A small catch up

Hello all!

It's been a while since I wrote an entry. A lot has been going on and by lot I mean LOT! I won't go into so much detail but I must say that it's been a very stressful time for me. A year ago I would've had a complete mental break down in this situation but I think I'm a bit stronger now. 

Anyways, the things that I can write about here on the Internet involves renovation in our bathroom and my internship that begun last week! The reason why I've been so stressed out is trying to work out when we can go to the toilet or take a shower. Since we have no toilet or shower we're using the sauna facilities downstairs. It's so frustrating to wake up in the middle of the night, realizing you have to pee and then proceed into the cold stairway. On top of that we have sauna shifts on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, which means that we're not able to use the toilet for six hours or so in the evening. We've managed to book our own sauna shifts every once in a while but when you gotta go you GOTTA GO. So in such scenario I've ran to my father's place who lives 200 meters from here. Thankfully it should be all over soon, since this is the third week.

What I'm most excited about is my internship even though I was super stressed out because of it at first. But now after two weeks I've come to notice how much I like doing what I do. So basically I just help teachers with their computer and tech problems, install hardware and so on. Sometimes the days can be a bit quiet like today, but soon I should start a project that could well turn out to be my thesis subject! I'm so happy to actually advance in my studies and hopefully this year I'll graduate!

Games!

 I've also done some gaming since obviously I bought some new games from the Steam Winter Sales... But not much because I've been a bit occupied by watching "Gossip Girl", embarrassingly so. Even so I was madly excited about Fallout 4 before it was released but had no actual money to buy the game when it came out. All my friends have already played it but hey, I got it on Christmas! It was a gift from dad and I also got a new display card to support my new, awesome games... and yet the game still keeps crashing so there's a problem with my pc's memory (which I got from my uncle) or the processor. So I haven't played much since having the game crash is really frustrating. Oh well, I could play some today after a little break and let Rami watch Netflix instead (feeling so sorry for him for listening to my rants about Gossip Girl)

So I wasn't that creative when creating my character to Fallout 4 but that's her right in the beginning of the game. She has bright red hair on a bun and her face is covered in freckles and a scar. Plus, her eyes have black circles from sleepless nights in the Commonwealth. Her ultimate goal is to find her son and avenge her husband's death no matter what it takes. 

Alright! I won't promise to be more active since nothing exciting's happening right now but when it does, I'll be sure to write about it. 'Til then, thanks and enjoy your rest of the week!

I really want to write something...

But there's not much to write about!

Actually I have been ill for the past week and all I've done is play The Sims 3 or watch tv-series. Netflix has been in much use in our household and I watch Friends whenever I'm feeling bored. When it was on-going I was never that interested in Friends despite the pressure from some of my friends. I did watch it, not much though and to be honest I never thought it was funny. Now I have an entirely different perspective and I think the series is quite entertaining. I have just started season 2 and if I'm not entirely wrong I have over 200 episodes to go. Phew, that's gonna take me years!

I've had some shifts at the grocery store and I must say that I haven't been this well off during my adult years. I have some spare money which helps me sleep at night (figuratively, really I don't sleep much) because if something were to happen I know I'd be able to pay for the costs. Or would I? Anyways I haven't had this much money in a long time and I think it's a good time to start saving. First of all I have to save a bit to be able to pay back my student loan once I graduate. I still have a long way to go but once I start working I don't think it's gonna be a problem.

On top of that I was able to get a new internship at our local university. I'm going in one of their many offices as a PC support kind of person. All I know is that it's going to be more about customer service than technical stuff, even though there's going to be some of that as well. That was actually my personal wish. So far all my part-time jobs have been about customer service so why not further practice my skills in the field? I'm really excited but at the same time I'm terrified! Well, I was terrified the last time as well but it'll get easier after I meet the staff and get to know the place. Anyways, wish me luck!

 Johan Falk

Are you a fan of Swedish crime? If you are, you better look up Johan Falk. It has a total of 20 films starting from 1999, but the first one I saw was produced in 2009. According to Wikipedia that's supposed to be the fourth film. I borrowed 12 films from my father and so far we've watched two of them. All I can say is that I'm hooked! The themes are somewhat dark and violent but there is some humour as well. The story is basically about this police officer Johan Falk who is transferred from Europol to a Swedish police group GSI (Gruppen för Särkskilda Insatser) with unconventional ways of handling things. In the first film we are also introduced to a young lad involved in a dangerous gang but it is not clear whether he's a bad guy or not... I won't tell anything else since that would be spoiling already! Since it's Friday night I'm really looking forward to continuing the film series.

