Happy New Year!

I awoke to a pitter pat on my roof top and realising it was FAR too late for Santa to redeem himself and bring me presents, I knew it was one of two things: either it was so windy that the branches of the closest trees (a good 10 metres away) were hitting the roof OR ... it was raining.
I hurried to the window and threw open the drapes (actually, they were still open after being too pissed last night to be bothered closing them so I just sat up in bed) and lo and behold, my window was covered in droplets of not quite frozen snow ... or in other words, rain.
Now, I can handle the snow and the minus 12 temperates and the lack of sun, but add rain to all this and I'm not happy!
RAIN? This is supposed to be a winter wonderland with soft fluffy flakes of snow or at the very worst hard frozen flakes of snow ... but not rain! I experienced enough rain in Japan ... and Melbourne ... and Perth ... and Portland.
NOT FAIR!!!!

Okay, over it now.

So, I wish you all a happy new year and I hope you find yourselves dry warm and happy as the clock strikes 12.
2006 will be interesting, entertaining and full of surprises.

xxx
nina

Resolutions

I know it's boring and pointless because I never keep them anyway, but I am going to have 5 resolutions for the coming year.
But I want you to help me think of them.
What do YOU think I should resolve to do next year?
All suggestions will be taken seriously and into consideration and the final list will be posted as soon as I am sober enough to write next year ... please, no-one suggest I stop drinking. Everyone needs a vice!!!

Here comes the sun ... via telephone.

G rang me from Perth today. I could almost feel the sun shining through the phone ... almost.
I can't remember the last time I saw the sun. I'm sure it wasn't that long ago ... but it's definitely been a couple of weeks.
The snow is nice, but I need my vitamin D!!!!!

I'm in the process of apartment hunting at the moment. Always my favourite activity (note heavy sarcasm).
So far I have seen one apartment and it was nice and I'll take it if the guy calls. At this point in time, my energy levels are so low that give me a big cardboard box and a blanket and I'll be happy!

I met a nice guy who was also looking at the flat. He is a DJ and involved in politics. We talked for the bus ride back the the city and I found myself in fits of giggles more than once. I remember now why I like to travel and spend time on my own. There are so many more cool people in this world that I want to meet.

So thank you, bearded stranger, for making my trip to the outskirts of Helsinki worthwhile ... especially if I don't get the apartment!

Post Christmas post.

Well, it's snowing and I feel like I'm in some kind of magical world! I'm sure after a week of traipsing through knee deep snow I'll be over it, but for now ... it's a dream come true!

Christmas was good. Pretty much what I expected ... except for the brief trip to hospital (not me, not serious, don't worry Mum), the amount of people who showed up to our little party and the fact that it snowed.
Our party was fun ... a little too much wine was consumed (and I'm still not entirely sure how I managed to do that considering the amount that was actually purchased) and we left it so late to prepare our meal that we forgot to cook half of it. However, it meant heaps of tasty grub the next day ... and we were in a better state of mind to appreciate it then.

Thanks to everyone who sent text messages, emails, cards and presents. I can't begin to tell you how much I appreciated the thought. I apologise to everyone that didn't get my cards and presents in time because I was so disorganised! Keep checking that mailbox though ... they'll be there sometime within the next couple of years!

Now it's time to think about the new year and what I'm going to do with it. First challenge ... find somewhere to live!
I think I'll check out how difficult it is to build and furnish an igloo ...

Christmas. Happy.

I vow to stop slagging off Christmas and pretending I hate it. Even the prospect of a weekend on my own does not upset me now because I took a minute to think about the enormity of the world and the diversity of it's inhabitants and I realised that I'm just being a pathetic sook.

Yeah, it'd be nice to spend Christmas with my family and friends in Australia, but I have family and friends here to spend at least part of it with. I'm not going to do the whole "be thankful for what we have" sermon, but I am thinking about it.

So, I'd like to suggest to all "orphans" out there, use this Christmas as an opportunity to spend some quality time with yourself. Read whatever you want, eat whatever you want, wear whatever you want, do whatever you want, watch whatever you want and imagine everyone else stuck in an emotionally draining and stressful family dinner that is envying you and your solitude. I guarantee you're the only one that'll feel like they've had a break when you get back to work!

I'm not religious so Christmas has no real meaning for me apart from a chance to relax and hang out with my family and loved ones. But if I can't do that, well then I'm gonna hang out with myself and I'm going to enjoy it!

I honestly wish everyone a wonderful Christmas and I hope at some point you take just a minute to think about life. We're not in it for long and everyday you are given an opportunity to make it better for yourself and those around you.

Hyvää Joulua ja Onnea Uudelle Vuodelle!

all my love
nina

Bah Humbug.

Is it too late to ignore Christmas and boycott all celebrations?

It seems I have two choices:
a. spend Christmas with best friend (who I have barely seen in the past two weeks due to recent fascination with certain boy) and new boyfriend who are seriously in honeymoon mode.
b. spend Christmas on my own with many books, DVDs, new ice skates and lots of yummy food.

