Lohja's nightlife

Now I'm not a big fan of going out in Lohja. The Finnish anti-social mentality is very obvious in bars. You only approach people you know. In Lohja that is practically everyone; so most people actually have a blast meeting their old friends. This is why everyone goes out on Christmas Day. But I don't know anyone outside my circle of friends. I did my high school in Helsinki and then went to uni to another country. So I didn't really had the chance to stay in touch with a lot of people.

Aside from this, going out in Lohja is a bit of a sham because the places here are complete dives. You pay sometimes up to 8 euros to enter what elsewhere in the world would be where the drunks and homeless people hang out.

But yesterday, I had a blast. I expected nothing, knowing from experience it would most likely suck. We had some friends over at our place and then continued to a new club that just opened in Lohja, Prime. We even had one of our friends, Laura (the one who's just turned 18 and loves to drive) being the designated driver because it was snowing and freezing cold outside.

We queued to get in to Prime, met some funny people already in the queue. Nothing like bonding over bashing the bouncer.

And then inside it was fantastic. It was a real club. Far from being the swankiest I've ever seen but for Lohja's standards it was amazing. It was really new so didn't smell of vomit either, always a plus.

They played regular club music and had a decent enough dance floor. And I even met Annukka who I met in Newcastle in 2005, the only Lohja person I've met on my time abroad.

So I just really hope people keep going to Prime because I want the only decent place in town to remain open until the next time I'm in Finland.

On Christmas

Perhaps not in the proper holiday spirit but I'm all about keeping it real so here's:

Top 4 reasons why I dislike Christmas

1. Obsessing over cleaning. Now I don't enjoy cleaning anyway but particularly over Christmas my sister gets obsessed about it. In what I consider to be a perfectly clean and tidy house, she feels the urge to clean. Fine if she would do it herself but noooo, she expects everyone to participate.
2. Too much food. I don't get it why we need to stuff ourselves on Christmas. My family buys food like there would be eight of us eating when there's only three, possibly four. I go to the shop with them and tell them to stop buying stuff but then they get angry at me for spoiling their fun.
3. Complicated family relations. People not getting along, awkward new family relations, who should go where. It's complicated enough as it is without the whole holiday-who-visits-who-at-what-time hassle.
   
4. Presents. Now I bought mine over the autumn, when I saw something I knew someone would like, I bought it. So by the time I was going home, I had everyone's presents all wrapped up and everything. Then I come here and all people talk about is how they haven't bought any yet, how they don't know what to buy and the ones they bought they feel aren't sufficient.

None of this is making me feel particularly festive. In fact, I think next year it'll be me alone on a tropical island.

Here I am!

I'd completely forgotten that I hadn't updated this space since my arrival, which by the way went rather smoothly.

So here I am, in Lohja. It's cold and snowy, just how I like it. The darkness is getting to me though. I sleep like a hibernating bear.

All is going rather smoothly. Riikka is recovering from her toncils operation so we keep her company. Meaning we go to her place and make fun of the fact she can't speak. We're not nice people.

Hope you all have a lovely Christmas and I'll get back to you at some point. Probably before next year but who knows.

Home is where my luggage is

Tomorrow Finland is once again calling me. At 10.45am I will start my journey towards Lohja and if all goes according to plans, I will be back home around 1am (GTM +2).

Why does it take me 12 hours to get from Cardiff to Lohja you may ask. It's because I'm taking a bus to Heathrow. These buses are notorious for breaking down so I'm leaving myself around four hours extra to make it to the airport. But even if that were to happen, Heathrow is not my favourite airport and I'm sure my flight will be delayed even though I'm flying with British Airways. In addition to this, I don't know whether the whole luggage-handling strike has been sorted out in Helsinki so might well be that it will take me longer.

I just needed to write down all the things I can think of that can go wrong, just because I like saying "I told you so."

In the meanwhile, things here in Cardiff are good. I managed to finish everything in time so I'm now up to date with my school deadlines. Even got a brilliant idea for a magazine I could pitch next term. I might ask your opinion on in Facebook sometime over the holidays so I would love it if you could contribute.

I've also got my luggage full of presents. So much so that I had to literally stuff the few clothes I'm taking and I'm not sure how am I going to fit my toiletries and make-up with me as well. Damn stupid liquid rules for carry-on luggage!

This time around going on holidays is a bit different. I've got no goodbyes to say to anyone, we'll all be back in a few weeks time. And I'm also only going for a few weeks instead of the month I'm usually away.

Going back is extra fun this time as I get to see all my Lohja-peeps: Minna, Jenna, Riikka, Anne and Laura. Laura has turned 18, Anne will come back from her Erasmus, Riikka from Sweden and Jenna has graduated. It's all pretty momentous. We've already planned a big pile-up.

In case I don't find the time to update this space, I wish you all a merry Christmas and see you next year! I'll be coming back to Cardiff on the 29th, assuming the BA strike doesn't affect my flights...

Edit

Sometimes I get overwhelmed by all the blogs and end up neglecting one or two. EU-UK one is my absolute favourite though. I love finding out stories, writing about them only to find out a few days later some mainstream newspapers are running similar stories.

But that's beside the point. What I meant to talk about was how swamped in work I've been and therefore unable to update anything here. Not that I have much to say even now.

Suvi was in Cardiff. We had a blast. We ended up having a massive night out the day she got here so kudos to Suvi for staying up 20 hours straight and still being entertaining. The rest of the time we remained indoors (weather was crap) and were entertained by Mark.

One thing I could however go on forever about is how I hate editing videos. I have no patience for it. And since I don't know the software that well it's even bigger of a pain in the ass. The same goes for photoshop. I just love Microsoft's Paint.

One of the things that bother me most with writing articles is the reliance on others. I can't write an article when I feel like it, I need to constantly wait for people to get back to me. I miss writing essays when it was all up to me. Well, I miss that aspect of it but not the content necessarily.

I do find myself gravitating towards EU-related topics. And weird ones, like the Covenant of Mayors and transposition of directives. Guess Maastricht had some influence on me after all.

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.