 

A bit of this and that

Hey all!

This time I'm going to write about this and that. Nothing much has been going around really. I work two to three times a week and on my free time I try to spend time with friends and hobbies. Also I'm looking for places where to do my internship. Seriously I could be so close to graduating if not for the internship... It also appears that I'm missing a single credit after I get everything else done so I was thinking about taking a language course of some sort. Preferably Japanese or French, or Russian.

  

Starbound!

So this is a game that I played very enthusiastically a couple years back. In fact me and my brother and a couple friends of his were waiting for its release and the second it came out we started downloading and installing! It's still in development so it's getting updates every once in a while, but I think it's in very good shape right now. On top of that it's very pretty to look at and I think the creatures you're fighting in the game are very cute... For instance some of the creatures aren't hostile at all and tend to be super cute and sometimes I kill one by accident and wail in agony for doing so... Silly me. Anyways I played for 15 hours or so after almost a two year break and well, it started to get very boring quickly. I'm looking forward to playing co-op with my brother though, perhaps that's more fun.

 Tuuttimörkö!

 

Even though I had to work on Sunday, we went to see a gig at a local bar. When I listened to Tuuttimörkö at home I wasn't sure if I'd like their music, but live they were amazing. I really had a great time and even though we were supposed to leave afterwards we stayed for a few drinks to chat with out friends. Even though I didn't have much to drink I was pretty tired at work... But definitely worth it!

 Something I wasn't gonna share but here goes...

I am so sick and tired of a friend couple that I'm slowly starting to lose my mind. I've tried to be helpful and supportive but I don't think that anything I say or do is going to work. This mess has been going on for as long as I've known them, which is almost three years so I don't think there's any point to going to the start of their problems. But anyways, their marriage is a mess. The husband is a complete mad man and my friend is too kind and blinded by her love that she won't leave him. He beats her, abuses her verbally and cheats on her. The reason why I'm so fucking pissed is that he straight on told me that he wants to have sex with other women and after telling me that he went on trying to hit on me. And the bastard really thought I'd rather have sex with a disgusting, filthy animal rather than my own loving fiance? Fucking swine. Fucking idiot, piece of shit. And my friend just laughs and says, oh, I don't know what to do with him. What you do is you leave his good for nothing ass as you've tried to do gazillion times before. Nothing's gonna change, he isn't gonna change so what's the point? Oh, the last time she was going to leave him he "changed" for a couple of weeks and returned to normal right afterwards. Even though their relationship has got nothing to do with me they've somehow dragged me right in the middle of it and I don't like it one bit. And now my friend has slowly started to drag other people into their problems. Jeez I am just so mad. Well I already told my friend I don't want to have anything to do with her husband so that's surely gonna complicate things a bit between us all.

Sorry for opening up like that but I just had to get it off my chest. I don't give a damn at this point who reads this since everybody involved already knows about their goddamn problems. Fuckity fuck.

Anyways, to lighten up the mood enjoy this cute picture of a piggy from an anime I recently started watching.

I saw Ghost!

Ghost @ The Circus, Helsinki 9.11.2015

 I think I had the most interesting Monday in my life this week! Me, my fiance and two of our friends went to Helsinki to see Ghost! I can tell it was an amazing concert since after a good gig I can't stop thinking about the band. I mean even now all I can think about is Ghost. I listen to their music, watch their interviews and live performances, and I just can't get enough of them. So now, all I need is Ghost ;-)

So how did I get into this band? Last summer I went to Provinssi Rock with the same group of friends as last Monday in Helsinki. We were staying at a friend's friend's place who was so kind to let us sleep on his couches. So before even going to the festival site we were listening to different kinds of bands and our host told us about a band called Ghost. The whole concept felt a bit funny at first since they're a metal band with heavy satanic references. But once we heard a couple of songs, we were all hooked! Our host told us that Ghost was going to play at a festival in Finland that summer but we didn't know the band so well at that time so we turned the idea down. Once we got back to our hometown, I looked the band up and that's how the love story begun... Not long after we heard that Ghost is coming to Finland again in November so we got tickets immediately! Even though it was only around three months the waiting felt like ages.

