| shutter speed | |
shutter speeds are great.
| accordian | |
click on the image for a 10second .mov file (1,4mb) of the man playing accordian whilst we watched the sunset.
| hirvijärvi | |
0115 saturday night / sunday morning.
such a relaxing weekend. thursday and today are rainy but friday and saturday were calm warm days. we rowed around islands, keeping away from the new born seagulls but still getting warning noises from the adult seagulls. we sauna'd and fished from the pier (where i took the above photo) and generally had a great time.
on friday night, all the houses around the lake started to light the traditional bonfire, so smoke wafted straight up until it met the top of the tree line and wind and then it spread out. it looked so beautiful, just a shame those pictures didnt come out all that well.
the highlight of it all though was a crazy neighbour, who randomly went out into the lake in his row boat and started to play old finnish songs (badly) on his accordian. he would put the oars into the boat and just let the current take him whilst the sounds of the accordian floated around the lake. i'll try and put the audio of it online later tonight along with more pictures from the weekend.
| juhannus | |
| clouds | |
those clouds be strange. shortly after it rained. and the rain continued.
| greens | |
above: park near olympic stadium | below: the 3t tram arriving at its terminus
| scales | |
caught fish and sunbathing snake last weekend.
| loan | |
after five years, finally. i just payed back the final installment of my bank loan. i took the loan out in early 1999 when i was applying for my j1 visa to nyc, i then got more when i came back from nyc so i could do my final year in college without worrying about money. thankfully money was the one thing that didnt cause me stress that year. the loan ran out in early july 2000 when i had come back from interrailing in scandinavia. anyway, now the loan is gone and money is slightly less of a worry. fanbloodytastic.
i am of course waiting for my bank to send me a big box of choclates and maybe some flowers to thank me for giving them so much interest and never missing a payment. stranger things have happened :)
| mökki | |
friday night 2320
| exhibitions | |
one of the things that stuck in my mind was this piece by finnish artist jaakko niemelä, it was called "hidas esitys" (slow motion) and it involved a very large block of concrete being slowly destroyed and day by day the arrival of tiny dinky sized emergency vehicles to attend to the rescue (complete with flashing lights).
i will try to go back closer to the date that it all finishes to see how it ends up.
the next thing that i really enjoyed was a video/computer instillation by a british artist called charles sandison. it was a series of five video projections in which he used computer code to represent the life of a village. as you can see from the above picture, there was males, females, children, old people and at the end dead people. they were surrounded by random bit of food to which the "male" would head off. they returned and "mated" with the females to produce several "child" characters. time would progress and death became commonplace. fascinating!.
i'll try to post more pics from it all next week. i'm off to a summer cottage tomorrow and back sunday sometime.
| anyone | |
| stay in the shade | |
on jose-gonzalez.com there is a video available for download. its for the "stay in the shade" song. link .wmv file 8mb
| harbour | |
this afternoon at bottom of helsinki.
| weekend | |
picture taken last night around midnight.
just had a pretty nice weekend. sara arrived on friday night, we stayed up till 3am talking about architecture and this and that. woke up early saturday to find that the city was covered in rain and it was drizzling. so we ignored it and continued walking all over the city. did about five hours of a tour of helsinki then left and went home. we had a "cheese and wine" party then and i had some cheese, no wine and lots of vodka. i have no recollection of people leaving the party. from 2am until i woke up its all a mystery. i do have vague dream like recollections of people throwing water down my tshirt. precious memories. sunday morning we woke up, stumbled about and then went to a summer cottage. yesterday was such a nice day, blue skies and calm seas. the cottage is on the finnish coast, but its surrounded by lots of islands and looks like it might be inland. so last night we went for a sauna and then went to go to the sea but it was too cold. i cant swim so i just walked in a bit. then we ate pancakes and went for a walk and got bitten by millions of mosquitos. we went to bed and woke up to finland a mini storm outside. after a 90min drive we got back to helsinki and sara just left to the airport two hours ago. in an hour im going to the airport to pickup my cousin.
the new camera is going well, i took looooads of photos over the last few days, but i only have a 32mb camera, so ive been using päivi's brothers camera too for a little bit. i have to get a 256mb memory card and some rechargeable batteries and get this website space updated and then bobs your uncle.
| flame | |
with helsinki being a former olympic city (1952) the olympic flame will be coming here before it gets to athens. it is here july 2nd!
| outbox | |
| hurray | |
| terminal 5 | |
terminal 5 is an event for air travel. the airport terminal designed by eero saarinen at john f. kennedy airport, new york, was left vacant in 2001. the site reopens with an exhibition curated by rachel k. ward to respond to the transitory nature of travel, architecture and contemporary art. sculpture, installation, sound, performance and other media take place within the luggage carousels, ticket counters, vip lounges, staircases and the tunnel walkway. the terminal also hosts an airport media lounge, airport gift shop and ongoing "arrivals," a series of public events.
terminal 5 is open october 1, 2004 through january 31, 2005, 11am-7pm, tuesday through saturday.
looks like a pretty cool exhibition.
| awake | |
i have several gmail invites, so if anyone wants a gmail account just email me (use any of my addresses).
| wrap up | |
the interview and test went sort of okay. my method of preperation (not speaking any finnish for the last two weeks) didnt help me too much. i stumbled over a few lines here and there and the interview part was me mumbling random stuff. the drawings (four drawings of a northern italian town) came out okay. i was very nervous last night and i couldnt sleep until 3am i think. i have no idea as to when the results are out. fingers crossed.
things are cranking up and up for this weekend. our "wine and cheese" party. alice should be here thursday, sara will be here friday and some of saras friends come aswell for the party. that reminds me, i need to send out the email invitations.
| nervous | |
for the application process for the first course there was all the drawing that i mentioned a month or two back. i got rejected for this course (as in the didnt respond to my submission). so thats life.
the night time course is slightly different. i applied to it about ten days ago. the applicaiton process consisted of filling out forms and sending in education and work references. then the second part is a entrace test. last week the college sent me a letter saying i got through to the entrance test. as i read the letter (all in finnish) i saw that it is seven hours long!, and is both drawing and an interview. its tomorrow morning at 0900 until 1600. i am incredibly nervous. ive been distracting myself all today by watching the movie "in the mood for love", d-day memorials and family guy episodes. i am a nervous for the reason that the test tomorrow covers the things i got rejected on for the day time course. my hand drawing skills are dreadfull. im just hoping things work out better tomorrow.
| elections | |
i have no idea whatsoever as to who i should vote for in the european elections. my decision making process had been one of "wait for päivi to explain it all, then i can choose". thankfully today i found a translation to a questionaire in which my answers would be matched with that of the candidates. the questions were all about the role of europe, finlands role in europe and the eu's role in the world.
my results gave me a good idea of what i sortof already knew... that i would be voting for the "vihreät" (the green party). i still have a week to look around and do a bit more research. so things may change.
| 0330 | |
three thirty a.m.
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