Home sweet home

Travelling is nice, but nothing beats sleeping in your own bed. Actually sleeping with one's husband in your own bed would beat that, but things keep getting better and better and that's going to happen tonight when Dragon gets home from his little trip. I'll write something more substantial about the trip a bit later, but now I've got more important things to write about.

Firstly just couple of things about the Kuukkeli awards. I can't speak for anyone else, but I think we did a good job with selecting worthy blogs to receive some recognition. Sure it's subjective list, it's my opinion and it's the judges' opinion - that's why we're called the judges. Yes, the awards could be done with just public voting - but that would be an entirely different thing then. It would be "the most popular" vote, not "the best" - best is always subjective. Think about the people deciding who's going to get the Nobels or the Finlandia award or the Oscars... I think the current system is good - people decide the shortlist and then there's a panel of judges who make the final selection. So we picked one blog outside of the list - so what? We did that last year too and it was hailed as bold but excellent move - this year it's suddenly somehow elitist and Helsinki-centric... For crying out loud - I don't even live in Europe, and I couldn't care less where other people live of blog from.

Anyway. Can't please them all, and that's that. At least I haven't got any nasty hatemail or deaththreats on the subject.

Actually I didn't mean to write about the awards at all, it just came out. What I consider more important, really, is gardening and I finally got united with my babies today when I picked up my lily bulbs from the post office. Bulbs are cute as buttons, and per instructions I planted them immediately - here's the glamorous photo taken by my dad to show you me in action. And of course today was the day when it started raining so I could maximise my gardening fun...

Gardening really requires patience - so little happens most of the time. I had a quick glimpse of the bulbs and now they are all tucked away again and I can only wait till I see them next time... They were sprouting a bit already so I don't think it's going to take that long for them to appear, but those tender first moments are just the best.

Home

Yay!

Chinatown

North America's oldest - and smallest - Chinatown is about one block in size. Cute in a way, I guess.

More English than England

This is the parlament house in Victoria, and it is indeed very English. The city is very interesting mix of British and North American culture. I feel at home here.

Wine! No, cider!

We wanted to stop by a winery, but it proved to be a bit difficult as they were well hidden. But we stumbled across a ciderworks and did a tour and got some tastings too. Excellent cider and friendly people.

Food

We've left Ucluelet and are in Port Alberni eating mussels and clams. Animal highlights today included a hummingbird, an eagle, some ostrich and a black bear!

The rainforest

We went for an evening walk on a trail leading trough the coastal rainforest. It's amazingly beautiful here.

Whale watching

Here's me and my mom about to embark on the seafari. Trip was fantastic, we saw sea lions, seals, an otter, eagles... But no whales. Apparently we're the unlucky 2% who don't - but to be honest it bothers me very little as it was otherwise such a great trip.

Misty beach

This is the view from our B&B - it's a bit misty now but they promised the weather would improve later on. Today's goal: see whales.

There already

The journey over the mountains and forests to Ucluelet was breathtaking. We stopped once and went to hug the age-old fir trees, truly humbling experience. Most of the trees were aroud 300 years old, but the eldest were up to 800. Anything you do or are seems pretty insignificant after that.

Nanaimo and beyond

We've rented a car, had lunch in an empty but quality restaurant, and are now heading towards the west coast of the island. I'm not driving so I think I'm going to take a nap.

Horseshoe Bay

Bus only took about twenty minutes to Horseshoe Bay - we're now on the ferry. I avoid ferries and boats if I can, it all comes from one time about 15 years ago when I was incredibly seasick on the Northern Sea. I would rather die than be that sick again.

Leaving Vancouver

I'm a proud haircut blogger, and to prove that, here is a photo of my parents boarding the bus to Nanaimo. We were on time but the bus was late - nevertheless, we're happily on our way.

Assembled Dragon

Since I am going on a work trip once again, I am shamelessly going to use our blog as means of communication:

If any of our readers is going to Assembly 2005 in Helsinki or can put me in touch with someone who is going, please drop me an email.

We are going on a summer holiday

More of good news bad news on the driving license department: I got my learner license, but the catch is that I can only drive if another person who has a BC license sits next to me in the car. It's starting to get very clear to me why I should have done this while my old license was still valid... I just need to pass that driving test real soon now so I can become a real person and a driver. Not that I really really need it right now, as we don't have a car - but it seems to me very much like leaving things until the last minute just complicates my life unnecessarily. Gee, what a revelation.

Our little mini-holiday on the Island is shaping up - the current plan is to leave to Vancouver Island tomorrow morning, arriving in Nanaimo early afternoon. From there we'll rent a car (and I won't be driving, for a change - yay!) and drive to the other side of the Island to Ucluelet and Pacific Rim National Park to see the rainforests, giant trees and whales. We'll spend two nights there and drive to Victoria on Thursday where we spend the last night, exploring Victoria on Friday and coming back on the ferry that evening.

Dispite being 30 and going on holiday with my parents - which might sound grim to some people - I'm really looking forward to this little trip. I'm hugely exited about seeing the "real Pacific Ocean" (and not the peaceful inlet we have here) and the ancient forests there, and I've always wanted to see whales in the wild which hopefully is finally going to happen. I should be able to blog using my Flickr account, as long as I have coverage on my mobile, which actually doesn't means most of the Island - it really is a wilderness out there.

