trachtenburg family slideshow players: mountain trip to old japan - music video. classic classic stuff

every christmas eve, after the dinner has been eaten and the presents have been swapped, finnish families go to the graves of their ancestors and lay candles and some small spruce branches. its incredibly beautiful to walk around the graveyards and see the thousands of candles. i took some photos [set]. some other pics from the last few days here: [24th-26th december]

radio stations should be banned from playing “homesick” by kings of convenience around christmas

my third annual email image save on money dont send christmas cards email image thingy went out today. i sent ti to all of my address book, if you didnt get it, dont blame me, blame my email addy book.

here it is anyhoo. taken in st. petersburg in august. ignore spelling mistakes in the image. thank you. interview this morning went well.

fantastic gig. i have to be up in 4,5 hours. doh. wahoo.

i am drowning in cds. ive so many of old photograhs and old drawings and old emails from the last 8 years or so. ive got almost an entire press full of the bloody things (five spindles decided to fall out this evening when i opened it and smashed everywhere). i am going to have to allocate a day over the next few weeks to go through all of them and get rid of the rubbish. no point in having 30 versions of the same file.

anyhoo, ken stringfellow concert in an hour or so and a job interview in the morning. eeek. christmas email is sent out tmrw aswell, so keep an eye out for that folks.

jimi tenor was great last night. a nice level of craziness in the club. he didnt play “outta space” but it didnt matter all that much. [flick photo set]. se oli hyvää iltaa.

here is a summary of whats being going on.

amina have released their first ep. on sale here

in ireland we refer to our teachers by “miss” or “sir”, here in finland they call them by their first names. the very logic of which blew my mind when i heard about it first the other day. imagine the effect this has on a young kid starting school. the teacher becomes their ally if you will rather than a person behind the tag of authority. one of the small reasons why finland has one of the worlds best education systems.

the snow has come and gone, time is slipping by with no mercy. its a week or so until christmas. no tree has been bought, no cards sent or for that matter written. its hard to comprehend that in two weeks its 2005.

i saw josé gonzález last night. pictures here: one two three. it was, as per usual with josé, very very good. 16€ for 55minutes isnt though. plus sitting beside people who thought the gig was a sing a long kareoke event can be annoying.

monday was the lucia procession through the city, we met the procession at bulevardi where i found that my camera batteries were outta juice. the icelandic horses, the waving kids and lucia herself passed. we went to a nearby sesto and got new batteries, then met the procession at heitalahdentori. which was nice. pictures here: [flickr link]

for the first time in ages, i actually have a scheduling conflict!. jimi tenor tonight in rose garden though. wahoo.

my very soul aches at the thought of a “shrek 3“.

john, one of my college friends is a member of the international solidarity movement. he spends a lot of time in palestine trying to support the fragile rights of the palestinian people. i have put his lastest email (extract below) and an old set of images from 2003 onto this site.

the state of israel does not want international observers being here; doing what we’re doing, and seeing what we’re seeing. it doesn’t want the world to know about the real, on-the-ground consequences that this wall is having on the local, indigenous palestinian people unfortunate enough to be in its path - like the land confiscation, the house demolitions, the olive trees uprooted & palestinian families being separated from each other. and it certainly doesn’t want the palestinian people to be supported in their peaceful, non-violent demonstrations against this wall. a wall which the international court of justice in the hague has not only ruled illegal, but demanded it be taken down and compensation to be paid to those palestinians who have been affected by it so far.

you can read the entire email and see the pictures here.