Why is it that at this time of goodwill and love, option b is looking the most attractive? Is it really too late to sell a kidney and get a flight to Cuba?

I did try to find out if there was some kind of volunteering I could do over the weekend, but my lack of language skills (and to be perfectly honest, lack of real effort) proved fruitless.

I'm quite happy to have Christmas on my own. I can play my cheesy carols and drink all the wine and go ice skating on the partially frozen river! For those reading this and taking this seriously ... please stop. Taking it seriously I mean.

If anyone has any useful suggestions on how I can spend my Christmas weekend, I'd love to hear them.

On a more positive note, I wish you all a wonderful Christmas. I will be enjoying myself wherever and whoever I end up with and I expect you all to be doing the same.

I miss you all, especially at the moment and if I do get terribly drunk, expect late night calls from me expressing my undying love.

I love you all! (well, I love most of you ... if I have no idea who you are then I guess I love you in a universal sense ... but maybe not personally. However if you think I should love you personally, please feel free to email and don't forget to include a photo!)

XXX

Friday night.

Once again I'm sitting at home on a Friday night drinking wine.
It's minus 7 degrees celcius and the thought of leaving my apartment is not particularly enticing.
However, I can stay here, drink wine, read Dostoyevsky, fall asleep at 10pm and be warm ... OR
I could venture into the CITY! (Helsinki city is more like a big country town actually but when in Rome ...)
Whatever I do I really don't think I'm going to be as productive as I'd hoped tonight considering my eyes are already closing.

But what to do?????
Waiting for my phone to ring ... but will only go out if someone suggests something really interesting. Odds of that? Unlikely.

We had the Christmas party at kindy tonight. 26 little kids standing in the snow singing Christmas carols. My clock is ticking so loudly I'm sure every eligible man in a 6 kilometre radius can hear it ... watch them run for the hills!
But seriously, they were so cute. All their little elf hats and red cheeks. *sigh*
Of course, they were all insane little demons today though. The snow, the countdown to Christmas, Friday ... it all contributed to create an afternoon of general mayhem and high pitched squealing. Deep breaths, gritted teeth and promising myself big glasses of wine tonight was what got me through. I've never really appreciated the peacefulness of the weekend before (is that my clock fading away?)

So back to tonight ... maybe I'll have a bath, wash my hair, have another glass of that lovely Spanish wine A brought me and see if I'm still awake in an hour.

A few things about me.

I am not just here to hang out with while you're waiting for your husband or boyfriend to be available.
My house is not a place to stay when you are drunk and don't want to go home to your wife.

I put alot of time and effort into my friendships and I would appreciate a little more consideration.

Thank you.

Wine talks.

So, it's the first Friday night I've spent at home since I got here I think and I have a bottle of Californian merlot, cool tunes playing (gave up on the Christmas carols ... I decided it was too pathetic), candles burning and yummy homemade soup in my belly. It's too cold to go outside and to be honest, I can't be fucked.
It's a perfect opportunity to do some writing ... and, truth be told, the wine is very inspiring.

First of all I'd like to write about my job. I love my job. It's the kind of job that I have always dreamed of having. I work with a bunch of rocking little kids who make me smile just thinking about them. The thing I love about working with kids is that they are totally sincere. I asked one of the 3 year olds the other day if he liked my new jumper. He laughed at me and responded with a very emphatic "no". I appreciate this kind of honesty. Of course, he couldn't explain why he didn't like it, and I'm not sure I need to resort to taking fashion advice from someone who wear a t-shirt with ducks and left over breakfast on it ... but at least he had a strong opinion. And they make me play. I love to play! I get to run after them and fall over and make up silly stories and pretend and sing and laugh and this is all part of my job. I guess I'm making up for that year of kindergarten I missed out on. Everyday at work I realise how incredibly wonderful life is and how much I want to make the most of it. This job makes me soooo happy and more importantly ... it makes me feel uselful.

The next wonderful aspect of my life at present is all these wicked people around me. I am constantly amazed that I have managed to find so many interesting and genuinely lovely people who want to be friends with me. For someone who has spent most of her life complaining about difficulties in meeting people, this is truly extraordinary. I guess I'm a late bloomer when it comes to friends. But now, here in this little Northern European city, I have a bunch of very different, but very cool friends. Apart from those I have preciously mentioned, there's A, the product manager for a major car company who swears he can salsa, throws snowballs at me and makes me laugh for hours. J, who tells me lovely things, rubs my back, calls me at 4am when he's pissed and I'm asleep and have to get up in 3 hours ... but I talk to him anyway because he's so sincere and lovely. Female A, she loves her job (I'm still not sure what she does!), tries to get the most out of life and is fantastic at encouraging everyone else to do likewise ... she also whips ass at Scrabble! There's K who is a woman that puts Audrey Hepburn to shame. She is totally cool, sophisticated and simply sweet as pie ... but, as I'm discovering, she has a wicked side too which I love even more. G, the young student who drinks whenever he can, plays football whenever he can't drink and who I've never actually met. We chat online ... flirting about our future meeting, which will never happen if I can help it ... the mystery is too delicious, we're bound to disappoint each other.
There are others that I run into constantly ... but I'll leave it at these few for now as the wine is beginning to slow me down.

