work-related – Nokisuu

Happy new year

3.1.20243.1.2024 julkaissut Nokisuu

I have been pretty tired all autumn and also busy so I haven’t been much here. I’ve been way too much in Reddit and on Twitter but I hope to start doing more ’live’ things now as the spring approaches.

I feel like I have only been to work or going there or going home from work lately and it’s not good. I’m a bit worried how this beginning year will go, I’m a bit bored at my work and now my colleague has the last training to do for her studies which means that I’ll probably need to attend to more work than previously.

I managed to read or listen to 111 books last year. I blame Chief Inspector Gamache for that partly because I found the books by Louise Penny so charming that I couldn’t resist reading the ten first of them during November and December. Of course I read other things too but these were like drug to me.

Anyways everything is fine, eldest son spent all of December in Japan and just came home on New year’s eve. Middlest son was here for the Christmas and left back to Central Finland with his gf today and youngest one keeps mainly to his games these days. I managed to get him to movies, before Christmas we saw Wonka which we liked very much and after Christmas we and hubby went to see Napoleon which was okay.. the costumes were really awesome and the cinematography too.

Earlier this fall I went to see the new Kaurismäki film called Fallen leaves and I can recommend it. It’s on board for the best motion picture category in Golden globes’s and the female lead actor Alma Pöysti is nominated in Golden Globes too. It’s a lovely movie of two people in the sidelines. Go see it if you can.

So I hope to get better at updating this blog too. If you want you can add me in Goodreads too, here’s a link to my profile: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/5830297-susanna

Oh and if you want to you can follow me in Instagram, my nickname there is also nokisuu as in so many other places.

Hello hello hello, where is the cat?

12.10.2023 julkaissut Nokisuu

That used to be a line in a Finnish children’s program in the 70’s, the kids watching tv were taught English with a show where two English policemen were looking for a missing cat. The answer is of course ’The cat is in the moon.’ (Later the other policeman became a writer for several Finnish tv comedy shows and he is very much liked, his son was my client in my previous library.)

Ok so I just thought to give a sign of life. Yes, I’m still here and kicking but I’ve been kind of busy with work and everything. Last week an old Finnish blog pal emerged and gave me a spark to start writing my Finnish blog again but also this one.

I spent about all of summer at the cottage and also every second (at least) weekend has been a cottage weekend for us. Next week I’m having my fall leave as is youngest one and Hubby said he’d be working from home so we’re going to the cottage on Wednesday because it needs to be made ready for winter hibernation. We’re also going there to see if we’ve finally gotten the water meter installed. We had only lake water for washing and drinking water had to brought from home or shop since the old well wasn’t reliable and so we decided to have water line drawn to the plot. It happened in September so we now have water on the plot but the meter is still on it’s way. Luckily we’ve been able to take water from the line already but it still need to be warmed up on stove for dish washing or in the huge cauldron in sauna if we warm sauna up.

I’ve enjoyed the cottage life. My soul relaxes in the quietness and nature. I also swam in the lake every day (when in cottage) until October. In summer Sirius the Cat used to come and sit on the pier when I was swimming and she’d look at me like I had lost all of my marbles finally. She also liked the cottage life and visited all neighbours, even the one with two dogs who were a bit miffed of her.

Anyways nothing major happening here. The work is also what it’s always been, just a bit busier since after the pandemic we have now returned back to the normal scale of things. The new cabinet of ministers is worrying with its politics so we shall see if there’s going to be strikes.

Eldest son is graduating to become a programmer and they won a game-coding contest with his friends and went to Riyadh to collect the prize in August. We asked him what he’d like to have as an graduation present and he said that since him and 15 friends are going to Tokio, Japan for the month of December we could buy him the plane tickets which we did.

Middlest son is still studying in Central Finland and now his girlfriend moved in with him as she got postgraduate study place in the same city. Youngest one is on the 2nd year in high school and he loves history and social studies.

Here’s the program Hello Hello hello’s 1st ep for you. The first part is a bit slow with the vocabulary but the real thing starts around 5’20. Everybody was hooked watching this, both kiddies and adults.

End of May and others

29.5.202330.5.2023 julkaissut Nokisuu

Adding a trigger warning here, this post talks about death right at the beginning.

I think last time I mentioned I was going to Stockholm with my friend M. Unfortunately they all got Covid and we debated about going as she was already healthy again before our traveling day was approaching but her mom was in really bad shape and we decided not to. M’s mom had Alzheimer’s and weighed only 36 kilos so she didn’t have the resources to pull through and after a week she just faded away. M said it’s really weird now since they have a lot of free time with her dad now as they used to home care for her mom.

