It’s been a while, a week and a day to be exact, since my last entry, although I’m going crazy on Twitter. Follow me there guys. Srsly. I think it’s the summery warmth that has struck me with a slightly lethargic disposition when it comes to blogging. However, for you reading pleasure, let me pick up where I left off last time.

Temperatures are soaring in Vaasa. Even though we’ve had some rain the thermometers have shown temperatures above 20° C/68° F for a week now. As a realist and borderline pessimist I of course prepared each day for colder weather to come, I live in Finland after all, and as it turns out today it looks like we won’t be going above 20 anymore, for a while at least. I definitely enjoyed the warmth fully as long as it lasted though.

Last Friday I spent the afternoon and evening with my friend Katriina. Starting with a visit to a few stores in the center of town we made our way to the post office and carried a rather heavy package home to Katriina’s new apartment in Olympia. What was in the package? A dancing pole. Yeah you heard me. Naturally we continued by assembling the pole and I must say we did a pretty good job. The pole assembling took about an hour, and as we both were very hungry we decided to go and have some pizza. This was my second visit Illyrian´s Restaurant & Coffeebar. You find it on Rauhankatu 16 and I recommend it warmly. The pizza was topped off with some soft ice cream, after which I made my way home in the rain at 8 p.m. … and I didn’t even get cold! This was only the start of the nice weather we’ve been having the past week.

On Saturday I headed to the grocery store with John, Sanni, and Janne. The others gathered stuff for the grilling that evening, while I hustled around the store fetching ingredients for the upcoming Sunday dinner. After the grocery shopping, with John acting like a teenage hooligan in the beer aisle and whatnot, we made our way (after some stops here and there) to the camping site where we put on the sauna and started the BBQ. We were a bit unlucky with the weather though. It was a bit chillier by the sea than in town, and me and Sanni got a total of about 10 minutes of tanning because of the clouds and later on even small showers of rain. It was however a good BBQ and fun day spent with friends. After we were done at the camping site we dropped off Sanni as she had work in the evening while me, John, and Janne still went for some ice cream. After the ice cream Janne was too tired to go on and drove home. I stayed at John’s apartment, where also Juulia joined us, to watch the movie It’s Complicated (2009). It turned out both John and Juulia had already seen the movie, but I guess they were fine with watching it a second time. Somewhere around midnight I made my way home. John was nice enough to follow me home by taking Lupe on late night walk at the same time.

On Sunday it was once more time for Sunday dinner. Before I went to John’s place I prepared the dinner by baking the chocolate cake. I don’t know why but everyone seemed to be in a slightly bad mood. I’m sure we all got over it though after the delicious ginger pork (豚の生姜焼き/ぶたのしょうがやき/buta no shôgayaki) I whipped up with a little help from everyone else. The chocolate icing was put onto the cake and eaten with great delight after the ginger pork. I think I’m still looking for that perfect chocolate cake recipe though. One day, one day…

On Monday it was time to start cleaning the camping site reception. It feels like we carried out tons of old papers and brochures, not to mention all the other old stuff that had piled up over the years. I continued the cleaning on Tuesday, this time arranging the last storage room, cleaning the floors, and wiping away some dust. I think the rest can be done after we open the camping site, perhaps by someone else than me as well. In the evening I joined John and Janne for a round of minigolf, as the keeper of the points of course.

On both Monday and Tuesday I had had grand plans on going to the beach to lay in the sun for a while, but it was not until Wednesday I finally managed to drag my butt to the beach without any interventions by for example the heavy rain and thunder storm on Tuesday. Later on a group of couch surfers arrived to the camping site’s beach/sauna, and as I wasn’t in a particularly sociable mood I stuck around long enough to devour a grilled sausage and then rode my bike back home.

Yesterday our class had it supposedly last speaking class at school. After class we however found out we were supposed to have two classes more. Didn’t matter much to me though, my work starts next Monday and I won’t have time for school anymore. After class I made my way to Amarillo with Janne, Timo, Jetro, Miikka, and Katriina, where I had a delicious (and very hot) Habanero burger. My recent craving for hot food has not faded, it seems. After lunch/dinner the group split up for a short while and met up again on Räätälinsaari (for future reference, Jetro…), where we enjoyed the sun albeit the cold wind, and played a game called Rappakalja. As it was starting to get too chilly we made our way to the park by the orthodox church, where we all (at least tried) to play footbag. My last stop was Katriinas apartment in Olympia. At about midnight I split from the group (apparently they made their way to some bar) and walked home.

