SNOW!

It's been a while. There are a few things:

1) Having an internet connection that DOESN'T WORK - extremely annoying.
Especially when it's at your parents house far away from anyone else. (Not that I have anything against my parents, I'd just like to talk to the boyfriend, waste my time on fbook etc.)

2) Having numerous members of family who think you're some sort of IT-genius just because you happen to use a web browser that's not Explorer - extremely annoying.
Although, there was a moment of joy with my skills when I managed to secure my sister's wireless. And may I add that the manual I used was more than unhelpful (in a bad way, does that mean I should say 'less than unhelpful'? It does, doesn't it?).

3) SNOW - AMAZING!
There was what they call a snow storm here (I suppose it's needless to say I'm in Finland at the moment, but I'll say it anyway: I'm in Finland at the moment.) on Wednesday. It was amazing, I got out of bed around 11am, I think, and looked out the window and it was all white outside! And better yet, it was still snowing! I went out to get the mail (our mailbox is a short walk down the road) and had to clear the drive way, stairs and stuff of the snow. There was about 10cm (about 4 inches for you ignorant fools out there) of it by then and when I left the house less than two hours later another 10cm had snowed on top of it. So by 3pm, there was about 20cm (8 inches, I'm sure you all know your maths) of snow and it was AMAZING! When I came back with my mum later, we did the whole clearing the front of the house and stuff from snow thing, (I'm sure you have a word for it in English, I just don't know it, should probably look it up) and it was great. The snow was the kind of really light and powder-y snow that flies on your face when you thrown it against the wind. It didn't take us long at all and I felt so happy doing it I almost offered to do the neighbours drive ways as well, but they'd already done theirs. (And in the end, I think I may not have been as happy had I done a lot more.) But anyway, yay for snow. I was so excited I just kept taking pictures like a crazy tourist who has never seen snow before. Sadly, my camera isn't very good and most of the shots aren't presentable, but I'll see if I can find some to put at the end of this post.

As it happens, this is the end of the post, so here are a few.

My foot prints in fresh snow

My shoes after walking through the snow to the mail box

My hat after 20min outdoors

The fence of our patio in the snow

Stupid people

[Edit: I can't seem to get the font size right with this one, which is a bit odd, given that there's only 5 options and I've always used the same one. But pff that, you can just add stupid text editor applications to the list of all the annoying things.]

Picture this:

You're walking down a pavement of a regular width (you can easily walk two-a-breast, even three-a-breast if you squeeze a bit). You're walking down on one side, minding your own business and you're not even feeling too pissed off about having to go to a seminar you don't particularly look forward to going. You're doing this when a group of approximately ten people walk towards you, nothing wrong with that really, they're allowed to walk there, after all, it is a public walk way. You'd expect that these people would make some way given that you're on your own and there's many of them. But NO! These people walk fucking three or four side by side. WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?!

I hate people who don't give way for others! Where the fuck am I meant to go, jump among the cars going by?! There's one of me and many of you, you can walk behind each other, I can't make myself any smaller, can I?! (Well I could, but it would take a change of diet and an increase in exercise, and I'm just not prepared to do that right now. And even if I did, it wouldn't really change the situation here.)

This is all.

Living, pt. I

Living - a note for all those who find living without mummy's care a tad difficult. And for those who just don't care.

Toilet/Bathroom

- After using the toilet (no matter if it's a weewee or a poopoo) WASH YOUR HANDS. If you don't wish to use the soap, don't but at least rinse your hands with warm water.
- When after pooing your poo doesn't go down with the first flush, wait a while for the water tank to fill up again and then reflush.
- When after pooing your poo is all over the bowl, use the toilet brush provided to clean to largest bits off.
- When after cleaning the largest bits of poo the poo is stuck to the toilet brush flush again and hold the brush in the water flow. This will get rid of the poo on the brush so that the next time someone takes it from its stand they won't have to use a poo-y brush to clean.
- When after pooing the bathroom smells of your poo, use the air freshener if one is provided. If not, there might be some matches, if this is the case, burn one of them and throw it in the bowl. This will get rid of at least most of the odours of your poo.
- Once a week or a fortnight use some toilet cleaner. According to the instructions (these will be on the side of every cleaning detergent imaginable!) pour some of the cleaner in the bowl, all around, leave it to be for a while (usually 5-15 mins) then use the toilet brush to brush the bowl all around. Now flush the toilet and again clean the brush in the water flow.
- When cleaning the toilet it would be a good idea to also wipe the dust and goo that gathers around the bowl (I mean the bits that water from flushing doesn't touch). If you do this whenever you clean the toilet it will save you from doing a very disgusting clean after a year of gathered dust and goo.
- When using the last squares of the toilet roll, REPLACE the roll. It doesn't require much.
- When you start using the last roll of the pack/notice the paper will run out shortly, BUY a new pack next time you go out.

