Hi!
I missed last week, I know, and I'm sorry. I had one of the most hectic weekends I've had in a while, I was on the go for almost all of it. Also, Friday didn't even feel like Friday, I could've sworn it was actually Saturday! you can imagine how confused I was on Sunday when it wasn't Monday yet, hah!
But enough about that. You're not here to listen to me apologize constantly.
I got myself some ink the other day. I've drawn with ink a few times before, but not that much, I'm more of a pencil drawer. But I thought I'd want to shake things up a bit try something new. And, I dunno, ink felt like a fun thing to try. There are so many different types of inks, did you know? And so many pens. That's the crazy part, honestly, the pens. I was suuper lost when I went to the store because I hadn't expected that! Luckily there was a very nice clerk who completely understood and asked me what I wanted to do with it and suggested a bunch of things. I probably wouldn't have bought anything without the help, I had no idea what I was doing lol
Though, in the end, I only got one pen, a very general use pen and a small thing of ink, because it's sorta expensive to and because maybe this won't be a good idea after all. But I thought would be fun to try at least. And the clerk gave me a bunch of advice, so I think I'll be good.
You know, I have this big swan's feather I found last year that I meant to turn into a quill, maybe I'll finally do that! That would be fun, wouldn't it? To have a cool quill and a little bottle of actual ink.
I'm not really sure what I'll be doing with it yet, so... if you have suggestions, leave a comment! Anyway.
Oh, I feel like I meant to tell you something else... what was it...? This is still so short, that's so anticlimactic, especially after missing a week, hmm...
Ahh, heck, I can't think of anything. Anyway, I'll think of something a bit more exciting for next week, promise!
Until next week, bye~
Friday, March 30, 2018
Tuesday, March 27, 2018
Some random things I want to share with you
So.
During my almost two months here, I've gathered a bunch of these small things that I would like to share with you. Like the things I wrote in the weird things -post, only things that aren't weird as such. Just things. But also things that aren't big enough to write their own post about. So I thought I'd just gather all of them into one post, so then it won't matter that they're all short. Here they are. Not in any particular order. I'm probably forgetting things (like last time), though, and more of these things will come up later. But maybe I'll do another post then. Maybe not.
Ok, let's go.
At my local grocery store (which I have in my head extrapolated to mean all stores, but I'm not sure) they want to see an ID when I pay with a credit card. Someone told me they want to verify that the person using the card really is the person whose name is on the card. Though they don't actually check the name on the card. They just write my passport number or something down on the receipt that stays with the store. And this is in addition to using those machines where you have to input the card pin. So I don't really know what that's all about. But I think I've seen an ID asked from other people too, so I don't think it's because I'm a foreigner.
Also about using the card here. You can't use a card in nearly as many places as you'd expect. For example, when we went out to see the encontra das águas my first week here, we couldn't pay the company arranging the tour with a card, but had to go get cash. Market vendors not accepting card isn't surprising (also true here), but tourist-half-day-river-tour-companies not accepting card is. So I mostly have to use cash, except at the grocery (is apparently a word I can't spell) store.
The Simpsons-cookies. Chocolate ball flavored Simpsons cookies.
They're not actually very good, to be honest. But they were cheap, and I wanted some cookies and some chocolate, so I thought I'd give them a try.
The electronics hate me. First, my camera memory card decided that it's 90% full even when there's nothing on it, so no more than ~70 pictures will fit. So I bought a new memory card. The new memory card pretty much instantly decided that it will only save 25 pictures, and the rest after that only as notes that "you took a picture, but I didn't save it, so you can't see it", and then has to be reformatted so it starts to save pictures again. Or, well, you can take more than 25 without a problem, but you also have to remove them. Trying to same a 26th photo on the card seems to be the problem. (I actually already talked about this in a previous post, but I seriously want to be able to take pictures while I'm here, so not having a working memory card in my camera is one of the most annoying things.)
Then the lamp in the ceiling of my room stopped working. As a person who has installed some lights into some ceilings a handful of times I took a chair and climbed up to see what the problem was, to find that one of the two cables that come out of the ceiling and go into the lamp (well, to the thing that the lamp is screwed into) had broken and come loose. So I took a screwdriver and screwed it back in, because that kind of thing is easy to fix. So done. Except when I tried to switch it on, nothing happened. Even if I tried a lightbulb that worked in a different lamp. So fine, I'll just use the desk lamp.
Except the next day, as I came home late and tired from my first day of classes during my time here (I'll get to that in a bit), the desk lamp simply didn't switch on either. So. Yeah. Some people came over the next day to do some general cleaning and maintenance, and that evening the desk lamp was working again, so either they fixed it somehow, or it started working again as mysteriously as it had stopped working in the first place. But it's been working fine for a week now, so maybe that problem is gone.
Also, once I had determined that the camera memory card really won't save more than 25 pictures without being emptied and/or reformatted (as in when for the second time it stopped saving the pictures after the 25th), I decided to try and reformat the original memory card, since I had now figured out how to actually do that. And it seems promising. At least currently it knows it's actually empty. So maybe that worked. I hope it did, and I don't have to think about how many photos I can take between the possibilities of emptying the card.
Here's the doublebanana from last week no one asked to see again, but I post it to you anyway. It was a good banana, once it was ripe. (I actually didn't wait quite long enough, it was still a little raw when I ate it, but it was good anyway.)
So there are two things (well, there are more things, but I'll just stick to these two for now) I remember our aunt saying about this place before I came here.
1. Manaus is not a very nice city and
2. The bananas here are great.
I agree with both.
When I heard this about the bananas, my reaction was pretty much "how are they especially great there, I mean, a Cavendish is a Cavendish is a Cavendish, no matter where you are in the world" to which she said something like "they have other bananas there besides Cavendish". And they do. I don't think I've seen a single Cavendish banana my whole time here. The bananas they mainly eat are there small ones. And they are great.
(For those of you who don't know, Cavendish is the cultivar of banana the rest of the world eats. I don't think I'd ever seen anything other than a Cavendish before I got here.)
The water that comes through the pipes isn't drinkable here. Which is annoying, when you're used to the Finnish way of things, but I suppose not all that surprising. I mean, if you can't drink the tap water in the US without filtering, I suppose I shouldn't expect it in Brazil (which I keep spelling with an s instead of a z, because that's how they spell it in both Portuguese and Finnish).
Also, only one temperature water comes out of the taps. There''s no hot water, and no cold water. The temperature of the water that comes out is determined (I assume) by the outside temperature. Or at least on hot days the water in the shower seems warmer than on cool days. Which is a little annoying, because on cool days you want the water of the shower to be warmer than on hot days. But nothing you can do. And it's not too cold. By which I mean the unheated showers on the big scout camps are a lot colder than the water here, and those are just fine. For the week the camp lasts.
So, I'm not a tall person. I'm actually quite an average hight person, despite the fact that my sister (the other sister) keeps telling me I'm short. But there are plenty of people shorter than me in Finland. There are also plenty of people taller than me in Finland. Probably more people who are taller than people who are shorter. But here. Here I'm actually quite tall. Seriously. I realised at some point during the classes last week that I was one of the tallest people there, including the guys. And once I realised that, I realised that almost all the other people I've been interacting are also shorter than me. Even the standard length of a mattress is 188 cm, not 200 cm like in Finland. And I have to say, I do not like it. I don't like being tall. I feel sorry for you actually tall people out there.
People here tie their hair. If I want to tie my hair up, just get it out of the way or off the neck in the heat, I take hairband and use that to tie it up. Here people who have long enough hair literally just tie it. They start twisting it like they were doing a bun, but then they pull the end through the thing, so it stays in a knot. I don't know how they do that. I'm pretty sure I've tried that sometime, and it's just simply too slippery to stay in a knot. Maybe the latino hair is somehow different on the microstructure-level that makes it stay in a knot? Or maybe I simply suck at making knots in my hair, because I never do it? I don't know.
The roads here are very large or very small. It seems to me that there aren't really that many medium-sized roads here. Also, the small roads always seem to have a lot of steep but very small hills, both up and down. And I mean steed enough that when the car starts going downhill, my thought is always "ok, so this hill is a little steeper than I'm entirely comfortable with in a car". The big roads though, they don't have those steep hills. I don't know if they've built the big roads in places with no steep hills, or if they've somehow evened them out so that the steepest parts are less steep.
Here are some snails on a wall after rain. I just thought they were cool.
