Bridges

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone! I hope your holidays were (or still are) enjoyable and relaxing and that you are all ready tackle the challenges and exciting experiences that 2007 is ready to offer.

My own two-week break was somewhat non-eventful. It all started with Bernice and I moving completely into our new place. For a little while there the house was pretty empty, however, slowly but surely the place has been getting filled up with useful homely things.

I love my home, and it is a home, it’s not a flat, though I do live with Bernice in a flatting situation. To my mind, there is a distinct difference between a flat and a home, that being that flatting is a somewhat transient experience. People generally move into a flat, stay a few years at most and then move on with no real attachment to a place, and while people who live in flats may consider them home, to me, calling my home a flat seems impersonal, arms length and non-reflective of me. I am a house proud person (you can blame/ commend my mum for that one) and I truly believe that a house should be an extension of those who live in it in order to be a home. My house and very soon the garden (once I have cleared it and started planting) is a place where I know I will be very happy because while not mine, it is a reflection of me and I want to make it my home. Funnily enough, while Bernice and I only though about the next 1 or 2 years, it is a place where, depending on the course of my life for the next few years, I can see myself staying there longer-term. So with Bernice I intend to slowly turn our house into the home that we want to have. So it’s a house and home, not a flat.

After that random spiel, I went to Tinopai on Christmas Eve and had a very enjoyable Christmas at the beach and for the very first time ever Kristelle’s partner spent Christmas day with his dad and grandparents because that’s where the whole family packed up and went to. Our holiday was cut short by a week by the fact that Kristelle rushed herself to hospital late on Christmas night with pregnancy complications and a very nervous 3 days ensued, but all is now well with her. I then spent my second week of holidays mucking around home in the garden with mum and buying random and necessary homely things.

With the end of 2006, a little reflection is in order.

It was one of the greatest years of my life, so many exciting things happened and now one year on from things that I experienced while in Finland and being back in NZ at Christmas last year I am starting to say things like, this time last year I was… And I can’t quite believe that one year has gone by already.

2006 was a year of learning, challenging myself in different ways, discovering more of who I was and experiencing and doing different things, while this mainly happened while on my Traineeship, the experiences and challenges kept going once I got back into the swing of things in NZ with challenges in my new job and balancing work/life/uni. It was a huge step up in terms of the expectations that others and myself placed on my abilities and knowledge and I have learnt a good many things from it.

Starting with the beginning of my traineeship and continuing into 2006, my journey to become spiritually, emotionally and mentally in balance and in tune with myself began in earnest (I started consciously and consistently putting more effort into developing this rather than just letting it happen). I still have a way to go and different areas to work on such as learning to trust or listen to what my inner self is trying to tell me. Also, the balance I do manage to achieve can be precarious at times when I let different things affect me in negative ways. I also know that I need to address the physical element of this balance so that I am truly in tune with me.

I see 2006 and 2007 as bridging years, moving from one way of life and one way of being to another.
Over the past few years, I have been working on the spiritual, emotional and mental and this has seen the development of a good foundation for this bridge. However, I have never consciously considered the physical, not only that, I have unconsciously stayed away from linkages between the physical to my spiritual and emotional self. This is a difficult one to explain… I am overweight but I am happy with who I am and how I look. However I know that if I look deeper, there are other emotions such as fear (this one very definitely), whether this be the fear of changing, the fear of admitting that I’m not happy with how I look or the fear of rejection, all of which contribute to my self-perception. It is safer to not consider these linkages and address the impact of these linkages on my overall wellbeing. I need to push myself out of my comfort zone further and start addressing the issues because I know that a number of the personal goals that I have for my life depend on me getting rid of the emotional baggage associated with my weight. I am hoping that in doing this it will give me the courage and motivation to lose the weight because at the moment it acts, in part, as an emotional shield that I am working towards not wanting anymore. I also know that in order to continue my journey of self-discovery I need to overcome this. Unsurprisingly, I already know how it developed, I just need to do something about it.

