rakkauden ja epätoivon laulu

From the Scandal Club newsletter:

-FINNISH SOCIETY OF EDMONTON VAPPU PARTY: (Spring celebration) at the DCC International Hall on Saturday April 30, 2011.

5:30 p.m. Cocktails (sima)

6:30 p.m. Dinner

8:00 p.m. Program

Entertainment by Master Accordionist Hannu Lambert from BC and Finntasia choir. Tickets : 20.00 per person for adults, $ 10.00 for children 12 - 16 years of age, under 12 free.Tickets only for sale in advance until April 23, 2011.

And by "Finntasia choir", they actually mean, uh, me (since I'm performing solo for three-quarters of our act).

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh dear. Hope I don't disappoint.

This statement confused some players in my Guild Wars guild, but I didn't see the point in explaining further to what amounted to a group of total strangers.

And now, a children's story or something.

* * *
I still get a lot of questions about this photo, in this order:

1. "What is that you're eating?" Ice cream.
2. "What flavour is it?" Nougat.
3. "Was it any good?" Of course.*


___________________
*It was Finnish.

  This is that brick of ice cream.

  The brick contains 1L.
  I don't think they come standard in any other size.

  The chunk I'm eating in the photo is about a 4cm chunk off of it.








Here in North America, bricks of ice cream come in supersize.
(Just as most things do in America, compared to Europe.)

This brick contains 1.89L. It's our only ice cream brick size,
as far as I know.
If the above was a regular brick, this is a retaining wall brick.

Growing up I've always wondered:
"What's the point of that cardboard lip across the front?
It looks a lot like a cake box from the bakery,
but with the lip glued down."

We'd stand the brick up on end.
We'd undo the flaps on one side
and spoon out the ice cream.

  But I've learned my lesson.
  This is how Johanna showed me to open
  the box of nougat ice cream in Finland. (As you saw above.)

  It's more practical with the smaller box though,
  because the cross-section is smaller and a spoon fits less well.

  Now you too can cut out large slabs of ice cream!
  (I recommend storing the open box in a bag in the freezer.)

  It's been a long time since I've eaten supermarket ice cream.
  I've kind of forgotten how terrible it is...
  especially when it hasn't chilled until it's as hard as a brick.


The End ;-)

Oftentimes I just feel like grabbing a walking stick and going wandering, in my imagination, anyway. So deep is this desire to walk until I find a home away from all this aimlessness, isolation, and distraction. That is my only destination -- the only place to me worth finding: a calling to home. A calling to service doesn't mean anything to me right now.

Varhain aamulla, kun vielä oli pimeä, Jeesus nousi ja lähti ulos. Hän meni paikkaan, jossa hän sai olla yksin, ja rukoili siellä. (Mark. 1:35)

...jos minulla vain olisi sellainen paikka. Rauhallinen paikka.

A special event/day in a person's life seems only worth commemorating if it has a related significance to at least one other person.

Otherwise, like wanting to hold in special remembrance the day I left Finland two years ago, the endeavour leaves only an empty feeling, akin to that of discovering that everybody's forgotten your birthday.

I set my camera on my windowsill for 3 minutes, in order to capture some of the construction noise. You'll have to imagine the background rumble being a combination of idling engines and generator whirr. Then imagine it going on for 8 hours a day, directly outside your window...while it's consistently 28°C indoors so you have to keep the window open.

Remaining roommate is back (for how long? I don't know). I overhear some remarks about items that should or should not have disappeared with the other people. This may take a while to sort out, and I have nothing to do with it.

Cool and not windy, heavy enough to hear the raindrops but not enough to hurt when they hit the skin.

I've been posting something every day in order that I might recover something of my creative writing tendencies, but the likelihood seems... low.

In addition to the obvious statement that something about me has changed since you-know-when, more specifically something about the nature of the relationship between me and you-know-where has changed too. This yearning now is... different. And I have yet to find a way in which I'm comfortable expressing it in full.

I'm wary of it being seen as madness, which I suppose it is. But I can't keep it inside me, and I need to keep from making too many enemies because of it.

I get overexcited easily and get many, many ideas for creative projects, but without inspiration, discipline, cooperating talent, and a little peace and quiet, they abandon themselves in time.