all things me

I was standing on the escalator coming from the subway. Listening to music on my mobile. All of a sudden the music stopped and I thought I’d accidentally hit the pause or stop button on the remote. I kept walking, thinking I’d fix it when I get to the bus stop (I was in a hurry).

Suddenly I realised the music — Sexy Back by Justin Timberlake — was playing on the loudspeaker!! It took me a few fumbling moments to shut it up.

The phones should definitely refuse to play music from the loudspeaker unless it’s specifically activated by the user.

Or maybe I should just listen to less embarrassing songs…

Do you have an artist, a song, or a music style you like, which you rather keep to yourself?

Last Friday I went out with a couple of colleagues, “for a pint.” We were walking to the subway station when the other asked me to come along and I had to make sure, “You’re asking me? Even though I don’t drink alcohol?” I was told that was beside the point. So, I tagged along.

We went to a beer house and I ordered a Pepsi (I was treated, how kind). The bartender asked, “you want some vodka¹ with that.” My response? A loud “god no!” When we sat at the table my colleague laughed and asked if I get asked that a lot. I don’t but that might be because it was my first time “out for a pint.” (I had a wonderful time!)

I’ve never drunk alcohol, nor tasted, nor wanted to. Usually it doesn’t cause any problems but in the company’s summer festivities we were at a Greek restaurant and I asked for something to drink other than beer or the lukewarm water they served at the tables. The waitress shrugged and said “this is a Greek restaurant in Finland, why would we have something else?” (What about kids?!?)

Finns are big drinkers and I’m one of the odd ones out. Proud of it, too, although I don’t remember making a decision between to drink or not to drink. There has been no need; drinking has never even crossed my mind.

I suppose it’s “common knowledge” at work that I don’t drink alcohol. (It certainly is common knowledge with my family and friends.) In our last Christmas party I won a bottle of wine and a promotional t-shirt. I asked if the competition organizer would mind if I gave the bottle away to everyone. I kept the t-shirt although I don’t think I’ve worn it once.

On Monday a colleague of mine had emailed a project manager saying that he hadn’t had time to finish a task so he’d buy a beer to whomever finished it for him on his day off. And either the PM or the colleague had added, “or a Hyvää Päivää² to Minna.” Today — I got a bottle of vitamin C + caffeine Hyvää Päivää.
(Yup, caffeine is my drug of choice. I’m not pretending to be a goody two-shoes.)

1. Well, he said “kossu,” but who cares. (See Wikipedia if you do care.)
2. Hyvää Päivää wellness drinks, another site, in English

Suddenly I’ve started to look for apartments for real. I made an appointment at my bank for Monday and then I’ll find out what sort of money I can plan on putting into an apartment. On Sunday we’re going to 4-5 showings (whatever it’s called — open house) and 4 more on Monday.

I have started a list of the things I need. And now I know some requirements for the apartment too: two rooms + kitchen and bathroom, preferably a balcony with “window glasses” (although a balcony will make it easier for my parents to smoke when they’re visiting…), storage space in the apartment (lots of old apartments have walk-in closets), no bathtub (takes unnecessarily much space)…

First I started looking for apartments nearby but Dad suggested the area where we used to live years ago. Not because he wants me far away (I hope so) but because it’s a nice area and it would make commuting easier. The apartments are also cheaper there. Still, I’m worried about “shunning my responsibilities” if I move too far away: I wouldn’t be able to help with the dog.

I’m going to buy an apartment instead of renting. Furthermore, I’m getting a two-room apartment instead of a studio because I see studios as temporary abodes — I want a Home. With a capital H. Also, there’s something about having all rooms in a single space that bothers me.

[Edit: June 17] Dad told me that it is actually forbidden in many places to smoke on the balcony nowadays. Therefore people have to smoke either inside their apartments or in the yard. Two of the buildings we went to see today smelled awfully of tobacco… Anyway, if I had a balcony, my parents would have to go outside to smoke because I would definitely forbid smoking inside. [/Edit]

Tomorrow’s my last day before the 2-week vacation (my first part of vacation — I have 2 weeks left after that). As usual, I’m worried that I haven’t shared enough information with my project manager back-up — or the tech people for that matter. Oh well, I have a few must-do things tomorrow, including a work-related phone call I must make. I’ve been postponing it for eternity because I don’t like official phone calls.

I did make an official phone call quite easily yesterday: I was inquiring about an apartment I heard about through the grapevine but, alas, it had been reserved when I called. Too bad; it would’ve been at an excellent location. The thought of reserving it, though, made me want to get an own apartment — desperately. I’ll have to go to the bank some day to make plans and hear what sort of price range I could consider.