They apparently don't teach English at schools here, which just seems like stupidity. All the people who speak English have either learned it themselves, or been to a special private school where they do teach English, or been to these special language schools, which only teach languages during the afternoons and weekends when people don't have actual school. And participating in any of this, of course, costs money. Apparently a lot of money. So the only way to learn English in this country is to is to be relatively rich and willing to pay to learn.
Speaking of school, now about my classes this week. So I finally had my first week of classes last week. Here the courses are in blocks, a whole week or two of the same course, all day every day. Ok, not necessarily all day, we had one morning off this week. And even on the days when we had technically all day, we had a three-hour lunch break. So we had three hours in the morning, starting at 8:30, then a three-hour break, and then another three hours in the afternoon, and finally getting of at 17:30 (which is about 45 min before sunset, after which it's getting more dangerous to be outside). This means, of course, that I have three hours of nothing to do, and then after I get home at six (or half past) I have to start doing any possible homework, which has to be done the same day or latest the following day, because if the course only lasts for a week, the deadlines for any assignments are within that week.
And this wouldn't be a problem, but it fits my daily cycle not at all. I'm relatively five about waking up before seven (especially since the sun always rises at six, so it's already daylight outside) to get to class on time, but then I spend my most efficient hours in the middle of the day doing nothing, and then should start doing something once I get home after six, which is not the time I can get anything productive that requires concentration done anymore. Well, depends on the thing. It's eight in the evening right as I'm writing this. But this is relatively light doing. The point is I can't do studying after about seven anymore. I'm simply not going to learn anything anymore, and not get anything done about assignments.
So why don't I simply do the homework in the weird off-hours in the middle of the day? Because most of that work requires a computer, and I'm not going to get my computer robbed on the street because I'm carrying it with me. I could take uber when I go and when I come, but I'm also not going to pay 12 reals to get to a lecture in the morning and another 12 to get back just because it's dangerous to walk in the street with a laptop, because it's ridiculous you can't carry something like a laptop (or a camera!) with you on a busy public street without the fear of getting robbed. Also my route to INPA is along a really big street, and the traffic on it is so bad at about the time when I come and go that it's literally as fast to walk the two and a half kilometers than take a car or bus. So no, I'm not going to pay that much money just to be able to take my laptop with me. (Maybe I could just carry it with me on the street. It's not as if anyone actually knows whether I'm carrying something valuable at any given time of not.)
Also, since the courses lasting only a week or two mean everything needs to be done now, it means scheduling when to do things is impossible. Because if there's something to do, it needs to be done now. And as someone who is excellent at scheduling my studied and then sticking to that schedule well enough to practically never be stressed about studying and still get good grades, I really hate it. So yeah, this schedule of studying does not fit me at all.
Then again, this was only the first course. Maybe the others will be different, or maybe I'll find a way to study with this kind of course schedules that works for me. I do have three more months of classes, after all.
Something I learned during the course was that I don't actually understand Portuguese. I also learned that I am able to talk about SNPs in Portuguese in front of a native-speaker audience for about 6 minutes. And it apparently went well, so. Although I did have the whole thing completely written out and practically read it from the paper, but still, considering my Portuguese skills, I'm quite proud of myself.
Also, people here are so nice. It's quite unbelievable, to a Finnish person. For example, on the first day of the aforementioned course, after the morning's class, I just sat in the hallway thinking about how I should go get some lunch, but I don't really know what to do, and this girl from the same course just came up to me like "Hey, you need some help? Do you know where you'll have lunch?" (We had had to present ourselves in the class, so I had said I'm an exchange student.) So I was like "Weeell, yeah, actually, I could use some help". So we went to her place to eat lunch.
Seriously, this is not a thing that would ever happen in Finland. This kind of thing is very confusing, but very nice.
I've been told (by more than one person here) that I need to be careful out in the traffic, because the cars and especially the motorcycles will not make way. And I guess they're kinda right, because yeah, in that traffic, you really do need to be careful. Though I was able to figure that out myself, because I have eyes. But they're also wrong. Surprisingly often someone stops to let a pedestrian cross the road. Definitely more often than in Kuopio. Then again, in Kuopio, if no one stops to let you pass, it's still possible to get across the road. Here it sometimes isn't. The easiest times for a pedestrian are when the traffic is the worst. It's quite easy to cross a road when none of the cars have any space to move.
Temperature-wise my biggest problem with warm areas like this (I've also noticed this elsewhere) isn't that it's hot during the day. That's fine. You just need to remember to drink (which is pretty much impossible to forget, because when you don't drink you get thirsty pretty fast) and eat enough salt to replace what you sweat out (which is harder. I honestly think I'm probably not getting enough salt. And salt is kind of important, knows anyone who knows anything about neuron function. Or any cell function.). Anyway, the heat and sweating you get used to. My biggest problem is that people have the air conditioning inside way too cold. I mean, I'm sorry, but if the temperature is 30°C outside, you can't have inside at 22°C, because the people dressed for the 30°C will freeze, especially since they're there to sit and study or listen to a lecture or something. Sitting is not a great way to keep warm. And I don't want to carry around an extra layer of clothes just because someone has decided cooling inside to too cold is a good use of energy.
The exception to this is the malls. I've been to three or four malls during my time here (for someone who really hates shopping, I have a weird fondness for malls), and the temperature in them has always been pretty much perfect. So that's nice.
This pizza. So food is very cheap here, in general. Many times I find myself thinking that in Finland I might pay the same amount of euros for some food as I here pay in reals. Which means those foods are about a quarter the price they would be in Finland. Ok, not everything is that cheap, but yeah, in general, food is cheaper here than in Finland But apparently Finland is a very expensive country, or so I have been told. So how is this related to the pizza? It's related to it, because apparently ordering pizza is just as expensive here than it is in Finland. We paid (translated) about 17 euros for that giant pizza with three different topping sections, including delivery. Seems a reasonable price in Finland. Here I would have expected it to be closer to 12.
Anyway. I wanted to talk about the cheapness of the food, but I also wanted to tell you about the pizza. So like I said, it had three different sections, which means if you couldn't decide which kind of pizza you want, you could take three different kinds of pizza. We had rucola (the green section) + tomato + mushrooms, then clock-wise chicken + green corn (it turned out that green corn is what I would have just called corn. They call it green here, because apparently the corn we're used to eating is actually still raw, and once it's had time to ripen in the field it dries and hardens some, and becomes more like the corn used to make popcorn) and the last broccoli + palmito (which is the core of some palm tree) + catupiry (which is this cheese that had the consistency of a foam and that I didn't like much, despite it having only a mild taste).
Oookay, I think pizza is a good spot to finish. This turned out to be a bit longer than I thought. But maybe that's all right.
I realised today you will soon have longer days in Finland than we do here. Actually they already might be. The length of the day today is 12:05, and it's only getting shorter the whole time I'm here. Shortening by about 7 minutes in the next three months.
I was supposed to finish here.
So bye.
~matu
During my almost two months here, I've gathered a bunch of these small things that I would like to share with you. Like the things I wrote in the weird things -post, only things that aren't weird as such. Just things. But also things that aren't big enough to write their own post about. So I thought I'd just gather all of them into one post, so then it won't matter that they're all short. Here they are. Not in any particular order. I'm probably forgetting things (like last time), though, and more of these things will come up later. But maybe I'll do another post then. Maybe not.
Ok, let's go.
At my local grocery store (which I have in my head extrapolated to mean all stores, but I'm not sure) they want to see an ID when I pay with a credit card. Someone told me they want to verify that the person using the card really is the person whose name is on the card. Though they don't actually check the name on the card. They just write my passport number or something down on the receipt that stays with the store. And this is in addition to using those machines where you have to input the card pin. So I don't really know what that's all about. But I think I've seen an ID asked from other people too, so I don't think it's because I'm a foreigner.
Also about using the card here. You can't use a card in nearly as many places as you'd expect. For example, when we went out to see the encontra das águas my first week here, we couldn't pay the company arranging the tour with a card, but had to go get cash. Market vendors not accepting card isn't surprising (also true here), but tourist-half-day-river-tour-companies not accepting card is. So I mostly have to use cash, except at the grocery (is apparently a word I can't spell) store.
The Simpsons-cookies. Chocolate ball flavored Simpsons cookies.
They're not actually very good, to be honest. But they were cheap, and I wanted some cookies and some chocolate, so I thought I'd give them a try.
The electronics hate me. First, my camera memory card decided that it's 90% full even when there's nothing on it, so no more than ~70 pictures will fit. So I bought a new memory card. The new memory card pretty much instantly decided that it will only save 25 pictures, and the rest after that only as notes that "you took a picture, but I didn't save it, so you can't see it", and then has to be reformatted so it starts to save pictures again. Or, well, you can take more than 25 without a problem, but you also have to remove them. Trying to same a 26th photo on the card seems to be the problem. (I actually already talked about this in a previous post, but I seriously want to be able to take pictures while I'm here, so not having a working memory card in my camera is one of the most annoying things.)
