Yiu-ng-yiu daai ngawn-chewn-mo aa?

Posting in honor of Friday!

Friday is the best day of the week. Friday is like finding a magical kingdom where the streets and houses are made of chocolate and burgers, and rivers run with beer (and rehydrating drinks during hangover days). Good-looking girls everywhere and all seem to think you're really good-looking too!

Just imagine how cool that would be.

That's how Friday is.

It's all a matter of perspective.

However, this Friday has already gone through a number of setback and they seem to continue. Preliminary plans failed miserably and now I need to think of a plan B. Blah. I hate plan B's; they never live up to match plan A.

I suppose I'll stay home but I don't even have plants I could watch grow. However, I suppose I could watch flat surfaces in my apartment gather dust and then clean them just for the sheer fun of it.

Plan A's failing suck: It leaves me standing at an edge of dark space, scary and cold.

Okay, enough is enough. I'll just go home after work. Get beer from the local grocery store. Drink it. Have happytime and then sleep. Sounds like a perfectly good Friday to me. Huzzah!

On other news:

This weekend will herald the 10th anniversary of Hong Kong's return to the glorious nation of People's Republic of China. July 1st, 1997, Hong Kong was passed from British ownership back to the PRC and everyone thought this place would fall like a dead bird. Well, it's still kicking, and kicking strong.

Despite being a part of PRC, Hong Kong was given special freedoms (ie. own legal system, police force, monetary system, customs policy, immigration policy, and delegates to international organisations and events). PRC, however, is responsible for defence of HK (so HK doesn't have its own army), and takes also responsibility over foreign issues and politics - and of course Beijing keeps a close eye on Hong Kong's internal politics as well.

So, what is Hong Kong like, compared to the PRC? Why should HK have its special status? Well, the obvious reason is that under the British rule, HK featured a number of differences from the Communist China. Democracy was introduced, and Hong Kong governments policy on minimal intervention (in terms of business) has been one the key-issues ensuring the growth of this area. Hong Kong has been described numerous times the world's freest economy - a model for capitalism.

On a practical side, there are number of differences that make Hong Kong different from China. Of course I can't honestly speak of the whole Mainland China, but from my experience in Souther China (Guandong province) it's pretty clear that Hong Kong's longer history as a modern and "western" city has left a positive mark in many ways. Hong Kong, for example is more:

- organized (people actually make proper queue's when waiting for something, traffic actually follows some elementary rules, etc.)

- developed (modern infrastructure, higher education, etc.)

- cleaner (streets are clean, buildings are clean, everywhere is clean (within the realm of possibility of course))

Other things too, of course, separate Hong Kong from Mainland and one of those things is the general language proficiency of this place. Like I mentioned in an earlier post, pretty much everyone in Hong Kong speaks good enough English to perform their jobs. Of course we have exceptions and language barrier can sometimes surprise you like a pack of angry baboons with sticks jumping on you out of nowhere. But that's rare. As it is to be attached by angry baboons with sticks. In China, however, it happens all the time; the language barrier, not the baboons (or how the hell should I know - they could have random baboon attacks there quite often). Shit. I'm being confusing now. Well, nevermind.

The bottom line is: Hong Kong rocks!

Despite being now a part of the evil communist PRC where evil people eat babies, malevolently experiment on TaiChi-activists, and on purpose do all the nasty things western nations are so innocent of, Hong Kong is quite well off

Many people thought the turnover will sink Hong Kong. Clearly it didn't. And I think HK is better off like this anyway. China is a good host and knows how to best deal with HK, respecting the current way of life in Hong Kong. And who'd want to be owned by the Britons anyway?

Sorry for going a bit political and boring.

To compensate, here's a picture of a squirrel:

Legal alien

"Modesty, propriety can lead to notoriety
You could end up as the only one
Gentleness, sobriety are rare in this society
At night a candles brighter than the sun

Takes more than combat gear to make a man
Takes more than a license for a gun
Confront your enemies, avoid them when you can
A gentleman will walk but never run"
- Sting, English Man in New York

I got my Hong Kong working visa today!
After working here for 1 year and 4 months, I am now actually a "legal immigrant". Untill now, I've been on a tourist visa without the permit to work. And as such, I have been an illegal alien. Hah, never felt like one though - and nobody here even seems to care. Everyone's too busy making a dime for themselves so they don't really care who comes and goes and does what. Well, suits me fine.

However, this change in immigration status of course means that I should probably start paying taxes too...

Well, at least here the word "tax" isn't such a curse word as it is in Finland. I don't actually know how high the tax-rate here is, but I just asked my colleague and he said it will be around 10%. The maximum you'd ever pay in Hong Kong would be around 20%.

20% is where Hong Kong stops, and where Finland practically starts. Still, this society seems to be working as well - or even better - as Finland. Am I missing something here?

