rakkauden ja epätoivon laulu

I can't tell if I'm just being superglue-clingy to the only person who is nearly always available to listen to me, or if it's more than that. He knows my conditions, but really, those are the products of thinking, and when it comes down to it, it's hard for reason to overcome the heart.

I got a few good Boxing Day/Week deals: stuff from The Body Shop, couple of pairs of jeans, gloves. I also got a Team Finland hockey jersey. It was $94 plus tax, down from $130. It's a lot of money for me, and it's only a matter of time before my dad will get on my case about spending like that on luxuries. It's a blue one though, and Real Finns™ prefer white ones (I do too; something about colour proportions I think) , but at that kind of discount, it's hard to refuse. Everyone I know with a white one got it in Finland, and I couldn't find any here. Were I to, it likely won't be at that price anyway.

I feel like I'm living life on the edge right now. It's not a crazy-high cliff or anything, not even remotely threatening to most people, but risky and a bit scary to me. Buying all these crazy things; associating with people "below"¹ me, wanting them to show me new experiences; encouraging the blatant scandalousness of being friends with CFJ (now with the weird feelings too). Pushing the limits of my self-punishment and guilt complexes. But I think I need it. Maybe I really AM just fifteen again, but this time for reals.

__________
¹ N.B. This is in scare quotes because it is not my epithet, but that of the middle/upper-middle-class environment I grew up in.

Now with Linux!
A couple of weeks ago my computer decided that its HDD had developed more bad sectors than it was able to deal with, so it started going U NOE I'M ABOUT TO DIE ANYTIME NOW SO BACK UP UR STUFF AND REPLACE ME KTHXBAI. Unfortunately I also forgot to take my meds that day. But despite scrambling to back up my stuff (thank you 1TB portable HDD), I found that I didn't feel as, hmm, emotionally panicked (i.e. OMG THE WORLD IS GOING TO END) as I would normally have in the past.

After non-panicking and faffing about with the Ubuntu LiveCD for a few days, I discovered that the warranty on my computer goes until the end of August, so tech support sent me a new drive (two-day delivery, wow) and Keith helped me put it in last Friday.

By then I'd already decided that I was going to put Ubuntu on it. After all, that was what I was trying to do when my old laptop was close to dying a couple of years ago. (I replaced it with my current desktop, and the laptop went to Keith's collection.) I like that not only is Linux Finnish, it allows for the use of a little bit of brainpower to make things work the way you want them to (most of the time), so looking for and installing software isn't just a total auto-pilot process.  Ubuntu's interface is kinda Mac-like, but I'm easily adaptable to those things. And I can have a bazillion desktops :D

And I got Guild Wars and Angry Birds to run using Wine, so the money I paid for those haven't gone to waste. I also have all four Humble Bundles, so I have plenty of games to play on Linux :)  I miss the 'shuffle by grouping' function on iTunes, though.

Time-warp back to the beginning of the month:

Finn-Drama Candy Grams
This year at Heritage Days I spent the bulk of my money on tasty food and not so much on kitschy stuff.  I still did some "strategic loitering" but a lot less than last year, since I was enlisted as a volunteer for one evening. My jobs were to fetch a few things from the refrigerator truck and to keep the condiments area tidy and stocked. It doesn't seem like much of a job, but I guess it's important when everyone else is busy serving and prepping food. Crazyfinn says that my efforts did not go unnoticed.

Crazyfinn let me into his "hideout" inside the storage trailer, where, Crazyfinn being a crazy Finn, discreetly downs half-shots of spiced vodka between forays onto the grounds. He drove me home every evening.

I only asked for my photo to be taken with Crazyfinn and Other Viking, but Crazyfinn made me an "invited guest" and let me into the infamous boat.  (I have a nagging feeling that he's deliberately being kinder to me than to other Finnish Society women. Confronted with this opinion, he vehemently denies it.)

Unfortunately, as Crazyfinn expected it to be, his letting me on the boat did not please Mrs Crazyfinn one bit. Not only that, one of the other Finnish women, whom I shall call The Mongerer, used the incident to invent rumours about me.

The Mongerer is sort of the female version of Crazyfinn. I get the feeling that nobody really takes her seriously but she likes to share her indignation as though she has a lot of clout. (I have been told "there's something wrong in her head" by someone whom I shall not name.) I had already been told by Crazyfinn and AwesomeGramps (who are by no means BFFs or anything) that The Mongerer didn't like that I go to sauna nude in mixed company (hey, at least I always wear a towel when I come out for breaks).

