Hanging around chez Malla and Veikko, my two theologian friends. I am no longer sure if there are anything but secular elements in my thinking any longer, and still I feel no conflict between us. Who is denying what?

Yesterday, Don Johnson Big Band (and at times also the guy who was beatboxin’) was awesome at Ihmistulva, I enjoyed jumping around a lot.

Also otherwise, yesterday was pretty relaxing. Met Tapio during daytime, bought a couple of ciders, had time to just enjoy my own company and feel that I am stronger by myself than I used to be.

University courses have started, and now life consists of balancing my schedule between the courses and my thesis.

I miss mystery, I miss diving together into where everything is unsure, I miss connection without condition. Why can’t people be more free? Why can’t they let go of prejudice? (Of course then you would ask, whether I have.)

After returning to Finland time has just passed, it seems. My work with Moodle, the thesis about Moodle, and the relationship with Minna have filled my mind. At the moment I am in a flu, so that makes it easier to stop and to look around me. I miss several of my friends, and hope they do not think I have abandoned them since I have not had strength to keep in touch. :)

I mostly have the experience in life that if I just concentrate, I can master pretty much anything I am motivated to take on. But I seem to exhaust myself so easily. Life offers too many challenges. Some I accept because of interest; some because of a sense of duty. Over time I have learned to understand my fears and that work continues.

But at the moment, freedom seems distant. Feeling somehow old. Work with Moodle is finding a balance in all of its challenges, and once I get out of this flu I will again find it inspiring. Still, I feel I need to broaden my horizons again. To find an entirely new perspective (how many can there be?). To make myself more involved in real life, whatever that will mean this time around.

To reach out for the God, who I still hope is looking for me, for my strength to hold on to him is pretty marginal at this point.

I am enjoying life with Minna. Mostly, she understands my weaknesses well and I think it goes both ways. We find it easy to spend relaxed time together, while facing difficulties rather directly. It seems balanced, and genuine.

But where is this headed?

The last night in Metz.

I’ve been inviting people to see me during the last week for several occasions, and despite me trying to organize things, everybody came tonight. The surprise was great – I would have been stressed about it had I known beforehand. The party ended just minutes ago, and I feel I had nothing to do with organizing it. Vincent brought chairs, some drank tea, some vodka, some wine, some beer, but nobody seemed too drunk at any time (some pistachio shells flew around the room during the night though). I offered everything I had in the cabinets (pistachios, sunflower seeds, eggs, soup, …) and people brought their own stuff. Lukas made omelettes. Some French people joined in at one point of the evening.

They gave me a book with photos and writings and drawings from everybody as a gift, and I feel like I have gotten way much more attention than I ever could have deserved. I feel too glad about it all to be cynical, it was beautiful. They made me sad for the fact that I am leaving so soon. :) There was quite a mess here but people cleaned up before they left and told me they’re coming again at eight in the morning to help me clean up! (The cleaner lady will organize an inspection at ten in the morning.) Wow.

Tomorrow to Poland, at around 17 hours.

Solution for daylight saving changes? It does not seem to tell which way to turn it, and when.

Why do I have to go to LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter to send messages? Why do people insist on using these non-standard messaging systems? If people said, “Don’t call me on the telephone — I prefer the delephone,” you would think they were crazy. For a while, this was a minor inconvenience, but now it is starting to get out of control. -readwriteweb

Nice, right? The implications of Sterling’s idea are painful for Twitter types. The connections that feel like wealth to many of us — call us the impoverished, we who treasure our smartphones and tally our Facebook friends — are in fact meager, more meager even than inflated dollars. What’s worse, these connections are liabilities that we pretend are assets. We live on the Web in these hideous conditions of overcrowding only because — it suddenly seems so obvious — we can’t afford privacy. And then, lest we confront our horror, we call this cramped ghetto our happy home! -nytimes

Tongue twisters in Finnish. Couple of times I have been asked if Finnish has tongue twisters, and I have failed to remember any.

