If vikings were Care Bears that drank tea, I would be that viking.
I'm a twenty something forever student from a land where we ride beavers to work, drink maple syrup, and playing hockey is like a mating call. I went on exchange to the University of Helsinki in 2011/2012 and apparently felt the need to keep going to school/living in Finland after I graduated. Follow me as I have fun in Finland and sometimes write about music.
Fun
stuff this week! Nothing overly special, and I don't have any pictures, but it is
the little things that count
1.
I took my flatmate skating for the first time. She's never been on
ice before, she's from England if that explains it, but she bought
skates earlier in the week with the aim of learning how to skate over
the winter. I've skated for twenty years and have taught one or two
other people to skate, so I offered to teach her. She was amazing. I
only had to support her for about thirty minutes, out of the one hour
we were out, before she figured out her balance, how to propel
herself forward, and speed control. She kept telling me how much she
loved it and that made me really happy. We are hopefully going to go
weekly!
2.
I hit all my exercise goals for the week!
3.
My friends and I had a fun Olympic Opening Ceremony party on Friday.
It was less watching them as much as it was critiquing the outfits of
the various teams (Canada still has the best alternative to waving
flags via our maple leaf mittens) and drinking and eating pizza.
4.
Saturday was my first official day NSOing for Tampere Roller Derby!
TRD played against the Hamburg Harbour Girls and won both of their
games. I was only needed for the first bout, but I still had tons of
fun. I really enjoy the position I was in and the NSO (Non Skating
Official) crew is just lovely. Some of my friends came and I'm really
glad they all enjoy it and derby is being spread around. I'm going to
do a derby post at the end of the month, hopefully, so keep watching
this space!
5.
I've come to terms with going back to Toronto for the summer. It's
going to be too expensive for me to stay in Tampere during the summer
and I've basically already got my old job back in Toronto. I asked my
dad and he is more than okay with me staying at his place over the
summer again. I also feel that I will be able to get a work
placement, which is required for my program, in Toronto much easier
than in Tampere. And I do miss Toronto, and my friends and family,
since I haven't been there since August. It should be a pretty fun
summer even though I won't be in Finland, but I will be back here in
September.
Next week shall consist of more exercise and skating, watching some more Olympics, and two birthday parties. Here's to being positive!
1.
I did a really good job eating well and exercising this week. Even
though I ended up not being good from Thursday to today since I went
to visit a friend, I still did a damn good job for the first part of
the week. I'll do even better this week.
2.
I managed to go skating all by myself. It sounds silly, but this was a big deal
for me because of what goes on in my brain when I do sports things by
myself. I really enjoyed myself and other than the first two minutes
of “shit, I'm here by myself. Everyone is looking at me”, I was
okay. I even did non stop laps for 15 minutes! (then I wanted to die
cause I was so tired)
3.
I went to visit one of my best friends. I probably shouldn't have
because I don't have the money and I should have done school work,
but I haven't seen Lily since the beginning of November. She was
having a party for her language school friends on Friday, so I packed
my bags and headed to Pori Thursday night and stayed till Sunday. We didn't
do much, but it was nice to see her and her boyfriend.
4.
I got a hair cut! Don't panic, I still have my signature side cut,
but I got the short side shaved again. I've need it done since before
Christmas but I never had the time to ask someone to do it. I have my
own clippers and was going to do it myself at the beginning of
January, but the damn clippers crapped out on me when I went to
charge them. Thankfully, one of Lily's friend's had some clippers and
Lily was able to give me a shave on Friday.
Nothing like a fresh haircut to make a girl feel like a million bucks!
5.
I got caught up on Supernatural. It's probably the only show I watch
religiously, but since it started back up from its Christmas break, I
forgot about it; I don't watch tv on a television so I don't have
commercials to remind me. Tumblr spoils stuff for me so I sorta knew
what happened, which is why I haven't really been stressed about not
watching it, but since I had time to kill this weekend, I watched the
3 episodes I was missing.
There
you have it, five sorta unexciting positive things from this week!
Next week I want to get back on my exercise and diet schedule and not
break it (I know I'll break it on Friday night because we are having
an Olympics party), skate at least one time, get some important
school work and emails sent out, and do well at NSOing my first big
derby bout on Saturday! I've also just been invited/told that there is a thing with my friends on Tuesday night. That means I've got something to do every night this week except Monday and Wednesday. Lord help me.
Not a lot of pictures from this week so have one that I took while waiting for my bus home from the city center tonight
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 9th.
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!
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.
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 8th
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!
Don't forget to follow me on Tumblr, Instagram, Flickr, Twitter, and Deviantart! All the links are on the sidebar. Thanks for reading!
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!
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.
Just so we are clear, Santa is from Finland, look it up or watch Rare Exports if you don't believe me.