Crazyfinn recalls the following conversation from H-days, regarding the boat thing:
Mongerer: "I don't suppose your wife may be wondering whether she's your girlfriend now, hmm?"
Crazyfinn: "Well, I wouldn't know what she's thinking." [takes out cell phone and dials Mrs Crazyfinn] "Why don't you ask her yourself?"

Crazyfinn also tells me that he's received threats on his voicemail from "someone I won't name" (but his story corroborates with AwesomeGramps', so I know it's The Mongerer), about expelling him and Other Viking from the Scandinavian Society (kind of a union between the Icelandic, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish clubs) for letting someone without a Viking costume onto the boat. (I had a story prepared, Crazyfinn said. You could have been captured in a raid. Innuendo intended and understood.)  He says that it's not like she has any real power, and that he was going to try to get the facts from other people who were managing the exhibit. After all, you don't just kick people who've been around for 30+ years out of the club because of the presence of one young woman and at the suggestion of one other woman.

More relevantly, however, is that The Mongerer has allegedly said that she didn't ever want to see me near the Scandinavian exhibit at H-days ever again. Crazyfinn alleges that she has accused me of getting uncomfortably close - not once, but twice - to some "Finnish girl, who speaks Finnish". As for this, I have NO IDEA who or what she's talking about. I didn't speak a single word of Finnish the entire weekend and only met one new Finnish woman, with whom I was polite, as I am when meeting people. [Edit: now that I'm thinking about it, this may have been The Mongerer's grown daughter? Likely the object of the accusation, then.]. I also chatted with some of the university-age Norwegian dancers, so I don't think that was it.

So yeah, completely unfounded allegations. If I'd done anything offensive, I certainly did not do it knowingly, and it was not brought immediately to my attention. It has been suggested that The Mongerer is just trying to get back at Crazyfinn for all the times he's spread rumours about other people, but then why am I involved? Why this accusation that has nothing to do with him?  I know it's stupid "women's gossip" kind of material, but I can't just ignore it because if the rumours get out of hand, I'll have fewer and fewer people willing to drive me out to the lake.

Wayside School
A mini-project I started doing while I was waiting for the replacement part for my computer is reading aloud and recording the "Wayside School" stories by Louis Sachar.  It's a trilogy of kids' books that I really loved when I was growing up because they were so silly and absurd. Each story (chapter) is very short, so I typically upload a few of them at a time.

Other Stuff
I went to the Antique Mall today. I'd buy most of the place if I could; there was so much vintage and antique ephemera like books, maps, food tins, cigarette cases, and stuff like that. I ended up with a couple of early 20th c. English composition textbooks, a tourist road map of Western Europe (the owner had checked off all of the countries that s/he visited - Finland was not - no surprise given how boring the country appears to be from the illustrative vignettes), and a well-worn Marttiini fileting knife in pretty good shape.  I bet Finnish women are gonna be positively FURIOUS about that, whether or not I ever actually take it to camp.  I was pretty close to buying a badge to sew onto my bag, but the irony of displaying said badge would be completely lost on most people.

Edit: Randall was interested in these, so I emailed him my scans and he has cleaned it up a little and posted it here.

If you're not familiar with what joss paper or "Hell money" is and what it's for, Randall at BigWhiteGuy.com has a nice illustrated write-up on that here.

I remember Hell money modeled on US greenback designs used to be fashionable, back when the US dollar was very popular as an investment currency. Last time I was in Calgary, I spotted some made in the design of Euros. I didn't find any pictures of them on Google, so when I was at that store again with my mom last week, I asked to buy some.

(It would offend my dad to be playful around stuff "meant for dead people," bad luck and stuff like that. My mom's family is superstitious too but they don't take it as seriously. Mom says that I should take them to Vancouver to burn for my deceased relatives when I'm done playing with them, though. Well yeah -- I'd like them to visit me in Finland, you know. In spirit.)

Each pack cost about two bucks and has around 60 sheets.

It actually says "joss paper Euros" on this package. See?


There were actually two different kinds:

These ones are pretty suck. The paper is coarser than the other, and it just looks like a bad Photoshop. (It really is a bad Photoshop based on a real 500 Euro note.) Did I mention the bad Photoshopping? Maybe Hell Europe uses dollars?

