Smile till it hurts

The silent sea of depressive faces in this country has not gone anywhere. We may be the second happiest nation in Europe, the economy is doing ok and the democracy is still somehow alive, but it doesn't show on our faces. It's still very amusing to walk around, counting all the lips pointing downwards, and all the super cheap vodka bottles happily travelling to unhappy homes. There are people here who look like they are hurting when they smile.

Yep, Finns were stated as happy happy joy joy people in a recent survey, but here someone asks equally happily that 'If Finns are so happy, why is the leading cause of death alcoholism?'

http://www.thelocal.se/discuss/viewtopic.php?t=153

Good call. Now who was it that paid for this survey, again?

As with money and ownership nowadays, happiness is probably less and less equally spread.

Another interesting and somewhat surprising is the statement that we share the same values with the Frenchies ("success, wealth, and prestige are values of very little importance, whereas equal treatment and care for other people and the environment are more significant"):

http://www.hs.fi/english/article/International+study+Finns+and+French+have+similar+values/1076154669520

So there may be some hope.

You can surely feel the continuing concern for the existence of social democracy, equality and nature in the media. One of the strongest differences opposed to Van after we had landed in Hel was noticing that there is lots of discussion and awareness raising. People are interested in the society. It's not all about hockey and the latest tv shows.

At least not every day.

At least not all day every day.

Maybe it's all just smoky delusion and all we care for is the next pint of beer.

Nah.

Almost new in Hel

It happened for the first time yesterday; upon making my Sunday morning coffee (morning meaning some early afternoon), I was thinking how great it would be to go on a stroll along the Sea Wall. I missed Vancouver. For a flash, and bitterly.

I remembered how, exactly a year ago, we flew back to Van from Hel, and I could smell the spring. Now, I can only smell the neuter that winter is, plus some vaguely Italian odours rising from the pizza boxes people carry around. Goddamn. Greasy cheap wholesale cheese and all.

Back to Hel for a month, and I can feel myself losing the remigrator's virginity. Before I give my smile entirely to the gray February city that Hel is now and lose my sensitivity, I'll try to make up a list of what has changed.

Alternatively, this could be a list of things that I have forgotten were there already when we left three years ago. But hey, I am not too far apart from having to add some memory games to my morning yoga.


What's new in Hel, babe?

1. Some people know how to say thank you, give way and open doors to others. A complete stranger even smiled at me yesterday at the same time he opened the door. I was in a state of shock all night.

To compensate for this overwhelming kindness, the ones who don't know how to move around in a world with other people than just oneself, are ruder than rude. Most of the time outside, I feel like I am participating in a game of 'bump wordlessly into as many moving creatures as you can' Some overdo this and get into bumping game with vehicles.

2. There are flavoured ciders in supermarkets. Blueberry. Black currant. Pineapple. And dozen others. Only the dry varieties work. The rest are yucky. Keep away from them.

3. Every time I open the tv, there's someone who doesn't look like a Finn, but speaks perfect Finnish. Yippeeee, we ARE actually getting international in this God's frozen back yard.

4. Advertising is getting more aggressive. TV programs are "provided by" so-and-so (and I was thinking this was an American trait). Even at my gym, it says on the shower room door that "Your shower is provided by so-and-so".

But I don't mind the so-and-so's luvly shower and hair styling products, because they save me from carrying all the feminine bottles to the gym.

5. There are really cool and over-prized cafés and bars in Hel. I have stopped drinking lattes (who wants to pay for over 4 euros?), but on the other hand our basic coffee tastes so good that I pretend I don't miss the scent of the Seattle-born coffee giant's espresso.


My highly profound list will continue on your screens. Sometime in the future.

New and old circles

During these three weeks back in Hel I have often found myself realizing how many circles are coming to a close. "Ten years ago" is a typical opening line. On the Hel streets, I run into people I met or used to know ten years ago (like a flat mate, who I last bumped into in Tampere four years ago. We both lived there at the time, and now found each other living here in Hel two kilometres from each other).

Ten years ago, I started a wandering process between Hel and England, leaping back and forth, then spent two years in Tampere and, after that, three in Vancouver. The work I now do, with its visions and missions and core values, brings together all the themes I've studied or otherwise learnt, all the people I've known, all the tiny significant ideas and gut feelings. I feel I've been collecting all that stuff, all those energies and muses and themes to be here now, to do what I do now.

Not that anything's final, thank goodness. Everything has just shifted remarkably. Moved into a new type of restlessness, new questions.

It's somehow sad to notice how we have missed nothing from Vancouver so far. It would be more sad to miss something. Or perhaps it's just too early to say.

