The Earth hour and about Italy

Hello again.

So the Earth hour was last Saturday. I'd like to talk about that for a bit.
So as you know, the Earth hour is a thing organised by WWF where everyone in the world (doesn't) turns off all their lights for an hour, from 20:30 to 21:30. Local time, that is. So that one timezone at a time goes dark. Or at least darker. It's always on a Saturday in the end of March. The last one, I guess. The point for people is to show their commitment to the planet by going dark for an hour.
According to Wikipedia (because I somehow couldn't find much on their own page) the whole thing started in 2007 as a lights-off event in Sydney, and then kinda spiralled on from there, so that now it's a world-wide thing every year. The idea originally came already in 2004, but it took a while to convince the mayor and stuff.
In October 2007 also San Francisco did a lights out thing inspired by the Sydney's happening in March. In 2008 there were already 35 countries participating. There were also some monuments participating, like the Sydney Opera House and the Empire State Building, and a bunch of other ones from Canada to Malaysia. Also for example Google's homepage went "dark" on the day of Earth Hour, meaning black instead of white.
In 2009 there were 96 countries on 6 continents participating, along with a bunch of tv and radio stations. In 2010 it was 126, and it's gotten bigger every year.
This year over 170 countries and territories had confirmed their participation by Friday. This means more than 1200 landmarks and close to 40 UNESCO world heritage sites set for the switch off. I don't know how many of them actually did and who else did, because I cant find this year's stuff yet (on Sunday, I'm too tired to do anything else right now, so I figured I'll write now, and do something useful on Tuesday instead of spending time on this).
There's also a good amount of criticism towards Earth Hour, mostly about how it doesn't actually make any kind of difference, because it's just an hour, and because then people feel good about not having had the lights on for an hour and don't actually change their behaviour, because, you know, they've done their part by switching the lights off for an hour. Or not. Also people are saying the Earth hour makes using electricity seem evil, even though it's one of the biggest reason for, well, modern everything from refrigerators (meaning unspoiled food) to proper hospital facilities (meaning modern, very good health care, meaning not dying). So we shouldn't see using electricity as a bad thing. And I guess those people are right, but still. People could easily survive using less electricity, even if a lot of it is required for making the world a little safer for every one.
Anyway. I think it's a pretty cool thing.

Ok, then about the other thing on the title.

You remember when I was doing the application for next summer's Explorer belt, but didn't get to go.
On Saturday morning I got a phone call from the leader of the EB asking what I'm doing next summer. Someone had cancelled and they were offering me their place. So now I'm going to go to Italy for a month next summer.
So....
That's not only going to make writing a bit of a story twice a week practically impossible, it's going to make writing anything at all on the blog here very difficult. Because for the first ten days (as far as I've understood, they haven't actually told be anything about it yet) I will be without any electrical devices, and even after that I don't know if I'll have access to the internet.
But maybe we could figure something out, like someone else would write the bits when I'm gone, or we'll jsut stop writing for a month, or something. I don't know. If we want to do that, that is.
I'm still a little (a lot) confused about this, because it kind of came completely out of the blue and yeah.
I have no idea what is going on.

I'm just gonna stop here.
I'll hear from you on Friday.

~matu

Oh damn it's Friday

Yeah hi. Sorry this is so late again but I had a rather eventful day today. Saved the world and shit.

Also, I would like to say that Robin has made me proud. I was told that it (the first chapter) was a masterpiece at creative writing today. A masterpiece. Amazing. I can still hardly believe it. I got a lot of positive feedback on it otherwise as well, I am so proud of my little baby!

I've met some interesting characters on public transport this week. One day, there was like a bunch of school kids that came on, which in itself isn't that surprising, but they were speaking French! Like, 10-15 8-year-olds just speaking French. I think they were from Canada, one of them had a hat that said Montreal something-or-other. Plus, today I met two other French speakers, 20-ish girls this time. A lot of French this week, huh....

Also I met this girl who was in full on like.... Renaissance gear. It was truly amazing. Didn't have the guts to go tell her she looked amazing, but she looked amazing.

Oh, you know that feeling when you bond with a baby on a bus or a tram or sth? Like, you're just sitting there and then someone comes in with a baby and you look at it, because baby and the baby just looks back, because... baby. And then you smile and when the baby smiles back it's like the greatest thing ever. Like, "the baby chose me. I am the chose one" it's so great. Especially if the mom doesn't think it's weird and then when you get off tells the baby to "wave bye bye" and the baby does a little wave and you wave back and your heart just explodes because baby.