The design on these ones is more cleanly done, modelling the door/bridge motif with an Asian twist, and the paper is a little nicer. Even the shrink-wrap was nicer and wasn't glued to the paper. Clearly the people who made these put more time into it, and I could go on to write about the symbolism the, uh, designers(?)/artists(?)/photoshoppers(?) incorporated, but armed with the knowledge from Randall's article (linked above), you can probably spot some on your own (click for enlargement). P.S. I quite like how it says "Please don't replicate" in Chinese next to where it says "Made in China". The detail is fascinating!

Edit to add: for those wondering about the mail situation, I came back from my vacation to quite the pile of mail stuffed under my door by my flatmates and the Secret Santa parcel.

On BoardGameGeek, I accidentally (accidents happen a lot) came across the card games Inquisitio, Modern Society, and Soul Hunters, for which there seemed to actually be a little bit of buzz about their public release at the Essen Spieltage (which is next week). The publisher had a pre-Essen deal on: the games for 18€ each, or 45€ for the three, shipping included.

(Click pictures for enlargement opportunities.)



What a great deal! I jumped right on it.

1. I have a feeling that games with slightly darker/cynical themes like these could be appealing to my Scandinavian Club friends, who seem inclined toward that kind of thing rather than perhaps mercilessly making fun of fantasy or colonial themes like they seem to like to do.
   
2. Also, it's difficult to get a substantial card game for less than $20 around here. Citadels is something like $21 online, plus taxes and shipping. To buy the same game in-store bumps it up to the $27 range plus tax. With this deal, these are ~$25 each, including shipping all the way from Finland, so I'm not complaining.
   
3. The designers seem to have a presence on BoardGameGeek and managed to generate good publicity buzz over the years as they've been working on them, so hey, they deserve something for their efforts (as opposed to... um... *cough*).
   
4. I still have a little bit of money left over from the payment for my work on Zanziar, and using the money to support a rival game publisher gives me a warm fuzzy feeling... like the one that some people get from boycotting Wal-Mart.

They said that they'd ship the games as separate packages and sent them out at the beginning of last week. I picked them up from the post office today. Finnish economy post has been very quick lately. That's interesting.




Each envelope was lovingly packed and addressed by hand (forgive the romanticism). Despite the games just being wrapped in a loop of bubble wrap and stuffed into a regular envelope, they arrived relatively unharmed. The envelopes were a little ripped but only a couple of box corners got dinged, and only very slighly. Actually, one of the envelopes was so torn that it's a wonder the game didn't fall out of the bubble wrap and through the hole! (You can see this envelope in the upper corner of the second photo above.)

Some BGG users would complain like crazy about this. They like their games to come in stuffed shipping boxes or real padded envelopes. I'm not so picky. They got to me in good shape. That's enough.

The boxes were designed to be a set, with the fake book effect.


There was a small puncture wound on the Modern Society box, so I carefully pulled back the paper label, filled the hole with glue, and replaced the label. I'm obsessive-compulsive like that:


But let's crack them open and see what's inside.


All three games have similar components: rulesheets in Finnish, Swedish, and English, 144 cards (of which some are advertisement cards), and some wooden chips.

Each game also has a card that's got a brief comment from the designer on it in both Finnish and English (in Modern Society it's printed on the back of the player scoretrack cards). I think that this is a really nice touch. Along with the advertisement cards, it's a good use for blank spots on the card sheet and saves up valuable space in the rulebook (where such comments are traditionally placed, if at all).

The cards themselves are of average quality; the cuts weren't completely clean and I had to colour in a small rip on one of the cards with my Finnish-permanent-marker-of-Japanese-manufacture. Because of the rough edges, I imagine that they would wear very readily. But they are the Euro-sized cards like in Agricola, requiring sleeves that I can only buy online, and once sleeved, they won't fit back in the box anyway. I'll consider making tuckboxes for them a little bit wider than Euro-sized cards. I made new trays for the boxes, with more slots, so that the cards can be separated by type.

Inquisitio is the only one of these games whose components are fully bilingual (the others only have English card texts). The cards in Inqusitio that don't require a back face are Finnish on one side and English on the other.

The English writing isn't perfect and some explanations could be more clear, but it seems to have been done in-house (there's only a translator credit on the Swedish rulesheets) and is very good. Only Soul Hunters has significant game text on the cards and they are straightforward rules texts presented in a consistent style. The other games use symbols.