In addition, I need to introduce an element of stability into my professional life. I am still very restless, I have a home and I am happy there but while I am challenged at work, I am not completely happy or comfortable with what I am doing and the potential career path I will follow. This is making me restless and while I am normally happy to go with the flow of things, this is something that I don’t want to take a wait and see approach with. I am currently trying to work through the implications of my current feelings and figure out what is best for me both in the short term (work has been very flexible about me doing postgrad work and taking time off and the advantage of staying in one job for at least one year) versus finding something else more… fulfilling (???) where I will enjoy what I am doing more. It is a tough situation and I can’t say which is the harder to do as they could both be harder or difficult depending on how you view the situation. It may be a case that my current job serves a purpose for the interim so I will take a pragmatic approach to the situation.

In 35 days I will be 25 years old, that’s a quarter of a century! And I want to start the next quarter in the fashion that I mean to go on. 2007 for me is about finishing that bridge; it is about facing and conquering as many of my own personal demons as possible, it is about making me as whole and as happy as possible so that I have the strongest possible platform to start the next section of my life’s journey.

The coming year will be interesting and full of personal challenges, and being completely honest, I am not really looking forward to some aspects of it. The road is seemingly endless and at this stage, I feel like I need some goals to achieve, but self- discovery and growth is not something that easily lends itself to goal oriented achievements. All I can say is that I commit to trying my hardest to live in the moment, put myself into situations that challenge me, make me think and allow me to be true to who I am and what I want from life.

A new year, another building block to add to those that make up my life. Bring it on!

Exciting news

In my last post I said that Bernice and I would be moving out together at the end of January next year. As such last weekend we started looking around just to see what was available etc. On Sunday, we ended up going and looking at a place in Mt Eden, I really liked the place and Bernice liked it too so yesterday I called up the letting agent to express our interest in the place, a few hours later and I had signed the contract for the place. We can start moving in from the 20th of this month. I am very, very excited. The house is a nice villa conversion and is in the centre of Mt Eden at the city end so it’s nice and handy to bus routes and shops.

It’s quite amazing how lucky we got because anyone who’s tried looking for nice places to live for decent prices in decent areas close to the city centre will tell you that sometimes it can take a while. That it only took us a weekend of actively looking (we looked at five different places), leaves me with a feeling that it was just meant to be because I really did like the place as soon as I saw it…

So I’m moving in a couple of weeks and I can’t wait!

An eclectic mix of updates

I feel like I need an update…

The semester is over- YAY!!!, I handed in my last assignment at the end of last month, and my last exam a couple of weeks ago. I feel very relieved that uni is over and done with for the year and now I have a three month ‘break’ before it starts again next year. I have gotten the results back from two of my courses, one was very good, the other I though I was going to fail the paper, but ended up doing ok in. Funnily enough, the lecturer marking both of these courses was the same person, if I were her I would be scratching my head now in wonder as to how I could do so well in one course and abysmally in another. I will pass my other two courses, so all in all it has been a good year academically.

Work is going well, I am enjoying it when I’m not stressing about the looming deadlines, though things have been a lot better since uni finished as now I find that my mind is not continually thinking about uni related stuff while trying to do others.

On another relatively exciting note

I am finally moving out of home… again. Maybe the third time will work a charm.

Bernice and I have decided to find a place together as she wants to move out of where she is currently living, and I, after some thoughtful consideration have decided that it would be best if I did not live with my mum permanently again. Now that the decision has been made, it is quite cool and I am looking forward to it. It will be interesting living with Bernice, we know each other’s bad habits which is a good thing- no surprises- however, living under the same roof as each other may just turn into a real test of our friendship. I know we can each be rather trying for the other sometimes. Hmmm…

We have decided that we will be doing the big move at the end of January after she gets back from her Christmas holiday seeing as there’s not too many weekends that we each have free leading up till the end of the year.

Speaking of Christmas… it’s now only 30 days away- hooray! It was Khazana’s birthday earlier this and one of the presents Kristelle gave to her and Xavier was a couple of books with the words set to traditional Christmas carols which we all sat around singing last night. My favourite was one with the jingle bells music and was about how Christmas day in New Zealand and the sun, beach, family and BBQ… and for my family that is exactly what Christmas is about so it was cool singing about it. Also Christmas carols are becoming the thing that I listen to at the moment.

