Wellcome to get to know Finland and Finnishness, as well as the world of 80's and 90's childhood memories, dreams, dance, gymnastics, baking and other interesting topics. Jump along the dance girl's journey!
I stumbled upon this wonderful memorial song made for lost loved ones by chance on YouTube, and I was immediately captivated. It has a truly beautiful message and a very moving video where people send messages to their departed loved ones. I even found the English lyrics for it. This is worth listening to and/or checking out. In the video, there are also a couple of well-known Finnish music creators making appearances. The artist is unknown to me. Perhaps I should get to know him.
GREETINGS TO MY FATHER, TO MY BROTHER (AND ALL THE OTHER LOVED ONES) UP IN HEAVEN!!!
For me, the lovely/precious/memorable moment of the week was this kiss captured in the photo found in my deceased brother’s apartment as I was clearing it out. As you can see, the picture was taken just before boarding the ship, about to embark on a journey and my brother is kissing his former fiancée.
A beautiful moment where both of (-my brother and his fiancée-) are young, healthy, and in love, has been captured on camera.
After the picture was taken, a lot has happened. Five years later, the fiancée (”K”) became paralyzed. Several years later, my brother and his fiancée (”K”) broke up (but later continued as friends) and I became K’s personal assistant. We were already friends, (which I guess is obvious). Then my brother passed away suddenly.
K’s hospital stays have continued. Last week, K had to go to the hospital again, and she apparently has another long rehabilitation period ahead. Life tests us, but good memories bring a smile to ourfaces. Oh, if only I could go back to the summer of 1999, when I had just turned 19. Life was ahead of me, and my dearest family members were close/healthy.
It’s that time of the year again, Eurovision song selection time. On Saturday night, Finland’s representative song for Eurovision was chosen.The winner wasthe hilariously quirky 90s party song: Windows 95 man’s ”No rules”.https://youtu.be/byI2jM_xcjU?si=nidpWIzuxAhAH7qE Looks like we’re going with humor again this year…
PILVI IS THE BEST!!!
However, the best performance of the night comes from the other host of the evening, delightful Pilvi Hämäläinen, known primarily as an actress, with her interval show. Unfortunately, it wasn’t eligible for voting.
Even though this was supposed to be a joke, and to compile all Eurovision clichés, this works better than any of the competition songs. Catchy, melodic, a true old-fashioned EUROVISION!! It also reminds me of my favorite Eurovision winning song ”Diva” from 1998.
And oh my, what a stunning voice Pilvi has. This came as a complete surprise.
At least for a middle-aged woman like me, this is the only genuinely right way to do Eurovision song. This has received a lot of praise on social media too!
Of the actual competition songs, I think the best one was Sini Sabotage’s: ”Kuori mua”, (Peel Me)https://youtu.be/3AHaIe_FQao?si=43BSun8RUMLjQhiL but even that didn’t come even close to this level!
Or well, it might be more contemporary, but not as authentic and interesting.
This is a really funny sketch (by the legendary Pertti ”Spede” Pasanen) from the 1980s-1990s, where Spede, always a bit ahead of his time, anticipates the arrival of mobile phones in a way.
The ”wife” is waiting for an important call from Stockholm and decides to take the landline phone with her to her friend’s place.
”Lissu promised to disconnect her phone for that time so I can plug mine into her socket”,
the wife explains to her husband. The husband is left dumbfounded.
The sketch is part of the excellent ”woman’s logic” series, which probably wouldn’t be shown on television nowadays because most probably these sketches would be classified as derogatory towards women. However, in this sketch a woman’s logic is presumably considered secondary from a contemporary perspective. The focus is more on the clever usage of the phone, and that’s why it’s particularly amusing to watch now in the era of smartphones.
Buy the way, I’ve heard that when Spede first showed the script for the initial sketch (related to a woman’s understanding of the operation of a car’s differential gear) to Hannele Lauri, who portrayed the female role in the sketches, Lauri asked:
”What’s so funny about this?”
