Dear Diary II

Oh dear, the hostess Amy sent a picture of me and Mr. Sherlock Holmes from that jolly party of theirs. What an interesting and handsome man Mr. Holmes is!

Must have been Holmes's chilling mystery stories that messed up my hair. From now on I never go anywhere without my hairdresser!

Yours,
Di

Just a perfect day

The recipe for a perfect day is ever changing. Sometimes the perfectdayness is reached with a good book, a glass (or more) of red wine, mood-pleasing music, pair of woollen socks and a blanket; other times outdoor activities with friends followed by a beer and a burger is the magic combination.

Obviously culinary pleasures combined with mental and/or physical activities are some sort of corner stones, but basically anything can be in the recipe; pretty flowers in a ditch, a person walking on the street and smiling happily by him/herself, a powerful storm (when experienced safely).

The food + activities -theme seems to dominate my November-29-2009 -perfectdayrecipe:
1 sunny Sunday morning
1 marvelous breakfast (rye bread, smoked ham & turkey breast, lettuce, tomato, boiled eggs, 1 liter of tea) with my habibi
1 1/2 hours in the pool and the sauna
1 bowl of pasta with shrimp sauce garnished with parsley
1 slice of apple crumble and a giant mug of tea
3 hours of French homework
7 times thinking of having a nap after the next French exercise
1 glass of red wine and five crackers with goat cheese
10 times Just A Perfect Day in a row to celebrate the perfectness of the day

Feel free to copy the recipe and mix the ingredients in any order you wish or remove/add ingredients. Have a great Perfect Day!

Dear Diary

What a great Saturday I had! My dear friends Elton John and Amy Winehouse had a jolly party on Saturday evening, and for sure it was much more fun than watching dead boring cricket games or hunters chasing poor foxes.

I enjoyed my time at the party immensely, there were so many interesting people; for example the bad-tempered TV-chef Gordon Ramsey (who wasn't so bad-tempered after all), Sherlock Holmes (who wasn't very effective in solving a mystery when Amy lost her camera), Charlie Chaplin (poor man, he looks so sad most of the time), gloomy Oasis-brothers, Bridget Jones (whose bunny outfit would be good for Easter too) and some young singer girl, her name escaped from me. Oh dear, she created a little bit of a drama, and was arrested by a handsome police man who happened to be in the party too. Also the hostess Amy got herself into trouble with the police, but a glass of punch à la Elton John made everyone happy again.


I was wearing an evening gown from 2004; since no one from the party had seen it before they didn't know that I was actually wearing it for the third time already! Unfortunately a lot of the pictures taken during the evening were blurred, as Sherlock Holmes had shaky hands.

One little disappointment was the group of four guards in the party. I nicely asked them to perform the change of guards for me, but they resisted for hours and hours. I believe they finally did perform some sort of change of guards, but their choreography was somewhat unusual. Oh well, I guess they thought I've seen enough of the official change of guards in all sorts of official events.

But all in all, what a great evening it was indeed.

Yours,
Di

Public speaking :)

Great improvement in one week! Yesterday I was at another occasion saying another seven sentences, and this time it went well, even very well compared to last week's tomato-red-disaster. The crowd was much bigger than last week, about 100 people and I had to speak on a microphone, but I felt soooo much more relaxed. Probably because during the past couple of months I had so many nightmares about yesterday's event that when it finally was happening in real life, I was just relieved. So, the key how to be calm for that 45 seconds in front of the audience is obviously to panic extensively beforehand... hmmm... I wonder which one is a better option after all - peace of mind for weeks and 45 seconds redness or panic for weeks and 45 seconds calmness??

Autumn colours

We've had stunning autumn days lately, blue sky, nice +4 and sunshine. No snow yet, but probably soon... and "it'll be a lot of snow this year, since the squirrels are building their nests on the top parts of the trees", said a Santa Claus looking Norwegian-Canadian man in the sauna of the public pool.


Pretty trees along the canal, on my way to work. In a couple of months the canal will be transformed into Skateway - the world's largest ice rink.


A bench in Gatineau park looks a lot like a bench in Pyynikki, Tampere. (Gatineau park is actually in Quebec side, that's the park where we go to swim in the summer.)

Multilingual, but not bilingual - yet

Finnish, Swedish and German are not in demand in Canada. If I had studied French and for example Spanish, my multilingualism would be in a totally different level. I would be bilingual with the official languages (English and French) and Spanish would be a great addition. Oh well, how could I have known 20 years ago - or even four years ago - that I will end up in Canada?

But it's never too late to learn. I hope. And that's why I've started French this autumn. I've always disliked French, and even when I had a French roommate in Austria for a year, in Toronto for a half a year and in Ottawa for couple of months, I never really wanted to learn the language. So far my French conversation skills have been limited to couple of bad words and "une paguette, s'il vous plait". I never understood how anyone is able to make sense of a language, where words might have 8 letters, but only half of them will be pronounced. Like "merci beaucoup" which is pronounced "merci boku" and not letter by letter, which I would prefer; "merci beaucoup". Not very graceful.

