pisinreisii

8.1.2014 pisinreisii

Viisi vuotta ensitapaamisesta / Five Years with Him

When I meet new people and they become acquainted with my spanish esposo, they often ask the question ”how did you meet each other?”. Therefore, on the day of my departure back to Lapland and with the recent anniversary, I thought to take a look back, relatonship-wise.

On the first day of January five years ago, I was in Dublin with a friend of mine and as expected, we went to a pub in the all-too-well known Temple Bar area. We were dancing there (yeah, there was no dance floor but we sort of created one there because we felt like dancing), having a great time and not drinking Guinness, and I do not exactly remember how it came to happen but I remember a very vertically challenged person walking past my friend and suddenly getting on his toes and licking the nape of her neck. I discarded the sight in my tipsy dancing frenzy but apparently one member of the group of people drinking next to us, had taken notice and came to comment to Karin something like ”Is that the irish way of saying hello?” Later he told me that he had eyed us already earlier, watching me dancing there without any dance floor around. Karin talked with him and I went over as well to introduce myself – and to be honest, to go and get Karin back to the impromptu dance floor. We introduced ourselves to the spanish group and continued dancing in a mixed group, and somehow we ended up dancing together – I think by the persistance of El Macho Fantastico. We started talking and went out to have cigarettes and talked some more and danced and talked. And we did the same the next night as well. I remember that I was so taken with his presence and the way he expressed all his thoughts with passion – it seemed that for the first time I met a man that was really present and showed undivided interest towards me in that precise moment we shared.

These photos are from the third night that we met just the two of us, before he and his friends left back to Spain. We talked a lot that night, sitting mesmorized by each other in a bar called the International (later it has made me smile to think of the name). When we had to depart that night, we had not kissed and we did not kiss, even then – Gon came around to it many times but I declined fearing that it would come with too high of a price for me. We exhanged addresses and so, but I was doubtful to hear anything of him after returning to Finland.

After arriving to the airport and opening the cell phone, I had several texts waiting from him. It felt soooo good, and I remember feeling giddy all the way home (although the flight times were inhumane). I remember that I went to my friend’s place that morning to have breakfast – after she opened the front door to me, I just blurted out: ”I’m soooooo fucked, I met a man from Barcelona”.

And that man proved to be very persistant. So we did Skype – like every night from that on. And when he started to talk about meeting again somewhere, I was a bit reluctant because somehow, I thought that someone cannot be that interested in me that he would travel from the ever-so-exotic Spain to Scandinavia in February. After going through the worst case scenarios in my head (1. He has a wife and 3 children 2. He’s a black market surgeon trying to harvest my organs 3. I only had those two previous ones), I realized that I am being crazy if I do not go. So we met approximtely 6 weeks later in Stockholm. We went to art museums and had long coffee and tea sessions in various cafes, walked numerous kilometers and kissed. (And luckily before, I did not know how good of a kisser he was, otherwise I would have regretted my decision in Dublin a lot).

In Stockholm 2009 February.

What followed: I went to Barcelona.

He came to Finland.

I went to Barcelona.

He came to Turku.

And after going back and forth, back and forth, we started to think about what we should do next. He was very determined to move to Finland, beacuse although all finnish people are amazed that someone would move here, Finland is really a good place to live in. After living all his life in Barcelona, he came to love the quietness of Turku, the way things work here (yes, the system works here), the closeness of nature, the easiness of life and so on. Actually, just yesterday he was remembering that in Barcelona, it took forty minutes to get to work with his motorbike and the distance to his workplace from his home was 13 kilometers. On a rainy day, it could have taken easily more than one hour. So yeah, the sun and the tapas are a nice thing – when you are a tourist. Making your life in a big city can be hard on others and easier for others. Luckily, he was tired of Barcelona and had been thinking of moving to somewhere for a time before we even met.

In August, 2010, he arrived to Turku bus station and started working, a couple of days after his arrival, in a company that had interviewed him in July, when he was visiting me in Turku. So things moved on pretty swiftly after they called him that he got the job. It took some time to get used to the new situation and to deal with all the practical stuff but never has he stopped amazing me by adapting to everything with such a positive attitude. I remeber when he wanted to buy himself a bike and I just mentioned him Biltema before leaving to work in the morning. He sent me a message during the same day that he had found the bus to Biltema AND he had purchased a bicycle AND put it together in front of the store AND bicycled the bike home – without much knowledge of Turku geographically.

—————————————————

This time-travelling back to old memories has left me smiling and the upcoming train trip to Rovaniemi does not seem so gloomy. Living apart is nothing new to us and we share such a strong bond that cannot be even described. I feel grateful and blessed to have him, still have the same thought of not deserving him that I have had since meeting him – although nowadays I have begun to take Marja’s preaching in to my heart: You deserve the best of everything. Please, try and introduce that sentence to your life as well if not accustomed to it yet. We deserve to get the best in life and in return, others deserve the best from us. It has taken me five years to reach that conclusion and what a journey is has been so far!

