Tomorrow could be boring

Is kitchen table a luxury?

Or a kitchen, for that matter? What about a bedroom?

The other day Timo and I were trying to see the silver lining to our extended stay in the studio flat. (We didn't plan to stay here long after we got married, but that demented brand of breakfast cereal called Credit Crunch made us pause and hold until house prices might come down to something approaching normal).

Timo said: "Well, look at it this way. It must say something about our relationship that we've been able to live in a studio for this long and we're still together."

He's right. We're very happy and very much in love. Every day I have a moment or two when I stop to think how lucky I am. I have had my share of absolutely abysmal and simply disappointing relationships so perhaps it's about time. Still, nobody is born entitled to anything, and just because you go through some shit doesn't then store that in the Karma bank (sorry Buddhists), so I still count myself lucky.

For my entire life up until I met Timo I was deeply suspicious of the "and then they lived happily ever after". And until we do, I obviously won't be in any position to guess whether we will. But I had reached a point where I didn't believe I was ever going to dare take a deep enough emotional risk to have a go. Timo changed that.

We'd love to live in a nice house with more than one room. Preferably at least two bedrooms. For a real dash of luxury, I'd love a spare room to set up as a home office and workshop. My work stuff and project stuff sort of needs its own place. There is something charming about how we live now, literally surrounded by stuff (I saw this documentary where they interviewed a mad professor and our flat looks not too dissimilar to his live-in library with piles of newspaper cuttings and bottles and magazines and books and computers). But charming quickly turns into an euphemism when you have to live it. You know the old saying "Oh, I love kids as long as I can hand them back." Kind of like that.

I'd also love to have an actual kitchen - not just a kitchenette. I'd love a kitchen table; a long, old-fashioned kind on which I could roll out pulla (bun) dough with a rolling pin. For a couple of years now I've gone to the trouble of making traditional imelletty lanttulaatikko (swede casserole) and perunalaatikko (potato casserole) from scratch. The process takes 2 days and in our tiny kitchenette, I haven't got enough room, so I have to juggle dishes and trays in and out to the main living area. They end up on chairs, our bed, on the tiny little table next to our TV. I also make Finnish star tarts (tähtitorttu) filled with plum jam. I cheat and buy the puff pastry and plum jam from the annual Finn-Guild Christmas fair at Rotherhithe.

Maybe next year we could move. Maybe we could spend next Christmas in an actual house. I already tried that once, but with the wrong guy. Even at the time, I kept worrying that it could all be snatched away.

What about this time? We live in an eccentric over-filled little love nest. We're happy here, but as Timo keeps saying: "I do look forward to the day I won't bump into your chair every time I come out of the kitchen."

What if we are stuck here for an indefinite length of time? Can we stay happy? Or what if we find a nice place, but we lose the magic? Or could it be that one day we might be lucky enough to have a proper home and a happy relationship? It seems like too much to hope for. I'm allowed, right?

In which I convince my husband that "höpö höpö" is an acceptable answer to everything

Quite some time ago, I bought my (then) new half-Finnish man a Finnish language CD-rom and course book. He'd expressed regret at never having learned the language at home. His mum spoke it and Timo and his two brothers did make some Finnish noises when they were children, but the language didn't really stick.

He didn't really get very far with the course materials. His version is that I was too bossy when trying to correct his pronunciation and whilst learning all the swearwords was of some use, he didn't feel inspired enough to continue.

Now that we're married and the course materials have gathered quite an impressive layer of dust on the top shelf of our bookcase, the greatest thing ever has happened: Katja's newly minted husband has declared he wants to learn Finnish. He's English through and through. Voilà, my husband now feels like this is some sort of challenge; the gauntlet has been thrown.

With his mind thus properly focused, Timo has made impressive leaps towards being able to understand the finer points of Viivi and Wagner and can't be too many years off being able to understand the other great literary W - the Finnish national treasure, Mika Waltari.

Current progress is still mostly focused on greetings and suchlike. So, okay, we're some distance off reading Sinuhe (The Egyptian) in the original language. But I'm convinced with his new found motivation, he will get there!

Whilst reading out loud some words intended to stretch the foreign mouth's ability to handle Finnish vowels, Timo fell in love with "höpö höpö" (which roughly translates to "poppycock" or "nonsense"). It's one of those delicious words (well, a pair of words really) that sounds appropriate for the intended purpose. Just like the English "poppycock".

The following chapter - on questions and appropriate answers - was highly entertaining because, in the style of "that would be an ecumenical matter", I suggested "höpö höpö" could be used as an answer to everything. Just try it and see!

