Another British (?) peculiarity: you can pay with a credit card at most of the charity shops (think kirpputori) but newsagents seem to only accept cash.

Well it had to happen sooner or later. Friday was the first day I unexpectedly heard someone speaking Finnish. The feeling is really weird, a bit like being suddenly woken up in the middle of a dream. And it’s not that I wouldn’t hear Finnish spoken daily, cos I do (Sonja’s here as well, remember). It takes a minute to recognize the language but you can’t help noticing. I guess it’s caused by the same part of the brain that’s responsible for the cocktail party phenomenon, cos it only works with my native language. Not once have I felt surprised hearing someone speak English or whatever in Finland but this way round it’s a real shock.

I just turned in the last two essays, a mere week late. The reception was better than I’d hoped for! So now I’m just keeping my fingers crossed and indulging myself in some serious slacking.

ITV news have gone hardcore. They were showing images from the parliamentary budget hearing and a live feed from Iraq at the same time using split screen. It’s almost like 24, only boring.

Doesn’t that devalue them both? It’s like the budget isn’t important enough to be concentrated on and while we’re at it, no one’s going to look at these boring images of Iraqis looting some godforsaken city so better provide them with an alternative.

And isn’t the idea of journalism to work as a filter and provide a commentary to what’s happening? The way I see it, reporters are paid to sift through the tide on incoming (mis)information and try to make some sense out of it? Geez.

Also couldn’t help noticing that the words ”social justice” featured quite often in the Chancellor’s speech. I’m a relative newcomer to British politics (going for the understatement of the week here), so I’m assuming that is a New Labour buzzword. I’d be interested in knowing what it’s supposed to mean (I believe his words were supporting enterprise and social justice).

The Chancellor was talking about improving the incomes of people in low pay jobs. He said that the modern way of doing it was to provide tax credits instead of rising the minimum wage. Now I’m a bit simple, admitted, but doesn’t that mean that the financial burden falls on the state instead of the employers? Mr Brown had calculated that the new tax credits would almost double the income of single-parent working families. If it’s already nearly impossible to get by on minimum wage, shouldn’t the government be pushing for higher wages instead of throwing in their own money? I’d rather have the credit go to the employers instead of the workers, because if there’s an economical downturn, the credits might go away and then the poor bastards are back on shit pay, which mightn’t happen if they’d raise the wages now.

But what do I know?

Talking elevators, lots of people named William or James and the Science of Star Trek Exhibition.

The man in the neighbouring apartment is playing the guitar at the very moment I’m writing this. It is yet unclear which song he’s murde–, uhm, interpreting at the moment. Just for the record, his favorites include Ticket to Ride, Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door and, as of late, No Woman No Cry.

The man is a decent enough guitarist, but his singing is a different matter altogether. First of all, it’s not in tune. Second of all, he’s still singing. Third, it’s fucking 4 AM. Why can’t the poor bastard just go to bed? Thanks to his perseverance, I must have heard Ticket to Ride more times than ever before in my life. Come to think of it, my years have been remarkably devoid of budding nocturnal instrumentalists.

(A Completely Unrelated Yet Somewhat Amusing) Footnote: I still can’t for the life of me understand why the heating has to be turned off in the middle of the night. One unpleasant side effect of this is that it’s rendered nighttime visits to the loo unenjoyable. Nothing takes the fun out of bodily functions like sitting on damp, cold toilet porcelain and freezing your ass off. It’s not that I’m asking for too much, is it now? Just a cozy nice little place where I can relax and take a dump whenever I like.

In the youth parlance, the words ’Friday night’ often equal ’partying’. I for one have never been a party animal, neither in the serious or the ironic sense of the words. I did, however, experience the wonder that is a British students’ house party last Friday.

The obvious question is why. The just as obvious answer is why not? After all, I’ve been in the country for couple of months already and hardly know anyone. Basically I’ve made acquaintances with my two house mates, the two other foreign students in my classes, and Gareth, and of course Timo, the token Finn.

Note that this doesn’t mean I’m blaming the Welsh (or the English) for keeping to themselves, for that is only natural – though I can think of three examples of people who have actively (ie. I’ve made the first move) tried and succeeded in avoiding any sort of social contact. But I don’t work for the Sun, so no naming and shaming will take place.

I actually thought about how I’ve befriended people in Jyväskylä. Basically it boils down to my classmates who I’m sort of forced to meet every now and then, and a couple of other people I’ve ran into more than once. So it’s not like I’d accumulated loads of friends back in Finland and am now feeling marooned. After all, I did know to expect the effects of culture shock and I am not alone – Sonja’s here too.

But I digress. What I was getting around to was the fact that I did go to the party hoping to meet some new people. Now, me being me, this was wishful thinking. To put it kindly, parties and Olli don’t mix. I can’t do the small talk, I can’t do the mingling, I’m generally not very intoxicated (as in not at all), I’m interested in the most trivial things (my idea of a fascinating topic at a party might well be the differences between Finnish and English personal pronouns – true story) et cetera ad nauseam. These traditionally nerdy characteristics mark me as ’the person most likely to not the party at all’. And I’ve been like this as long as I can remember. Call me a slow learner.

