Thursday

A lot will be going down this Thursday. Most significantly, my friend Laura will be turning 18. She's one of those people that I remember thinking were really young. She's Riikka's sister and I remember Minna visiting Riikka's place and telling me about little 10-year-old Laura. Seems like ages ago! The first time I properly got to meet Laura I remember thinking that she can't be Riikka's little sis, she's so mature and tall.

Nevertheless, Laura has been hanging out with us for years now, making me feel old. She will finally turn 18 and we can include her in all of our fun and games. Would be so lovely to be in Finland to celebrate it but suppose we just have to make up for it in December. I just hope that all of my darling friends know that it's the most difficult being abroad when my friends are feeling really down or celebrating some momentous achievement. I'd love to be there for you!

Aside from this glorious festivity, on Thursday my mom is going on a holiday. Not significant you think but I think it is pretty wicked. She's going with a friend of hers, on a girlie holiday in what must be the first time since 1997. So kudos to mom!

Most fun for me will be of course Suvi coming to Cardiff. The most amazing friend ever will come and visit me once again and we get to experience all fun UK-stuff again! Yey! We'll even have a thanksgiving dinner on Saturday, organised by Mark.

On Saturday my grandma is going on a holiday which I found out she only booked yesterday. Such a globe-trotting family I have!

I'm looking forward to this weekend, I think it should be joyous on all accounts. Though I bet I just jinxed it here.

The ex that keeps on coming back

I don't remember when I first became interested in the EU. Must have been when I was 15 and took part in an economics competition in my school (which I won, might I add) and had an excellent history and society teacher. So when I went to high school, I took part into one European Youth Parliament session and even took a voluntary EU course. I remember loving it.

When I applied to universities in the UK, I believe only three out of the six were politics related. The rest were economics and language related - I was accepted to study Economics and Turkish at the SOAS and not accepted to Oxford to study Turkish.

I then notoriously ended up in Newcastle and then Maastricht to study essentially EU politics. But then February this year I had that existential crisis, what do I want to do with my life? And journalism dawned on me. So I prepared to abandon EU and concentrate on other stuff, possibly write about the EU in a distant future when I'd be experienced enough to be hired on the Economist.

So here I am in Cardiff, happily writing about loads of different stuff but at the same time keeping up EU as my hobby by writing the blog. On Twitter I started following the EU Commission's Representation in the UK, they started following me and even forwarded me their blog there.

So this Monday I was getting started to properly start finding my work experience placements. So I post a tweet about me trying to find them. The EU London Rep then tweeted me what kind of work experience I was looking for and I told them I'd like something to do with writing. They then ask me to send in my CV which I obviously did. And the next day they get back to me saying that they'd love to have me there!

So after somewhat abandoning any hope of ever working for the EU, they find me and ask me to work on what is essentially an ideal job! You have no idea how excited I was and still am.

It is a wonderful example of how social media is a whole new way of connecting people. I do a little happy dance about it especially as the only reason why they would have been interested in me was indeed my blog, so they must think it has some substance to it.

Yea so essentially my ego just grew exponentially. As if I needed that.

Why blog about personal stuff?

Today one of my lecturers commented on my UK-EU blog. I realised there and then how public all of my blogs are. This blog may not bear my name but people will still link to my other blogs and therefore easily find out my identity. So why should I write about personal stuff and reveal all that to people?

Unlike some may suggest, it is not fulfilling a narcissistic desire to expose myself and "become famous".

I have lived in five different countries over the past five years. I have made lots of new friends in that time from different countries with whom it is at times impossible to keep constantly in touch with. So I hope if they genuinely want to know how I'm doing they'd read my blogs. And whilst they are almost all on facebook, facebook is very limited in the communication it provides. I could obviously write notes there and just have people who see it on their newsfeed look at it but I think blog better suits my purposes.

When I started this blog I did kind of mean to make it public so that all those people who stumble across this and might want to go and study abroad could read about my experiences. But also it is there so that all of my friends could see how I'm doing by reading this. Reading this blog is voluntary, I don't want to impose my status updates or notes to everyone who I've befriended on facebook.

If you are indeed reading this, could you leave a note saying why you read it? So far the only person who I know to read this is my sister.

I do intend to keep it personal but at the same time, I won't usually name people and certainly not in a negative context because this is public. I don't want to be that kind of a person and also from a legal perspective that might be considered slander.

I am considering about making this private but at the same time I feel puzzled as to why I should hide who I am as a person. Though potentail employers might find this blog, surely everyone can see that I write this to keep my friends updated which would not reflect me as an employee.

Also I sure hope it doesn't paint an unfair picture of me as a person, right?

Blogging

I'm really getting into the whole blogging vibe. I started another one, this time compiling all the stuff my friends say and I manage to write down.

Boring you might think but give it a go. Quite a good revelation into why I have such a good time here in Cardiff.

Sunday

Kanye West's Love Lockdown

Great song and it seems to speak to me today.