Now how’s that for documenting my life. Maybe I’ll try to write shorter and more humorous blog entries more often for the rest of you to enjoy.

To break away from the routine some me, John, Sanni, and Janne (and Lupe) had a Tuesday-dinner, at my place! This of course meant I had to do some extra cleaning before the guests arrived. Fair enough, It was neither that messy nor dirty in my apartment, but I sure found things to do anyway. I vacuumed, cleaned the kitchen and bathroom, took out the trash, carried two chairs and a table up from the basement storage room to the balcony and wiped them clean, and arrange all my clothes that were lying around as well as all papers. Whew!

When my guests finally arrived at 5 p.m. -ish we started cooking the salad, rice, and most importantly of all – the tonkatsu! Mmm, delicious. After dinner we toured the camping site some, where Lupe got to run around for a while. It was of course not as easy to get her back on the leash and into the car. After we dropped off Sanni we continued our raid at John’s place, where we watched a movie called Edge of Darkness. The beginning of the movie was good, but when the main character’s (Mel Gibson) daughter (Bojana Novacovic) was shot my initial though was “Wait, what? So he’s just going to hunt down her killer for the rest of the movie?“. Yes, that’s exactly what he’s going to do. Lame.

Summer seems to have made an early start in Vaasa. From what seemed to have the potential to become a new ice age, as it snowed in Vaasa as late as April 27th, has no become the most wonderful weather prognosis we have had in May in a long time. Sure, there is some rain in there, but heck, if it’s going to be +20° C or above the next five days I haven’t got a thing to complain about!

Now how about some Imogen Heap?

Today was the last part of the raku ceramics course I have been attending since late March – the firing. I made my way to the course center at 10 a.m. in the morning. 10 a.m. on a Saturday, really? Yeah, really. At the course center I packed the stuff I had made, an elephant, nine hashioki, and a sort of lame incense holder. Then we made our way to a cottage called Pohjanpirtti by the sea close to town. The venue was really beautiful, as was the weather, but the ocean view was perhaps not the nicest as the cottage faces Vaasa harbor. Three very simple kilns were set up and the firing process could begin. While we waited for the glaze to melt we set up a small picnic of sort, where everyone contributed with some type of food.

At the beginning we had some trouble with the kilns, as the temperature didn’t seem to rise up properly, so there was a lot of waiting and wondering. In other words the perfect opportunity for me to enjoy the sun for a while. Yay, I have a microscopic tan! As the glaze finally started to melt it was time to get busy. The items were removed and placed into big tins and barrels containing saw dust. The idea is to provide a reducing atmosphere for the glaze and stain the exposed areas with carbon. Then the items are placed in cold water to create a fast reduction in temperature and create a crackle onto the glaze. We also put a lot of items into a heap of snow on the yard. Yeah, you can still find snow here and there!

The most interesting part of the process was finally washing the items, revealing the final product. The originally green glazes had mostly turned into shades or red and copper and the beautiful crackle pattern was especially visible on the white glaze.

The most anticipated piece of them all, my elephant! In some areas the glaze got really bubbly, but I guess that’s the beauty of it. Rustic and very wabi-sabi. The colors of the glaze vary from white to shiny copper, maroon, dark red, and even bright orange.

I particularly liked the color and crackle detail on the ear.

The hashioki turned out really nice as well.

When I came home I washed all my items carefully, revealing the final details. Especially the hashioki had more crackle than I has expected. Summa sumarum I had a really great day and I hope I get to make raku again someday! Right now I feel like I’m living in a cloud of smoke though, the smell really sticks to your hair. Maybe I should take a shower, or is smokey hair sexy in that outdoors-y kind of way?

