| two | |
| mix | |
well, sometimes rain and art does mix.
| art night | |
| catchup | |
the last two weeks i have been back studying finnish five days a week. the standard is higher that my level i think so its a little bit overwhelming, espically with half the class having lived here for 5 - 10 years so they have far more familiarity with the language than i. next wednesday i start my 3d visualiastion course. i have no idea what to expect. it will be 1630-2030 monday to thursday, so i'll have four really long days a week. it will all be in finnish, of an even higher standard to what im used to. so im expecting to feel completely lost until christmas at least.
| memory | |
| kometen | |
svt.se - svt dokumentär. i randomly found a documentary/short film last night on swedish television. it was old footage from the late 1950's to the early 1970's stockholm coupled with a fantastic score by leif jordansson. the film is made by stavro and you can find more information about the film kometen (the comet) here. i only saw the second half of the 30minutes, so i missed a lot. the images fitted perfectly with the fantastic soundtrack. all shot in an almost home movie style, but with a disconnect. there was no characters, only randomly shot people going around doing their buisness in stockholm. lots of drunk people for a while all the while playing off and to the music which had a low key phillip glass feel to it with hints of some godspeed spin off and amina / sigur rós improvised introduction. fantastic stuff. (update: the dvd will be in shops (pesumably in sweden only) in about a months time)
stockholm 1965. a man with a film camera documents his surroundings the last days before the crash of the comet. a fiction film based on documentary material, from the time before the end of the world. 30 minutes of catastrophe poetry from 297 rolls of double-8 film shot between 1959 and 1971.
| 128 | |
the 128 "bus" in st. petersburg.
| justice | |
| maasalo | |
i was walking home from the centre a few weeks back when i passed by a collection of art installations / weather machines. they are just to the south of töölölahti beside the train tracks and (temporary) skate ramp. the top photo and the bottom left photo are of a machine called "menninkäisten yösoitto" (a very rough translation i think is 'pixies night ring". the inner part of the piece was turned by the wind and produced random ringing, really nice. here is a sample:
the piece on the bottom right is (i think) called "tuulispää" (gust of wind) and is also by the same artist : antti maasalo.
20040819.04.wav : 28sec : 300kb
| sonia | |
i think ive to get the flag out for her races next week.
"nic finds it hard, yeah. it can be claustrophobic. it affects him more. if i try to block it out, it's harder for him because he doesn't understand why i've decided to do what i've decided to do. he doesn't know why i've decided to behave that way. because i want to move on and forget about it, i refuse to discuss it. he's a talker, with his other athletes. they talk about everything. they get to the bottom of a problem and figure it out. that's not going to happen with me. we won't get to the bottom of it so we might as well leave it and move on."
| olympics | |
the only english-language coverage of anything 'olympic' related today was the bbc panorama programme this evening in which it talked for an hour about the corruption in the ioc application processes. that filled my olympic spirit :)
| extract: content | |
follow the link for a ten page adapted extract from the oma/koolhaas book 'content'
"the chinese love the monumental ambition. they hate the monumental price tag - and the 'foreign' design. a portfolio of the grand ideas and grim realities behind the contentious new vision for china central relevision."
| printed | |
i start another finnish course on monday, its every day for 16weeks-ish until early december from 1200 to 1530. although i have to make a phone call on monday about another thing thats cropped up that might affect the finnish course, possibly good news. fingers crossed.
i was watching the olympics opening last night, i noticed one thing:
"that does not make sense"
iceland, population 290,000ish: olympic team: 15ish
india: population 1,000,000,000ish: olympic team: 15ish
| pietari | |
the city centre was pretty big, the main street cutting through the centre with lots of beatuiful buildings and churches and museums everywhere. but for every one fantastic building there was ten in need of repair. apart from a few coffee shops we didnt go into anything, which is a shame, but due to their size you'd need a full day at least to see even get a start on some of the musuems (hermitage for example). so the thursday we walked back to the ferry, constantly thinking we were closer to the ferry than we were. many many streets later we found it.