Today as I was looking through the most well known Finnish newspaper which has a lot of obituaries every Sunday (M wished she’d get the latest Sunday paper because of her mom’s obituary) I noticed a familiar name among other obituaries. My old colleague whom I used to call my work brother had lost his brother in March and his obituary was on the paper also.

After work I went to meet my colleague and tell him I was sorry, his brother was just two years older than me. We chatted a while since he knows me and DH and the boys so it was nice to catch up. He said his brother had been ill for a long time but as he lived with their parents and took care of them it’s kind of hard for him now to do everything on top of his work (they were/are both bachelors).

On other news Middlest son’s girlfriend enrolled to pursue her studies in Jyväskylä so they’d move together and first it looked like it was not going to happen since the English IT-courses she’s enrolling had over 3700 people wanting to start and they only took 25 students but she made it and now in July she’ll be moving to Jyväskylä too. I’m so glad. Since Middlest son will be making a career in the Defence forces it’s important that he’ll have a girlfriend who is willing to move where the DF sends him.

What else? I spent three nights at the summer cottage with eldest son in mid May and it was very nice. The weather was very warm and I swam in the lake for the first time this year, the water was +18C degrees and so nice.

The Eurovision Song Contest was very good too this year and so exciting! Finland with Käärijä’s Cha Cha Cha came second and as someone said Finland won but Sweden holds the party next year so it’s all good. We are very proud of Käärijä 🙂

The Mayor of Vantaa (my hometown mayor and also our next door neighbour) Ritva Viljanen gets a kiss from Käärijä. She almost forgot to give the flowers to him 🙂 I just love this picture.

In about three weeks I’ll be on my summer holidays at summer cottage but before that I’ll begin an online course about Elements of AI in Open university due to my boss’ recommendation. We can do the course on our work hours which is good.

I think this is all from me now. See you later alligator 🙂

I’m waiting for the album to come out in September.

P. S. Maybe next time I’ll upload the cat video I made on the video course I took part in April.

Daytrippin’ yeah. Again.

15.4.202215.4.2022 julkaissut Nokisuu

I feel like I mainly post about my day trips and I don’t even do them so much. So funny!

Last Saturday we (me, DH and youngest one) drove to Jyväskylä to inspect middlest one’s new flat which was very nice. It had many cupboards and the rooms were spacious and the balcony was lovely. While the men assembled some Ikea furniture I unpacked the kitchen things and uploaded the dish washer with the new dishes. We made a list what middlest one should still buy, i.e. dish washer tablets and so on and then we had dinner in the city centre. I called my cousin and we decided to go to her place for coffee and bring something to go with it.

My cousin’s little boy (5) got a bit scared when we showed up as they have been low contact with people since he’s a ’heart child’ with HLHS. Luckily he got over his scare in a short while and later played card game with youngest one while we chatted with my cousin. It was nice to see them too 🙂 Afterwards we drove middlest son to pick up his car from the garrison and left for home via the local chocolate factory shop.

This is the lake from the summer cottage city centre.

At work the week (three days) was hectic as we have a strike looming ahead. It was supposed to begin on the Tuesday after Easter but it was postponed two weeks. I’ve never been on a strike, they’ve always been cancelled for different reasons so I find this very interesting. I’ve promised to go to my old work place as a picketer for a day with our head shop steward.

On top of these strike news I got news that I was selected with my colleague and our Media teacher for a Erasmus+ for a week in Limerick in May. I’m flabbergasted to say the least, I never expected to get chosen but my lovely boss said I should apply and I did and here we are! I’m so excited!

DH had one of his summer holidays still left and as they are lost if not used at the end of April we took a one-day cruise trip to Stockholm. I got a day off and youngest one too and on Wednesday evening we went to the ship, ate well and did some shopping and in the morning we woke up in Sweden. After breakfast we walked to the Viking museum in Djurgården which was very interesting. Afterwards we took a ferry to the Gamla stan where I did some book shopping and then we had coffee and cake (”fika”) and then we slogged back to the cruise ship. The weather was smutty, drizzling but okay. Back at the ship we had dinner and this morning we were back home.

Both eldest and middlest son were home so we had dinner together and I baked a Key Lime pie which was very good.

