Save you

Annika

I hope she's not gonna be angry with me for putting these puppies up here. I just want to show the world how you tackle ovarian-f***ing-cancer! That's the way- aha-aha, I like it, aha-aha! The two first ones are from the hospital right after the second surgery. Gorgeous even then, she is. And funny.

Annika: I'm proud of you sis!

People are stupid, really

Me included. Ofcourse. Let me se how I can deploy this in the most difficult and incoherent way (my kind of way, that is).
Firstly I realized rather disturbing things during my 6 Months in Hong Kong:

1. You can't get away with acting like you're on Holiday for 6 Months. Not when You are closer to the big three-o than twenty.
2. There is a time when the adjective "loose" applies to your body too.
3. Gravity...Is a fact.

Well...This is just the start. Bare with me. After realizing these, to me, horrifying and rather chocking truths I was hit by a ginormous punch in the tummy. (Yes I'm being figurative). You know the one where it feels like your intestines inhabit your throat (because what else could create such a feeling of a big blob (or lump...or blobby lump for that matter) in your throat combined with constant tummy-ache? The intestine-blobby-lump-tummy-ache, with time, turned into a bad habit of starting to cry in, very often, public places. Very annoying. People think you are a freak already with white hair and being tall as a building in Hong Kong. The punch was the news of my sister (the only one I have) being diagnozed with ovarian cancer.

There's nowhere to go from there. What do you do when you get news like that? Becides deal with the lump-blob-ache-crying kaskade. Well the road I chose was anger. I was so pissed off. I mean it was so unfair (still is) and so unlikely I didn't even believe it. I wished it was me instead. I guess all those feelings are common in these kinds of situations. Well anyway..This was about being stupid...sooooo.... Hence number four in my list of realizations in Hong Kong:

4. Number 1-3...They don't matter shit (sorry Mum, I mean crap).

So why do I think people are stupid? Well more ignorant than stupid, I guess. The thing I furthermore (oh yeah I'm an English teacher...we use words like "furthermore") realized was how come I don't get angry for other's sisters sake. Alot of people's sister's get cancer. Am I that selfish? Ignorant? Stupid? There's alot of bad things happening and I get angry now? Angry at God. Well it was about bloody time, you'd think.

Now my sister got operated on for the second time yesterday and her kemotherapy is well on its way, and I guess that's why I feel better and ready to write about it. She is a fighter (hon har pung, helt enkelt) and she will get better soon. So now my anger has given way. And my final realization for this post is: I can't be angry for all the sisters in the world. It's exhausting to be angry.

Exotic Finland

January in Finland. 15 degrees below zero. Bring your grandma-style-woolen-knickers and grandpa-style-undies. It's worth it to be totally unsexy or a-sexy (=a total lack of sexyness, like the fat guy in the Borat movie) really to avoid freezng your bum off. We always complain about it being horrible up here (me for one anyway) with the weather. But when you stop and take it in...and stop being so annoyed over leaving the woolen knickers at home and becoming bumless or numb-bummed atleast...it's beautiful and very pieceful here in the wintertime.

Family

My Family. And I mean...You can't look at this picture without recognizing MY METALLIC RED SPANDEX! Oh yeah I'm on FIRE, baby! That's how smokin' hot they are. And those horns of my dad's...They twinkle and sing. Made in China, no doubt.
Seriously my family is the bomb.

VISA

Since I grew up in Sweden, the Motherland for equality, I always felt like an independent woman, although I'm married. (ha ha) Well now I'm apparently not independent anymore. The Chinese Government doesn't think so anyway. Or the SAR of Hong Kong to be Politically correct (The Special Administartive Region of China). Atleast they stamped my passport with: DEPENDANT. Bugger. Well I can think of worse people to be dependant of than my honey Visa. Which is ironic, really...Since the "Dependant" is my VISA.

I have a Dependant Visa that states that I'm dependant of Visa. haha :)

Hmmm...Is it working?

I can't believe I'm married to a Fridolf!!!!!

It turns out my husband's name in Swedish (or the corresponding one anyway) is tatatataaaaa (trumpet): Fridolf! ha ha ha ha :D I'm, once again, peeing my pants. His name in Finnish is Visa, which is so much cooler (Visa is a kind of Birch tree that grows in Lapland), although it's a magnet for bad jokes like: Is your brother's name Master? Can I pay with Visa? (his father used to say that and push his son towards the cashier...ha ha You're the one who named the kid, dude.)

In Hong Kong before Christmas there were big signs that said: " Let Visa pay for your Holiday shopping" For me that was very appropriate, since my salary as a coach/teacher wasn't much to "hang in the Christmas tree" as we say in Swedish.

Speaking of names...How can people name their kids things like: Yrjö (means vomit in Finnish and it's a Finnish name), George Bush btw, in Finnish translates into Yrjö Puska = i.e. Vomit Bush, Paukku is a Finnish last name and it means fart. I mean...That's just mean! Recon your kid would be Yrjö Paukku = Vomit Fart (sounds like a name Bart Simpson would use a alias doing his pranks). That's a death warrent. In these days of globalisation, I would think twice giving my child a name...I mean...at least I would translate it into English or even Swedish, which is Finland's second language. Jukka is a common Finnish name that in Swedish unfortunately means: "humping". My Finnish teacher's name was Sirkka-Liisa and in Sweden cirka means approximately. Therefore clever people would ask her to tell her name a little more exactly. Very funy, I know. But these days, school is dead serious. You have to have the right clothes and the right parents etc, which is enfuriating, but that the way it is. Having the wrong name, could mark you for life.