Then the lamp in the ceiling of my room stopped working. As a person who has installed some lights into some ceilings a handful of times I took a chair and climbed up to see what the problem was, to find that one of the two cables that come out of the ceiling and go into the lamp (well, to the thing that the lamp is screwed into) had broken and come loose. So I took a screwdriver and screwed it back in, because that kind of thing is easy to fix. So done. Except when I tried to switch it on, nothing happened. Even if I tried a lightbulb that worked in a different lamp. So fine, I'll just use the desk lamp.
Except the next day, as I came home late and tired from my first day of classes during my time here (I'll get to that in a bit), the desk lamp simply didn't switch on either. So. Yeah. Some people came over the next day to do some general cleaning and maintenance, and that evening the desk lamp was working again, so either they fixed it somehow, or it started working again as mysteriously as it had stopped working in the first place. But it's been working fine for a week now, so maybe that problem is gone.
Also, once I had determined that the camera memory card really won't save more than 25 pictures without being emptied and/or reformatted (as in when for the second time it stopped saving the pictures after the 25th), I decided to try and reformat the original memory card, since I had now figured out how to actually do that. And it seems promising. At least currently it knows it's actually empty. So maybe that worked. I hope it did, and I don't have to think about how many photos I can take between the possibilities of emptying the card.
So there are two things (well, there are more things, but I'll just stick to these two for now) I remember our aunt saying about this place before I came here.
1. Manaus is not a very nice city and
2. The bananas here are great.
I agree with both.
When I heard this about the bananas, my reaction was pretty much "how are they especially great there, I mean, a Cavendish is a Cavendish is a Cavendish, no matter where you are in the world" to which she said something like "they have other bananas there besides Cavendish". And they do. I don't think I've seen a single Cavendish banana my whole time here. The bananas they mainly eat are there small ones. And they are great.
(For those of you who don't know, Cavendish is the cultivar of banana the rest of the world eats. I don't think I'd ever seen anything other than a Cavendish before I got here.)
The water that comes through the pipes isn't drinkable here. Which is annoying, when you're used to the Finnish way of things, but I suppose not all that surprising. I mean, if you can't drink the tap water in the US without filtering, I suppose I shouldn't expect it in Brazil (which I keep spelling with an s instead of a z, because that's how they spell it in both Portuguese and Finnish).
Also, only one temperature water comes out of the taps. There''s no hot water, and no cold water. The temperature of the water that comes out is determined (I assume) by the outside temperature. Or at least on hot days the water in the shower seems warmer than on cool days. Which is a little annoying, because on cool days you want the water of the shower to be warmer than on hot days. But nothing you can do. And it's not too cold. By which I mean the unheated showers on the big scout camps are a lot colder than the water here, and those are just fine. For the week the camp lasts.
So, I'm not a tall person. I'm actually quite an average hight person, despite the fact that my sister (the other sister) keeps telling me I'm short. But there are plenty of people shorter than me in Finland. There are also plenty of people taller than me in Finland. Probably more people who are taller than people who are shorter. But here. Here I'm actually quite tall. Seriously. I realised at some point during the classes last week that I was one of the tallest people there, including the guys. And once I realised that, I realised that almost all the other people I've been interacting are also shorter than me. Even the standard length of a mattress is 188 cm, not 200 cm like in Finland. And I have to say, I do not like it. I don't like being tall. I feel sorry for you actually tall people out there.
People here tie their hair. If I want to tie my hair up, just get it out of the way or off the neck in the heat, I take hairband and use that to tie it up. Here people who have long enough hair literally just tie it. They start twisting it like they were doing a bun, but then they pull the end through the thing, so it stays in a knot. I don't know how they do that. I'm pretty sure I've tried that sometime, and it's just simply too slippery to stay in a knot. Maybe the latino hair is somehow different on the microstructure-level that makes it stay in a knot? Or maybe I simply suck at making knots in my hair, because I never do it? I don't know.
The roads here are very large or very small. It seems to me that there aren't really that many medium-sized roads here. Also, the small roads always seem to have a lot of steep but very small hills, both up and down. And I mean steed enough that when the car starts going downhill, my thought is always "ok, so this hill is a little steeper than I'm entirely comfortable with in a car". The big roads though, they don't have those steep hills. I don't know if they've built the big roads in places with no steep hills, or if they've somehow evened them out so that the steepest parts are less steep.
Here are some snails on a wall after rain. I just thought they were cool.
They apparently don't teach English at schools here, which just seems like stupidity. All the people who speak English have either learned it themselves, or been to a special private school where they do teach English, or been to these special language schools, which only teach languages during the afternoons and weekends when people don't have actual school. And participating in any of this, of course, costs money. Apparently a lot of money. So the only way to learn English in this country is to is to be relatively rich and willing to pay to learn.
Speaking of school, now about my classes this week. So I finally had my first week of classes last week. Here the courses are in blocks, a whole week or two of the same course, all day every day. Ok, not necessarily all day, we had one morning off this week. And even on the days when we had technically all day, we had a three-hour lunch break. So we had three hours in the morning, starting at 8:30, then a three-hour break, and then another three hours in the afternoon, and finally getting of at 17:30 (which is about 45 min before sunset, after which it's getting more dangerous to be outside). This means, of course, that I have three hours of nothing to do, and then after I get home at six (or half past) I have to start doing any possible homework, which has to be done the same day or latest the following day, because if the course only lasts for a week, the deadlines for any assignments are within that week.
And this wouldn't be a problem, but it fits my daily cycle not at all. I'm relatively five about waking up before seven (especially since the sun always rises at six, so it's already daylight outside) to get to class on time, but then I spend my most efficient hours in the middle of the day doing nothing, and then should start doing something once I get home after six, which is not the time I can get anything productive that requires concentration done anymore. Well, depends on the thing. It's eight in the evening right as I'm writing this. But this is relatively light doing. The point is I can't do studying after about seven anymore. I'm simply not going to learn anything anymore, and not get anything done about assignments.
So why don't I simply do the homework in the weird off-hours in the middle of the day? Because most of that work requires a computer, and I'm not going to get my computer robbed on the street because I'm carrying it with me. I could take uber when I go and when I come, but I'm also not going to pay 12 reals to get to a lecture in the morning and another 12 to get back just because it's dangerous to walk in the street with a laptop, because it's ridiculous you can't carry something like a laptop (or a camera!) with you on a busy public street without the fear of getting robbed. Also my route to INPA is along a really big street, and the traffic on it is so bad at about the time when I come and go that it's literally as fast to walk the two and a half kilometers than take a car or bus. So no, I'm not going to pay that much money just to be able to take my laptop with me. (Maybe I could just carry it with me on the street. It's not as if anyone actually knows whether I'm carrying something valuable at any given time of not.)
Also, since the courses lasting only a week or two mean everything needs to be done now, it means scheduling when to do things is impossible. Because if there's something to do, it needs to be done now. And as someone who is excellent at scheduling my studied and then sticking to that schedule well enough to practically never be stressed about studying and still get good grades, I really hate it. So yeah, this schedule of studying does not fit me at all.
Then again, this was only the first course. Maybe the others will be different, or maybe I'll find a way to study with this kind of course schedules that works for me. I do have three more months of classes, after all.
Something I learned during the course was that I don't actually understand Portuguese. I also learned that I am able to talk about SNPs in Portuguese in front of a native-speaker audience for about 6 minutes. And it apparently went well, so. Although I did have the whole thing completely written out and practically read it from the paper, but still, considering my Portuguese skills, I'm quite proud of myself.
Also, people here are so nice. It's quite unbelievable, to a Finnish person. For example, on the first day of the aforementioned course, after the morning's class, I just sat in the hallway thinking about how I should go get some lunch, but I don't really know what to do, and this girl from the same course just came up to me like "Hey, you need some help? Do you know where you'll have lunch?" (We had had to present ourselves in the class, so I had said I'm an exchange student.) So I was like "Weeell, yeah, actually, I could use some help". So we went to her place to eat lunch.
Seriously, this is not a thing that would ever happen in Finland. This kind of thing is very confusing, but very nice.
