Horror movies

The hard rock band Lordi, that also won the Eurovision contest in the year 2006, has now moved on to making horror movies. A Finnish horror movie, unique in its’ kind as there is a fairly small market for horror movies here in Finland, the movie is ready made in English for a more international market had its’ premiere yesterday.

The monster rockers of Lordi are fitted into the story just as they are, monsters that are just there to scare you.

The bands promotion videos have already been in that genre and the identities of the band members are still not publicly known. Strangely enough the general idea seems to be that the band was formed just before the Eurovision contest which is absolutely not true as the band apparently has been kicking and alive for a decade already.

Finally the water situation is getting back to normal in the city of Nokia as the municipal water now has been tested negative for any further contamination and the city council is to discuss when and how to get back to normal tap water usage by next week.

In the same small town of Nokia also alleged serial killings were discovered last year. A nurse was been accused of inducing deaths of three with insulin and attempted to kill two more people in the same way. Now as it seems to be impossible to prove the origin of the insulin in the dead bodies, as there is no laboratory in the world that can determine whether the insulin was natural or where it originated from so there might be a miss trial in the case.

I have been quite curious about the reason why she has killed these people, if she wanted to help and they were mercy killings or what. Guess we’ll never know.

On coffee again

The town of Nokia is still suffering of lack of potable water as they still are waiting for the results of the cleaning of the contamination from its municipal water in some areas of the town. The chloride levels in the water were temporarily raised sky high in order to flush out the impurities and people were asked to run the tap water in order to get the water pipes clean.

The last results of the water’s purity is expected by end of this week and then hopefully life can go back to normal for the last 10.000 inhabitants in the last and worst contaminated part of the town after having been on detention from tap water and having to collect it at these special drinking water distribution stations all over town since beginning of December last year. I can only imagine the trouble you have to go through for making one single cup of coffee, which reminds me; our house is more peaceful now than it has been for the past three weeks as dear spouse of mine is once again allowed two cups of his accustomed coffee. One in the morning before he leaves for work and the second one that the two of us have together when he arrives home after a hard days work. Which is a nice custom as we share what has happened during the day over the coffee, a moment for just the two of us every day as routine?

All raw vegetables are back on the menu, as well as is his favourite rye bread that was the second thing he missed the most being on this scientific “we will then know” diet his doctor ordered, only thing missing is dairy products and as the air home nowadays is less polluted by bad fumes our dear docto0nr must’ve been right. Not that I doubt him, as I notice the pleasant outcome, but it might have been something else, not necessarily more serious but something that would not have been quite as obvious as this lactose intolerance is.

At least there will be no more grunting about “coffee this and coffee that” anymore when out on town on our almost weekly shopping trips to town, dear husband and I with an occasional impromptu coffee and cake break.

As sweet as it comes

As sweet as it comes

Sucralose is a non-caloric sweetener.

It is an approved food additive and is also called E 955 and it is also available as a tabletop sweetener under the brand name SPLENDA. Sucralose is used in diet sodas, yoghurts

It is the only non-caloric sweetener made from sugar, yet it is 600 times sweeter than sucrose which is ordinary sugar. Sucralose tastes like sugar and it has a clean, sweet taste that does not leave an unpleasant aftertaste compared to other artificial sweeteners and it passes rapidly through the body virtually unchanged and it is proven non-toxic to humans in the amounts it is used in food products.

Well, I have enjoyed my occasional use of low-calorie sweeteners as they have tasted artificial which goes well together with the junk food it has been accompanied with but the new Coca Cola being too sweet for my taste as it now contains Sucralose and this little secret pleasure of mine has come to an end but out of a completely different reason.

Sucralose as sweetener may sound good for dieters, but there seems to be a down side to it as 85% of the Sucralose we take in comes out as it was ingested, most of it remains as it was when swallowed and it is neither converted into something else in our digestive tract. So where does it go then?

According to recent Swedish research the Sucralose passes out of us down the toilet ending up in the nature as the today used wastewater treatment processes the have little effect on Sucralose removal rates and the breaking down of the Sucralose molecule is very slow in the nature and there is no knowledge whether the discharge of it into nature has any eco-toxical effects or not.

