter and spring

I like Fridays - it does however mean that I have two whole days just for me and my family. It's been nice week at work, but nothing special has happened. The pope was elected and Nokia did good in Q1. That's about it.

Next week I'm going to meet two nobelists. Let's see how that turns out.

Funerals last week went fine. I found out that my husband's grandmother used to write columns in some newspapers. I wonder why I haven't heard about it before. I knew she was very artistic and painted, but I didn't know about her literary hobbies. I never met her, because she died in 1970's.

The spring time is amazing - it's like the stock markets this week, very volatile.
Last weekend we had about 15 degrees celsius and the sun was shining and then suddenly few days ago the wind started blowing from North Pole and we had snow. I'm worried how my violets will do.

15/04/2005

How much do you really need?

A big gardening weekend ahead. I'm going to do a new flower bed and I need some new sacks of soil suitable for planting. Yesterday I bought some fertilizer, but how much of it do you really need? Well, let's wait and see. I'm so beginner in this.

Funerals is another issue this weekend. My husbands great uncle is being buried on Saturday. He was an auctioneer.

Even though my hobby is genealogy (family research) I haven't done much research of the family of my husband's father. The other part of the family comes from the region of Päijät-Häme and the other part of the family comes from Carelia which was lost in war with Russia in 1944.

Saturday evening I'm going to a concert. My brother sings in a choir.

10/04/2005

Gardening

I bought some seeds today. It's nice to know I have a sea of flowers during the summer. I'm not a perfect gardener, but I try my best.
My absolute favourite is a yellow day lily.

I also like some old Finnish perennials. And of course dark red roses.
The next thing I would like to buy for my garden is clematis.

07/04/2005


Alajokimaisemaa Ilmajoelta kesällä 2004 Posted by Hello

06/04/2005

Spring dust and dog don't fit well together

Helsinki is full of dust, sand and dirt this time of the year. And I have a dog with long and thick fur. You can imagine how that effects your cleaning standards.
I was just vacuum cleaning the sand from the floor where he uses to sleep. It was like a sand box.

Street dust is a typical problem in Finnish towns in early spring - this is because the are using salt and sand in winter time to prevent accidents in icy streets.

05/04/2005

Working girl

It's over 5 o'clock and I'm having trouble leaving work and heading home. I don't know why. I have a nice home.

Maybe it's the journey I don't like, or the fact that I should start cleaning my windows. Maybe I just like hanging here in office atmosphere. Does anybody else have the same problem?

Somebody told be today that I always seem so content with my work.
It doesn't give me a big amount of joy - and at times it can be stressing.
Perhaps I'm just a type of person who is content and satisfied where ever I'm working.

I remember when I was working at the post office while studying - I was happy there as well, even though they didn't pay well and there was much routine.

Someone could say it's lack of ambition or resistance towards any changes.

"Tread softly for she is near under the snow
Speak gently for she can hear your daisies grow...
... She was lily like and white as snow
Never knew she was a woman so sweetly she grew"

- Oscar Wilde-

17th century


So,
I spend my day in 17th century world. Archives were silent and the time was flying. Handwriting in old documents was quite beautiful - yet hard to comprehend. Try yourself to read German script or fraktura which was used in Finnish documents as well. It's not an easy job, even though it gives a huge amount of pleasure. I don't really see any difference in 17th century and 18th century texts. It's more up to the personal style of the clerks and vicars. Of course you can think that I am

Mad as a hatter...

Morrisonin Easy Ride

... ja sieltä löytyy myös se morrisonismi eli Coda Queen. Siitä voi olla sitten montaa mieltä, että miten se sopii allekirjoittaneelle.

"Coda queen now be my bride
Rage in darkness by my side
Seize the summer in your pride
Take the winter in your stride,
let's ride"

Maanantai



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