Anyway. I don't really have anything else, I'm going to bed bye.

Pie out.

P.S. About the story idea, I really like it! Although I think writing only once a week is maybe not enough, I think I might get unattatched..... So we could write like you-nothing-me-nothing-you-nothing-me-nothing-you.... you get the point. We can work on the schedule, but YES I wanna do that.

Oh damn it's Tuesday

The title pretty much tells it all.
I completely forgot.
Or, rather, I remembered it for a moment here and another there, but I've been busy all day, so I never had the time to get to the writing.
Not that I would've had any time to think about what to write during the last week. I haven't had. I've been at school, busy with the newly begun courses. And then I spent the weekend teaching how to make good camps.
And then today I first was at school, and then studied in the library, and then came home and studied some more until it was half past seven and I decided it's enough for one day.
And then I made some... kiisseli? I have no idea what that is in English. I'm not sure they have that in the English-speaking countries, so I'm not sure there is a word for that.
And then I completely forgot anything about having to write.
Like I said, I'll be really busy for the next month and a half or so. So if I end up having these supershort posts during that time, because I have my mind so full of other stuff there simply won't be much space there to think about interesting things to write about.
Earth hour is next Saturday, and then the daylight saving... begins? ends? I still have no idea which is which in English. It's so much easier in Finnish. Simple summer-time and winter-time. No way to mix those up. Daylight saving begins, right?
Anyway. Maybe I'll write about that.
Because right now I really just have my mind filled how to make a good camper's book and what to talk about when I have to to a half an hour live radio show on the university radio in the beginning of May. And that (oh, crap, I almost forgot) I have to study some biology because I have to return the book to our sister in the beginning of next week.
And then I have to go to Kuopio for two weekends to teach kids how to lead scouts. And there's just so much happening right now.

Uuuh, I think you got the point.
My posts will probably not be too high quality, at least during April. But I'll try my best.
And I was thinking, since we both clearly like the writing stories thing best, maybe we could write one over the summer vacation. A summer story after two Christmas stories. Not writing every day, but on Tuesdays and Fridays like we usually do. Get more time to think. And then we can spend like May-June-July-August on that.
I don't know. Just an idea. We can talk about this later.
I'm just gonna stop blabbering uninteresting things now.

I'll hear from you on Friday.

~matu

First chapter, and Easter

I finished my first chapter! I'm so proud! It's just under 21 pages and just under 11 000 words. That's... a lot. I don't think I've ever written anything this long (Christmas calendars not included because you wrote half of them and I don't even know how long they are). The second closest thing is probably a Star Trek fic I never finished which is like... 12(?) pages at the moment. I mean holy shit. 21 pages!! I mean, and that's jut the first chapter. This thing is gonna be so long, oh man.

I'm taking a bit of a break atm, because the next chapter should be Colin's, but I'm not yet entirely sure what he does. I guess I could skip to the third chapter and write about the dragon growing up and then the birthday party, but I actually really wanna write about Colin. I should probably just.. start writing and see where it leads. I know of one scene I want to be in it, when Colin and Carina are at a bar and then there's this expositional bullshit about the thief and the stolen dragon, and it should probably also have stuff about the dragon riders... And about Colin's role in the palace, hmm.

Ooh, suddenly a flashback scene to the revolution and the dying of the Queen (who was never actually a Queen, huh) oh man. Probably not gonna be in the book tho, but still, it's good to know how the history goes.

There is a lot of info about the characters that i have but I probably won't be able to get into the books.... Y'know, like people's favorite colors and foods, their blood types, and sexualities, and random tidbits about them. Like for example, Robin is claustrophobic. Also, Carina can't swim, Colin has a very low self esteem, Lexlie hated her parents because they pushed her too hard, Tina is very good at reading people and has worked since she was 14 to help support her family. Although now that I think about these, they kinda sound like they could be elements in the book at some point. Maybe.

Anyway. I'm thinking of coming to Kuopio already next week. Because the Easter break starts on Thursday (2nd April), but I don't have school on Wednesday and not really on Monday either, so if my classes on Tuesday aren't like "absolutely must be there super important information" kinda classes, I could come on the previous weekend (28th March). Which would be pretty cool, I would actually have time to hang out with mom and dad before they go on their trip and with Iita before the, uh, whatever thing she has. Are you going to Kuopio at some point?

But yeah, that's really all I have about that. Sorry this is kinda the same thing over and over, but I'm really hyped about this story ahhhh. Bye.

Pie out.

Why things happen in stories

Hello again.