Meanwhile, we've been trying to think of where to take Timo's Finnish cousin and his girlfriend when they visit London in November. I don't really want to see Avenue Q again (as brilliant as it was, we've got the soundtrack now and may have over-played it juuuuust a little. But then, can you blame us? "The internet is for porn" is even on my iPod). Anyway, I've suggested Monkey. Now that it has moved to its dedicated venue, maybe we'd stand a chance of getting tickets. I was so gutted for having missed it the first time.

Kosh, you smell good!

The first time I saw the bottle design for Thierry Mugler's Alien perfume, I had a nagging feeling I'd seen it somewhere before.

The commercially successful Angel by Mugler is a love-or-hate scent, you know, a bit like the Marmite adverts in UK. You either want to smear it all over you, or it makes you want to remove yourself from even a hint of its presence. Preferably a few postcodes away, actually.

Well, as far as Angel goes, I'm in that second category. So had it not been for the intriguing bottle, I may never have decided to sample Alien at all.

The scent is soft, sweet, warm, loaded with Jasmine and suits my skin exceptionally well. It transforms to a faintly powdery (but not dusty) amber on me. Very nice for feeling cosy and sultry. And I'd much rather be an "alien" than an angel any day.

It didn't take me long to figure out what the design reminded me of either.

"The truth points to itself", as Kosh would say.

I was really, really, really, REALLY hoping to get this perfume for my birthday. Maybe. Maybe?

I had a genuine surprise this morning - there was a golden package next to the Valentine's card on my desk. Timo was already at work. The sneaky devil! We've never done Valentine's presents! Cards, yes, but presents, no. So, I now have my own mini-Kosh.

Maybe he was being extra thoughtful because we're getting married this year? In fact, 5 months from today. Yikes.

Shaolin Monks

Timo and I don't get out much. Apart from going to work. A lot. Yes, we're exactly as sad and getting-long-in-the-tooth 30-something couch potato-workaholics as those statements imply. I'm not sure how much I mind.

Occasionally I dream of us away somewhere, on a beautiful, relaxing holiday with no computers, televisions, shops, or any of our modern trappings in sight. I had one such a dream last night. It was warm and sunny, but not so warm that we would both get heat stroke. Maybe I was having wishful dreams of our honeymoon. We're hoping to be able to take a week's holiday about a month after our July -07 wedding and go somewhere nice.

Occasionally we manage to have an evening out. And not just any evening; I'm not talking going to the pub, or the cinema (mostly because we rarely do those things either). Our next such excursion will be to see the Kung-Fu master Shaolin Monks at Sadler's Wells. We're going on the 30th of October. Absolutely can't wait! I love the theatre, opera, ballet, performance, stage - and I love Martial Arts. So as soon as I saw this advertised, I shoved the ad under Timo's nose: "Wanna see!".

Twenty Shaolin Monks and five young trainees have travelled all the way from the Shaolin Temple in China, to demonstrate their martial arts expertise.

In a crescendo of kung-fu sequences, the Shaolin Monks are lifted aloft on sharpened spears, splinter wooden blocks with their bare hands, break bricks on their heads and fly through the air in a series of incredible backflips and spins.

This show is the Shaolin legend made real and is definitely NOT to be tried at home!

How cool does that sound? I'm really looking forward to it!

If I can fit it in/afford it; I've been looking at Tai Chi classes locally... but on the other hand, Karate has always drawn me in. Just didn't like the local class being mostly full of adolescents (nothing wrong with that age group, but I really felt like the odd one out). Not sure yet. It comes down to class availability and money.

I'm going to work on a late shift tonight. Got to cover for late night opening and then stay behind to change our promotional displays, ready for Friday. I've spent my morning today arranging November events for my store (we're attending some out-of-hours fairs with stalls & entertainment), planning the next month's rotas, booking my staff on training courses and confirming interview appointments. I've got to be out of the door in an hour. Just sitting here with a face mask on (I look like the Swamp Thing) and sipping a cup of coffee.

There are very exciting things going on, professionally speaking, but I can't mention any of them here. As mentioned in previous entries, they're the sorts of things that I could once only have dreamed of happening. And they're the sorts of things that wouldn't be available to all - not for any kind of price; I have been pinching myself a lot recently because I think I must be dreaming. I feel very, very, very, very fortunate and humbled. I know I've been working hard, trying to reach the right path, making mistakes along the way, and somewhere deep down, I've held a hope - no, a belief - that you simply have to be able to make something of yourself with effort and the right attitude (despite sometimes seeing evidence to the contrary)... and yet, when the possibility of Something Big is now almost within reach, I'm a little stunned. It could all still just be too good to be true.

Hello from HelSTINKI

Just a quick "hi" from my friends' computer at Helsinki's Punavuori. It's been a mixed visit so far. I am over the moon about being with my family (that's who they are, really) and it is wonderful to eat lots of Finnish chocolate, sleep enough and mill around aimlessly. Kind of like being on holiday, oddly enough.