Day at the park

Parents seem to be adjusting well to the different timezone and slept pretty much until the morning. I had made my poppy seed cakes yesterday - because some recipies said it would be better next day - and we enjoyed them for breakfast, and the rest with the afternoon tea. The were pretty much spot on how I wanted them, but I just realised I forgot to take photos of them... which is a shame as I just got these new little cake molds that are just the cutest - well, another time then.

Meanwhile, enjoy the photos taken in the park today. On your left is a starfish - we noticed a young seagull eating something strange, and after it had left this not so appetising looking morsel we went to have a look. We didn't think it was alive - at least it didn't show any signs of life (life as we know it anyway) so we left it as it was. When we were leaving the young seagull came back with another starfish and tried to swallow it - of course with little success, and we left it standing there looking quite stupid with one starfish arm in it's throat and four pointing out. Silly thing, if you can't eat the starfish, stop trying!

The other photo on your right is from Lost Lagoon in Stanley Park, with some turtles basking in the sun. I'm not sure if they are indigenous to the area of it they are runaways (I'd suspect the latter), but they seemed to enjoy the weather as much as we did.

Before leaving home we were thinking about if we should take the bird book with us - but I assured that I "knew all the birds in the area anyway", and the book is quite heavy. Turned out they had changed all the birds since I'd been there last time, and we had to try to remember all the characteristics until we got home. My favourites were probably the woodpeckers that we saw in the forest - they seemed to be quite used to people and didn't mind us coming quite close.

Have I told you that this is one of the things I enjoy about Vancouver?

Meet the parents

I've missed my parents.

But they are here now, arrived safely and semi-conscious - and we have been able to keep them awake the whole day. After they arrived we had some tea and then went for lunch in a local seafood restaurant - I had a really nice creamy chowder and I'm still full.

Vancouver has been showing it's best - it's over 20 degrees and West End and the beach was full of sunbathers, even some swimmers. Me, it's too cold until it reaches over 25, and even then I might not be brave enough to go to the sea.

Shame Dragon has to work so much - he's going to work tomorrow and leaving to San Fransisco again next week. I'm probably going with my parents to visit Vancouver Island meanwhile - I've been here over six months and although we've been to Seattle we haven't been to Victoria yet. But apparently that's what other Vancouverites do as well - they visit their sister city on the other side of the border approximately twice as often as the capital of BC, Little England, Victoria.

Dragon and the Masters of the Universe

I (as well as many of our readers I'm sure)spent many, many Saturday mornings glued to my TV-screen, watching intently as He-Man defeated Skeletor, the Overlord of Evil time and again to save the Universe. As far as I could tell the entire extent of Skeletor's "awesome powers" was his silly voice, writing and the dialogue sounded awful even to a 10-year old boy, and on top of it all the animation was hokey repetitive. However, there was something about the archetypical heroes and villains that made me (and millions of other kids) watch the series.

As part of my job, I've spent a lot of time on the conceptart.org boards, and the following re-designs of the He-man characters caught my eye.

I know both the images and text might apppear somewhat... extreme to those of the readers who want to keep their purist view of Prince Adam, Skeletor and Evil Lyn, but for those with an open mind they might be be a facinating re-imagining. You can find the artwork here. Just Simply scroll down to the bottom of the page to view them.

Since John Woo is planning to make a new He-Man movie, I think he should pay a visit to these pages, too...

Not quite according to plan

View over False Creek from Yaletown.

I had made a decision earlier this week that I was going to keep - something I should have done six months ago. I finally went and took my driving license knowledge test. Even in the morning I was still a bit dubious - I was afraid that I'd fail and ruin my whole day (yes, yes, I know!). But after waiting at the ICBC office for an hour or so, the test was over in ten minutes and I passed with flying colours!

But then came the bad news - or news I hadn't expected. I need to pass a proper driving test too - I'm sure I read from somewhere that the knowledge test was the only thing that I needed, but looks like I was wrong. And the lady who gave me my results was quite abrupt bordering on rude - and I didn't take the learner license she was offering me: I didn't realise at that point I needed another test and she wasn't forthcoming in explaining the system to me. So the end result is that I have no valid driver's license, so I can't even take the road test.

Well done, you.

After panicking about this for a while I came to the conclusion that it must be possible for me to just go back to the office and ask for the learner license - at least then I'll be legal to drive the car I take my road test in (wherever I get that then, I have no idea yet... I'll cross that bridge when I come to it). So back to the queue on Monday and cross my fingers.

After the ordeal was over I walked to Yaletown, the yuppie part of downtown, because I wanted to find the ferry to Granville Island. Yaletown is weird - it's still partly under construction, and they are building huge glass apartment buildings there that will cost arm and a leg. I believe it started just before Hong Kong was given back to China - wealthy people from Hong Kong (Hong Kongians?) invested heavily in Vancouver (and properties in Yaletown) at the time because they were afraid that Chinese goverment was after their assets. Nothing of the sort happened, but now we have a new trend in Yaletown.

I walked across a pretty park surrounded by building works, and found a pair of Canada geese nesting on the top of the stair pillars. The Mr just stood there looking important while the Mrs was sitting on the nest - and somebody had brought her a large cup of water or food so she wouldn't have to leave. I find something totally Vancouver in that photo: the blue sky, building works, skyscrapers and nature.