Money for the poor

After the recent water crisis in the town of Nokia where thousands became ill The Ministry of Social Affairs and Health is requiring all municipalities in Finland to thoroughly check their water treatment systems’ plumbing by march in order to avoid such disasters in the future. The town’s sewage water got mixed into the cleaned tap water by a vault that was not even thought to exist between the clean drinking water pipes and the waste water.

The cleaning up of the Nokia’s water system is still going on and many citizens have now claimed compensation from the town. A couple of deaths occurring at the time of the water contamination are to be scrutinized just to be on the safe side to check whether the sewage water might have caused the deaths or not.

There is said to be 130.000 poor families in Finland and I have wondered what that really means, who is counting it and how it is done. Does that mean that you are living on social welfare as you are below the existential minimum of means for daily survival or how is it decided? Sounds like an awful lot, to me at least, in a country that is proud to call itself a welfare state.

Anyway, as there is a charity fund raising every Xmas and it ends on Xmas Eve I have been wondering how the money will get to the needing in time to celebrate the holidays as it is said, or is a part saved from the previous year to the next year? The money apparently goes to the needing families as gift vouchers which I think is good, at least then you know it goes to what is was designated for, food and not booze from the liquor store.

Which is the main reason I never give away money to beggars, I could buy a Big Mac or something similar instead but those offers have so far always been turned down, and quite in a rude way as well.

The amount of beggars, and here I mean foreign and not the usual winos and homeless, has increased in Finland and there are talks about abolishing begging in the capital region. Well, as I have already noticed, begging is not very successful in this country to the great disappointment of many foreign beggars standing around in corners but why only prohibit begging in the capital region, shy not in the whole country when you’re at it? Makes it easily comprehensive, one general rule for the whole country.

Asked to resign from Nokia

The Nokia management is asked to resign and if it was the company called Nokia I meant, it sure would hit the news big worldwide but as it only is the management of the city council of the town of Nokia in Finland it is smaller news.

Still in the small town with 30.000 inhabitants with 9.000 names collected for the resignation of the town officials in charge when the municipal tap water was polluted by mixing it by mistake with sewage water with scarce info about it, this is big. What makes it funnier from my point of view is that in Finnish pipe, johto, also is management, so the water pipe is asked to resign if you want to get it “wrong”.

Anyway, now the traditional time for all Christmas charities is on and the streets are hit with Salvation Army soldiers with their chiming bells cauldrons to raise funds for people who have not enough top celebrate Xmas. Also on TV there are fundraising concerts to raise money for Hospital equipment. It seems strange in this country that is called a welfare state, that there are people who have not a home to stay in, or money to buy food. Nothing to be proud of really, but so far the weather has been warmer than usual so the homeless have not been freezing that much.

Ice melting

I seem to have been quite preoccupied about water at the moment, in one way or other.

The weather in Finland has been unusually warm for the season and the snow that we had melted away; there is only snow up in the northern most parts of the country at present, and the water levels had on Sunday risen in many rivers by 12 inches, or is you prefer by 30 cms with a risk of flooding like in springtime.

The ice on the lakes had melted thin like in spring and are no more to trust for walking on and there has already been 7 drownings due to the weak ice, as the Finns are passionate ice fishers. Even the police have been active in trying to make people get off the ice to avoid drowning. The weather has even been warm enough for dear husband of mine to collect some more tube formed Chanterelles on his walk on Sunday afternoon. And that I have not heard of anyone doing here in Finland, still picking edible mushrooms in December!

Now on Monday morning the water levels had decreased again so there was is imminent risk of flooding right now but it is depending on the coming weather if we are going to have a winter flooding this year a second time here in southern Finland as the rivers flooded already in January due to snow melting once earlier before the spring melting. Last spring flooding was much smaller than the average year already. This is good for the ground water levels as they had been drying up due to very dry, warm and sunny summer which now seems to have corrected itself.

And the weather is now to be a bit colder, with subzero temperatures in the whole country, at least for a couple of days. Maybe even the sun will be seen in the sky, which would be a nice change as it has been so murky lately.

Water and power

Finally the inhabitants of the Finnish town Nokia can begin to make use of their tap water after sewage had leaked into the local water supply one week ago.

