Tag: personal

Friday 5 for November 3: Late again – http://f.riday5.com/2023/11/04/friday-5-for-november-3-late-again/

1. When did you last miss a scheduled appointment?

Not in years. But 15-10 years ago I missed a bunch of appointments or just meetings with friends/family without warning during several years because of my Crohn’s symptoms (read: diarrhea), or had to cancel just 1-2 hours before.

2. What’s usually the reason you’re late for something?

I’m never late now. I can’t remember the last time. Because usually they’re things that if I’m late for them, I suffer as a result- like Doctor’s appointments which are hard to get and the appointment is like two months away from the day I made it because they’re too busy to get me in sooner unless it’s an emergency; or the unemployment agency will punish you if you’re late or miss an appointment by cutting off your benefits which means no money which means the next rent can’t be paid. So I take steps to make sure I’m not late or miss my appointments.

3. What have you recently finished well in advance of a due date or deadline?

Last month’s the goverment mandated job application to an employer.

4. In your daily life, what strategies do you use for not being in a hurry?

I try not to leave things for last minute. And when I need to be somewhere at a certain time, I leave early enough to make it in time – even if I have to wait outside or somewhere for half an hour.

5. What are you waiting for?

I’m not sure. The last 5-6 years I’ve felt like I’m in limbo, waiting for something. It’s all about hanging in a loose noose, forced to being unemployed to get money to survive due to factually not being able to work, but not having the right illnesses to get on disability.

Friday 5 for November 10: When it’s time to change, you’ve got to rearrange – http://f.riday5.com/2023/11/10/friday-5-for-november-10-when-its-time-to-change-youve-got-to-rearrange/

1. If you could change one minor thing about your life right now, what would you choose?

Minor thing? I can’t think of a minor thing I’d change. All the things I’d change would have a huge impact on my quality of life and reduce my stress by huge amounts or completely eliminate it. I can’t think of a minor thing that changing would make a lick of difference.

2. What’s your favorite bubblegum?

Don’t have one. I can’t remember the last time I had bubblegum.

3. When did you most recently need an unexpected change of clothing?

Probably when I was dressed too lightly for fall weather and only realized it once I opened the frontdoor and felt the cold air. Would’ve been the last few weeks but don’t remember exactly when.

4. Where do you keep your (currency) change?

In my wallet. If I’ve accumulated an unusual amount of coins, I might put an even amount of them such as 5 euros (in 10 and 20 cents) in a tiny coin purse and use them to pay for small things at the chemists.

5. When did you most recently need a change of scenery?

The only time I remember feeling like that was when I was living in Vantaa in the Greater Helsinki (metropolitan area surrounding Helsinki, the capital city of Finland) and studying in the library school. I lived in student housing which was an apartment of three bedrooms and a kitchen. There usually were only me and one other person living there, so the third bedroom was locked (we locked our doors when we weren’t home). My housing mate often traveled back to her home town for the weekends, and if I didn’t, I’d feel like the walls were closing in, having only my own room and kitchen to be in. I wasn’t used to having that little space to live in. So I’d often go out on Saturday to the library or Akateeminen kirjakauppa in Helsinki just to browse and to get away from the student housing. Akateeminen kirjakauppa was a really good bookstore back then, with wide selections in all the genres and a big selection of English language novels. It’s where I bought my very first English language novels ever, which just happened to be Star Trek novels! I’d also visit different town libraries because several towns make up the Greater Helsinki and town libraries are always the biggest libraries as well as these particular libraries being part of the capital city area and having lots of international users so they’d have good service and selection. I made use of those libraries a lot!

Almost late!

1 – International Day of Older Persons: David Bowie once said that ageing is an extraordinary process whereby you become the person you always should have been. Do you agree?

I think I do! I certainly am much more comfortable in my own skin now in my late 40s than ever before.

2 – World Architecture Day: Are you a keen observer of architecture, or do you mostly notice it when you see architectural oddities, e.g. a particularly ugly building, or a very unusual house design — that sort of thing?

I do notice architecture a lot! Even if a lot of my notice is on the “Oh my that’s ugly!” or “Or that’s very (old &) pretty!” side. I find modern architechture unattractive, and a lot of historical buildings a lot nicer to look at. I do appreciate it when TPTB do try to make a newly built building more attractive, usually with lively colors – mostly it feels like everything’s made of either gray concrete elements here or gray glass and metal elements, so buildings that are painted with actual colors, sometimes several of them that go together, is great.

I’m also known to pause movies and tv shows to google building blueprints because I’ve gotten stuck on the thought “what the hell kind of floor plan is that” or “the carage being there and opening into the ktichen the way it does doesn’t make any sense”. Friends and The Golden Girls just to name two. When I rewatched The Tudors a few years ago, I googled the manors and castles featured in the show a lot.