So what was it like? Well, like most other parties. The house was full of drunk people I didn’t know and didn’t get to know, the music was turned way, way too up (people are always trying to compete with the music which is, by the way, the worst abuse worthy pop music can be subject to) and I spent most of the time doing my very best ’cool and interesting’ imitation. No, it didn’t work this time around, either.

What did happen, though, was well worth the effort. But before I get to that, I’d like to write a little bit more about yours truly. It would seem that I have something of a reputation amongst the students, namely for being late and being extremely brazen about it. He just walks in at half past, looks around, takes the handout, goes to his place and ruffles around his bag like nothing’s happened! is how Matthew put it, and I’ve heard it from other people as well. But I’m getting ahead of myself here.

Seems like I’m digressing chronically, must remember to do something about that (lobotomy might be effective). As I was about to write, I did finally meet some other classmates. And all in all the evening did go quite well, as we talked about some truly trivial matters (the non-gender specific nature of Finnish pronouns – see, I told you) and some rather more interesting issues as well (why Bristol blows Cardiff out of the water when it comes to, well, basically anything).

The highlight of the evening was me exchanging telephone numbers with the boys, that is Matthew and Sam (they do come across as sort of Batman and Robin. I hope you’ll read this some day, guys). This means that I’m no longer socially forsaken with the natives (although I haven’t yet named anyone Friday (note to self: must get this Robin thing out of my head as soon as possible)). So when we left, truly and completely exhausted (it’s amazing how tiring doing nothing at boring parties can be), the prospects were looking up, really up. Call me sentimental, but I was happy that I’d gone there and spent the evening feeling like an outcast smeghead.

One more thing about the whole social reclusiveness aspect of this all. One girl did come up to me at the party and exclaim ”I’m in your class” which was very kind of her, but did leave the lingering question ”Why is it more acceptable to say something after sixty days of continued silence at the classroom?” All in all I think this is related to what I like to call the foreigner fallacy. See, Finland is still largely homogeneous. The population is almost exclusively nth generation Finns, especially inland which is where I come from. This means that whenever a foreigner enters our humble country, he/she is subjected to a barrage of questions and attitudes, ranging from the curious to the racist. If I’m allowed a generalization (and why wouldn’t I?), being foreign is the key to immediate popularity in Finland (well I did lie a bit, now didn’t I?).

Now, in the ’multicultural’ UK looking a bit funny (Finns do look funny!) isn’t going to of interest to anyone, unless they’re a) unable to escape the room you’re in and are thus forced to make conversation or b) are taking your money and thus feel forced to make conversation with you (the lovely lady at the Agfa store did actually inform the that she lived with a Norwegian person – good for her, I guess). But this all was supposed to be just a footnote.

Now where’s my spell checker… and what’s with all the parentheses?

A true British cliche passed by us on Friday night.

It was midnight and we were just walking home from the party, when a man cycled by. The thing that made it strikingly British was the fact that he did not use his hand to steer the bike but instead was happily muching away on a portion of fish and chips.

Now had this happened in Finland, the person wouldn’t had been able to even mount a bicycle, much less ride it without using his hands (Just think back to the kind of people that buy snack food Friday midnight. Exactly.) and his choice of food would’ve been either makkaraperunat (that’s potatoes with sausages) or a hamburger. The reason for this is, in my view, that no Finn in their right minds wants the aftertaste of fish on a morning after.

One has to bear in mind, tho, that Finns think nothing of having a garlic breath Saturday morning. I kind of dig it myself, don’t know why. Idiosyncrasies, I guess.

Seuraa yleistys: paikalliset ovat urheiluhulluja.

Moiseen tulokseen on mahdottoman helppo päätyä, kun kävelee Cardiffin keskustassa Millennium Stadiumin lähistöllä matsipäivänä. Tänään kyseessä oli ilmeisesti Wales vs Azerbaidjan (en edes tiedä miten se kirjoitetaan) ja laji oli kai jalkapallo tai rugby, piruko sen tietää.

Joka tapauksessa keskusta oli täynnä, suorastaan ylitäynnä, ihmisiä jotka kanniskelivat päällään mitä hullumpia asusteita. Jokaisessa kadunkulmassa seisoskeli kärryn kanssa mies, joka kauppasi Wales-aiheista krääsää. Vain mummit ja vaarit oli jätetty kotiin, muuten kaikki 1–60-vuotiaat olivat maalanneet kasvonsa ja lähteneet ulos.

Eikä siinä mitään, että stadionin lähellä hengaili pirusti porukkaa, mutta kun kaikki pubitkin olivat täynnä. Leffateatterin vieressä olevan räkäklubin ulkopuolella oli kymmenmetrinen jono, ja tämä siis lauantaina iltapäivällä kello yksi. Ilmeisesti täällä (stand back in amazement of the extent of my perceptiveness!) on sosiaalisesti hyväksyttävää, ellei jopa vaadittavaa, kannattaa kotijoukkuetta julkisessa paikassa ja juoda samalla olutta.

Huvittavaa oli.

Katsoin tuossa juuri, että Walesin kuvat -kansiossa (huomautettakoon, että hakemiston nimi on eri) on sata megaa kuvia, yhteensä 156 kappaletta. Vaikka niistä suurin osa on tuubaa, on joukossa pari siedettävääkin. Tiedän jo miten saan ne veppiin (lainaan kaverin bittiä), mutta siinä saattaa kestää vielä pari viikkoa. Älä menetä toivoa, siis.