I’m trying to find us a summer cottage where we could be as we want to. I don’t get along with my SIL and it’s getting harder summer by summer to stay civil, not that we ever see but my brother is the in-between-man and I don’t think it’s fair, besides the boys are getting frustrated too as they’d like to go to cottage more than they now can. I found one place which would be in my price range and contacted the seller about going to visit the place next week but he hasn’t answered yet. It’s a three-hour-drive but it looks promising. I’ll be going there with eldest one to inspect.

A summer cottage right outside Helsinki, behind one of the most famous Helsinki summer restaurants called Klippan

Small island Lonna and behind it Suomenlinna (Sveaborg), the church tower is light house too

Nice Easter flower arrangements outside Nordiska Museet

I don’t seem to get pics to gallery mode anymore and now I’m too tired to look into it. Maybe it’s all right as it is. Here’s a song for you, I really like Ben Folds but then I kind of forgot him for a while.

What a week

25.12.2021 julkaissut Nokisuu

It’s been the kind of week you just hope it’ll end safely.

On Monday at work we were wondering why there is a smell of smoke. We checked every place but this time it wasn’t our building. It was the largest coffee roastery in Helsinki which is situated a block away over the football field. The smoke was pretty heavy and as I went to lunch the air was grey with smoke even some blocks further from the fire. Funnily our nearest work lunch place is on the Main fire station next to my work, there were many people from my work having lunch and sitting a bit longer in a smokefree place. I did a short walk a bit further to get some clean air, since we didin’t have clients anymore it was okay to stay a bit longer. The fire continued to Wednesday when the fire department finally got it out. Here you can see a video footage of the fire.

I felt like a smoked ham after work but I met a friend after work in the city centre. We changed gifts and it was nice to have a chat and nice cup of coffee after all day inhaling smoke at work.

On Tuesday the smoke didn’t get indoors anymore but as it was last day before my days off I didn’t much care. I left early as I went to dinner with my friend Mareetta. She had some trouble coming to pick me up from my work as the fire was on one of the main entryways to the city centre. (In twitter someone compalined the fire trucks being on the bicycle lane…) We drove to the seaside to take some pics of the sundown and then went to eat to a shopping centre.

On Wednesday I had my first day off and as youngest son had a short day at school we went to movies after his school to see the new Spiderman : No way home which was very good, we really enjoyed it. The new Dr Strange movie looks good too.

Eldest son was coming to spend the Christmas with us so hubby went to get him and they did some last grocery shopping. In the evening DH started to say his tummy ached a lot and then he threw up from the pain twice and finally around 10pm he was in so much pain he was just crying with pain on the sofa and I said I’ll call the Emergency Services and he said yes. So I did and they send an ambulance to assess the situation, at this point eldest son was already sleeping as he had an early morning next day. The ambulance crew took hubby to the hospital for a check-up and I was left with my old traumas (from when my dad died) to spend the night badly. Luckily eldest one slept through all of this but middlest and youngest one were still awake when hubby left so they were a bit tired too.

On Thursday around 10 am DH got out of the hospital and middlest one went to get him. It was kidney stones and the doctors had decided not to operate as it’d be a too big an emergency operation. Instead he got great painkillers and they’ll call him in for an operation soon, then they’ll blast the kidney stones so they come out more easily. Hubby still has pains as now the stones have moved downward but he’s able to do things at some level. Boys were great help, they carried the Christmas tree indoors and did all the things DH usually does.

This has put a bit of dampening on our Christmas but not much. Yesterday after dinner both elder boys fell asleep as they were so stuffed and we gave gifts later. I had bought the new Abba LP as a gift for DH and me, it was awesome. Even Sirius came to listen to it 🙂

I watched Die hard with middlest son and went to bed around 1am. Today I napped an hour on the sofa and then read a book. Now I’m planning to watch Die hard 2 or Jumanji 2 or Jungle cruise which I have yet to see.

Smokey day, I was on my way to lunch (next to the church).

The fire is where you can see the blue lights

I hope this year will end soon and nothing extreme happens next week. I’m quite done already.

Where did the chocolate eggs disappear?

8.4.20218.4.2021 julkaissut Nokisuu

I wonder where… Before Easter I was almost at the same weight as five years ago. After my mom died I gained some kilos and my thyroid acting up too made me gain weight. Now it seems the thyroid meds are in correct order and so I’m finally getting a bit lighter. During Easter thou it’s impossible not to eat good food and desserts which is good but luckily not every day is a holiday.

I had some days off during Easter, mainly because we don’t have much work as we don’t have so many clients. Since I last updated I’ve continued at the foodbag delivery and supervised matriculation exams at my former high school. It was fun to visit my old school, when we graduated it had middle grades and high school but it’s since turned only to a high school and now has about 860 students. At my time there was probably around 300 students all together. To house all of them there’s also been renovations done and built more space. Nowadays the high school specializes in media studies so the kids who go there can later find themselves working in some media career.

