It's like Peyton Place, they say. They have a fan page in Facebook. You know them by their first name. They reprehend you for moving (300 meters up the street) because they won't see you anymore. Thus you have to start liking their Facebook page or they won't give you boxes.
They are a supermarket and its staff in Helsinki. When I first lived in Canada, it used to drive me mad that everyone at the cashier got chatty at the end of my tiring working day. It's difficult to get the words "I'M GREAT!" out of your mouth when at best you're feeling kind of ok. In Helsinki the cashier will be as grumpy as you, only during years do you develop a relationship that is very much warmer than the October weather that made you pop in.
I don't live in Canada now. Yet. But this blog will come alive in March when I move there for 6 months. (Sorry, supermarket! Obviously will not even try to get boxes for that.) The plan is to love. And to write a lengthier piece than blog posts. I WILL be GREAT!
Friday, October 21, 2011
Friday, February 26, 2010
More lessons, one on germs
Back again, this time after brain surgery! These past two years really haven't been kind to me. But I'm all right now.
It's time to be kind to myself so I've started going back to the swimming pool. I often see this elderly lady there, she's quite a character, sings Nessun Dorma in the shower. This time she started talking to me because I wasn't wearing flip-flops or swimming shoes (I got a good old rant about athlete's foot). Then she decided to tell me a hygiene-related joke.
The punch line made me visualize a man using sugar tongs in the men's room and it was actually really funny, I laughed aloud with her.
What a funny lady, and Helsinki is such a funny city sometimes. And I feel like I'm getting to experience everything for the first time - only this time with experience.
It's time to be kind to myself so I've started going back to the swimming pool. I often see this elderly lady there, she's quite a character, sings Nessun Dorma in the shower. This time she started talking to me because I wasn't wearing flip-flops or swimming shoes (I got a good old rant about athlete's foot). Then she decided to tell me a hygiene-related joke.
The punch line made me visualize a man using sugar tongs in the men's room and it was actually really funny, I laughed aloud with her.
What a funny lady, and Helsinki is such a funny city sometimes. And I feel like I'm getting to experience everything for the first time - only this time with experience.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Trick me once
I don't know why I stopped writing the blog. Maybe I've been so sad that a blog that's based on everyday serendipities was not possible to maintain. Now I'm starting to emerge from the sadness for the enjoyment of all you three readers. :)
What happened? Why don't I explain it through the conversation I had with my 5-year-old godson Leevi last summer. He asked me to play with him and I just don't do play (except with my own toys, but they are rated R) and a week had passed of the bad news so I was quite exhausted.
A: Sorry sweetie, I'm so tired that I think I'll just stay here in the kitchen and talk to your mommy for a bit.
L: We know already!
A: What do you know?
L: That Ben tricked you that he was your friend.
A: Well yes, that's what happened, you seem to know very well.
L: Did he have another friend?
A: Yes, he kind of had two friends at the same time but now he has no friend at all.
L: That's so stupid.
I was stupid, too, but I have learned a lot during this year.
What happened? Why don't I explain it through the conversation I had with my 5-year-old godson Leevi last summer. He asked me to play with him and I just don't do play (except with my own toys, but they are rated R) and a week had passed of the bad news so I was quite exhausted.
A: Sorry sweetie, I'm so tired that I think I'll just stay here in the kitchen and talk to your mommy for a bit.
L: We know already!
A: What do you know?
L: That Ben tricked you that he was your friend.
A: Well yes, that's what happened, you seem to know very well.
L: Did he have another friend?
A: Yes, he kind of had two friends at the same time but now he has no friend at all.
L: That's so stupid.
I was stupid, too, but I have learned a lot during this year.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
So Much for My Happy Ending
Things that have made me happy during these past 11 days:
- the endless understanding I get from my friends
- a new soap from Lush (it's yellow and it's called Happy)
(- the fact that they've opened a Lush store in Finland)
- start of the football season
- cats
- new pink placemats
- a good cup of tea
- the wind
- my new hair
And nothing sooths a broken heart as much as a nice run in the park. The first of this summer.
