Tucked in a corner, apparently hiding from the view is the granite less appealing thing that I discovered by chance. It looked quite uninteresting while I was approaching it but when I saw the title (“Chair with a view“) and I realized what it was, I had to climbed up and look around from up there and the view was great. Moreover I really felt as an Emperor for a moment and I thought at the “Throne of Earthly Kings” in Greenwich university that I always admired when I was passing by there (despite the big question mark sculpture that was there before was a better portrait of my mental state in London).

Finally I went up nearby where I left the bike to see the remaining pieces that are quite modern and abstract thus not really my cup of tea. However the “Endangered” had and interesting look and it definitely look like a fossilized condor. The red-grey streaked granite head contrasting with the black of the body suited the piece. In addition the head part also have a remarkably natural eye mark that I believe inspired this piece. “Evil Thoughts” is an interesting crude took on modern society (I think) with a pop-art edge that is interesting but the lighting was bad at this time of the day. The other pieces where very modern and thus I report only the title of one of them: “Hole” by Reika.

On my way out from the garden I just realized that I missed a piece, literally I stepped into it before I saw it. It is probably the more linked to nature and reality of the pieces, the title “Earth’s Heavenly Senses” says it all and the idea is quite good and well performed. It made me a bit unease when I looked at it element by element (especially the hear and the nose), but looking back at it in its entirety it is quite fascinating. I guessed this is one of the piece most suited to several visit at different time to shoot all the textures and shadows and shapes possible.

So lets start with the bureaucracy news. After 3 months I am still waiting to receive the paper work from the police, thus I am still registered as resident in London where I guess all my documents ends up…not a big deal, I only received twice something there in the past 4 years.

Bank account: same rules apply as in England despite all the good story heard about this issue from the locals. First the bank employee do not thrust you, I guess on the basis that you are not a Finn, but I can understand that. Anyway, the fact that I have a house, a car and a car permit to park by my house should be a good start, but they do not even let you go as far to tell them. Apparently the first rule followed is the reason of presence in Finland. You have to fall into one of 2 categories: a student (with certification from the learning institutio) or a worker (with certification from the employer). Now I can go on for ages on how many other categories should be put into consideration but I don’t wanna even bother so this is the fact as it is, period.

The Punavuoren Putiikki opened, it is in full swing and it also already belong to the Design District circuit. After my first step into the “Boutique Little Helper” (i.e. painting walls, scrabbing floor and moving furniture around) position, I started to get on the ladder…incredibly enough I already accomplish to get the position of Visual Merchandiser expert (that for who doesn’t know, it is the posh name for “the person who dress the windows”) and I am already at two window displays. First was a “Wedding” theme to show the bridal lingerie and accessories, second (and current) is “Circus” as Hanna Haavikko‘s new collection is inspired by the biggest show in the world…and to be fair was also much easier to visualize in my mind than the Finnish Tango inspiration for Tyra Therman‘s new outstanding underwear collection entitled Tango Finlandia.

I also managed to start my career as fashion accessories “designer” by selling my first broach to a very happy customer. Moreover I am the (semi)official photographer for the shop and the products.

I got to know better some of the Burlesque scene characters around by attending a couple more events in which I was the assistant for Miranda Lingerie.

Panama Party has been as usual a success, you know what I am speaking about bloggy, the yearly event organized by T’s mother staging entertainment, lovely atmosphere and the always great Play-Back competition…I will come back to this with pics and clips as soon as I get them. Laugh a-plenty are guaranteed.

The most unexpected thing was that I got interested in photography, so I started to read books on the issue (and I am still at the level of not understanding 2/3 of the words) hoping to have time to learn to use the SLR camera and help T in some of her photoshoots. Instead as soon as I was able to handheld the camera I found myself to act as a pro and having to take the shoot for the Dimun autumn collection with a professional model and so on. I was a bit nervous but hey I did my best and I have to say I learn a lot from the errors and next time I will be more aware. Anyway I think some of the post-production pics are quite good  for a first attempt

Breakthrough moment was also the discovery of the Finnish Library system. The libraries here are as well organized as I have never suspected them to be and so user friendly that is impossible not to love them. Not only they have 10 or so libraries in Helsinki (all linked) each one more specialized in a certain subject, so you have to pick your choice to start with, but you can also reserve a book and having it brought to your nearest library at a very fair small cost, be notify when the book is ready for picking up and enjoy. Library here are very comfortable places, spacious and pack with goodies and books in all languages, you can use computers, read books, magazines…and all of them have a HUGE collection of comics and mangas to read through on a rainy day or to take home and enjoy on the sofa.

