Beware of removing tattoos

Body art such as tattoos and piercings have become very popular here, and also with it the removal of permanent tattoos has risen. The piercings you just leave without attention and it heals itself, I guess.

Anyway, the easiest way is to remove a tattoo is by laser, which vaporizes, or rather dissolves, the colour of the tattoo in the skin layers. Many beauty salons now offer this service and normally it results in a skin burn wound that heals in time.

But the laser has to be powerful enough, a so called class 4 laser, to get into between the skin layers to be able to make the tattoo disappear. Now the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority of Finland recommends that the removals only is done by either doctors or medical staff under the supervision of a doctor, as removing a tattoo wrongly or on a person with very sensitive skin by unskilled and not properly trained personnel, can cause permanent skin damage.

So I guess I´ll better stick to my henna tattoos also in the future.

Hair fashion trend

When you are living in Finland you are actually here to see what is going on, and one thing this country has been renowned for is its' blonde beauties.

Well, knowing more about the facts of life, and how things actually work, you learn to know that naturally blonde hair tends to darken with age forcing so many "once used to be naturally blondes" wanting to stay blonde, having their hair either highlighted or dyed blonde.

I have now caught up another trend, about hair colour that is.

In the summer there are more blondes than in the winters. At least it looks so, and judging from the shop shelves, in the summer all the do-it-yourself blonde dyes are out of stock, and in the fall the blondes seem to disappear and more brunettes and redheads are seen walking in the streets.

That must then mean that many women dyed their hair blonde for the summer, maybe to be more attractive in the summer months or to "have more fun" as they say blondes have. Maybe it is better to go back to normal daily routines for the winter and dye the hair brown in the fall, maybe dyeing it flaming red for the winter to brighten things up a little at Christmas.

Anyway, the seasons show in the way people dress, well, at least how the women dress. In the winter more sensible clothes and shoes are sought for, to keep dry and warm, and when the sun comes out in the spring, the heavy winter clothes are shedded showing all legs and bosoms and women turn blonde all of a sudden to match it.

Is this a new fashion trend I have spotted?

Wham bam!

Well this dating seems to be an odd business here in Finland.

You go for a date, hit it well off and go for a second date with dinner in a restaurant and it still seems fine so you settle for a third date. He invites you to his place for dinner and he cooks before your eyes. You are romantically wined, dined and seduced and everything still seems fine the next day and you set date for a third date but then nothing, just a cowardly text-message saying he is really sorry but he wasn't really turned on. ?!?

He did not turn on? Why the romance then, champagne and all?
Just "Wham, bam. Thank you ma'am"!

Well, I guess I can not judge from just one experience but my female friends have told me the same story. A couple of nice dates then it all of a sudden ends, usually with no explanation at all. Are the Finnish men just players, or is it just me who tends to meet them? And I am not even a blue eyed blonde!

So, I guess I am still single but I guess I am not dating for the time being...

Minister threatened to death

I must confess that this is now beginning to become ludicrous, with the Finnish foreign minister receiving death threats since his involvement in his second text message affair in two years time.

The Foreign minister has confessed to having sent a couple of hundred text messages to “a blonde erotic model”, or quite frankly, a stripper like an 80 year old friend to the family expressed herself on Sunday. I can agree with her that things should be called their right names as the name of the so called model has already been featured in the media. Mind you, she used to be a dancing teacher of good reputation this friend of ours so maybe her professional pride took a bad blow at the hint of erotic dancing.

Still, the current situation in the text messages scandal seems that both the sending and text messages receiving counterpart has been threatened to death and the Finnish security police has been informed. I assume they will begin their will investigations soon, but so far the foreign minister has not given any details about his threats to the public.

Yesterday a party member foreign minister and fellow MP of the same told one of the evening papers that she thinks the foreign minister is to resign because of him having lost his credibility. According to her the bad media attention caused by his behaviour has hurt his reputation, both in Finland and abroad.

Well, President Clinton of the US stayed in office so why should not one Foreign minister of Finland be able to do the same?

This is just politics.

Blonde erotic model

The Finnish ministers of cabinet seem to have been quite busy, at least the male ones.

Some male parliamentary representatives were accused of sexual harassment in the parliament not too long ago and
the prime minister just had his previous love affair aired in court after his ex-girlfriend has published a book about their love-affair and now the Foreign minister has hit the tabloids with a blonde.

The foreign minister in said to have sent 200 text messages from his office mobile phone, to a young, blonde busty erotic model, or in some media mentioned as a nude model. This is not the first time the foreign minister has hit the headlines with his text messaging, the previous time was two years ago. The ministers’ wife denies the truth of these accusations and says it just makes her laugh as the media still keeps going on and on about this thing.

The foreign minister on Friday told the Swedish speaking national radio that he is falsely accused and denies having sent the messages. Still the young model claims in the afternoon papers that she has proof of having received them.

It now seems obvious that the pie throwing of politicians, with real or made-up sex scandals, that has for far been non-existent here in Finland, has finally arrived here, and is here to stay.

Strange that no one I have talked to ever has confessed of reading the tabloid press, nor to be interested in gossip. This seems to be another façade you have to put up with living here. At least I can confess that if a really juicy thing hits my eyes I read about it, but I do not but very seldom buy any magazines if ever.

Not that I am any better than any one else, but usually I have no idea of the person in question, who they are talking about, ignorant foreigner as I am.

So it remains to see whether this is another case of ministers in heat totally lacking fair judgment or just an attempt to smouldering his name and getting some “bad press is as good as any press” publicity for this blonde erotic model.

Sun or sunblock?

Nokia, the Finnish company and manufacturer of mobile phones sells 1 million mobile phones every day of the week including Sundays. And so far they have been the biggest supplier of mobile phones worldwide.

