Tekstit

Näytetään blogitekstit, joiden ajankohta on 2017.

My 2017 Highlights

Kuva
Listing your highlights from the past year is a common practice for social media users around the globe when the year is nearing its end. I encountered this question as early this year as October and it got me thinking... The years when I have actually achieved a lot (moving abroad; getting a job in a huge, international company; achieving a long-time dream, etc.) I never acknowledged those achievements much. Personally, of course, I was aware of what had happened and been done but I didn’t shout about it publicly. On the other hand, the few years that have truly been the most trying in my life so far I have mentioned. Usually in a form of a prayer or a heart-felt wish that the next year would please be better. So far I have gotten that wish... Most of the time. But honestly, how your next year turns out to be depends a lot on how you embark on it; do you start the year with the Finnish mentality ”it’s gonna be just as shit as the last one, nothing ever changes” or do

About Inspiration, Staying Inspired and Nourishing Creativeness

Kuva
As a blogger it is vital to keep the posts coming regularly; the more often the better. Search engines and their algorithms raise active blogs in search results higher than those that are rarely updated. But the fact is that nobody can be creative 24/7. Creativeness has a nasty habit of appearing all of a sudden and then you are overwhelmed with ideas of what to write or say, what kind of photographs you should take for each blog post, etc. And then, just as suddenly, follows the period of emptiness when you can’t think of anything to say, no matter how hard you try. Creative people have different ways of dealing with the sudden peaks and lows of creativity; some write notes and make schedules, others just get to work, open a document and start spewing words onto it, or grab their camera and run outside to look for scenes to capture. I find the latter practice to suit me better. When I get an idea I have to materialize it immediately, even if it’s just one sentence. I

Finn-Fun in Tallinn + Christmas Market

Kuva
When life kicks you in the stomach repeatedly for months on end it’s good to keep in mind the wise words of the great thinker, Taylor Swift: Shake it off! Different people have different ways of ”shaking off” all the shit that life has seen fit to pile on your shoulders and mine is spending time with friends. How fortunate then that one of my best friends arriving for a long weekend visit coincided with so far the worst week of this Autumn! I received a crushing ”Thank you but no thank you”-message from a job that I was sure was mine (yeah, no sign of Finnish humility here) on the same day that my friend cruised to Tallinn and thank goodness for that! I needed her cheering company more than ever. After a quick visit to my local supermarket we decided to make a little curve on our way to my place. The curve had a  conveniently  situated  sushi restaurant on it. There is nothing in life that sparkling wine, sushi and good company couldn’t fix! Even though I ha

My Strange Habits x 15

Kuva
Listening to music before falling asleep. I put the music away when I have fallen sufficiently close to passing out. I hold a cup of tea or coffee ”wrong”: I take the whole cup in my hand(s) even if there is a handle for picking the cup up. This is a habit that was pointed out to me when I was very little and still, to this day, I haven’t been able to shake it. I have a collection of books, which I read all over and over again. I’m extremely particular with books, I can’t just read any book, it needs to match my requirements precisely... Except even I can’t describe what exactly those requirements are. In my apartment there must always be noise. If I’m home the TV is always on, even if there’s nothing interesting to watch. When I take home office, I actually work. The whole 8 hours. I must always choose and prepare my clothes for the next morning before going to sleep. If I don’t do it there’s no point getting up the next morning.

10 Pros and Cons of Me

Kuva
* I tend to demand things, not ask: it's very impolite and quite arrogant /  It's also very effective and I usually get my will across. * I am an extrovert: culturally in my home country this is quite unacceptable behavior, it's not OK to be too loud or too open about differing opinions; it all can be embarrassing for family and friends /  I make friends easily because I am very open-minded and willing to try new things, which all leads to not being judgmental. * I am emotional: culturally (again) quite strange, sometimes I am unable to control myself, especially negative feelings can take over my entire body (head ache, heart attack etc.)  / I come across as genuine, honest and caring person, so people find it easy to trust me, which is the base of any friendship. * I value free time/freedom of choice over money: there’s no risk of me ever becoming rich / I am happier when I spend more time with my friends and family and am able to do things that I w

"Why are you single?"