Today I want to talk to you about why things that happen in stories happen. In the stories.
Why I want to talk about is because first of all, it's a really difficult thing. Sometimes when writing a story you come to a situation where you know what should happen, but it seems to not be happening. A little like what you explained about on Friday. The story starts to live its own life.
And, secondly, the book I read for the exam a couple of weeks ago talked some about this. More specifically it was a book about the theory of audiovisual story telling. Meaning movies. But I'm pretty sure what the book said about this can also be applied to the written format.

So, basically the point was this: from the point of view of analysing a movie, there are four kinds of motivation for a thing to be or happen in the movie.

The first, and possibly least interesting from the point of view of writing a story, is artistic motivation. Basically when you have a weird art movie, this includes all the stuff that is there purely for the art. I guess there could be stuff in a book just for the art, but I suppose (I may be wrong) there isn't all that much of that there. I suppose art movies is a thing, but you don't really write a book just for the art. You write because of the story. Or what do I know, I suppose there could be a book written for the art of writing.
Oh, I guess poetry.
Though I'm not sure if that counts, because I'm talking about prose. Books that tell a story. So I'm not sure if poetry works here. Though I guess maybe poem books are the art films of books.

Moving on.

The second (they're not actually in any order) kind of motivation has got to do with the narrative. It's basically all the things that happen in a movie (or a book, I guess) because it's necessary for the story that they happen. The book I read had an example that in horror movies the heroine has to be told to go sit in a room alone to be safe, obviously not to be safe but to be kidnapped. Because otherwise there wouldn't be a story. Of course you can't justify anything happening in the story with this, because everything that happens has to have some kind of logic behind it. Even if it was the story's own weird logic. As in a story has to be consistent. But some things still have to happen to pull the story along, otherwise there is no story.

Of course, if the things that have to happen for the story are also rationally motivated, it's a lot better. In this category goes all the thing that happen because they make sense. People act like people because they're people. They do what people would do in a situation. If you think about people in stories, they're surprisingly different from actual people. Think of any hero. Or any villain. Who is actually like that? Ok, I guess someone could be like some character. But it seems to me that a lot of characters are ideals or have some characteristics that are necessary for the story exaggerated from what a real person would be like. So maybe "they act like people isn't quite right". Maybe "they act the way they do because that's what they're like" is better. And then they might end up in situations and story lines that they weren't supposed to get into. Like apparently is happening to you. And apparently happened to the hypothetical author in the link I put on the comment on your last post. (You did read that, right? Dad thought it was hilarious.)

Then there's the fourth kind of motive: inter-textual. This stuff in the movie that somehow gives the watcher hints about things in the movie, but that you have to know to understand them. The example the book used was that in westerns good guys always have white hats and bad guys have black hats. I don't know if it's true or not. But basically they're that kind of things that repeat from story to story that don't have any significance to someone who doesn't know it, but if you've seen enough movies, you can clearly see from the very beginning who the hero and villain are. Because of the color of the hats. Or something else like that. Of course all these things don't apply to all movies. But they are apparently pretty consistent within a genre, for example.

Ok, this wasn't quite as long a thing as I thought it would be.
The biggest reason I'm thinking about this is because I've had a quite big problem with this in my thing. Because the whole point of the story is there are werewolves and then the village practically kills itself trying to get rid of them. And "because this has to happen for the story" just isn't a good enough a reason for them to kill each other on pretty much a hunch about who the wolf is.
I think I may have solved that problem today, though. Maybe I can get back to writing some time soon now that I may have solved the biggest problem in the motives in that book.

Ok, I'll hear from you again on Friday.

~matu

Writing stuff and English teachers

Oh yeah, it's Friday. Sorry this is so late.

I've been writing a lot this week. And when I say a lot I mean like 4 pages a day. Or something. I've almost finished the first chapter of Robin which is very exciting and I really like how it's turning out. The merchant character became so much more interesting than I had originally planned haha. I think I might write something exclusively about them at some point, because they ha such an interesting personality and there's probably so much stuff there to explore huehue.

Also today I was writing this scene where Robin is talking to Peter about the fight with her mother and shit, y'know she's kinda depressed at this point and yeah, and the scene kept trying to make itself so romantic, like????? What????? WHy????? I don't ship them?? They're not meant to be a couple??? And I swear to god, at one point I was writing it Robin said something like "I'm so tired of it all" or w/e and I almost wrote Peter getting up and starting to give her like a shoulder massage! And I've read enough fanfic to know where that would be going. I don't.. I don't know. Their relationship is kinda... I mean they are and most definitely will stay platonic (although I think there had been some experimenting some years ago) but the relationship has become much deeper and more intimate as I've written scenes with the two of them.... Originally I'd actually planned on making Camilla the person Robin would talk to most out of the three, but Peter made more sense when the time came.