Not that I speak any Spanish, but I hard lots of it on Sunday. John speaks it, Minttu has spent time in Chile and studied Spanish, and Juan… well, Juan is from Spain… sooo yeah. On top of it all our Sunday dinner consisted of authentic Spanish tacos. We even made the tortilla break (flour and corn) from scratch. As dessert we had delicious funnel cakes, and the rest of the evening was spent on me kicking everyone’s asses at Lips (the xbox singing game), great fun! Since I didn’t blog about the previous Sunday dinner I feel obliged to inform you all we had spring rolls (again) on April 25th. We also made a dipping sauce for the spring rolls, and some fried rice. Oh and then waffles for dessert, om nom nom. I wonder what next week will bring.

Yesterday was spent at Jetro‘s apartment being generally lazy. We made カレーライス (Japanese curry with rice), played cards, watched TV, and just talked about whatever. Today I met up with Jetro again, this time in town, to find him a new pair of glasses! I had a feeling I wouldn’t know the first thing about what suited him, or how to act as a proper style judge, but I think I really aced it! I guess the general public won’t be able to see Jetro with his new glasses until he comes back from his trip to Switzerland, but I’m telling you, he’ll look awesome!

When I came back home yesterday evening/night I was also met by a pretty positive surprise. A while back I created a twitter account, which I have only been mildly active on, to add a more frequently updated feature to my home page. Some time ago I got my first – and only – steady follower, Meryl ORourke, a British “stand up, journalist, comedy writer, broadcaster and all round media tart” as she describes herself. Now, I don’t personally know Meryl and I have no idea why she started following me, but I dedicated my 50th tweet to her anyway. This lead to Meryl asking her followers to follow me, and eleven of them actually did. So here I am with twelve followers in total, may there be many more to come and a huge thanks to Meryl for being totally awesome!

Now then, how about I make myself some dinner, since I finally managed to buy some groceries today.

Yeah, I got lazy with the movie reviews, which made me think I deserve a royal ass whooping. Hence I started to write down all the titles of the movies I saw and this, my dear ladies and gentlemen, is a list with tiny commentary of all the movies I have watched starting from December 2009 to April 2010. Enjoy! Possible-spoilers ahoy!