I've been told (by more than one person here) that I need to be careful out in the traffic, because the cars and especially the motorcycles will not make way. And I guess they're kinda right, because yeah, in that traffic, you really do need to be careful. Though I was able to figure that out myself, because I have eyes. But they're also wrong. Surprisingly often someone stops to let a pedestrian cross the road. Definitely more often than in Kuopio. Then again, in Kuopio, if no one stops to let you pass, it's still possible to get across the road. Here it sometimes isn't. The easiest times for a pedestrian are when the traffic is the worst. It's quite easy to cross a road when none of the cars have any space to move.
Temperature-wise my biggest problem with warm areas like this (I've also noticed this elsewhere) isn't that it's hot during the day. That's fine. You just need to remember to drink (which is pretty much impossible to forget, because when you don't drink you get thirsty pretty fast) and eat enough salt to replace what you sweat out (which is harder. I honestly think I'm probably not getting enough salt. And salt is kind of important, knows anyone who knows anything about neuron function. Or any cell function.). Anyway, the heat and sweating you get used to. My biggest problem is that people have the air conditioning inside way too cold. I mean, I'm sorry, but if the temperature is 30°C outside, you can't have inside at 22°C, because the people dressed for the 30°C will freeze, especially since they're there to sit and study or listen to a lecture or something. Sitting is not a great way to keep warm. And I don't want to carry around an extra layer of clothes just because someone has decided cooling inside to too cold is a good use of energy.
The exception to this is the malls. I've been to three or four malls during my time here (for someone who really hates shopping, I have a weird fondness for malls), and the temperature in them has always been pretty much perfect. So that's nice.
Anyway. I wanted to talk about the cheapness of the food, but I also wanted to tell you about the pizza. So like I said, it had three different sections, which means if you couldn't decide which kind of pizza you want, you could take three different kinds of pizza. We had rucola (the green section) + tomato + mushrooms, then clock-wise chicken + green corn (it turned out that green corn is what I would have just called corn. They call it green here, because apparently the corn we're used to eating is actually still raw, and once it's had time to ripen in the field it dries and hardens some, and becomes more like the corn used to make popcorn) and the last broccoli + palmito (which is the core of some palm tree) + catupiry (which is this cheese that had the consistency of a foam and that I didn't like much, despite it having only a mild taste).
Oookay, I think pizza is a good spot to finish. This turned out to be a bit longer than I thought. But maybe that's all right.
I realised today you will soon have longer days in Finland than we do here. Actually they already might be. The length of the day today is 12:05, and it's only getting shorter the whole time I'm here. Shortening by about 7 minutes in the next three months.
I was supposed to finish here.
So bye.
~matu
Tuesday, March 20, 2018
All the bugs
I'm in the tropics. Quite literally in the middle of a rainforest. You probably already knew this, if you're reading this. The thing about rainforests is that there are a lot of bugs around. Also a lot of everything that are not bugs. I use the word bug, because I want to refer to not only insects but also spiders and millipedes and all the other things that aren't insects but are included in the super-vague term bug. The fact that there are a lot is not surprising, because that's just what you'd expect from a rainforest. But yeah, this is not a place to be, if you're afraid of anything that could be classified as a bug.
I mean, look at these things:
It's about as long as my middle finger. It's enormous. Well, was. And then it flew away. And again, I don't even know what it is.
Ok. Let's first talk about the mosquitoes. Because mosquitoes are pretty much the first type of bug you think about when you think of the tropics (except for maybe the spiders, but I'll get to those in a sec), because they carry like all the diseases. (You'd think. When I was in Australia five years ago I actually didn't realise there would be mosquitoes, because mosquitoes are a nordic thing, right? I did realise it pretty fast, though, once my shins started to itch from all the bites.)
By now I've pretty much learned to ignore the mosquitoes, but in the beginning, they were the most annoying thing. I thought, multiple times, about how yeah, it's cold in Finland, but at least we only have mosquitoes for four months a year. Unfortunately I didn't (for some reason I can't explain) take a picture of my legs a few weeks ago, when I had been bitten all over and then scratched so that the legs (below the knee) looked absolutely terrible. And by terrible I mean exactly like you'd expect if you have fifty bites and then scratch them for a few weeks. By now I've gotten rid of all but the worst ones that I keep ripping bloody every couple of days so they never heal, and my immune system has learned not to freak out so much about the first ones. I assume. The other option is that I'm just not getting bit as much as in the beginning, but I don't know why that would be, so...
What was I talking about?
Right, mosquitoes. So in Finland we basically have two kinds of mosquitoes, the small ones that bite you and make a sound that drives you crazy when you're trying to sleep, and the ones with the ridiculously long legs. I'm pretty sure there are more than one species of both, but I can't tell the difference between the different species, so what ever. Here I haven't seen any of the long-legged ones at all, but I have noticed that the mosquitoes I think of as normal-sized are not all the same. As in the differences between the mosquito species are big enough, that I can tell some of them are different from others. Not that I can tell all the different species or have any idea what those species are, but yeah, there are mosquitoes here that look completely different from each other. There are also some tiny mosquitoes here, and some that don't make any noise at all, like all the ones in Finland. Silent mosquitoes are weird.
Ok, moving on. I didn't expect to write so much about the mosquitoes. Though I guess you can't really talk about insects here without talking about mosquitoes.
The other bugs I think people think about when thinking about the tropics are the spiders. And yeah, they are everywhere. Literally. From the yard to the kitchen to bathroom to bedroom. Most of the ones I've seen (=notice) are daddy longlegs or harvestmen or whatever those are called in English. The spiders that are way more legs than body. I mostly ignore them, because those are harmless. I think. I mean, in Finland they are. But this is a rainforest, which means anything could be dangerous and I'd have no way of telling, because there are so many things here and I know literally nothing about them.
Soooooo that. Yeah. Not something I thought about before, but I am thinking about now. I don't actually know if some of the long-legged spiders are dangerous.
.....
It'll probably be fine.
Anyway.
There are some more normal-type spiders around too, but I haven't seen any of the really big ones. I mean, the spiders I have seen are bigger than most spiders in Finland, but that doesn't take much, since the spiders in Finland are very small, on the scale of all the spiders in the world. Which is nice, because while I'm not too queasy about spiders, if I have a choice between being in the same room with a giant spider and not being in the same room with it, I'm gonna choose not being in the same room with it. Unless it's in a terrarium.
What else do we have here worth mentioning...
The millipedes. So we have these small (~3 cm) brown millipedes that curl into a curl when poked all over the house. I don't actually have anything more to say about them. They're millipedes. I ignore them.
And the butterflies! The butterflies here are huge, compared to the ones we have in Finland. Well, some of them. There are also butterflies that are normal-sized from a Finnish perspective. But then there are the gorgeous palm-sized vibrant blue butterflies I keep wishing I'd get a good picture of, but no such luck. Yet. I still have months left. Maybe I'll get a good picture of a hummingbird and that time too. That's one of my goals here. Get a good picture of a hummingbird. I occasionally catch some feeding in the flowers in a bush outside, but they are so ridiculously fast that by the time you've spotted them you should already have the camera ready and aiming at the bush to be able to have any kind of hope catching one in a picture.
Ok, back to insects. Ants, to be precise. The ants are almost as annoying as the mosquitoes. They don't carry diseases, though. But the fruit bowl is full of ants. The flour is kept in the fridge so the ants don't get to it. The sugar is kept in a tightly closable jar, so the ants don't get to it. The ones we have in the house are tiny, but they're everywhere. If you leave anything with food crumbles out for like ten minutes there will be ants all over it. Or fruitflies, if what ever you left out are sweet enough. If you peel and cut yourself some fruit and then leave for like ten seconds to take the peels away the fruit plate will be filled with fruit flies. In this particular house it's also possible that if you turn your back for a second there will be a cat in your food. So that's fun.
Anyway. The ants are annoying, but also harmless.
And then there's this:
So like I said, I'm not queasy about insects. Mostly. There is an exception, and that is the hymenopteras (which apparently don't have a name in English, they just use the Latin name for the group). For those of you who know even less about insect taxonomy than I do, Hymenoptera is the group of insects that includes ants, wasps (parasitoid and others), bees and sawflies (which you've probably never heard of). Basically all the things that will sting you for defense, or to deposit its eggs in you.
(I admit I don't actually know if there are any that would use humans as a host for the eggs, but that doesn't make their enormous stingers any less terrifying-looking.)
The hymenoptera are a group that I don't like. At all. If I have a choice, I won't go anywhere close to them, ever. Well, except for the ants, which are mostly alright, if annoying. Though there are some pretty scary ant species too, that will bite hard or sting or something. But all of the rest. Ugh.