I have finished two sweaters, one is a Riddari and it’s very nice and the other is the Suolaulu sweater but it needs a bit tweaking still. I’ll take piccies and upload them around weekend (I hope).

Youngest son continues school at home. Now it’s decided that the middle grades go to school on schedule so that all the 9th grades are at school next week and then two weeks at home, then it’s the 7th graders turn and the 8th graders go last. Yay. I hope they all will be able to go to school on May.

Middlest son has been home from the army for a week since Saturday. He has done the single flying test and so can go flying alone when it’s allowed. He also applied to the National Defence University even thou he already has a place in the Engineering University. If he gets the place in ND Uni he’ll get to fly the new fighter planes when they arrive. ~~I’m not so sure if I want to see that..~~ The ND University is located here in Helsinki, not very far from us and they have very nice facilities. His official army time ends in June.

Here are some pics. Yesterday I went to the forest for a walk but it was still pretty wet so I had to stay on higher ground and couldn’t get many pics. Here the spring is not as far as last year but then we had much less snow, almost none at all.

Oh and the definition for Easter witch is here 🙂 It’s a common tradition here and very much enjoyed.

Spring is just around the corner

20.3.202120.3.2021 julkaissut Nokisuu

At least I hope so. Today we are getting more snow but it should melt next week as the temperatures rise over 0 C degrees. On Wednesday it’d be as high as +5 C degrees already.

I’ve been working at my ’own’ job and continued at the packed lunch distribution. On top of that I’m now supervising matriculation exam students at my old high school. It’s been 32 years from my own exams and the school has undergone some serious renovations some years ago when it changed from middle grades and high school to just high school but the main part was familiar so I found places easily.

I was there last Tuesday and I’m going there again on next Tuesday and Thursday and then Monday. There were over hundred participants on the exams and we have to check their laptops and packed lunches for notes and then walk with them to the bathroom breaks and back to the exams room so they don’t get to sneak on their phones or something. The whole thing reminded me and my colleague of an airport; first the check out and security and then the lavatory queue, it was funny.

I still haven’t gotten my grade from the Organizational communications exam I took part last week. The book was quite a hard read and very USA centered which made it a bit difficult and tedious at some times. We had also a group paper to deliver and it took a bit of effort but we had a good group and it turned out good.

I’ve also knitted, I’m in the first sleeve of another Riddari sweater and from one other sweater I need to fix the collar. I also did some more masks to use with my woollen cap and some for hubby when he goes to the grocery shop.

Since I’ve mainly been a couch potato after work I’m adding the fandom fun Michele and Rachel already did.

1.Your favourite John and why:

Porter. Because he is loyal to the end (like me).

2. Your favorite Richard action movie and why:

Captain America. I may have a crush on Chris Evans too *blushes*

3.Your favourite pairing of Richard and ____

Oh dear, this a hard one.. but I’ll go for Martin Freeman and his perfect Bilbo. Their roles as Thorin and Bilbo complement each other and you get the feeling there’d be something more than friendship you know. And it makes me so sad in the Five armies when Thorin dies. It’s just heart breaking (which is why I didn’t put that on the pic).

4. Richards best trait is his ________

Well, I don’t know him but he seems to be kind and considerate and that’s always charming.

5. What one question would you ask Richard about his roles up to now?

I truly hope we don’t need to start a campaign for his roles to die always like the campaign Save Sean Bean had. Do we?

6. If Richard ask you to dinner and where to eat what type of restaurant would you take him to?

If he came here I’d probably take him to one of our Finnish cuisine restaurants. More likely I’d cook him some nice salmon for dinner and blueberry pie as dessert.

7. What song comes to mind to describe his acting career?

I think the lyrics match well 🙂

8. What board game would you play with Richard during another lockdown ?

I’m not so into board games so I think we’d play cards, a version of Rum or the Spanish Canasta.

9. What two fandom items would you give to Richard as tokens of appreciation?

Umm.. none? I don’t think he’d like them. For some reason I think he’d be embarrassed. Instead I’d knit him a pair of socks. Oh but I did that already, do they count? 😀

10. Complete this sentence: “Richard you are the ________ to my __________.

Chocolate to my ice cream. Is that too racy?