1.1.2009

If any of you 2 readers have problems figuring out how to start the new year I have the perfect solution: CRYSTAL CASTLES. Visa isn't quite as enlighted as I am in understanding the duet's brilliancy (is that a word? f*** it, now it is), but he'll come around.

http://www.myspace.com/crystalcastles

Biggy Biggy Biggy can't you see...

...sometimes your eyes just hypnotize me...

Happier New Year everyone!

So I decided to upgrade my New Year's Eve in Hong Kong to a New Year's Eve in Turku, Finland with the N.O.T.O.R.I.O.U.S (B.I.G) familjen Essén. :) Especially the S.I.S. The big sis, if anyone is wondering. She is the older one, not me. I'm still 20-something, u know.

We started the evening with lots of food and then we rented a movie. It was a really tacky romantic comedy, you know the one where the plot is so obvious even George Bush would get it. Anyway it was entertaining in a brain-dead kind of a way. After the movie and the food we went out to see the fireworks. They were actually impressive. Really. Way to go Turku.

Now I look forward to all the new stuff 2009 will bring. I have three words to say:

BRING IT ON!

HOT POCKET!

Jim Gaffigan is a genious! Thank you Jyry (my hilarious, boyishly handsome brother in law) for indroducing us. I want to BE Jim Gaffigan when I grow up, that's how good he is to me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9c9lAfXQHs

Oooops 3 more...

Herro, solli, and good bye...

I saw Team America (the movie made by the South Park guys, genious, I tell you, genious. Although a little too rough on the parents. They are not used to the "F-word" as we (kids of today) are. Anyway in that movie, Kim Jong Il was my favorite caracter (hey, I never promised this would be a deep, philosophical blog...Solli Visa), partly beacuse he has the voice of Cartman ("I'm not fat, I'm just big boned") but also because of the way he spoke. Ha ha After 6 months in China you laugh at that sort of stuff.

(In China clock is very often pronounced cock, by the way. And they have alot of places that sound like genitalia...I wonder if they have some kind of fixation of some kind... ;) Or then it's just me.)

Anyway today I'm going to try to add some photos...Yet another thing I never did before...so bare with me....

I want to share with the cyber space: some Familjen Essén Christmas fun, my birthday present given to me fom my sister, the legendary (or atleast much spoken=written of) piercing, my fabulous bag from Hong Kong (uh oh is this turning into one of those fashion blogs u wonder...hmmmm who am I writing this for anyway... ha ha I have like 2 readers... ;) )...and I guess that's it...Oh no one more thing. And the most important thing as a matter of fact. My beautiful sister and her new scarf á la Maria. And fyi: I'm her scarf stylist.

Awuhuuuuu! This is fun!

Okay here's the deal: I think you're never older than you are in your heart...Too bad you youngsters who got a heart donated from some grandpa doner. But you guys know what I mean. Here's what's in my heart today, cause I'm gonna pour it out for you:

I turned 28 today and got a call from my fabulous friend Christine Englund (Check her bad-ass blog: http://englundengland.blogspot.com/), who's always an inspiration and a pushy son of a bitch. She said I should start a blog. Okay my first thought was: How the hell is it done? I see blogs popping up like mushroom, but it always seemed so hard I never even gave it a try.

I hate that about myself. You should never say "I can't" or "I don't know how" etc, before you even gave it a try! My little brother is a good example of being the opposite. When he was a teenager he was curious of what a computer looked like inside...well that curiosity ended up in him tearing a computer apart and finding out. He never said "I don't know how"...He just did it. The story ended with his curiosity being quenched and a computer taken apart...He did not know how to put it back together...but his friend did. And after he saw his friend building it, he knows too.

So my dear pushy friend Christine (whom I call Kicki which apparently means a one night stand or something in that direction in Spanish (her boyfrend is conviniently enough, Spanish) and sometimes I call her Kickeli, which in Finnish means penis (Kikkeli that is) who never ever seems to lose faith in me kept telling me that I should keep a blog... So here we are. Even my husband Visa was surprised. "Do you have anythig to tell", he said. Ha ha always the logical one, my honey. I guess I'm just gonna do some bla bla bla and put up some dorky pics and be all proud of my blog.

Anyway. Here we are. Me, Myself and Mioli (my mother's nickname for me since I was a featus or something, that I've grown to love after 20 something years) writing a blog. Hallelujah. Well I shouldn't be surprised...My mother has one too. :)

I started this blog with writing about being young at heart and stuff... (I feel that this blog is going to be very coherent....not, but F*** it! This is my blog and I'm an incoherent person...So there you go.) So I already said it's my 28 th birthday today, Dec 29 th (for the love of God people, plan your pregnencies so you don't have a kid that close to Christmas...it's horrible (to wait for almost ONE YEAR to get presents the next time.... ha ha)) and it's starting to add up to a pretty hefty sum of years. But as I said it's all about how you take it and how you feel and act. Therefore I decided to do something juvenile today. Let me present my Birthday Gift to (Me) myself (and Mioli): A BLOODY (it really is bloody. My hair still has stains of blood, I'm not kidding) PIERCING! Tadaaa. I feel like 19 again. I almost peed my pants, but that's what life is all about. Doing stuff that isn't easy.

So let's see how this Blogging thing goes. I'm not the person with the best perseverance (although that might have been stated in someone's CV), but so far...padapappaaapaaaa... I'm loving it...