Thirty

Today is my birthday. Happy birthday to me. The first blog post about my own birthday was ten years ago. It's sometimes very hard to believe that I have had this blog over a decade now. My blog has seen so many of my birthdays since. I've described my birthday parties here, whenever I have had them, and my birthday presents too. A lot have happened during all these years. In a way I am still the same person, and in a way I am not.

I still don't feel like an adult, I'm not sure if I ever will. I consider that to be a good thing. I never really want to grow up. I am happy being this way, feeling young and utterly confused about everything. I've move forward, taken some steps bavkwards and then moved forwards again. That's life, as it is. I've ended relationships, said goodbye to fading friendships, found new love, found new friends, started new things and new chapters.

I am grateful that I have kept my blog all these years, even though I have some years missing here and there. I feel grateful that I have this chronology of my life. I can recall events that I have forgotten, remember feelings, be sad about certain things, be happy about others. This is a gift, truly, and a best birthday gift I could give myself. Sometimes blogging is hard for me. I feel it gets harder the older I get. I am less careless about the things I write, censor myself more. I'm worried about coworkers, future employees finding my blog and expecting me to be the same person I was ten years ago, or even five years ago. I do change, like all humans too. I wish I could let go of my constant fear of being discovered one way or another. I am writing under this pseudonym, but today's technology just makes it harder to hide.

But do I really have anything to hide? Other than my past. But is my past worse than my current moment. Or is my past worse than my future? I don't know. I am just afraid of people making assumptions based on the stupid childish things I've written ten years ago. It's hard to determine the fine line between the person I used to be and the person I am today.

Sometimes even I am consufed about the person I am today. Who am I in the first place? What is the essence of me? When I was younger, like in my teens, I thought that being thirty means being an adult. That by the age of thirty I would have it all figured out. I'd have the education, the career, the everything. Little did I know, indeed. Being thirty is no different than being twenty, at least in my book.

I do have the education now though. And I am actually trying to get back to school, to get a higher education. I don't really need it, but I am thinking why not. I can study while I'll work, I should be able to arrange it. I think getting another degree could give me a kick to some new direction. I am not sure if I need it or want it, but it's good to have some options open and explore new possibilities. It can't hurt. Now let's keep fingers crossed that I get accepted.

And the career. A career. I am not sure if I have a career, but I do have a job. And it's a job I enjoy throughly most of the time. I have responsibilities, projects, challenges, all that. I respect and appreciate my newest boss and I like my teammates. I even get to work together with my best friend. I wonder what else could I want, expect the three things I can't get: a transfer to another team, a bigger salary and a big ass promotion.

And my life. I think it's getting sorted out for once. For the first time I am on medication. Antidepressants and anti-anxiety. It's time to tackle this son of a bitch depression. I've suffered way too long and way too much. I am also waiting to get into psychotherapy. I am too old to fees ashamed for being such a mental case. Sometimes I feel that my blog is mostly a history of my depression too. Occasionally here and there it shines trhough even though I've never really directly addressed that. Sometimes I wonder why it took me so long. And sometimes, still, I wonder I need that at all. I can't decide. Sometimes I am fine, sometimes I am not. But when I am not fine, it damages things and it bothers me too much to just ignore it.

Love. There is a line in one song I like that goes "your last love is the best love". I don't necessarily agree with that statement. I loved my ex-husband and I still do. I cherish all the years we spent together and even the bitter end. I have no regrets, nothing. I still speak very highly of him and I get angry whenever someone tries to say something mean about him. None of this was his fault, he always tried his best. And I am not saying it was my fault either. It's just the way things went and I am OK with that. I've moved on. And while I don't agree with the "your last love is the best love", I feel that I have found something that simply works better for me. My relationship with my boyfriend is not better or worse, it's just profoundly very different; different personalities, different dynamics. I love my boyfriend very deeply and very passionately and I feel confident he brings me joy and happiness for many, many years to come.

I used to own an apartment. I've taken a step back and now rent one, along with my boyfriend and roommates. It doesn't bother my slightly. I feel my attitude towards owning things has moved to another direction. Material things mean very little to me, only care about the very obligatory things. I need clothes on my body, but I don't care them too much. The same goes for everything, really. What I need to own, I own. But I've lost my interest of owning fancy things or things that fall more into the luxury department. In a way I'd be interested to become more minimalist, but at the same time I feel too lazy to go through my things and downsize. I don't mind having the things I have now even though I don't need them all. I feel that the things I get now are more imporant. I don't want to clutter my life with stuff. Stuff doesn't correlate with happines, that's what I have learned.