This picture is from our backyard. Some local hymenoptera, I guess some sort of wasps, decided to build a nest in one of the trees there, literally two meters from where one end of my hammock is tied to. I am not happy about it, because that means no more hammock (because there aren't any really good spots here for a hammock aside from that one). Because there is no way I'm going to spend sometimes hours a day sitting two meters from a wast nest. This picture is from about a week ago, by now the nest is a lot bigger and a lost readier. This one is still open at the bottom. The only way I was able to get a reasonable picture of it at all is because of the excellent zoom I have in my camera.
So yeah. Not cool.
Apparently our backyard is a deathtrap. First a hole appearing out of nowhere literally beneath your (my) feet (foot) and now a wasp nest. I wonder what's next.
And now, so as to not end on a bummer, here's a doublebanana for you:
A very, very, very raw doublebanana, but a doublebanana nevertheless.
I mean look at that, it's so green it's practically glowing. Also true of the live version, not just the one on screen.
I can put another picture of it in next week's post, so you can see how it looks when it's yellow. Assuming it'll get yellow in a week. The bananas we got last week are still not ripe to eat. Then again, that picture is from Saturday evening, so maybe it's ripe by next Tuesday. Also, the bananas here seem to turn yellow days before they're actually ripe enough to be good to eat, so it'll probably be yellow, even if it's not ripe yet.
Ookay. I guess that's all for today.
~matu
I mean, look at these things:
Ok. Let's first talk about the mosquitoes. Because mosquitoes are pretty much the first type of bug you think about when you think of the tropics (except for maybe the spiders, but I'll get to those in a sec), because they carry like all the diseases. (You'd think. When I was in Australia five years ago I actually didn't realise there would be mosquitoes, because mosquitoes are a nordic thing, right? I did realise it pretty fast, though, once my shins started to itch from all the bites.)
By now I've pretty much learned to ignore the mosquitoes, but in the beginning, they were the most annoying thing. I thought, multiple times, about how yeah, it's cold in Finland, but at least we only have mosquitoes for four months a year. Unfortunately I didn't (for some reason I can't explain) take a picture of my legs a few weeks ago, when I had been bitten all over and then scratched so that the legs (below the knee) looked absolutely terrible. And by terrible I mean exactly like you'd expect if you have fifty bites and then scratch them for a few weeks. By now I've gotten rid of all but the worst ones that I keep ripping bloody every couple of days so they never heal, and my immune system has learned not to freak out so much about the first ones. I assume. The other option is that I'm just not getting bit as much as in the beginning, but I don't know why that would be, so...
What was I talking about?
Right, mosquitoes. So in Finland we basically have two kinds of mosquitoes, the small ones that bite you and make a sound that drives you crazy when you're trying to sleep, and the ones with the ridiculously long legs. I'm pretty sure there are more than one species of both, but I can't tell the difference between the different species, so what ever. Here I haven't seen any of the long-legged ones at all, but I have noticed that the mosquitoes I think of as normal-sized are not all the same. As in the differences between the mosquito species are big enough, that I can tell some of them are different from others. Not that I can tell all the different species or have any idea what those species are, but yeah, there are mosquitoes here that look completely different from each other. There are also some tiny mosquitoes here, and some that don't make any noise at all, like all the ones in Finland. Silent mosquitoes are weird.
Ok, moving on. I didn't expect to write so much about the mosquitoes. Though I guess you can't really talk about insects here without talking about mosquitoes.
The other bugs I think people think about when thinking about the tropics are the spiders. And yeah, they are everywhere. Literally. From the yard to the kitchen to bathroom to bedroom. Most of the ones I've seen (=notice) are daddy longlegs or harvestmen or whatever those are called in English. The spiders that are way more legs than body. I mostly ignore them, because those are harmless. I think. I mean, in Finland they are. But this is a rainforest, which means anything could be dangerous and I'd have no way of telling, because there are so many things here and I know literally nothing about them.
Soooooo that. Yeah. Not something I thought about before, but I am thinking about now. I don't actually know if some of the long-legged spiders are dangerous.
.....
It'll probably be fine.
Anyway.
There are some more normal-type spiders around too, but I haven't seen any of the really big ones. I mean, the spiders I have seen are bigger than most spiders in Finland, but that doesn't take much, since the spiders in Finland are very small, on the scale of all the spiders in the world. Which is nice, because while I'm not too queasy about spiders, if I have a choice between being in the same room with a giant spider and not being in the same room with it, I'm gonna choose not being in the same room with it. Unless it's in a terrarium.
What else do we have here worth mentioning...
The millipedes. So we have these small (~3 cm) brown millipedes that curl into a curl when poked all over the house. I don't actually have anything more to say about them. They're millipedes. I ignore them.
And the butterflies! The butterflies here are huge, compared to the ones we have in Finland. Well, some of them. There are also butterflies that are normal-sized from a Finnish perspective. But then there are the gorgeous palm-sized vibrant blue butterflies I keep wishing I'd get a good picture of, but no such luck. Yet. I still have months left. Maybe I'll get a good picture of a hummingbird and that time too. That's one of my goals here. Get a good picture of a hummingbird. I occasionally catch some feeding in the flowers in a bush outside, but they are so ridiculously fast that by the time you've spotted them you should already have the camera ready and aiming at the bush to be able to have any kind of hope catching one in a picture.
Ok, back to insects. Ants, to be precise. The ants are almost as annoying as the mosquitoes. They don't carry diseases, though. But the fruit bowl is full of ants. The flour is kept in the fridge so the ants don't get to it. The sugar is kept in a tightly closable jar, so the ants don't get to it. The ones we have in the house are tiny, but they're everywhere. If you leave anything with food crumbles out for like ten minutes there will be ants all over it. Or fruitflies, if what ever you left out are sweet enough. If you peel and cut yourself some fruit and then leave for like ten seconds to take the peels away the fruit plate will be filled with fruit flies. In this particular house it's also possible that if you turn your back for a second there will be a cat in your food. So that's fun.
Anyway. The ants are annoying, but also harmless.
And then there's this:
(I admit I don't actually know if there are any that would use humans as a host for the eggs, but that doesn't make their enormous stingers any less terrifying-looking.)
The hymenoptera are a group that I don't like. At all. If I have a choice, I won't go anywhere close to them, ever. Well, except for the ants, which are mostly alright, if annoying. Though there are some pretty scary ant species too, that will bite hard or sting or something. But all of the rest. Ugh.
This picture is from our backyard. Some local hymenoptera, I guess some sort of wasps, decided to build a nest in one of the trees there, literally two meters from where one end of my hammock is tied to. I am not happy about it, because that means no more hammock (because there aren't any really good spots here for a hammock aside from that one). Because there is no way I'm going to spend sometimes hours a day sitting two meters from a wast nest. This picture is from about a week ago, by now the nest is a lot bigger and a lost readier. This one is still open at the bottom. The only way I was able to get a reasonable picture of it at all is because of the excellent zoom I have in my camera.
So yeah. Not cool.
Apparently our backyard is a deathtrap. First a hole appearing out of nowhere literally beneath your (my) feet (foot) and now a wasp nest. I wonder what's next.
And now, so as to not end on a bummer, here's a doublebanana for you:
A very, very, very raw doublebanana, but a doublebanana nevertheless.
I mean look at that, it's so green it's practically glowing. Also true of the live version, not just the one on screen.
I can put another picture of it in next week's post, so you can see how it looks when it's yellow. Assuming it'll get yellow in a week. The bananas we got last week are still not ripe to eat. Then again, that picture is from Saturday evening, so maybe it's ripe by next Tuesday. Also, the bananas here seem to turn yellow days before they're actually ripe enough to be good to eat, so it'll probably be yellow, even if it's not ripe yet.
Ookay. I guess that's all for today.
~matu
Sunday, March 18, 2018
Day 10 - Cactus
I'm pulled from my dream by so much warmth. It's not unbearable, but it's kinda getting there. It's more warmth than Flame usually lets out.
I open my eyes, blinking a bit. It's bright; the spring sunlight pushes easily past the drawn curtains and illuminates the room. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust.
My nose is centimeters from Cecil's.
I spring up, pulling the blanket with me and hurling Flame into the air since she was on top of it. She lets out a small shriek and I feel sorry for her but also glad that I managed to not scream. Cecil stirs as well, woken by the noise and I reach for Flame who is snarling at me.
"Ohh, I'm so sorry, girl, I didn't mean to do that!" I say, but she just hisses and jumps onto my head and to Cecil. He's sitting up now too, rubbing his eyes and scrabbles for his glasses on the nightstand.
"What happened?" he says, his voice hoarse with sleep.