Just because I was bored, I did a which Christmas carol are you quiz. Apparently I am ‘Silent Night’. I enjoy Christmas and I like them conventional, that means, family, tradition, midnight mass and a whole raft of other christmasy type things, except I hate the shopping, but I love the wrapping and giving of gifts, I love carols and I probably will have a merry Christmas. Surprisingly, this is quite an accurate description of how I like my Christmases.

I have been told I need to challenge myself to do something different, more specifically, I should undertake a physical challenge this being, the formally know as Special K Women’s Triathlon or Duathlon, or rather I should challenge myself to run 5km, all at once. I am not fond of running, walking is more my thing, but I am going to try this as I have been dared to. I am not entirely sure of my reasoning behind this, but I suspect it’s because A) I want to prove that I can, and B) its a dare and while I’m not overly fond of undertaking dares, this one is not a stupid one and, well refer to point A.

Other than that, life is… happy

Just thinking

Over the last two months I have written two blog entries, one each month. They both start with a variation of “where has the last month gone? ...”

I have realised that life has gotten so busy that I have forgotten to stop and smell the roses or at least take time out to think, reflect and just be. I went to the farm last weekend and spent a grand total of about one hour with the horses and the rest of it doing my assignment. At the time, it seemed like a very good thing to do, looking back, I think that I should have taken more time out just to enjoy the natural wonders of the farm and the world around me.

So this is me, taking time out… thinking and writing it down.

I used to like writing in my blog because it gave me the opportunity to update people but also to give myself a forum in which to express how I felt, and most importantly it made me think. This might seem slightly strange, but because of the nature of what my blog was to me while I was in Finland, challenging me to really think and reflect about what was going on was important. Now that I’m back I am finding that I am doing less of this which for my own piece of mind is not good because it became such a big part of who I am over the last year and it helped me keep things in perspective and in touch with what I really want.

I have noticed that I cry a lot; most of the time either for no apparent reason or for something so small, it really is insignificant. I can get very short, very quickly with my family because I am not used to dealing with their dramas and I have nowhere to just go blah, so it all gets bottled up. My headspace feels very cluttered with lots of little random things that would normally just be purged onto my blog. I haven’t lost sight of the bigger picture, but I feel like I am getting bogged down in the today and not dreaming about the tomorrow, maybe this is just something that comes with moving into the real world where family, work and everything else exists, but if it is, I have to say I really don’t enjoy it. Mostly, I have to say that on the surface, I might seem happy with my lot and I think to an extent I am, but deep down things just do not seem right and that I am not as happy as what I know I can be. And I think that I have been throwing myself into things full-bore because I really don’t want to think about this and instead am looking to just get through it.

I am finding that I am again saying to myself that I want to go home at the most random times, similar to what I was doing when in Finland, I can be on a bus going to work and say that I want to go home, I can be at home and say I want to go home. I feel very displaced and I’m not sure why. I have a huge urge to go and create my own home with all the white-wear, lounge suite, and other big ticket purchases, yet at the same time I just want to leave and go overseas again. I feel like I am trying to find my place in the world but cannot figure out where that is. I always assumed this was with my family in Auckland as I cannot see myself living anywhere else in NZ, but now that I’m back, the thought of staying here and creating my life doesn’t seem quite right yet neither does the thought of leaving my family. At the moment I feel like I am placing myself in a box that I don’t want to be in but can’t decide where else I’d rather be. It’s all rather confusing.

The Last Month

Where has the time gone? I keep asking myself this question, I can't believe that tomorrow is the first of October. I heard people on the radio talking about daylight saving starting tomorrow and I was thinking that can't be right, it's not October yet, and wondered if they changed the start date at some stage while i was away only to realise that it's the first tomorrow.

So life has been very busy. I've started work, there is a lot that I need to do. I am working on projects that I was working on in someway shape or form before i left council, but they have progressed further while I have been away, now I am playing catch up while at the same time trying to write reports and do economic analysis that will be used for public consultation in October/ November. It is actually quite stressful, I am only working part time until the end of October because of uni and because of this I feel like I'm not getting as much as I would like done and that there are not enough hours in the day because I seem to spend quite a lot of time in meetings, it's actually very annoying!

Then there's uni... I can't wait for the next month to be over, I have assessments coming out of my ears, it's interesting but again stressful, much like the rest of my life really.

