Outlandish

Halloween I love! Even though in reality it's a very Christian time of the year when you should go to cemetery and light a candle for someone who has passed, but for me it's all about a world-scale costume party. And I loove costume parties! And at Halloween everybody makes an effort. This year I had a two-day Halloween, one in the office and one with friends on Saturday, and because I am a superficial person I couldn't wear the same outfit for two days in a row. As the Fun Team team leader I was responsible for organizing some Halloween happening in the office on Friday. So, the obvious option was a costume competition. Fun Team also took it upon itself to decorate the office in the Halloween's spirit. And we went all out! Even though we had to pay for all that stuff ourselves, it was more important to make the office presentable. We even had Halloween-appropriate music prepared, candy and cookies resembling various body parts and spider's web every...

Brno; a city I've wanted to visit since I moved here. A colleague used to study there and we've tried multiple times to make plans to go there without much success. But now she's about to get married and she wanted to have a Bachelorette weekend in her former home town so it was set. An early train  (late of course)  on Saturday morning took us to Brno by noon. We dropped off our bags at Kristi's friend's place and went to look for a place for lunch. The place that we wanted to go to - a burger place - turned out to be closed, though, and they would be opening at 5pm. So, on we walked. Me, Brigi and Orsi becoming continuously slower because of the hunger... ok, gossip! The next place we tried had a lunch menu but when we started ordering each of our orders was shot down with "we don't have that today". Turned out there was a food festival and all the food from the restaurant had been taken there. Raises a question what was the point of keeping the...

Every time I step out of the Helsinki-Vantaa airport and start my way towards Turku I feel like I've never even been anywhere. In Finland nothing ever changes. It has a sort of consoling effect on me to know that you can always come back to the familiar and safe place. What also hasn't changed is my friends; despite getting married and having babies they are still exactly the same and thank goodness for that. I do appreciate even the hangover on Friday morning because my friends told me to join them into a student party (we graduated in 2012...) rather than spending the night in the house where the walls had started to fall on me already.  For Friday we had planned a dinner and a movie with the girls but the movie had to move when a party invitation turned up. We did have dinner though, in restaurant Fontti. They had re-done their menu completely from last year and it was brilliant. I took a pulled pork burger, but couldn't get a picture of it because it was ...

I can't remember ever having a good weather on my birthday. On the other hand, if you are born in January, what can you expect? This year, though, on my birthday Bratislava was enjoying a weirdly warm weekend. Whereas on last Saturday, when I had arranged a birthday party for us four girls who were born in January, I opened the curtains in the morning to a terrible winter storm.  Despite my fears of people cancelling because of the weather we only had two cancellations and one of them was due to sickness. So, the party could begin! For a venue I chose Urban House café/bar in the Bratislava old town. It's a big sister of my favourite café here, Gorila.sk. Most people describe the place as a hipster place. Whether it's an accurate description, I don't know, but in my opinion it has the most relaxed atmosphere, nicely inconsistent furniture and good local wines. If you find yourself there (which I would highly recommend) do try the halloumi burger!  Unlike...

Ever since I joined the Fun Team I've become very close with the Nordic and UK customer care teams, which means that I've been able to participate in things that my own team doesn't arrange, like the Halloween costume competition and the Christmas party yesterday. Officially I wasn't "allowed" to go because I work under another company these days. But I was offered free entry in exchange for helping with the registration. Obviously I jumped for the chance!  After one of the crazy-busiest work days in recorded history I ran home to change and then rushed across the road to the party venue. Our shift at the entrance only lasted for half an hour which left us plenty of time to concentrate on the main thing: dancing and wine. I haven't been dancing for a long time so obviously I had the time of my life. And what was super awesome was the amount of men on the dance floor! I've never seen so many men dancing.  Did I already mention I had ...