The municipal tap water quality is beginning to improve, and it can now be used once for drinking and cooking if it is for at least five minutes. The tap water is now safe to be used for in washing machines and dish washers and to shower in. hand washing is still recommended to be carried out in boiled water. On Monday there will be an update on water quality and usage recommendations from authorities and the current recommendations apply for the almost entire town Nokia except fro some small parts.

I have hard to imagine how to cope for more than a week without any tap water, being as preoccupied in my own thoughts as I sometimes tend to be. I wonder how many times I would have washed my hands without thinking about it, made some coffee in the percolator, washed some dishes or run a washing machine.

It is the same with electricity, when you have none you can only come to think of a thing that needs it, like watching TV, making some coffee, washing something or using some other kitchen appliance. What would the modern man do if cut off from both clean, running water and electricity at the same time?

Read a book in candle light maybe…as working with photography digitally has its' downsides when no power supply at hand.

Turkey feast

I was always a bit envious of the Americans who have their turkey at Thanksgiving as I come from a traditional Christmas ham eating family, and I was desperately looking for a date to have our turkey dinner for years but not until arriving in Finland I got the perfect date, the Finnish Independence day on December 6^th.

And so it was yesterday time for out annual turkey feast once again. This year I had decided to document the cooking and the dinner preparations normally going on from the day before the Independence Day, but once again found out I had forgotten about it. It was not until the turkey was carved and most of it eaten I came to think about getting my precious dear camera into the shrine of cooking, which was too late of course. Now there is only the left overs to photograph, but they can sometimes be more thrilling to work with as you have to be creative in more than just the one single way.

Anyway, by the time the turkey was ready to be taken out of the oven and to be carved it was all too dark to take any photos in nature’s own light anyway so I will seriously have to consider acquiring additional lights in order to be able to shoot the photos I want of food, at least this time of the year, until it once again turns into lighter on December 21^st. Being very disappointed about forgetting to take my photos I was very pleased with the outcome of the bird though, it was delicious. But so it has been every year, and this time I had a different stuffing with the gravy turning out absolutely superb. I could have spooned just gravy all day so nothing would have been left until dinner time!

Cranberry sauce is one thing we only serve with the annual Independence Day turkey, and with the recipe I have it turns a really dark fuchsia colour. The cranberry sauce served with orange carrots, roasted potatoes, orange sweet potato gratin, brown gravy, white turkey meat and either green peas or haricots verts is a colour clash screaming at you on your plate when eating it, but tastes delicious.

Anyway, I feel bad for the citizens of the town of Nokia with no potable water in their taps, must have been quite a sad way to celebrate the 90^th Independence Day with the army been called to help distribute fresh drinking water for the town inhabitants to collect. Now there has even been found Salmonella together with other as virulent bacteria in the water.

Even more sad for the person who opened a valve thus poisoning the whole town doing so by mistake, what feelings of guilt and regret. The Finnish Criminal Police are investigating the incident and it seems that the possibility of polluted waste water getting into fresh cleaned tap water is supposed to be impossible as a safety precaution and a faulty construction is suspected. Now all municipalities are encouraged to see over their water facilities in order to avoid other such incidents.

Brewing stopped

Apparently the brewery in Nokia was not informed about the municipal tap water having been contaminated with waste water since Wednesday so they had kept on brewing their ciders and beer as normal.

Fortunately no contaminated products have hit the market but the Nokia brewery still clean their manufacturing facilities thoroughly, and wait before the water supply is back to normal which can take its’ time. The Nokia brewery is manufacturer of ciders, various kinds of beer and lager, a lingonberry soda and a lemon soda and a bottled Vichy water. Talking about a major economic set back for the brewery having to stop manufacturing now just in time for the peak shopping season of the year! Not to mention the loss in ready brewed drinks having to discard of because of the waste water that accidentally was used.

Anyway, I have wondered about this phenomenon, bottling ordinary tap water, adding fizz to it and calling it Vichy water. But I guess Vichy has over the years become to mean just sparkling bottled water for many people. For me it is of importance how the bottled water tastes as I can detect a difference between them, like Perrier, Evian or any other brand although others claim it is impossible saying “water is only water”.

Well, this time tap water is not water anymore.