It's the school holidays and as a treat I took my neice and nephew to the Weber Bros Circus last night. The kids had so much fun, so did I actually. My niece was so cute, she was standing up and dancing along to the techno music and clapping to the beat and my nephew spent the evening trying to get the attention of the clowns and laughing, it was great! It is quite amazing how much strength some people have and also how much nerve others have. At the very end they had the ball of death or whatever it is called where people on motorbikes zoom round in the big steel ball, they ended up putting 3 motorbikes in there and I was absolutely petrified that they were going to crash, there just didn't seem to be enough room in there for all of them, but suffice to say everyone came out grinning.

August

I'm not entirely sure where the last month has gone, one minute it is August and now it is Septmeber.

August has been a relaxing month with a number of small successes...

• I have completed one major assigment, albeit in a somewhat rushed finish at the end
• Begun researching and the beginnings of writing three other major reports
• I am enjoying being back at university and learning new things and using my brain, but I don't like being a student, it is worthwhile but also a real pain in the butt
• As a result in July I tentatively started looking for a fulltime job and have been lucky enought to get one back at Auckland City Council in the Economic Development Group where I was before I left for Finland, however the role is different and seems more challenging than what I was previously doing which is great. They have also been really flexible in letting me start intially part time till my courses finish next month and then taking time off next year as needed for my study modules. So I am happy and start there in a week.

The last month has been a time for catch up with my freinds, seeing as July was a bit hectic I put off telling people I was back until recently, but since I've told people I have been catching up with people. It is great to hear about what everyone has and is doing now, we all seem so grown up now that many have left university and started working.

On another positive note, my mum had her back operation on Tuesday, well, with three compounding problems she had the choice of two operations and went for the less invasive which has managed to eliminate a good amount of pain for her and i am so happy about it, hopefully the pain she has now will be managable, if not the other operation is an option. it's nice to see her so perky and happy again as she has not had a good time of it since I have been back.

My Blog's Name

So I can't call my blog 'my Finnish experience' anymore, so I have been thinking about what to call it, it's current title will do for now unless I can think of something a bit more inspiring (to myself) or clever. I've had the suggestion 'My finished Finnish Experience' (thanks James :)), I think I'll mull it over some more.

One year on

So.... Long time no post....

Just a random thought, I have had this blog for over one year now, cool...

Anyway... I am back in NZ, well I have been for a few weeks now. How do I feel about being back? Indifferent I think would best describe it. Life has been hectic or at least I always seem to be busy, though I'm not quite sure what I've been doing, mostly doing things with my family I think. It is nice to see them all, but it is quite full on and is definitely not at all what I am used to and this is reflected in my attitude to my family, they are so loud, they are now almost unbearable for any extended length of time.

Anyway besides all of that I have started back at university doing postgrad in Environmental Management, but I'm looking for a job also as most of my courses are module based or in the evening and I've done two of my courses for this semester already, so only two more to go. I find that after not studying for a while I am really getting back into the spirit of it, with such energy it is scary. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that I only have to focus on each paper and attend lectures for a week at a time full time so it doesn't carry on like some never ending hell which is how I've always felt about attending lectures every other day over the course of a semester, no matter how interesting the paper I've always found lectures to be a dead bore come the end of semester, this doesn't happen now, or it hasn't thus far (touch wood!).

So life keeps going, it's funny, I think about my time in Finland and know it happened but it seems like such a distant memory yet it was only last month that I left!

I think I will keep my blog going, I just need to think of another name for it as it's not exactly My Finnish Experience anymore, though I'm having a bit of a brain block, it will probably end up getting called something really simple, but one year on, it's time for a change.

London and Eastbourne

Strangely enough after one year of blogging about my time in Finland I am getting a bit sick of it. I've never really been one for writing letters, emails etc that have no purpose besides conveying random peices of information, while my blog has more of a purpose than this, writing in it "constantly" so that it can be a true reflection of my traineeship is becoming a bit of a drag, but there are a couple more that I should post before I say "that's a wrap", and it may very well be that they are a lot shorter than anything else I've ever written, the following is one of them...

