I've lost it

What a short joy it was to be able to sell mags. Today was the ultimate low point of my salesperson career. One lousy mag sold in four hours, sheesh. I've lost my golden touch or something. Boohoo. It might have had something to do with the fact that probably every single nice person was out of the reach of a phone (imagine the odds of that happening in this wonderland of Nokia...) and only the muttering, grumpy and rude people answered. And they were grumpy and rude probably because they had gotten sunburns or a heatstroke or something in the lovely weather today and they had forgotten to turn off their phones. Dumb sods.

Hopefully I can make up for my losses by selling at least 10 mags tomorrow. :) Optimism rules, even though I've had a bit of a headache for hours now (thank goodness I'm not one of the migraine suffering people, so I can cope with this ache) and today was no triumph in the telemarketing front.

However, I have to say I'm fairly happy about how the day turned out to be all in all. I found all the books for my next exam, and they seem to be very interesting, indeed. One about intellectuals in the middle ages, one about the early growth of European economy (meaning the period of seventh to twelfth centuries, which makes it more interesting than the topic seems) and one about using pictures as historical resources. I'm going to have a nice two weeks studying this stuff. I have higher hopes (and ambitions) for the result of this exam, since this is one of the last exams I'll ever have to take for my major. Whee.

And as a relating note, I have to say I did something to advance my thesis today, too. Go, me! :) I sat in the university library and read a thesis about the Finnish terminology that is appropriate when translating some of the terms that the Order of St. John uses.

It was quite useful, since there really aren't that many researches or studies about the Order available in Finnish and I've been struggling with the translations already. It's not like I can snap my fingers and come up with a credible and correct translation for a title like "a knight of magistral grace" just like that. Honestly, I can't. I'd love to, but I can't.

The Order's titles and the whole terminology is somewhat archaic and not very familiar in the context of Finnish history. Since there is virtually no chivalrous traditions as such in the Finnish history, most of the terms have never been properly translated and all kinds of terms have been used without any specific "rules". Which then makes it a problem I have to tackle before I can really get any further. Sometimes I think I would've been better off writing the darned thesis in English in the first place, but I suppose I'll have to translate it later, if need arises. :)

Oh, and more news on the same subject. Sort of. At the university today, I bumped into a professor of mine, who told me that in the fall there's probably going to be a visiting lecturer from Malta. Not only that, but this lecturer has apparently some plans that involve researching the Order of Malta and the professor thought I might like to meet this person and maybe even get involved in the project somehow! Yay! If I understood correctly, the guest lecturer is going to be someone who specializes in the history of the Order. Dear me, how I hope the professor was right and I get to meet this person.

I shouldn't get my hopes up too high, though, since this professor is very nice and helpful, but some of his plans don't actually have anything to do with reality. One of those academic oddities, hehe. However, I'm going to keep my fingers crossed that this would turn out to be something I could get involved in. You never know.

Uagh, now I've gotta go and get some sleep.