I guess it's just that this business of moving into new surroundings on one go throws us into completely different orbit, leaving no space for comparisons. It's like being committed to one person: you take and accept the whole package in their own terms. There's no mixing and matching. You are either here or there, either with that person or the other.


To avoid any sublime conclusions and to leap back on the hard-ass ground, the word 'circle' always reminds me of Stephen Fry in one of the 'Have I Got News for You' episodes. At the time, there were some rumours of Prince Edward and Fry hanging together in the same social gangs, or even more than that. Fry, well-known for his excellent sense of euphemisms, stated that 'I have not penetrated his intimate circle'.

Good old-fashioned anthropology

Hooray, our home is back, unwrapped from the cold cardboard boxes. Cooking is suddenly so much easier with more than one pan and one plastic knife.

Now that I've seen four moving company gangs on both sides of Atlantic, I can draw a few highly unbiased conclusions.

They move in groups of three. The tallest is usually the leader, the one who tells the others which way to carry, unveil, tape and rip apart, and who does the least. This is the type that possibly was a bully at school, or, alternatively, now replaces his lack of history as a bully by being a noisy semi-bully. Then there's the virgin-eyed junior, whose pubic hair has hardly reached visibility and who falls on the floor if you speak to him. Then there's the guy who's scared of the somewhat speculative, but still existing chances of McDonalds going bankrupt and who thus devotes lots of loving care into investing his money on burgers.

There's always an unspoken pecking order, lots of cool knitted caps, tattoos and a silent longing for a night at the local.

I didn't get a chance to measure their skulls, which is a pity.

It should be noted that different analysis might follow based on a moving gang that only concentrates on national assigments.

We're not in Kansas anymore

I needed to finally admit I'm back in the country. Please take me in your arms as another number in this social welfare jungle, you Dostoyevskian social insurance people.


Me: It's so empty and quiet here, I can almost hear the hay balls rolling.
The officer: Excuse me?
Me: I was just saying how surprised I am by how there are no queues.
The officer: No queues. Yes. It's so cold.


I was really the only person besides the empty-eyed chap behind the counter, and we really spoke those words. The officer clearly had no clue where I had grabbed my hay balls from. He wasn't being unkind, he was just too far away from Arizona desert. Or then he had been fingering the gun in the upper drawer of his desk when I stepped in, toying with the idea of ending his miserable life. The sun only shines outside. And it was so cold.

And so were my blood veins.
I decided to walk back home, as it only took 15 minutes to cross the bridge. With half a frozen face in -14 celsius, lots of liquid snot ready to gush out and a clear blue sky in the background, I smiled happily, and hurried home to enjoy some ugly green asparagus soup.

Good Night and Thanks for All The Fish

We have got rid of jet lag. We don't stink weird on weird times of the day or fall asleep in the middle of sentence - our own or someone else's. But we're still outsiders. I find myself exhausted in my old home town, where I was born and where I have lived for seven years. One sign of sailing through everything new and unfamiliar is that both of us are overloaded with streams of dreams each night. Every night I go to sleep, I glide into a world with lots of people from my past, mixed with new terrains. I guess these private dark hour film festivals could also be a sign of stepping into a completely new phase in life.

It's the second night at our Kaapeli home. I'm delirious of the airy space, the sauna, the simple food. My other hand has an aroma of dill and gravad lax, and the other stinks of tar. So I do stink weird, after all, in a wonderful way though.

We went to our very own local tonight for the first time (well, for the first time as residents indahaus, not as customers). As a vast building providing space for loads of creative people, I spotted a familiar gang from tv, an improvisation theatre group, and one of my all time favourite musicians Tapani Rinne sat next to us to enjoy a drink after another long day with his sax.

Some Rinneradio samples can be found here, the link takes you to a wide selection of Finnish music, also great for us newcomers to learn of all the new bands: http://www.musex.fi/midem2006/

(some of my old favourites include Don Johnson Big Band, Eternal Erection (yes, you read right, and yes, their funk is funking good!), Kemopetrol, Rajaton, Giant Robot, Koneveljet (their 'Welkom' is just fab!), Poets of The Fall and Nightwish.)

I was so tired that I asked the waitress about the 'glasses that come by wine' (instead of wines that come by glass). So to all those I've told about the time I said 'Good night' at the Stockmann Deli @ five in the afternoon (if you do that in Finnish, you sound like someone who needs to get their circuits checked. I was simply in a Canadian mode. Or that's how I try to explain it, anyway): I expect to start blurting out more twisted fun stuff soon. Stay posted.

Our container has hit the Finnish shores, and we get the stuff once the toll bureaucracy has been cleared. We are very hard trying to join the Kallasvuo method:
http://networks.silicon.com/mobile/0,39024870,39155846,00.htm