I spent the whole day in my tanktop - as a cautious Finn I never leave my jacket home but this time it wasn't necessary. After I got back from Granville Island to Sunset Beach, I found that I wasn't the only one enjoying the good weather: the whole beach and the seawalk was full of people, mostly just sitting outside reading or enjoying the sun, but there were some picnics and even swimmers about. And when I got to the Inuk Shuk statue there was even a couple taking their wedding photos - I followed while the maid of honour tried her best to get the bride on the beach safely, as they had chosen the part of the beach where there was no sand just pebbles, and the poor bride was really strugling to stay upright in her high heels and huge skirt. But she was so beautiful, and it took me back to our wedding day again.

Planning

Time is running out again.

I've slowly started cleaning up the apartment for yet another visit - this time it's my parents who are arriving on Saturday morning. Don't get me wrong, I'm actually really looking forward to seeing them and showing them Vancouver, it's just that... I feel kind of guilty about it all. Guilty because I know I'm going to enjoy it, and guilty because I should be doing something else. Mainly looking for a job, looking for a way to make some money.

It's not totally quiet on that front - I've made a decision to expand my horizon and look for developer jobs too. It's not ideal for me, I'd really rather do QA, but I'm starting to feel that I need to get any job to get back on the wagon. I've heard something from both of my contacts, so I have at least some hope. Frell, I just hate this.

Another random thought: being on a diet is not that dissimilar to fasting. I spend the whole week about fantasizing about what I'm going to eat on my pig-out day... last week it was pancakes and dognuts, this week it has been poppy seed cake (for some reason). I've searched for recipies and found some I'd like to try - I haven't baked in ages (mainly because Dragon doesn't like cakes) but I've suddenly got the urge again. I'll tell you how it turned out.

This blog

A beautiful day again today, only much warmer than yesterday.

But no, that's not what I wanted to write about.

I started the morning with the Kultainen Kuukkeli judges' meeting, and we finally hammered out the winners for the Finnish blog awards. Personally I'm pleased enough with them, all good blogs although some of my current favourites didn't quite make it. After the meeting something didn't quite feel right though, and until Outi put it into words (in Finnish) I had brushed it aside as "my problem". [She writes about how she hates how some people categorize blogs into "good blogs" and "bad blogs" depending on their subject matters.]

This blog is a so called "haircut blog" - meaning I mainly write about very ordinary things: what I did, where I went and what I had for lunch. I have opinions about politics and ethics, but I don't tend to write about them here - most of the time I feel that other people say "important" things much better than I do and I don't want to repeat them. For me this blog is a way to keep family and relatives somehow involved with my life, and I dare say this blog is quite imporant to some of them. But in addition to them, there are also some "random" - and mostly anonymous - readers that came once, liked what they saw and keep coming back. I find it flattering, and I'm glad some people find my writings interesting even if they don't personally know me.

But to think that because I don't write about the current affairs or that I don't have strong political opinions that I voice out here - some people think that this blog is somehow second rate? To be honest that thought hurts my feelings - even though I know the comments weren't probably meant like that. But I had a look at my current blogroll - and I have to say over 90% of the blogs I follow are "haircut blogs" of people I know or whose lives I find otherwise interesting. Rarely do I read a blog because of the subject matter, in almost all of the cases I read it because the person behind it interests me and their writings reflect their personalities.

I should just drop the subject and be happy that the people that mean something to me like D/k.

Right.

Beautiful day

After all the guests have gone, we've had two of the most beautiful days here in Vancouver. Not a cloud in the sky, bright sunny and so clear you can see the Vancouver Island from the beach. I would say "warm", only it isn't that warm, especially on the beach where the wind was quite heavy - I know, as I decided to go to Granville Island to spend the day.

Where it was calm though, the weather was superb - I sat outside eating my lunch (on the right): pita stuffed with bean salad, rice and tuna, a fruit salad and a freshly pressed glass of watermelon juice. It was just me, opportunistic gulls, and a saxophone player - and about hundred other people, half of them pint-sized kids running around scaring off birds. I don't know what the deal is here, but most of the parents actually encouraged this behaviour, maybe thinking it's cute - my mother would have severely told me off for scaring animals. And so would most of other Finnish (or even British) parents - it really surprises me it's not a custom here.

I walked back home and fell asleep on the sofa - and woke up just in time to go to yin yoga. I was hoping Kristen would be teaching Kelly's class - but no such luck, it was Shannon. I've been to Shannon's yin class before, and I didn't like it that much - but this time I ended up enjoying myself. Her style is again different to my other teachers - but I got something out of it, and dispite the guy next to me not getting the idea breathing like a steamtrain, I had a really peaceful practice. I've decided that my current favourite pose is yin's saddle (variation Supta Virasana, reclined hero pose) - your knees are apart and you're sitting on your heels, and then leaning back to the floor. First I preferred Supta Virasana - but actually doing it as a saddle is better for my knees and I get a better compression in my back too.

There's no substitute

When I got to my yoga studio today, there were good news and bad news waiting for me. First of all good news - my teachers Kelly and Jason had their baby on Saturday, a little boy! But the bad news is that they are both going to be on holiday for couple of weeks now. So, we had a substitute teacher, Jesse.