Someone commented on one of my previous posts by saying that maybe I am happy when I'm unhappy (paraphrasing). But this is not true. It's not that I want to be unhappy ... it's more that I feel as though I shouldn't be happy. I feel like I'm not doing enough ... not fulfilling my potential. But you know what ... for everyone out there who thinks I need help on how to be happy: I love my life. I just need to learn to realise that it's okay to. Then I'll be happy.

This is great wine by the way ... it'd go really well with some chocolate icecream ...

Christmas

I'm feeling the Christmas spirit. Nostalgia and sentimentality are clouding my mind and making me dream of Christmases before.

Childhood Christmases ... waking up at 5am. The impatience of having to wait for the adults to rise so we could open the "hundreds" of gifts under the tree. Fidgeting through the church service. Swimming in the pool or at the beach. The extravangant lunch of cold seafood, so much chocolate, plum pudding with custard. Then the annual Christmas concert my cousin and I would perform after a week of intensive rehearsal. The applause ringing in our ears for the rest of the lazy afternoon.

Extended Family Christmas ... One year at Mum's, next year at Dad's. Different cousins, more presents, twice as much food. Lugging presents all over the state and back. Then in later years: Boyfriend's Mum's on Christmas Eve, Boyfriend's Dad's on Christmas Day, fly across the country, do it all again. Too many presents, too much food, too many people. Christmas is losing it's charm.

Perth Orphan Christmas ... where I discovered it was a bad idea to end a relationship so near the festive season. 38 degrees celcius. Cricket in the backyard. All of us "orphans" drunk on cheap sparkling wine before 11am. Tandoori prawns for Christmas lunch. Dvds and the air conditioner as my company in the afternoon. Enjoying the solitude for once.

And the New York Christmas ...
Waking up in that Brooklyn apartment. Opening presents in bed (one of us anyway!). Eating chocolates till we were ill. Cooking my first roast. Walking hand in hand across the empty park. Drinking bottle after bottle of that wonderful beer. Laughing at the silly carols at that bar. And the bittersweet knowledge that this was the first and the last time ...

And now ...
11 days to go. What will this year bring? New friends. Good food. Snow.

I'll keep lighting my candles, keep watering my poinciana, keep drinking my glögi, keep listening to my carols ... and I'll try to keep in mind what Christmas is all about for me:

love

Feeling the bite.

I walk out of my apartment. The chill hits me in a way I haven't felt before. It seems to burrow into my bones and wrap itself around the marrow. Instinctively I brace myself against the wind. Hunched shoulders, head down, arms folded. Hold myself stiff.
I want to wrap my scarf tighter and pull my hat lower, but I can't bring myself to uncurl my arms from around my chest.
Head down. Walk faster.
I sit at the bus stop. The metal seat tattoos my thighs ... so cold it feels like searing heat. I stand up. I walk. I stamp.
I clench and unclench my hands to keep the blood moving.




It's not even cold here yet.

Ready or Not

Fugees. Live. Awesome.
I've been trying to write this post for almost a week now and I just can't describe the energy of this concert. The sound wasn't great and the venue sucked ... but this is the kind of concert that you feel within your heartbeat. It stays with you.
In a word, The Fugees: ROCKED.

It's just one thing.

So it's December. I can't quite believe it. 6 months I've been here. People are going to stop being so forgiving for my lack of Finnish soon, I'd better get my shit together.
It's funny when you wake up one day and realise you are doing exactly what you want to be doing or what you thought you'd be doing and you're still unsatisfied. I mean, there are still things I am hoping to do: get gigs, get fit, go iceskating, pay my debts etc. But basically, I should be blissfully happy.

I live in the country I've always dreamed about and I love it.
I have some incredible friends here and abroad.
The rest of Europe is just a stone's throw away.
I have a job that I really enjoy doing AND gives me responsibility and goals to work toward.
I am perfectly healthy.
Most people I know are healthy and happy.

So what am I missing? Love? Passion? Material things? Religion? Children?

I don't know and it's quite frustrating.
The thought that has occured to me many times over the years crops up again ... maybe I won't ever be blissfully happy? Perhaps it's just not in me. Happy, yes, almost all of the time. But really really feeling like my life is wonderful and complete happy? Just not my thing I guess.
In the past this hasn't concerned me because I've always had somewhere to go, someone to wait for, something to dream about ... but now I don't. That alone should make me happy ... but what goes first? Our dreams or our will to live?

Sorry, this isn't meant to sound so depressing. Don't worry, I'm not suicidal, just thinking out loud.

I guess I should come up with a new plan and work towards that. Maybe I'll join a religious cult somewhere and dye my hair blue.