celebrate.

one thousand.

Today we passed landmark of one thousand downloads.
ONE THOUSAND :D that is plenty, as I know only
very few people who have confessed to be regular
subscribers. :)

But thank you for the music,
show must go on,
hope you find what you are looking for,...

peace and love,

How do you see?

Juno.

I heard first through friend's friends friend that it wasn't worth watching,
and so to avoid uncomfortable situations I didn't go to see it.



But then after seeing some previews I became
more suspicious and watched it anyway. And loved it.

Simpe and not. Black and white with shades and shadows.

I found Juno very pro-life, pro-love, pro-long term
relationships. It raised a good lot of questions
and thoughts and without pointing
one's finger at obvious things it managed to come
across deeply philosophical. And entertaining.
It was somewhat shortest 90minutes in recent
box office hits.

I can recommend it to anyone who thinks
that they can understand and process
idea of possible consequences of (premarital)
sex and that all things and decicions that
people do in movies are not maybe ones people would do
in real life. We turn sometimes to do better,
sometimes worse. :)


After watching Juno I felt like it would be
really good to have some kind
of christian data base or reliable source
to find out what movies are really worth of watching.
My brother then helped me to find
http://www.christianitytoday.com/movies/
and after reading couple of previews of
movies I had seen I think this site is worth
visiting once you are pondering whether
to go to movies or not.

I do not write this to baby-sit, but I personally think
that I don't have to see everything and rather watch or
listen something what I honestly enjoy.
"Everything is permissible"—but not everything is beneficial. "Everything is permissible"—but not everything is constructive..."

fever.

All who wander are not lost.
- J.R.R. Tolkien

I tell them I am from a country that no longer exists. They believe me.
- Leah 'The Poisonwood Bible'

One might think, for example, that
one cannot claim that one is from another country
other than where one was born. Identity is not as
simple as that. Identity cannot be calculated by a
computer with sufficient background and demographic
information. Identity is formed and collected over a
lifetime, and what goes in and what doesn’t is decided
largely based on feelings. Where one sees connections
to others, places, and objects, one identifies.
- Unknown

Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people who miss the same imaginary place.
- Andrew Largeman, "Garden State"

The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.
- St. Augustine

The real voyage of discovery is not in discovering new lands but in seeing with new eyes.
- Marcel Proust

Traveling in the company of those we love is home in motion.
- James Henry Leigh Hunt

The higher the mountains, the more understandable is the glory of Him who made them and who holds them in his hand.
- Francis Schaeffer

Now the LORD said to Abram,
"Go forth from your country,
And from your relatives
And from your father's house,
To the land which I will show you."
- Genesis 12:1

---

shame on you.

Unlike in many other places around the world,
here in Finland we are not used to hearing bad
or incomplete finnish. Even for the time being
non-native "bad" finnish speakers hardly exists.
You either speak finnish as your first language,
mother tongue or then you don't speak it at all.
Even most of our swedish or russian speaking
minorities fit in these two categories.

That's the way we learn for speaking a language,
it's either fluency or keeping one's mouth shut.
And we Finns have no problems with quietness,
- companionable silence.

Proudly we explain to our foreign friends
that the secret of our close to fluent english
is tv-programs that are not dubbed, so we
are used to listening foreign languages from
early age. By the same token we are perfectly
unused to hearing fragmental language,
regardless of the language.
(With one particular exception: when finnish
politicians are forced to speak our second
official language swedish in television interviews
or programs - and how do we laugh at them.)

When our immigrant population grows
incomplete finnish will become more common.
We will have new dialects, exotic loanwords
and hilarious situations. But most of all,
maybe variety of incomplete finnish speakers
will encourage us native finnish speakers.
Maybe then we will dare to use those four to five
different languages that most of us have mugged up
at school for years. Even though we wouldn't yet be
fluent.



(freely revised and translated from Joanna Palmén's column,
"Suomalaisten loistava kielitaito" Ylioppilaslehti 2/08)

facts and figures.

"i have a dream."

Had some kind of age crisis maybe when realised that many of
my childhood friends are turning 25 soon. It sounds really old
but isn't so, is it? :)

Then i began to list all kind of odd figures of my life, numbers don't
tell you much but are just interesting.

I have..
...been at 29 countries
...used 5 different email addresses
...studied 7 languages at school (finnish, swedish, english, french, german, portuguese, russian)
...been at school for 19 years, (3 of them abroad, 5 in university level) and been in 9 different schools
...moved 17 times
...over 6000 photos in my computer
...donated blood 3 times
...2 sisters and 1 brother
...owned 4 bicycles and one car
...lived in 9 cities
...5 seasons of gilmore girls and 4 seasons of friends on dvd
...been north from the arctic circle and south from the tropic of capricorn
...owned 3 nokia mobile phones, currently nokia 7370
...

Too much information?

just.

It was so dark outside,
no single star on winter sky.
I could have screamed to stars
but as there was none
i just whispered to
diamonds glittering on snow
Why.

Shadows are not black they are blue.
I wish it would even storm,
it would be more calm on the inside.

"...was sure by now that You would have reached down
Wiped our tears away, stepped in and saved the day.
But once again, I say amen and it's still dark."

(Casting Crowns - Praise you in this storm, edited)

I choose to trust your promises,
even i can't see
to read
them in this darkness.

Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. ps.119:105


And i heard silent but strong voice replying:
For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the LORD that hath mercy on thee. isa.54:10