The first library I visited was the one that impressed me the most is in fact the audio/video library…you can select from a great collection of CDs and DVDs and they also have some consolle games…such a thing is the best ever deterrent for video piracy I have ever experienced. I am finding the lack of the dozens of people trying to sell me pirate DVDs at the shop exits, bus stops, tube stops and so on in either London or Rome or wherever else nowadays, very refreshing and relaxing! Plus the fact that I can leave the books at any of the library to be brought back where they belong (at no charge) is a great PLUS!!!

Another one of the news that I have forgot to tell you Bloggy is that I have found a job position and I will soon start at one of the University campuses (so I will be able to attend a good Finnish course and have a cheap and good gym to shake my very lazy past few year…s).

I guess that with this, my confused update is done and I will come back with details and more events I forgot soon.

Åland, the wonderful island of Ahvenanmaa. This is a very strange and charming place. Firstly I have to tell you that the trip was my first 2CV trip ever. We met with Tyra and her mother in Kirkkonummi after having packed Priscilla with all the camping gear and got rid of the back seats. From there we headed to Turku where we would have embarked on the ferry boat to go to the island. The trip was enjoyable and full of expectation. Tyra and I in Priscilla and Tyra’s mum and Helli in…wait what is it call…ah nowadays it is Perkkele (Tyra’s mother partner 2CV) renamed after the long list of problems that it had lately.

Being on the Ferry brought me back to my first “cruise” between Helsinki and Stockholm overtaken several years ago with my good friend Katy. The big ferry full of youngster heading for a fun time to spend in the disco trying to score, and the thousands of people ready to splash money to get the duty-free products (mainly cosmetics and alcohol).

The trip went quite well, we arrived in Mariehamn, the island’s main city at around 1:00 am. We then headed towards our camping destination. Obviously we got lost and endure a little detour (what in my old university slang was known as a Peach-circle), and then finally arrived at our host’s house. The first night we slept inside and from the day after we camped in the garden. The schedule for the trip was to work in the morning to renew a little house that Tyra’s mother has been given as free use by our host and going to visit the place and some of the family friends in the afternoons and eves.

First visit planned was to a museum-house in the inland where one of Tyra’s friend take care of the Swedish semi-pro theater, they stage all performances in a shed. This was the first time that I truly understand the strange duality of the Finnish island of Åland. In fact despite Åland is a fully Finnish region the Ålander do not speak Finnish, sometime in the past the Fin-Swed stronghold decided to swap to Swedish and tried to become part of Sweden. Unfortunately for them, Sweden rejected the proposal as Åland strongly need a governmental support as it is not self-sufficient, thus the Sweds turned down the request because the cost to keep it up were and still are high. Nonetheless, the language was already changed and they did not go back to Finnish. This has caused a strange loop, as Tyra’s mum was explain me, now they reached a point were some of the families are split as part of the relatives still living in mainland Finland and their relatives in the island are not able to communicate anymore. This is a shame especially because in some instances there are grandparents that are unable to speak with their grandchildren. But enough with the odd duality of the place.