Anyway, as you may or may not know, I didn't
go back to Canada for Christmas this year. I have friends here in
Finland that would have welcomed me for Christmas and Christmas back
in my hometown can get a bit hectic sometimes going between two parents
and my brother being in B.C., so I planned on staying here. Over the
summer, my mum decided that she would come to Finland to spend
Christmas with me. I for one was not holding my breath until she had
a plane ticket in hand and my dad said that I was not allowed to
spend Christmas alone so he would fly me home if she didn't make it
out here. In September I got a message saying she had booked her
flight for December 16 to December 30!
December 16, which is also the day I
was extracted from the womb, comes and Im on a train from Tampere to
Helsinki-Vantaa to pick up my mumma. She has never been to Finland
before, even though she has been to basically every European country
before I was born. I was mega excited to show her around the city I
used to live in, especially since she is the one person that was
subject to my full on Finnophile ways. I felt sorta bad since there
is no snow in Helsinki and it
rained almost the entire time she was here, but I think she had fun.
She kept telling me how much she liked Helsinki and how she
understood why I liked living in Finland so much. My birthday evening
was spent at a wonderful restaurant on Pohjois Esplanadi called Aino,
which specialises in Finnish food. I had moose neck and sausage (yum)
and, since it was her first meal in Finland, Mumma had reindeer and
wanted to start a long term relationship with it. The
night of the 17th
was a belated birthday present for me because I got my socks blown
off when I went to see one of my favourite bands, Satyricon, perform
at Circus. I could ramble on about how awesome the concert was, but I
won't and you can just go look at the photos I took.
My birthday dress. A present from Mumma that she got from a Canadian shop called Blame Betty!
It didn't feel very Christmasy,
probably because of the lack of snow, but we had a little Christmas
tree complete with Canadian themed ornaments,and
even though my dad wasn't there, he sent me some gifts that were also
Canadian themed.We didn't have an oven at the little apartment we were renting so
we couldn't make a proper Christmas dinner or bake cookies, but we
had as close as we could manage for Christmas Dinner, which actually
ended up being eaten on December 26th.In
Canada we celebrate Christmas on the 25th,
but I know most of Europe opens their presents on December 24th.
Our typical Christmas Eve is to have a ridiculous amount of finger
foods and Mumma makes a huge pot of mussels in white wine. We
couldn't find any fresh mussels, we didn't look that hard), so we
just had loads of smoked salmon and the usual amount of finger foods,
and of course a lot of wine. Since my parents have been split up
since I was fifteen, I've always opened presents from my mum on the
24th
so that part wasn't strange to me. What was strange is that hardly
anything was open on the 24th,
nothing on
the 25th,
and nothing on
the 26th.
I don't know about other countries, but in Canada, the 24th
is one of the biggest shopping days because of last minute shoppers.
There are a number of business open on Christmas Day, especially in
the bigger cities in Canada, mainly because there is a much larger
number of people that don't celebrate Christmas in Canada compared to
Finland. Boxing Day in Canada is a massive
shopping
day; a wonderful day to go to the Eaton Centre if you have a death
wish or are feeling dangerous (the Eaton Centre is a large mall right
in the centre of downtown Toronto).
The Leafs aren't my favourite but there is a player on their team with the same last name as me so my dad had to get it for me. I know what I'll be wearing when I go skating this winter!
Christmas Eve dress! You can't see our decorations very well but that IS an RCMP Beaver as our tree topper
Without
going into too much detail about the rest of the trip, since I can't
really remember everything we did the whole two weeks, Helsinki with
my mum was awesome. I was a bit on edge for a few days for some
reason; I think I'm still dealing with school stress, lord knows I
keep thinking of all the stuff I have coming at me in January. Mumma
wanted to go to Tampere, Turku, Tallinn, and even St. Petersburg and
was kinda bummed we didn't manage to get to those places. I like to
stay away from the touristy places anywhere I go, so I tried to take
her to the places I liked to go to when I lived in Helsinki in
2011/2012. I'm not sure which her favourite was, but she really liked
the Christmas Market, Kaivopuisto, and Suomenlinna; I know, I know
two of those three places are very touristy but you can't go to
Helsinki without seeing Suomenlinna and we don't have Christmas
Markets in Canada on the same scale as Europe does. The rain sorta
slowed us down most days, but we walked a ton, something Mumma isn't
used to since it's pretty hard to get around without a car in my
hometown, but I think I showed her a lot of Helsinki and I think she
enjoyed herself a lot. I definitely enjoyed myself and I'm overjoyed
that both my parents have now seen the country I love so much and
understand a bit more why I love it so much. I did miss being back in
my hometown for Christmas, which apparently has a ridiculous amount
of snow right now and thankfully didn't get blasted by the major ice
story (one of my best friends that lives east of Toronto was without
power for over a week), and I did miss seeing some friends and family
(and kitty cat!) during the holidays, but I'm quite happy I decided
to stay in Finland for Christmas; what is Skype for if not connecting
with people at times like this?! Mumma is going to Scotland in May
and said she wants to come visit me in Tampere and that there had
better be nicer weather then!
I've
got photos from my holiday in Helsinki on my Flickr as well as myInstagram! You can also follow me on Tumblr and Twitter!
