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(the full quote from the subject line did not fit in... shame. So here it in its full glory: "On the way back they sang a number of tuneful and reflective songs on the subjects of peace, justice, morality, culture, sport, family life and the obliteration of all other life forms.") Like for birthdays and un-birthdays, there should be 364 un-Christmases when one can freely enjoy Christmassy things without it being Christmas and without feeling the need to let everyone know that there is only *insert number of months, weeks, days till Christmas* Then shops wouldn't have Christmas stuff out in September. And Christmassy things would not magically disappear right after the 26th. One day, when I'm totally in control of the world and all societies, that's how we'll have things. Un-birthdays, un-Christmasses, un-Valentine's days (or wait, we already have those, they're called dates… but with un-VDs [the non-general disease kind] we wouldn't have to suffer two months of pink and red stuff all over the place), un-Easter, etc. My world domination plans for the moment are limited to getting most of the say in the tree decorating.   |
Cool peeps are cool.
Nov. 27th, 2012 07:56 am| Will I ever stop considering the weather as the most fascinating thing on Earth? Not very likely. Many things in life do not change but we're lucky around here that it seems that the weather is going to be changing a bit. Just look at the end of the week that's they're promising us!  No, I do not have issues. I am genuinely happy that we're going to be getting snow, that it's going to get colder and everything. It's been a rather warm and wet autumn and those are never fun. White snow on the ground, it adds something to life. And maybe I will finally get to change those bike tyres… Let's make this more interesting though…
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I tend to find the randomest and best things ever at the recycling center! Look who got these puppies (for a whooping 20 cents each)!  I now have four postcards from the 70s with good old Lenin... and a few others from that era from different parts of the USSR. I have yet to send out a single of those Lenin postcards, there is just something so nostalgic about them that I shall probably hoard them up until I have to move out of Finland. Maybe they remind me of my favourite photo of myself from the good old days... |
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That's actually the only photo I have put up in my whole flat, I have a wall covered in postcards but no other photos. But really, it just doesn't get better than that... mini!Gali, Saint Nicholas and a portrait of Lenin in the background. And I do believe the dress was hand-sewn. Bedazzled before bedazzling was cool. |
 Sign that I may be getting old or that I've been around LJ too long - the whole move from community.livejournal.com/com-name to com-name.livejournal.com is very frustrating. Seeing something-something.livejournal.com in the address bar for me equals to a single user's journal and seeing a community name there bothers me. I like my first world problems. |
| It's no secret that I have a thing for cameras that weigh as much as a brick and where the most "automatic" thing is the lightmeter "calculator" (aka a selenium photocell linked to an arrow and a bunch of circles you can move to "calculate" the settings and then set them manually on the camera), which at the time those cameras were made was a thing of beauty. It's also no secret that I fall in love with random cameras just by seeing them once and not letting them go up until I get my hands on them. And so the camera virus has struck again. This time I've been lusting after the Olympus Trip 35 because how cool is a camera that David Bailey promoted and that has a selenium photocell! Then I fell on a Smena and some part of my brain put two and two together and figured out that it was the camera my dad had told me about previously, he had one and it's the one he used when he couldn't take the Zenit with him. I actually learnt that he had two of them and the first one (8M) had a funky mechanism where you had to remember to take multiple steps before you could shoot and then he had another one where you didn't really have to (Symbol). Oh Soviet cameras, why must you hold such a huge spot in my heart! Now I don't know which one I want, I suppose I could get both but will I really have the time to play with both? One thing at a time perhaps. I think I'll start with the Smena. We'll see. Some girls have problems with vintage shoes and clothes, I guess vintage cameras are kind up that alley too, in a way. Till then there are also Japanese bricks like the Chinon (with some Kodak 200)! The Chinon even uses a battery... totally advanced stuff! You push a lever and it turns on a lightmeter which then makes a little arrow move and it's up to you to find a good shutter speed and aperture, based on what "look" you want, to get the little arrow to be in the middle (unless you want under or overexposed stuff, sometimes it's good too). This is why I like these (almost) fully manual cameras, I've learnt from them so much more than I could have ever learnt from something more evolved. And look at the brilliant stuff they still produce!  ( +3 - overlooking the city ) |
Oh downtime to celebrate Pepero day?