The staged theater act was quite interesting and some of the scenes full of pathos thanks to a very eye catching scenography. I could not obviously understand a single word but that hasn’t been a big problem. After the performance I had the chance to have a guided tour of the big farmhouse-museum. The place it is so charming, all the rooms have been redecorated mainly by Tyra’s mum some years ago using the ancient techniques that the original decorator would have used. The story of the place is also tint of tragedy. During a Christmas day several years ago the all house burned down and luckily enough the place was well insured, so that they have been able to rebuild it. Unfortunately all the decor was gone but for some pics retained in photo-books of people who lived there and moved out previously. For this reason Tyra’s mother was called and she copied and reinstate the full glory of all the rooms following the pictures provided. She did a hell of a good job, where wall paper was required, she developed the pattern and send it to a specialist that hand painted a new batch of wall paper for every single room, and she painted all the rest of the house herself. The surveyor of the place is a lovely anglo-Aland lady that is so welcoming and warm-hearted that I think is impossible to dislike. She invited us for supper at her summer/sauna house by the sea. The summer house is placed in a heaven on earth corner. We arrived driving through the country and then a short drive through the woodland rich in pine trees and soft ground. In less than 20 minutes we arrived from the heart of the inland to the edge of the island. When we parked the car I was not yet able to see the breath-taking view. One minute after, when we stepped over the wooden floor of the summer cottage I was speachless. The house sit as on the cross between the woodlands and the rocky shore that jump into the Baltic sea. No pics taken with my little digital camera will be able to render the real power of the place. We had a lovely dinner with the hosts (funny enough they are food experts and I found myself with my hands on several Coop products from my beloved country) and then we took turn in the sauna. It was gorgeous, the sauna room has glass windows overlooking the sea so that you can totally relax and enjoy the view. Needless to say we got out of the sauna, walked to the edge of the rocks and jump in the open sea…as usual my love for unusual things and my naive fear of unknown and dark waters made me jump in with such nervousness that mine wasn’t more than a dip and a rush to get out of the sea as soon as possible. So fast I was that I got a bruised knee in the process. It is also true that the extremely cold water on the very hot skin from the sauna effect, would have not allow me to stay a second longer in the open sea without serious possibilities of a heart attack, so there you go, I have been in the water as long as Tyra did endure herself (so much for the “local”girl). I will always remember this particular sauna experience along with my wintery lappish one and I hope I will be able to enjoy them again as soon as possible.

The following days we kept working and we visited the city of Mariehamn that had an uncommonly number of overseas visitors, thanks to the fact that we arrived at the same time of the starting of the Natwest Islands game XIII, so we were surrounded by the teams of the Shetlands, Isle of Man (that for me will remain the island that goes places), Menorca, Jersey, Cayman island and Bermuda for some example. Oh and the quite numerous Gibraltar team (that sounds as odd as Israel taking part in the Eurovision…is Gibraltar an island?!?I didn’t recall this piece of information). We went to sun bath and “dip” in several beaches. Interestingly all the sandy (family orientated) beaches comes with a very long slow deepening water front, so slow that you have to walk 200m to get to water that reach your knees/thigh, by that time the water was so cold for me that I would not have venture further to see the cliff marking the end of the island and the start of the open sea. Strange is also the fact that apparantly for some practical reason all these places have been carpeted, every there ant then you can see wrinkles coming out in the underwater floor of a sort of canvas that goes on and on. It is probably the system they have used to get the sandy beaches or to get a child friendly water front, somehow it reamins a funny mystery to me on how, why and who has thought such a strategy. But there you are, this is briefly my visit to Åland and some of the pics I have taken.

I am currently packing for my first real camping experience with Priscilla , Tyra and her mother. The 5 days trip will bring me to Åland (or Finnishly known as Ahvenanmaa). I don’t know a lot about it except for the excitement for the place transpiring in Tyra’s words whenever she called me from there, so I am looking forward to it. It is true as well that I am looking forward for the real camping experience. It is…hmmm…well lets not get too precise on this I think it is fair to say that my memory goes back to more than 10 but still less than 20 years ago. I have been working in a camping site as bar waiter for three summers and lived part-time on site in the caravan/tent facilities provided. It is also true that there I had a bed and I have been going home every 2 days maximum as I have been a spoiled and house oriented boy. Thus I want to see how I will enjoy the putting up tent, sleeping-bag usage, looking up at the “night” sky thing.  We will also have to test our new bright orange/yellow tent and I will endure the ultimate test, a long drive in Priscilla. So keep looking out for the next post with ample (hopefully) photographic reportage and news.