When it comes to different teachers, I believe I'm pretty open to new ideas - I believe that it's good to try different teachers now and again, as they all see the practice in a slightly different way and have something different to say. But for some reason I couldn't get into Jesse's teaching style, at all. He was talking quite a lot, and giving lot of detailed instructions - some of them where too detailed and I had difficulties in figuring out what he wanted. Like "pull your ribs up" - excuse me, but my ribs don't move. I asked him after the class what he meant with that and he said that he meant using uddiyana bandha and not leaning backwards - well, in my mind that still doesn't have anything to do with ribs.

Also, it's called Flow Yoga, but his style wasn't very flowy. Right in the beginning we did Surya Namaskar A's, but instead of B's we did a series of warriors with vinyasas between - and most of the warmth I had gathered during A's was gone.

Oh well - I guess I just have to grin and bear it for now waiting for Kelly and Jason to get back, also there are other substitutes too, maybe I'll catch someone really interesting next time.

Ah, peace

You can't imagine how much at peace we felt this afternoon on the sofa: me napping, Dragon playing games, sometimes chatting, eating takeout. Having guests is great, but just being by ourselves doing what we want is fantastic too.

In the evening we went to play some games with Laura and Clay - we played Citadels (first time for me, but this seemed like a really fun game) and Saint Petersburg (which we are really starting to get into). We like to try lot of games, but some games we keep getting back to, time and time again. I think Saint Peterburg might be one of these - it's simple enough, but possible strategies to use seem to be endless. You can't play against other players, so in the end you can't blame anyone else for you loss - while I like games like Citadels or Settlers where you can gang up on other people, I really enjoy games where it's just about you and your actions. And I think games like Carcassonne (or even better Hunters and Gatherers version which we prefer) are best when played collaborating, more than aggresively.

We were talking about holidays, and I mentioned that we were thinking about going to Burning Man this year - and turned out that Laura and Clay were big fans and had been to Burning Man several times in the past. They were discribing their incredible experiences from previous times and it made me want to go there more and more (if possible).

(I even had a Burning Man dream last night - I was there with Orava and Janka. Orava said that there were always shortages of water, and Janka offered to show me where to get water. We ended up wading in a river, going through some kind of amusement park where we had to go into slides which I always fear in my dreams. Rest of the dream turned into the final episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with a romantic last scene with Buffy and Spike.)

And on and on

A great blue heron at Sunset Beach.

Ah, weekends. Best thing about them no doubt is to be able to be with Dragon, and today was for a change good weather. Today is my "candy day" so I started with a breakfast I've been dreaming about since we got back from LA - pancakes. I made some wondefully fluffy American style pancakes (Axis of Ævil knows what I'm talking about), served them with fresh strawberries, vanilla youghurt and maple syrup. Just as good - or even better - than it sounds like.

Later we decided to go to Granville Island - it's never ever a bad choice and there's always something new and interesting to see. This time we didn't spend that much time in the market itself, but went around the little shops on the island. We found a shop that sold lot of live seafood - and we were tempted to buy some oysters that are dirt cheap here (around $1 each) but preparing them seemed too difficult so we left it for now. Will be back though, if nothing else for the mussels.

We visited a bookshop (I got myself a pocket sushi guide to figure out what on earth all those different sushis are) and a garden shop (got myself a little trowel) and numerous others where we just browsed. From the market we got some bison steaks for lunch, and I got a dozen dognuts to take to see the match tonight (we're going to see UFC 52 with Dragon's friends). Did I say I have my candy day today?

And then we got home only to find that Mr. and Mrs. Pigeon have started measuring the balcony again. By some vigorous shooing and rearranging the pots and soil sacks, we hope to have created a wonderfully pigeon un-friendly setting. We keep hoping.

Pigeon battle continues

But I think we're winning, mark 3 seems to work quite a lot better than it's predecessors. After spending whole of yesterday chasing them away, and making sure they spent the night somewhere else, in the morning Dragon found them on the balcondy sleeping peacefully with their beaks under their wings. Since then, they've been back once, and now my pots for my lilies have arrived so I placed them in the conrner where the pigeons wanted to nest. Hopefully this is the end to this interesting saga, but I'll keep you posted. In case I have any readers after the photo yesterday.

Update: I just saw one of the pigeons coming in, trying to get to behind the pots, not succeeding and then flying away! It worked, it worked!

Scarecrow, mark 3

After consulting the experts, here's mark 3 - the crazy woman. Keep her in your livingroom, keep her fed and awake - and in return she'll keep running to the balcony shouting "shoo" when the pigeons come.

Oh wait, that's me.

Well, that's what they recommended in the garden centre anyway, so that's what me and the mother in law have been taking turns to do. Throw away the twigs, shoo the pigeons away, and keep hoping they'll get the hint sooner rather than later. Apparently you can put in an owl or whatever gadget, and they will stay away for a while - but as I already experienced, the pigeons get blasé really fast and just continue as they were.

While in town today, I could barely contain myself so that I wouldn't run after pigeons when I saw some.

Mark 2, failed

And here's Mrs. Pigeon posing next to mark 2. I guess it was only matter of time - now I'm off to get something more potent.

Scarecrow, mark 2

Kudos to Janne, here's my second scarecrow. And in case they can read, it's wearing the "Big Evil" t-shirt. No Mrs. Pigeon, so far so good.

Scarecrow, mark 1

Here is my first scarecrow, posing with Mrs. Pigeon.

It wasn't my fault

It's true, I'm a baby killer.

