Night Of Arts

During the last few weeks here there has been the Helsinki Festival which hosts an array of events from opera to capoeira. Due to the dissertation nonsense and lack of money we havent been able to see as much as we would like but still we have managed to see quite a bit. One of the grandest annual nights of all is the Night of Arts which was last Friday. Everything on this night is free so we found ourselves in the centre of a busy Helsinki. As I said on an earlier post I think this is my 5th or 6th visit and although I have seen quite a lot of Helsinki I feel that this trip has been the best. I don't quite know why this outing has been so good but I think that one of the main reasons is that over the previous visits I have merely been learning and understanding the Finnish culture whereas this time I have gone beyond learning and actually started to enjoy it and take it all in. Anyway d'yer 'wanna to see me holiday snaps?? Heres some pictures from the Night of Arts:

Some people on poles outside the Finnish Parliament

Some 'canoe dancing'.

A sauna that is made out of mud bricks.

The view across to Helsinki Opera House

And finally me and my old mate Jone Nikula- pop idol judge/musician/novelist/Rock manager/DJ and Cyclist who makes Simon Cowell look like a poof.

Good Old England Im Proud To Say That Name

I have one friend which I am somehow glad to know. The ongoing 'joke' between us is that we 'pretend' to be racist, moany Little Englanders. For me the joke is simple:we pretend to be like a lot of people we know or have known in the past. We exchange pleasantries such as 'bloody foreigners coming over here..stealing our jobs, spending the taxpayers money..'. I cant explain the tone of the conversation (or joke) but its somewhere between earnest and jest. When we are not together our msn conversations are based on links we send each other from the from the daily mail, the Sun and BBC websites. When we go out together and start to drink we talk about this 'joke' but still the joke remains a pseudo reality in which we systematically half play out and half witness in our everyday lives. It can go on for sometime, and usually ends up with one of us just laughing. Today i went to meet Vuokko at the Train Station in the centre of Helsinki and managed to quickly look over the British press with the Daily Mail headline looking like this (although the mail spread was much better-it had pictures of scummy foreigners with dirty fingernails wearing crap sports clothes and smoking roll ups). When we got back home I started to talk to my friend about this and the joke pursued. ('Yeah The Sun reckons the Portuguese police have eaten Madeleine, cos thats what those bloody foreigners do..eat children...ha ha ha...').

Anyway the point of this insight is that I have known for a long time that I want to leave the UK. Im not sure if my friend feels the same but im certain that on some level the UK gets him down. The truth is that neither of us are racists or little Englanders who want to move to Spain because theres 'no pakis there' and 'you can leave your door open like in the good old days'. It sounds like a Gervais one liner, but we like foreigners so much we both go out with a couple of 'em, and most of our friends are Foreign too. In fact i think we are the only English people we know. So the point is (I will get there in the end) that this wanting to leave the UK scares me. Am I just running away from it all? Surely im technically equal to Don and Maureen who live in Spain because England 'aint what it used to be'? I have had quite a few problems coming to terms with this but the reason why I do want to leave is not because of foreigners stealing my passport or eating my children, its not because the health service is bad, its not even because Tony Blair was/is a cock-nob, no, its because I cant handle that 'joke' any longer. Im not so naive to think that other countries dont have this problem, but today i realised that its so aggressive in the UK. Right now going back to 'good old England' makes me feel a bit sick.

Stress Stress Stress Stress Stress Stress Stress.....

I have been walking around the flat for the last two minutes or so mumbling 'stress stress stress stress...' There's too many reasons why I have been doing this but the main one is that we have 15 days until we fly back to London, within those 15 days we have to find somewhere to live and finish the dissertations. Yes, we will pack all our belongings into two backpacks and seek our fortune in London. Vuokko has a job, but me I am panicking, I have the dissertation and job seeking to do at the same time.

Well heres some nice pictures of Finland, maybe I should have been doing what Im stressing about now when I was taking them. Oh well.

Summer in the City

I have now been in Finland for nearly two weeks and everything is going ok. It has been good to get away from England and immerse myself into the culture and sophistication that is Helsinki. Lots of things have happened at the same time over the last few weeks and there seems to be no simple pathway to the next part of my life. I am almost coming to the end of my dissertation (which I am enjoying)and im looking forward to handing it in. I didn't get the funding for the PhD which means that I am somewhat in limbo as to whether to continue with the studying, at the very least I suppose I will start it part time. At first I was a little annoyed with the department, seeing that I have been at the university for a few years and I have paid god knows how much money in there tight little pockets. Now i just feel that theres not much you can do in these situations, its a dog eat dog world blah blah blah. I could equally be quite annoyed with the English education system as a whole but that would conclude nothing, thousands of poor students are in the same boat. So I will try to do something but I have no concrete plan yet.

On one of the first days in Finland I nearly drowned. Im not one for melodramatic updates but this event has made me rethink quite a lot. My initial response to it all was that lifes to short, all this worrying..I shouldnt bother..blah blah blah. But now I have had time to really think I dont want to stop this PhD dream. Life really is too short and if I give in I'll end up making a rash decision and ultimately find myself in a boring dead end job. Sod that.

The last two weeks have also given me the chance to see Helsinki in Summer which in a word is beautiful. Even though this is my 5th or 6th visit i have learnt more in this one visit. I have usually visited during winter but now in summer the whole city is transformed which I think has led me to see more of it and understand how big the place actually is. I dont know if its because I have no real life plan or if Helsinki is just wonderful but I dont want to leave. If I would be guaranteed a job or a PhD place then I would stay. The more I visit this place the more layers are peeled off , I understand more, see more, want more. Today i will go to one 'museum' to see The Real Citizen exhibition in Helsinki which will hopefully inspire me with my dissertation.

I will put some nice pictures on the next post!