My Rapid Descent into Orange Snobbery

Before we start with the news, I'd just like to say that oranges here in Finland are really good. They either come from Spain or Morocco. And they are YUMMY. SUPER YUMMY. And cheap. I paid .68€ for six big navel oranges (appelsiini in Finnish), and a similar price for eight Klementinni (that's Finnish for clementines). I have become obsessed - maybe partly because I'm getting a cold and my body is demanding water, vitamin C, and sugar, in a conveniently wrapped package that tastes DELICIOUS.

So the past few days have been really quite good. Friday evening was shaping up to be really boring - I couldn't find anyone to go out with and everybody I called had some lame excuse about why they didn't want to hang with me ("Kevin, you're creepy...and I only hang out with people who aren't obsessed with oranges" - ok it wasn't actually like that but sometimes I imagine that's what they were thinking). Anyway, I decided to just pick some random event from a "cultural events" calendar put out by the city and go by myself. I picked an "Indie Rock Nite" at Iliokivi, the bar in the student union at the university. It said that it started at 9 and that there were four bands. So I showed up at 10 and the place was deserted. Since I had nothing else to do, I grabbed a beer and sat down and thought about math (it was a surprisingly productive environment). Eventually the music started up, and as I kind of expected, the bands were mostly students and mostly pretty bad. But I did have one brief conversation with a Finn so I consider the night a victory. Eventually some other foriegn students showed up, and around 2 am we left. Most people lived in Kortepohja (a big dorm complex near the bar), and only myself and one Polish woman were staying elsewhere. She didn't want to walk home by herself, so I walked with her - but she had a very poor sense of direction and we ended up getting quite lost. Around 4 am I finally got home and pass out exhausted. I will never leave the house without a map again.

Anyway, Saturday I went shopping (see above regarding my orange feeding frenzie) and then met Lara (an Italian woman from Milan) for coffee to help with her English. It was a lot of fun! "I drink espresso" "I drank espresso" "I was drinking espresso" "I had drunk espresso" "I will drink espresso" "I will have drank espresso" etc. The most interesting part was trying to explain the phrase "in the meantime". Lara asked "What is 'mean' in 'meantime'" which quickly dissolved into a ridiculous discussion of the meaning of the word "mean".

Dinner Saturday night was beef stirfry. It was a little disappointing because my yellow pepper from a week ago had gone bad so the stirfry was 75% beef and 25% otherstuff. Mmmm...beef (gross!). Lara told me that some people were meeting at 9pm in the center to do "something". So I showed, and it turned out that we were going to a "indie-pop" concert. I was a little skeptical due to the night before's performance. However, this was a much bigger venue and a much better band - they were called Liekki which is "Flame" in English. They were *really* good, despite the fact that I had no idea what they were saying. It was really fun, but there was one disturbing element. Nobody was dancing! It had happened on Friday too - but then I thought is was just because nobody liked the music. But here clearly people really liked the music, but they just didn't want to move or anything! They just stood there. Very strange to me.

I've had a recent photography problem - I'm too self-conscious about taking photos. I don't bring my camera with me most places because I don't like taking pictures in front of people. Strange, huh? I feel like I'm stealing something when I take a picture. Especially if I'm taking pictures with people I don't know in them, even at a distance. Any advice on how to get over that? The result of all this is that I don't have any photos to show you of the concerts :(

Anyway, here is one photo I have managed to take lately: a winter time rugby game.