getting packages in the post really is the best thing ever. boxes from home, from far off places full with this and that. i am pretty lucky to have a few people who are masters of the package sending art thingy. one more arrived today from hörður full of amazing photos and magazines. the outside was plastered with 26 stamps!.

anyway. two weeks ago some irish friends visited. tomorrow some nyc friends visit. in a 5 weeks some icelandic friends visit, in 2 months some irish ones visit. nicely spaced out so as to help me from collapsing due to my helsinki tour responsibilities.

“on your left is a cool building, on your right is a cool building, nope.. i cant remember who designed that one either.. but its cool though”.

ah. the joys of having a crap memory.

summer time has arrived. and with the arrival of each new season comes the new h + m billboards. last autumns involved almost every single bilboard and tram stop being taken over with ads of lovely lovely ladies modeling some clothes or jackets.

for some reason there was no winter ads (here in helsinki at least). but they did come storming back with a spring campaign that (i think) was focused around supermodel iman. well, theyve done it again with the summer series. so much so that hundreds have been robebd (by teenage boys) and defaced (by feminists) in germany (now they are giving out them for free to stop the vandalism). this series is based around heidi klum.

in school the last two days we’ve gone to two libraries. on wednesday we went to kallion kirjasto and earlier today (thursday) we went to pasilankirjasto. anyway due to the nature of my finnish language course i am with a lot of people from all over the world. so ive become mildly fascinated with the differences in language and patterns of speach and things like that. seeing tamil and chinese and pakistani and other forms of writing amuses me no end. today in the library i got two books. one was “languages of the world” and the other being “langugage, its sturcture and use“. im not overly technically interested in the subject, just like reading through them seeing things i didnt know before about links between different languages. (interesting fact: the word “slogan” came from irish! madness!) apart from those heavy books and another one on city planning.. i have a feeling i’ll finish the dilbert book, which i also got, first.

i forgot the video. i only remembered that i should have dropped it into the r-kioski beside the tram stop 10minutes after i had got on the tram. so i had to get off the 7b, get on the 7a.. go home, get the video, go to r-kioski, drop it off, then get the 7b back then to city centre then walked around the magazine part of stockmann. all the good magazines in either finnish or swedish (they did have english ads in them though). anyway, left there and walked to saunabar in the rain. thought about this bloggy thingy. love it to bits but i dont have enough to post. but who cares about quantity. i remembered then an article from wired a few years back. it was all about how the currency of the new economy will not be money, but it will be attention. look at me, listen to me, give me your attention kinda thing. blogs are like that. normal people, blogging, posting whats going on to the outside world or friends or random passers by. blogger.com has a “ten most recent posts” on their main page. i look at them randomly every now and then when im checking out the lastest blogger news. i open them, look then move on.

anyway, i remember reading this article when it was in the print issue (back in december 1997)and i remember intensily reading the article. these days when im online or when i read i skip through everything glancing at the first paragraph or two and then usually the last (thats where the good juicy things are) and same with many other things online.

in cyberspace, there is nothing natural about large-scale divisions like cities, nations, bureaucracies, and corporations. the only divisions, and rough ones at that, are among audiences, entourages, and what could be called attention communities. each community is centered on some topic and usually includes a number of stars, along with their fans. attention flows from community to community. below this primary exchange will flow the less important exchange of goods and materials.

anyway, how they all fit together is something that i dont know yet. that wired article can be found here.

the space beside the new luas line on capel street in dublin one.