Poor Midsummer poetry

The Midsummer was celebrated during this weekend.
Most businesses like banks, shops and restaurants closed for the weekend by mid-Friday, and even the public transports were standing still until Midsummer Day’s afternoon when they traffic like it is Sunday. No shops are open until Sunday after the holidays. Many tourists wondered about the phenomenon visiting Helsinki during the weekend as most Finns had deserted the capital.

So what do the Finns do for their Midsummer celebration then?

No matter if you go to camping, boating or to your lodge, you just have to vanished somewhere out of town, outdoors into the great wilderness to enjoy the summer’s biggest festivity. At least the weather Gods were favourable and for first time in years the Midsummer festivities were celebrated in a warm, sunny weather in most parts of Finland.

Well, of course good food and drink are always a must, beer, pickled herring, fresh potatoes, barbequeing, fresh strawberries and then you are ready for some more serious celebrations.

The Midsummer bonfire. An old pagan custom that has survived into the modern day-living here in Finland.

The Midsummer bonfire is traditionally lit in the evening, preferably near the lakeside, in the never setting sunset to celebrate the season of light and also fertility. Midsummer night is also the night for the youngsters to pick seven flowers to keep under their pillows to dream about their future spouse…Whether this really works I do not know.

But in many places dances are also kept in the vicinity of the bonfires so you can enjoy the festivities even more to your own suiting, either join the dancers or just watch them go…collect your own flowers and sweet dreams.
Anyway, remarkably many babies are born in the month of March.

“A young maiden dancing with flowers in her hair,
with the handsome and rich young heir,
a Midsummer bonfire lit in the near,
March a new-born child will bear…”

I was never any good at writing poetry anyway...

The heat is on!

The celebrations of the annual graduations and schools finishing their work for the summer took place in hardly summery weather in beginning of June, and now the happy youngsters are granted sunny and hot weather up to round 30 degrees C. The Government are planning to establish a special office for warning of exceptionally hot weather. I wonder what good that will do?!?

I mean talking about heat-wave warnings, maybe a good idea but what good will it do in this country, where they hold the hottest world-championship competition in the world?!?

Can you already guess what I am talking about here?
Of course not.

Imagine, sauna, hot-hot-hot. Summer heat-wave hot-hot-hot.
And then you combine them together and there you go!

The World championships in sauna-bathing!

There actually is an annual World championship competition in sauna-bathing. It takes place here in Finland, of course, and takes place in the summer, of course. This year they are holding the 8th world-championships in beginning of august. I mean, this is taking things to the extremes again, sitting as long as possible in a very hot sauna in the summer…people are completely steaming hot and red when they come out!

Okay, here’s the funny part, it is actually not as stupid as it sounds, well maybe sitting for hours in the sauna to see who sits longest and stands most heat is, but having a steaming hot sauna-bath when it is hot is not such a stupid idea after all. I mean, you are in hotter air in the sauna than outside, so you feel like it is cooler when coming out of the sauna because of the heat you were in!
Same thing as having hot drinks in the sun actually makes you feel cooler, instead of drinking something icy cold and feeling even more hot and awkward afterwards.

So hey, the heat is on. We go sauna-bathing…You should try it too!

Finnish Parliament Centennial celebrations

The Finnish Parliament celebrated its’ centennial yesterday. Finland was the first country in the world to give both women and men equal right to vote for their representatives to the Parliament a hundred years ago. Yesterday the television was full of broadcasts of the celebrations. We were shown the Celebration session from the House of Parliament, the celebrations at the Opera and the festive buffet afterwards.

In the very first Finnish Parliament there were 19 women, how is that for equality between the sexes?!?

There is a female President in Finland, and she was re-elected in the last Presidential elections, and there are now 76 women in the Parliament.

And quite a progressive Parliament one century ago it indeed was, taken in concern that Finland by then was governed as an autonome part of the Russian Empire, to declare its’ independence at the time of the Russian Revolution in December 1917. Before that Finland was a part of the Swedish Kingdom for several hundreds of years until the war against Russia in 1809.

Now with almost a century of independence, I think the freedom has taken a few steps back since the Sufragettes straining for the right to vote with joining the EU. EU is growing too rapidly and has become too big a machinery to be a quick enough to keep up with the pace of modern life with all legislations and regulations to be carried out. Only good thing I have seen so far is when travelling abroad and not having to change the money into new currencies all the time.

Anyway, great turbulence was yesterday stirred up by one of the female members of Parliament by addressing her speech against the regressive politics in Russia and claiming that the Russian Duma has regressed back to the days of the Emperor. No reaction has yet been seen from the Russians but I expect it will come soon.

And maybe Lordi for President would not be such a bad idea after all?!?