Nov. 11th, 2010 07:59 amSo LJ will be down for a few hours at 10am local time... they're saying two hours, given the laws of all interwebs things it's probably going to be a few more. Anywho, apparently today is Pepero Day as it's 11/11. I don't have any Pepero available so here is a photo of some Pepero that I ate while in Korea. I suppose today is probably also Pocky Sticks Day and Mikado Day. Finally, here is some local sunshine caught on film. Almost all the flowers are gone by now but a few still resist all the rain we've been having lately. I even went in my nokian boots to work yesterday!  ( two more of flowers and trees ) |
| I like to talk while I think and I like to write out what I think and this needs a lot of thinking. I'll be honest, the entry on the Hello Kitty cookies has been sitting around for a while for the simple reason that I felt bad about posting a thing only written in French. It was as if I owed to someone to always write in English... when in reality I don't owe anything to anyone. In the end I opted for a short English version at the bottom of the post and it sounds pretty rushed. There are other things I feel bad about, posting too often is one of them. Posting about some random crap only I will ever care about. And then at the end I always remember that the reason I'm still making my little LJ journey is because this is pretty much the only instance of my doing something consistently and it keeps me sane. Life is shitty? Choke a virtual bitch on LJ. Have deadlines approaching and need to find ways to procrastinate? Write tons of random stuff on LJ. Need to squee because life is just that awesome? LJ again. Feeling pretty darn amazing and need to boost that ego some more? You know where to find me, LJ. Who'll read this stuff in ten years? Probably just me... and hopefully future!Gali will still be able to read both English and French and she'll understand that current!Gali does not make a difference between the two languages. There are things which are easier for me in English, don't ever, ever, ever (ever!) ask me to talk about my work in French. That is the thing I dread most! Having to present stuff at franco-français meetings and seminars makes up my nightmares. These days most everyday life things come in French, it's like that. I am now surrounded by French again and this kind of stuff happens. I'm pretty sure that if I were to go back to Ukraine for a long period of time and actually made the effort of learning the Ukrainian keyboard, I would eventually come up with posts in Ukie. I can only call this the "path of least resistance" way because that's what it is. Actually that's how I talk in real life. I won't just put in random French or Ukie words in a conversation with a person who only speaks in English because that would be just silly and rude and we would never understand one another. Still, I like knowing which languages my interlocutors speak because then I feel free to mix and match words from different languages. I like to laugh about the fact that unless a person perfectly understands Ukrainian, French and English their chances of understanding our family dinners are close to zero. It's probably a sign of some kind of mental degeneration but I don't really give a damn. So in the end, I'm going to muster up the courage and stop feeling bad about writing things in French even though that means that only three people will probably understand what I'm talking about. Unless I have more Francophone on my flist than I realise. And who cares if I post often, it's just more data for the people who will write my biography in the future. And here are two shots of Toulouse at night that I really can't think of anywhere else to put.  ( +1 parce que c'est beaaaaauuuu... ) |
Of football and the Czech Republic team.
May. 13th, 2010 06:17 pmLet's talk football. I've been out of the loop with football even more than I have been with cycling. I was rather surprised to learn that both Morientes and Heinze now play for Marseille and hey, I only learnt a day after the fact that Marseille is won the French league. I'm a bad, bad, bad person. In any case, the other day I also learnt that the World Cup is only a month away! For most of it I'll be doing other things such as hanging out in Korea but hey, since their results in 2002, maybe it'll be a huge thing there. Right, this whole thing reminded me that I'm usually for France, Ukraine and Czech Republic. I'm shallow I'm mainly for Czech Republic because the team is pretty and that reminded me of the CR "dream team" with all the pretties, back in the day when Pixie still played with them... |
 An... the good old days. |
I haven't heard much about about Milan Baros or Ujfi or Janek in quite some time... and I've only kind of followed Jaro's actions here and there (still playing for Bordeaux). I remember that the trio there got into trouble last year but I really had to google what the hell they're up to now. Well, Milan is in Turkey. Plays with Harry Kewell on a team I've never heard of. Then again, I don't know any Turkish teams. Ujfi is in Spain. Hum... right. I haven't heard about that move but I bet the team colours suit him less than the Fiorentina ones! Janek is still playing for Milan, he's thinking of quitting the NT just along with Ujfi. Who else was part of the team back in the day? Pixie is still retired. Rosicky Right. I feel so old in a way, I can't follow all the changes going on. I have teams in my head that correspond to a certain era and that's how it should always be. Like AS Monaco should always be the "dream team" that went to the CL final! (that's why seeing Morientes and Heinze in Marseille is still a bit weird for me) There was really no point to this post beyond saying that I'm weird and sometimes I wonder late at night what the hell happened to Milan Baros. |