But there's a melancholy tone to this visit. It breaks my heart to see a certain kind of veil - part dirt, part apathy - covering what used to be my old hunting ground. I've posed a question to my dear friends: what the hell happened to Helsinki? More to the point: what the hell happened to Finland?

The standards of maintenance, availability of fresh produce and type of customer service you might expect now resemble any random European country, but before they used to be better. It really used to be true when we described Finland as a clean and pure place. It doesn't appear to be true any more. I'm so saddened by the drop in standards that I've considered sending a letter to the editor of Helsingin Sanomat (Finland's largest daily newspaper).

Anyway. It's not all doom and gloom! I guess I'm just feeling a little odd at the moment. Trying to establish how much of this is the outside-in effect of coming back year after year to an ever changing country and how much of the change is actually for worse.

Meanwhile, Timo and I have started to make real wedding plans. We're meeting a Finnish wedding planner tomorrow and we might end up booking their services. Depends how complicated an affair it's developing into. We're still not in favour of pomp, but it seems that Timo has a guestlist three times the size of mine, so we may need some help in arranging even a simple kind of party!

I'm not really on the computer much this week (we'll be in the countryside tomorrow, swimming in a lake somewhere), so apologies if I don't reply to comments until I return to UK.

Off to Finland tomorrow

No more work for almost two weeks; a thought that is at once wonderful and frightening, but mostly FUCKING AWESOME.

Didn't get any packing done yesterday as I had to sort out a tricky situation at work and go in on my day off. I did, however get to the hairdressers as planned and opted for a whole new look:

I haven't really stopped since, uh, I don't know - since I started my new job? Yes, I think that's about right. So this is a wonderful break both Timo and I have been looking forward to. He's over by his desk checking our tickets right now and occasionally goes: "woo-hoo!" for no particular reason other than that this time tomorrow we'll be in Helsinki.

We'll be staying with my friends Jiri and Tuulia - and this in itself is one of the biggest treats about the whole trip for me, for obvious reasons. I'll report back when we return (although I will probably pop online at some point or another to check email and the blog, it is unlikely I will post anything until I return).

I have a cow thing

The cows are multiplying. It all started as an extremely nerdy inside joke. You see, once upon a time there was this turn-based-strategy game called Master Of Orion. I never played it, but I did get hugely addicted to its second release, imaginatively named Master Of Orion II. For the sake of brevity, fans had come to call this game series MOO. You may see where this is going.

When rumours begun to circle about a possible - gasp - third version, I was very excited indeed. Imagine the possibilities! I won't expand on the wishlists die hard fans of the series started compiling (for the simple fact that they won't make any sense unless you've played the game), but just imagine someone telling you that soon it would be possible to get rid of many of the frustrating aspects of your favourite past-time (the new reading chair has a set of special features that prevent eye strain and rubberneckedness! Your reading experience has been improved hundredfold! And what about that TV remote? Can't find it? No need; with the new feature in TV watching III you can now control the screen with your mind...). And so forth.

So, along with hundreds, or possibly even thousands of gullible idiots, I pre-ordered the game without having read a single review.

That was a really stupid thing to do. You see, MOOIII sucked. It was awful. Like an Excel spreadsheet with a giant GO button to end turn and minuscule space-y graphics in an attempt to somehow connect it to space-opera. Charts that you didn't really have much control over. It was hideously unplayable, dissatisfying - and worse; it was a giant departure from MOOII, which angered fans even further. Apparently the "original version" had been somewhat similar, but none of us Johnny-come-latelies (the ones who got hooked from MOOII onwards) really gave a shit about that; we wanted our space battles and ship building screens and cool blue-skinned alien babes!

In true Comic book guy style, many of us looked to the Internet to register our disgust within minutes. There was a web address on the MOOIII box. It took us to the official forums for the game publisher. We registered, ranted, connected... and some of us formed a little sub-faction of our own under the Monthy Pythonesque heading "Pirates of the Dwarf Cove" - and to cut the long story short(er), departed, formed our own online community, started arranging real-life meets and left the whole MOO thing behind. It led us together, but it was no longer the single unifying factor.

MOO stuck for quite a while though. We gave each other cow-themed presents. I ended up accumulating many cow print objects. There was the Pirate theme too. I think my most bizarre purchase in a long while was a stuffed cow dressed in a Pirate costume. It sometimes comes with me to special events and always draws attention.

One of the most important things that happened as a result of the Pirate/Cow community thing was, of course, the meeting of soulmates, the coming together of two hearts (and later, pelvises). True love is so amazing, isn't it? I suppose meeting someone of like mind in a community formed around a common interest is less of a coincidence than one could presume, but the fact that Timo was also half-Finnish did come as a bit of a welcome shock. Anyway, that's not what I'm writing about today.