Well that's a lot of text... Point is, I don't know how or when but Robin and Peter's relationship grew into a full blown bromance. And it's probably going to have an impact further down the road. Y'know, initially I was just going to ignore all the people in Lendá after Robin leaves, but I don't think I can do that anymore.

Other exciting news is... uh.. I don't really have other news, sorry. My roster of English teachers from around the world has grown, with the addition of a Canadian (judging by the slight accent) and woman Washington (the state) who I think is some part Native American (at least she really looks like one, y'know the facial features and stuff). So that is several Finnish women (in elementary school and Kallavesi), English woman (Elizabeth), basically-Australian man (Laukkanen was that his name?), old Scottish gentleman (reading/discussion course), old Texan poet (creative writing), not as old Canadian guy (critical reading of the media) and presumably Native American (scientific reading/writing/discussion).

You probably don't care about my roster of English teachers, but it's not like I have anything better to tell you.

I'm going to bed now, bye.

Pie out.

Why you should study languages

Good morning.
Afternoon.
Something.

Today I want to talk to you about languages. That is because I spent the weekend listening to Portuguese and not understanding it. Though there was always someone translating, because almost no one else there understood Portuguese either.
So I thought I'd talk to you about why you should study languages.
As you know, during my life I have studied a total of six languages at school. Of those six I speak two fluently. That's Finnish and English. And that annoys me. I also understand some Swedish and French, but can't really say I'd be actually able to speak them even if I had to. And then there's Italian and Latin that I've studied a total of four years, that I only understand a couple of words here and there if I ever happen to hear the, which I don't. Either way, no matter how bad I suck in all those languages, having studied Latin, Italian and French gives me a pretty good ground to start learning any of the Latin-based mid-European languages. Though French would be the easiest.
And because of capoeira, I decided I want to learn Portuguese, because that I actually hear not only ever, unlike any of the other languages, but actually a couple of times a week, and I might actually have use for it in the future if I keep training capoeira. Which I hope I will.

Anyway.
What I wanted to talk about was why to study languages in general, not why I want to study Portuguese. So here my top 7 reasons why to study languages.

1. Practicality. You understand a language you've studied. (Well, you should.) If you ever travel to a country where they speak the language, life is a lot easier if you speak it too. Or if you for some other reason have to use or hear that language often. Of course if you don't ever need it, then it doesn't really hold much practical value.

2. You can read books in that language. If you like that kind of thing. I'm the kind of person who likes to read books in the original language if it's in any way possible. It's a good thing I mostly only read fantasy, because that means most books I would ever read are originally in English. Though I'm sure there are fantasy books in almost all other languages too. The world just doesn't hear about it, because the English-speaking world is kind of dominant on this planet.

3. Speaking a language opens up a whole new world for you. Having to do with the last point. If I spoke some other language than English, I would be suddenly able to find all the things in the world that are in the language other than English.
Or, if you want to think about it through a practical example: Imagine not speaking a word of English. Imagine all the things in the world you wouldn't have any idea about, if you didn't understand English, meaning you probably wouldn't have any idea of anything in the world that is in English. You would just know of the things that are in Finnish or someone has bothered to translate.
Even though there is a lot of content in the Internet (and the rest of the world) in English, I somehow fail to see how there wouldn't be a ton of stuff out there in other major languages too, like Spanish and French and Portuguese and I was going to say Chinese, but I'm not actually sure there is that much Internet in Chinese. But I'm not going to get into that now. The point is, there must be so much great stuff in the world we simply have no idea about because we only speak English and Finnish.

4. Speaking a language helps you think differently. I've been talking about this before, for example when I said that Russian doesn't actually have a word for freedom as we understand it. A language is always developed around what the people speaking the language have thought is important. The things that are different in their way of seeing the world have different words. Someone just explained to me about an African (I think) language, which has twenty or so words for different shades of green, because distinguishing between different shades of green is important when living where ever they lived. The people speaking the language could not however separate blue from orange, because they'd always called them with the same word, because who cares about blue and orange.
So I guess speaking different languages literally makes you see the world differently, just by giving you words for things you never noticed existed.

5. Also helps you understand other people. Just kind of an addition to the previous point, but still seemed like a separate one. When you speak a language someone else speaks, you can understand their way of thinking and seeing things a lot clearer than if you only speak your own language.