- When after showering the bath/shower floor is all covered in your pubes, use the shower to float them down the drain.
- When after showering you find that most of your hair did not go down the drain pick them up and bin them. You can use a piece of toilet paper or similar if you don't want to touch them bare handed.
- About once a fortnight clean the bath/shower. This you can do using a special bathroom cleaner which you spray on the surfaces and then wipe out with a sponge or a cloth and warm water. This is especially important if your bathroom has bad heating and/or air conditioning. Again, doing it regularly will save you from being disgusted going to the shower and it'll prevent you from having to do a clean of loads of discusting goo/mould/whatever gathers in there. I suggest you also clean walls around the bath/shower, because they too get pretty disgusting after a while.
- Make sure you use your own shower gel/shampoo/other products. If you use someone else's without a permission chances are you'll only end up annoying them. AND especially if you're a student/are using a student's shower gel/shampoo/other products you'll cause them extra costs and they might actually be a tiny bit skint even if you're not. Especially if you haven't bought your own shower gel/shampoo/other products and have been using theirs.
- When in shower, if there's a shower curtain make sure it covers as much as possible preventing the water from going anywhere it's not meant to go. If you're in a bath it means the water should stay in the bathtub, if it's just a shower with a floor drain, the water is meant to stay as close to the drain as possible.
- If there's a bath mat, it is not there to absorb all of the water dripping from you after your shower. This means that you should dry your self in the bath/shower (obviously after you've showered). If you keep your towel somewhere in the near vicinity of the bath/shower this should not be a problem.
- If you do happen to water the whole bath mat, do put it somewhere to dry. If there's a radiator, that's good, if not, see if you can hang it somewhere.
- It is likely that the bathroom will also have a water basin there. This too, should be cleaned regularly, needless to say, I hope.
- Oh and, just as any other room in the house/flat the bathroom floor needs to be hoovered/mopped every now and then. It would probably be easiest for yourself to do it whenever you're cleaning the toilet/bath/shower. Otherwise it'll just look a bit silly, you know, a dusty floor when everything else is clean and sparkling.

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While writing this I realised that things that seem natural and obvious to me, actually do require quite a bit of thinking if you've not had to do any of this whilst living with your parents. I would like to say here that I'm very grateful for my mum that she made me do things, and also for my primary and secondary school teachers (and the Finnish curriculum) for being so amazing and teaching the practical as well as boring stuff like maths. I could go on about how we were taught to fight, clean, cook etc. in school. And this was for both, girls and boys, if any of you want to use that silly excuse: 'but you're a girl, you should know these things anyway'. - It is not a priviledge that comes with being a girl, it comes with being a human being!
[edit: they taught us how to quarrel fairly, we didn't have fist fights in home economy.]

In case some of my housemates actually reads this, I want to say that I realise I don't live up to these 'rules' myself. This is mostly because I don't feel that most of you realise how dirty our house is and I don't want to clean things up just so that after a day it'll all look the same again. If you seemed to care more (I know some of you do, but I refuse to name anyone) and actively did something to keep the house clean, I too would do my share. If you decide not to believe me, feel free to bitch about me as much as you want. In the mean time, I'm just waiting live with clean people. Make that a person.