===

I'm going to organize a "Heart of Winter EPIC FAIL Tea Party", which will happen between the end of final exams and Christmas, I think. For maximum "Heart of Winter" effect. Naturally we can't get Finnish-winter darkness here. It'll be a tea party to celebrate all kinds of EPIC FAIL with the playing of non-EPIC FAIL board/card games like these. Hopefully by then I'll be done with and have been paid for my EPIC FAIL work, and have more money to buy non-EPIC FAIL things.

Hmm. What else was I going to say? My pictures are showing off my new Kashmiri shawl/blanket. I got it for $5!

(short week; yesterday was a holiday)

It was below freezing this morning, but since I don't have a winter jacket that is expendable enough to throw onto the floor/on top of the fridge in a dusty workshop area, I just put on a sweater and headed out to work, cold weather be damned.

We didn't really have anything to build - or do, for that matter - until approx. 3PM. The tradespeople are working five days behind schedule and hardly any of them showed up to work today either and so there's just nothing that's ready for us to do our part for.

And I think precisely because we had nothing to do, I had to put up with all of the rest of my coworkers talking about how drunk they were on the weekend (among other drunken times).

Sigh. It makes me feel kind of lonely and alienated, that I have trouble interacting with them because they're too young for me. I think that one of the benefits of my Asian background is that there's so much pressure to "stay in line" in order not to "lose face" that civility and decorum are extremely important. This serves a social-class purpose as well; there's a lot of emphasis on upward social mobility in Chinese culture and we believe that that's achieved through good education and good, cultured manners - not necessarily formalities but acting in the respectable manner of respectable people.

It just becomes an unconscious thing, that we do not glorify or show off our vices as points of pride, if we have any at all. And people who do do that get unconsciously kicked a notch down the figurative "respectability meter".

Consider Sunday afternoon, when I went over to visit CSG. He just came back from Sweden last week and had brought some random Swedish newspapers for me (I haven't quite had the chance to see if there were any IKEA ads in them). He's a bit of a jazz piano player and really wanted to learn more about classical music and technique and so we had some good conversation about that (among other stuff. He EPIC FAILS at Swedish crosswords, and I EPIC FAIL at Swedish vowels). To be honest I don't remember all that much of my music history but the discussion was engaging and educational. I found myself longing for that sort of conversation today, longing to be around CSG (for such socializing).

I finally bought myself one of those everybody's favourite FAMNIG HJÄRTA cushions, which I've had my eye on since... I started this job. I keep whining about wanting to buy it, so I just went ahead and bought it so I don't have to whine about it anymore.

I also took home a good portion of a roll of RATIONELL VARIERA drawer mat that we had left over from our work and would have gone into the garbage otherwise. It's just that non-slip kind of mat stuff that's good for a lot of things.

I feel like my breathing is unusually shallow tonight. Unfortunately I had a rather sizable whiff of second-hand smoke from my coworker's cigarette and I hope it's not because I'm allergic to tobacco smoke or something (I shouldn't be; it's not like I haven't been around smokers before). Maybe I've just caught some illness from the cold weather, but there was a fleeting thought upon mortality as I was coming back on the bus from shopping for a belated birthday gift for CSG, and I wondered if my parents would honour my wish to be buried in Finland.

Items assembled

• LILLÅNGEN leg frame
  
• LILLÅNGEN sink cabinet with 1 door
  
• BESTÅ shelf unit/height extension unit

Once upon a time, when I was in my last year of high school, my "Finnish thing" started. I went to the public library and signed out this one textbook, Mastering Finnish. It totally blew me away with how complicated the whole language really was, and didn't make a lot of sense to me. But I really liked how the text wasn't so "yay, tourist language!" with silly cartoon drawings and stuff (in fact, there are no cartoons in the book at all). I also really liked the section at the back where all of the grammar material was recompiled.

I have yet to find another textbook with such a presentation, and I eventually discovered for myself that the way this book presents grammar is quite non-conventional and sometimes very convoluted. But I revisited this book a few weeks ago, and it seems to me that it is precisely the convoluted method that actually explains some of the stuff better to me and structures it in a way that makes sense to English speakers. And of course I still liked the balance the book struck between conversational lessons (meh), reading prose (okay), and hardcore grammar lessons (yay).