"No, nothing, sorry," I say rubbing my own hands over my face. "I just woke with a bit of a jump and accidentally woke up Flame and she didn't like it and..."
"Woke with a jump?" he says, finally getting his glasses and pushing them on. He squints at me. "Did you have a nightmare or something?"
"No, no, nothing like that, I just..." I try to come up with something, anything to say. "Never mind, it's not important." I dig my phone from underneath my pillow and check the time. 7:24. No sense in trying to sleep anymore, huh? Not sure I have any sleep left in me anyway, after that.
I get up as Cecil consoles the overly dramatic fire elemental, who is very obviously fake crying in his arms. I lock myself in the bathroom to wash up.
~x~
After a quick hotel breakfast (that I didn't sleep past this morning) we pack whatever we have left to pack and then check out. We don't have too much in the way of luggage, but what we have we leave at the hotel for safe keeping for the day. They'd just be in the way at HUT, and the hotel is on the way to the transportation centre.
Since we woke up a bit earlier than we had planned, we take a bit longer -- and a more scenic -- route. It's fun to sit on the second floor of a double-decker, since we don't have those back home. We can see the whole city pretty well from there as we drive through it. Flame, too, is very excited, her face basically pressed against the bus window the whole way.
At noon we're at Lucas's lab. Well, no, it's not Lucas's lab, per say, but rather the HUT lab he works in, but... whatever. We wait a minute or so in the lobby and then we're greeted by Lucas himself. He's around Cecil's age (which is to say a few years older than me) with ashy hair, brown eyes and thick rimmed glasses. He gives Cecil a quick hug before turning to me and shaking my hand quite enthusiastically as Cecil introduces me.
"It's real nice to meet you," he says, still not letting go of my hand. "I have to say, this is quite exciting! If you can do half of the things Cecil said you can, then..."
"Jeez, Lucas, calm down," Cecil laughs and Lucas lets go of my hand with a soft "oh". He pushed his glasses up his nose and gives me an apologetic smile. It's a bit weird to be the one everyone is focused on, when I have a literal legendary elemental wrapped around my shoulders. But I guess Lucas isn't that interested in those things. Flame doesn't seem to mind the shift, and is happily just lounging around, playing with the strings of my hoodie.
"Right, this way then," he says and shows us deeper into the building.
We end up in a decently sized circular room. There's no windows, a few monitors and several chairs that are rather reminiscent of the chairs dentists have. Without all the teeth equipment over them, of course. The few people also in the room look up as we walk in and greet us. Lucas's colleagues, here to observe, apparently. I wasn't aware there would be observers, and a kaleidoscope of butterflies is starting to take residence in the pit of my stomach. Flame purrs and butts my jaw with her head, which makes me feel a bit better. I give her a grateful scratch on the head.
Lucas instructs me to take a seat on one of the chairs and I comply. It's more comfortable than it looks, which probably shouldn't surprise me, seeing as they are literally for people to sit in while they sleep. Flame curls up on my lap as one of Lucas's associates attaches an electrodes on each of my temples. They transmit my dream to the monitors, Lucas explains, so everyone will be able to see it. That worries me a bit, because I dream of some pretty weird stuff sometimes, but it is a lucid dream so... it should be fine.
"Alright, are you ready?" Lucas asks. I nod. And then a thought crosses my mind.
"Am I... am I going under alone?" I ask. I was thinking that they'd be coming with me.
"We'll join you in a bit," Cecil assures me.
"Yes, I just want to see what you're capable on your own first," Lucas says, pushing his glasses up again.
"Okay." I nod again. "Let's do this then, I guess." Flame sings out a soft note as my eyes start to grow heavy.
~x~
I'm in a room. A perfectly cubic white room. I look around. There's nothing in here.
"Can you hear me?" comes a voice I recognize as Lucas's.
"Yes," I say. I hope that the monitors also have an audio component to them. "Why am I in a blank room?"
"Because it's a brand new dreamspace, no one's done anything to it yet," Lucas explains. That makes sense, I guess.
"What do you want me to do with it?" I ask, glancing around.
"Whatever you want."
I stop turning and hum. I was hoping for a little direction, but... Well, first things first, I want to get out of this boring room.
I turn around and open the door. Behind it opens a corridor, much more colorful than the original room, with windows on one side and a row of beautifully carved wooden doors on the other. I start walking. Behind the windows is the infinite beauty of space, stars upon stars, galaxies twinkling in the distance. The light show from Friday night sails its slow way across the vastness of it all, its colours changing leisurely.
"Whoa." I smile a little at Lucas's exclamation. "Did you just create an entire universe?"
"Nah," I laugh. "It's only visual. Though, I guess if you want me to go out there, I could make up some planets and stuff as I go."
"I... wow." A pause. "No, that's... maybe let's start with something a bit simpler first."
"Alright."
There's scratching behind one of the doors and I open it.
"I was expecting you," I tell Flame, who jumps on my shoulders and sings a little song.
"Wait, is that the actual elemental?" comes Lucas's voice, but it's a bit more distant, so I assume he's asking Cecil. True enough, Cecil's voice echoes in the hall next.
"Yes, we're not sure yet how exactly it works, but she has been hopping into our shared dreams before," he explains. "I suspect they have very strong psychic abilities, but I've yet to test it out."
"Fascinating," says Lucas. "I hope she doesn't compromise the creative integrity of the space..."
"Well, Flame, where should be go next?" I ask, ignoring his mumbling, and Flame sings a bit more, though of course she doesn't answer verbally. I chuckle, and walk through the door she came in from. It's another hallway, this one lines by plants and landscape paintings. Some of the plants are real house plants that my mum has, but others aren't purely fictious, conjured up by my subconscious based on what I'd like plants to look like. Many of them have flowers and the hallway smells delightful.
The hallway ends in wide double doors. They're made of glass and behind them is a lush greenhouse. I open the door and Flame jumps off my shoulder, dashing inside. I'd be worried about the fire hazard, but Flame is very good at not setting things on fire and also this is a dream.
"You've been making some pretty incredible stuff," Lucas says. I run my fingers along a huge leaf, making the drop of dew on it slide down onto my hand. It's cold.
"I haven't really been making any of this," I say, plucking a large flower with blue and purple gradient and tucking it behind my ear. "Not consciously, I mean."
"Oh," says Lucas. There's a pause and I continue walking among the plants. "Well," he finally says, "you certainly have a lot of imagination then, don't you."
I laugh. "I guess so," I say.
"Do you think you could make something for us?" he asks then. "Consciously create something?"
"Sure," I say and look around a bit. I pick up a flowerpot which wasn't there a second ago and place it on a table that wasn't there either. There's a tiny, round cactus sitting in the soil. I look at it. Flame jumps up on the table next to the pot and looks at it with a tilted head. The cactus gets bigger. It grows taller and rounder, its spines getting longer and pointier. A big bud grows on the top, larger and larger, until it rips open and bright red and orange petals explode from inside it. Flame chirps happily as a huge flower looking like a fireball blooms in front of us.
"That's pretty impressive," Lucas says. "Can you do something bigger next? Like a whole room?"
"I can do better than that," I say. Flame hops on my shoulder again as I turn my back to the cactus and walk to the end of the greenhouse. A doorknob appears as I reach for it and I open it into a vast white space. I step out into it.
"Uh..." says Lucas.
"Give me a sec, man," I say and stretch my arms for a second. Then I concentrate.
The ground turns green. Or rather, a mat of grass grows from the nothingness. Next a few trees, some bushes. A bench. I'm walking along, willing things into existence as I think there should be something. Small waves start to brush against the grass as a pond extends to my right. A white koi leaps out for a moment before disappearing beneath the surface again. The ground starts to slope upwards as I walk up a hill, and when I'm on top, I pause to view my surroundings. This is a pretty nice little park. Out in the distance there's a city skyline, but that's just background texture at the moment.
There's a long silence.
"Oh, sorry, did you want actual buildings?" I ask, suddenly realizing I've just made more plants. "Here." I continue up the hill a bit more, until I'm standing in front of a large building.
"Ah, that's the concert hall!" says Cecil. "The one where the Aurora viewing was held."
Lucas lets out an "ohh" of understanding as I open the door and walk in. I don't remember much about the place aside from the big hall, so the front door leads directly there, even though I know there were several rooms in between. It's as it was two days ago, or as accurately as I can remember. There's the tables, the stage, the band equipment, the foods. The big window with the Aurora behind it again. The lighting is low so it's very visible, although unlike Friday night when the only light was candles, now it just... is dim.
"That is uncanny," Cecil says. I nod.