i knew of russias reputation for copyright flouting, but it was pretty bizarre to see the extent of it. some stores openly sold most computer programmes for only a few euros, they sold films (that have only just been released in america) on a choice of divx, vcd or dvd for only 3 or 4 euros. these shops were not hidden away in alleys or side streets or in briefcases, but in modern well laid out stores on main streets with friendly and overly helpfull staff. although in some places the staff were too overly helpful and overly plentiful. in one cafebar, there was seven people waiting on the bar. at most they needed four. three were always standing around doing nothing.
all photos here: 2004.08 st.petersburg
i'll think of more later perhaps, i'll leave you with a photo of the building beside where we docked, its a hotel / ferry terminal / illegal cd shop place and a beautifully ugly building.
| ten | |
i was talking to my mum this evening and she was telling me that there was a soccer camp on there this weekend. a freak wind somehow knocked over a pair of goalposts and killed a ten year old boy. he was the only child of a family that lived nearby.
| turkuun, turussa, turusta | |
for the festival all we got to see were tv resistori (really good), imatran voima (pretty good), uusi fantasia (pretty good) and bits of a few other things.
yesterday then we went to ruissalo to unwind a little, weather was so warm over the weekend and not too hot. got back late last night and slept.
photos here: 2004.08 turku
| green | |
the saddest building in all of helsinki. on the corner of toinen linja and suonionkatu.
| plans | |
saturday: uudenmusiikinfestivaali
sunday: train back to helsinki
wednesday evening: ferry to st. petersburg
thursday: arrive in st. petersburg in the morning
friday: leave st. petersburg in the nighttime
saturday morning: arrive back in helsinki.
its a tour of the former capitals of finland and russia! jeow!
| fancy | |
i installed wordpress and uninstalled it about five times. dont know why. i spent hours messing around with the inner workings of movabletype 3 to see if i could use it for my links blog, after a day or so i went back to blogger. movable type is a great system, but to be honest i think id have to spend hours and hours to give it the look i have already using blogger.
ive been looking for a gallery programme to display images, i wanted something very simple with not too much fuss. i couldnt find that so i found one php gallery programme that had me up till 2am last night messing around with debugging stuff, and after all that it still wouldnt work and i wasnt too happy with the look of it anyway, so i got rid of it. then i happened upon a small simple programme that takes the images and does it all for you with about 10minutes of setting up. so im gonna be putting up lots of images to my "kuva" (means picture in finnish) area from now on. i still have the colours and folder descriptions to sort out on it, but so far so good.
| her name is rio | |
i finally found it, one of my favourite comedy sketchs ever! the scene opens in a rural english animal sale ('mart' as we called them) with all rural english farmer folk standing around waiting for the sale to begin. after a little while the 'herd' is brought out, and its a herd of six 'new romantics'. the bidding starts and a lucky farmer buys them.
he gets them home and all stabled up. then he gets some recording equipment and set it up at their stable door. he then says "name rio" and slowly the new romantics respond and start to sing duran duran's "her name is rio" song. then cut to next scene and the farmer is selling mix tapes at the local market of various new romantic songs. brilliant stuff.
bbc: "big train" season 1 episode 6.
| cityscape | |
holiday inn, sanamatalo, kiasma, parliment house, finlandia house with töölolahti in the foreground. the twin spires of johanneksenkirkko in background. the lahti (bay) starts right at the north of the city centre and ends 15min walk south of my apartment.
| penmanship | |
well now i am in that situation again, my handwriting has deteriorated (as well as my spelling and general cognitive funtions) to a horrendous level. i have an entrance test this tuesday for a forthcoming finnish language course and my brain and general level of sanity and self confidence hovering somewhere around the "lacking" department at the moment. i am unable to focus and to complete simple tasks, of course this entry might be read by prospective employers in which case i am tip top shape for any potential employment, but for the rest of the time i feel a little bit frustrated in myself. i am getting worked up over the smallest things, leaving the big challenges for another time. if i didnt have these two courses coming up soon i think my brain would implode. [insert long passage of curse words]
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