Five Good Things This Week

Last week I had three goals for this week and I am proud to say I accomplished all three!

1. I started back at the gym. I hit a tough spot after my horse died last March and got heavy enough that it was starting to affect the way I was walking and it was taking a real toll on me mentally and physically. I lost about twenty-five pounds over the summer, but have put about ten back on because of the realities of student life. I'm finally in a place where I'm feeling motivated enough to get healthy. I'm using an app, which I have to use via Internet because it's still in Beta phase for Windows Phone, called HeiaHeia. It tracks your exercise, has tons of different exercises and sports to chose from, and you can set goals for yourself, not necessarily weight goals but also how many times or hours you want to exercise. I set up a three month program that will start on Monday. I will undoubtedly not be able to follow it as closely some weeks because school will get in the way, but like I said, I'm the most motivated I've ever been to do this and I plan on sticking to it.

2. I finally got some ice skates! All Canadians are birthed from the icy shores of Lake Ontario with hockey skates strapped to their feet and a stick in hand, right? Maybe I'm exaggerating, but my family is a hockey playing family. My dad played for the Ontario Hockey League, and subsequently lost his upper front teeth, and my brother played on an all star team. I have skated since I was three and played hockey collectively for about five years, as well as figuring skating for about four years. I was never that great at either, hockey is the only time I've ever broken a bone, but I am a good skater and I really enjoy it. 
          Finland is wonderful for the fact that ice skating is part of school for kids. In Tampere, there are rinks set up virtually everywhere and I can only think of one that costs money to use. I told my dad this and how I was probably going to rent skates to go once or twice, and he ended up sending me money at Christmas to buy some skates for myself. I fully intended to buy some while I was in Helsinki over Christmas so I could go skating with my mum, but the thought of lugging them plus everything else back to Tampere made me decide against it. This week I finally got to the Intersport at Koskikeskus and got a pair of Easton's for less than sixty euros (yay for sales!). I even got the chance to go skating on Friday at the massive rink by my university (think the size of two football (soccer) fields) and I was on cloud nine for the rest of the day. I'm going to be going skating there as my treat for the week since Fridays are supposed to be about an hour and a half of cardio. I hate cardio; running is no fun, stationary bikes hurt my knees, treadmills are like running purgatory and there are only so many times I can put up with an elliptical. Not only am I going to enjoy doing laps on ice skates, it's going to help immensely with my roller skating and will build up my endurance so that I can skate to and from school with ease come spring time and clean sidewalks. I've also convinced a few of my friends to pick up some skates so we can all have something fun today together!

My new friends. Designed in Canada....made in China

3. I went to a concert Friday night. Everyone knows I love music a lot and it was a large part of why I fell in love with Finland and decided to come live and study here. Hell, music is why I'm in a Master's program! I've missed out on a few concerts since August because of lack of funds, but sometimes it pays to spend a bit of money when you get to hear some good music. JP Leppäluoto was randomly performing at Jack the Rooster, a very nice if not expensive bar, and while I appreciate his voice, I'm not super into the stuff he's done nor have I ever really kept up with what he's done. I have seen him perform at Raskasta Joulua (a yearly series of concerts with Finnish metal musicians performing Christmas songs. It's possibly the best thing ever), and was impressed with that enough to give him a try on Friday night since my flatmate and another friend were going anyways. He managed to start almost a whole hour behind schedule, but the place was packed considering it was not promoted very much. He performed some good covers of mostly 90s songs, but I wanted to get home early and was basically out the door as he started singing Rebel Yell. Other than having to get very sassy with three guys getting all up on my friends and I, and there being an obscene amount of people wearing plaid that night, myself included, it was a fun night spent with good friends.

If you have no clue who I'm talking about, JP used to sing in this band, Poisonblack. While he is a very good singer and I'm sure I would have been into them when I was younger, it's not really my thing anymore. 

4. I got a lot of school work done yesterday. I'm almost done my first research proposal even thought the due date got moved from today to March 9^th. With the new due date and being almost done, I can do a properly literature review now. 

5. I had my second walk on a frozen Näsijärvi today. I went out on Näsijärvi, one of the two big lakes that sorta straddles Tampere, when it was frozen back in March 2012 but didn't get too far out. Today some friends and I walked from Särkänniemi, the amusement park, out to the tiny island that has a light house on it and to the shore near Finlayson. I guessing it was about 3km in all, but I'm not sure. There were a ridiculous amount of people doing all sorts of things like walking, skating (there is a specific path you can use to skate across the whole lake), biking (which was weird and a lot of people were doing it), cross country skiing, ice sailing, kiteboarding, and even dogsledding. Clearly Finns know how to deal with winter. After walking we went to the Pyynikki kahvila that is in Keskustori for munkki and coffee. A Sunday well spent!

Tiny light house. More photos on my Flickr and Instagram

Looking towards Särkänniemi. More photos on my Flickr and Instagram

All in all, this week was a good week! I accomplished some goals, got some entertainment, and got outside. Next week I want to do well with my new training program, get ice skating at least twice, and get my research proposal done.

Here's to being positive!