Tax returns and tap water

If you have paid too little taxes you are to make your first installment payment at latest tomorrow, with the second to be paid in January next year but if you are getting money back from having paid too much you won’t get them until the day after tomorrow, that is if you have a filed a bank account with the tax authorities. If you have not informed them about your account number you will have to wait until mid month before your get your tax-returns. This might seem like a minor glitch, but if one spouse get s tax return the day after the day the other spouse is to pay, and if you have not got enough money to pay before you get the return then what do you do?

Anyway, it seems strange that three towns have so far this year suffered from contaminated tap water by E-Coli bacteria. There was one case in Vihti in October this year when 8 dead squirrels were found in the water tower earlier this spring and now there is a current case in Nokia, you know the city where the mobile phone company comes from and Nokia car tyres are manufactured. Also in Jyväskylä in September the citizens were also told to boil their tap water before using if for several minutes in order for it to be potable.

How can semi purified waste water that is not fully purified get mixed into the purified chloride drinking water? As for what I know about drinking water and waste water systems they are normally here in the Nordic countries built separate from each other, and the drinking water facilities’ intake are not even in the near vicinity of the waste water plants and the systems normally just are able to run one way, not be reversed just to prevent cases like this. The two different plants purify their water in their own system and normally in quite the opposite sides of the towns.

Having lived outside the Nordic countries I have acquired the here often considered strange habit of having a separate water filter to our drinking water. We have laughed a lot about it among our friends many times but with these statistics for recurrent epidemics around the country with harmful bacteria getting into the drinking water, I might even consider switching into bottled mineral water. It will be more expensive, and there are also bacteria in the bottle waters but guess their amount is smaller than might be in tap water.

Twice so far I have been warned about tap water, once my whites in the washing machine got all black because of some residue was flushed from the water pipes, the other time the water pipe had burst because of the cold weather, which also seems strange as they are normally dug that deep into the ground that they do not burst from frost. It might be the wear and tear of time that has been working at it, but it must be less expensive to change into new water pipes instead of having people die of the infections it causes, especially among the young, elderly and ill.

Power shortages?

If the coming winter is a cold one there might have to be power cuts even in households and not just in the industry.

A very cold winter might stretch Finland's energy resources past the breaking point as Finland does not produce enough power of its own. There is a risk for power cuts especially during the peak season of Christmas when the traditional Xmas sauna is heated up at the same time with the traditional Xmas ham cooked in the ovens. At present power is imported from Russia accounting up to ten percent of Finland's energy needs and the Finnish power supply company Fingrid now says that with Russia turning down its output in order to meet its own power needs there might not be any power left to sell to Finland.

The worst case scenario is that even household power would have to be rationed, this meaning cut of for some time, and the power supply company now hopes that the households will economize the amount of power used during a cold winter. Some electricity is also imported from Sweden but with a cold snap there at the same time as here in Finland, there would be no additional electricity resulting in shortages. As last winter was an exceptionally mild one apart from a couple of short cold snaps Finland didn't experience any power shortages although they were already then expected to happen.

An electricity shortage or rationing of the same will surely make the electricity prices sky rocket.

As I am no sports fan I to my great surprise yesterday found out that The FIS Ski Cross Country Worldcup began its’ season 2007/2008 in Düsseldorf, again, and this for the 4^th time.

Snow in Dusseldorf at this time of the year?!?

End of October a mild autumn, in the middle of the Old town down by the river Rhine? When the leaves still are green? Becoming curious I googled the event and found the official site and read on.

What a waste of energy and resources!

The event was proud to on their official site announce that they are the only event of the cross country season to have a 100% guarantee for snow. The needed 3000 cubic metres of snow for the track is made out of 1500 cubic metres pure drinking-water without any chemical additives. The same amount of water to fill a common 50m swimming pool and the manufacturing of the snow is begun 100 days ahead of the World Cup and the track itself is handmade.

Okay, cleaning the water, making it freeze, storing it cold in order to have the needed amount, moving the snow into place of the track, hand making the track, how much does this cost in energy resources?
Or money for that matter?

And there is lack of pure drinking water in many areas of the world!

I have been feeling bad about it as there is no alternative when showering living in apartment in Finland as the municipalities supply you with water and it is all pure drinking water but this unbelievable wast of resources.