So I thought, you know what, I need to buy this now. I asked if a bookstore could order it in for me, and they suggested that it's from such a small publisher it'd be better for me to contact them directly. So, last week, I sent an email to the publisher (which turns out to be a publisher specializing in stuff for Finnish-North Americans) saying that I wanted to buy this book (and asking if I could mail the payment since I can't pay directly with a credit card)...

...and the author of the textbook replies to my email. I'd known all along that he's the professor of Finnish at the University of Toronto (and I was sort of sad that I didn't go there for university - I may have applied there but I don't remember anymore) and since I rather admired his book, I couldn't help but get a little too excited ;)

Meanwhile, I had shown this book (the library copy) to a buddy of mine who seems to like meddling around with languages (I don't approve of his methodology, but buddies are buddies) and he was also interested in it. I messaged him to say that the author sent me an email!!!! and the first thing that came to his mind was to question if he was legit, if it was a fraud o.ô. I replied, his email signature block is just like that of most professors: name, academic titles, address, contact info. If you want to look into that, by all means do so. And he's Finnish-Canadian. Just chill!

But it got even better than that; once I confirmed my order, I was also told that I'd be sent an invoice and only needed to pay once I received the items. People don't normally do this anymore for individual customers - it's just our culture. I prefer to look at it as testimony to the Finnish attitudes toward trust and good faith.

I told my buddy this, and I hope that by this point it has eliminated any doubts about Professor Vähämäki's "legitimacy."

I have also received my books today. You might be wondering what the second book is. It's the Journal of Finnish Studies, V.9 No.2, on Finnishness in Finland and North America. I'm not afraid of academics (or convoluted explanations of grammar!) when it's going to help me get to the heart of something that I really want to know.

And yeah, my cheque will be in the mail tomorrow morning. ;) I had to go out this afternoon anyway so I dropped it in the mail box already. But if you want to be technical about it, the box gets emptied tomorrow morning.

I've been away for the last couple of weeks - 20-hour bus rides and endless snow and alternating iciness and sogginess, and old houses that creak, leak, and are at a Leaning Tower of Pisa -angle. The total "too stupid, sometimes naïve"¹ of some of my relatives driving me into resigned silence most of the time.

I managed to get a lot of exercise while I was in Vancouver (since cars were having so much trouble so we bussed and walked a lot - great for getting annoying but handicapped relatives off your back). Also, being snowed in meant that we ate at home a lot more than usual there, so I think this must be the first time that I actually lost weight there instead of gaining it.

Also some modest seasonal loot, like a much-needed new jacket and a new watch; a board game; soap; the long-awaited package with Finnish candy, tea, and the DVD of my current most <3 movie (I already made a region-free copy of it for my viewing convenience); and some money with which so far I've placed an order for a silver ring.

I currently wear a silver toe ring on my right pinky finger (they're the only things readily available that's small enough for my finger) - so it's open on the back and sometimes gets caught on things. Since it's the pinky of my writing hand, it's supposed to be reminiscent of the engineers' steel ring, and its "brokenness" represents to me the state of being unfinished.

But now I'm finishing a general science degree, and it's never really felt to me like an actual milestone in my educational career (since I'm going on to other things more relevant to a future teaching career), so I felt that it didn't justify buying one of those fancy engraved grad rings (I have one from high school). So instead I'm completing the circle with a new ring for my pinky finger to replace the old. It's a plain half-rounded silver band, with no decoration. I could have had it now, but my hands are so small that it needs to be adjusted to a size 3½ and I have to pay and wait for that. All in all, it's still less than a quarter of the price of one of those gaudy grad rings.

But being so far away from a computer for two weeks did something weird to me. Coming back I expected to be relieved and happy that I could chat with my friends again, but upon resuming my Finnish chat-room lurking, I felt a bit confused and hesitant, apprehensive and slightly awkward. Somehow, suddenly seeing so much of the language again only made it feel kind of dry to me, and I found myself asking myself, "so what's so special about all this? What's the big deal about Finland anyway?"

Well, of course gazing upon a wall of foreign words is nothing special. It's the people behind them who bring the words to life when you actually have conversations with them. It's the Finnish people I missed most. Everything else I miss follows in consequence.

There can be no great faith without doubt.

I've been meaning to have finished writing my Random Practical Guide for future students going to Finland ages ago but I really haven't made significant progress on the parts containing info that the original questionnaire forms would have wanted. All the other practical information I don't find so hard to say. Just the stuff that they want. I think it's because it is more directly about my experiences and is meant to be a sort of promotional material.

