Curious Perversions

[kyrasantae]

Jos pyydät, tulen kyllä vastaan / sinun kanssasi kulkemaan / sitä pitkää, yksinäistä matkaa…
En lähde vierestäsi pois.
[If you ask, I will come walk that long, lonely journey with you / I won't leave your side]

Late Wednesday night/Thursday morning UF post:

I worked for six hours straight on my 'Random Practical Guide to Jyväskylä', putting the finishing touches on and completing the 20-page project six months in the making (though most of it was written in the last month). At the beginning of this month I was on a roll and so I made a promise that I'd have it finished by the end of the month, but the tragedy of my uncle's passing right after I made that promise threw me off track a bit and I had to catch up.

I was obligated to return some sort of review/report on the practical arrangements (and supposedly a bit about my feelings [and favourite experiences, etc.]) of my expedition to Finland, but I couldn't fill out the simple forms they gave me without having a guilty conscience about the trivialization of the whole thing, so I chose to do a much more involved project. I left out my feelings and reflections of the place; I didn't feel that they would be relevant for most students who might be considering going there, so I kept my report to the practical and mundane stuff as much as possible, with some discussion of the typical Finnish personality qualities and practical customs/how-things-work.

Even though you'd expect me to be relieved that it's done and over with (it's been stressing me out for the last little while), I actually feel a little bit sad that it's done. I don't know why. Maybe it's because this report is supposed to be my last "official" on-the-record word on something that was so... grand amazing incredible that finite words cannot do it justice.

I've so far shown it to a couple of Finns, a Swede, and some Canadians, and it seems to have been quite well-received. The authority for whose purpose it was written seemed to be happy about it, since, apparently, more people are interested in the program this year.¹

All of which is a good thing, because I was just really really worried about the embarrassment it would cause if I made any seriously incorrect remarks. I tried to err on the conservative side, so that following my potentially incorrect word would not break any legal/social boundaries. Many of the things I write about are those things that were not immediately obvious to me and had to ask or be shown or have explained what it is or what to do.

I tell Finns about why I'm a bit reluctant to show them my guide, but Finns have such a curious perversion toward wanting to know what others think of them that they really really want to see it, so I let them...

But I also know how much Canadians like to say nice things in order to not cause offence or hurt feelings, and so I often have to take their remarks with a grain of salt. I know it sounds cynical of me and too critical of myself, but the more I realize that I'm a lot like my late uncle, the more I can't allow courtesy compliments to inflate my ego like he did.

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In other news, Jose and two of his friends, Sarah, and I randomly decided to go for waffles and sausages (well okay that was just me and Sarah, and pity they weren't Finnish sausages) after Scandalous Scandinavian Nordic Club get-together last night, and we wanted to take Sarah's car, so we had to walk to her house.

There's been snow on the ground for a long time now, and it snowed a bit over the week, but yesterday it was really warm AND it was so warm in the afternoon that it RAINED. When the wetness froze up in the evening, IT WAS WORSE THAN CHRISTMAS IN VANCOUVER because people actually normally shovel the snow off their walks and thus entire paths were ice. This morning I look across the street and see people carefully sliding along the sidewalk.

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¹ Yeah, at the promotion event in October I think a couple of people mentioned that they were interested because it was the country of NW >_<