Becoming richer by getting poorer...

It has been lot of things happening lately. I bought tickets to Korea for winter holidays!!! I am poorer now, but will be richer as counting the future experiences. I am so excited to go and to see my friends there that I got to know in Austria! I also have two Koreans studying at my class in Finland right now. They will both travel back to Korea too at winter. It will be cool!! :) Before Korea the plane lands in Thailand. Because it was at the same price, I will spend five night in Bangkok...alone. It takes courage from me because I have not travelled outside Europe and it is always a bit more stressy for women to travel alone, but anyway I am waiting to experience it. Alone somewhere. Seeing that I will manage in another corner of the world. And adding few more handstanding pictures to my collections. With an elephant it is a "must". :D

Travelling alone has also some other aspects too...
It is weird how in this age you are starting to really use the phrase "in this age". It feels that many people around you are taking the steps to family life. Engagements, children etc. And weirdly...it feels like something to consider. I mean...I feel like I could be taking some steps soon too when there would be "the person" next to me. I feel more ready than before. Am I getting adult?? :D
But so, travelling now and experiencing the world as a part of "the youth" that will be in few years behind in the past, is a nice thought. Something to remember when going to work from eight to four every day and living a familylife... Well I am not sure about the family=children...but anyway hopefully there will be at least two persons living in my household ;) For at first anyway.

"Ilahduta virkailijaa"-liike sai instanttia palautetta!!!

:D :D :D SE TOIMII!!!!

Tänään puolen päivän aikoihin työttömyyskassan virkailija, jota en ole koskaan tavannut lähetti minulle kännykkääni tekstiviestin: kiitos, piirtämäsi lintu oli tosi hauska.

Ihan pieni hassu asia. Ja joku oikeasti taisi ilahtua siitä niin kovin, että vaivautui käymään tietoni läpi tietokannasta ja lähetti minulle tekstiviestin :D :D :D Nauratti. JEEEE. Kaikki mukaan!

in english:
:D :D :D IT REALLY WORKED!!!
My "cheer the civil cervant"-movement got instant feedback! :D
Today at the noon I got sms from the office...from a person I have never met. She thanked that me for sending such a nice envelope!!! Can you believe it! It was just a funny idea and someone really appriciated it and made the effort to search my number from database and sent me the message!! :D :D :D Let's make this an international movement!!

Ilahduta virkailijaa noin 1,99 eurolla vuodessa

Tämän viestin sisältö ei ole kuluttajasuojalain alainen.
Sen kopioiminen on äärimmäisen sallittu.
This message is NOT under any copyrigt laws.
You are recommended to copy it as much as you want.

ps. english version below
Olen päättänyt aloittaa kansanliikkeen: "Ilahduta virkailijaa"! Jokainen meistä tietää, kuinka ärsyttävää on täyttää hakemuksia ja kaavakkeita sinne sun tänne. Nuo rasittavat Kelan virkailijat, jotka vaativat meitä suomalaisia todistelemaan menomme ja tulomme. Hyvänä lisänä tähän tulevat verovirkailijat, työttömyyskassa, sosiaaliviranomaiset...ja mitä kaikkia niitä nyt mahtaakaan olla.

MUTTA jos onkin sangen turhauttavaa täyttää lomakkeita ja todistella nippelinappeleita suuntaan jos toiseenkin, niin kuinka ankeaa onkaan olla töissä paikassa, johon soittavat ihmiset ovat yleensä aina pahalla päällä. Vai onkohan niin, että aivan yhtä usein tympeä virkailija saa ihan iloisalla ja kohteliaalla asenteella soittaneen ihmisen huonolle tuulelle...Noh, joka tapauksessa.

Kuinka ankeaaaa onkaan avata päivästä toiseen satoja surkean ruskeita kirjekuoria. Ei enää, sanoo "ilahduta virkailijaa"-liike :) "Ilahduta virkailijaa"-liike tarjoaa vaihtoehdon! Se tuo iloa masentuneimmallekin toimistohiirelle. Liity sinäkin joukkoon jo tänään! Liittyminen maksaa 1,99 euroa/vuodessa riippuen kuulalärkikynän hinnasta lähikaupassa ja sen ajallisen riittoisuuden kestosta. Aloita sinäkin siis kuoreen piirtäminen jo tänään!! Voit saada kivikasvoisimmankin virkailijankin hymyilemään.