◯◯一 $5 a Day (2008)
◯◯◯ A quite pointless movie, so pointless in fact I don’t know why they even filmed it.
◯◯二 9 (2009)
◯◯◯ 3D-animation goes emo.
◯◯三 Adam (2009)
◯◯◯ Actually gave an interesting view of Asperger syndrome… assburger, hehe.
◯◯四 Astro Boy (2009)
◯◯◯ The Americans raped Tezuka Osamu, and I was too old for this movie, but it was pretty okay anyway.
◯◯五 Avatar (2009)
◯◯◯ Space Pocahontas. Amazing animation, for all other purposes watch the Disney version.
◯◯六 Be With You (いま、会いにゆきます, Ima, Ai ni Yukimasu) (2004)
◯◯◯ Mellow Japanese movie, sort of cute, sort of lame.
◯◯七 Blind Side, The (2009)
◯◯◯ So Sandra Bullock finally got her Oscar eh? Yeah I don’t get it.
◯◯八 Can’t Buy Me Love (1987)
◯◯◯ Patrick Dempsey – Not even cute as a kid.
◯◯九 Christmas Tale, A (Un conte de Noël) (2009)
◯◯◯ Un film mauvaise. Oo look I still know some french.
◯◯十 Clash of the Titans (2010)
◯◯◯ LotR + Avatar + Greek Mythology – Awesomeness = Clash of the Titans
◯十一 Complete History of My Sexual Failures, A (2008)
◯◯◯ A documentary lacking any sort of intelligible conclusion.
◯十二 Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009)
◯◯◯ Definitely the best animation of 2009, funny and original!
◯十三 Couples Retreat (2009)
◯◯◯ Just another Hollywood comedy, don’t waste your breath.
◯十四 Crazy/Beautiful (2001)
◯◯◯ Interesting movie as far as themes and human relationships go.
◯十五 Defendor (2009)
◯◯◯ Decent entertainment, a let-down as far as the ending goes.
◯十六 Down in the Valley (2005)
◯◯◯ A very interesting plot, but an even more rushed and let-down ending than in Defendor.
◯十七 Education, An (2009)
◯◯◯ Girl goes to school, girl meets guy and leaves school, guy leaves girl, girl gets back to school. That’s it.
◯十八 A Hole in My Heart (Ett hål i mitt hjärta) (2004)
◯◯◯ A movie by Lukas Moodysson… just… no.
◯十九 Extract (2009)
◯◯◯ A light comedy, nothing special, but still watchable.
◯二十 Final Destination, The (2009)
◯◯◯ Thank God they put an end to all destinations. Too bad they did it with a shitty movie.
二十一 The Girl Who Played with Fire (Flickan som lekte med elden) (2009)
◯◯◯ Sadly a let-down in comparison to the first movie of the trilogy.
二十二 Gozu (極道恐怖大劇場 牛頭 ＧＯＺＵ, Gokudô kyôfu dai-gekijô: Gozu) (2003)
◯◯◯ Miike Takashi is one crazy bastard.
二十三 Hana-bi (はなび, HANA-BI) (1997)
◯◯◯ I much prefer Kitano Takeshi when he isn’t depressed out of his mind.
二十四 Happiness of the Katakuris, The (カタクリ家の幸福, Katakuri-ke no Kôfuku) (2001)
◯◯◯ I repeat, Miike Takashi is one crazy bastard.
二十五 How to Train Your Dragon (2010)
◯◯◯ A great animation movie to start off 2010 with, loved the dragons!
二十六 I’m a Cyborg, but that’s Okay (싸이보그지만 괜찮아, Saibogujiman kwenchana) (2006)
◯◯◯ The title pretty much says it all already.
二十七 I Love You, Beth Cooper (2009)
◯◯◯ Horrible high school comedy, beware.
二十ハ Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, The (2009)
◯◯◯ Too bad Heath Ledger’s last had to be labeled with “crazy”.
二十九 Invention of Lying, The (2009)
◯◯◯ A very refreshing plot and story with that bleak British comedy.
◯三十 Inglorious Basterds (2009)
◯◯◯ Tarantino was clearly not on his A-game and experienced severe American nazi-angst.
三十一 Kick-Ass (2010)
◯◯◯ A good, but definitely not kick-ass movie. Great acting.
三十二 Knocked Up (2007)
◯◯◯ I avoided this movie for so long because I can’t stand Katherine Heigl. It was pretty funny though.
三十三 Law Abiding Citizen (2009)
◯◯◯ Action movies tend to numb your brains out at some point, this one didn’t! Woo!
三十四 Love Exposure (愛のむきだし, Ai no Mukidashi) (2008)
◯◯◯ Four hours of painful Japanese kind of crazy. Not good.
三十五 The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (Luftslottet som sprängdes)(2009)
◯◯◯ The high of the first part of the trilogy kept me going, but I still got disappointed.
三十六 Men who Stare at Goats, The (2009)
◯◯◯ This movie had so much potential, but it delivered absolutely nothing.
三十七 Paranormal Activity (2007)
◯◯◯ I don’t like scary movies, but this one still tingles my brain when I think about it!
三十ハ Passion of Mind (2000)
◯◯◯ One of those movies that tries to be all psychological, cool, n’shit, but fails.
三十九 Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010)
◯◯◯ Why are the Greek Gods in the States? Sense. This movie makes none.
◯四十 Perfume: The Story of Murderer (2006)
◯◯◯ A movie I would possibly consider calling aesthetically pleasing. Go figure.
四十一 Post Grad (2009)
◯◯◯ Probably crap according to all standards, but I like this sort of happy go lucky college stuff.
四十二 Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (2009)
◯◯◯ Good movie, but I can’t say i was very moved by it.
四十三 Hush Little Baby (Se Min Kjole) (2009)
◯◯◯ Lots of angst and lots of clichés.
四十四 Sex is Zero (색즉시공, Saekjeuk Shigong) (2002)
◯◯◯ I lack experience in Korean college movies, but if they are all this bad…
四十五 Sherlock Holmes (2009)
◯◯◯ Decent entertainment value at least, as one would expect from Guy Ritchie gone Hollywood.
四十六 She’s the Man (2006)
◯◯◯ An alright teen comedy with the ever-so-predictable plot.
四十七 Shutter Island (2009)
◯◯◯ Not the most successful attempt at realistic mystery, but I suppose they were aiming for confusion.
四十ハ Somersault (2004)
◯◯◯ The naive and IQ-lacking main character made me cringe through the entire movie.
四十九 Sorority Row (2009)
◯◯◯ Just another one of those crappy “scary” movies.
◯五十 Thirst (박쥐, Bakjwi) (2009)
◯◯◯ Korean vampire movie, pretty interesting if compared to the western standard.
五十一 New Moon (2009)
◯◯◯ I wish death upon every Twilight-fan on the globe.
五十二 Virgin Territory (2007)
◯◯◯ A horrible modern adaptation of Boccaccio’s Decamerone. So not cool.
五十三 Waterboys (ウォーターボーイズ, Wôtâboizu) (2001)
◯◯◯ A rarity among Japanese comedies, it actually made me smile slightly!
五十四 Weather Girl (2009)
◯◯◯ I just couldn’t relate to the extreme mid-life crisis at hand.
五十五 Whatever Works (2009)
◯◯◯ Pretty decent, and I love Woody Allen’s original style of directing movies.
五十六 Youth in Revolt (2009)
◯◯◯ Good comedy, perhaps Michael Cera’s best since Superbad.