Movies

I've not been annoyed by much lately, which is annoying because it means that I don't have anything to write. I remember I was annoyed by things a couple of times whilst writing my dissertation but I resisted the temptation to update this blog, and now I can't remember what the things were. Therefore, this is going to be a boring non-whiney mid-post about the films I've seen at the cinema since the beginning of the year. So, two months have passed, and I've been to the cinema 11 times, I think it's pretty good. I do love student offers.

I'll just do this as a list. It's boring, I know, but oh well.

I'm Not There
- The Bob Dylan film by Todd Haynes, very good. Richard Gere was probably my favourite of all the Dylans if I had to pick a favourite, but they were all very amazing. Definitely worth seeing, and I suppose needs another viewing to completely appreciate it.

Paranoid Park
- One of my favourites this year so far (although this year there's only been one film I didn't think was really good). So beautiful with an entertaining story that the slightly gore-y bit in the middle which I thought was a bit surprising didn't really affect the overall experience. This is to say that I thought it didn't fit the style of the film, but then again, surprises are (almost) always good.

No Country for Old Men
- Very good. I wasn't sure I'd like it judging by the trailer, but it was quite frankly amazing. I liked the story, sound design was amazing and casting was really good. Especially Javier, I was amazed after I checked where I'd seen him before and realised he was Ramon in Mar Adentro!

Lust/Caution
- Definitely very good. (I really should stop saying 'very good'.) I thought the rather graphic sex scenes portrayed the relationship between the two main characters perfectly. In addition the story was gripping and surprising.

Sweeney Todd
- Just to get this out of the way, I really like Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera and I thought the recent movie version of it wasn't too bad. I'm not sure why I felt the need to say that, but there I said it. Anyway, I did like Sweeney Todd too. As far as musicals go, it can never take the place of Phantom in my heart, but then that's not really the point. It was visually amazing, Johnny was good, Helena was incredible BUT the young lovers, were NOT to my liking. The chic especially was just ANNOYING. I did my best to ignore them though, and left the cinema feeling pretty good about the film.

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
- This one's a bit iffy. It was well directed and well acted. I don't think the script was very good and at times the use of what I suppose was supposed to be tension-building music was just annoyance-causing. Overall, it was alright, and I think I have a real soft spot for Ethan Hawke. I don't know why, but it is there.

Juno
- I liked Juno. Despite the music chosen having been a bit odd. (Yet, I do really like this song.) And even though Jennifer Garner annoyed the hell out of me, I still thought the story was good and it was funny and well, I'd love to have CJ Greg as my stepmother.

4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days
- This was just amazing. It wasn't preachy, it wasn't shocking, it was just honest. It simply felt so real I'm not sure I've ever seen a film that felt so real. (And still I was slightly annoyed by the use of light in some scenes, although, I decided it was because it made me uncomfortable which again was simply because it made it feel so real. If that makes any sense.)

There Will Be Blood
- I didn't expect to like this at all. The trailer really didn't make my juices flow, but with all the fuss about PTA and Daniel Day Lewis, it was a must see. And I'm glad I did. It is very good. All I've got to say is 'I am a false prophet. God is a superstition.'

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
- I walked out of the cinema deeply moved and still weirdly displeased with the movie. But having given it some thought, I've come to the conclusion that it was the fact that I kept on crying for most of the second half of the film that made me so uncomfortable. This is an amazing film (so I stop saying 'very good' and now everything's just 'amazing') and everyone should go and see it. It is BEAUTIFUL and MOVING and AMAZING.

Be Kind Rewind
- Now, I don't like Jack Black. But I liked the idea of Be Kind Rewind, so I went along to see it. And then, I didn't really like it. I think the story had potential and was actually rather endearing and all, but I wish it didn't have Jack Black. It just seems to me that everything I've seen Jack Black in (High Fidelity, School of Rock) he always plays the same role and it's always equally annoying. I really WANT to like High Fidelity, for example, but for some reason I don't. I think it's because of Jack Black. Yet, I'm looking forward to seeing Margot at the Wedding, and I'm hoping in that Jack will prove me wrong and will be very good. Or at least less annoying.

There, that's done now. I'll try to get something a bit more substantial done the next time. Chances are, that during the next few weeks, when I'm meant to write a load of essays, there will be some whining.