I've lost friends, both best friends and acquaintances, during this past ten years. They come and go. I am generally just really bad at keeping touch. I know that using things like Facebook might help, but I am still against Facebook. It doesn't interest me one bit. I have no interest of keeping up with friends who I am no longer really friends with. I don't care about their babies or their fancy jobs. It would probably just make me feel bad about myself. Or maybe it would be make me feel guilty of being the one who faded away. I am always able to make new friends and I feel that the friends that I have made during the last few years are better than the ones I have ever had. Occasinally I feel this flutter of nostalgia, thinking about people I used to know and care about, but what I have learned that reconnecting with others is not as easy as it might sound. People  change, me included. It's better to keep things in the past and just have the nice memories of things that used to be.

Now I realize this post is turning to a megapost. It's not a bad thing. Actually this is the very thing that I wanted to do. I wanted to capture the current. What I am right now, how things are in my life in this very moment. So when I turn fourty, I can reread this and write a new one. I have no idea where my life leads me next. Maybe after another decade I live in another coutry, speak different language, have a completely different career and completely different social circles.  Who knows. I never expected to find myself here and yet here I am.

Vad i helvete?!

Be careful what you wish for, they say. Be careful. I remember this one blog post I wrote back in 2008, in which I semi-seriously pondered whether I should study Swedish, the other official language of Finland. I can't remember why I got the idea and why I thought it was a good idea, but I remember discarding that idea pretty much as quickly as I got it. I guess I assumed it would be too much work, to be too laborious.

But little did I know... that in 2015 I would actually pretty much fall in love with the Swedish language. Fall. In. Love. I am 100% serious. I fell in love with the language I used to hate for years. And it happened by an accident, because of a stupid joke that wasn't even funny in the first place. It's amazing how little things can change the way you view things.

It started with Duolingo.com, the language learning website. I had heard so much about it that I eventually just wanted to give it a try. I wanted to see what it was all about and whether it worked or not. I made an account and suddenly I was faced with a tough decision; what language should I try?And in case you don't know already, there is a surprisingly wide selection of languages to choose from! Hastily I decided to make a fun decision, something to entertain me at work. So I chose the language everybody hates, that I hated; Swedish.

I am highly motivated by magical invisible internet points. I love getting experience points and level-ups, they do wonders to me. So once I started "playing", I wanted to advance up in the skill tree, get more level-ups, get more experience points. I was hooked. And suddenly I forgot that Swedish was supposed to be oh-so-dreadful and oh-so-boring. That I was supposed to dislike it, even hate it. The more experience points I got, the more I was sucked in. Swedish started to make sense, kinda started to sound beautiful. It had it own flow, I liked it. I started to appreciate it. I relearned grammar and widened my vocabulary.

So yeah. I'd say Duolingo works. At least for re-learning languages.

It took me a little over month to finish the Swedish skill tree. I worked hard, one could say I was even a bit too addicted to Duolingo. But it was all for good! It wasn't just a stupid mobile game to waste some time on. I was actually, very seriously, learning something. And I wanted to keep learning even after I finished the skill tree. I started to read books in Swedish and ultimately I made a decision to read nothing but Swedish books this year.

Det handlar också om mig

My progress with books is quite slow, but it is definitely still progress. I try my best to learn Swedish from other sources too. It's easy here in Finland, there is Swedish practically everywhere when you really start to look for it. I've learn countless new words for example from ads, street signs and instructions. Sometimes I feel impatient, like I should be working harder or learning faster, but then again I understand that it takes time and practice to become fluent, it doesn't happen overnight and it doesn't happen easily. After all it has taken me a decade to become fluent in English and I've only studied Swedish actively for a year. Couple new words every week is more than enough. I'll get there, eventually.

Besides, I am also in level 14 in Dutch.

Fail semester... sorry, fall semester

My school started on Monday and it feels good to get out of the house regularly again. I missed seeing people and having conversations without the trouble of inviting friends to come over. Though I don't have many friends at school, due to my weirdness, but at least I think that I have all the right friends around me. I wouldn't even want to be friends with everyone in my class. By the way, there's some changes in our class dynamics. There used to be more girls in our class, but now there's only three of us. I kinda like it. When I studied dentistry, there were only girls in my class and it made me feel quite insecure. I feel better now when the vast majority of our class is boys, because I don't have to care about how they feel about me. Girls are more critical and gossip-y and they easily create an unhealthy study environment. Or at least that's how I felt studying with only girls.