That’s when Spede realized the sketch was working.
I grew up with these jokes and I find them clever. Also isn’t it true that ”men are from Mars, women are from Venus,” as the fantastic old saying goes? We complement each other when we are different. That’s how it’s meant to be. We can be different and still be equal!
Let’s share one more festive post here, even though Christmas is pretty much over again. I just didn’t have time to post this earlier… On the other hand, Swedish-speaking Finns have traditionally spent Christmas until January 13th (for what we call ”Nuutinpäivä”) so I guess you could still consider this part of the Christmas season in some way…
Here are various christmas tarts and gingerbread tarts I made.
This year, I tried gingerbread tartlets for the first time using the recipe from the YouTuber ”Kakkumonsteri”, and they turned out well.A delightful combination of the crispiness of gingerbread and the flaky structure of Christmas tarts.
I used Valio’s caramel cream as the filling, which has a delicious taste. However, I found that the flavor suffered from heating in the oven. The best taste was when spooned directly from the fridge. (It could also be that my sense of taste has probably not fully normalized after COVID-19, as it seems that any slightly milder foods don’t taste like anything. Spicy or otherwise strong-flavored foods, like tortillas eaten on New Year’s, taste normal. For some reason, cold foods also seem to taste more intense than hot ones.) I hope that will eventually return to normal, or else I might only be able to eat traditional Finnish foods when they are cold. 😆
I also made traditional gingerbread cookies. Here are the best ones
Preparation:
Ready-made doughs are convenient to use for this, but you can also make them yourself if you like. First, roll out gingerbread dough (”Kakkumonster’s” dough looks quite small; I rolled it out in few smaller batches), and place tortilla dough on top as shown in the video. Thin sheets of tortilla dough are handy here, and you don’t even need to roll them out much. Divide the dough into eight parts and shape them as desired. After that, you can add traditional jam as a filling, or I recommend trying caramel filling.The caramel cream I used was quite delicious and added something new for these. ”Kakkumonster” made two types of gingerbread pastries: with licorice flavor and with gingerbread flavor. Gingerbread cream cheese is sold ready-made (at least in Finland). For licorice, you’ll need licorice powder, which is mixed into the cream cheese, but it’s probably not sold in most places outside of Finland.
The tarts are baked at 225 degrees Celsius for about 10 minutes.
The year 2023 was much better than its predecessors. Life began to settle in this new place, and the new home started to feel like the real home (not just a vacation spot, as it did in the beginning, heh). The home also looks and feels more like home now because we finally brought furnitures, paintings, and dishes from the storage, which belong to my childhood home. All of them hold so much sentimental value. The antique furniture we brought also fits well here. At the same time, I brought with me my grandparents’ inherited, beautiful coffee cups and it’s nice to enjoy morning coffee with them…
That’s my favorite. These were used a lot during my childhood and youth on special occasions and gatherings. Mainly that’s why they are dearest to me.This one is a nice English cup.This one is truly beautiful, but very small (probably an espresso cup).I also got to know this dog companion of my spouses sister’s family. He has been in our care a few times. A cute dog, although a bit restless and in need of a lot of outdoor activities, as is typical for Jack Russell Terriers. Not exactly a couch potato.
However, year 2023 wasn’t either entirely free from sad news. Just before Christmas, I heard that the mother of a dear friend passed away at the age of 82, so 2023 still included this sadder piece of news.
I vividly remember how my friend and I traveled by train to Hämeenlinna probably sometime around the year 2000 for a Bomfunk MC’s concert. We stayed at her mother’s place. It was a big deal back then! The journey was fantastic, and it left warm memories!