But I don't want to try to sell it to anybody. It's none of my business where you want to go on exchange and I don't want to pressure you into making a particular choice. My writing so far is more along the lines of "So you've decided to go to Finland. Here's what I think you need to know and expect in order to make the most sense of the different surroundings and to prevent from being completely confused." Logistics are important to me; I want to see that things will proceed smoothly with few hassles, and I want to encourage "making sense of different surroundings" rather than just accepting and/or judging them.

Even so, there is so much I could possibly say, even just on Finnish customs like guestbooks and bachelor/bachelorette parties and how supermarkets are different than ours, that I could never finish writing as new things either come to mind or I learn them. It's this learning, the new discoveries, that help to confirm my fragile faith. There's always something more that I find absolutely makes sense or absolutely reflects the way the imaginary world inside my mind works.

__________
¹ This phrase was allegedly said (in English) by President Hu Jintao of China at some press conference to a group of Hong Kong journalists after he was irritated by their "stupid" questions. It's become a bit of a Chinese political sound-bite.

<kyrasantae> sometimes i ask my friends if i should go shopping
<kyrasantae> and they'd be like "you should buy something, reward yourself"
<kyrasantae> but i don't feel that way at all
<kyrasantae> there's no such thing as a reward, just more stuff to clutter up my room
<kyrasantae> and games i'll never play
<kyrasantae> crap i eventually get sick of and give to other people
<kyrasantae> and i can be just as materialistic as the person next to me, but there's a guilty conscience
<kyrasantae> and it's not a conscious sort of guilty conscience like "self, you need to be more european and stop thinking about material things"
<kyrasantae> it's just an intuitive "this doesn't feel right" feeling
<kyrasantae> and then i collect random finnish crap that no one else wants
<kyrasantae> :p
<kyrasantae> i guess my motives for getting random finnish crap that no one else wants is ... different though :s
<kyrasantae> it's like collecting scraps of reminders of the time the world around me made sense :(

Compared to the European imports shop in Calgary, the local one around here totally sucks except that this one has more fresh German-style sausages.

It doesn't have as much Finnish stuff, but it does cost a bit less. Uh, the mustard does, at least. I don't remember the prices for the other stuff in Calgary off-hand. They didn't have any Finnish coffee, or chocolate :(

But at least now I know where to get my mustard when I need more of it :)

Here are some notes:
* Turun sinappia (125g): $3.69
* Tyrkisk peber (180g): $5.09
* Salmiakki (Halva brand, 250g): $5.39
Of course they have Panda liquorice and Finn Crisp and Fazer crispbread but aside from the Fazer crispbread the other two are readily available at other shops. (Note: The Fazer company that makes crispbread is different from the Fazer company that makes chocolates and candy.)

I may or may not have mentioned back in April that I came across a second-hand book store that had a couple of old Finnish books lying around. One was a book about some sort of Finnish history and the other was a book with scenic photos. The latter book has text in Finnish, Swedish, German, and English, so although I couldn't bring myself to buy it in April, I felt like I could now, and maybe learn something (linguistically) from the texts :)

It's pretty old, © 1977. It appears to have been a gift from a Finnish family visit: on the inside, it says, "Family Ross W. Wein / with many thanks for the beatiful_[sic] memories / Merry Christmas 1983 / Kimmo + family".



In other news, the Nobel Peace Prize went to a Finn this year :)

The European imports shop I like to visit here in Calgary has a limited number of Finnish goods, such as FinnCrisp, Turkish Pepper, Salmiakki, Fazer Vodka-filled chocolates, and Jenkki chewing gum (I could have sworn they used to have Sisu candy, and since when did Fazer make crispbread?). I CAN'T BELIEVE THEY DON'T HAVE THOSE GIANT BLUE FAZER CHOCOLATE BARS.

I'm now the owner of a small tube of Turun Sinappia, of which I totally should have bought the 'Hot' mustard, because I think this tube of 'Strong' stuff must mean it's stronger in sugar than the 'Mild' stuff I had in Finland. :P

P.S. For purposes of freaking people out: 500g packages of Juhla Mokka and Presidentti coffee both cost $13.95 each. Plus tax (5%). Ouch. Yeah. Dude, the Presidentti I bought that came with the tin was only 6.90€. Geez. And that's *with* a bazillion percent tax. Darn import costs.