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Five Good Things This Week

Nothing very exciting or particularly good happened this week. I got a rejection for an internship because I don't speak fluent German and that kind of bummed me out for the whole week, but I'm still going to keep applying for summer internships in Europe and I will prevail! Even though it wasn't the best week, I can still think of five good things from this week.

1. I got my first graduate term paper back and even though there was a lot of constructive criticism, my professor said he can see through this paper, which is the only independent work he has seen from me, that I'm really passionate about the topic, metal music, and that I'm a very bright woman. That made me feel really great and solidifies a bit more that I'm in the right place and doing the right thing. 

2. It's been sunny all week. I really love winter, which is undoubtedly due to spending roughly the first fourteen years of my life on a ski hill every weekend between December and March; it's also nice that both my favourite countries have winter in common. Winter didn't arrive in Tampere until two weeks ago, it was gross and rainy here since mid October. Now it's been hovering at -15 everyday this week and crispy cold and sunny everyday, I love it! There's something really magical about winter for me, I can't really explain it but I'm very happy we have proper winter now.

Sunny chilly days. This is about a 10 minutes walk from my apartment. More photos on my Instagram!

3. I got some “high culture” into my system. On Friday my friends I went to see the Tampere Philharmonic perform at Tampere Talo. They performed the first suite from Sibelius' The Tempest as well as Bruckner's 8^th Symphony. It was the first classical concert I've been to since high school and it was so nice to sit and listen to some lovely music. I was a big orchestra geek in high school and developed a real love for classical music, which has sadly fallen by the wayside because of the amount of popular music I listen to, so going to the Philharmonic was a real treat for me. I think we are going to try and go back in April because they are performing the music from Pirates of the Caribbean. It was great to hear some classical music, but it made me really miss playing and performing. 

All fancy for the philharmonic. Wolverine thinks so too.

The Tampere Philharmonic! More photos on my Instagram!

Above is the Overture and First Act from Sibelius' The Tempest Suite. Below is the finale, my favourite part, from Bruckner's 8th Symphony

4. I had a really nice beer on Friday. We went to a restaurant called Plevna that is a microbrewery and serves “authentic German food”, which my German friends determined was a lie. The beer was on the expensive side, about 5,70 for a medium sized beer (I'm sure the size has a proper name but I've got no clue; I'm not a beer expert, I only drink the stuff), but oh my god it was the best beer I have ever had. I would wash my face with that beer. I felt I needed to buy that beer a nice dinner and say it looked cute, it was that good. Had I had extensive amounts of cash to burn through, I would have bought more, but I felt the relationship was best left short and sweet. I shall return one day and taste its sweet nectar, but for now I'll stick to the cheap stuff. 

5. I just finished a big chunk of my thesis research proposal! It's for a class called Scientific Writing, so it's not even for my actual program, but it's going to help with the final proposal. I'm about three pages into the required six. That's not bad considering the first part of the school year was jammed packed with work for other courses so I'm lucky I even have three pages worth of material to go on!

There you have it, five good things this week. It wasn't the best week, but it also wasn't the worst week. Goals for next week are getting back to the gym, finally buying some skates, and going out on Friday night. Here's to another positive seven days!

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5 Good Things

So my friend started the New Year off by saying it might be fun to post five good things that happen to her each week. I thought it was a wonderful idea and decided I'd do that same and post here. It's a positive way to sum up and reflect on my week, and I'd be able to post more on here! So here are my five good things from Jan 5-12, 2014. 
It was a hard week. First week back at school and intensive courses for 3 of those days. Im definitely wiped out from last week, but there were some good things. 

1) We got a decent amount of snow! 
I love winter, having basically been on a ski hill since I was 3. We've had rainy and grey weather for the longest time and it was really getting on my nerves. We finally got some snow yesterday and today and I'm so happy!

Look at all that lovely snow! More photos on instagram.com/lilacviking

2) Two nights of roller derby
I'm an NSO (Non Skating Official) for Tampere Roller Derby. This week I got to help officiate a bout between the Tampere Rollin' Bros and Helsinki Roller Derby A Team. Helsinki won and it was lots of fun being Pentalty Box Timer for the second time! Friday night was just a normal scrimmage between the TRD Fresh Meat (the new girls) and I was PBT again. I actually had to teach someone to be PBT and she did a good job!

3) I've started to make a conscious effort not to eat so much crap. Today was a cheat day, but I've been good other than that!

4) My snow pants that I barely fit in last Christmas are now much too big for me!

5) I just got back from a lovely brunch with friends and then we went tobogganing. I hit a rock really hard and hurt my bum quite a bit, but it was still a wonderful Sunday.

My friends and I have a few more things planned in the upcoming weeks, so I should have lots to talk about!

Another one of those Best of 2013 things

 Even though Common Era Earth has just turned 2014 years old, I felt that there was still room for one more Best of 2013 list. I think the contents of this list are a bit under appreciated when it comes to metal. I'm talking about music videos. I find that a lot of metal music videos are the band performing while some random shots are thrown in of either band members “acting”, or random people acting, whilst attempting to make a connection to the song. I know that music videos are no longer very relevant since most music television channels no longer focus on music, and even less relevant to metal music because those bands don't get much airplay on music television anyway, but I've always appreciated a well executed music video. While these days it seems that it is a lot easier for bands to release lyric videos, there are some bands that have made music videos an art form rather than just a mishmash of performing and so called acting. This is just a few bands I thought deserve a pat on the back and a snuggle for being able to execute superb music videos in 2013.