- the endless understanding I get from my friends
- a new soap from Lush (it's yellow and it's called Happy)
(- the fact that they've opened a Lush store in Finland)
- start of the football season
- cats
- new pink placemats
- a good cup of tea
- the wind
- my new hair
And nothing sooths a broken heart as much as a nice run in the park. The first of this summer.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Why I don't have children
After today, this would have been my answer:
I can sleep in, meet a friend, go to a museum and then have lunch at a Turkish restaurant, after which we can go to my friend's place for a cup of espresso, until it's time for my stretching class at the gym. And a day like this is not a rare treat for which I've had to armwrestle my husband for two weeks, any given Sunday can be like today. Heaven.
More reasons here: Benefits of Childfreedom
(Bare with her, she's obviously had to deal with the daily "surely you must want to have children, every woman does!" a lot as you do when you're a woman in your thirties. But although the list doesn't have to be taken literally, a lot of it means business.)
I can sleep in, meet a friend, go to a museum and then have lunch at a Turkish restaurant, after which we can go to my friend's place for a cup of espresso, until it's time for my stretching class at the gym. And a day like this is not a rare treat for which I've had to armwrestle my husband for two weeks, any given Sunday can be like today. Heaven.
More reasons here: Benefits of Childfreedom
(Bare with her, she's obviously had to deal with the daily "surely you must want to have children, every woman does!" a lot as you do when you're a woman in your thirties. But although the list doesn't have to be taken literally, a lot of it means business.)
Monday, April 7, 2008
Coming (home) at the same time
One of the reasons I'm so convinced that an apartment block is the best place for a human being to live is my neighbours. I've always had a good luck with neighbours, even in Spain, when we thought that the couple downstairs was always fighting - I later realized it was just normal conversation in Spanish.
I've lived in this house for 4 years and the first 3 went kind of unnoticed. Last spring I suddenly noticed a new phenomenon: all my neighbours started opening up to me on different subjects when we met in the stairwell or in the backyard. My friend Ilkka explained that I had spent the magical 3 years in a flat that it takes in Helsinki, where people move a lot, for the neighbours to start trusting the newcomer.
In our house there are people of all ages and all kinds of family situations. There's one lady who's lived here since the house was built - that's the year 1950. Her daughter, whom I imagine to be from around that same year, also lives in the building. There are a couple of young families (thank you for proving that it's possible to live in an apartment building with children!), one woman with mental health problems (sits in the backyard and talks to herself all summer), a Blazing Show Girls dancer with her two chihuahuas. Before I moved in, my flat was owned by a gay couple. When the opening up phase started, my neighbours were ever so eager to share about their tumultuous relationship and how they took turns in kicking each other out from the flat, naked, in the middle of the night. (Luckily for the community, they were replaced by another odd couple, a Finnish woman and a black man.)
I realize that in an apartment block, you will always hear noices. I can hear my upstairs neighbour snore, and when their grandchildren visit, it's very clear they haven't been raised in a flat. My downstairs neighbour bangs the door like a crazy person, and then there's the other kind of banging that I like to call "noices of life".
There are 3 doors in my floor. My next door neighbours are a young Finnish-American couple. In the flat opposite me lives a girl whom I recently found out to be one of the board members in Pro Fair Trade association. Interestingly enough she was also responsible for the football campaign that I'm running. I found this out because she was wearing the campaign t-shirt, not through work. :0
The Finnish guy with his American girlfriend moved in last autumn. My previous next door neighbours were the only ones that ever bothered me. A young Finnish couple with obvious problems in the bedroom department. Pardon me for being so cynical but I don't think it's possible for the woman to always, I mean every time, reach...krhm...climax just 10 seconds before the man? And it always sounded just the same. (Like killing a small dog.) In all friendship and as an older woman, I often felt like slipping a letter in from their mailbox to tell him that when a woman screams like that, she's faking it. But she moved out after 6 months just to prove my point about their problems (next door to a friend of mine!!!). Not that the new couple is completely silent... but that's what it's like in an apartment building.
Today all the 3 of us that live in the 2nd floor came together... home at the same time. And when in my previous posting I was so worried about being middle-aged, today's friendly chit-chat with my neighbours made me feel like I live in a hip, young, possibly a student house.
(And when I had my Easter garland in the door, someone had left a small chocolate egg in the nest there, along with the wooden ones.)
I've lived in this house for 4 years and the first 3 went kind of unnoticed. Last spring I suddenly noticed a new phenomenon: all my neighbours started opening up to me on different subjects when we met in the stairwell or in the backyard. My friend Ilkka explained that I had spent the magical 3 years in a flat that it takes in Helsinki, where people move a lot, for the neighbours to start trusting the newcomer.