"A bit empty, though," I muse, and then a stream of people starts to walk in from behind me, chattering away, dressed in their Sunday best like they were back then.
"Holy--" Lucas says. Most of the people are nondescript, figures without specific features, but some are people I remember from the party or my friends from back home. I see mum, and Tony, and Nick and My and Leea and Rachel. A few of our choir members, some teachers. A couple fictional characters I really like.
A soft touch on the small of my back and I turn to look over my shoulder only to be greeted by Cecil's smiling face. He offers me his arm and I loop my hand through it. Flame lets out a very confused whine.
"Forget what I said earlier," comes Cecil's voice, but not from this Cecil. "That is uncanny."
"Sorry," I say, feeling a bit bashful. "You were there, so I guess... you just popped into my mind."
"No, no, that's fine," he says as the other him just smiles at me. "It's just... really weird to see myself like this. It's an amazing rendering though."
I laugh, to hide my embarrassment. I let go of dream-Cecil's arm and he walks into the crowd. I look after him a bit wistfully and then blink and shake my head. God, I need to get it together.
"So, uh... you gonna come here with me now, or what?"
~x~
We spend hours in the dreamspace. I build Lucas several increasingly big places; houses, shops, our school building, the Natural History Museum... Lucas is very fascinated by my ability to populate the spaces I create with humans, or with simulations of humans, acting very naturally. He goes on a whole lecture on how people in dreams come from the dreamer's subconscious so when it's a shared dream it would be everyone's subconscious but somehow they block eachother so you don't usually see dream-people in dreamspaces or something? I'll be honest, I didn't quite understand what he was talking about, but I got the impression that what I did was sufficiently impressive.
Cecil on the other hand spends the time walking a bit behind us. I assume he tries to not get in the way, and a few times I get worried that he's bored or something but whenever I look over he's smiling in that goofy way he does. Flame is keeping him company, having curled around his shoulders as soon as he arrived, so I guess if he was too bored he could just play with her.
Finally Cecil says that we should get going, so we don't miss our transportation time. Lucas reluctantly agrees. He's apparently gotten quite a lot of data he can work with at this point, but once we wake up he tells me that if I ever want to come back and show him some more, they would be ever so grateful. I tell him I'd like that -- not out of courtesy either, I really did enjoy our time in the dreamspace -- but that right now I have to concentrate on graduating. But I haven't decided on whether I want to go to Uni or not, nor which one, so who knows.
Lucas sees us to the door and waves his enthusiastic goodbyes, and then we leave.
We stop to eat quick before heading to the hotel to get our luggage and then we're off to the transportation centre. That experience is very similar to when we came over, although customs tries to stop us because of Flame. Cecil flashes them some kind of NALMC badge and they let us go pretty easily though.
We emerge from the centre into the cool spring air. It's drizzling lightly and Flame burrows herself into my bag so get away from the rain with a grumble. A loud honk carries across the small parking lot and we both look over to see Tony standing by mum's car, trying to shield himself from the rain and wave to us at the same time. I turn to Cecil. There's a pause when I don't know what to say.
"Thank you," I settle on. "For the trip. It was fun."
"No, thank you for coming," Cecil hurries to say. "I was very glad you accepted my invitation! And thank you for enduring Lucas's... Well, Lucas. He's a bit eccentric, sometimes."
I laugh. "It's fine, really." Another pause.
There's two honks more, shorter this time. I shoot a glare at Tony, who's gesturing for me to get a move on. I sigh.
"I guess I should get going," I say, only a little disappointed. "Do you... do you want a lift somewhere?"
"No need, thank you," he says. "Rachel is on her way to pick me up."
"Oh."
Another honk. I take a deep breath. Fuck it all.
I grab Cecil by the coat lapel and pull him down the 5 centimeter distance in our heights. He exhales in surprise and it is warm on my face. My eyes are screwed shut so I can't see him, but he is soft, so soft. A moment passes.
I let go and step back. I stare at him, frozen in place. He's flushed, his mouth slightly open, and he blinks, slowly.
"OkaycoolthiswasfunIgottagonowbye!" I shout and just hoof it. I spin on my heel and sprint to the car.
I pull open the door and throw in my luggage and Tony is just laughing, he's howling with laughter and my face is burning.
"Oh my god, just shut up and drive!" I hiss at him and he calms down enough to start the car. He's still giggling as he shifts it into reverse and backs away from the parking spot.
"You are hilarious," he says as he starts to drive away from the centre. "Welcome home."
I stare at Cecil in the rear view mirror. He's still standing exactly where he was. He lifts his hand to his face and touches his fingers to his lips and I sink a bit in my seat.
I can't believe I just kissed him.
_____________________________________________________________
WHAT THE FUCK OH MY GOD WHAT EVEN HAPPENED DAMN I KNOW I'M THE ONE WRITING THIS BUT LIKE ????????
Sorry, I'm just writing self-indulgent fluff hahahaha I don't know what happens next though? Can MC ever face Cecil after this?? Will I ever write more??? Maybe! I might if people wanna read and I find myself without a topic one day. BUT I won't be continuing this anytime soon, probably. I dunno, if I get inspiration from somewhere.
Anyway. Did you know that a group of butterflies is called a kaleidoscope? How awesome is that?? :DD
I, uh. I really don't have much to add at this point. I kinda wanna turn Carol into like, a comic or sth, but I have so much on my plate right now with Sorcerer and everything I don't really have time to start drawing a comic lol. But yeah, I've entertained the idea, because as I was rereading it, it had a lot of very visual scenes and stuff. I'd have to design Main Character though, and I'm not sure I'm ready for that, I like that they're super vague.
But yeah, that's that for now, sorry for leaving this on maybe a bigger cliffhanger than the last one but... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I liked your turtles (and tortoises). Bye now!
Pie out.
I open my eyes, blinking a bit. It's bright; the spring sunlight pushes easily past the drawn curtains and illuminates the room. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust.
My nose is centimeters from Cecil's.
I spring up, pulling the blanket with me and hurling Flame into the air since she was on top of it. She lets out a small shriek and I feel sorry for her but also glad that I managed to not scream. Cecil stirs as well, woken by the noise and I reach for Flame who is snarling at me.
"Ohh, I'm so sorry, girl, I didn't mean to do that!" I say, but she just hisses and jumps onto my head and to Cecil. He's sitting up now too, rubbing his eyes and scrabbles for his glasses on the nightstand.
"What happened?" he says, his voice hoarse with sleep.
"No, nothing, sorry," I say rubbing my own hands over my face. "I just woke with a bit of a jump and accidentally woke up Flame and she didn't like it and..."
"Woke with a jump?" he says, finally getting his glasses and pushing them on. He squints at me. "Did you have a nightmare or something?"
"No, no, nothing like that, I just..." I try to come up with something, anything to say. "Never mind, it's not important." I dig my phone from underneath my pillow and check the time. 7:24. No sense in trying to sleep anymore, huh? Not sure I have any sleep left in me anyway, after that.
I get up as Cecil consoles the overly dramatic fire elemental, who is very obviously fake crying in his arms. I lock myself in the bathroom to wash up.
~x~
After a quick hotel breakfast (that I didn't sleep past this morning) we pack whatever we have left to pack and then check out. We don't have too much in the way of luggage, but what we have we leave at the hotel for safe keeping for the day. They'd just be in the way at HUT, and the hotel is on the way to the transportation centre.
Since we woke up a bit earlier than we had planned, we take a bit longer -- and a more scenic -- route. It's fun to sit on the second floor of a double-decker, since we don't have those back home. We can see the whole city pretty well from there as we drive through it. Flame, too, is very excited, her face basically pressed against the bus window the whole way.
At noon we're at Lucas's lab. Well, no, it's not Lucas's lab, per say, but rather the HUT lab he works in, but... whatever. We wait a minute or so in the lobby and then we're greeted by Lucas himself. He's around Cecil's age (which is to say a few years older than me) with ashy hair, brown eyes and thick rimmed glasses. He gives Cecil a quick hug before turning to me and shaking my hand quite enthusiastically as Cecil introduces me.
"It's real nice to meet you," he says, still not letting go of my hand. "I have to say, this is quite exciting! If you can do half of the things Cecil said you can, then..."
"Jeez, Lucas, calm down," Cecil laughs and Lucas lets go of my hand with a soft "oh". He pushed his glasses up his nose and gives me an apologetic smile. It's a bit weird to be the one everyone is focused on, when I have a literal legendary elemental wrapped around my shoulders. But I guess Lucas isn't that interested in those things. Flame doesn't seem to mind the shift, and is happily just lounging around, playing with the strings of my hoodie.