Further checking my colleague on things:
- Hong Kong has public healthcare, so cheaper alternative for private hospitals

- Hong Kong has unemployment compensation for unemployed people which is actually as high as HKD 4,000 to 5,000 (that's EURO 400-500) per month

- Hong Kong has government housing for poor people who can't afford their own apartments

What are we paying for in Finland?

In Hong Kong you get only primary school for free, but starting from secondary level, you need to pay rather high expenses (depending on the school of course). Is that it?

We pay easy 10% more taxes in Finland to get free university studies? Something tells me there has to be more to it.

Obviously I'm making rather direct conclusions here but it just strikes funny to me. Here in Hong Kong we have a prefectly operating system of similar social benefits as in Finland, with a population of similar size. Yet, for some reason, we don't need to pay as much tax in HK.

Oh, and I'm being provokative on purpose. So, please mind all the holes in my theory and let me know.

I suppose the bottom line is that Hong Kong is just simply a lot richer than Finland and they can sustain such system with less aid from the people but I wonder if Finnish government, in Hong Kong's situation, would bother lowering the taxes.

I think I'll just buy a summer cabin from Finland in my later years, and keep myself and my money in Hong Kong where we're both safe from the long-reaching arm of the Finnish tax bureau.

On a side-note: I don't mean to bash Finland with these last few posts. It just seems to be topical to me right now, and I'm just on a voyage of discovery of this big world we live in. :)

Supremacy

Received my DinersClub PIN yesterday! In celebration we drank a couple of beers and watched Bill Hicks do stand-up comedy.

While seemingly running completely out of cash, I was almost willing to accept life's cruel teaching of poverty and need. I was almost willing to cast aside my life-long philosophy of "neh, I can always get money from somewhere!" and actually become a considerate consumer with awareness of currency and its value, and how saving makes sense in the long-term.

Haahaa!

I got the damned PIN now! I can ALWAYS get money from somewhere! Haahaa! No lessons learned!

I will prevail! I am supreme!

Seriously though, money acts strange here. Everything is slightly cheaper here than in Finland and I make more money than I did in Finland. Seemingly I should be quite well off (which I actually am considering the major purchases from the last 6 months) but some reason it's just not enough. I seriously need to start counting pennies and make a monthly budget. The last ten or so days, despite this happy ending, really showed me that it sucks terribly to run out of cash midway. Salary on Friday, sweet. Need to see how far it'll take me this time.

On other news, it was raining sideways yesterday. Protecting yourself from rain by holding the umbrella vertically is always amusing - added with the force you have to put into keeping your balance as the strong wind is pushing agaist the umbrella. I carry an umbrella always with me in my bag. Usually it's a tiny-kind, the kind you wouldn't really expect a manly man to carry but hell, I don't care. It keeps me semi-dry.

What I'd really like to see is a strong typhoon strike close. I would definitely like to see what happens! I mean, I don't want any catastrophies to happen, that's for sure, but I would like to see the force of nature up close. A proper T-8 would let me stay home as well to enjoy the show.

Now, to the topic at hand.

Exactly one month untill I go back to Finland! Huzzah! I hope the weather is nice there when I arrive. I suppose I need to take a jacket anyway, just in case.

Going back to Finland is kind of like going back in time. It's not a big difference as such, but Hong Kong looks like the world of Blade Runner (without flying cars) while you could still make a credible WW2 movie in most places in Finland. I don't really care much for Finland these days. Sure, it's nice with all the nature and stuff but seriously - you need that stuff only on vacation.

Back home in Finland, I need to drive my car 5 kilometers (roughly) to the closest grocery store. If I want to buy clothes or anything else but groceries, I need to drive 40km to Tampere. If I want to take a train somewhere, I need to drive 25km to Toijala (Akaa), and if I want to fly somewhere, it's 150km to Helsinki-Vantaa.

If I want to "go out" somewhere in Finland, the only option is to go drinking. Alternatives could be;
- Going out to eat? Boring and expensive
- Going to the movies? Not really common except maybe with couples.
- Going out and NOT drink? Need to check my medication.
- Going shopping? No.
- Going to an arcade? No arcades in Finland.
- Etc.? No.

Two drinking options are either to go out and drink at a bar, or buy beer from a store and drink at someone's place. Two options. No more.

People in Finland are generally nice and welcoming but we have a big redneck problem as well. Albeit a minority, they are a big minority and not to be ignored. Go to a grill (a source of maybe the best culinary experiences in Finnish cuisine) and you're taking a risk of getting verbally assaulted, physically assaulted, or even killed. Go to a music concert/festival and you face the same risks. Go to a city central at evenings and you face the same risks. Go anywhere else but your own home and you're in the danger of being assaulted by a Finnish redneck.

If that wasn't bad enough, good and nice people can turn into the worst kind of redneck idiots in a matter of hours once they get alcohol in them - which of course happens alot seeing it's the only way Finns know how to have fun and go out.