Esimerkkimme kuoret matkasivat tänään halki Itellan työttömyyskassan vuosimaksuvirkailijalle. Väsyneen illan päätteeksi piirtely synnytti eilen vieläkin väsyneemmässä mielessä väsyneitä ajatuksia ja tämän väsyneen loistavan idean!! :D :D :D Kohta alan painaa aiheesta kiinnostuneille pinssejä! "Minäkin olen ilahduttanut virkailijaa".

in english:
I have started a new movement "Cheer up the civil cervant" (the people working in bureaucracy) Bureaucracy what a difficult word!!! Well so anyway: For me and you it surely feels very frustrating to fill forms that you need to send to ministeries etc. But think how dull it is to work in the place where you just go throw the formulas day after day. And you always get these shit brown envelopes :D

Join now the "Cheer up the civil cervant" movement. It will cost you just 1,99 euros per a year depending on the amount that you have to pay for the pen in your nearest store and the durability of the ink of the pen. Draw on the envelope today! Could you be the one bringing the smile to the stonesface's life? Just try :D

Creating identitys in media culture and in our own lives

Yesterday I was photoshooting my friend Teppo for his soon coming website. He has composed music that will be there to download for the audience. For example you...and the music industry. He is very talented and I have been pushing him to this lunacy of posing in different places and postures. So blame me if you find something to say about the pictures. But for my opinion they are quite good (if not looking at some minor technical details). They are my pics!!! :D Hmm...I might really consider trying to make some living also with photoshootings.

"Teppo Pelkonen"

macho?

or sweet?

what shall it be?

In general: It is interesting how you can give a different impression of a person by choosing the ancle of view etc. The same person can look very different in different pictures. Choosing...selecting...emphasising something. Everybody has seen a lot of pictures of Britney Spears for example. She and other celebrities (especially women) can look very different depending on how much they have make up, how thay are stailed, if the wind machine is blowing, if the photoshop geek has been working in a night shift making the skin look nice.

Last weekend I saw one girl which I have not met in two years. We were in a meeting together. It took ages for me to really recognice her even if I had already heard her voice...which really reminded the girl's voice I knew two years ago ;) She was brunette, but now she was blonde..she had cut her hair, earlier she didn't use make up, now she did. And I think she had also changed the colors of her eyes with lences.

I had to do some identity thinking about my self too. For a school project I had to squeeze up my identity in four pictures. We have a day this week where we show "unseen side of me" photos. One potrait, family/friends, hobby and home + one work in the portfolio which is normally not shown. I added here my photos ecxept the last one. I could have selected some others too...and by doing that the identity of me would propaply be different in the eyes of others. I quess that nowadays in world's media culture identity is often something you can quite much altern by cliking blur and changing contrast in Photoshop.
You who know me...does these photos really represent me? Propaply in a very small scale...

"funny" self potrait...but am I always that positive?...I quess not. :D

My love towards Alps and people who I miss a lot

Jumping...the hobby

Helsinki, the city where I live

It is getting darker

Photo from site: http://mattviews.wordpress.com/2007/01/28/the-curse-of-the-golden-flower/

Day by day the fall is entering with blackness. I went today with my friends to see the movie Man cheng jin dai huang jin jia - The Curse of the Yellow Flower. They say that it is the most expencive film made in China this far. The movie was ok...but I think not that spectacular as it has been said to be by the Finnish press. * The movie was visually very interesting and it had nice cuts, still moments and very carefully planned shootings.

But in a way the story was "loosing it" near the end. I quess the storyboard artist has used 40 red pencils per each other color making the design. I mean: lots of blood in the film. But. I liked the story as a whole. Even if it could have been more sophisticated: not showing off so much with special effects and the great budget. I think that in the last years one of the problems in films industry has been the extra keenness of creating war/fighting scenes with 3d. But actually...this film might be using real actors. I don't know. But there is many people in China for sure :)

The main actress of The Curse of the Yellow Flower was also in the film Memories of Geisha. I liked it more then this one. But as I said, this was ok too. Visually I enjoy the Asian style and I quess that I will continue of going to theathers to see films produced in that corner of the world.