On Friday evening I arrived back in Tampere after just over 1.5 weeks visiting London and Eastbourne. London is a great place with lots of cool things to see and do and places to visit. I arrived early afternoon there and by the time I got to my hostel from the airport it was going on late afternoon so it was just my intention to go for a walk around the area I was staying in and have a bit of a think about what I was going to do while there. In the end however I ended up in Hyde Park and sort of kept going and one of the first things I came across was the Princess Diana memorial, when I first saw it I wondered what the heck it was, then discovered it was her memorial and then I started wondering what on earth they were thinking when it was decided that that particular fountain would be the memorial, it is in my opinion fairly terrible, well the fountain is ok, but as a memorial, it fairly sucks. Moving on, I then found myself at the back end of Buckingham Palace and decided well why not, so I went down to the front and discovered that the Queen was in, then walking down The Mall I went to Trafalga Square, up to Picadilly Circus and then along Oxford Street back towards the Marble Arch and back to Paddington where I was staying, so it was a pretty long walk.

The next day I went and visited good old Big Ben and he dinged his dong just after I got there which was pretty cool, the House of Parliament looks like a prison with its high black wire fencing and security cameras along its perimeter, but it still looks very nice, the London Eye looks slightly out of place, but Westminster Abbey and St Pauls Cathedral look stunning as does all of the old architecture in the city. Oh and I visited Harrods, no trip to London is quite complete without this!

The next day I went to Camden Town and the changing of the guards and then spent a good portion of my day trying to find an adaptor to charge my camera which had quickly run out of battery, I thought this might happen but didn't think it would so soon. Why did I spend most of my day doing this??? Because the first adaptor wouldn't work as I could get the plug in, I took it and the plug back to the store and trying the adaptor that I brought and another one, the stupid plug just wouldn't go in, I then had to go to another store, the first store pointed me in the direction of a proper luggage store saying they would have more variety so I went there only to find that they had only the one, theis being the one that I had already tried, but low and behold when the plug was put in this time it worked perfectly, how annoying... Having wasted a good portion of the day doing this one thing and subsequently doing a bit of window shopping, I then decided that I would spend my evening out taking night photos of areas such as Harrods and its thousands of lights, Tower Bridge and the Tower of London etc I also went and visited Picadilly Cricus and Leister Square which are both quite different in the evening compared to during the day.

Friday I went and saw the Changing of the Horses Calvary guards thing which is pretty much just two sets of soliders on mounts standing around for about 15min, but the horses were beautiful! I then went to Kensington and visited the Palace, gardens, Royal Albert Hall as well as the Museum. I have to say that the memorial that Victoria built for Albert is mighty impressive, sort of puts others to shame really. I also went and saw the Lion King and it was absolutely amazing how they managed to turn an animated film into a stage production and do it well, I started crying within about 1 minute of The Cirlce of Life song beginning. Covent Garden at night is also very lively.

On Saturday I went and had a look through Westminster Abbey, had a look at the British Taite, went to Westminster Cathedral and then went back to Westminster for the Evesong service in the afternoon, then I jumped on a bus and went to St Pauls, my intention here was to just take some photos but discovered that their evesong service was just about to start so I went in there to, now i can say that I have been to services in two churches that I have admired since I have no idea when, ages ago! And I went back to covent garden to look at the markets and the various buskers around and then I went out to Greenwich.

On Sunday I caught a train to Eastbourne to go and visit my relatives. I was sitting in Paddington Station and looking at the train departures board and was wondering where on earth the train to Eastbourne was as my ticket said I was leaving via Paddington Station, I finally got annoyed enough to go and ask the ticket office who told me my ticket included the underground and that I actually needed to go to Victoria Station, so with 40min to spare I waited for the underground and then managed to board the train to Eastbourne with about 4 minutes to spare which is a good thing as I told my relatives I would be on a particular train and didn't want to be late.

Eastbourne is a town of about 94,000 people in East Sussex on the English south coast, it is a very pretty place and it is the first time I have ever visited there. My grandfather came out to NZ in the 1950's working his way over from Australia, he ended up staying in NZ and marrying my gran, but he left behind 6 younger brothers and sisters in England, up until last week I had only ever met grandpa's sister, Great Aunt Ruby and her husband George when they visited NZ around 10 years ago and then only for an evening, but being in this region of the world, I had to go and visit, I was supposed to go at Christmas but went home instead and then I was going to go at easter until one of my other aunts husband died, so it was really a case of now or never.