Actually, the long geographical distances in Finland are probably an evolutionary protection measurement to save Finnish people from themselves. If isolated groups of Finns get drunk on regular basis, the chance for a clash between these groups is decreased by the long distance they have between them, hence reducing the risk of injury or death.

Of course the contemporary way of life has ruined this evolutionary protection measure by introducing the modern automobile.

The bottomline of why Hong Kong is supreme is as follows:

- People are nice AND don't drink as much so they mostly stay nice even at evenings

- Crime rate is low in Hong Kong which is a testament to their good way of life and understanding the very basics of harmonous living with each others

- There's actually many things to do in Hong Kong at evenings and not just drinking. And the local people actually use these options and they seem genuinely happy doing so.

- Albeit the city areas of Hong Kong are much like concrete jungle, huge portions of the HK S.A.R. area is actually protected nature.

- Services are close-by all the time. From my apartment, the closest grocery store is 5 minutes walk away, a bigger and better takes 10 minutes walk. I can find all the basic services within 10 minute walk from my front door. If I still need something else, I take a metro and can get anywhere in Hong Kong within one hour.

- I don't need a car because the public trasport actually works here and is affordable.

Seeing this post is already quite long, I will stop now. Maybe I'll come back to this topic later some day, maybe I won't.

As a conclusion, I would like to state that I still love my home country and I think it's great! There are many, many good things about Finland and I will definitely move back at some point. However, it has become clear to me (while traveling around) that things are not as black and white. Finland is not the best place on earth, and never will be. But it doesn't need to be.

At this point, the only things I miss about Finland are my family and my friends. That's all.

miserere nobis

It's Tuesday again. This means that it's almost Wednesday followed by Thursday, leaving only Friday untill it's weekend again!
...It's fun to pretend.

On my desk right now:
- A pile of unsorted papers waiting to be sorted
- A project proposal for an environmental technology consortium
- A filled in form for participating in an eco-fair next October
- Instructions on how to proceed with the above (very vague instructions)
- An empty coffee mug featuring pictures of Bad Badtz-Maru
- "Business opportunities in Northeast China" by Ministry of Trade and Industry
- A 2 centimeters diameter ball made of rubberbands
- My to-do list with 8 points for today.
- A bookmark with picture of Santa Claus, saying "Natural Finland, Your Funland"

At this moment, I find the rubber ball most interesting.
Earlier I was playing with it on the table but now there's authority figures in the office so I'm left with only writing.

It's good to write blogs when work doesn't offer the required stimulation. It looks like you're working, it sounds like you're working but you definitely are not working. The perfect crime.

20 minutes to lunch break. Plans for what to have for lunch are still open but it seems that we'll be spending around HKD 200 to save 60. The logic: we're short on cash, but I have plenty of money on my Dinersclub. So, need to get to a proper restaurant so I can pay with my creditcard! Huzzah! Thank you Dinersclub for not giving my damned PIN during the last two months I've been asking for it. Thank you.

Ah well, I suppose it doesn't matter.

This morning I woke up to a sunny day, it was clear blue sky and nice white clowds floated behind the bright-green mountain. That being the first thing I see in the morning makes everything else seem trivial. Why should I stress about anything on a such perfect day.

The only thing that could make it even better is if I could actually be outside to enjoy it. Well, weekend's just around the corner! Only Wednesday, Thursday and Friday to go!

"Denial is a defense mechanism in which a person is faced with a fact that is too painful to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence." - Wikipedia

*sigh*

Maybe I'll just play some more with the rubber ball.

Teh awesome langkwiz skillz

It would be great if I was from Holland, and I moved to Germany to work. I mean languagewise. I would have to pronounse "lederhosen", or "Er ist ein gefährlicher Panzerkampfwagen" a little differently but otherwise I would be set quite easily.

The actual situation is: I come from Finland and I work in Hong Kong. Sweet in every other way but the language.

So, let's look at the facts:
- Me, a Finnish bloke of 25 years old.
- Speaks and writes rather fluent English
- Speaks and writes rather execrable Swedish
- Speaks and writes even worse German
- Knows elementary Putonghua (Mandarin Chinese)

Cantonese:
- 6 to 7 tones (depending how counted)
- No resemblance to any western languages
- Pronounciation is totally different from that of any western language

So, yeah. I know some languages, I know how they work and I understand a lot of the basics. But Cantonese for some reason is just impossible! I've tried a number of times to systematically start learning the language but always there's something to blast away my motivation.

At the office, I pick up my dictionary. I browse a few pages and pick up a sample sentence:

I say: "Yiu-ng-yiu daai ngawn-chewn-mo aa?"

Heads come up, awkwards stares.

Silence.

One colleague asks, half laughing: "Wha-at?"

I repeat: "Yiu-ng-yiu daai ngawn-chewn-mo aa?"

Colleague: "What are you trying to say?"

Me: "Cantonese for 'do I need a helmet?'"

Then I take the book to my colleague, who studies it for a while. Eyebrows raised, a small smirk.