By the way, I am still awaiting the letter from the police to be able to proceed with the documentation for the residency change. Therefore I am still a kind of no-land visitor of the Nordic region. However, I guess they had enough documentation as they would have had contacted us already if that was the case.

But now I have to get back to packing otherwise I will still be at stage 1 when Tyra’ll be back and she will be quite annoyed by the thing. So speak you soon.

Well enough of the male-appreciation for bikinis and models, I guess it is an obvious thing.

Anyway, the Ophelia market has been interesting, but the great pleasure came from attending the ¨ From Helsinki to Honolulu via Hysteria ¨soiree on a boat in Helsinki (what a surprise). We arrived and set-up the table and we already got the fun part of getting to know the performers before and during make-up session. The most interesting part for me was that a group of performers came from the States so there was a lot of English spoken as a result. The 3 crew members of the Diamond Daggers with their bearded lady were very amusing, and really good customers , their great feature was a very good choreography and cheekiness. The classy and chick Miss Lucky Penny was a breath of old school with her beautiful dresses and the impeccable demure and make-up. But the great great and I add great stage presence of Kitten on the Keys and her Goldielocks style hair paired to the giggling quirky voice as co-hostess of the international act was hilarious. Her mutty double entendre songs were great and her attitude so impeccably un-polite but without sounding so, very English style. Baroness Eva von Slut was a classic number, nothing to say about that. The Finns didn’t lack in attitude and quality either, the Itty Bitty Tease cabaret were phenomenal with their Old Western movie inspired number, and the “alternative” use of the nipple-tassels will stay in my memory for loooong time my dear Delicious Cherry De Licious. Sally vanilla was a strong performer, Kiki Hawaiji such a refreshing and happy go lucky character. The furious pirate Bettie Blackheart was a power of nature and she was wearing the most beautiful performance gloves ever (the fact that Tyra made them it has nothing to do with my impartial judgement ;p ). Well in the end that was the best of the 2 events I worked at, the fact that we closed the stand to attend the show made it much more fun and enjoyable than the Ophelia market to me. If we add the discovery of the “Burlesque Karaoke”  staged by the co-host and incredible Lola Vanilla ,who I could not forget to mention, and my recruitment in a Newcomers-Night show as “pick-up Italian guy” for a comedy Finnish duo (that it will be in October) on the solely premises that I can speak Italian and I am quite shameless (Filian will be ecstatic I guess) I can call it a night that deserve special mention.

Oh but now that I think about it…I can exploit the massive potential of wordpress and delight you with a small clip of the great Kitten on the Keys performing her song “Bus song”:

So we packed the pieces and we transferred them to the Atelier where the course was held (I will speak about the teacher/artist etc in a later post). Jenni was painting a tool-box and Tyra a “garden disco-pigeon” (as it was renamed after the first day of work, despite it is a flamingo and not a pigeon at all) for the balcony garden.

I have forgotten to take pics of the pieces at day 0 so you will have to thrust me when I tell you that I have started from scratch and the table and chest were unpainted. After some deliberation on the background colour for the coffee table Tyra and I decided for a turquoise to be then decorated with an art-nouveau pattern in green shades and gold. At day 1 (4 hours a day) the background of the coffee table was finished with acrylic colour paint, while the chest laid untouched in a corner of the room .