Lordi on the Tango-market

The European song-contest winner, the heavy monster-rock-band Lordi is going to perform at the annual Tango-market, the Finnish Tango-vocalist contest in Seinäjoki this summer. Imagine all people gathering to hear Tango music and then comes heavy rock band Lordi. Is this the country of controversy or not?!?

Before entering the stage in Helsinki, or Hellsinki, as is the new spelling for the name of the capital on the t-shirts saying "Mr Lordi for President", the band asked for a peaceful participation from the audience when appearing on Market-square on Friday night, not on Senate’s Square as I mentioned before.

The members of the band seem to be quite down to earth, both guys and girl. They had also asked to be able to stay incognito and for the Media to not publish their real names or any photos of them, which Finnish gossip magazine Seiska did anyway. Now there is a petition collecting signatures against the pictures published by the magazine. I think it was quite cool by Lordi doing “Kiss” all over again.

That was magic, the members being able to be their own roadies without anyone knowing how anyone of them looked!

Mr Lordi himself has stated that his Finnish accent is incompatible with his made-up stage look, so he is not allowed to be photographed from the front when interviewed in Finnish. And quite frankly, it would seem a bit odd.

But I join everybody else in saying: “Hard, rock Hallelujah”!

Way to go Finland!
Winning for the first time in 40 years of participation in the European song-contest!

Hard, rock, Hallelujah!

Strange, that a Finnish band should go and win the European song-contest. It has been said that hell freezes over before a Finnish song wins the Eurovision song-contest. So we are now awaiting for hell to freeze over!

But how could Lordi not have won?!?

The BBC was broadcasting their song three times every half-hours the day after the semi-finals on the News as Lordi was sued as Satanists by some Greeks. Any artist would have paid millions to hit the News worldwide as they did, and unintentionally!

And are they really Satanists or is their song satanic?!? They do have another song named “Devil is a looser”, would they be Satanist singing that?!?
“Both angels and demons should join”, and “if you don’t join us, you can go to hell”…

Anyway, it was quite fun to watch the contest, for the first time for years, knowing that the Finnish female narrator had earlier stated that if Lordi makes it to the finals, she would do the speaking in just her bikinis…to the disappointment of all the male spectators she was not shown on TV.

Leaves me to wonder what she had promised to wear, or not to wear, if Lordi won, as she from the beginning was not at all positive about them getting points in the vote and winning. She kept on repeating “Oh, no! They can’t win!” Maybe she promised to wear just her bikinis all year around?!?
And that is not advisable with the weather in this country!

An old lady was interviewed live on radio last week about what she thought about Lordi. Well, her quick answer was: ”He must have done some serious drinking to look like he does!” Today, just two days after their victory, or rather just one day, they are already talking about naming a square after the band, imagine Lordi-square!

Anyway, every time when the Finns have achieved some success in sporting, like ice-hockey or something, the winning team is welcomed on Senator square in the middle of Helsinki with crowds of people gathering to see the heroes returning from the battle-grounds .

And these hard rocking monsters did not win by being half-naked. They were almost the only contestants that were fully clothed !

Low-fat sausages and light Ciders

The Finns are well informed and educated about health issues by the government so the food industry is making huge efforts to keep in pace with the latest trends in healthy food. For years it has been said that salt is bad for you so everything in the supermarkets are lightly salted. Not to forget to mention about Coke light and sodas with sweetener instead of sugar for keeping the calories down. Or the yoghurts with no added sugar and practically no fat at all!

Also fat has been banned and all the products are now low fat forgetting that there actually is good and bad fats! So people forget to eat salmon and other fish with unsaturated fats and eat low-fat sausages with saturated fat instead.

And talking about that, now that we are entering the high-season of bar-b-ques in the summer. Low-fat sausages for the grill of course, potato-salad also made with low-fat mayonnaise, but here comes the funny part, we do actually have light Ciders here. Yes, real Ciders with alcohol but with added sweetener instead of the sugar to keep the calories at a minimum. Actually they are not as bad as I make them sound, but it’s funny, I think.

The newest trend here and not yet a big hit, has been is the low-carb-diets that are just making their arrival. Some signs are already to see in the supermarkets. So instead of counting calories you leave out the carbohydrates to as little as possible to maintain or reduce your weight. Imagine what horror that is to a hostess to keep track of who is eating what for the moment hosting a dinner party instead of keeping in mind just the old, common food allergies?!? Some of my friends are now eating high protein foods forgetting about fibres and good fats. Is it not strange what influence the Media has on people?!? Anything on the TV or in the Newspapers must be true and you don’t have to think yourself at all.

We just had two weeks of lovely, warm sunny summer weather so the bar-b-ques have been going on steaming hot this time and now we’re back to snow! Well not quite here where I live, and the chances seeing cross-country skiers on the lakes is already gone for this year, maybe if I moved further up North for next year to make this dream of mine come true?!?

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?