1) Outlaw by Watain from The Wild Hunt

The video for Outlaw must have been a stressful one for everyone involved with Watain. The band has been together for about fifteen years and never released a music video, unless you count their DVD, Opus Diaboli, which I don't, so there must have been immense pressure for Outlaw to be above and beyond. Outlaw has got to be my favourite track from The Wild Hunt because of the tribal and animalistic nature that seems to leap from the speakers and drag you back to it's lair. The music video managed to embody all that wildness fantastically. I love the ”vintage” asthetic of it, which may be interpreted as trying to stay trve by having it be shit quality. They were successfully able to piece together vingettes of all kinds of footage like insane asylum patients, animals parts, other blood and gore, nuns doing drugs, a lady who looks like she is committing suicide by sticking her head in an oven, and a band performance. And to add to the interesting vignettes, the fast pace of the song was matched by the transitions of the vingettes and was able to keep my interest. They even managed to make the band performance interesting by keeping it pretty primal. I haven't seen Watain live, but Outlaw definitely gives me a taste of what I could expect; fire, dirt, and blood. I really liked how the band was involved in the vignettes without it seeming like it was just an awkward moment of acting; sometimes they were on motorcycles, sometimes they were creepin' on those insane asylum people, sometimes they were being very Crust Punk by tattooing some poor soul in a disease filled room where I would not be surprised to find GG Allin in a corner covered in his own blood and shit. It's creepy, dirty, and wild. It's perfect. 

2) Dead City Radio and the New Gods of Supertown by Rob Zombie from Venomous Rat Regeneration Vendor

Dead City Radio is a boot-scootin' booty shakin' kind of song for me and its video makes me love the song even more. I do a bit of an eye roll when bands do videos in black and white because it makes me feel like they are trying to be too artistic, but I think when it comes to Rob Zombie, and this music video, I'll let it slide. This video is incredibly random but it works for the song and the video doesn't try to do anything else but be a performance piece. I could have done without Sheri Moon Zombie being in it because she is to Rob Zombie what Johnny Depp is to Tim Burton, but I didn't hate her performance and she is still pretty badass in it. It's still got that sassy Rob Zombie feel to it; it's fun and groovy and that's all that matters.

3) Blow Your Trumpets Gabriel by Behemoth from The Satanist

Blow Your Trumpets Gabriel is one of those videos that surpasses the song. For me, the song is a tiny bit borning, but the video made up for that and makes me way more excited for Behemoth's return. The video is chalk full of gorgeous imagery and symbolism that I haven't quite absorbed/grasped from just a few viewings and my limited knowledge of such things. It's in black and white as well, and I'll let it slide even more than Dead City Radio because this video is damn artistic, in a way that doesn't try to talk down to its viewer. I think that this video is a great trailer for what we can expect from The Satanist, which will be released in February, and shows how Behemoth is ready to live up to their name.

4) Häxbrygd by Finntroll from Blodsvept

Finntroll delivered some Mad Max-esque trollness with Häxbrygd. It's nice to see a band that would otherwise get pushed into doing yet another video full of folky aesthetics do something totally different, but still keep some of their roots in there, like the addition of some floppy troll ears and keeping their stage makeup. For me, the end of the video where the band finishes pimpin' their ride and proceeds to ride around town is very similar to the video for Dragula by Rob Zombie, but, I dig it. I could do without the addition of the double bass because I think it is really over done in a lot of music videos. However, drummer Beast Dominator's incredibly sassy moment of giving the camera the finger and the addition of a creeptastic scene with Trollhorn playing the hell out of an accordion tips over the scale for this being an awesome video. 

Honourable mention – In the Navy by Alestorm from Live at the End of the World

This is an honourable mention because technically it's labeled officially on Youtube as a teaser for their live DVD/album, Live at the End of the World. From a band that labels itself as ”bacon powered pirate core”, I don't expect any less than them finally covering this musical masterpiece and while I'm not a huge fan of live videos, this one is pretty fun. I like that they've utilized GoPro technology in this because it sort of update to the age old live music video. The ”back stage” footage you see is decent cause it's not just a bunch of musicians off their tits all the time nor is it just about how boring touring can be; they managed to get a good mix of the two with some nice footage of Australia.

I've missed them playing in Toronto everytime, either I wasn't into them or I was not in the country, and them appear to have played in Finland once. But, I know from reliable sources that what you see in this video is basically what you get; lots of drinking, primarily by frontman Christopher Bowes whilst playing the Segway of instruments, the keytar, pirates, and kangaroos. Although, I don't think kangaroos are all that prominent, but they should be. All silliness aside, the video is a great teaser/trailer/whatever you want to call it for Live at the End of the World and if I wasn't a skint student, I'd definitely buy it. 

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