Thread Saturday

Yes, today is Easter Saturday, here called “Thread Saturday”. Why?!? I have not got the slightest idea.

Today is just an ordinary Saturday and the shops are open as normal and we had planned to go for a walk and window shopping in the city centre… but with the cold northern wind that has been blowing now for almost a week has not yet shown any signs of stopping, we decided to stay at home and just be. And guess most of the day, at least mine, will be spent cooking our Easter meal today.

Hmm…a thread, does this have anything to do with loosing the thread in the conversation, or your own thoughts?

So if Jesus was crucified and died on Good Friday after having been betrayed after his last supper on Thursday and as he is to rise after three days, showing himself to his apostles, when was he buried, on the Friday or the day after?

If he dies on Friday and is buried the same day, well then the second Easter day is when he rose from the dead. So why do we then celebrate the first Easter day?!?

I mean today, as it really seems to have no more importance than having a long weekend with four days off work.
Enough of this, I better get on with the cooking!

Looong Friday

Well, today is Good Friday, here in Finland called “Long Friday” or should it be “Looong Friday”?

According to the old tradition you were not allowed to enjoy yourself and certainly not to smile with your teeth showing today. And all this to join Jesus in his pains when he some 2000 years ago, well guess he dies in his thirties, so sometime 1970 years ago really, carried the cross on Via Dolorosa and got crucified.

Anyway, still today this is one of the days the whole country really shuts down and is quiet. You are not supposed to be visiting or have parties, and the neighbours that are either not Christian or too young to care consider or respect anything had a party that went on to the early hours. So it really was a long Friday, it felt like it would never come to an end.

The music went on for hours until the early morning, and so did the shouting on the balcony.

Even having a party on Easter Thursday, which here is called “Busy Thursday” would have been easier to accept, anyway, the noise way not bothering really until their balcony door was opened for going smoking outdoors smoking, and having had a couple of drinks you tend to talk a bit louder than really needed.

One more summit, and this time a major summit took place today about what to do about global warming, and according to the information I have it was a long one, so maybe the name “Long Friday” would be appropriate.

So we had just fish to celebrate the end of lent and fasting, which we did not really do, but to even more enjoy the Easter food tomorrow. Prawn-cocktail as starters, poached salmon with asparagus and sauce Hollandaise and a mousse au chocolat noir as dessert. And this really is according to all the rules of Lent, even the most puritan Roman Catholic or Greek Orthodox could have eaten this on Good Friday.

75th anniversary

In the 1900’s the Finnish government tried to influence on people’s drinking habits by alcohol rationing, with it only resulting in illegally distilled, and too often impure, alcohol and bootlegging of the same. The rationing finally ended and alcohol was let free with it today being 75 years since when the first Finnish Alko shops opened.

Funny, all these attempts by “Big Brother” in different civilizations and countries trying to watch the whereabouts and doings of citizens, and it’s been going on ever since the beginning of mankind.

I guess it will be easier in the modern society with easy accessibility to mobile-phones, the Internet, credit cards, GPS tracking of cars etc. How long will it take before we all get a microchip inserted into us at birth so “Big Brother” knows where we are at all times like in the X-Files?

Maybe this would have been useful to the Finnish ministry of trade and industry when investigating the illegal search and test drilling of uranium here in Finland done by a foreign company last summer in the vicinity of, and in if I have not got it completely wrong, a national park.

There are rumours that this is the biggest source of Uranium in Europe. Lots of money to make maybe, but with what costs as being hazardous to the surroundings, the environment and nature itself by opening the ground by mining it and making it radioactive all over, the material was not rich enough to use just piled in heaps in open air (?), or the final disposal of the waste after being used in a reactor...

Anyway, happy 75th birthday Alko, the only licensed shop to sell booze in Finland!

And I better get going if I want to get any wine with the roast of lamb on Easter Sunday as today is the last day Alko is open until Tuesday after the holidays.

Coca or Cola?

A human rights organisation is accusing several European countries of having granted asylum to people suspected of having committed genocide in the 1990's in Rwanda.

Here, with Finland being one of the countries accused of protecting criminals against human rights, the officials state that there is currently only one Rwandan living in Finland and the conditions of a second one is investigated to see if asylum can be granted.

