The boots that I ordered have now traveled from Sweden to Paris, France. Those silly FedEx people don’t seem to know where exactly Finland is and what the most economic shipping route is. What’s next, Kuala Lumpur?

Oh the eternal struggle with facial skin care. I can’t say I was ever that kid with extreme amounts of acne, but my skin is usually very oily and while I think I’ve gotten past the teenage acne I now suffer from PMS acne instead. Oh the joy. I think I’ve however found some pretty good products to battle the acne, impurities, and whatnot with.

For basic skin care I use Vichy’s Normaderm series, specifically the day and night creams as well as the cleansing gel. They’re more expensive than the regular stuff you buy at stores, but they have worked well for me. I wouldn’t recommend them for mixed skin types or dry skin, as they don’t have any remarkable hydrating effects. If you have very oily skin, kind of like me, I definitely think you should try it out though. I especially love the smooth, silky and matte effect the day cream has.

Another way I try to battle my monthly PMS acne is by regularly treating my skin with a clay mask and scrub, especially when I start to notice the early signs of my skin blooming up again. I’ve tried a few varieties, but at the moment I’m sticking to Blue Corn 3in1 Deep Cleansing Scrub Mask by The Body Shop. It really gives your skin a good cleanse and the scrub makes your skin feel even more smoother. If you feel like you don’t need a scrub just apply the mask and rinse it off without scrubbing.

Finding the right skin care products is however not the only way to battle acne. As far as my PMS acne goes I’ve found trying to reduce any sort of stress has helped. I haven’t noticed any significant changes when experimenting with various diet options, it’s all highly individual I guess. Hormonal contraceptives can also help you out. I’ve tried that option, but I felt like the positives didn’t quite outweigh the negatives, and additionally it did not clear up my skin entirely.

I’m glad I’ve found products I feel I can stick to, but of course you never know what’s out there until you try it. Does anyone have any recommendations as far as products or general facial skin care goes?

I don’t know what kind of phase I’m going through but each morning I have a very vivid image of the dreams I dreamed during the night. I almost forgot it today, since I didn’t pay much attention when I got out of bed, but when my friend mentioned something jokingly about feng shui through instant messenging the memories suddenly sprung back. They had nothing to do with feng shui per se, but I dreamed about my apartment tonight. The main thing is though it (my apartment) sort of morphed into my grandparents’ house, and I was discovering how my apartment suddenly was way larger than I remembered, I found a new bedroom and all. The apartment/house started to get bigger and bigger, and I kept discovering all kinds of new rooms. This went on until I came to some sort of realization inside the dream, that I was having a dream within a dream and that’s why the house grew out of proportion. How very Inception-esque of me. When I snapped out of the dream within the dream, the house shrunk back to being a morphed version of my aparment and my grandparents’ house.

The most significant thing now that I’m awake though is how sad I become when I think of the dream. I don’t know in which year my grandparents had the house (in Lammi) built, but my memories must be from the period I was 3-5 years old, since my grandfather died when I was 5, after which my granny sold the house and moved into a smaller apartment in Helsinki. I still remember all the rooms, the scents, the cellar space that was always flooding, the back room my grandfather had his desk and all his papers in, and it makes me miss those days, that house, my grandfather and grandmother. I’m actually tearing up as I write this.

I don’t know, maybe it’s just the hormones.

Tomorrow school’s in sucka as MC Hammer would put it. Well, not quite actually. I only have an exam, after which the first actual lecture (for a course I’m not sure I’ll be bothered to participate in) is on next week’s Wednesday. Classes at the university start on, erm, week 37.

As for tomorrow’s exam I can’t say I’m very bothered. Haven’t had the time or energy to study properly, but it doesn’t really matter if I pass or not since passing the exam won’t actually speed up anything and I can do a retake in December again. At least I feel like someone gives a damn about me at the university of Vaasa, a fact and feeling I’ve learned to appreciate. I realize that as a university student you carry all of the responsibility for your studies, but when the system fails you beyond your control (oh so many times) and no one actually cares enough to fix it you start to wonder. When school doesn’t give a shit about you I don’t think you should give a shit about the school in question, either.

The end of the summer cottage season is this weekend, I don’t have any plans though (the one plan I sort of had went down the drain already). Anything crackalackin’ somewhere in the area?

My batshit crazy dreams continue. Animal Planet or such still seems to be the theme. Last night, I was competing in a apprentice-like setting, but for students. The prize was to go on a charity exhange of sorts (volunteer work, I think) to this Indian elephant haven called Ümberville. Think of a tropical jungle setting, with ancient ruins. In Ümberville a kind lady cooked me some dinner, including boiled lions. It was kind of nasty to see a dead lions head roll out of the pot, and it didn’t taste that good either. Kind of like… dry chicken.

Oh well, carry on citizens, carry on.

On a more normal note I enrolled in some classes at the university today. Hopefully I also get into the beginner’s Spanish one (it has a limited number of seats and you had to motivate why they should pick you). Hola, mi nombre es Silja!

Today’s link: http://www.eroakirkosta.fi/ – “Leave the church”, Finnish site for an effortless resignation from church online. Unless you’re actually a believer and/or remotely active within the church, give me one, ONE, 1! good reason why you shouldn’t leave the damn thing.

No, really, I did. I can see where my brain picked up most of the stuff I witnessed tonight, but how the hell it ended up patching the story up the way it did is behind a shroud of mystery. To put things short tonight I have, among various other things, cuddled with the sweetest sloth ever somewhere in a tiny zoo in Florida, witnessed the camping site reception being completely smashed up by a group of chimpanzees in a camper, and witnessed a snow leopard with a cub in the Finnish woods. Last night’s theme was clearly Animal Planet. On top of everything, just as I woke up and gave it a good stretch my heart lost its rhythm for a brief while (it skips a beat, then beats twice as fast until I get it back on track).

Top of the mornin’ to ya!

Yesterday and part of today was spent at my childhood home in Maalahti keeping an eye on my parents’ dog Klara. Things usually tend to get boring, so I grabbed a hold of the camera and played around some.

Summer’s Kiss by Silja on deviantART

If you’re more of the music type, then here’s a song by the Finnish band Regina called “Tapaa minut aamulla” (“Meet me in the morning”) for you to listen to.

Another raku ceramics course coming up next spring. I’m so participating. I’d also like to try out new languages, I might enroll in Spanish class at the university, where I for the record have three courses and the candidate’s thesis left to do before I graduate.

Oh, another thing! Imogen Heap is coming to Finland again in November. I so want to go to her concert!

Yes, I’m alive. My inspiration just went for a summer vacation, that’s all.

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?