Congrats! You made it to the end! Have a piece of cake 😀

A musical update

21.2.2021 julkaissut Nokisuu

As most Europeans I too follow the Eurovision Song Contest, at least half-heartedly. I used to watch them as a kid since there wasn’t so many music programmes in TV but then I had many years I didn’t watch the contest at all. After Lordi brought Finland our first and only win in the ESC I’ve had just a cursory glance at the songs we’ve sent to the contest. The main reason being that I don’t like most Finnish contemporary music nor musicians.

Finns love heavy metal, it’s said we have the most metal bands per capita in the world. I just recently read an article in which the studies said that metal music lowers the blood pressure and calms nerves. When I had more migraines I noticed that listening to heavy metal (especially Rammstein) helped the pain so I can believe the results.

This year I listened to the finalists (at least half of them) and I had some hopes for the winning song although I never thought it’d grab the most votes being hard metal. But it did! And now we are sending Blind Channel to the ESC. Here you can read more about the contest from last night.

Here underneath is the participating song, I quite liked it since I love Linkin Park. Under that it is a compilation of the songs Finland has sent to the contest over years which is quite funny imo.

Onto other news; I’m having next week off since it’s the school’s winter holiday and we have only so much work to do atm, we are trying to stretch even the most menial tasks for days. My gig at the packed lunch bags distribution is also finished now as the high schools and vocational schools are going back to studying in-situ with safety regards on place (just half of the students in class per day, others teleworking at home). We’ll see how that goes, our PM Sanna Marin wasn’t happy about the Helsinki Metropolitan area mayors’ decision.

So I’m going to study and have some free time too. My Communication Sciences studies are going well but there’s only so many hours in a day and during working week the weekends get really short really fast.

And to end in heavy metal here is a trailer to a Finnish comedy about a heavy metal band. It was hilarious.

Wintery times

30.1.2021 julkaissut Nokisuu

We’ve got more snow and now the weather getting colder again, next week temperatures should drop down to -12C degrees. I don’t mind, I’ll rather take the rain in snow than in water during winter time, and the cat goes out anyway whatever there rains. Actually she really loves the snow, she plays in it and hunts the snowflakes too.

I’ve been helping at the teleworking students lunchpack sharing on couple of Mondays now and it continues next months too. The students are both from college and vocational school and there’s four schools they can drop by and get their lunches for a week. I’ve had a lovely group of people to work with, two are from my own workplace and one is a former colleague from the City Library, we have great humor too so the days go by quickly even if there’s all kinds of mixups and mess to clear up. For example on the first Monday the students name lists were not in alphabetical order but on the order they had enrolled to the service. It cased some serious queueing which is not very nice atm.

At work we’ve been doing some serious digital jumps again with teaching our teachers how to use Google Meet an such. We’ve also digitized some materials for the teachers so they can keep their lessons from home more easier and then there’s all the online-meetings.. Some days my ears are sore of the earbuds and eyes from too much screen time.

On this week some of my friends had their birthdays. On Wednesday I had dinner my friend M with who we saw Uncle Vanya in London last year. Since we haven’t met since November I gave her now the lovely wooden Christmas decorations made by Rachel and her SO and bought from the RA-fandom Christmas auction. She loved them and was very happy to receive them.

Yesterday I met two of my friends in Ekberg’s, one the eldest cafes in Helsinki, which is very classy and has delicious cakes. I bought some cakes home too since Juhana, middlest son, came home from the AirForce for the week and youngest one, Jimi, Has his birthday on Feb 8th and today we had Jarno, eldest son, on dinner too so it was small birthday party for Jimi like this.

I’ve been watching McLeod’s Daughters and now I’m halfway through 3rd season. It’s nice to watch something easy while knitting and I’m eagerly waiting to get on 4th season so I’ll see Deano soon. I’m also watching WandaVision from Disney+, it’s very interesting. Earlier this month I watched Midnight Sky, the new film by George Clooney and wasted two hours of my life for such a crap. It was horrible. I also watched one Finnish Detective series called Ivalo (Arctic Circle) and almost strained my eye muscles while rolling them too hard, it had so many twists that it’d have easily filled three seasons.

My Riddari sweater is coming along nicely, I’m already on the yoke.

Well, tomorrow I need to concentrate on my studies at the Open Uni, I’m now doing Organizational communications course and it includes video lessons, a homework and a book exam of one very thick book. Aargh. Not to mention I’m reading some very good detective stories which doesn’t make it easier to start reading for the exams.

Oh! I bought an activity bracelet just to keep an eye on my steps and so far it’s been nice. I have also lost some weight as a consequence. Not bad.