Unfortunately you can't really see anything from the photos I took. I took videos from nearly every song but my damn Huawei ruined the sound. Oh well, at least I have the experience in my memory.

What we were surprised about was how talkative Papa Emeritus was. We expected him to stay quiet and only influence the audience with his presence. In fact he was absolutely charming and at times I could feel my cheeks heat up a bit. He was funny in his own way and I was constantly snickering at his remarks. I hadn't paid much attention to their US tour so I had no idea what their show was going to be like. When Papa changed clothes and took off the priest's robes I was absolutely stunned... and charmed!

The night was amazing up until we left the venue. It was raining and after 30 minutes of wandering around we had no idea how to get to our car. We parked in a parking hall underneath Kamppi and Forum, two shopping malls located in the center of Helsinki. There were dozens of entrances to the place but of course in the middle of the night most of them were closed. Finally, we found a number we could call and we were helped into the right direction. But jeez, door after door and closed elevator after another I really started to freak out. Thankfully we were back home at around 3AM.

 

Anyways, all the thanks go to Ghost and the whole crew. In an Instagram picture showing their no. 1 Finnish record and a bottle of Finlandia vodka, they mention that those who didn't make it to their November gig will have a chance next summer... Hell yes! We'll be there for sure.

Thanks for reading and if you're at all curious, go to Youtube and search for songs Cirice, He Is and Jigolo Har Meggido.

 

A couple of games

It's been a while, hasn't it?

The main reason is that I haven't had much to write about. I started my apprenticeship at the city's IT-services a few weeks ago and that's pretty much all I've been thinking about lately... that and games actually. So I have tons of (not quite, 169 in my steam library) games but sometimes I feel like I've got nothing to play. Familiar feeling? That goes for clothes too... But now, I've picked random Steam games that I've been meaning to play but haven't gotten to it until now. There are quite a lot of them so I'll try to be brief.

Mutant Mudds Deluxe

So the first game is an old school platformer with a twist; you can travel from dimension to another, e.g. from the background to the foreground. The game really has hours of gameplay because the stages get extremely difficult as you progress, at least for me... You have regular stages and from those you can enter extra ones. On top of that you have so called 'ghost stages' that are similar to the regular ones, only they are more difficult and you can't hurt the enemies. I've played it some buuuuut, it just gets so frustrating when you enter the extra stages.

 Data Hacker: Reboot

 Data Hacker: Reboot is a role-playing game made with RPGmaker and it has a special kind of Japanese vibe. Perhaps its the characters. Oh and they even have voice acting! Anyways I haven't really understood the story yet but what I've figured is that the worlds are collapsing and people are being dropped into this virtual reality that's also being attacked by some virus-like monsters. The main character, who's also in the picture above, is looking for his sister by using these so called world shards to enter different worlds. Really, I have no clue. That's where all the cool stuff ends. I need to grind so much that I constantly feel like I'm not making any progress. Grinding can be fun, I love grinding in some games, but in Data Hacker it just feels like I've been playing for 20 hours instead of four... I'll get back to it when I can but playing it now feels too heavy.

Defender's Quest: Valley of the Forgotten

This is a tower defense game so it requires some strategy, which I usually lack. Somehow, I've still managed and I love this game! At times it becomes very stressful but most of the times I triumph in battle! I even like the story; it's original and a classic battle against evil. So the main character is a librarian of a royal court, and she gets thrown into a huge pit or valley where all plague victims end up. The twist here, is that all plague victims in this story end up turning into zombie-like creatures. Our main character is about to turn into one as well, but instead she magically finds a way to battle these 'revenant'. She meets friends from different fighting classes on her journey to discover what is going on. I've enjoyed the game immensely, seriously, play it. I suck at strategy games but Defender's Quest is a lot of fun!

 Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale

Gotta love anime-styled RPGs, right? Recettear tells the story of a young girl who is left behind by his adventure-crazed father. All is good, until a fairy-loanshark comes along and tells our heroine to pay his father's debts! So, Recette opens up her own store! Your task is to get enough money at the end of every week, by buying low and selling high! You can also go dungeon looting, which requires the company of an adventurer. I played this game a long time ago and I remember having huge problems meeting the deadline every week. I decided to try again and now it's going smoothly! I really like this game but it can get a little repetitive quickly.

