Show me your dirty face

Dust. There's lots of dust in this town. I have to vacuum my room once a week here because house dust just piles up so quickly. In Finland that miracle happened maybe once in three, I'm a very lazy housekeeper. The pollution is also visible in my cotton pads when I wipe my face clean every night and mornings. I've always thought of air pollution as something invisible (apart from obviously car fumes from passing cars) that only quietly affects things like health and whatnot but I've come to find that it is also very real physically too. I'm curious to see if I can also feel it the next time I visit Finland.

I can not, for the life of me, get a stupid bank account opened! They don't seem to know what they want from me since every time I've tried, they've needed different documents. Passport seems to be the only thing they all agree on. They also always want proof of address but don't quite know what they can accept for that.

This week was quite uneventful. 10-18 at the office and then home to watch tv. Which is awesome! I definitely prefer working to going to school as I can - with a clear conscience - just bum around doing whatever when I'm not working. With school there's always some essay that needs to be written or a project proposal that needs editing and researching and stuff. Now my free time is actually my free time! No nagging sense of guilt about assignments.

On Wednesday one of my coworker's band had a gig and we all went to support him. Check them out here. And here's a video just in case you're too lazy to navigate to a different site.

Saturday night I went to a local pub with two Finnish girls who also have just started their internships here. It's nice to meet other people who are new to the city and compare notes on how we feel about it ;) I had a -10% food voucher but forgot to use it so I'll have to go back in a couple of weeks. Tuesday nights they seem to have a pub quiz, that could be fun.

Wknd of leisure

It's contact free week now, fall break if you will. I don't actually get a whole week off but I had a full weekend of fun. I went to visit my friend Maria in Porvoo and took my mind off all of this school/interning chaos.

Friday was awesome! We went to Britney's show, both of us old school Britney fans. Crossed that off my bucket list! It was great, really. I've read quite a few reviews where they criticized her performing playback. Of course she's gonna use playback! That's what she's always done and always will. Going to her show and expecting live music and live singing is just delusional and stupid. She always sings little bits live and has the playback supporting her and that was the case now too.

SOON! At this point we were shaking of anticipation

It was a show, I'll say that. There were exceptional dancers, costume changes, elaborate props and everything. One thing I was a bit disappointed with was her dancing; it was a bit lazy and unfocused. Otherwise it was exactly what anyone could have expected, if they'd actually ever paid any attention to how her shows are constructed. After the show we headed back to Porvoo and stopped at a locad Irish pub for a drink. There was an Oktoberfest weekend going on, people were dressed up and singing German drinking songs (or so I suspect, I didn't understand any of it). Fun night.

On Saturday we went shopping. I had no money to spend but I made myself useful as a consultant when Maria was trying on clothes. We also stopped for a coffee and cake. I had ana amazing and amazingly huge slice of Tiramisu. Then we took the doggy for a walk, had an awesome meal and started getting ready for the night. She had Singstar she'd never played before so we took advantage of that and practiced for our future pop-stardom.

On the left: Our dinner - karelian hot pot and yellow turnip mash. On the right: Tiramisu in the front, After Eight cake and quark cake in the back.

Maria's cutesy giant shetland sheepdog Tito ready to conquer the fields of their back yard

After we started losing our voices we transferred our presence to a local nightclub. It's been ages since I've been to a proper dance club. The one I always go to is more indie/rock kind of a place with a dancefloor. I didn't really recognize many of the songs until at the end of the night when the DJ played some old school hiphop. That was so fun! We were sweating like little piggies after bouncing around like idiots for the duration of maybe seven songs.

Sunday was relaxing day. We watched the newest episodes of Gossip Girl and Fresh Meat, ate some chips and just lounged on the couch until I had to leave to catch my ride back to JKL.

Now it's time to get back to my life of filling out loads of paperwork.