My colleague then reads it to me but all I hear is Kung-Fu-talk. Does he want to see my fighting skillz? I can judo-chop people. Maybe he wants a fight? I don't know!

I ask to hear it again, slower.

Again I hear Kung-Fu-talk, but it's slower than before. Good, I can pick up a few words that I think I can recognize from the book. Ok, I'm quite sure I can repeat it correctly!

I try my best to say it EXACTLY like I just heard my colleague say it.

"Yiu-ng-yiu daai ngawn-chewn-mo aa?"

...And I'm told I got it all wrong.
...Doesn't even come close.
...I need more practise on the pronunciation and the tones.
WHAT THE F*CK?! I said it the same way I just heard it - and I read it directly from the frigging dictionary! How can it NOT be even close?! How is that supposed to motivate me at all? How I ask you, how?

If I can't even get it right if reading straight from a dictionary, how could I without one? I don't know, it just doesn't motivate me.

I would like to learn the language, no doubt. It would be totally awesome and kick ass to know Cantonese, but damnit, they should give me a break!

Oh, and the above dialogue never happenned actually, but I've had plenty similar ones earlier.

One clear problem with dictionaries is that they get the pronunciation key totally wrong. For examply, they write (a simple, basic word) "I, or me" as "ngaw", while it is actually pronounced simply as "oh"... Why would they put it as "ngaw"? It just screws up everything. And knowing this, I can't really trust anything they wrote there! Damnit!

Aside from all of the above, the whole city of Hong Kong doesn't really motivate me. Everyone speaks quite good english here. Everyone that I need to speak English anyway. From the taxi driver to the nice young girl at McDonald's. Even if I learned Cantonese, I would probably be too chicken-shit to actually speak it - seeing how well I can manage with English.

Oh, and it's really annoying to see 2-year-old children running around, speaking better Cantonese than I do! I'm superior!! And it's not fair!

...

On a side note, it's been fun teaching local people some Finnish, which is equally difficult for them to learn. Ärrän kierrän ympäri orren, ässän pistän taskuun. Mwahahahahaha!!!

Week at its end.

So, it is the end of the week again. Time to toss stress aside and enjoy the few days off offered us by the capitalist big machine. A few days of skipping on the fields makes a happy and efficient worker.

This weekend is bound to be cool again. Today's plan is to head for TsimShaTsui to get wasted like never before, and tomorrow I get to hang around a nice and cute girl again. Life is sweet right about now.

I haven't yet solved my budget problems yet but I should come up with something. I have plenty of money on my creditcard but since I don't have the pin-code here, I can't take out cash from ATM's. And without cash, I'm left at the mercy of shops that actually accept creditcards (mine being Diner's Club which is hardly accepted anywhere).

Sweet.

Well, at least I still have a few kilos of rice back home so I won't starve to death.

Okay, back to issues at hand.

Beer.

Beer is the greatest human invention. Ever. The Japanese engineers came close to beating it when inventing the Dakimakura. However, their invention only gets to second place, while beer's title is still left unshaken by challengers.

"A Dakimakura is a kind of large pillow from Japan. The name means "hugging pillow"; they are similar in shape to body pillows in the west.

Some Dakimakura are imprinted with a picture, usually a young woman in the anime style." - Wikipedia

Yes, aside from a pillow that looks like an anime character, or a some other nice lady - in real size - beer has never been challenged credibly and is the best thing ever. To the surprise of many people, I intend to drink beer tonight. I will drink it not too much, but just enough to make me "that special kind of drunk, that you're a better driver because you know you're drunk. You know the kinda drunk that you probably shouldn't drive but you do anyway, because... come on, you gotta get a car home, right, I mean what do they expect me to do? Take a bus? Is that what they want? For me to take a bus? Well screw that! You take a bus!" - Peter Griffin

High expectations for this weekend. No matter what, it will be fun. Weather forecasts say it won't rain, it'll be sunny and it will be warm! No Typhoons either. Huzzah!!

I don't really have much to write now. I'm too set for the weekend already. Maybe more on Monday. Now I'm off. Below a picture of a Damimakura:

Low budget week

Whoops, looks like I've ran out of money.

Last year I managed with roughly HKD 2,000 - 3,000 a month, and now even 10,000 doesn't seem to be enough. What has changed?

Well first of all, I lived in Central, which means I saved around HKD 1,000 just by not using MTR every day to work - I walked and it took 5 minutes. Second, I didn't go out much to drink which now takes away a nifty share of my monthly income. Third, I either make more proper food at home or go out to eat, so none of that cheap student-crap I used to eat last year. Four, larger investments that I skipped last year. This year I have been setting up a home and that means a lot of things to purchase (plasma-tv, dvd player, speaker system, laptop, and a large set of other household appliances).

And finally .. *drumroll* .. unexpected expenses!