For a long while I’ve been wanting to re-do my site — the blog, more specifically. I try and sketch, find colour schemes, and start coming up with the basic structure. The problem is, I have no graphic design talent.

Finding nice colours is quite easy, there are lots of tools to make it even easier, too. I have collected hundreds of fonts through the years and there are the selected few that I really like. But after those are taken care of, I should start making my site pretty. That’s when I hit the wall.

I can’t draw (seriously), I possibly can doodle but doodling doesn’t make pretty. Of course, I could make my site with only coloured boxes, but that’s quite dull.

I took a look at my past designs and I may just resort to using one of the old ones (coded better, of course). However, I’d really really like to create something new. Maybe I’ll finally continue with the design which was in the “final polishings” stage two years ago(!!!) — if I can find the files, that is.

How do you do it? Are you one of the lucky ones who have an artistic bone in their body? Do you use some sort of resources to help with the design?

[Edit May 18] And where do you get an idea for the design?! I’ve only managed to think of the main colour so far. Argh! [/Edit]

I dread social situations, more precisely official situations: presentations, calling on the phone on official matters, handling things at a counter or office somewhere. When I realise I have to do something like that, my heart rate jumps a lot of notches and my face feels like it’s turning red. I have to think how I’m going to start and rehearse a few times.

Still, the situations don’t cause me to blunder; I don’t stutter, get mixed up with my words, or mumble unintelligently. In fact, I’m very normal and seem at ease. Why, then, can’t I remember it when the pre-socialising symptoms start disturbing my calm and collectedness; I won’t make (too bad) a fool out of myself however much I fear it.

I just made a call to customer service to change my parents’ magazine subscription to a discount. I tried to think of a way to state my business, thought I’d figured out a good way to start but still managed to say something quite ungrammatical (it is very easy in Finnish with the 15+ noun cases we have). Nevertheless, I was understood. Don’t get me wrong, I was flushing and well on my way to arrhythmia. But I sailed through it.

Very frustrating.

I try to read as much as I can and I like to carry a book with me wherever I go. When I’m close to finishing one book, I start carrying two books with me which sometimes makes my handbag quite heavy…

Luckily, I stumbled across eBook readers for mobile phones. I’m currently using Mobipocket Reader. At for example Manybooks you can download several different formats — one of which is the Mobipocket Reader format. It’s also really easy to convert text files, HTML files or Word documents into eBooks with Mobipocket Creator.

Let’s pick a book at Project Gutenberg and convert it to Mobipocket.

I’ll pick the HTML format even though plain text would do. HTML format contains tagging for headers and things which can be used in formatting the text in eBook.

After opening Mobipocket Creator, I choose to create a new blank publication. This way it’s easy to pick the title and I can combine several files if I want.

Now I need to choose the files to include in the publication. I drag and drop the HTML file I just downloaded from Project Gutenberg.

For demonstration’s sake I’ll pick up an image to be used as the cover image. I’ll drag and drop this image into the Cover Image window.

As far as I know, the image doesn’t show in the mobile application. Instead, it’ll show up in the Mobipocket Reader’s library.

Finally, I click the build icon and the Build button.

Then I open the Mobipocket Reader and send my newly created eBook to my mobile.

The resulting eBook from this HTML looks like this:

In Mobipocket reader there are several settings. For example, if I read just before going to sleep, I change the background to black and the text to yellow. Last night I tried out teal text on black which was quite good. On the bus it’s usually best to read black on white. The font size and font type are also adjustable, as well as justified text or unjustified. There are options to add highlights, bookmarks and notes to the text as well as create hyperlinks.

What I miss is a way to check the total number of pages. There is a meter at the bottom of the screen to show how far you are in the book but it’s difficult to really make out how much there is left. Maybe it’s just me, I like to look at the number on the last page no matter how interesting the book is.

Great-looking movie. Amazing music. Efficient killing. Buff men in skimpy clothes.

What more could a girl want?

I don’t know if you noticed it at all, but this definitely wasn’t my intention:

During the upgrade, link and post categories were merged (stupid feature; at least I don’t understand it yet) and I had two identical slugs for my post category “(Odd) People” and my link category “People”. WP merged the two and kept the post category title, causing slightly embarrassing sight.

Now, I don’t consider ‘odd’ a bad thing to be, quite the opposite, but if you were offended, I do apologise.

Now all (not very numerous) posts from my WordPress.com blog have been imported here into the

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