3 – Virus Appreciation Day: OK, so it’s been almost three years since Covid rocked the world. Is there ANYTHING you appreciate about that particular virus — well, maybe not the virus itself, but the impact it had on workplace arrangements, or social norms, etc.?

I’m glad that healthy people got some taste of what it’s like to be chronically ill and severely limited in what you can do and what it’s like when you spend most of your time at home. Too bad most people seem to have forgotten it already! Same with being unemployed and how the very basic unemployment benefits are really small.

We seem to have to gone back to what was before COVID-19 as far as work goes and forgotten all the lessons. Or so it seems to me looking in from the outside. I guess my circles do take a little bit more notice of things like the flu and not visiting each other when one very clearly in in the middle of it. Continue reading Jo’s Daily Questions – October 2023

The Friday Five for 27 October 2023 – https://thefridayfive.dreamwidth.org/121019.html

1. Which website do you go to more often than any other?

Technically gmail because I have my inbox always open in a tab as well as my phone. Other than that, probably https://www.yle.fi which is the national news site and Reddit which has both fandom subreddits and subreddits which talk about Finnish news.

2. Which website have you stopped going to, that you used to go to a lot?

Livejournal.

3. What is the weirdest or most unusual website you have bookmarked?

I don’t think I have either types bookmarked. Others may think some of them are weird but I don’t!

4. If you shop online, which online store do you buy from most often?

There’s no one single online store I buy more from than any other. They are divided by product category; here are a few of my most used (but not necessarily more than a couple of times a year):

https://www.lumingerie.fi is the only shop I buy bras from.

https://fountainfeder.de/ is a shop I buy a lot of the fountain pen/ink stuff from and only one I buy ink samples from since Brexit. But it isn’t the only shop I buy fountain pen stuff from.

Amazon UK and Amazon DE are the two I use the most for buying DVDs & Blurays and calendars/yearly diaries.

https://www.yliopistonapteekki.fi/ for things like vitamins and cosmetics when they’re in a good sale.

5. Which online store do you browse but almost never buy from?

I browse Etsy a lot, and while I do buy from there, compared to the browsing, it’s a tiny amount.

Friday 5 for October 27: Lessons – http://f.riday5.com/2023/10/27/friday-5-for-october-27-lessons/

1. What were your high school teachers wrong about?

I quit high school after three months and was absent most of those three months, so I’m answering this based on my primary/comprehensive school and the first year of vocational school (the first year was general education, the years after that were for training in vocations).

The teachers were completely wrong when they said that when the baby boomer generation retires, a mad number of jobs will open up and we will have no problems getting a job if we’re even half way decent at what we do. They were so totally wrong.

Instread of steady jobs, there was a serious depression which started in 1990. Companies went under and unemployment was high. If you graduated to a profession during the depression or in the years immediately after it, what those people got were temp and part-time jobs at best, unemployment at worst. In the public sector jobs did more and more of cuts and offices, libraries, hospitals etc. run on minimal staff and people are only hired when it can’t be avoided to this day. In the private sector the same, but the service industries such as restaurants, shops etc. only hire part-time and only bosses are full-time. And everywhere technology has taken over human work, so a lot of people who aren’t cerebrally minded are unemployed because simple jobs don’t exist anymore, and they are not up to reading to be engineers, doctors or coders etc.

2. Which high school subject (or specific lesson) turned out to be more useful than you expected?

I think history. I’ve many times been grateful for the general education I received about varius countries, their histories and their relationships to one another, and what ideas, events, sentiments lead to various historical upheavals. It’s made following international news much easier when I know at least something about Russia’s history, or Hamas or Israel or whatever.

3. From which high school courses do you remember most and least?

I remember history the most, I think. Just because I loved learning about Ancient Egypt, Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece. Least – Chemistry and Physics. I feel like I never much learned anything, or at least don’t remember much. Mostly I remember there being too few work stations and boys dominating them, so whenever we got to do experiments/see something work, boys got to do the thing and girls watch from the side :/ You can’t really learn well when you don’t get to do stuff yourself.

4. How many of your high school classmates are you still in touch with?

None. I didn’t like school, and only had “school” friends, not ones that I wanted to spend any time with outside school. Of my real friends, one was in the same school as I but in a different class, and the rest went to a different school.

5. Which specific songs bring you back to specific memories of high school?

Not song, but band: Duran Duran. And not school itself, but rather singing Duran Duran songs after school with my friends, and doing my homework while listening to WIld Boys and Save a Prayer.