Day 2 had me focusing on the chest and that was much harder as I had to sand paper it before, clean it and decide on the colour all on my own as Tyra was not there and the chest was totally my project. As maybe you know green is my colour and I decided for a dark green. The green ended up not so dark as I was expecting but that was ok as I decided along with the teacher to decorate it with a gradient colour scheme going from a darker to a lighter shade of green using an oil colour technique . Luckily day 3 saw the colour of the chest going darker during the drying up and I was so happy about the result obtained already. The colour went powdery and I felt very compelled to leave it like that more than going through with the oil painting decoration and likely to ruin the achieved result. For who doesn’t know oil painting a piece of furniture is hell and it should be done only by skilled and prepared people. Anyway I had to apply first a layer of oil. After this step that took the most of the 4 hours, the oil needed to dry and in the spare-time I started to think about the pattern for the coffee table. Next I started to prepare a mix of oil colours to darken the chest and give the gradient. Mixing oil colours is a fine art that I haven’t mastered yet. After drama and panick during the first attempts to paint it I got a grasp on the technique and the final result at this point is in the following pics On day 4 Tyra was back and so I could finish the painting of the chest while she draw the final draft of the pattern for the coffee table and transferred it on the top. Thus when I was able to work with her on the final part of the decoration, she had already started painting with the darker shade of green and we finished the main bulk of the lines on that day . Despite in the original idea the chest was also suppose to have a “neo-modern” pattern in silver, time constraints left the gradient as final result but I am quite happy with that. Also the table was suppose to get a centre piece of fine art (eheh) but again, day 5 went very fast and I was barely in time to finish the pattern that you can see (loosing my eyesight in the process of filling the small lines and trying to be as precise as possible). Anyway, the pieces can undergo a second course and be finished one day if I will feel the need for it. I am quite content with the results and the final correction made under supervision of the teacher made all the difference to the pattern on the table that you can see in its final version with the red and gold decoration. All in all it has been a great experience and I have had a cracking time with some very sweet Finns attending the course and being very kind to me as well. We had crisis and drama moments with Jenni and we laughed our socks off in several occasions. I would strongly recommend an “art attack” as therapeutic regimen or just as a relaxing and very rewarding adventure and isn’t the table just very nice indeed?! Moreover, I am sure that the table will fit perfectly in our living room and it will be a piece of conversation that I will always be proud of despite the lack of the center decoration that I had in mind.

But I have to start from somewhere to account for the last 10 days.

First of all, I finally dealt with all the police formalities, I had to go there twice to provide all the documents they have requested to prove that I am able to sustain myself and I have lived with my girl-friend for at least 2 years. We were a bit anxious as neither of us is a skilled ‘keeper of important papers’ and we had only some scattered bank statements that we both received at my address in London, but the guy yesterday seemed very relaxed. Tyra was telling him “We have this document and this, oh and if you need more we have this..” and his reply was “I think this is ok, we will contact you if we need more data” so she went on “but you know we have also this bill here and this thing too” and very nicely he replyied again “I think this is ok, we will contact you if we need more data“…and finally at the last attempt of Tyra being over-zealous he said “I think we have proves that indicate you have lived together, dates are not of a major importance at this point, and again we will get in contact if we need more information” and off we went.

So this said, I should have finished for now with the documentation and hopefully I will receive the paper that I have to provide to the Maistratti that I need to go to the Social services office and finally to the Italian Consulate to get the updated Finnish residency <phew>.

Anyway, changing subject, one of the only photographic documented events of the last 10 days is the fact that I have a vegetable patch!!! It is probably since my 2nd here at high school that I haven’t owned a vegetable allotment. It is so nice to be back in contact with mother Nature. As you know Tyra’s mother lives in the forest and they own some land too so she kindly provided us with some to grow vegetables . I went there on sunday and we prepared the field and planted onions and beans . That was great fun, and a good reminder of why I was not the best suited farmer at my agricultural based school, my hands are poshier than my mind and they get blisters when I ask them to do some manual work. But hey there we go, now I have signed in for a day per week to go and take care of my crop, getting rid of weeds, looking after my little blossoms and hopefully having something worth harvesting. Considering the high price of fruit and vegetables here, everything is welcome.

I was very surprise when arrived at a suitable rock, not in use and just lapped by the waves, I found out that the soothing, calming effect that the sound of my own Mediterranean sea has on me was there, perfectly reproduced by the rythmic swinging and humming of the waves hitting the sea shore over and over again in a never-ending loop. I feel so relieved I finally live in a place where I don’t need to dream of the sea sounds, smell, breeze; that I don’t need to listen to the CDs reproducing a strange and unfamiliar pattern of waves breakign somewhere between a tropical beach and an echoing bath-tub in some cheap recording studio that do not belong to my memory. 

There I was, reading my Stephen Fry book, part of the present that my colleagues and friends in London gave me, listening to the waves and the music, relaxing and inhaling the freedom of a sunny day on the beach regardless the name of the water that was singing.