As you probably know, one of my hobbies at home is to chase away pigeons - mostly because they make a mess. Well, on the weekend a pigeon couple started measuring our balcony for a place to nest. We kept driving them away, until yesterday they got serious. I had to clean away the five measly twigs they had brought in, and in the evening when I was going to bed and closing the balcony door, there was Mrs. Pigeon sitting in the corner. I approached it, thinking that it must have been sleepy for not scaring off easily - but when it finally moved there was an egg it had been sitting on!

A perfect, pure white, shiny little egg.

Well, I wish Mr. and Mrs. Pigeon and their future family good luck in their endeavors, but not on our balcony. I put the egg in the bin (washed my hands) and hoped that would be it. I mean, surely evolution would dictate that if you lose an egg in one place, you go and nest in another?

No such luck - Dragon told me just before he left for work that he had driven the couple away five times, so I had to wake up early to take the pigeon watch. I've been throwing away the twigs they bring, and if I go away for a second to empty the dishwasher they are back, with Mrs. Pigeon setting down looking like she's going to lay another egg.

I need to get some kind of scarecrow, and fast.

Cold in Chinatown

It seems that spring is postponed for now, and weather has been miserable and cold ever since we started having visitors from Finland. Still, there are flowers everywhere, and in a spur of the moment I decided to take a walk with the mother in law in Chinatown. Weather was bearable when we got there, but by the time the tour started at Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden it started raining. The tour and the garden were interesting, but it was starting to get very cold - so by the end of the tour we were more than happy to sit inside for a moment and drink couple of cups of the complimentary tea.

On our way back home we stopped at T&T Chinese supermarket - this is the most fantastic supermarket I've ever seen: at one glance it looks like any other supermarket, but once you get inside it's like nothing you've seen before. It's like directly stepping into another country, everything you see here is different. People don't come to this supermarket just for the enormous selection of imported groceries - just the live seafood section is better entertainment than your local pet store. Sounds wimpy enough, but I just got some noodles, Peking duck for Dragon who loves it and some honeyd chrysanthemum tea drink.

The instructions for making the drink go as follows: "Take a bag of this and dissolve in 200 ml of cod or boiling water". I didn't have any cod though, so I just used boiling water... drink was very sweet and had a flowery smell (no, really).

Greek lamb stew

There's a hailstorm outside, so what better food to eat than a hearty stew of whatever you have in the cupboard. For me it happened to be lamb, so here's a recipe for a Greek lamb stew I made today.

all purpose flour
600 g lean, boneless lamb, cut into cubes
3 bay leafs
bunch of fresh thyme, chopped
1 tsp dried rosemary
garlic, as much or little as you like
500 ml chicken stock
250 ml white wine
250 ml tomato sauce
one big white onion
black olives, pitted

Season flour with salt and pepper and roll lamb cubes in it. Heat oil in a pan over medium high heat, brown lamb cubes in oil. Sprinkle herbs and garlic over lamb and add roughly chopped onion, stock, wine, and tomato sauce. Season with additional salt and pepper to taste. Simmer over medium heat for 1-1/2 hours, stir now and again - at least for me it had the tendency to stick (although not burn). Add olives, simmer for half an hour more.

Serve with rice, potatoes, salad, bread, whatever you like. And rest of the wine bottle, of course.

Back to old

Today, more or less back to the old routine.

In the morning I got back to job hunting, sent couple of applications and couple of emails to my potential contacts. In the afternoon I took the mother in law to Granville Island - once again I spent considerable time at the Granville Island Tea company. Mother in law bought lot of tea, as all my guests seem to do - but can't really blame them as the selection and quality there is simply fantastic. She fell in love with the delightful blueberry rooibos I have in my tea stash, like I did and Chu did, and who can resist their cherry rose sencha. Didn't get to talk to Mark and Debbie that much as it was extremely busy (we were joking that I always bring the customers along), but we did get to sniff all the different varieties of tea we wanted. My cup of tea this time was a Chinese Yunnan tea, which was a dark tea with a slightly smoky aroma - but not too dark, almost more like Indian tea than Chinese.

After returning home, it was straight to yoga. Oh, how I've missed it. Sometimes I almost feel that taking a break of yoga is good because it makes the return that much nicer. Also I often feel that a small break in practice makes me realise some new things altogether, and makes me able to consentrate more on essential things - I was quite happy with my Surya Namaskar B's today.

Kelly is getting extremely big, and is due to have her baby any time now - I'm really glad she didn't disappear while I was on holiday. And Jason didn't take too much micky out of me for missing two weeks - we talked about visitors and he asked if I was interested in doing the teacher training they have planned for this autumn. Well, what can I say - I've been thinking about this for a while, and I'm most definetly interested. If only in the beginning to do some teaching work on the side (assuming I ever get a "real job"), but maybe some day more seriously. We'll see.

Walking

We took the mother in law to Stanley Park today, and while walking there we stopped by Dragon's new favourite suplements store Gym Bag on Robson. Since the "Fat Week" on National Geographic Channel I've been wanting to get a pedometer, a step calculator - studies say that you should be walking around 6000 - 10,000 steps each day to maintain good health. I recon I'm probably doing enough, but I'm a technology geek so I love little gadgets like this - it's even got a radio. Yesterday's little trip to Stanley Park (totem poles, the aquarium) was about 10,000 steps and today I'll measure the distance to my yoga studio (yay, yoga!).

Ahem.

