Me

I love Wordle. These are some of the most common words in my blog. Sums me up pretty nicely.

Truth is in the dreams

I value sleep a lot. I prefer to sleep 10 hours a night. Normally this has not been a problem. Being a politics student meant that I could study whenever I wanted and rarely had any morning classes.

In Cardiff however this is hardly the case. We are now kicking into proper working mode and there are so many deadlines and stories we need to be working on in parallel that it is just constant work essentially. I'm in front of this computer (or my computer at the maglab) for most of the time I'm awake.

But not only that. When I'm walking down the street I tend to carry a camera so if I see a nice spot I will pause to take a picture in case it would fit into a story later on. Also should I run into a possible story I have the possibility of recording it somehow.

When I'm out with friends I tend to think what stories I could write about stuff they say. I quite often keep a notepad with me if someone says something funny and take it down.

So how this relates to my sleep is firstly that I don't have much time to sleep. But when I do get into my bed, exhausted, my mind doesn't stop. Perhaps it is still the novelty of all this, but I keep going through stuff that I need to do, what could I write about and those kinds of things.

I have gone to bed, rolled around for a few hours only to get up in the early hours of the morning to write a new blog entry or write down what I just thought for an article.

When I finally do fall asleep it's all about the stuff I do during the day. Twitter, interviews and story ideas are now regulars in my dreams. I need to find a switch to turn it off sometime soon.

Oktoberfest

This is how they celebrated Oktoberfest here in Cardiff.

Odd, right?

Languages

Living in the UK means that I'm most of the time surrounded by people who only speak English fluently. So naturally they're curious how I function with my English and I have to answer questions like in which language do I dream or think.

These are really difficult questions for me to answer. It takes me a while and I don't think I can give a proper answer.

I have at times had a conversation and then had to afterwards contemplate did I just speak Finnish or English. When I'm forming a sentence I sometimes stop to look for the right word and I go through a list in my mind first in the language I'm currently using and then try the other language to see if it would remind me of the word I'm looking for. Most of the time I'd say it depends on the context which language I use. English tends to be dominant because I live mostly in an English-speaking environment.

But what makes me uneasy is that I find it easier to communicate in English. Most often I translate English phrases directly into Finnish rather than the other way around. My brain is attuned to English. But it's also weird because I'm not a native speaker so I'm not perfect in the language but I'm still better at it than my own native language.

Finnish is a difficult language. Me living abroad and studying in English means I don't write in Finnish and only speak with friends and family. Because of this also my dialect in Finnish is overly Lohja, I'm not hearing much else. So the grammar said byebye already in sixth form and whatever remained was gone a long time ago. I get asked where I'm from in Finland when I speak Finnish because I speak it a bit funny.

Same here in Cardiff. Most people outside from Britain would say I have a British accent. Some English think I have a Welsh accent. But those from Wales have a hard time pinpointing where I'm from, they usually guess something along the lines of Canada and South-Africa.

I guess I'm just ambiguous.

Journo

As I'm embarking on my journalism career, there are things that I need to write about that take me away from my comfort zone. So far I quite like it. I need to come up with fresh ideas constantly and then write about them really concisely.

Today I'm cooking dinner for nine people. Not one main course but two. I had this idea to do a cook-off between Welsh and New Zealand so now I'm cooking a lamb dish from each country. I've never cooked anything like this before so I'm quite eager to see the end result.

I've invited eight friends, all from different countries to come along and judge so hopefully it will be a fun evening. Assuming I manage not to burn anything down.

Fingers crossed everyone!

Dangerous

My house here in Cardiff is pretty much ideally located. It is close to the city centre and the university, has shops close-by and some studenty places to go out.

The problem with being so close to the city centre is that it is potentially quite dangerous for my wallet. The amount of shops with ridiculously cheap prices (in comparison to Finland) is amazing. Today I went into town to buy washing rack and to send a letter, ended up buying a jacket and shoes. They're both absolutely adorable and admittedly I needed a new jacket but I can't keep on justifying my purchases for much long.

So thank you credit crunch and thanks also the Finnish government for the student grants. ;)