Anyway, now with more sunny weather the campaigns to use sunscreen protect our skin and not get burnt in the sun. It is vital not to burn your skin when basking in the sun to avoid getting skin cancer.

New guidelines concerning cosmetics advertising was just published in Finland. All cosmetics have to keep what they promise in the ads and it has to be proven scientifically. So now your skin actually has to look 5 years younger, or your eyelashes have to become 400% longer and thicker as they promise in some ads. Guess this will make it easier for us women to choose between all different lotions and potions in our desperation to become more beautiful than we originally are under the makeup. But who is to measure it?

Guess it now only is what they leave out to mention about their products we have to be cautious about. So we have to decide between the sunblock that causes cancer and the sunburn that does the same thing.

Did you know that Nokia actually is a little town in Finland just next to Tampere, the second biggest town in Finland?

Deo-devils and Wax-virgins

Here in Finland there is a strange tendency to take things to the outrage in one way or another. To be subtly balancing on the edge is out of the question. For example, a woman dresses up to kill. Hair done beautifully, make up perfect and here comes the flaw in the picture: no perfume, no deodorant at all, just a pungent smell of sweat!

Then you get the bag-lady type who is not dressed up at all but has a nice scent of expensive perfume surrounding her like a cloud. By the way, I have heard about a man making his million by collecting refundable bottles in the dustbins. I have seen him in town and guess what, the smell is just awful! But, I have been told that when dresses up for going out, nobody recognizes him as the same guy with his suit on.

Then you get the teenagers that are always dressed to kill no matter what time of day it is and have used the whole bottle of perfume or used all the deodorant, a so called deo-devil. Also there is a tendency in the men from more southern areas of the world to exaggerate their use of perfume which is especially noticeable in elevators without any supplement of fresh air. And that’s when the migraine hits you.

Most people here are quite hairless, or at least so I have noticed watching people basking in the sun on the beaches during the summer. The ladies do not always shave their arm-pits, nor their bikini-areas. Guess this is a country full of wax-virgins. And deo-devils in one way or another, deodorant or no deodorant…

Hair-colours and suntan

I know that blondes have more fun, and as I got a hair-make over as Mother’s Day gift I thought I’d go blond to have even more fun than I already do.

Well, then they told on the news that it is highly probable to get cancer if you dye your hair often. The same with sun-bathing and tanning-beds, you might get skin cancer and the colouring agent in self-tanning lotions might also cause cancer. Where has all the good fun gone now for all us women with nothing else to do than change our colour in one way or another?

A new book was just published about the good and bad effects of sun. Did you know that the sun is good for you as well as the culprit of many bad things?!? Actually, if you get sun burned as an adult it can prevent from certain forms of cancer but getting burnt as a child you might get melanoma? Or that acne gets better from sun exposure only temporarily just to worsen its symptoms during the winter? And we have always been told it is good for us to be in the sun if acne prone, and also to get sufficient vitamine D.

And at least women know today that vitamine C is good for our skin, in our skincream. So now we have to take our vitamine C both internally and externally.

When will they tell us to not paint our nails because it is good against osteoporosis or something else and take that fun from us as well?

Knives and wildlife

Before I moved to Finland I had heard about the Finns always settling their differences with their knives. Well, I came here and was thrilled about the idea of men getting their knives out in the streets and having real knife-fights, and how disappointed was I to find out that no such things exists anymore. At least not living in a big town, maybe in the country-side far up north they might do in the woods.

Another big delusion for me when moving here was to find out that here are no polar-bears walking in the streets! You will certainly have to go to the US and Alaska for that. It would certainly be cold enough in the winters for the polar-bears even here in the southern part of this country.

But you do get bears around in the woods quite a lot. Never have seen one in the wild, but some friends live in the countryside nor far from here and they have a bear wandering around in their neighbour-hood in the woods. Imagine go out in the woods berry picking and walk head on into a hungry bear!

But the strangest things are quite rare and you do not see them much in big cities. They are easier to discover in small towns or villages a little off the beat so to say.

Imagine a young woman in her twenties, good looking. She has made her hair properly, done a nice, fresh looking make-up, high heel pumps and here we go!!! She is also wearing a track-suit!

Why bother with the hair-do and make up, and then wear high-heels to a track-suit?!? I have seen it several times during the years. So keep your eyes open look around you when you are as there are many of them to see, they are just hard to detect when dressed properly.

How is that for wildlife?

Blondes do have more fun!

Funny this thing about blondes having more fun, they do actually have more fun and I can vouch for that! Blondes do have more fun! Funny, this statement about blondes having more fun. They do actually have more fun and I can vouch for that!

The general impression around the world seems to be that there are more blonde and beautiful women in Scandinavia, and thus also in Finland.

I am not sure whether that statement is true or not, but a lot of the women here have their hair-colour out of a dye-jar. Probably quite a few of the women used to be blonde when small and growing-up just made my hair go darker and the blonde traits disappeared in the end. So I think there has to be a distinction between real-blondes, used-to-be-real-blondes and dye-jar-blondes!

I mean, how is Beyonce for a blonde anyway?!?

So how do the blondes have more fun then?!? Well, most of the fun comes from getting your hair done! To be able to maintain a good-looking blonde hair-colour you have to go more often to the hairdresser’s than the rest of the population. The rest of us, well, we just go and get ourselves a good looking haircut and the hair done, but blondes dye the their hair, after that they have their roots done, or just go and get some sun kissed streaks in it on top of the haircutting.

So, they certainly get to spend more money at the hairdresser's.
And spending more money is fun! Isn’t it?

How the real blondes have more fun, well, that still remains a puzzle to me…