2009 – Olli: Lived and Living

Amazed

Posted on May 7, 2009May 7, 2009 by Olli

The last night in Metz.

I’ve been inviting people to see me during the last week for several occasions, and despite me trying to organize things, everybody came tonight. The surprise was great – I would have been stressed about it had I known beforehand. The party ended just minutes ago, and I feel I had nothing to do with organizing it. Vincent brought chairs, some drank tea, some vodka, some wine, some beer, but nobody seemed too drunk at any time (some pistachio shells flew around the room during the night though). I offered everything I had in the cabinets (pistachios, sunflower seeds, eggs, soup, …) and people brought their own stuff. Lukas made omelettes. Some French people joined in at one point of the evening.

They gave me a book with photos and writings and drawings from everybody as a gift, and I feel like I have gotten way much more attention than I ever could have deserved. I feel too glad about it all to be cynical, it was beautiful. They made me sad for the fact that I am leaving so soon. :) There was quite a mess here but people cleaned up before they left and told me they’re coming again at eight in the morning to help me clean up! (The cleaner lady will organize an inspection at ten in the morning.) Wow.

Tomorrow to Poland, at around 17 hours.

Flu w/ love, sunshine

Posted on March 3, 2009March 5, 2009 by Olli

It feels really spring-like in Metz, already. So finally I feel like it was worth it to come to northern France also because of the weather (the autumn was pretty bad). The flu is doing good to me, too. Slowing me down when I don’t have the guts to do it by myself.

Otherwise: thesis writing, talking with Minna and other friends online, preparing for my trip to Paris with Eeva this weekend.

I am slightly bothered about Facebook taking over my blog; status updates and all the social interaction engages me so much nowadays that actually writing even just a bit longer posts seems irrelevant. I’ve already expressed it all in IM discussions and status updates, so blogging feels like repetition. Maybe I should just start using this blog for something more substantial than my personal whining, since that seems to have a better arena in Facebook nowadays.

On the other hand, Facebook does it by great social UI design, so maybe I will just be happy. I still hope very much that an open platform that does it even better will supercede them soon.

During being in my current flu, I have learnt to use Twitter better (by adding the friends of friends who seemed the most interesting) and it actually seems some use at the moment.

Also, I took Flock into use today and the integrated experience actually seems pretty nice. I am blogging this from Flock. The UI does not seem to allow setting a category for the posting though so I will have to go to wordpress to fix the language category for this, after all. I’ll take that back: the Flock editor asks for the category after pressing Publish. I still have to check which categories I have used from my blog page, though, since I cannot remember all the categories this might fit into.

At times the flock UI is very cluttered and as my screen is only 1024 pixels wide, adding a sidebar to that makes many modern sites scroll. I actually think that is the fault of modern web design and not that of Flock.

Une nouvelle année

Posted on January 1, 2009January 5, 2009 by Olli

Heli arrived on last Friday. It’s been good.

Özhan, l’artiste took a photo of me and Heli yesterday. I haven’t been featured on Deviantart before! Not that we are recognizable, but still it’s cool. The weather in Metz really is that melancholic. No wonder Verlaine and folks liked it here.

It was a good and peaceful new year. We drank a bit (not too much like I did in Paris on Saturday when I got a stomach disease), and found a nice small bar where it was fun to dance. It was somehow amusing that the DJ played all the songs from Youtube, though :D.

We have also been playing Mario, taken lots of photos, talked, wandered around, seen lots of sights, prayed, relaxed, written, gotten lost and then found, talked with people in a couple of languages.

Tonight, going to see Hunger. Nähdään nälkää, heheh. Heh. Hee… öh.