• Mun mummoni muni mun mammani, mun mammani muni mun = My grandma hatched my mom, my mom hatched me (song)
• Appilan pappilan apupapin papupata pankolla porisee ja kuohuu = Appila vicarage’s assistant pastor’s beanpot is steaming and boiling on the stove

I find the kind with lots of declinations (declensions) particularly interesting (I found the translations on the page rather poor):

• syyttämättäjättämispäätöksestään = of his/her decision to refrain from accusing (this is real Finnish, probably used in official documents and news with bureaucratic language)
• epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydellänsäkään ~  even with his quality of having a lack of having been made disorganized OR even with his state of having a lack of having disorganized* (something, object not mentioned; no Finn understands this intuitively and most even not after trying)

* According to Yahoo! Answers, alternative translations include “even with its quality of not being possible to be made irrational.” and “not even when taking into account his/her/its way/ability/tendency of not disorganizing” but I think they are wrong.

(Stopped using Flock after realizing YouTube does not work in it, although other Flash videos do.)

It feels really spring-like in Metz, already. So finally I feel like it was worth it to come to northern France also because of the weather (the autumn was pretty bad). The flu is doing good to me, too. Slowing me down when I don’t have the guts to do it by myself.

Otherwise: thesis writing, talking with Minna and other friends online, preparing for my trip to Paris with Eeva this weekend.

I am slightly bothered about Facebook taking over my blog; status updates and all the social interaction engages me so much nowadays that actually writing even just a bit longer posts seems irrelevant. I’ve already expressed it all in IM discussions and status updates, so blogging feels like repetition. Maybe I should just start using this blog for something more substantial than my personal whining, since that seems to have a better arena in Facebook nowadays.

On the other hand, Facebook does it by great social UI design, so maybe I will just be happy. I still hope very much that an open platform that does it even better will supercede them soon.

During being in my current flu, I have learnt to use Twitter better (by adding the friends of friends who seemed the most interesting) and it actually seems some use at the moment.

Also, I took Flock into use today and the integrated experience actually seems pretty nice. I am blogging this from Flock. The UI does not seem to allow setting a category for the posting though so I will have to go to wordpress to fix the language category for this, after all. I’ll take that back: the Flock editor asks for the category after pressing Publish. I still have to check which categories I have used from my blog page, though, since I cannot remember all the categories this might fit into.

At times the flock UI is very cluttered and as my screen is only 1024 pixels wide, adding a sidebar to that makes many modern sites scroll. I actually think that is the fault of modern web design and not that of Flock.

• Retki Mont St. Quentinille / Trip to Mont St. Quentin
• Ihmistäyteisempiä kuvia samalta reissulta Facebookissa.

Lisäksi www.talitakuum.fi tuli linjoille perjantaina. Olen ylpeä, sekä sivuista että Helistä&Sallasta.

J’Attendrai Le Suivant (I’ll Wait for the Next One)
Thanks to Özhan for the link.

Christmas – New Year 2008-2009, Metz/Paris

Thanks to my flu getting a bit better, decided to put some pics from the holidays online.

Heli arrived on last Friday. It’s been good.

Özhan, l’artiste took a photo of me and Heli yesterday. I haven’t been featured on Deviantart before! Not that we are recognizable, but still it’s cool. The weather in Metz really is that melancholic. No wonder Verlaine and folks liked it here.

It was a good and peaceful new year. We drank a bit (not too much like I did in Paris on Saturday when I got a stomach disease), and found a nice small bar where it was fun to dance. It was somehow amusing that the DJ played all the songs from Youtube, though :D.

We have also been playing Mario, taken lots of photos, talked, wandered around, seen lots of sights, prayed, relaxed, written, gotten lost and then found, talked with people in a couple of languages.

Tonight, going to see Hunger. Nähdään nälkää, heheh. Heh. Hee… öh.