After the walk we stopped by one of our favourite restaurants, the Long Wall Mongolian BBQ restaurant and had lunch there - I had almost forgotten how good food is there. The evening was spent in the front of the telly - poor mother in law is still suffering from jetlag and retired early - I watched Toy Story 2 which I hadn't seen before and The Ultimate Fighter finale which was pretty exiting.

Dieting news

Another guest has safely arrived, as we picked up Dragon's mother from the airport today. The poor thing wasn't able to sleep in the plane at all, so she's a bit spaced at the moment - and having slept some hours just know she'll probably suffer quite a lot from the jetlag.

Everything is peaceful - we went to the shops and got food while showing the mother in law a bit of West End. My current diet food at the moment seems to be a stir fry: chicken, lot of vegetables and noodles. Easy to make, easy to eat in small portions. And talking of the diet, everything is going to plan - I've lost (probaby) couple of kilos so far and the trousers do indeed feel more comfortable now. Just couple of more, and I'll be at my ideal weight.

However I think I just have to acknowledge that the days of eating whatever I feel like are over. Couple of weeks ago we were watching "The Fat week" on National Geographic channel, and they were saying that if you eat only 40-50 extra calories a day, you gain weight about 0.5 kilos a year. Doesn't sound much, but lets put this into the context: think of something that contains about 100 calories, like an orange or a banana, or handful of M&M's or crisps, and that would gain you 10 kilos in ten years. Again, ten years sounds like quite a long time - but it's quite common that people my age have been doing exactly this since teenage years and the extra weight suddenly comes to them as a surprise. And once those extra kilos are in, and your eating habits have been locked in - changing them is very difficult, to some people impossible.

And that's what I'm trying to do. I think it requires a mental shift, more than anything, and that's still work in progress for me. When I was a kid we always had a "candy day" every Saturday when we could eat sweets, and every other day they were forbidden. That really used to annoy me as a kid, and when I found the free will as a teenager my diet went really unhealthy. And continued until pretty much until couple of years ago when I started exercising. First I was under the impression that I could eat anything I wanted - a teenager with fast metabolism and suffering from anxiety that caused me to eat very little real food, I really could eat several doghnuts a day without seeing any change. Now, years later I'm happy and eating normal amounts - and suddenly all the extra treats show up as too small clothes.

So I'm getting back to the idea of "candy day". Eat healthy, normal amounts of food every day with no treats, and once a week have something sweet to treat the hungry soul. This is the essence of Dragon's diet, and it seems to work very well for me.

Tired

After several loads of laundry, and hours of cleaning the apartment starts to look like a human habitat again.

I think I'm finally starting to understand what Dragon means when he says travelling is tiring. Since we came back from LA I've been just tired all the time, and I'm only now starting to feel like I'm back to my usual self... I'm probably getting old. Or maybe it's just a post-trip low and withdrawal symptoms of having to part with my best friend that's putting me down.

My usual self, whatever that means. I've been taking two weeks off job hunting while Chu was here, and I really really shouldn't have done it. I'm seriously starting to feel like I need to get a job soon, or I'll just drop off the wagon permanently - I never figured it would be so difficult.

I'm not making any sense, so I think I'll go to bed.

Travel report

Travel report is ready, you can now read about our trip: first day when we arrived to LA, second day of running around meeting wrestlers and the third day at Wrestlemania.

Gone but not forgotten

Dragon did as we asked him to, and woke us up at eight when he was leaving to work - our plan was to get up and eat a proper breakfast and then get Chu all packed up to get to the airport. Instead we laid in bed for an hour or so chatting and dreaming, and had long showers and forgot to eat breakfast. Chu was quite late leaving to the airport but managed to get to the plane on time, and is in Europe as I'm writing this. I feel once again that part of me is gone, but luckily there's always Skype.

Rest of the day I've been listening to Cats that I downloaded from iTunes (Because jellicles are and Jellicles do / Jellicles do and Jellicles would) and editing photos from our trip - so in case you're interested in indy wrestling or us fangirls, head over to the new ASW gallery. I've also been catching up on dishes, blogs, some emails (sorry for others, I'll get back to you soon!), travel report and started cleaning up the apartment. Dragon's mother is coming on Saturday to stay for ten days so we don't have much of a breather here - tomorrow I'll have to do a lot of laundry and finish cleaning the rest of the flat.

There's no one like Macavity

Morning started (too late) with a Kultainen Kuukkeli judges' meeting - yes, I'm one of the judges again this year. Quite interesting, although there seemed to be quite a lot of consensus on most of the issues. The biggest problem will no doubt be to agree with the "best entry" category.

Today is Chu's last day, so we did a final round of the places she wanted to visit - mainly Granville Island and Lululemon and Lush on Robson, before heading to Queen Elizabeth Theatre to see the musical Cats.

My Cats fandom probably begun when we first sung Memory at school like probably half of the schoolkids in the world, and then my parents took me to see the performance in Helsinki. At that time I was a very sensitive musical youngster, so I didn't appreciate the Finnish version too much, as there weren't enough musically talented actors to perform this quite a challenging piece. However I did get the record of the original English performance which I listened to quite a lot, I can still easily recall and hum all the tunes. I couldn't really speak (or understand) English back then, so I can't say I remember the words - in fact I found it exiting tonight that I could actually understand more now than back then.