I mentioned earlier that my apartment's main aircon is broken, so I got a repairman coming. So, finally yesterday a few guys from the manufacturer's customer service dropped by to have a look. The problem: aircon doesn't cool the air. After a while they have it sorted and they tell that it's ran out of coolant liquid. So, they put in a new set of that. All's fine, except they realize there is a leakage somewhere and that is actually the origin of the problem (why the coolant had depleted so quickly on such a new device). They can't fix it however so they just leave after putting the new coolant in, saying it'll last either a few weeks, or a few months. Great. The whole operation cost HKD 600, and I think to myself how fun it will be to repeat this expense every two weeks/months.

So, I have one of my chinese-speaking colleagues to check with them (they didn't speak good English) what should be done about it. Clearly we can't leave it like that, leaking and depleting so quickly.

The answer: we will get a quotation later, but estimate cost for finding the leak and fixing it will be around HKD 5,000.

Shit.

I really, really hope it is also a custom here to have the landlord pay for such repairwork because I certainly can't afford it. Yet, a summer without the aircon unit will be a bitch to survive.

On current money issues, thanks to that extra cost of HKD 500 (Markus covered the extra 100), I'm finally drained of money.

Next payday is still over a week from now, and I'm now running a HKD 30 budget. That will be enough for me to have lunch today, or take an MTR home after work. I don't know which to choose: to eat, or to go home. I suppose I need some kind of a plan.

"I've got a plan so cunning you could stick a tail on it and call it weasel!" - Black Adder

Why sleep when you can watch Taichi?

Monday night was among the coolest things ever happenned in Hong Kong so far. For me anyway.

Tuesday was a day off which meant that I knew I could stay up a little later on Monday evening, and so I did. I called this nice girl I've been seeing quite a few times already and asked whether she had time to go out again. She did. So we went for a dinner in a rather expensive - but nice - place (both had salads, HKD 200 for each set). I paid, of course. So anyway, the night was still young when we were finished with the dinner and just so happens that a friend of hers calls right when we were about to plan for what to do after.

So, turns out there is a party somewhere in Causeway Bay and he's asking her whether we would like to join.

"A party", I think to myself, "I've been to many bars in Hong Kong so I know what they're about but 'a party'?"

Needless to say, I was interested to see what the word "party" means in Hong Kong and thus we took a taxi to Causeway Bay. We didn't go to one of those nice areas with neonligts everywhere and all, but instead we found ourselves in a rather shady street with bags of trash and broken streetlights. If I was walking alone, that would exactly be the kind of a street I wouldn't want to take in the dark.

So, a shady street.

"Ok", I think to myself, "I know most 'local' places are actually somewhere far from the tourist places we usually go to."

We enter a random doorway. It's just one of the many doorways in the street without any particular lights or signs, just a doorway. We go in, take an elevator and go somewhere maybe to the 5th floor. Doors open.

Black walls; young Chinese looking people walking about, drunk; and loud dance music fills the air. Sweet!

We go in. Music is really loud and at first I don't like it. It's too loud, and it's not the kind of music I usually like to listen to. Yet, I get used to it quite quickly.

We pay HKD 220 to enter and get stamped on our hands. For the 220 we supposedly get 3 drinks for free. Sounds like a bad deal at first, but since we're already there I don't mind. As long as something's happening.

So, we enter the main room. It's maybe 30 sqm space with black walls, a bar and a tiny dance floor packed with people dancing to beat. I get my first beer. Sweet.
We sit down on sofas and try to talk in the noise. Not impossible, but difficult. My date, who is highly energetic already by default, seems to get even more accelerated by the atmosphere of the place. Fun.

She wants to go dancing. I resist; my dancing is kind of like a quadriplegic rhinoceros trying to do a somersault. Awkward.

Well, in the end I allow myself to be taken to the floor. To my relief I notice most people are possibly even worse dancers than I am, so I don't give a damn anymore. I only wish the DJ would've played the Axel F.-theme. Anyhow, dancing the night away from henceforth. We stayed mostly on the floor for the whole evening, maybe 3-4 hours or so. My legs are protesting now, but it was fun back then.

I forgot to mention I was the only white guy in the party.

There were a few others but they stayed only for a little while and so mostly I was the only Gweilo around. Fun, fun, fun! The amount of people asking my name and where I come from was almost scary.

R= random person, M=me

R: "Hey, what's up?"
M: "I am enjoying this charming atmosphere very much, thank you."
R: "Hey, what's you name?"
M: "Pekka, P-E-K-K-A, Pekka."
R: "Ok, Pikah! where are you from?"
M: "Finland."
R: "England? Whoo-hoo!"
M: "No, Finland."
R: "Oh, Finland? Whoo-hoo!!"

And this went around a number of times. Sweet. I was the most popular guy on the planet that night.

One random guy tapped my shoulder and I as I turned he said to me: "Hey, congrats! You're the random white guy!", and I was like "Erhm, thanks?"
I suppose that kind of places always have 99% population of Chinese people, and always one or two 'random white guys'.