Best show. Ever! The Umbilical Brothers were just as good if not even better than I had expected. Though tired from my 24h Helsinki trip I still feel enormously satisfied with the experience as a whole.

Yesterday I jumped on a train at about half past noon to get from Vaasa to Seinäjöki. That’s about as far as I got until VR (the Finnish FAILway company) started fucking with me. For starters the next train I had to catch was 50 minutes late. Apparently the tracks between Oulu and Seinäjöki are pretty messed up, so the trains can’t go very fast on some parts of them. When I finally got to board the train I find out the train only goes as far as Tikkurila, and not all the way to the central station in Helsinki. Hence I had to switch trains in Tikkurila to get to my final destination. But oh, it does not end there, the train from Tikkurila to Helsinki was 10 minutes late. I guess this wouldn’t have bothered me as much if I wouldn’t have had to stand out in the miserable cold and damp weather for those extra ten minutes, on top of already waiting for the train to Helsinki another 10 minutes for starters.

When I finally got to Helsinki my date for the day (I suppose you can call him that?), Renato, was waiting for me at the station. Originally we had planned to eat dinner before the show that was starting at 7 p.m., but since THE TRAINS WERE EFFING LATE we just walked straight to Alexander theater, where the show was going to be held. While waiting for the show to start it was pretty fun to see some celebrities in the audience as well. I was this |—| close to Jaakko Saariluoma, next to him sat a few other actors from the Finnish show Putous, such as Riku Nieminen (I think?). Then I was about this |——–| close to André Wickström, the most awesome stand-up comedian ever and of course I was this |———–| close to Shane and Dave, a.k.a. The Umbilical Brothers!

As I’ve already expressed the show was amazing! I won’t get too much into detail, you can watch clips on YouTube or buy the DVD after all, but I certainly laughed more than I have in a long time. It was also the last stop of the tour for the brothers, so the show lasted way longer than expected. Shane and Dave had a great connection with the audience at all times (starting with the microphone not working at the very start of the show) and at the end of the show the guys informed the audience they were more than happy to stay and chat with the fans after the show and so forth. If I hadn’t been as hungry as I was after the show ended I would have loved to stick around for a while longer. They probably had enough fans on their hands anyway though, so nevermind.

Renato took me to New Bamboo Center on Annankatu after the show to eat, and luckily the place was still open. The food was delicious! I definitely recommend the place of you’re in Helsinki and looking for something Asian. I had the chicken curry, the portion was really big and the curry was just the right amount of spicy. After we finished our very late dinner we went to Renato’s apartment, where I got some precious hours of sleep before I had to get on the train from Helsinki to Seinäjöki at 7.30 p.m. this morning. Today I got only mildly bitch-slapped by VR though. The train from Helsinki to Seinäjöki departed and arrived on schedule, the train from Seinäjöki to Vaasa however departed 20 minutes late because of another train arriving late. Sigh.

So now I’m back in Vaasa once more and supposedly I should find the energy to celebrate walpurgis night with some friends later on today. Too bad the weather is gray and miserable, otherwise a picnic in the park like last year would have been nice.

At the moment I’m having an internal hissy fit.

Background story: I was unable to attend the first exam held in December 2009 for the course Japanese III. On the second exam date, which I could attend, I passed two out of three parts of the exam. Stockholm university does not have a third exam date, and since I haven’t passed Japanese III I can’t do the exam for Japanese IV held in May. The next exam for Japanese III will be held in August, who knows when the next exam for Japanese IV will pop up.