No wonder Cats is a classic. It's funny, it's sad, it's exiting and the music is what I've come to expect from Webber, clever and easy to remember tunes and songs. It was nice to hear the music once again, most of the singers were excellent (except for the little cat that sang Memory in two occasions), dancing was first class - the only thing the surprised me that the costumes were down to a t exactly like I remember them... I would have expected a bit of variation or modernisation, but I guess they have wanted/had to keep the same all these years.

Gathering strength

Today we've been mainly gathering strength after the trip - in the end the plane was delayed about four hours. We've been sleeping late, watching Wrestlemania again - this time on TV, laying on the couch talking girlie stuff and drinking tea. Weather has been awful too, so I'm not feeling too guilty about it.

Stuck

Hey, we're still alive. And stuck on LA airport, so now's as good time as any to update the blog. I tried moblogging with Kablog, but although the entry was succesfully posted for some reason the main page wasn't rebuilt so no one ever saw it. I'll be writing the entries at some point for the weekend - but be warned they will mostly contain wrestling references perhaps not that interesting to most readers.

But to sum up the trip: phenomenal. It's weird - our last wrestling trip to Toronto last summer we planned for ages, this one came almost as an oversight: we decided to see if we could get just ordinary tickets to Wrestlemania 21, and got tickets that looked really poor (but turned out to be pretty good). Then later on I found out about two indy wrestling shows going on on the same weekend and we decided to do those too. And once the superstar appearances were scheduled it turned out we would miss most of them too - so we went in with very little expectations.

First of all, the indy shows were fantastic. Most of the big names on the American indy scenes were there, and the action was first class, but we also met some really cool people. We sat next to three English guys who were fun, and met some of our favourite wrestlers during the intervals - cool people who were really happy to see us and hear our opinions. We also met a fantastic WWE security guard there who got us to see some WWE superstars without queuing our asses off on Saturday which was much appreciated (and he was a really fantastic person too, honestly!). Wrestlemania totally rocked too, although by day three we were so tired we were quite happy with the peaceful seats on the top tier - view was supposed to be limited but was good, and seeing all the action from upper corner was fun.

Seems like three nights of live wrestling in a row seems to pretty much be the limit of what we can take, and although at some point we were disappointed that we hadn't got any tickets to RAW and Smackdown today and tomorrow, we're quite happy to go home today.

If only the plane would leave... More tomorrow.

Grandaddy of them all

On Sunday we had no reason to get up early, except for some weird reason I ordered the breakfast for nine. So we got up at nine, at a lazy breakfast and went back to bed. We woke up sometime in the afternoon and after picking up protein shakes from a local smoothie bar, we headed to Staples Centre.

Queues were once again huge, but we seemed to get off easy every single time on this trip. We found one of the backdoor queues that were actually quite short, and got in with only 20 minutes or so queuing - which was good as they said in the paper that the ultraviolet index was ten, meaning that fair skin would burn in ten minutes without protection. After Toronto trip when we burned really badly we had prepared for sun, but still I wouldn't want to push it.

Our seats read "limited view", but as you can see from the photo they weren't bad at all, we had unlimited view to the ring. What we didn't see was the main screen, but pretty much everything else was visible - it was actually really cool to see a lot of the preparations going on outside the camera view. For example how they disassembled the ring before the sumo match: Akebono had already appeared and started to walk towards the ring when the sumo circle wasn't ready yet - but by the time he was there it was up and looking good. Or how they were assembling the stage Motörhead was playing on next to the Hall of Fame inductees without the viewers sitting at home noticing a thing. And I think that the ladder match actually looked better from a distance than it did on the telly.

Anyway, Wrestlemania was a great show. It seemed more distant after two evenings of sitting withing touching distance of the wrestlers, and by this time we were dead tired - but still, it was a great experience. We had no assholes around us and did several chants just amongst our section, and the athmosphere was good. We rented two pairs of binoculars in addition to the one pair we had, and used them a bit - most of the time it was just easier to follow the matches without them.

Good stuff, and definetly won't be the last big WWE event we'll be attending.

Day two

So with a promise of skipping the queue to see Bret Hart we slept until eight and had breakfast in our room. We had plans to leave around nine but ended up leaving almost an hour later. At this point we couldn't actually get hold of our new friend and started to get skeptical about promises made in the dark of the night, but optimistically headed for RVD's 5 Star Comic store in Lakewood where the signing was taking place.

We managed to get lost, even with the help of Holly (our NeverLost system) but that was because the address we gave her was wrong. We finally managed to find the mall with help of some friendly locals, and arrived around 11 am. And if you know anything about wrestling legend Bret Hart and his fans, you can believe easily that queues were amazing - in fact there were three separate queues: people who had tickets, people who were queueing to get tickets, and people who were queuing to get to queue where they could buy tickets. At this point it was Chu's time to get wheeling and dealing and get us in - and with flashing the right business card and finally getting hold of our friend she managed to get the phone to RVD himself who let her come into the store to buy tickets. After some more wheeling and dealing she got us in too and into the queue to see Bret.

For Dragon and Chu this meeting was much bigger deal than it was for me, but it was still interesting to see the legendary wrestler and his fans. Bret was very polite and seemed only mildly surprised to hear that we came from Finland. He was wearing a Calgary Hitmen t-shirt and jeans, and had a lot more gray in his hair than I was expecting - he seemed a bit tired and wasn't as personable as I was expecting (but Dragon keeps telling me signing autographs is often like that). So we all got our five seconds with him, and Chu and Dragon both got to say what they wanted, and Chu got an autograph she really wanted (and she paid dearly for, too). The signing was supposed to end at 12, but I hear Bret was there until 1.30 to get everyone happy.

