This Christmas has thought me:

After spending three days in my apartment due to the flu, I stepped out to find a pile of spruce needles outside my door.

Lesson: Even though a Christmas wreath (julkrans) might look pretty on your door – if you’re living in an apartment building you might want to get one made out of plastic, or at least one that’s not breathing.

It’s a given that Turku would have its own Christmas market.

But even though it’s a beautiful city I won’t be spending my Christmas holidays here, but from 22.12 to 3.1 I’ll be in Kvevlax with my family

Merry Christmas to all and to all a Happy New Year!

The theme of this year’s Christmas party was “Every sperm is sacred”. The boys had us sing the theme song and then handed out hats so that we’d have the right attire for the night.

We were split into groups and named according to the theme. My group was Fertilization – and we actually ended up winning the first prize!

Sticking to the theme, the boys had made a sperm piñata, filled with words that we later had to make into a poem.

The food was just great; cream potatoes, steak and various salads. For dessert – Irish coffee cake

And then a quiz – I now know everything there is to know about sperm…

My boss Matti gave his annual magic act. Nina is assisting and Marko was the light master.

Tricking the underwear of both Heli and the other boss, Jorma

And then Oliver was found a bit lacking…

The evening ended in dance and I saw the greatest party trick ever; getting everyone onto the dancefloor with a video on how to disco:

Shinya came back to work today after a 3 week long vacation in Japan. I am so glad and he was happy too. He said: “I’ve confirmed. I’ve confirmed that I’m Japanese.”

And I thought: Yes, how wonderful. To be able to feel that you belong somewhere, that is truly a beautiful sensation. To find your identity anew.

And I don’t think it only applies to nationality but to other things as well. You can forget who you are but when you walk into a church, attend a meeting or pray with your friends you find yourself again. “It’s confirmed, I am a Christian.” And what a wonderful feeling it is.

Me and some of my relatives (+Li Min) at Christmas. With them I find that I’m truly a Finn-Swede. (photo by Olle)

I just thought this was so sweet! And I know that we have many wonderful and powerful Christmas songs, but how often do you find a Christmas worship song? Can we please please please sing this next Worship night!?

This year some might say I went a bit overboard with the decorations. But these are the ones that don’t bake their own gingerbread. Those who make their own gingerbread dough, however, might say that my decorations are lacking a bit…

As I’m living in such a small apartment, and because I’m not going to live here during the actual holidays, my decorations are something of an ”if I can’t have x I can have y”

The entrance is always the most important. Because I can’t put a nail through my door (my house is so new and fancy that they wouldn’t allow that, I’m afraid) I’ve bought a Christmas calendar in the shape of a wreath. And since I don’t have a Christmas tree I decided to decorate my largest plant with some stars.

Since I couldn’t find a suitable fabric for a table cloth, I simply bought a curtain and placed that on my table – this way I don’t even have to sow!

Light fixtures are always nice – here surrounding my icons.

Since I used the curtain for my table I had to make my window a bit more Christmasy by adding some baubles and hearts.

My kitchen is decorated by adding some red towels and pot-holders.

Ok, so maybe it’s not so necessary to decorate one’s bathroom but it sure looks nice…

my place

It might seem like spring has come to Helsinki but at work it’s still Christmas. I bought this Poinsettia (Julstjärna) one month before Christmas and, believe it or not, but it’s still blossoming.

When I came back to work after the holidays, I put away all the Christmas decorations I had on my desk – except for the flower. My initial decision to throw it away was met with such protests from my colleagues that I had to let it be. They are already thinking of me as a coldblooded killer from my lack of compassion for all the mice and rats people kill in the name of science. As I didn’t want to feed on their believes I had to let the stupid flower live.

But it just keeps on living. Has it no pride? It’s a Christmas flower! It’s supposed to live for one month tops, and then meet it’s fate and start withering at New Years. But no, this flower has some crazy Daffodil genes and thinks it will survive until it has fulfilled its destiny at Easter.

So it’s just a flower. But think of the Christmas tree. You don’t keep that in the house all year round do you! The flower is somewhat like a office Christmas tree – it has to go!

And I know what you are thinking – Why don’t I just stop watering it. But no, to fool my colleagues it has to be a sudden death. Like the flower was struck by some weird disease.

I’m thinking about using one of all the poisonous substances we have in our lab. Maybe beta-mercaptoethanol. But I guess just regular ethanol would do just fine.

Yes this is my new scheme – the poor little flower will get alcohol poisoning.

Mwahahaha…

Christmas is a time for watching TV. You will most likely find me slouched down on the couch with a huge box of chocolates for the entire holidays. It’s kind of a Christmas tradition, I did it ten years ago and I will probably continue doing it until my dying days, or until I’m forced to make dinner for myself, whichever comes first.

However, the quality of TV programs of today (or should I say the lack of programs) have become a, how should I put it, a marmalade heart in my otherwise perfect chocolate selection. Previously, I was happy flicking through the channels, watching old reruns of Loveboat or Little house on the prairie. And after a while I was bound to encounter a classic movie by the name of say: Clueless or Legally Blonde. So I could spend my afternoons, happily dozing of during commercials.

Todays TV is a totally different story. The introduction of mobile phones to our society has given the TV producers new inventive ways to rob people of their money. As TV-shop seem to attract an, how to put it, older clientele, the new phone games have become increasingly popular. So from 1pm to around 4pm every day, the only thing showing on TV is some girl in a bikini trying to dodge digital footballs that are thrown at her by some invisible teenager who is spending his parent’s earnings on a stupid TV based video game.

It is frustrating! What am I to do? Even TV-shop was better than this!

My alternative is watching the second season of Heroes.

And oh how I love Heroes. I’ve been reluctant to watch the second season even though I’ve had it on my computer for quite some time now. You know how the first season is all new and exiting and how the second season can seem like somewhat of a repetition of what you already know. It becomes too predictable.

The second alternative to the season two phenomena is what I would like to call: the less-clothes-higher-ratings policy. This is when the producers are getting chicken, thinking; there is no way the second season will be as popular as the first one, we have to turn to desperate measures. As an example of this I can take Roswell. Do you remember the fabulous sci-fi series where Katherine Heigl (Izzie of Grey’s anatomy) was first spotted? Of course you do Well anyway, in the second season you suddenly noticed a trend about the actors and actresses (in particular the latter of the two) in that they were wearing less and less clothes. Suddenly Roswell had become very hot, everyone was sweating and had to remove a shirt or at least show their mid riff to get some relief. In my opinion, a show that has to turn to such desperate measures to ensure continued high ratings has lowered its standards too much.

Fortunately this is not the case of Heroes. Even though Milo Ventimiglia, who plays Peter Petrelli in the series, needs to take off his shirt surprisingly often, nothing else has really changed since the last season. And seeing the bare upper torso of Milo is nothing that I would find that disturbing, if I may say so

The only unfortunate thing is the continued strike of the writers of the series. It has forced Heroes to take a break after only 11 episodes!! (And if you didn’t know it, almost all other TV-shows produced in the states are now threathened by this strike. Soon there will be nothing to watch!) I am saddened by this as it will take me less than a week to watch all episodes AND because I don’t know the ending! I will probably suffer a nervous breakdown before someone in the US finds a way to solve this problem. Don’t they consider how this will affect the image of their country? The best way to brainwash a people is through TV and now we are forced to watch more and more Finnish and British series. How will this end for USA? Can we ever learn to trust them again?