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In the category, "this is what going mad feels like"… we have this morning at the office and my ponderings related to whether wearing shoes or not has an effect on motivation/work progress/stuff. Being the perfect scientific mind that I am, I tracked all the results in a very half-arsed manner online.  When things like that happen, all I can think is that I've reached a new epiphany and there are very few things left for me to strive for. And in conclusion, all those people who use Instagram for photos of their pets or food are getting it completely wrong. |
I'm trying to empty out my "already uploaded but never posted" folder before one day I finally get around to uploading everything else! Fun times! Would go much faster if one day I managed to actually stay focused on a single subject for more than two minutes. Remember the good old days of my whining about how it was getting darker and how horribly glum autumn was?  Yeah, I was crazy back then as you can see from the above photos. Seriously, these days I'm growing more and more excited about the fact that it's almost light (read: not pitch black) at 3:30pm! Heck, at 4pm it's still not pitch black! These are exciting times my friends! Also remember when the worst cycling conditions included…  Ah! Those were the days. This morning I met a whole two other cyclists during my commute and there wasn't even a blizzard out there, just windy and -4C! Committed to the commute, that's us! Now look at all the exclamation points there are in this post. I blame it on the pea soup I had for lunch (it's Thursday, after all). |
| Last time my PhD/thesis/stuff didn't go according to plan (as in broken bones and broken bicycles and broken head-wise), I settled on a last minute trip to Japan. This time around I feel like going for a crazy colour in my hair. Maybe light pink dip dyed tips or something. My hair is now long enough that I could actually hide those tips in a bun if I really had to. That would nicely match the hot pink nails I have today.  Right now though I'm eating gummy bears for breakfast on a Sunday morning. Don't tell me I am not the most responsible 27 year old you've met!  Or I could go back to orange-ish. I quite liked that... but I'd make it more orangey this time around. (for the full PhD/thesis/stuff development, see twitter... not the "cerealjoe" one.) |
| You know what just caught my attention today? Here, on packets of prunes it says "dried plums". Maybe there is some obscure Finnish word for "prune" but it seems that "dried plum" is the main expression. Isn't that fascinating? I find these kinds of things absolutely wonderful, differences in language and all of that. That said, I bet many people consider "prune", in its "dried plum" meaning, to be an obscure word in English. I will never understand why people don't like prunes, they're awesome! Then again, I love dried fruit in general. I don't like dried ginger though, but it's not really a fruit, is it? Also, as a final note on prunes for today, on that package of prunes I have, there is a picture of plums on the front. Why put a picture of plums when you're selling prunes? I guess it's a bit like pictures of pigs on a pork product... it probably makes sense to the majority of the population but it doesn't compute in my brain. Time to move on to July 22nd. As always, it's the weird photo that ended up being my favourite. ... oh, to have a decent-tasting tomato again! I guess those are only about seven or eight months away.      (HQer over here, for what it's worth) |
| There are days when I feel like starting a post with "putain, les mecs!" I think it's a perfect way of expressing some kind of latent frustration linked to some other feeling I can't quite pinpoint. The thing is, I rarely, if ever at all, feel like starting a post with "dammit, guys!" or "fuck it, you guys!" There is some kind of crudeness in those expressions that I do associate with "putain, les mecs!" On that random note, have a sequence of shots from the summer that somehow turned out rather well.      |
| I am not MIA! I have just discovered the joys of a busy life. Just kidding. I'm just lazy and there are books to read and there is the call of the outside when there is a bit of sun. I wonder if there is a name for the feeling of guilt one develops when living in Nordic countries when it comes to seeing some sunshine outside and deciding to stay indoors. It's a real thing. It hits you square in the face, "I should be outside, there is sunshine! Soon it will start raining again and then it's going to be dark at 5:30pm! I cannot possibly stay indoors!" That and the feeling of pure satisfaction one gets from beating the rain like I did this morning. It's a feeling of glee only five year old kids should feel and only when faced with an unlimited supply of candy/ice cream and legos. But really, one of these years I should move close to the equator and not have to deal with amazingly different day lengths. That brings me to the point that I should start thinking what the hell I want to do after my defense because that's most likely less than six months away, five if there are no more fuck-ups. Post-doc in some random country (apparently there are some positions open in Singapore that might interest me), teaching environmental stuff/creativity/engineering design in some random university (I've always wanted to finally put that "languages" section in my CV to use), going into industry (9-5 sounds so... not my thing... not that I have a thing for late night writing and weekends worrying about stuff), forgetting about science and getting a job that would require almost no input from me (to be honest, "mindless" work sounds so appealing although I would probably tire of it after two months), other. And by "other" I probably mean trying to find the meaning of life, possibly by writing self-published books of poetry. Except that poetry is not my thing. Man, that was a downer! Actually this is why I was considering participating in the NaNoWriMo this year and write a book called "The Dark Side of that PhD Stuff (Spoiler: There Do Not Have Cookies There)", it would exorcise, at least partially, my inner PhD demons. Except that apparently NaNoWriMo is just for fiction novels. Fucking sucks, if you ask me... although from a certain point of view, no matter what one writes, there is always a bit of fiction because no one can be truly objective. Right... till then, have this amazing representation of life.  