Well, back to 2023… also the decline in my mother’s health towards the end of the year brought sorrow and concern.Her doctor decided to discontinue her memory medication, according to him, it doesn’t bring any benefit anymore. In my opinion, she has deteriorated since then. We visited her on Christmas Eve, and she barely managed to hold on her eyes open.She also didn’t drink much coffee and didn’t eat barely at all the pie offered with it, which is a concerning sign. However, the timing of our visit was good because Santa Claus arrived to distribute gifts just then, and I was able to give my mother the shoulder shawl I made as a gift. Unfortunately, she didn’t pay much attention to it or anything else. She could hardly recognize me neither. I, too, struggled to recognize her as my mother. She felt so unfamiliar. Even though I knew this was coming, it’s still difficult to accept/believe. Well, none of us is getting any younger. My own May birthdays are also approaching again, after my mother’s 80th birthday in April.
For the upcoming year, I mainly wish for good health above all else. Nothing else matters as much. Of course, it would be nice to travel occasionally, but health is the number one priority in life for me these days. Now, having understood the fragility of life.
On the new year’s eve, we went to the local town center to watch the fireworks, and I wanted to include a video of those here. However, the video I shot didn’t turn out well, so I left it out. The footage was very short (a mistake, apparently it didn’t start recording right away as intended), and there’s not much to see in it. It was really nice fireworks!
Below are some of my best/the most significant posts in 2023.
In the first post you can read about events from two years ago in my life, a time when a lot happened, and these events have largely led to the present moment and my current self. I included this to provide some background on recent events in case you’re not aware of them yet.
Our trip to Keuruu, e.g. inspecting our cottage’s condition, was the best/most emotional event of the summer. It all started with the search for the cottage keys…
Although personally I managed to avoid major sad news (except for the death of my friend’s mother that I mentioned), in 2023 there were still significant losses nationally, as dancer Aira Samulin and our former president Martti Ahtisaari passed away.
This is what we’re celebrating with today. The bottle, at least, is stylish!
Below are views from our driveway/parking lot.
Our car parked.The view from next to the parking lot, at the edge of the adjacent forest path.View from kitchen window. The colored lights shining in beautiful shades of red and gold, as it should on New Year’s Eve… (and our Santa Claus still waves to everyone in the front yard.)While taking the photos, I noticed that one bright star was shining in the frosty evening sky. (Only one was clearly visible, even though these pictures might suggest there are multiple stars.) I’d like to think it’s the twinkle of my brother.
This year, too, is coming to an end. Once again, it has gone by really quickly, as if in the blink of an eye. It’s a bit scary, fearing if the same will happen as it did last year, when after the New Year, it felt like the pace of days accelerated rapidly. They just shot forward… It feels like I used to accomplish so much more in a day, and now I hardly get anything done…I guess this is what they call middle age. On the other hand, I was living a quite different life before, and my days were made up of slightly different things. It might be more of a mindset thing.
A perfect fit for the turn of the year is my favorite scene from the Sex and the City movie. The scene is very poignant and emotional, and the song is beautiful!
The movie was on TV on Christmas Eve night, and I had to watch it again, even though I’ve seen it many times, and even though I was in a daze due to my sleep debt. This movie is just so fantastic!
Such a friendship would be wonderful, but extremely rare. There are probably not many people who can say they can always feel comfortable calling a friend and opening up about anything. I have good friends too, but nothing like that. Sharing the darkest feelings is difficult, and I’m not verbally gifted in that way either. Writing is more my strength… but I’ve always envied the friendship between those women!
Decide to be happy. Learn to find joy in simple things.
Do your best with what you have. No one can have everything, and in everyone’s life, sorrow is mixed with joy. The trick is to let laughter overcome tears.
Don’t take yourself too seriously. Don’t think you should be shielded from the misfortunes that others encounter.
You can’t please everyone. Don’t let criticism bother you.
Don’t let others set your boundaries. Be yourself.
Don’t borrow trouble. Imagined troubles are harder to bear than actual difficulties.
Stay interested in new things. If you can’t travel, read about new places.
Do something for those who aren’t as fortunate as you.
Stay busy. A bustling person has no time to be unhappy.
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