Anyway, Aunt Ruby was great taking me all about Eastbourne and showing me the sights and also telling me all about my family and where my grandpa comes from because he doesn't talk about these sort of things. Throughout the week I met everyone of my grandpa's siblings (except one who died a number of years ago, but I met her husband) and their partners or spouses, I even met some of my second cousins and their children, it was nice if a bit weird. It is funny how everyone in the family, including most of the children live in Eastbourne still. Tuesday's are girls night for Aunts Pearl, Ruby and Margaret, last Tuesday dinner was at Aunt Ruby's so I cooked yummy Morrocan vegetables and rice with garlic pitas and then for dessert we had this chocolate and vanilla Swirl mousse that I made, I have to say I am a great cook, but people who have tried my cooking know that already! I'm not modest am I? I had so much fun laughing with and getting to know my Aunts, there was no weird silent moments or anything.

On Wednesday Aunts Pearl and Margaret took me on a tiki tour around the surrounding villages of Eastbourne and we had a nice day visiting the Long Man, Alfriston and the Michellin Priory. In the evening we wnet and visited uncle George (brother) and his partner Rose and stayed for quite a few hours. By this time I was getting a bit antsy to be by myself again, meeting my family is great, but I need space and Aunt Ruby just wanted to come everywhere with me and I didn't want to be rude, but I think she got the idea that I needed some time to myself so on Thursday I went to Brighton for the day, the bus trip there was nice if not exceedingly annoying, it was over an hour late getting in! But walking along the pier and see front were nice and the Lanes were great with all the different varieties of shops. I had a really nice day.

On Friday morning I left eastbourne and went back to London and spent the day just wandering around different areas in the central area I hadn't spent much time looking at before and then got the train back to the airport to come back to Tampere.

What i find most interesting about my trip to eastbourne was the fact that by the time I had been there for a day I was making myself right at home and knew where everything in the cupboards was located etc it felt like home and within a couple of days Aunt Ruby was acting just like my grandma did towards me- fussing over me, but letting me be enough and treating me like an adult, she even tried to ply me with alcohol on my last night having bought a new bottle of sweet wine which only I like and deciding that I really should try to drink as much of it as I could before I left, thank goodness I could beg off with the excuse of needing to pack my bag before going and seeing Uncle Bill and told her she should just save it for Aunt Pearl! It was really nice that she and my other Aunts were just so welcoming, even one of my second cousins who I talked to for 20 minutes was like it. It was nice coming away feeling that these people were not just my family in name, but that they really were my family and it didn't matter that i had never met them or that we live thousands of miles away from one another, they are there and that's what matters.

No more work... Almost

My last of work was unofficially on Wednesday, I am now officially on a three week holiday until the official ending of my traineeship, except I have to go to work one Saturday for the entrance exam for potential new students.

Now that I have left, it almost feels that I wasn't even there. I am not sad that I will not have to go back again except the one time. I will not miss going to work, but there are a couple of people at work that will be strange not seeing. I think the people at work will feel the same. I left much in the same way I arrived, I just disappeared, I had afternoon coffee with a few people and it was nice that someone made the effort to round a few people up who came in at timed intervals to talk to me which I thought was hilarious, but otherwise, it was low key, I'm pretty sure very few people actually know that I have left. I think this goes to show exactly how well I was integrated into the school, I wasn't. While I am not too fussed about this, I would have found it somewhat superficial if they had tried to have a send off afternoon tea or something, I must admit that I am quite annoyed by the fact that not even my direct boss bothered to make the effort to say goodbye. Certainly there are no classes at school so she chooses to stay at home and work and to come to work to say goodbye would be time consuming given where she lives, but she could have sent me an email or something to say goodbye. I actually think it's bloomin' rude to not say goodbye to someone you've worked with and shared an office with for a year.

All of this goes to show exactly how much of an impact I had at the school, more students said goodbye to me than the teachers! I really might as well not have been there the whole year. Now it is over and it was a completely forgettable year.

The only sad thing about it is that it is one more milestone ticked off here which brings the time when I have to leave to go home closer.