But now my "merci boku" is becoming more graceful, thanks to the French classes. Three hours a week I sit with other eager French learners and repeat after the teacher "a quelle heure alles-vouz au travail?" - "a kel öör alle-vu o travaij?" - "what time do you go to work?". To my surprise, Finnish has actually proven to be helpful when learning French, since Finnish has ö-sound in it. Couple of other students struggle with the sound a lot and when the teacher says "öööö", the students answer "oooo". Each week "öööö" -"oooo" - "öööö" -"oooo" - "öööö" -"oooo" dialogue goes on for a little while.

Another three hours a week I spend with an online program. Unfortunately the ears of the program are pickier than ears of another human being, and I constantly struggle with words like 21 (vingt et un), yellow (jeune) and tiny words like "le", "je" or "au". When the computer says "I don't understand you" for the 20th time in a row I jump to the next word and mumble my first French sentence to the computer: "Ta gueule!" - "Shut up!"

Public speaking p****le

Aaargh. If I have to say about seven sentences to a group of less than 20 people, can't I do it without stumbling in my words and being nervous like hell? Obviously not, as was proven yesterday. Of course I had prepared my seven sentences well and practiced them over and over again, but nevertheless, the nervousness hit me last minute. And most likely I was blushing too. Oh well. Maybe next time it will be easier. (Although I've been repeating that sentence for the past x number of years, and seems like every time the next time is still not much better.)

Good day, bad day

When people hear that I'm from Finland, they often ask how does it feel to live in Canada. Most of the time it doesn't feel much different than living in Finland, and my basic answer usually is "the nature and the weather are very similar to Finland, so it feels like home here, but obviously the population is much more multicultural here, which I like a lot". Then the discussion goes on either to Canadian weather ("no, I actually really like winter, I just hate the salt you guys use here to keep the roads melted") or to Finnish population ("no, not everyone is tall and blond and blue-eyed in Finland, I have green eyes and actually my hair colour doesn't qualify to blond there").

Sometimes though, it feels different to live here. It's difficult to describe in which way it's different, it just is. Those days are usually not good days, but luckily those days are very rare. Here is an example of one of those days, a piece that I wrote in August (when I was still too shy to start a blog) when I absolutely hated Ottawa for a day:

"It’s the hottest day of the summer, +32 degrees, and the whole city is wrapped in haze. I’m biking home from work in this sticky, hazy weather, knowing that “home” is about +45 degrees hot and there’s no lake nearby where I could jump and cool off. Well, yeah, there’s Ottawa River running through the city, but thanks to Ottawa’s worse-than-medieval sewage system, you don’t want to swim in that water. To swim without e-coli we have to drive 50 km, pay 9 bucks, and stay in a designated swimming area which is about four meters wide and full of kids. What if I just want to have a quick dip after work?? Where do I go??

I bike faster with a grim look on my face and suddenly it strikes me. I hate Ottawa. I hate I hate I hate. I recall all the beautiful clean lakes in Finland. If I was in my home town Hollola, it would take only five minutes by bike and I’d be in one of three small lakes. Tampere, where I studied, was surrounded by two cooling lakes. I browse through all the cities and villages of Finland in my mind, and convince myself that each one of them has a lake or a river. With e-coli-free water. My only bad swimming memory was somewhere in eastern Finland, where the water was muddy and not refreshing, but I ignore that memory. I’m sure that even that village had a hidden lake somewhere; I just chose the wrong lake or the wrong end of it.

I keep on biking, sweating and swearing. Finally I'm at home, which is hot like hell in days like today and I burst at my husband: Why there's no lakes with five minutes walk from here?!?!?!"

So, that's how it sometimes feels to live here and that's when I miss Finland a lot. But otherwise Ottawa is just like any city where I've lived, and I don't feel like I'm abroad. Which is good, since I'm not, since Canada IS my new home country. And actually, Ottawa is pretty pretty:

Heihou maailma

I finally took the bull by its horns and created a blog, jei*! Don't know how jei it's for other people, but hopefully very jei or jei at least, and hopefully it will be VERY jei for me, selfish as I am. (* jei = a Finnish version of yay, adopted from a dear friend of mine)

The purpose of this blog is to writewritewrite in English and to overcome the block in my head. The block that paralyzes me when I'm trying to be creative in English, and especially trying to write creatively in English. I hope the blog helps me to get rid of the feeling of not knowing enough words to be witty and funny, or not knowing enough words to describe everyday phenomena. I also believe that using the words in writing will help them to stick in my head and the use of online dictionary would decrease gradually. In a nutshell, my modest wish is that with the postings my English will miraculously become superb, it will be entertaining and captivating and free of all sorts of annoying mistakes that I make but am not even aware of.

Another as important purpose of this blog is to keep my family and friends up-to-date/week/month with what is going on in my everyday life. I'm still anti-facebook and extremely lazy in writing emails, so hopefully this blog will offer one way of staying in touch. So please don't shy away from commenting (in any language you wish to use), whether you want to point out a missing article or say hi; it's all warmly welcomed.

All this said, it's about time to post this text and stop worrying about the possible mistakes it includes - after all, I'm writing to learn how to write!