After that we decided to go and see our benefactor at a Blockbusters where he was guarding John Cena. This was the most audacious moment of the trip - drive in the front of the Blockbusters where they were literally hundreds of people queuing, park right next to the main entrance, step out only to be met by the meanest looking security guard (and the most handsome I have to say, in his suite and sunglasses), then hug him in the friendliest way and to be escorted inside right before the queue. At this time I believe they were starting to run late and didn't allow any photos with John Cena which was a shame - but we did get to talk to him a bit and wish him the best of luck for his match on Sunday. Unfortunately we were not allowed to stay in the shop so we headed out and to the Staples Centre were we stocked up on Wrestlemania merchandise so we wouldn't have to queue for that on Sunday. After that we got back to the hotel, and while Dragon headed for the gym, me and Chu headed for the bed so we'd be all rested before the evening's entertainment.

And we slept until right before we had to leave for the second night of the PWG's All Star Weekend. We got in earlier this time so we could get first row seats, but the doors opened late. So we stood there in the front of the queue with our English friends, when the organisers let about 25 Japanese fans before us - their reasoning was that these people had come half way around to world so they wanted to give them good seats. Then something really weird happened, something I've never seen happen before - we started complaining loudly about this "unfair treatment" (I think all the power had gone to our heads!) when other people behind us in the queue started shouting back that it was only fair the let the Japanese in - it wasn't that many people anyway and they had come a long way! Imagine that, people were actually telling us off for complaining about people skipping the queue. I have say for them, the PWG fans are the most friendly wrestling fans I've ever met - in person and on their board. Quality people.

I think that although the better matches were on the first evening, this event was probably the better event of the two - to start with it lasted for three hours which is much more manageable time. Before the event we got to meet the phenomenal AJ Styles who was also phenomenally nice - after we went back to our seats and discovered that photo Chu had taken of us had failed, we came back and AJ was nice enough to pose with me one more time although the bell had already rung. To our surpise we also saw Frankie Kazarian's last indy match before he moves on to WWE, and the other wrestlers held some beautiful speeches for him wishing him the best of luck. Something I love about wrestling fans is their way to communicate with the wrestlers by using chants, and my favourites for this evening was "please don't go" and "thank you Frankie" chants for Frankie and "happy birthday" to Scorpio Sky. To see the humour in this you have to imagine 400 or so people chanting the words at the same time with their fists in the air.

After the event we stayed and chatted with Jonny Storm again, who quickly proceeded to making a date with Chu when he was coming to wrestle to Helsinki next month. Those Essex lads, eh? We also chatted with a man who resembled El Generico a lot and was selling his t-shirts, but most certainly wasn't him - he was also a huge flirt, but then again I would rather be remembered as "two sexy ladies" than "two crazy Finnish ladies" we dubbed ourselves as.

Fantastic and tiring day, but well worth it.

Good start

Fantastic start for the trip. The flight was easy, and we picked up a car on the airport. I had been slightly afraid of driving in Los Angeles, but it turned out to be ok - we also got the Hertz NeverLost GPS system in our car and I don't think I'll ever rent without it again.

It was a surprise though to notice that it took us almost two hours from the airport to our hotel downtown - by that time it was dark and we barely had time to check in before we were off again to see our first booked event, Pro Wrestling Guerilla's All Star Weekend's first show. We had booked the tickets beforehand, and were quite happy that this allowed us to skip the very long queue that was waiting for us - we got pretty good seats on the second row behind three English guys.

What can I say? $25 for ring side seats to a four hour event containing some of the hottest indy stars in America, we sure did get a hell of a deal. If I have to complain about something I would say that four hours was actually too long, it was difficult to stay focused and exited for that long - I would have dropped some of the six man tag team matches (as much as I loved some of the wrestlers). My favourite matches were Jonny Storm vs. Petey Williams, American Dragon vs. James Gibson (that's Jamie Noble for you WWE fans) and the main event El Generico vs. Kevin Steen vs. Super Dragon.

We also got to meet Jonny Storm and Fallen Angel Christopher Daniels - the former I've met before but I don't think he remembered us (fair enough), he was however a huge flirt and wanted to hug me all the time... which was all good, I love to hug him too. Christopher Daniels was also very nice - much more impressive in flesh than on telly, his charisma just doesn't seem to stick on film. He was very friendly and signed autographs for us, even if Chu was a bit flustered.

And just about when we walking back to our car, we got stopped by two guys from WWE who had been in the event too watching the wrestling, and got talking. One of them was working as a security guard next to the ring and offered to help us a bit to meet some of the WWE superstars we had planned to see on Saturday. Which was a really nice gesture as at this point it was way past one am and we had planned to wake up around six to get to the Brett Hart signing on time.

When we got to the hotel we found out that they didn't have a 24h room service - I was so tired I just went straight to bed, but Chu and Dragon went out looking for food and didn't get to bed until after two am.

Off to America

We're going to Los Angeles now, see you on Monday. I'll do some moblogging if I can, but chances are I'm going to have problems with my mobile there, I always do.