Anyway. I have four new courses to study. On Mondays I have a course called "Developing Data Network Services". We don't have any lectures in it, just a few seminars. We should watch some virtual lectures independently, but I still haven't installed that vpn-client on my computer which makes it possible. I read the instructions for Linux OS and there was an end-note which said it doesn't work on Ubuntu. And currently that's the only operation system I have in hand. J.R. said that there is a change it might work, because my Ubuntu is a newer version than the one mentioned in the instructions. We'll see. And oh... of course we have to do some big project. Laurea is all about making projects. We still don't know what our subject will be, though.

On Tuesdays I have some bullshit called "Managing Business Performance". I know I shouldn't be so judging, since our teachers probably mean well. But the last time we had the same teacher it was real pain in the ass. Seriously. Some people just shouldn't be teaching. Thank God we have two teachers in this course, and the other one is more pleasant. We were actually able to a) understand what he was trying to say and b) listening through the lecture without falling asleep. That's really special in Laurea.

On Wednesdays I have "Managing Information Security". It's the first course that actually sounds important and useful. And the teachers seemed OK too, like they actually know what they are talking about. We also got some books for free in our first lecture. That was cool. Free stuff is always cool. And it's quite amazing that finally some teachers actually believe that we're capable of like a) reading a book, b) learning something and c) being truly interested. Whoa!

On Thursdays I have a second part of an "Analysis and Design" course (I couldn't find a matching course in English and the Finnish name was absolutely impossible to translate), in which we are supposed to continue our project. In the last course our team designed a booking system for a hotel and in this course we should execute it. On the first lesson our team found out that we were the only team who managed to pass the last course completely. Talking about having the right friends... It feels good that everyone in our team is equally motivated. Or motivated in general.

And on Fridays I have NOTHING! Hooray! Anyway. You could probably hear my negative attitude towards my school through my post. It's justified. If my school was a person, it definitely wouldn't be the sharpest Crayola in the box. It wouldn't even be in the box, it would be too second-rate for it. I think the main problem with my degree program is that anyone can get in. Even monkeys. And monkeys aren't motivated to study, which doesn't make teachers exactly motivated to teach us. We do projects after projects without proper guidance and the end-results are poor (except in our team, of course). And the monkeys also have low moral "oh, let's plagiarize everything, that's why we have Wikipedia in the first place". Argh. Enough said.

And now you probably wonder why I keep studying in Laurea. Here are my reasons:

a) It's very close to my home, it takes only 15 minutes to walk to school.
b) I have a few good friends in my class that makes it worth the whine.
c) Despite all the bullshit, it's still about computers. And that's what I wanted.
d) It's only 3,5 years, 3 years if I keep myself busy. And I just started my second year.
e) Business Information Technology sounds good. I might actually get a job after I graduate.

EDIT: I have changed my mind. I said that one of our teachers is real pain in the ass, but now she's quite good at teaching accounting. I have absolutely nothing to complain about her way to teach in this course.

Nothing ever happens to me

It's hard to blog when nothing ever happens to you. Last Saturday we went to movies. The movie was Watchmen and we liked it a lot. It was long but not boring. And on Tuesday Ossi came by because he wanted our old teamaker (he read from my blog that I was willing to give it away). That's all beside school. And school sucks. And I guess I shouldn't be saying that on my blog anymore, because just today I linked my blog to a school project. I had to write a wikipage about myself, and as you know, there is not much to say about me. So I just write down my contact information and my blog address below it.

But something is happening to J.R. He's applying for schools. And one school he is applying to is in Tampere. It's definitely not his first choice, but it's an option for us. I've been living in the metropolitan area since I was fifteen and I love Espoo. But to be honest, I have no reason to live here. I have no hobbies here, my family doesn't live here and I feel that I'm not so important to my friends either. They wouldn't really miss me. Of course I'm currently studying here, but I can always request for a transfer. They have the same study program in Tampere and according to J.J. (he's studying there) it's very well organized compared to my current school.

Even though it's just an idea, I like to think how my life would be in Tampere. First of all, my family would be closer. I could visit them more often and they could visit me too. I would feel like an outsider anymore since I could participate more. I wouldn't miss birthdays anymore. And I have friends at Tampere as well and they're different than my friends here. I'm not sure how long Elina is going to stay at Tampere after graduating, but at least J.J. doesn't have such plans. He likes to live in Tampere and it would be amazing to be able to see him as often as I want instead of like once or twice in a year. He's still one of my greatest friends, especially because he really wants to hang out with me, unlike my friends here (OK, Ossi is an exception. He's awesome). They just make me feel incredibly lonely, but J.J. makes me feel quite the opposite.