Hero Siege

 Yet another game that can get a little repetitive but more about that later. Hero Siege is a rogue-styled adventure game. Your mission is to hack enemies into pieces, level up and loot all kinds of riches. And of course to kill Satan's son, that is probably the final boss of the game. I've had fun with it, but like I said it gets a bit boring at some point. For instance I went into this secret level with hundreds of killer-sheep in it, I had probably all the possible bonuses on and I rocked the level. Oh, and leveled up quite a bit. The next levels were all rainbows and kisses instead of harsh blows and bloodied grass, well not quite but you get my point. You're supposed to start every level very helpless, but you can cheat that by grinding earlier levels. And what's the point of that...

Long Live The Queen

I am so addicted to this game! But it's so darn difficult... In this raising simulator your task is to aid a young princess on her way to coronation. Her mother has just died so she's feeling depressed and lonely. In fact, the mood she's in affects what bonuses and penalties she gets while studying. For instance when she's feeling happy, she's best at conversation and athletics. On top of that, every skill has three subskills that you can level up to 100%. If I counted correctly, there are in total 42 skills!! For instance, on my first gameplay I concentrated on military skills and Intrigue (internal/foreign affairs, ciphering) and thought that no one can hurt us now! Then I embarrass myself at a ball, since my character doesn't know anything about dancing, royal manners, flattery, decoration and the list goes on... And then she dies of a poisoned chocolate because she doesn't know anything about medicine! Oh, she only knows how to crypt secret messages and command an army... So frustrating, but I have to keep playing!

So sorry for the long post but yeah, I've been gaming a lot lately. I'll have a break on Saturday because some of our relatives are coming over. I'm baking and I hope everybody's going to have a good time.

Thank you for reading and see you next time!

What Our Weekend Was Like

So what's been happening?

This entry isn't going to have a certain theme but instead I'm just going to tell a little about our weekend. Nothing too exciting, but I do have some pictures to show!

FRIDAY

On Wednesday I went to the so called "Crazy Days" that a big Finnish retail chain holds every once in a while. I could've been in and out in less than 2 hours but since I went there with Rami's two older sisters, it took us more than five hours... God I wore the worst shoes possible for shopping so my legs were in terrible pain the time I got home. Anyways I don't think the prices actually go crazy low, but I did make some cool finds. I bought a yoga mat for around 12€, a nice cardigan for 20€, some spices 1€ per shaker, 450g of goat cheese for 5€ and the reason I'm telling all this, I bought 500g of salmon for around 5€. Since fresh fish is terribly expensive most of the time I've made all these excuses for why I haven't made sushi before, but now I got the inspiration to do some Japanese cooking!

 So here they are, my very first homemade sushi! I used specially made sushi vinegar that I mixed with the rice, and for the fillings I used salmon, cucumber, avocado and cream cheese. I must say that they were very delicious. All the ingredients cost me around 30€. That's quite expensive but since we had to purchase EVERYTHING, it does cost a bit. Next time it'll be a bit cheaper though.

On Friday we were supposed to eat lots of sushi, drink a bit of wine and relax with Rami. We did that, yeah, but we also had a little company. Our good friend Saija used to live close by with her boyfriend Antti, but they moved last spring and we haven't seen each other that often anymore. So that's why it was so wonderful she called and asked if she could come by. We listened to music, ate sushi and drank wine the whole night. We were supposed to stay in but we ended up going in one of the local pubs. It was nice though, I got to dance a little bit and sing karaoke. We even had a conversation with this Romanian guy that we seem to see everywhere, and we got to know a little about his life despite the language barrier. I don't think he understood my English at all...

 

I almost forgot about this photo! We're all going into different Halloween parties this year and the big question is, what are we going as? So in my drunkenness I realized that I once bought a Cookie Monster costume from eBay. The only problem is that it's too small. I'm 176cm tall and I purposely bought a suit that's for 180cm tall, and I thought that'd be enough but no... It's probably just fine for a 165cm tall person. I'll come up with something else, but since I was a bit tipsy I decided to try on the costume anyways and take a selfie. Yeah...

