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kyrasantaeHere's some random (in multiple ways) meme which I responded to on Facebook but figured I may as well copy here. Followers of this blog will have probably read about some of these things already.
Just Saturday I was telling people at Girls' Night that I wanted to be tagged with this meme so that I could do it. And someone who wasn't even there tags me! :o
Edited to add: I also apologize to my foreign readers for my advanced English.
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Here are the rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 20 random things, facts, habits or goals about you. At the end choose 20 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.
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1. I'm torn between getting just a Master's Degree in Finland and going all the way to a PhD, just for the ceremonial sword that comes with it.
@Ville: maybe I should come look at yours first? :)
2. I'm very picky with my music, not by specific style, though. Almost all of the artists and songs I listen to can be placed on a sort of associative 'web' where the artists can be connected somehow to each other via musicians guesting on other albums, or songs that they have covered (or have been covered by them). When introducing me to new music, just let me listen to the song(s) and make my own decision. Don't tell me what band it is or how much you love them or what you like about them.
Jari probably doesn't remember when I was lying around in his room while he was doing something with music on and I mumbled to him, "hey you need to hook me up with whatever band that is, that's my kind of thing." That's the perfect example of how I choose what music I like.
3. I can't actually read very much Finnish (more than I think I can, and less than I think I can). I definitely can't speak it. I can only sing in it. However, I like to pretend that I can read it, and if you give me enough time I can vaguely figure out what some text is trying to say.
4. My motivations for learning any different language are literary, i.e. reading and writing, rather than speaking. Finnish is very straight-forward in pronunciation, but the extreme differences between the written form and the vernacular (compare to written French versus Quebecois speech) would lead to some... interesting interactions. Kind of stilted like the one time my sister started trying to speak Mandarin Chinese but applying the Cantonese pronunciations to the words, but maybe not that stilted (after all, they speak fairly formal Finnish in Aki Kaurismäki films, but I'd hardly use that as a standard).
5. I lurk on a Finnish IRC chatroom where I'm not even interested in their common hobby. Sometimes weird incidents happen when they think I'm a bot or they start acting like typical teenagers. My method of applying time and effort to read Finnish doesn't really work there, since they type the way they would speak. Sometimes one or two of them ask me for homework help, but they don't seem to approach me for English help as often even though they know I'm a native speaker.
6. I have to stay outside earshot of any rock music performance (except probably a Viikate show, if I ever get the chance to see them). The reasons behind it are a bit complicated, but in effect it is a self-imposed stipulation to stay away from such things until I've had a chance to perform as part of a real rock band myself. I have a few CDs that I've bought that I've also decided that I cannot open and listen to until I meet the same condition.
7. I feel music so deeply that can't imagine myself doing any kind of musical/artistic performance without giving it my all. I know a lot of people these days say that music means a lot to them too, but my emotions are almost completely at the mercy of music. Music has been life-or-death to me in the past. The peer-status/popularity value associated with games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero, in my opinion, draw away from the music-as-art/music-as-serious-business (which it is, if you think about it) value of musicianship. As for karaoke, it's just no fun sitting in a room watching other people sing songs that I don't know. It's more fun for me in Finland when I can play and sing along.
If someone would actually attempt an older Dream Theater song (anything before 'Systematic Chaos,' because that's one of the CDs under the condition in #6) on Rock Band, I'll offer to sing. It'll probably not be one of my favourite of their songs, but at least I'll know it. I'm also waiting for a Finnish oldies/pop music version of Singstar or something, hahahaha. Like they'd even release that sort of thing on this side of the ocean.
8. I write a lot about myself. You probably already noticed that. But when I have something to say that I know I'll end up wanting to share with a lot of people, I'll post it on my blog. It saves me the time, energy and also the pain from the stress/carpal-tunnel injuries in my hands.
9. I have a fairly good memory of where I've written things down before. If in a discussion I'm prompted to recall something I've written in the past, I can usually pull up a link to it very quickly.
10. The "Readers' Digest Condensed Books" version to the answer to Frequently Asked Question #1: "Why do you have this fanaticism for this Finland thing?" is right here (PDF; 6 pages). Or if you prefer theonetwo-sentence version, "I did not choose Finland. Finland chose me."
11. I probably misuse the Finnish understanding of their word "kaiho" (to simplify, it's a feeling of nostalgia and/or wistfulness - see "saudade" on Wikipedia), but Finns haven't seemed to notice it yet. Maybe it's because it's an old-fashioned concept, and Finns my age don't really know it.
12. My Finnish patriotism (if you can call it that) is like a religion to me, that is, it contains a set of moral obligations and moral values. Some of my self-imposed obligations seem arbitrary; they are. But if you think about it, any belief system is in some sense arbitrary and doesn't suit well to having reason applied to it. Since it is possible to offend someone's religion, it's also possible to offend me in a similar way, and, well, that's just not very nice (of you and for me).
13. I still want a kantele. No, really.
14. I only became an official student in the Faculty of Science this year. Last year I was just pretending (while clearing academic warning - see the "Signatures" series and its accompanying note on context), and the year before that I was figuratively jumping out of a sinking boat.
15. Choosing to study German over Swedish (the other official language of Finland) wasn't a deliberate, one-over-the-other choice. I had a brief exposure to German in high school (German 10) and I told myself that I wanted to continue it in university. At the time I was still interested in everything Dutch, and German was sufficiently similar to Dutch to be essentially the same thing in my mind. But everything changed in the three years I spent in engineering (where I was discouraged/disallowed to take language courses), and when I finally had the chance to choose language courses, I stuck with the original promise I made to myself, partly because with the background I already had in German, I could be more confident that I could get the grades I needed to maintain.
16. I'm a bit of a masochist, sometimes fasting for no other reason but to do it. My sociology prof last term said it could be something about people searching for "authentic" experience rather than the superficial experience of mass culture. It's like thrill-seeking, but without the adrenaline rush.
17. I don't find the partitive case to be particularly difficult - it's just WEIRD.
18. I really really like eating that Japanese "nattō" fermented bean stuff, but not so much that I'd miss it when I move to Finland.
19. I find social dance situations to be very awkward, on the one hand because I don't like touching people, and on the other hand because I don't find it very emotionally/artistically expressive.
20. Oftentimes, the word choice in my writing is very deliberate. Not so much in this post, though.
BONUS!!: #10 is, I'm pretty sure, the longest "academic" paper I've written so far. And it's just shy of 2300 words. I'll be writing a longer one this term, but I still can't believe that IB students have to do that 4000-word mini-thesis (Extended Essay)... IN HIGH SCHOOL! I can't yet see myself writing 10-12 pages on a single topic (but if I do any grad school I'll have to do way more than that, I guess). That's what a random mish-mash of engineering and general science and sociology classes does to me.
There's more than 20 things on this list, I think. Some of the items actually have a lot of content to them. I could go on forever with random stuff about me, like my OCD and semi-perfectionism, and ego-trips (and Egotrippi, ... uh... never mind).
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Listening to: Egotrippi - Mustat Varjot