Conclusion: I may well be forced by the system to study japanology for a fourth year, just because those asshats are too lazy to arrange more retakes.

Opinion about the matter: #€%&!

So apparently I didn’t just end up staying at home, scratching my bellybutton. Sweet! First I went to see the movie Kick-Ass (2010) together with John, Sanni, Janne, and this other dude Mikael, who I hadn’t met before (but with whom I had actually played WoW with once or twice). Summa sumarum the movie had a way too slow start, a pretty good ending, nice fighting scenes, but way too little luls. I guess it didn’t feel like a waste of time and money like Clash of the Titans, but then again CotT at least gave birth to a new internet meme.

After the movie Sanni went home and the rest of us went to D.O.M (a bar), after a fiery debate whether to eat something at McDonald’s or not. At the entrance to the bar I only had a 20 euro bill to offer for the 2 euro entrance fee, so the guard let me in in the hopes of me getting some more change while in the bar, so that I could pay him with a 2 euro coin or some such. In the bar I met three of my classmates, Katriina, Miikka, and Timo, and while I didn’t buy anything in the bar I still got the money back Katriina owed me. We played some games in the bar, Janne and Miikka eventually went home, John and Mikael continued their evening at Waild, and me, Katriina, and Timo stayed until closing time at 2 a.m. Now, I was going to give the guard his 2 euros, but he wasn’t at the door when we exited the bar. I’m sorry Mr. Guard. Me and Timo were hungry (I had personally not eaten anything that day), so we dragged a slightly loud and drunk Katriina along with us to Hesburger. Damn that burger was nice on an empty stomach.

As it’s Sunday today it was time for some Sunday cooking once more. Me, John, Sanni, and Janne had pizza, Maitham joined us for a few hours as well, and as dessert (yeah, like there was much room left in our tummies anyway) we had chocolate fondue. We also had a go at a few movies, but ended up playing a game called Apples to Apples instead, pretty fun.

Now I’m at my parents’ place to do some dog-sitting, yay…

Mother Nature is clearly experiencing some badass PMS right now. First she spits her rage upon Iceland as Eyjafjallajökull erupted, and then the luls was spread all across northern Europe as the airborn ash from the volcano put all air traffic on hold. Now Vaasa has fallen victim to an outrageous snow storm. It’s April. Srsly.

Today I poked some on my raku ceramics again, this time putting the glaze on all items. It’s all an experiment really, especially when some of the glazes may potentially change color during the final burning process, depending on if the glaze gets oxidized or not. I played around with the glazes, especially on the elephant I sculpted last Saturday. The glaze colors on the picture are not final, they morph (in color) and turn glossy in the heat of the kiln and finally a crackle is created on the glaze due to rapid temperature changes. Areas with no glaze at all turn charcoal black. We’ll do the final burning on May 8th.

As I was poking on some working schedules (yay, I have finally gathered my team for the reception!) a day or two ago I started thinking about how I won’t be able to do an evening shift on 25.5, 27.5, and 29.5. Why? It’s Eurovision Song Contest time baby! I finally listened to all of the entries competing either in the first or second semi-final, or in the final. Initially I felt a bit disappointed in this year’s entries and I had a hard time pointing out any immediate favorites. I think however some songs have started to grow on me, for example Kristina – Horehronie (Slovakia) and… ok, so I can’t think of any other entry right now, but whatevs. A lot of semi-ballads competing this year, sort of lame. Also, I was really hoping Ukraine would have had a great entry this year as well, as I have been cheering for them the past three years now (Verka Serduchka in 2007, Ani Lorak in 2008, and Svetlana Loboda in 2009), but sadly this wasn’t the case.

So, anything fun happening somewhere in Vaasa tonight? I have a feeling I’ll end up sitting at home all day long scratching my bellybutton. Tomorrow some traditional Sunday cooking with John, Sanni, and Janne again, Maitham might join us too. As far as I know chocolate fondue is on the menu as dessert, hopefully the main course will be Asian-inspired. Mostly I’m looking forward to seeing Lupe again though ♥ Don’t forget to check out my awesome t-shirt I’m wearing in the pic to the right!