Outlandish

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 ...

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...

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! Ev...

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. ...

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...

”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 appr...

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...

Finnish people go nuts for asparagus in the Spring. And they do have a point; those long, green goodies taste awesome in a pie, accompanying a steak or just boiled with a knob of butter. But as always, I don’t like to be too mainstream, I don’t like to do or wear what everybody else is doing or wearing. And it applies to food as well; instead of asparagus I’ve gone a bit nuts for spinach. My main lunch item at work is usually a spinach and feta cheese pastry. I never grow tired of it, it’s just too good. And one day I was flicking through programs available on telly and put on some Jamie Oliver. I don’t usually like to mimic his cooking because he has too many, often weird and unusual ingredients in his recipes: each ingredient or spice costs money and since I rarely cook anyway, I don’t want to get all those rare herbs and spices to waste space from my limited drawers. But this time he made something that was easy and only had five main ingredients + salt, pepper and a lit...