The Christmas of the Finnish technology students..

..is starting to show signs of life. The annual event of 1st of May is the grande finale for this. However, it is more a rule than an exception to start the festivities at least a week beforehand. The events are plentiful among our student guilds and the students themselves are active in party-having regard.

What can I say.. the Sun is (again) starting to warm us up and the snows have just melted, colours of the nature emerge and people start to smile. It's a good time to get the grill from the closet and invite your friends to have some good time in a weird place, e.g. a roof of a technology students' campus dorm. It is a perfect place to let the world know of your music (with the heavy-duty music machinery you brought along), your energy, inviting all the bypassers to join the fun. Or then we might have a mega-picnic in the backyard of our school's main building (the backyard is quite big and green :) ) - more than 1000 people having good time.

For me 1st of May festivities are still on hold partially. What I am glad about is the fact I probably will be able to do my master's thesis at work - little by little figuring out how it's going to be while at the same time dealing with the bureaucracies of this process. It is also relaxing to know the thesis subject is doable and will not be some boring thingy as it many times can be. I'm eager to kick it off (properly after festivities ;) ).

The last Thursday there was more than 2000 students in a student event, whose purpose is to collect stamps from various bars in certain locations (luckily the area was quite near to where I live) to earn their levels. There are four levels: appro, cum laude, laudatur and doctor. One has to do them in order and cannot be acquired before the lower level is obtained. So it takes at least four years to get the highest rank. I got it last year so this year I only hanged around, although the amount of alcohol consumed was not substantially different than in the last years. I got to work on Friday in a good shape though and was productive. I don't know why but it seems I am quite energetic on the day-after...

On Friday Silja was supposed to return from China. Unfortunately the fucking volcano erupted in Iceland thus trapping Silja to Moscow. She will miss today's student party, an annual student party for older technology students - drinking, singing, eating, bad humour and beautiful people. So that's what is going on today for me. Volcanos suck!

Tomorrow it is time to go for an annual trip to Estonia to fetch some cheap booze for the upcoming "trials". It will eat one day out of my work week but I was able to have it as unpaid leave. Which was nice.

I hope to hear from all of you still reading this blog :). That's not much I guess :P

Your Truly
Junnu (You Feng)

Human

In the last four days I have felt / been:

-happy when seeing or talking to dear people (both foreign and Finnish)
-crying in a car when listening to music that induced some strong feelings. Can't actually remember crying that much at least in..well I don't even know!
-drunk and happy with the company I had
-hung over and happy and energetic - well enough to cook super-good food and make my own chocolate out of coconut oil, cocoa butter, cocoa beans etc.
-content over getting my apartment to look like nearly something I would call home (yes I have materialism in me at least some amount, forgive me ;) )
-in sauna with my little brother, my mother and father, sweating my ass off
-been uneasy because my blood pressure is up, for reasons unknown to me. Maybe I should go jogging or stop stressing.. Maybe I just need a good back massage from someone who really cares for me and so that I could feel (preferably) her warmth flow through me, making me peaceful at least for that short moment.
-trying to start things smoothly in my work place. Unfortunately, I've been only partially successful in this respect.

Love. Hate. Courage. Fear. Jealousy. Pride. Addiction. Despair. Joy. Pain. Compassion. Faith. Prediction. Compassion. Love. Joy. Human.

After the first work day (1) the views from my balcony were great in the evening (2)

(1)


(2)

Adjusting back to Finland

Hi there everybody!

Lately I have been too lazy or busy to write anything but I thought I'd give it a try now.. I'm also trying to figure out the future of this blog. After all, this was meant to be my travel diary.. but maybe I would now start writing here whenever I feel like it, when I have something to say or on my mind and I want to share it and write it down.

When walking down the streets of Helsinki, Hyvinkää or wherever here in Finland (or in Stockholm for that matter on last weekend) it really feels like there are no people here. It's really spacious back here in Finland. Those people who are here hold their heads down while rushing on about their businesses. Where is the joy which was so prominent e.g. in Thailand? I guess the Finnish winter really makes people depressed.. And now it is the time of the year when all the snow is melting away (painfully slowly) and one has to walk in this sloshy snow getting wet and sharing this fun with everybody around.

Ì have managed to adjust to Finland quite well I guess. None of that stuff occurred they mentioned in my home university's foreign studies pages, like "the culture shock may be even bigger when returning back home than going to the foreign country". I've been having good times with my friends in various occations and now I feel kinda like home here, now that I have established the social relations again back here. One good way of doing that is e.g. having an elevator party in a boat to Stockholm ;).

I now live in Helsinki, Kallio to be more exact. It's a place with 44 square meters and is owned by my friend's mom. The rent deal is... very lucrative I would say :D. So I'm living cheaply here in 8th floor of this storeyed building near the amusement park Linnanmäki. It's a short way to Helsinki's cheapest pubs from here :) You are welcome to join me!

I will start working on next Tuesday as well. Probably doing some programming-typish stuff or otherwise play around with mobile devices. I would try to start doing my master's thesis as soon as possible because otherwise I would be in a total hurry to do it. Damn school bureaucracies and other stuff-that-make-you-graduate-against-your-will :)

I also now have been starting to eat more healthy stuff (even though I eat bad stuff still cause it's good), of which a proof of several hundreds of euros worth of healthy food stuff exists in my apartment now. I would eat some raw-food shakes, more organic stuff and some additional stuff I add to my normal food.

Here's some pics first from my condo and then from Helsinki, beside the railway tracks.










And finally a picture, which you should take a look at while listening to Gary Moore's The Loner.