In our house there are people of all ages and all kinds of family situations. There's one lady who's lived here since the house was built - that's the year 1950. Her daughter, whom I imagine to be from around that same year, also lives in the building. There are a couple of young families (thank you for proving that it's possible to live in an apartment building with children!), one woman with mental health problems (sits in the backyard and talks to herself all summer), a Blazing Show Girls dancer with her two chihuahuas. Before I moved in, my flat was owned by a gay couple. When the opening up phase started, my neighbours were ever so eager to share about their tumultuous relationship and how they took turns in kicking each other out from the flat, naked, in the middle of the night. (Luckily for the community, they were replaced by another odd couple, a Finnish woman and a black man.)
I realize that in an apartment block, you will always hear noices. I can hear my upstairs neighbour snore, and when their grandchildren visit, it's very clear they haven't been raised in a flat. My downstairs neighbour bangs the door like a crazy person, and then there's the other kind of banging that I like to call "noices of life".
There are 3 doors in my floor. My next door neighbours are a young Finnish-American couple. In the flat opposite me lives a girl whom I recently found out to be one of the board members in Pro Fair Trade association. Interestingly enough she was also responsible for the football campaign that I'm running. I found this out because she was wearing the campaign t-shirt, not through work. :0
The Finnish guy with his American girlfriend moved in last autumn. My previous next door neighbours were the only ones that ever bothered me. A young Finnish couple with obvious problems in the bedroom department. Pardon me for being so cynical but I don't think it's possible for the woman to always, I mean every time, reach...krhm...climax just 10 seconds before the man? And it always sounded just the same. (Like killing a small dog.) In all friendship and as an older woman, I often felt like slipping a letter in from their mailbox to tell him that when a woman screams like that, she's faking it. But she moved out after 6 months just to prove my point about their problems (next door to a friend of mine!!!). Not that the new couple is completely silent... but that's what it's like in an apartment building.
Today all the 3 of us that live in the 2nd floor came together... home at the same time. And when in my previous posting I was so worried about being middle-aged, today's friendly chit-chat with my neighbours made me feel like I live in a hip, young, possibly a student house.
(And when I had my Easter garland in the door, someone had left a small chocolate egg in the nest there, along with the wooden ones.)
Monday, March 3, 2008
How do you know you're middle-aged?
Your kid brother turns 28, but that's not how.
On a Friday, when your intern (hint number 1: you have an intern?! Seems like just months ago when you were one) is planning for a wild night out, you realize all you're hoping for is to get to Tiimari before it closes to buy Easter stuff. Then you spend your evening happily crafting an Easter garland of chicks and bunnies.
On a Saturday, you have a Bodypump class programmed, just as does every other middle-aged woman in your neigbourhood. Only you miss the class because you arrive late: it was much too interesting to chat with your neighbour about the prospects of a plumbing renovation.
On a Sunday, you're happy that your office is empty so you can spend some 5 hours doing work without being interrupted.
On a Monday, you notice you haven't posted anything in your blog for 2 months. This was supposed to be a blog about an interesting and eventful life! Well I'll go with my favourite explanation of not ever taking any photos: when you're really having fun, who has time to get the camera?
(And you're really not kidding anyone.)
Must plan a night with the girls in da club. (hint number 2: you use lame hip hop expressions like "in da club")
On a Friday, when your intern (hint number 1: you have an intern?! Seems like just months ago when you were one) is planning for a wild night out, you realize all you're hoping for is to get to Tiimari before it closes to buy Easter stuff. Then you spend your evening happily crafting an Easter garland of chicks and bunnies.
On a Saturday, you have a Bodypump class programmed, just as does every other middle-aged woman in your neigbourhood. Only you miss the class because you arrive late: it was much too interesting to chat with your neighbour about the prospects of a plumbing renovation.
On a Sunday, you're happy that your office is empty so you can spend some 5 hours doing work without being interrupted.
On a Monday, you notice you haven't posted anything in your blog for 2 months. This was supposed to be a blog about an interesting and eventful life! Well I'll go with my favourite explanation of not ever taking any photos: when you're really having fun, who has time to get the camera?
(And you're really not kidding anyone.)
Must plan a night with the girls in da club. (hint number 2: you use lame hip hop expressions like "in da club")
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