One thing you could do, is to invite about 20 people over for an evening of not counting calories. My friends Mari and Mikko did just that this past Saturday. They'd invited a bunch of people over to enjoy a raclette dinner, which eventually meant that there were 17 of us around three raclette grills. Yummy. But sort of greasy. My clothes smelled like I'd been working at a local hamburger place for a full day, ewgh. But a perfectly good way to cure munchies for a while.
A really short while, that is. I was all for chocolate and candy on Sunday evening after practice... I managed to fight off the urge to run to the neighboring movie rental place and buy 5 euros worth of candy. And I didn't buy any chocolate from the store today, either. Good for me. :)
Yesterday we went to Uusikaupunki with Satu to learn a choreography for the upcoming recital. The show's in April and we've both been really not-so-motivated about it for quite some while already. Luckily things began to look a bit better as Heli taught us a beautiful and simple "medieval-oriental-fantasy" choreography to a wonderful song called Radharc which is performed by a band named Dead Can Dance. (Gaah, I just realized the pun that one could read into the name of the band and us dancing to their music... We're most definitely not dead, though.) It's going to be the dance with which we, the three leading ladies, present ourselves to the Queen of the Fairies and to the audience, naturally.
I fell in love with the music as soon as heard the first beats. I can't wait to get the whole album, which I ordered because I knew Heli was going to use that music. I'm hoping the package'll arrive on Wednesday. I'll be listening to the cd on repeat and dancing every time I hear the music for the choreography. I can always count on wonderful medieval and Celtic style music to cheer me up. I'm glad Heli introduced the band to me, and it's good that the music is still available, although most of it has been recorded in the late 80's and early 90's.
So it goes, life. Ups and downs. But I probably shouldn't say I'm feeling pretty good at the moment, because as the recent events have proved, Mr Murphy sure likes to mess with my life. I'm sure I'll get a letter from the Board of Student Allowances (or whatever they might be called in English) tomorrow stating that I'm not eligible for any kinds of arrangements with the sum I'm supposed to pay, because, say, I'm too old or too dumb or not poor enough or something. That'd be just my luck.
But at least I'm not living within a pillar of Eternal Darkness like poor Jonathan Strange in Susanna Clarke's excellent novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. I just finished reading it today. I loved it. It's the kind of almost minimalistic fantasy I like a lot. The events aren't happening in a blink of an eye, the characters get to grow along the story and the atmosphere is somehow very peculiarly muted. Right down to the color scheme of it all. It was murky, mysterious, fascinating, intriguing and completely enjoyable. I warmly recommend it to anyone, who likes legends, early 19th century settings and magic. But since not all of you have yet read the book (go read it, now!), I'll stop ranting about it so I won't accidentally slip out any spoilers.
A quick movie comment addition here at the end. The movie Swordfish is on tv tonight and I just began to watch it a few minutes ago. There was this character who was supposed to be a Finnish hacker Axel Torvalds. (Yes, they really did make the criminal character almost a namesake of Linus Torvalds, who is a Finn but not a crook.) They claimed he had a Finnish passport and even showed it on screen. With a friggin' eagle? Well excuse me for having a Finnish passport that hasn't even seen an eagle. The Finnish coat-of-arms has a lion on it, not an eagle. And then they claimed the character refused to speak nothing but Finnish while the Finnish consulate would provide a translator. The men were speaking German, for cryin' out loud! Americans, get your European countries and languages right, will you? I'll come and speak the lines in Finnish, if it's necessary to teach actors Finnish. Makes me mad, that kind of ignorance.
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3 comments:
Oh yes, Dead can Dance. A very very good band with music that's really different from anything else I have ever heard. Well this goes at least for their album Within the realm of a dying sun. I got introduced to this band by a friend um... about fifteen years ago (uh, really shows my age doesn't it ;) ). I never got to buy any other of their albums as they were a bit hard to get (and I'm lazy in that kind of way), but I see now that CDON.com has a most (maybe all) of their albums, so they don't seem to be that hard to get hold of anymore (isn't the Internet a wonderful thing). Better count my pennies and see if I could afford to buy another Dead can Dance album. ;)
Whoops that anonymous old geezer posting about Within the realm of a dying sun was me, Ben. And now I think I'll start up iTunes on my computer and listen to the album in question.
-Ben-
Well, don't worry about the age-thing, Ben. Music is ageless. :) I just bought the album Aion (I soooo hope it comes tomorrow) and will buy Serpent's Egg later. Those were recommended to me as the classics. But the net truly is a wonderful thing, I must agree with that. Visa is an equally wonderful thing, heh. But if you buy one of their albums (not Aion, that is), may I borrow it someday? :)
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