Oh, remember that HKD 220 entry and three drinks? Well, turns out no one was really counting how many anyone had, so it ended up being way more than 3 free drinks.

The place closed at around 04:30am. We got out and I was thinking of staying in Hong Kong island untill 06:00am when the metro starts operating again. I didn't want to take a taxi to Tsim Sha Tsui and then wait for a bus, and all that. So some of my newly made friends, and my date, decided to head for Victoria Park to have some more beer. And we did.

It was funny enough to be sitting at the park talking and drinking beer, while there's a lot of older people doing Taichi in the park. I tried to teach my newly made friends some basic Finnish, they tried to teach me some basic Cantonese. I think we all failed miserably.

It all went untill around 08:00am when finally we decided it might be best to get some rest. So we left and I took the metro back home. Arriving around 09:00am; taking a shower and dropping a few lines to friends still online; I found myself in bed around 09:30am, and I slept like a baby untill 17:00.

That pretty much concludes my adventures on Monday night as well as covers most of Tuesday too. Seems this post is mighty long and mostly about nonsense - so if you're still reading this, I have say you should get a better life and you must be a very sorry person to have spent all this time to read this post. Thanks though.

No wikipedia quotes today.

Just one of those days

*sigh*..
Tired..

This has turned out to be one of those days when you know you've a lot to do but no energy to do them.

I know it didn't help at all that I stayed up untill 2am, drinking a few bottles of beer and just chatting. Hah, also was supposed to watch a movie but it was too damned scary - even for two grown up men like me and Markus. Alas, I felt ashamed but couldn't really help it.

After yesterday's entry, I went out for a two hour walk. Took some pictures and familiarized myself with the neighbourhood again. Even found a few new cool places. After that, me and Markus went out for a quick dinner and headed back to watch a movie.

The movie of choice was "The Dark" with Sean Bean (the only reason I bought the movie a long while ago), which I've been meaning to watch for quite some time now. So, we open a few beers, put in the movie. Watch it for 30 mins and decide it's too scary.

Hah, it wasn't "scary" as such but it, like so many horror movies these days unfortunately, based a lot of its "scaryness" on just making loud noises and quick flashing scenes. I hate that stuff. Even if the scene itself wasn't that bad, there's suddenly a bright flast of something and a loud noise. Shit, OF COURSE A PERSON WOULD JUMP UP THE CHAIR FOR THAT! They're called reflexes - and using them to increase movies shock-value is a very, very cheap trick. I personally prefer movies that are actually scary by plot and atmosphere, not movies where I have to constantly watch for cats, birds, memory-flashbacks, black-haired small girls saying "BOO!" when I least expect it.

"A reflex action is an automatic (involuntary) neuromuscular action elicited by a defined stimulus. In most contexts, especially involving humans, a reflex action is mediated via the reflex arc (although this is not always true in other animals, or in more casual usage of the term 'reflex'.)" - Wikipedia on reflex

I would like to stress the words "automatic" and "involuntary".

So, anyway. Didn't watch it longer than 30 mins. After that basically I just went to sit by the laptop and chat, while drinking away beer. Took me untill 2am to realize my mistake after which I corrected it (too late) and went to sleep.

Now I'm a living dead, sitting in the office.

"Idle is a term which generally refers to a lack of motion and/or energy." - Wikipedia on Idle

No motion. No energy. I live in a fluffy world of cotton candy and pink clouds right about now. Except for this damned "not enough sleep"-headache.

Luckily tomorrow is a day off because I we are celebrating some old Chinese poet by the name of Qu Yuan.

"Qu Yuan (Chinese: 屈原; Pinyin: qū yúan) (ca. 340 BC - 278 BC) was a Chinese patriotic poet from southern Chu during the Warring States Period. His works are mostly found in an anthology of poetry known as Chu Ci. His death is commemorated on Duan Wu or Tuen Ng Festival (端午节/端午節), commonly known as the Dragon Boat Festival in the West." - Wikipedia on Qu Yuan

This means that I can relax this evening and have a nice and creative quality time. Or then I can get totally wasted and not even remember what happened today, or last year for that matter.

No matter what, one thing is certain: I need better horror movies. Preferably with tentacles and shit.

magno cum gaudio

"Happiness or glad is an emotional or affective state that is characterized by feelings of enjoyment and satisfaction. As a state and a subject, it has been pursued and commented on extensively throughout world history. This reflects the universal importance that humans place on happiness." - Wikipedia on Happiness

It's been a nice and peacefull weekend. I've had a few nights of good sleep, didn't drink too much and I got to go out with a really nice girl - watching a movie and all that. Can't really think how the weekend could be better, except maybe if it was a few days longer. :)

Routines have been shaken a little and I hope things will progress like this later too. Routines are not really what I want - eventhough they bring a level of stability into my daily life. Yet, as I live my youth in an awesome place like Hong Kong and supposedly should be having "the time of my life", why on earth would I want to stay indoors all the time just looking at the screen of my laptop ..........err... *sigh*
I think I should end this entry short and just go out.