6. Studying a language is good for you. I think. I'm too lazy to actually dig out a study or even a Wikipedia article to back this one up. But your brain generally likes exercise and stimulating, and I'm pretty sure learning a language is a great way to keep your brain from getting all lazy and sloppy.
Yeah, I have no idea if this is actually true. But I'm refusing to believe studying languages doesn't have any positive effects on mental capacity or health or something. 

7. Speaking different languages is cool. Sure, studying grammar and vocabulary is a pain and a lot of unpleasant hard work, but I wish now that I had tried a little harder on my French lessons simply so that I would now speak three languages instead of two. Though it is really hard to learn a language you don't ever use or need outside a classroom. That's why I hope I'll do better with Portuguese.

I'm gonna go flip through the Portuguese textbook I bought today (that's how serious I'm about learning it).
I'll hear from you on Friday.

~matu

PS. I also bought Aatu a copy of The Hobbit today, because for some reason we were in the bookshop with him a month or two ago (were you there too?) and I asked him if he'd read it if I bought it for him and he said yes. At the time I didn't trust that answer, but in time I decided it's worth the shot. Because books are cool.
So not we'll just have to see how long it takes until he finishes it. If he finishes it.

Movies of the Week

Hello.

I'm in Kuopio, as you might have known. We've been watching a lot of movies during this week, and seeing as there's nothing else really, I guess I'll tell you about them. No spoilers, don't worry.

Sunday night we tried to watch The Book of Life from the internet, but the connection had a problem or something and the video wouldn't load.. We ended up watching The Swan Princess from netflix. It was.... Not as good as I had hoped. It would've probably been really good when we were kids. I mean, the beginning had a really good bit when the prince was all "lets get married!" and the princess said "wait what right now??" and the prince said "ofc?? you're all I ever wanted! You're beautiful!" (actual line) and the princess was very unimpressed and was like "thnx, but what ELSE?" and the prince was like "what else is there??" and the princess just... left. It was great. But then it just kinda turned.. bleh. Anyway.

On Monday we finally watched The Book of Life and that was so good. It's a kids' movie, about this Mexican village like... 100yrs ago or something and these gods who are in charge of the realms of the dead and it's just. So good. Watch it, it's sweet and funny and beautiful and just great.

Tuesday we went to see The Imitation Game which just. Wow. Bennytoots can really act, like damn son. It was good. Not gonna say more if you're gonna wanna go see it. BTW, I didn't know it was about Alan Turing, but I guess that's just me, haha.........

Wednesday we went to see Kingsman, which is a British film about a secret organization that works outside governments to ensure world peace. Kinda James Bond -esque but so much better. Kinda gory as well, but super badass. Like the choreography in those fighting scenes? Amazing. Colin Firth was super badass and Samuel L. Jackson sounds so weird with a lisp. I recommend it, although it's not necessarily your kinda movie?

Thursday Iita's friends came over and we played some games and then in the end watched How to Train Your Dragon 2, which you've seen, so I won't talk about that.

Today we're probably gonna watch something as well, although we haven't decided just yet. I don't think we have anything here that I wouldn't have seen already, but still. I'm kinda in the mood for something funny, I think. If you have a suggestion, please leave a comment?

In other movie news, there's so many great movies on the making. Like Avengers: Age of Ultron and all the other MCU movies (except they're still not making a Black Widow movies WTF????) as well as Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which is the new Potter movie and Now You See Me is getting a sequel (which totally should've been named "And Now You Don't" but the producers are idiots) and there's Home, which is a new Dreamworks movie about an alien which seems really cool and then there's Lazer Team which you probably don't care about but I'm super hyped about. What else, uhh. Spider-man will be in Marvel's Cinematic Universe, apparently, which is super cool. And Deadpool gets his own movie! Ahh, man, there's just so many good movies coming, I can't even wait.

But yeah, I'm pumped. What movies are you waiting for? Do tell me.

Pie out.

Because you didn't write either.

You have skipped too many posts by now.
Because of that, I will also take a night off from writing.
Why I'm taking this specific night off is because on Thursday I have an exam that I wouldn't necessarily have to take on Thursday, but that I really really want to get over with, so that I can 1. not think about it after or during my vacation next week, and, more importantly 2. I can get back to studying the biology. Because I want to finally get in to study something I actually want to study enough to graduate.
So I'm taking the night off, because right now I have about as many hours of free time before the exam as it takes to read what I have left of the books.

But I better hear from you on Friday.

~matu