My life would be, out of doubt, better in Tampere, but I still hope that I don't have to move. I definitely could and I wouldn't be miserable at all. But I rather keep on trying. I can see no reason why my life couldn't be here. It just haven't started yet. Maybe tomorrow. Or the day after tomorrow.

Come out and play

I normally get very nervous when I'm supposed to give presentations. I don't know why it happens. I don't have anything against performing, and usually I even like it. People have said to me that I'm quite natural when it comes to giving presentations. But that's only when my nervousness works for me.

See, when I'm nervous, I talk a lot. And that makes people think I know what I'm talking about (and usually I do, by the way). It also makes me crack stupid jokes, which is good, especially at school where presentations are typically dull. So when I'm nervous, I might end up giving a dynamic presentation.

But sometimes my nervousness doesn't work for me. Sometimes it doesn't work for me at all. Like today; We had to give a presentation on the future of the Internet. I had my part figured out and I was prepared to perform. I was nervous, but I thought it was a good thing. I don't know what went wrong. I just totally forgot what I was supposed to say. And I had notes! But I guess I wasn't so bad after all. I just wasn't as good as I should have been. Luckily the others don't know what awesome things they missed, it's just me who knows that I sucked.

One team gave us presentation on Linux. I listened carefully to find out were they for or against, it but they didn't have that kind of a view. They mostly talked about its history. I would have wanted to hear more about their personal experiences, but apparently they didn't reallyhave any.

It seems, as far as I know, that I'm the most experienced Linux user in our class. Last year I installed Ubuntu on my old laptop, and for several months I didn't use any other operating system beside it. So yeah, I learned some tricks... But I'm studying Business Information Technology, which means computers and stuff, so there should be other huge nerds too. Where are they hiding? I want them to come out and play with me.

Spontaneous Ideas Hearts Extrovert

Last week I wrote a report for school. Our team's subject was "the Future of the Internet" and my job was to write about web 2.0, semantic web and some shit about browsers and standardization. And I'm not pleased how it turned out. I could have done better! But my team wasn't very motivated and it made me less motivated too. I had higher goal first but then it eventually lowed to passing the course. I know that I shouldn't have let my team mates to affect me... but I can't help the fact I'm generally lazy.

I remember writing earlier on my blog that I don't like team working. Well, I have changed my mind. I guess Laurea (that's my school) has brainwashed me by its fancy LbD. LbD stands for "learning by developing" and it basically means that we are supposed to learn by doing real things together. They are encouraging us to be authentic, experimental and creative. And that suits me: according to BBC's personality test, I'm an "innovator".

And innovators are "fun-loving, creative, sensitive people who enjoy developing their ideas by discussing them with others". They support the people around them, easily spot opportunities and recognize hidden potential in people. And get excited about new projects. I know it's just a silly test, but I think the result it gave me really sounds like me. (And I would totally like to hear what's your personality type!)

Since I have already babbled so much about school, I guess I can continue with the subject. So, today we had a router exercise at Data Network Architecture course. We had to configure Cisco router and make static and dynamic routings. I have no idea what that means, but I had fun while doing it. We had to use command-line interface, and I've liked that ever since my Ubuntu experiments. Pointing and clicking is just so boring compared to typing and executing commands. And in my opinion Cisco IOS was quite easy to operate and to understand.

By the way, my school year is coming to an end soon: Tomorrow and next Tuesday I have some presentations to give and some opposing to do. No big deal. And next week I have Swedish and Data Network Architecture exams. Then it's pretty much over. I have survived my first academic year at Laurea university of applied sciences. Hooray!

Kids, don't plagiarize!!!

It's unbelievable how some people don't take plagiarism seriously. We had this report we had to write for a school project. It's not easy to write several pages when there are more than one writer, so we agreed that each one of us would write one part of the report separately. And when we meet for the next time, we would put the parts together and continue writing from there.

So we had a meeting on Saturday. One member of our team didn't show up. We weren't surprised, and actually we were quite happy that he decided not to come. But he had wrote his part... but his text didn't really match his skills. We knew he wasn't a good writer, probably due to his foreign background. So we did a little Google search... and found out that at at least one big part of his text was directly copy&pasted from the web. Since we couldn't trust his text anymore, we had to rewrite everything. That meant hours of extra work...