More on the pressing issues tomorrow. It's better to write from work since there I can stare at the screen with a clear conscience.

"Conscience is an ability or faculty or sense that leads to feelings of remorse when we do things that go against our moral values, or which informs our moral judgment before performing such an action. Such feelings are not intellectually reached, though they may cause us to 'examine our conscience' and review those moral precepts, or perhaps resolve to avoid repeating the behavior." - Wikipedia on Conscience

Figedæg

It's Friday again. Last day of the working week and beginning of the weekend. Alas, this is something I've waited for the whole week.

"The name Friday comes from the Old English frigedæg, meaning the day of Frige the Anglo-Saxon form of Frigg, the Germanic goddess of beauty." - Wikipedia on Etymology of Friday

"In Norse mythology, Frigg (Eddas) or Frigga (Gesta Danorum) was said to be "foremost among the goddesses," the wife of Odin, queen of the Æsir, and goddess of the sky." - Wikipedia on Frigg

Most people probably don't really realize how deep-rooted the old pagan myths and ways of life still are in our daily lives. All those holidays that were originally based on pagan festivals, all those rites and supersticious beliefs - and all the names for things we commonly use. Names for days of the week, too, come from pre-Christian times. So, here's a short briefing of the weekdays with the help of my good friend, Wikipedia:

Monday = "It gets its name from the Moon, which in turn gets its name from Mani (Old English Mona), the Germanic Moon god." - Wikipedia

Tuesday = "Tiwes dæg, named after the Nordic god Tyr, who was the equivalent of the Roman war god Mars" - Wikipedia

Wednesday = "The name comes from the Middle English Wednes dei, which is from Old English Wodnes dæg, meaning the day of the Germanic god Woden (Wodan) who was a god of the Anglo-Saxons in England until about the 7th century." - Wikipedia

Thursday = "The contemporary name comes from the Old English Þunresdæg (with loss of -n-, first in northern dialects, from influence of Old Norse Þorsdagr), meaning "Day of Thunor", this being a rough Germanic equivalent to the Latin Iovis Dies, "Jupiter's Day"." - Wikipedia

Friday = See above

Saturday = "It was named no later than the second century for the planet (Saturn), which controlled the first hour of that day according to Vettius Valens. The planet was named for the Roman god of agriculture Saturn." - Wikipedia

Sunday = "Germanic-speaking nations apparently adopted the seven-day week from the Romans, so that the Roman dies Solis became Sunday (German, Sonntag), likely in reference to the Germanic sun goddess Sol." - Wikipedia

So yeah. Think about it. :)
Enough of the info-bit, however, and let's get back to the issues at hand.

Weekend's around the corner and I really need the rest. I've been tossed around at work from project to project, from deadline to deadline and it just doesn't seem to end! A couple of days off will be just what I need right about now to cool my head.

Today will yet prove to be a stressful day but it's Friday so I don't give a damn. I'll just live and survive it and that is all.

Oh, I booked flights to Finland this week! So, I'll be back in the land of the thousand lakes between July 27th and August 11th. Sweet!
I don't really miss home as such, only my friends and family. Aside from that, Finland seems a dull place right now. I know there's a lot of good things there too, but it's just an observation I've made. When I went back to Finland last October for a few months, I found it really "flat". No high buildings, no big cities, no busy streets, and no sense of "motion". Finland just felt like a place stuck in status quo, with minimal things happening. I know many people like that. I don't. Not now anyway.

What I really look forward to going in Finland is a nice day by a lake: sauna, swimming, beer and barbecue. Nothing can beat that - that is the perfect way to spend a day.

Well, back to work. Lots of stuff to do today before I can set off to enjoy my few days off.

Acta non verba.

EDIT: 19.6.07, took a small typo away thanks to a nitpicking friend.

Thunder and lightning!

"A thunderstorm, also called an electrical storm or lightning storm, is a form of weather characterized by the presence of lightning and its attendant thunder produced from a cumulonimbus cloud. Thunderstorms are usually accompanied by heavy rainfall (heavy downpours), strong winds, hail, and sometimes tornadoes." - Wikipedia on Thunderstorms

Thunder, lightnings, heavy rainfall and strong winds. Check.

I was kept awake last night by these elements of nature. Seems they are a lot more present this year than the one before. I can't remember being constantly disrupted from my sleep by bad weather last year, but now it seems to be a trend.

...And to all people living in Finland who are thinking "Oh, it can't be that bad - just the other day we had like rain and stuff." Sure we have bad storms in Finland as well, but they come maybe once or twice a year. Here it seems it's the only form of storms allowed to enter city premises. "You must be THIS strong to enter this city and piss off people who need to work the following day."

Well, I chose my place to live so I shouldn't complain. I knew perfectly well how things might be here. What we need to now is good Typhoon! Preferably one that causes T8 warning. That'd be brilliant!