How hard is it to prove anything if you have no papers, and of course any legal documents can be stolen or lost when in war zones, or thrown away on purpose for that matter, not forgetting to mention about forging passports and driver’s licenses. How many people are there living just in little Finland with false identities, and no matter of what ever reason it may be?

Anyway, I just heard that the country of Colombia is considering naming the coca-bush, from which you extract cocaine, as their heritage plant…which would mean that the soft drink Coca Cola probably would have to change the name.

Imagine the world without Coca- Cola…I mean the name has been Coca Cola for what, more than a century now? And must be one of the best known brands, if the not THE brand in the world!

By the way, did not Coca Cola contain some cocaine in original version, in the beginning?

Changing models

What is the 7 year itch? And when is it to occur? Is it the year before you have been married 7 years or is it the year after you were married? How do you count the seven years, does this reoccur every 7 years in your marriage or relationship? Does the 7 years count from when you first met and began dating, before you even were married? Or does it count from when you began going steady, or moved in together?

What is that “itch” then? Someone told me when I asked that if you have survived in your relationship for 7 years then you are in the safe, but many marriages dissolve even after that, after 20 years of marriage or more.

I know the cells in our bodies are renewed every 7 years; does this have anything to do with it?
That we want something new again as our bodies are new and refreshed…even though as we are just as fat as we were before all the cells were renewed.

Or is it spring doing it again, waking us up? With more light, the sun shining you feel better and begin to watch around you in a different way, some kind of awakening after the winter cold and you all of a sudden notice all the people around you in the sunshine, see a nice looking person, or someone is just being nice to you and there you go.

You fall in love again, and have a little fling and just carry on afterwards like nothing ever happened.

Or is the 7 year itch is just an excuse to tell your spouse that you are fed up with him (or her for that matter depending on your own sex of course), and are changing into a newer and less used model?

Sometimes I hope it was that easy to change the off-spring as well into a nicer model, one that is easier to handle, maintain and does what you tell them to do!

Music on a pike’s jaw

The Finns have an epic of their own, The Kalevala that is quite unique in the world as there is no creation story similar to it, as all the other original creation stories told around the world resemble each other in some ways.

Anyway, in the Kalevala there are all the tales as poems about how earth was created is and so on. In it the head character, Väinämöinen creates an instrument called the Kantele out of the jaw of a pike fish, stringing it up and playing music on it and singing.

The Kantele is still used and played at here in Finland but today it is not anymore made out of the pikes jaws, they are more like flat wooden boxes lying on tables with lots of strings and played traditional Finnish music on. The songs have normally been traditional poems and tales that have been sung for centuries, but I just recently found out that it is not quite as uncommon as I had thought.

There are actually classes at the conservatory to take, they do give lessons in playing the Kantele, and you can even get a degree in playing it. Last week I accidentally met a person that plays the Kantele, a lady that studies the art of playing it as well as gives lessons at the conservatory. She writes her own new contemporary songs to play on the Kantele and restores antique Kantele instruments ones as a hobby. Wow!

So Kantele is not only history, it still is going strong in contemporary life here in Finland.

Telling lies or getting candy?

Today is on very sad combination of traditions occurring on the same day here in Finland.

Firstly we have April fool’s day and then it is also Palm Sunday, the Sunday before Easter. April fool’s day most people know what it is, the general idea is to tell a lie making people believe what you said is true but the Palm Sunday tradition here in Finland is probably more unknown.

What they do is kind of similar to like the trick or treat on Halloween’s, except the trick part missing totally. The kids dress them selves up as “Easter witches” and spend the day going from door to door, reciting a little poem wishing happiness and good health for the coming year in the house, giving away Palm branches, which here in Finland has been replaced by decorated branches of birch, or willow with catkins on, receiving candy and treats in return from the ones who “are home” or open their doors. I can somehow understand the fun of it, at least for the kids getting more sweets than usual, but with all the bad ideas in minds of people of today, well something might go terribly wrong.

Anyway, yesterday must have been one of the busiest days of the year in all the candy stores and supermarkets, and a good excuse for anyone with a sweet tooth to buy some extra candy to them selves.

So which tradition is the one most probable to hit you first?

One of the off-spring telling you a big lie, and all of them being teenagers there are bigger chances they might actually tell you something that is true, getting away with it with you not getting angry as you believe it is a lie, or the neighbour's kids ringing on your door bell 6 am a Sunday morning?