And the music to go with the our love story:

Peter Murphy – Strange Kind Of Love

Enrique Morente – Manhattan (First We Take Manhattan)

The National – Karen

The Cardigans – And Then You Kissed Me

Suhteet Oma elämä Rakkaus

6.12.2013 pisinreisii

Rivo tukka, oma napa ja Jouluapua muille / Fugly hair, Egocentrism and Helping Others

There it is, my new fugly hair. I have dreamt about having this hair color for a while (I mentioned it already in the post, where I had my hair dyed as aqua pastel blue – check also the blog of my hairdresser!) This shocking yellow has been even more perfect than I visioned. I mean, it is so artificial in its nature and sort of the most unwanted result in all hair colors (for people who bleach their hair), which I why I wanted it. I have this tendency to do things that will result in a reaction in others and I like to do an everyday life study of breaking the normatives, and how people react in these situations. In the Art Department this hair caused only mild rections and positive comments, but already in one of the shopping malls in Rovaniemi that I visited, two women around forty looked at my hair in shock and the other one turned to her friend and spat out: ”Fuck how ugly!” / ”Hyi, vittu!”.

That comment that was intentionally for me to hear, made me smile but the overall thing that the comment represents is not humorous at all: people have a tendency to build their life on normatives (how to act proper, how to dress in the right way, how to be the a girl / a boy / white / middle class / etc.) and the result is that everything outside that norm is ABNORMAL. And what is abnormal is something that needs to diminished, and one way to achieve this is peer pressure – it gives a freedom and a license to all the members of the society that perceive themselves as the norm / the majority to comment on somebody elses behavior in whatever way without any problems of conscience or even other’s intervention.

Let’s build a story by saying that I would come from a culture where all people were born with neon-colored hair and that would be the norm – the only thing I have been accustomed in everyday life. Let us say that I have seen photos or tv-programs with different colored hair in them but they are something foreign to me. Would I have the need to comment on somebody’s hair when encountering them in my everyday life for the first / second / third time? I hope not. It is not like somebody’s strange hair color would affect me in any way or cause me any mental or physical pain. So, why people feel free to comment on anybody else’s actions or attributes in any way? Is it fear towards the abnormal that has been taught to us, since we were babies – all that differs is a threat to a well controlled society? This example of my life only gives a microscopic glimpse to things that minorities have to endure, like ethnic minorities, sexual minorities etc (the link is to an article in Helsingin Sanomat).

As promised in the previous post, here is more photos of our trip to Naantali to attend my lil’ sister’s son’s babtism. And on the way to the church, I just had to take some snapshots of the houses that are an eyeful – if you have never been to Naantali, take at least a daytrip there, walking around the area and having your own picnic, is the perfect solution (even in late fall /early winter although it is cold and windy). Especially this house that I chose in my photo collage is a dream come true.

During last weekend, I convinced my esposo to try on this beaujolais nouveau that I had read about. He seemed a bit sceptical, beacuse normally our wine consumption consists of Spanish wines from the Rioja area (reserva) but I held my head. We opened the wine on Saturday before I started cooking and the scent of the wine was superb and so fruity. But oh my, the first sip was catastrophic – I can still see the expression on Gon’s face (now it is funny to think we have both looked like that) and he only remarked: ”Oh, this is a REALLY young wine”. Well, after taking a few mouthfuls the taste became more acceptable but still, it was stark to my taste buds. I am now withholding myself from choosing the wines until 2014. Ha!

How is it here in Rovaniemi? Well it is still a winter wonderland and the sun light has become even more scarce – so the sun is only visible very near the horizon and this photo I took at 12.35, when the sun was clearly already setting. This darkness is intriguing to me – still some what exotic, I think. The short period of daylight that comes from the horizon level causes the shadows of objects to be super-long and blue in their hue – such a visually interesting thing!

And behold, the post man came, when I was leaving home: with an all-terrain vehicle! I guess it is handy, realiable and necessary for these conditions.

And these last photos are of my two godson’s that are my older sister’s kids. We went to Ikea to buy some items she needed and there I had these very anti-consumeristic thoughts that have been brewing inside of me for a while already. What do we get when we buy things? The buying as a phenomena (chek these great TED videos from interesting people!) is a creation of clever marketing that forms our perceptions of normative behavior. Back, when living in Turku as a twenty-something, I used to do the same – when bored I went around shops just for the sake of it, and most of the times bought something. And I think it gave me a feeling of content that was a short lasting high – and the shitty, cheap stuff piled in my house (if you visit any flee markets now, you see them overflowing with these H&M and other similar brand’s products: cheap, poor quality stuff that everybody wants to get rid of and simultaneously buy more).

Well, this thought has been actively in my mind and I have noticed that the buying holds less interest to me nowadays. The producer of a clothing or whatever has become to mean more to me and I absolutely hate when people say things like: ”I can’t make a change by not buying this, I am only a one person, it makes no difference if I buy this.”. We cannot change anyone else except ourselves and the easiest thing to do, is to make excuses.

That’s why, this Christmas, I am only buying useful stuff to people. I am not going to buy any shit, just because of buying, instead I have asked my sisters what they really need, and I am going to get them that or make some art pieces / handicrafts myself. And that goes for my adorable godsons as well.

And please, check this Facebook Group (it is Finnish) that some great person has created, very unselfishly! I chose a family from up North, if you can, choose someone as well that you think you could help. And please keep in mind that Christmas is not the only time a year, one can do things for others!

Kauneus Ruoka ja juoma Ystävät ja perhe Hiukset