One thing comes to mind though, they are absolutely right, good that the water used is pure and does not pollute the river Rhine in any way as it is quite polluted already. No more additional pollution of the water except for maybe some substances washed down by the melting snow on its’ way down the banks into the river below.

-------------------

You can check out the facts out yourself at the provided link to the official cite of The FIS Ski Cross Country Worldcup in Düsseldorf at: http://www.worldcup-duesseldorf.de/index.php?id=35&L=1

New ways

According to the news The Finnish National Public Health Institute has been taken by surprise by a study carried out at the Harvard University in the US which conclude that children may five times more likely develop bone cancer if they ingest fluoride added to their drinking water and if Harvard's research holds up to more scientific scrutiny Finland should re-examine the quantity of fluoride it adds to public drinking water, as it is added into drinking as it is believed to strengthen bone structure.

Well, well, here we are once again. Something that was believed years ago to be good for you no longer might be and that we really don not have a choice to say no to as there was no other option. The tap water we all are drinking with out even thinking about what I might, or might not contain. Or the filling in our teeth containing mercury that are bad four our health but would be too expensive to remove.

Have you ever been on a diet?

Well, a lot of us have especially when growing older and becoming more comfortable and the pace slowed down than in the youth when you were still “going places”.

Anyway, why is it that when you are on a diet just one failure, once wrong step always ruins it all and then you think you have a good excuse just going on eating in the wrong way for the rest of the day, and get an even better excuse to continue eating that way for the rest of the week as you are filled with your feeling of disappointment, self-loathing and guilt. Why not just accept the fact you made a mistake after having eaten your chocolate bar or what ever and continue as nothing had happened after having eaten it?

It is just like all these New Year’s resolutions. You might honestly mean it when you make them, but sticking to them is hard as hell. Dieting, or quitting any bad habit like smoking, is a question of a change in your lifestyle, to change your behaviour and normally that is not an easy thing to do. It is not made just out of the spur of the moment’s inspiration; you have to adjust into a new way of thinking and acting, and that normally takes time…anyway, just back on the waggon again asap after your error.

God, I need some more tea as I really don’t know where I am going with this today!

Waterproof wrappings

Going for a drive out of town on a Saturday can sometimes be the strangest experience and as this Saturday was announced to be a car free day, which was not advertised especially well before hand. Many big cities had reduced their bus fare prices in order to get people using the buses instead of taking the car into town shopping, but nothing was anywhere told about the turn out of this campaign afterwards.

So our little planned trip out to the countryside became even stranger than it would have been on a normal planned Saturday drive in the countryside.

Anyway, getting out of a big city is always strange as the way people’s traffic behaviour gradually changes and every different town has its’ own traffic culture. The same rules and laws still apply in theory but not always in real life drivers act differently depending on if they are in the countryside or in a town and especially the parking is different, somehow more casual if not really peasant, sorry pleasant.

To really give you the picture of how our minds work, we act in different ways depending on if we are on foot as pedestrians crossing the street, cycling on bike or driving in our new car, it depends on your point of view whether you take the same chance crossing the street on foot or by car when the red lights are on. As long as nobody sees you, you are safe and sound; you have not broken any rules and can’t be fined for doing something nobody was there to see.

So we visited this big shopping centre in a small town with the usual chain shops and a big supermarket. All the cars were parked in rows very far from each other and you could walk in between the fronts of the car hoods, which never would have come in question in a big town as the space is limited and you have to make the best of the parking space you get. There also is no politeness here as to who is next in line to park the car in the next free space as in bigger towns and parking outside of the marked car parks also prevails, parking right next to it right in front of the entrance blocking the pathway outside the marked parking area.

Also the queuing culture in shops and supermarkets is different in the small country town compared to the bigger cities, no queuing culture there, just walking straight in front of people in line jumping the queue at the cashiers in the supermarket.

Surprisingly many small municipalities have bothered to apply to become towns here in Finland even though they have no real town centres, just houses cluttered together in between the pastures of the farmlands. No real harm there but than name town just seems a bit off here taken in consideration.

The absolute highlight of the weekend must have been the big advertisement for waterproof tea-bags that we saw passing by in our car. At least these teabags are bound to preserve the aroma and flavour of the tea in the teabags, and as they are waterproof none of it gets into the hot water the teabags are to be soaked in. So what's the use of the waterproof bags? I have no idea, except maybe you can re-use of the unused teabags?