SATURDAY

Terrible, terrible hangover... I've been going low carb for over a week now and despite Friday being a bit of a cheat day, I got drunk so fast. Even at the pub I was only drinking water, in the beginning... So me and Rami took it easy really. We were invited to go barbecuing with two friends on a lake, but what the heck it's less than 10 degrees outside?? Obviously we didn't go since walking 4km felt like too much at the time. Even our friends didn't spend that much time there at the lake. But in the evening they decided to visit and brought a little meat with them. It was yummy and in return we offered them some sushi. Once they left we went to sleep almost immediately.

SUNDAY

There's not much to tell about today. It's been more of a cleaning day, doing laundry and dishes and so on. We visited my grandma shortly and went grocery shopping. Rami's actually cooking right now and I was supposed to help but this is taking more time than it should. Anyways, I'm just waiting for tomorrow and I'm freaking out a bit. My three-month apprenticeship is going to begin and I'm terrified since one of my tasks is going to be educating city employees on information security. I am not a presentation-giving-type of person at all... But I'm just going to think that it's only three months and if 3 years can fly by like "where the heck did the time go", then so will the freaking three months. Hopefully I will learn a lot from the experience.

Thank you for reading again and I shall leave you with this picture of Lilla My!

 

 

Food and music

Good morning!

I actually feel a lot better now that I've slept a little longer. A whopping seven hours instead of just four! Anyways I've already made some arrangements and I'm finally going low carb again (but not high fat). In high school I lost over 10 kilos by cutting on carbs and exercising regularly. Back then I was normal weight and proportional and I hated my body, but now I actually have a reason to lose weight. I've known it for a while now but on the weekend I tried to take one of my rings of and it wouldn't come off. We tried olive oil, cold water and all things slippery to make it come off but all I got were awful burns. So yeah, that's when I decided I need to do something. I have no idea how much I weigh because our scale can't make up it's mind. For instance before we moved I weighed myself and the result was what I expected. A week later I tried again and it showed 5 kilos less. I was happy but then it started showing 10 kilos more! Today I weighed myself and I was again in the starting point where I was before we moved. So no trusting the scale!

 This was my breakfast today + coffee. The bread is delicious but it was a pain in the ass to make. It contains some carrots, seeds, two eggs and spices. I boiled the carrots and I thought that why not try the old blender I got from my stepmom. And nothing, the carrots just lay there in one piece and nothing happened. I decide to do it by hand but I realize that the only thing I can smash the carrots with is a fucking fork. I do that for two minutes and go FUUCK this shit, Rami is looking a bit worried over my sudden mood swing, but I then proceed to trying a mixer. That goes a little better but in the end the mixture's not smooth at all and I was a bit worried. In the end it turned out alright even though I made a horrible mess in my anger. But tasty breakfast nevertheless, even though I have no idea what to eat for the rest of the day!

The real reason I'm writing

Since k-pop has become very popular recently you may know the band I'm about to talk about. It's BIGBANG, or just Big Bang like it was back when I listened to them a lot. I remember paying a crazy amount of money for two of their albums, that also contained cool stuff like messages in Korean, stickers and whatnot. The album covers were huge and funnily shaped and they had holograms! How awesome is that... I even wanted a t-shirt but back then it was crazy expensive like I mentioned. I listened to BIGBANG in middle and high school but since then I've kept a small break. I've listened to some new songs afterwards, I really liked Fantastic Baby, but that is nothing compared to what I discovered yesterday.

 Hoooly moly! These guys are killing it and I love it! I will definitely continue listening to them more often in the future. I went absolutely crazy about this song yesterday and I couldn't go to sleep since I needed to watch the video over and over and over again. The dance version is very cool as well and I was planning on showing it to my Zumba instructor. It has a few zumbaish moves so it would be kick ass to dance to this song! The first thing I did when I woke up was turn on this song and DANCE!

From left to right: T.O.P, Seungri, G-Dragon, Daesung, Taeyang. (So you know who I'm talking about)

And wow. My favourite was always T.O.P and he is still handsome, but dang what happened to Seungri and Taeyang!? Especially Taeyang, damn he is hot if I may say so! That all goes for everyone but Daesung... He makes that cool head bang at the end but still not as cool as the rest of the band. And cut your hair young man! I don't need to mention G-Dragon, since he is amazing, a true mastermind and super hot in his own quirky way. Love you Gee.

Shortly said, BIGBANG is back and I am effin' excited. Perhaps I'm a bit late as usual, but I'm happy I found this great song that has inspired me to stay tuned.

Thanks for reading again and I'll be back with new stuff soon in the future!