Hello. Today is the 23rd of April and it snowed this morning. I can already smell snow for Vappu! I really did take a few photos of the snow but they all turned out blurry so you'll have to believe me on that one. I could always take a screen grab of my updates list of FB, most of them are people complaing about the effing snow. But hey, wet stuff is always a good excuse for wearing rainboots! |
 Note: that skirt ends actually right around my knees but somehow it looks much longer on the photo. Perspective, perspective, perspective! |
And now let's look at something that has bothered me for a while: |
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Yep, it's an ad. This ad is actually located on the bus stop where I take my bus in the morning. I understand that the point of the ad is to show that the laptop is so light and portable that you can bring it anywhere and owning it will make you feel free and when you're going to be done with all your tasks in record time, you'll feel like you've just climbed a tall mountain. Every single time I see the ad, all I can think about is the fact that the guy must be really stupid for taking a computer with him to such a mountain. I mean who in their right mind would do that (besides extreme bloggers but they're a weirdo bunch)? And it bothers me and I have to face it every morning... Why yes, I am still a very special snowflake and I get bothered by the smallest things. It's like the tampon/pad commercials. They're stupid. |
So world, what's up? Has the axis gone a bit wonky these days? No really. Why am I enjoying eating ridiculous amounts of softy food like yogurt and porridge? Why am I considering making some dish involving boiled potatoes when I cannot stand boiled potatoes on most days? And most importantly why the hell did my ubuntu installation fail? I haven't had something like that happen to me since trying to install fedora years and years ago! All was fine for a bit and then at the end I got this random "installation failed" message. Well up in your butt too! Right. Even though my porridge and potato problem is not solved yet, I tested another muffin the other day! It was a strawberry jam muffin from the Stockmann bakery. I should point out that's the only thing I bought there during the "crazy days". Yes, it counts, the price sticker had a little yellow smiley face on it and therefore it counts! I'm feeling so much more Finnish already... give me a couple more years and I'll actually buy something more important there and in ten years' time I'll be queuing in from of the shop at 7am. Anywho, let's look at this muffin. |
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It was very lovely and moist and the strawberry jam wasn't too sweet but as for the muffin from Cafe Esplanad, there was a banana taste that just wouldn't go away! I bet the banana stuff gives you this moistness or something. Still, I'd rather not taste banana when I'm eating a strawberry muffin, if you catch my drift... sensory overload. |
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Conclusion: Stockmann bakery - 3.5/5 - because of that banana taste and a bit too greasy for my liking. I really want to find pretty cupcakes though. Where can they be hiding? I found this cute Easter themed baked good the other day and from far it looked like a cupcake and I was already so happy... but then I came closer and it just ended up being a tartelette kind of thing with a yellow chick on top. So disappointing! So Helsinki, where the hell do you hide your pretty cupcakes that can be bought? (and hopefully that aren't made by Fazer or some other giant) Right. Now back to Doctor Who. The Daleks still make me feel uncomfortable. Somehow I'd much rather do other stuff than watch the episode. And maybe later I'll go out for a potato salad. Gah. This is so weird. What's there to crave in a potato salad? I don't like potato salad, it's usually gross... but man, I'd love to have some right now. Can I just blame Eyjafjallajökull for that? Bad Eyjafjallajökull, bad! (I'm totally naming my next pet that. It will be "Eyja" for short. Eyja is a pretty name.) |
I am the goodest at spelling!
Feb. 16th, 2010 09:54 am| I don't know if I'm the only one or not but there are a couple of words that I cannot remember how to spell for the life of me! One of those is "exercise". I always want to spell it "exercice" in English even though that's the French spelling or I also sometimes want to spell it "excercice". That final "s" just does not make sense in my head. It's not the only word where the French spelling messes up my head. There is also "development" which is spelled with a double "p" in French and I want to put that second "p" somewhere. Same thing with "envelope" because I always try to spell the noun without the final "e" at the end even though that would give a verb or I sometimes want to double the "p". I still haven't figured out proper mnemotechniques for that. I have one for "example" and "exemple" though, in French "to write" starts with an "e" therefore the French spelling takes an "e" and the English one takes an "a". Yes, I'm the only person who gets that technique but it's helped me numerous times. But look, I actually participated in writing things. Really, I did: | |
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I have to admit I don't actually remember participating in the French concours thing. The date would imply that I participated while back in France and I know I did participate in the "Grand Concours" in maths and English... but French? The only thing close to this I remember participating in is back in the U.S. and I remember actually winning something because I somehow managed to get a pretty damn good score. Oh well. I have the proof with the medal at my parents'! You know what bothers me? It's the fact that I did not get a single thing for getting a perfect score on that stupid English proficiency exam two or three years back, the test that even my British born English teacher didn't think was possible to get a perfect score on. Seeing how I write today it seems that I can't even form a single proper sentence. That was not always the case, I used to be good at this stuff... | |