Then there are the dishwasher tablets with a soluble plastic wrapping, that now has been introduced on the market. What is the use of the plastic wrapping as it is soluble in water? What do they protect the dishwasher tablets of, getting wet as you do not need to remove the wrapping when loading them into the dishwasher?!?

Problems washing

Washing your own mats and carpets is one thing people still tend to do and it is usually done by scrubbing your mats by hand with a brush using liquid soap and when warm and sunny weather hits most of the municipal washing places tend to be very crowded and people waiting in line for their turn to wash. The reason for washing when the sun is out is that your washables dry quicker than they would otherwise do. Instead of transporting them wet to your home to dry you can spend some more time gossiping and socializing, meet old friends and perhaps even make new ones.

The washing sites are also places to share all gossip so if you want to be well informed this is the place to keep updated on the local gossip as nobody wants to sit at the hairdresser’s anyway when it is hot.

This is all nice but recently the washing basins have been stolen in many sites around the country as the aluminium the basins are made of is an attractive and costly scrap metal and washing has had to be postponed to later date when new basins have arrived.

School is to begin next week so some school books had to be purchased as usual and are they expensive! And every year the teachers tend to choose new books so you always end up with having to buy new ones every year instead of inheriting them from your siblings. Guess it is good as the teachers then do not get as easily bored with having the same old routine every year but they have to keep up with their teachings constantly updating their knowledge.

The bad thing though is to get the books “out of their baby shoes” getting rid of all the faults and mistakes in the first edition and of course these books we had to buy were of the first not yet tried edition.

So another hot day was spent in town instead of just relaxing which I would have preferred.

In need of a drink

The Coca Cola company intends to use less water in their manufacturing processes and are currently using, 290 millions of litres of water every year. The company is said to begin adding vitamins to mineral water and is donating 15 million Euros to the WWF which is not a bad idea, I think

Anyway, some days just are meant to be a waste of time, like today for instance. Travelling 30 kms by bus out somewhere in the bush, sit around waiting for a couple of hours as people do not keep their appointments, then back the same 30 kms in a bus driven by a chauffeur that who does not know how to turn the air-condition on until almost back in town. Good I needed a drink, and a drink of water I mean in this case.

Water is one thing that surely is needed right now in this heat wave that has currently struck Finland and as it gets a bit tedious to always just drink water maybe a Coke or two might slip down too.

Don't forget to shower

Greenpeace have for a couple of days had an action against the working conditions and security at Olkiluoto at the construction site of the newest nuclear power plant in Finland. Greenpeace is concerned about the tight timetables of getting the plant built on the cost of the security for the workers and the activists have been hanging up in a crane on the building site in order to protest.

Apart from global warming and climate change there is great concern about the situation of the Baltic Sea becoming more and more polluted with the sea life threatening to disappear completely. Especially bad is the situation of the Finnish Gulf with a lot of waste and sewage water from big cities in non-EU countries being let out into the sea and the southern Baltic Sea with the newly joined but heavily industrialized but less environmentally aware EU countries.

All the countries around the Baltic Sea add more or less to the pollution of the water with artificial fertilizers and pesticides used in the agriculture and the presence of the poisonous blue algae is here to stay. In the most recent gathering by specialist concerned about the condition of the Baltic Sea if the waste water from big cities first were cleaned instead of just poured out into the sea. For many years this has been a great nuisance and nowadays there are algae blooming in many lakes as well being a health hazard if you are not aware of it.

The water temperatures in many lakes here in Finland are unusually warm for being this time of the summer and we might be having the record year of algae blooming at hand this summer so make sure you have a shower after you have been for a swim in the Baltic Sea or in the lakes.

National aerial day

Heavy rain has been causing trouble in the capital area as well as around the country in general. Cellars have been flooded and water coming in thought the rooftops, which I think is odd as the houses are at least supposed to have been built to last cold winters and loads of snow on the roofs, and snow is water frozen into snow crystals.

A thunderbolt had struck in the antennae that broadcasted digital TV to the eastern parts of Finland. And today has been the national antennae day here in Finland. People are encouraged to check their aerials in order to know if they are correctly aligned with the new digital antennaes and if the broadcasts are correctly received without interference.