Funny thing is that western media portray Typhoons as a "devastating force of nature" but the people here actually look forward having as many Typhoons coming here as possible, and as close as possible. The reason: T8 allows people to stay home, and not go to work!
People in Hong Kong aren't really worried about the destruction Typhoons create, they merely want to have some extra days off.

Granted, Typhoons are really bad for less developed areas and people get killed during and in the aftermath of these tropical cyclones passing by. Last year there was actually one Typhoon that came rather close to Hong Kong, and it had just left some people dead and missing in the Philippines. It was somewhat of an eerie feeling thinking of the same storm coming towards us. However, nothing significant happenned. Didn't even get to T8 here - a lot of people disapointed.

"Tropical cyclones are classified into three main groups, based on intensity: tropical depressions, tropical storms, and a third group of more intense storms, whose name depends on the region. For example, if a tropical storm in the Northwestern Pacific reaches hurricane-strength winds on the Beaufort scale, it is referred to as a typhoon." -Wikipedia on Tropical cyclones

Anyway, Typhoon season is just ahead. Wishing everyone plentifull of days off!

On a side note, during my route from home to work, there is only about 10 meters of exposure to rain: when crossing a road. Other than that, there is always a ceiling to protect from rain. Of course, if it's really windy and rain is coming side-ways, the situation is not quite as pleasant.

Now back to work, enjoying this sleep deprivation thanks to last night's thunderstorm.

Just as a reminder:
"Sleep deprivation is a general lack of the necessary amount of sleep. A person can be deprived of sleep by their own body and mind, as a consequence of some sleep disorders, or deliberately. Sleep deprivation has sometimes been used as an interrogation technique or as an instrument of torture." - Wikipedia on Sleep deprivation

Working hard, hardly working.

Office work is like a roller-coaster ride. Don't believe me? Well, you have the right to do so - but you're wrong! Wrong I tell you!

In this company you never know exactly what to expect from the coming day. I suppose in some proper companies, where people actually have a set job-describtion, one can expect to be doing the same stuff from day to day. Here, however, what you work on changes all the frigging time, every single day!

For example: I am a project manager, working as a sourcing agent for a number of Finnish clients. That is/should be my job. But in this company (especially) being a project manager means only that you are given new projects continuously and expected to keep up with the previous as well. My definition for a "project manager" = "A person who is trying to manage with the projects given, and still keeps a happy face and takes a few new ones without so much as a blink." So, how do I manage?.. well, here's what my friend Wikipedia says:

Stage one: alarm
When the threat or stressor is identified or realised, the body's stress response is a state of alarm. During this stage adrenaline will be produced in order to bring about the fight or flight response. There is also some activation of the HPA axis, producing cortisol.

Stage two: resistance
If the stressor persists, it becomes necessary to attempt some means of coping with the stress. Although the body begins to try to adapt to the strains or demands of the environment, the body cannot keep this up indefinitely, so its resources are gradually depleted.

Stage three: exhaustion
In the final stage in the GAS model, all the body's resources are eventually depleted and the body is unable to maintain normal function. At this point the initial autonomic nervous system symptoms may reappear (sweating, raised heart rate etc.). If stage three is extended, long term damage may result as the capacity of glands, especially the adrenal gland, and the immune system is exhausted and function is impaired resulting in decompensation. The result can manifest itself in obvious illnesses such as ulcers, depression or even cardiovascular problems, along with other mental issues. --- Wikipedia on Stress (General Adaption Syndrome)

Stress. What a wonderfull thing. I makes you do things really fast and motivated - or it will stop you from doing anything. With both cases experienced, I like the first one better. Latter one only increases the bad effects.

However, even with all the work that needs to be done, things are now just so slightly better. My boss is away for some time so at least I can have my own pace on doing things. It eases a lot, though of course the work-load doesn't decrease. Yet, just knowing I'm not forced upon tight deadlines so clearly and it helps the coping to situation.

I am a project manager, working as a sourcing agent for a number of Finnish clients. That is/should be my job. However, I also do projects for environmental technology, medical technology, feasibility studies, market research, and random other projects. There is a LOT going on.

At least I won't die of boredom.

"Boredom is a condition characterized by perception of one's environment as dull, tedious, and lacking stimuli. There is an inherent anxiety in boredom; people will expend considerable effort to prevent or remedy it, yet in many circumstances it is accepted as an inevitable suffering to be endured. A common way to escape boredom is through creative thoughts or daydreaming." - Wikipedia on Boredom

Wikipedia is amazing. My best friend.

Ohh.. and I forgot to justify my first statement. Office work (at least here) is like a roller-coaster ride because you never know what to expect - and because at times you don't have much to do (but to play games on PSP), and on other times you're drowned in work - desperately trying to survive the work-load that is coming at you like a pack of Rhinoceros charging ahead, trying to trample you! You never know which kind of day is coming when you come to the office in the morning.