I'm writing about my cow thing. I have a new cow-related obsession. It is closely linked with my ice-cream related obsession (side-thought: can taste preferences be genetically inherited? My mother was practically obsessed with ice cream).

I have discovered... The Skinny Cow (I'd link to their UK website, but they are using the heinous word "indulge" in big, pink letters on the front page and it makes me feel like someone's dragging nails on a blackboard. Plus the US site shows a dazzling array of flavours that us UK consumers can only have slobbery dreams about). I'm trying to cut down on junk food in a desperate attempt not to balloon to size 24 before our July 2007 wedding (I'm trying to slip that wedding thing in haphazardly here and there, so as not to get clammy hands every time I think about it. It's not working yet). However, I seem to suck at trying to give up junk food. I am terrible at it. I've probably managed one day without either ice cream or chocolate. Granted, I don't shovel lard and sugar into my face 24-7, but why oh why can't I go for even one, say, WEEK without polishing off half a bag of Maltesers, or an ice cream cone or two? This has got to stop!

So, The Skinny Cow seems to be a passable compromise. Instead of Ben & Jerry's calorific artery-clogging double-bypass ice cream sandwich, or even a humble portion of Green & Black's vanilla ice cream... I've switched to raspberry and vanilla cones that have 122 calories and 5% fat. Not so horrific. I should also be avoiding dairy and the sorbet-content in these cones is a welcomed component for that reason. Avoiding dairy would be a doddle if there were no such things as ice cream and cheese. I am very happy with Soy milk and Soy yogurts.

Now I just have to find out if anyone does timed locking mechanisms for the freezer compartment of household fridges. Having "low calorie option" ice cream is bloody useless if you eat two in a row...

Take a ticket, your number is 37758

Today, on Mozart's birthday (thank you, Google), I am going to talk about football.

There were at least two things wrong with that sentence, but no, you weren't imagining it. I'll allow you time to re-arrange your reading glasses on your noggin and to wipe that ridicilous grin off your face.

You see, Timo, my gorgeous half-Finn, half-Northern Irish love, is an avid football fan. Luckily not in the Eeeeeenglaaaaand-beer-bellied-going-out-to-get-smashed-wiv-the-lads-way, but rather, in that Fever Pitch-a-tad-obsessed-about-club-football-specifically-about-Arsenal-way.

Which, to a person like me, previously uneducated about these important differences, and ignorantly assuming that all football fans were alike, is a lesson learned. No, Timo didn't just make me write that. Although, I do think that he has subtly brainwashed me. A little. But I think I volunteered.

Not only am I beginning to understand the offside rule, I've now actually been to a football match (not just any match, but Arsenal versus Wigan, which was held on Tuesday at the Highbury stadium. Highbury is a place full of history, has beautiful Art Deco facade, and is due to be closed as a stadium and converted into flats. Arsenal FC will move to a new stadium nearby).

The picture on the left is of a penalty shoot-out (click for larger version), which, sadly, did not result in a goal for Arsenal. It is quite amusing to see how superstitious many of the devoted fans are - Timo kept on saying that he wished he hadn't taken that picture, because obviously, that's what proved to be unlucky for Arse. Yeaaaah.

When we were waiting for the match to start, outside the Gunners pub near the stadium, one of Timo's friends commented: "So, it's her first time at a match. Hope she's lucky".

A coach full of Wigan fans travelled past and the people inside thumped and jeered so viciously that I wouldn't have been surprised if they would have managed to break the windows and spill out onto the street. I guess there's a reason the Gunners has a sign above the door, stating: "Home fans only".

The match itself was exciting, but uncomfortable and frustrating. Exciting, because it was a new experience and because I couldn't help but get drawn in to the trance-like state of willing those players to get that fucking ball into that fucking net. Already.

Uncomfortable because it was very, very cold. One of the coldest nights this winter, with temperatures below freezing. And frustrating, because despite a score of 2-1 in favour of Arsenal, it was Wigan who came out as the winners, due to the calculations that determine the winning statistic when deciding who moves forward in the contest. And with this being the second match, and with Wigan having scored higher in the previous one... bah.

I've joined the club as a Red Member, which means that I'm now automatically in line for a Gold Member status (which, sadly, doesn't come with complimentary schmokes and pancakes*, but does mean that the likelihood of being able to obtain match tickets is higher). Timo is also a Red Member, and has joined another kind of line... the ridicilously long one for season tickets. His queue number is 37758. Maybe his grandchild might get a season ticket. If he's lucky.

I wish Arseblog would have been nominated as best sports blog in the 2006 Bloggies, but perhaps the regular visitors (or those witty and clever people who leave the most comments on any weblog, ever, according to Arseblogger) were too busy commenting and not busy enough nominating. For shame. Next year?

*If you get this reference, you're officially a nerd. Well done!