It's not quite as accurate of a representation as 42 but I would say it's not far. (No, I am not functioning on 4 hours of sleep because I couldn't put down my book last night. Why do you ask?) |
Niargh niargh niargh!
Sep. 12th, 2012 10:39 am| The big updates on the marathon will come later. Today is just one of those days when something doesn't feel right. Nothing feels terribly out of place or wrong but somehow I have this feeling that things could be better and that's rather annoying. So far it's been one of those mornings where I can't even force myself to read over and edit this one article that I have to get done by the end of the week and I have people breathing down my neck to get it done. One of those mornings where possibly only playing with a cute puppy in a sunny field would make things awesome... except that it's raining and there are no puppies, there are some fields a couple of kilometers away, I guess one out of three is good enough? Right. So do I sound :( :( :( already? Let's look at the bright side of things! It's a rainy day but I managed to get to work while it wasn't raining! My Holga Kitchen Sink lens kit is waiting for me at the post office. I have bananas and dried fruit! I need to get one of those stress balls to play with. Also I should clear out my desk, or maybe just take all the bottles out to recycling, they're taking over every single available space. Oh! There are tiny little puffed rice bits covered in chocolate in this dried fruit thing I'm eating. It's called "Paradise" and I might have just gotten it because of the name... I usually get the "California" one but this one looked promising... "Paradise"! Just for shits and giggles, some stuff from the week-end:  Now... where can I steal some puppies and maybe play god and make it sunny so I can go play with said puppies in a sunny field. |
Tanananaaaaaa!
Jul. 30th, 2012 07:16 am| Okie dok. Let's have a very unbiased look at my life right now. I have one of them twitchy eye things, you know the one where your eye just won't stop twitching and google is of no help because apparently it happens to everyone and there about a thousand theories that every day Einsteins have as to why it might happen. Apparently my thesis is still not done and I need another journal article because that's how things roll around here. Too bad I'm still having this love/hate relationship with my whole post-Masters education. We're back to the hate bit, in case that wasn't clear. Actually I'd even say that today is a very negative day, the kind of day you don't want to see anyone, because I'm anti-social from time to time, but alas it's the day that everyone wants to see you. But hey, those almost-three-weeks in the south were good. I had actually forgotten what high levels of humidity felt like... I was quickly reminded here with 95% and sweating like there is no tomorrow on a short bike ride when it's only 18C. The hand seems better, a month or two and things should be at 100%! Oh, and how amazing was Vos yesterday? And all the other women in that race. I'd say that this was the highlight of the Olympics, I doubt any other competition can beat the amazing level of that road race... and to say that women's professional cycling still doesn't get even a quarter of the coverage and sponsorship that men's professional cycling does. The men's race was pretty awesome too but the comments/reactions some people had about the finish were rather upsetting because the bashing that Uran got was just not justified. As I said on twitter, imagine being almost a "no one" in cycling (I know, I know, he's Sky and had the white jersey and had tons of other stuff, but relatively speaking he's a no one) with no apparent finishing abilities what-so-ever (again, relatively speaking but Uran has never been known to be a great finisher) going up against Vino, I think a freaking out freeze in a final sprint is more than a possibility. Then again I would make the worst ever hockey mum because I want everyone to win and be nice and everything. And really, the bashing was just plain old mean. And my current self might not be into Vino but I certainly am in love with the idea of my 2005-self being in love with Vino (don't question this, that sentence totally makes sense in my head). And he'll probably be sporting a golden tracksuit as Astana DS next year and that's going to be even freakier than those kits with his face on them. God, those things were things of nightmares. Just now I also thought that I only watered a tiny bit the one plant that's still alive in my flat since I've been back. I should look into watering it a tad more. Super transition to... some old photos of the other plants that were not dead back in March! Dude, best transition ever or what!      I should have called this one "the evolution of how things die over at my place, part 23478398". Woohoo! So I could go on like this forever. I think I'll just save it for later. |
Eff me, what's up with today?