Soon there will be another Asian movie in movie theatres...a Japanese Anime based on the novel Legend of Earthsea (Maameren tarinat) by Ursula K. Le Guin. Waiting for it already :)

*one of the Finnish critiques about the film
http://www.skenet.fi/index.html?menuid=367&aid=1881
Ohjaaja-tuottaja-käsikirjoittaja Zhang Yimou on loihtinut valkokankaalle yhden värikylläisimmistä elokuvista vuosikymmeniin. Jo pelkästään tästä syystä viime vuonna ensi-iltansa saanut Kultaisen kukan kirous on välttämätöntä nähtävää jokaiselle, joka nauttii siitä eeppisestä yltäkylläisyydestä, jonka vain laajakangas pystyy tarjoamaan. Näin mielettömän spektaakkelin esittäminen vaatii hulppeat puitteet.

Kultaisen kukan kirous tuo yhteen Aasian ykkösfilmitähdet.

Täydelliseksi Yimoun elokuvaa ei kuitenkaan voi luonnehtia, ja monelle elokuvan ennakkomarkkinointiin perehtyneelle se saattaa tuottaa suoranaisen pettymyksen. Toisin kuin mainoksissa on luvattu, Kultaisen kukan kirous ei ole toimintaelokuva samassa mielessä kuten esim. Yimoun edellinen Lentävien tikarien talo (2004). Action-kohtauksia löytyy kyllä muutamia, mutta erityisen unohtumattomiksi niitä ei voi luonnehtia.
Outi Heiskanen
6.9.2007

Virransäästötilassa

Valmensin keskiviikkona ja kävin laulutunnilla. Vietin eilen illan koululla fuksiaisissa. Olen tehnyt melko paljon freelancer-töitä. Olen esitellyt vaihto-opiskelijoille kaupunkia. Ostin viherkasvin. Arkiasioita. Huomenna aamulla menen valmentajapäiville. Väsyttää...

Luennoilla meille on esitelty erilaisia tutkimusryhmiä ja heidän aikaansaannoksiaan. Tutustuimme yhtenä aamuna erilaisiin elektronisiin ratkaisuihin/laitteisiin, joilla mm. sensoreiden avulla voidaan tuottaa kaikkia jänniä interaktiivisia ratkaisuja. Olemme myös saaneet hypistellä markkinoiden uusimpia high tech-laitteita sekä kuulleet, kuinka uutta mediaa voidaan käyttää erilaisiin eettisiin tarkoituksiin. Kahden ensimmäisen viikon jälkeen sainkin idean, josta kenties alan työstämään sovellusta. Kaikki on kuitenkin vielä niin alussa, että en tiedä tuleeko ideastani sen enempää. Parhaimmillaan saattaa kuitenkin olla, että alan tekemään aiheeseen liittyvää tutkimusta ja ideasta kehkeytyy jopa lopputyöni. Yllättävän paljon meille puhutaan nyt jo valmistumisesta, vaikka olemme olleet koulussa vasta kolme viikkoa. Edellisten vuosien opiskelijat ovat kai enemmän ja vähemmän jääneet roikkumaan koululle sokaistuneina valinnanvaikeuden pyörteissä, koska kurssivalikoima tarjoaa niin paljon "kaikkea kivaa".

Itse olen nyt sokaistunut vain tietokoneen ruudusta. Tarvitsen lepoa...unta...pausea.

This is the way we study... ;)

...or just showing off. ;D We have a nice ping pong table at the lobby and yesterday we had fun time playing it together. We also tried this version where everybody runs around the table and tryes to hit the ball by turns. The trueth anyway is that there has been lot of lectures and sitting...and long days. Today I came home at quarter past seven. Mostly they have been quite tiresome infolectures about the schools systems etc. In three weeks we will start the actual courses. These first four weeks we have introduction lectures.

By the way, I did set up my account for computers at school and selected the background image. Ah, I still miss Austria!!! This is the river behind the school in Puch Urstein. PUCH!!! <3

The wheel chair in the picture above was used today when we had the most interesting lecture so far about usability. We have a teacher who is totally deaf. He can't hear anything but he can talk and "listen to us" with help of interpreter. He had borrowed wheel chairs, some adjustement glasses from The Service and Activity Centre for the Visually Impaired people Iris and also some good ear blugs etc.

So the idea was that we all got to try how it feels to have some kind of disability this morning. Some of us had not good hearing or vision...some were sitting in wheel chair and there was also a person whose fingers did not work because of rheumatism. The task was to find our way in the school from place a to b and make notes about things that we found difficult. I had glasses which made me blind in terms of the definition of blindness. But actually I could see something but not very well. I quess that some people who have definition of blind in Finland can then see something. My friend in the group had a tunnel vision...(she had different kind of glasses then me)

I could not read text if I was not standing very near and the letters had to be very big. It really pointed out the importance of contrast and colors in signs. The importance of design. We also recognised that in the elevators there should be voice note when you arrive to a specific floor. There was many things that were not very well planned in our school if you have special needs. After the session we talked about the things everybody found out and our feelings of beeing disabled. We also tryed to find ways to think solutions.