Kuva
Hand up all you singletons who have become face-to-face with this question at least once this year . How did it make you feel? Degraded, lonely, like there’s something wrong with you, or like the asking party was offering you a compliment the hard way? Of course, the way this question makes you feel depends a lot on how it is asked: in an accusing tone of voice or just out of pure curiosity because the questioner is actually interested in your views on living a life. Regardless of the motives of the people who pop this question at regular basis, I find it a funny question to be asked in Western societies in 2017. Aren’t we far enough culture-wise in the Western world already that each and every single (pun intended) one of us could live exactly the kind of life they want to? Why do you consider it your business to inquire about their love life, when will they have their first child or why they don’t want to have kids? Even if you know the people you want to ask th

Me too

Kuva
” If all the people who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote "Me too" as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem. Please copy/paste.” The above text started popping up all around Social Media this Monday. The whole thing started from the Hollywood producer legend Harvey Weinstein  being accused of having a problem. A problem that he admitted, and which too many men on this planet have; He can’t stop harassing women and he has now sought treatment for this. Some of you might now think ”Oh, well that’s good, right? He’s at least trying to get better.” But no, it’s not good enough, and here’s why: It took until his current age for him to understand that everything he’s done to women his whole life is actually not OK. This is unacceptable in every possible way because we are talking about an issue that SHOULD be clear to every effing human being on planet Earth in 2017: my body is my own and you do not have any right to c

Causes of Autumn: Rage and Blessings

Kuva
This year has been particularly bad weather-wise; we moved from Spring straight to Autumn (read: we moved from rain straight to more rain). And now it seems that global warming might ensure that in the future 'Summer' will become a word that can only be used in past tense, because warm waters (and thus weather) will flee from these latitudes. It's little bit hard to try and stay positive when the shelf of clouds on top of us is so  thick and consistent that we live in constant darkness. The difference between day and night becomes more and more obscure every day as the days also get shorter. Oh yeah, and then there's this rain. Like, non-stop rain, which I thought was a physical impossibility... Unless you live in the monsoon area, which I do not. But it turns out that there is an area, the very last corner of Europe where all clouds gather and dump their load throughout the year. And that place is called Estonia and I, an imbecile moron, decided to move here

The Unavoidable Consequence of Travel: Friendships

Kuva
”Travel broadens the mind”  is a quote that everybody has probably heard. It has even been translated to almost all known languages. And the reason for this is simple: it’s true. I started my mind-broadening travels already as a teenager when I moved to Brighton, England for one summer to learn English with EF Language Travels. That trip was the starting block for my great love for England, English culture, English language and also for traveling, meeting new people and learning about life from different perspectives. Because each person you meet sees life a little bit differently, even if they come from the same country as you. I have discovered that even though each country has its own culture, and each culture has its own habits and traditions that largely define how we live our lives, in the end we human beings are all similar in so many ways. We all have the basic needs and emotions, even if in some cultures showing those emotions publicly is not considered appropri

Exit Room Experience in Tallinn

Kuva
Escape Rooms have been really popular all over the world for the past few years. Who ever created this idea, hooray to them! Escape Rooms are exactly what you would expect: you are locked into a space with a varied theme and your job is to find solutions to riddles and find hints in the furniture to be able to get out within an hour. If you are experiencing a stressful time in your life I can gladly recommend an hour's escape room experience! It really sucks you in and for an hour you forget about everything that might be outside that room, it's rather therapeutic really.  There are loads of different kinds of escape rooms to choose from; individual people who have reserved one room from their apartment for this kind of physical puzzles that people are willing to pay for, and actual companies that have rented an entire space to set up this experience in, some of them even have a bar and space to hang out in after the hour's ordeal. I had my first ever Es

Finally Summer!

Kuva
What a transformation the sunshine and the suddenly appeared greenery all around has brought with it to my mental and physical well-being; I feel like I’ve emerged from the thickest, grayest fog! For a change I can see what’s around me and I can hear everything around me, the cars rolling by, the birds singing, everything. After months and months I am again able to walk straight, instead of in a huddle to keep as many particles of my body as well hidden from the atrocious coldness as I possibly can. And because the weather is not a life-threatening challenge anymore I have started exercising again: so much so that instead of going for long, energetic walks I have actually started to run. And oh lord how great it feels! Tallinn looks amazing after the depressing winter months. Everything everywhere is so green and just simply looks alive! That’s the drastic difference between summer and winter on these altitudes: winter equals death all around whereas summer is scre

Riga - A Baltic City Worth Visiting

Kuva
Latvia’s capital, Riga, is well worth visiting! It is the biggest city in the Baltic Countries by its population (almost 700 000) and its long and varied history has left its mark on the city. Latvia has belonged under Polish, Swedish, German, and Russian rule and even these days about 39% of the population is Russian. Riga’s historic center is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and its Art Nouveau architecture is world-renowned. Unlike most people destined for Riga, we traveled there on a bus, not on a budget airline. The bus from Tallinn took four hours but it was quite all right when the travel company was as great as mine was. It was surprisingly noticeable when we had wandered over the border from Estonia to Latvia; the houses on the way became derelict and not well looked after, the roads were partly in horrendous condition and when we got into Riga the slum-like areas with most terrible blocks of flats were a truly depressing sight. For some reason I hadn’t expected su