May. 30th, 2012 09:22 am| It seems that today all the rain is stuck over Estonia (it's kind of funny) but with all the clouds, humidity and wind there are no little white particles floating about... so yeah, life is good. There really was a point to what I was going to write but it escaped my brain two seconds after I started typing this up. Oh well. Wheeeee! No really. It's one of those mornings where putting together more than two words together is hard. That said, I did get this one sentence for the thesis intro that seems to be really awesome. As of half an hour ago. Maybe in three hours it will seem like the worst thing ever, but that's basically the story of my life right now. Have yourself an old one from the archive. Today's location is about 8km west but the sky is about the same.  |
Elvis is not dead.
Mar. 8th, 2012 07:04 amApparently he got reincarnated into a bird and now lives in Sibeliuspuisto.  True story. Wonder how I only noticed that the other |
Someone bring me my tea cup!
Mar. 1st, 2012 09:47 am| Hey, what do you know! There is more and more light every single day out there and this morning I noticed that the sky isn't totally dark in the bus... soon enough my pre-6:30am bus ride will be almost in full daylight, perhaps not "soon" but in a couple of months. By then though I won't be taking the bus any longer. And I digress. Can I have a pony? A pink one? With purple spots? And a possibly blue hoofs? No, logic and thought filters are not my strong point this morning. And my tea cup is too far for me to reach easily. Anywho. So the snow will eventually leave, either by melting or on one of those trucks that go dump everything on the main snow-mound-of-doom-that-never-completely-melts... here are some photos from a month ago or so. They are related to this, there are some with snow in them.  ( +7 - gradients are awesome! they're like rainbows and stuff ) Yay panda! |
C'est la classe, non?
Nov. 11th, 2010 10:34 amYou want to know what the "clou" of the show that is the garden is? It's this wheelbarrow. Yes, it is.  There are garden designers out there who probably would love to have such a thing! ( can you tell I'm procrastinating? Two more photos here... that film was damn long! ) Dear Etsy sellers, Will you please stop lying on your location? When I do a search for "shop local" for France I want to get the shops that ship from France. Why? Because there is a good chance that the stuff will make it to my place in a day or two instead of two weeks. Simple as that. So why do I keep on getting tons of shops which are supposedly based in France but ship from other countries? At first I thought it was a mistake and contacted a few and guess what... they're really not based in France. Why the hell then indicate that they're based there? It screws up the whole search process and it's just plain annoying. Just saying you're based in France will not make anything you sell cooler, trust me. *chokes a bitch* And back to normally scheduled work. Boo. |
So most people see the city of Paris as ~*~Paris~*~ but in the end it's just a city. It's not a bad city, it benefits from years and years and years of centralised everything and let's be honest almost everything is still centralised.  Paris is all about taking the train and hoping it doesn't stop at Avignon TGV or Aix TGV. That makes you lose about fifteen minutes which is a catastrophe. Oh and see the funky lamps they now have at Saint Charles? ( four more photos and stories of randomness ) |