I just wonder how he dared to plagiarize. He would have gotten troubles for all of us. He did the plagiarizing but the teachers would have blamed us for not doing the report together. And I wonder if he thought about his reputation. Of course the word spreads and soon nobody wants to work with him. He's already an unliked team mate because of his laziness and lack of original ideas.

And I feel wrong because I have been spreading the word to some of my school mates. I should have talked to him, not behind his back. But I was so disappointed and angry. We were ready to correct his misspellings and grammar errors, but he didn't give us a chance. He should have said to us that he's having problems and we could have helped him. We can't all be great writers, but we can all be honest.

Anyway. I have wrote a lot for school lately, and I still have plenty to do. But all this writing has reminded me how much I love it. Writing is just the best damn thing ever. It's better than crocheting. And maybe, but just maybe, even better than hanging out with J.R.

And apparently I'm one of the best writers in my class. It's just a shame that I know nothing.

Learning by doing some other stuff

I was really ill yesterday. First my eyes started to ache and I decided to take a little nap. I slept for few hours and when I woke up I had the most terrible headache. But I took a pill and ate some banana cake that J.R. baked and I started to feel better. Though I'm not sure if it was because of the pill or the delicious cake. Anyway.

J.R. and I spent the last weekend in Viiala. This time we had no particular reason to visit my parents, I just wanted to visit them and J.R. had no better plans either. OK, we had this one reason: my mom wanted to take J.R. to pick mushrooms with her. I had to go with them too, though. My rubber boots were too big and they make my toes ache. I didn't complain much, though.


And now our fridge is filled with trumpet-shaped chanterelles.

And my sister commented my weight. She said that I should watch what I'm eating because I'm getting chubby. She's so polite, isn't she? She's right though, I'm getting heavier. But in my opinion I'm just getting healthier. Couple years ago I was like anorexic. I wasn't eating much and I lost a lot of weight in a short time. It's good that I'm actually eating nowadays and it's only good that my body is taking its natural shape again. I was not born to be thin and it doesn't suit me. My current size is OK and I hope my sister stops makings comments about it.

I thought that I should write something about my school too. I have now studied three weeks in Laurea University of Applied Sciences and I'm still not sure if it's what I really want to study, but it's not bad either. For example we have had some interesting data network architecture lectures. And our school is actually quite nice looking in the inside:



Laurea has this fancy thing called "learning by developing". It means that we are forced to work in groups. A lot. And I'm not a fan of group working so it might become a problem. Our last project was ten page report of the history of the telecommunication. I wrote about smoke signals and homing pigeons and stuff. It was actually quite interesting. And today we gave a short presentation of the subject to the rest of the class. I think our presentation was the best of the bunch. There were better performers but their presentations were too long and too heavy in the details. So I could congratulate myself for doing a good job.

Promoting teetotaler rights

I'm a teetotaler in a student community. I know, it doesn't sound right. So far I have heard the word "alcohol" like once in every hour I have spent in school. The tutors are promoting us all these cool parties they are arranging for us so we could like get to know each other and stuff. But what about us who don't want to drink? I know that teetotalism isn't a reason for not going, but my lack of interest is certainly one. I'm not into that kind of parties. I'm just not.

So there should be alternatives for non-drinkers. We do exists and we do want to have fun too. We, too, like to socialize and make new contacts. We are not teetotalers because we want to isolate ourselves from the rest of the world. We, at least most of us, have just notice that it's possible to live without alcohol.

I would be more than happy to participate in any kind of free after school activity (as long as it doesn't include exercising) that has nothing to do with alcohol. But there aren't anyone organizing such events. And I have started to think that maybe I should be the one who makes the change.

Maybe.

New school, new studies

About eleven months and five days ago I was still studying to be a dental hygienist. Then I realized that there was something odd about the way I was spending my days. At school I was only thinking what I could code next. And after school I just code. So clearly my passion was not in dentistry. So I quit school.

I started in a new school on Monday. Now I study Business Information Technology in Laurea University of Applied Sciences. It's not exactly what I wanted but at least it has something to do with computers and stuff. And I can hang out with other nerds and become even more nerdy. Or not. Anyway. So far I have hang out with this one girl. She's really sweet and she's a teetotaler too.

And my boyfriend baked buns. In Finnish they are called "korvapuusti". I don't know why. Since if you translate it directly it means "slap on the ear".


On the other hand... they do look like smashed ears...

Last night J.R. and I talked about my blog. He said that it used to be a lot nicer when I wrote more and more often. And that now I'm only like posting pictures and babbling something to keep Hannes happy. He's definitely right and I should do something about it. I really should. But not just today.