At the end the teacher talked us about thinking and using testing methods in our own projects in multimedia - about accessability and usability in the devices we will make in the future.

Chanching the subject: a few pictures from yesterday. I was in a boat called Väiski in Hakaniemi, Helsinki with class mates. They arrange once a year this party for all art schools in Helsinki. There were people from the Music Academy (Sibelius akatemia) the Theater Academy (Teatterikorkakoulu) and the University of Fine Arts (Kuvataideakatemia) and from our school: the University of Art and Design (Taideteollinen korkeakoulu). It is nice that we are having this group atmoshere in the class which I have not experienced after primary school. But the party itself was not that huge. Many people left early home...even if some people wouldn't quess, but students seem to take studies seriously in the art field. So not just hanging around every evening eating cheese and drinking wine in weird clothes having paint all around them. ;)

This morning we were sitting punctually at the class room listening the lecture.

Under umbrellas/ Sateenvarjojen alla

Last evening I spent a "girls night out". Actually first time after coming home from Salzburg. We ate in Kurdic restaurant (Cafe Caisa) in Helsinki and after that went to see theater/circus show called L'Oratorio d'Aurelia in Savoy.
http://www.changeperformingarts.it/thierreechaplin/oratorio_photos.html

It was very visual show based on music and movements, dance and funny suprises. I enjoyed a lot to see the girls! And later also Liisa joined us to the theater. We all have known us now 10 years. We studied in same highschool. Oh...It feels like time is passing by faster and faster. (Actually me and Liisa have known each other 13 years from school (yläasteelta))

In Finnish/Suomeksi:
Eilen illalla vietin pitkästä aikaa "tyttöjen iltaa" vanhojen kavereideni kanssa. Vanhojen kirjaimellisesti :D koska tapaamisestamme on kulunut jo 10 vuotta. Kävimme yhdessä syömässä kurdilaista ruokaa, jonka jälkeen suuntasimme katsomaan sirkusteatteria Savoy:hin (linkki esitykseen). Teatteriin saimme seuraksemme myös Liisan. Oli todella mukavaa nähdä pitkästä aikaa. Liisan kanssa olen tuntenut jo 13-vuotta. Ajan kulku yltyy koko ajan...

On the wall in Savoy they had photographs. I think that this one above has cought in a marvellous way the atmosphere of dreams and reality collapsing in human life. We see the shadow sites of life in small pieces already in early age. It is a sadly happy picture.

The photographer is Sami Mannerheimo. Picture's name is Jäätelökesä = icecream summer

http://www.samimannerheimo.com/

In Finnish/Suomeksi:

Savoyn seinällä oli Sami Mannerheimon valokuva, josta pidin kovasti. (linkin takana valokuvaajan kotisivu) Siinä kiteytyy mielestäni surullisen kauniilla tavalla unelmien ja realiteetin toisinaan vastakkainen yhteiselo. Kuva on mielestäni kaikessa surullisuudessaankin kuitenkin todella kaunis. Lapsen katseessa on syvyyttä...koskettava kuva. Jossain mielessä kuvassa on myös mielestäni huumoria. Asiat voisivat olla huonomminkin. Jäätelö sulaa sormille, mutta maistuuhan se silti hyvältä. Kuten elämäkin useimmiten. Mustaa ja valkoista tarjoillaan usein samassa lusikallisessa.

After the show we went to cafeteria to eat cakes and to have some drinks. More drinks were drank in another place later at the evening. In the picture: Liisa and Vilja.

Myöhemmin illalla söimme kakkua Fazerin kahvilassa ja piipahdimme myös istumassa Pullmanilla rautatieaseman yläkerrassa. Se oli yllättävän kotoisa paikka vanhoine puupaneeleineen. Ilta meni lupsakkaasti. Keskustelimme muun muassa hilpeään sävyyn Liisan ystävien viikottaisesta piirakkaillasta ja maistelimme vuoronperään makeita liköörejä. :D Keskustelimme myös pelottavan paljon teemasta lapset...vaikka se ei liene ajankohtainen kenellekään meistä. Ainakaan kahteen vuoteen...sanoi eräs (...ja en ollut minä :D)