So better check your aerials before august and also on the Net to see if the area where you are living is covered or in the shadow.

Having a bad trip

The problems with seabirds continue and now in the vicinity of Kokkola 50 dead gulls were found lying dead on a field. The found dead birds were common and black headed gulls, and both are protected species and poisoning is suspected to be the reason of their deaths. Well, another reason might be the avian flu, but I doubt that as they are not migrating birds. Wonder when the poultry is allowed outdoors again?

Anyway, I was actually going to write about this friend of mine who got this new medication to try. Her medication was to increase the pain level as she suffers from fibromyalgia and so it did. But she did not sleep for weeks, kept on fainting due to low blood-pressure and lost her appetite and almost 10 lbs of weight while the side-effects were supposed to be weight-gain and tiredness. Well these are things you can still live with, especially if you have more weight than you need but the psychological effects of the drug were quite remarkable. Being under the influence of this medication she filed for divorce from her second husband quit her job and began looking for as well a new job and an apartment of her own. She was also planning to send her children to live their father and signing the custody of her children over to her ex-husband from having always being the single custodian. She was not even interested in TV-shopping when using this medication, which is one of her passions in life.

A sure sign of summer’s arrival is when the melting snow causes the water levels in the rivers to raise, an annual happening at about this time every year and always in the same places, like in the Kittilä region now with some roads being in danger to be closed due to the water levels. I have never lived in the country so that the river has flooded my house, but I would get annoyed and tired of it happening every year and have moved somewhere else. And if it happens every year, well guess the insurance companies get tired of paying for lost and ruined property. The insurance companies here in Finland are already as it is very hard to get to pay for anything. The normal routine is to deny everything in the first run without any consent and if you persist about your rightful claim you might get some money in the end.

Guess there is no insurance company that pays you anything if you ruin your own life when being on the wrong medication and having a bad trip.

Lucky unluck

The weather has been real nice so we went for a walk, which I now regret very much. Being accident prone and enjoying photographing is not a very good combination. As the spring flowers are beginning to bloom among the last year’s dead grass I just had to take some photos resulting in me falling out in the rough. So now my wounded knee is aching again. And of course it always is the same knee I already injured in a skiing accident 20 years ago.

Coming home I just discovered that the kitchen sink had clogged, and I strongly suspect the porridge maker for this, so I had to ring the service guy.

Clog was fixed in two hours time by some super solvent poisonous substance, at the same time spreading all over the cupboard as well. So the service guy found out that he had no new replace packing for the sink. Monday they’ll come with a new one so now we have to live with the water seeping from under the sink until then.

And all this time with the dustbin on the kitchen floor instead of in the cupboard instead of the worse dustbin being flooded in the cupboard and all of it running over the floor. That would have been some serious cleaning to do; now it is just the sink cupboard. What luck nobody is coming for dinner or anything today, so I have to make special arrangements, and that we were invited over to some friends tomorrow so I don’t have to look at it.

One good thing though, I have a good excuse for not doing anything again, so somebody else will be cleaning, and were not talking about the just washing the burnt pot anymore.

Good luck for me, unluck for the porridge maker.

Breaking ice

A great controversy has been raised by the eastern neighbour when a nuclear icebreaker was tested in the Baltic Sea without the consent of neighbouring countries, what if anything would have gone wrong?

The same neighbour also has huge resources of gas and oil and of course wants to make money on them; they are planning to construct a gas pipeline on the bottom of the Baltic Sea passing close to several neighbouring countries all the way to Germany.

As the export of gas and oil through the Finnish gulf and the Baltic Sea is expanding, the concerns of polluting the sea and coastal areas should any accidents happen to tankers or the planned pipeline, and several countries are now trying to figure out what is going on.

Anyway, the sun is shining, and heat records have been broken in Finland. It has never been this warm before in the month of March, last record was from 1945 with a 16 degrees Celsius, and yesterday we had 17,5 degrees and the ices of the lakes are just melting away.

I can’t help thinking about it as a friend of my dear spouse announced at a dinner last weekend that he was going fishing on the ice next Saturday. Is this really Russian roulette the Finnish way?