"Right, this way then," he says and shows us deeper into the building.
We end up in a decently sized circular room. There's no windows, a few monitors and several chairs that are rather reminiscent of the chairs dentists have. Without all the teeth equipment over them, of course. The few people also in the room look up as we walk in and greet us. Lucas's colleagues, here to observe, apparently. I wasn't aware there would be observers, and a kaleidoscope of butterflies is starting to take residence in the pit of my stomach. Flame purrs and butts my jaw with her head, which makes me feel a bit better. I give her a grateful scratch on the head.
Lucas instructs me to take a seat on one of the chairs and I comply. It's more comfortable than it looks, which probably shouldn't surprise me, seeing as they are literally for people to sit in while they sleep. Flame curls up on my lap as one of Lucas's associates attaches an electrodes on each of my temples. They transmit my dream to the monitors, Lucas explains, so everyone will be able to see it. That worries me a bit, because I dream of some pretty weird stuff sometimes, but it is a lucid dream so... it should be fine.
"Alright, are you ready?" Lucas asks. I nod. And then a thought crosses my mind.
"Am I... am I going under alone?" I ask. I was thinking that they'd be coming with me.
"We'll join you in a bit," Cecil assures me.
"Yes, I just want to see what you're capable on your own first," Lucas says, pushing his glasses up again.
"Okay." I nod again. "Let's do this then, I guess." Flame sings out a soft note as my eyes start to grow heavy.
~x~
I'm in a room. A perfectly cubic white room. I look around. There's nothing in here.
"Can you hear me?" comes a voice I recognize as Lucas's.
"Yes," I say. I hope that the monitors also have an audio component to them. "Why am I in a blank room?"
"Because it's a brand new dreamspace, no one's done anything to it yet," Lucas explains. That makes sense, I guess.
"What do you want me to do with it?" I ask, glancing around.
"Whatever you want."
I stop turning and hum. I was hoping for a little direction, but... Well, first things first, I want to get out of this boring room.
I turn around and open the door. Behind it opens a corridor, much more colorful than the original room, with windows on one side and a row of beautifully carved wooden doors on the other. I start walking. Behind the windows is the infinite beauty of space, stars upon stars, galaxies twinkling in the distance. The light show from Friday night sails its slow way across the vastness of it all, its colours changing leisurely.
"Whoa." I smile a little at Lucas's exclamation. "Did you just create an entire universe?"
"Nah," I laugh. "It's only visual. Though, I guess if you want me to go out there, I could make up some planets and stuff as I go."
"I... wow." A pause. "No, that's... maybe let's start with something a bit simpler first."
"Alright."
There's scratching behind one of the doors and I open it.
"I was expecting you," I tell Flame, who jumps on my shoulders and sings a little song.
"Wait, is that the actual elemental?" comes Lucas's voice, but it's a bit more distant, so I assume he's asking Cecil. True enough, Cecil's voice echoes in the hall next.
"Yes, we're not sure yet how exactly it works, but she has been hopping into our shared dreams before," he explains. "I suspect they have very strong psychic abilities, but I've yet to test it out."
"Fascinating," says Lucas. "I hope she doesn't compromise the creative integrity of the space..."
"Well, Flame, where should be go next?" I ask, ignoring his mumbling, and Flame sings a bit more, though of course she doesn't answer verbally. I chuckle, and walk through the door she came in from. It's another hallway, this one lines by plants and landscape paintings. Some of the plants are real house plants that my mum has, but others aren't purely fictious, conjured up by my subconscious based on what I'd like plants to look like. Many of them have flowers and the hallway smells delightful.
The hallway ends in wide double doors. They're made of glass and behind them is a lush greenhouse. I open the door and Flame jumps off my shoulder, dashing inside. I'd be worried about the fire hazard, but Flame is very good at not setting things on fire and also this is a dream.
"You've been making some pretty incredible stuff," Lucas says. I run my fingers along a huge leaf, making the drop of dew on it slide down onto my hand. It's cold.
"I haven't really been making any of this," I say, plucking a large flower with blue and purple gradient and tucking it behind my ear. "Not consciously, I mean."
"Oh," says Lucas. There's a pause and I continue walking among the plants. "Well," he finally says, "you certainly have a lot of imagination then, don't you."
I laugh. "I guess so," I say.
"Do you think you could make something for us?" he asks then. "Consciously create something?"
"Sure," I say and look around a bit. I pick up a flowerpot which wasn't there a second ago and place it on a table that wasn't there either. There's a tiny, round cactus sitting in the soil. I look at it. Flame jumps up on the table next to the pot and looks at it with a tilted head. The cactus gets bigger. It grows taller and rounder, its spines getting longer and pointier. A big bud grows on the top, larger and larger, until it rips open and bright red and orange petals explode from inside it. Flame chirps happily as a huge flower looking like a fireball blooms in front of us.
"That's pretty impressive," Lucas says. "Can you do something bigger next? Like a whole room?"
"I can do better than that," I say. Flame hops on my shoulder again as I turn my back to the cactus and walk to the end of the greenhouse. A doorknob appears as I reach for it and I open it into a vast white space. I step out into it.
"Uh..." says Lucas.
"Give me a sec, man," I say and stretch my arms for a second. Then I concentrate.
The ground turns green. Or rather, a mat of grass grows from the nothingness. Next a few trees, some bushes. A bench. I'm walking along, willing things into existence as I think there should be something. Small waves start to brush against the grass as a pond extends to my right. A white koi leaps out for a moment before disappearing beneath the surface again. The ground starts to slope upwards as I walk up a hill, and when I'm on top, I pause to view my surroundings. This is a pretty nice little park. Out in the distance there's a city skyline, but that's just background texture at the moment.
There's a long silence.
"Oh, sorry, did you want actual buildings?" I ask, suddenly realizing I've just made more plants. "Here." I continue up the hill a bit more, until I'm standing in front of a large building.
"Ah, that's the concert hall!" says Cecil. "The one where the Aurora viewing was held."
Lucas lets out an "ohh" of understanding as I open the door and walk in. I don't remember much about the place aside from the big hall, so the front door leads directly there, even though I know there were several rooms in between. It's as it was two days ago, or as accurately as I can remember. There's the tables, the stage, the band equipment, the foods. The big window with the Aurora behind it again. The lighting is low so it's very visible, although unlike Friday night when the only light was candles, now it just... is dim.
"That is uncanny," Cecil says. I nod.
"A bit empty, though," I muse, and then a stream of people starts to walk in from behind me, chattering away, dressed in their Sunday best like they were back then.
"Holy--" Lucas says. Most of the people are nondescript, figures without specific features, but some are people I remember from the party or my friends from back home. I see mum, and Tony, and Nick and My and Leea and Rachel. A few of our choir members, some teachers. A couple fictional characters I really like.
A soft touch on the small of my back and I turn to look over my shoulder only to be greeted by Cecil's smiling face. He offers me his arm and I loop my hand through it. Flame lets out a very confused whine.
"Forget what I said earlier," comes Cecil's voice, but not from this Cecil. "That is uncanny."
"Sorry," I say, feeling a bit bashful. "You were there, so I guess... you just popped into my mind."
"No, no, that's fine," he says as the other him just smiles at me. "It's just... really weird to see myself like this. It's an amazing rendering though."
I laugh, to hide my embarrassment. I let go of dream-Cecil's arm and he walks into the crowd. I look after him a bit wistfully and then blink and shake my head. God, I need to get it together.
"So, uh... you gonna come here with me now, or what?"
~x~
We spend hours in the dreamspace. I build Lucas several increasingly big places; houses, shops, our school building, the Natural History Museum... Lucas is very fascinated by my ability to populate the spaces I create with humans, or with simulations of humans, acting very naturally. He goes on a whole lecture on how people in dreams come from the dreamer's subconscious so when it's a shared dream it would be everyone's subconscious but somehow they block eachother so you don't usually see dream-people in dreamspaces or something? I'll be honest, I didn't quite understand what he was talking about, but I got the impression that what I did was sufficiently impressive.
Cecil on the other hand spends the time walking a bit behind us. I assume he tries to not get in the way, and a few times I get worried that he's bored or something but whenever I look over he's smiling in that goofy way he does. Flame is keeping him company, having curled around his shoulders as soon as he arrived, so I guess if he was too bored he could just play with her.
Finally Cecil says that we should get going, so we don't miss our transportation time. Lucas reluctantly agrees. He's apparently gotten quite a lot of data he can work with at this point, but once we wake up he tells me that if I ever want to come back and show him some more, they would be ever so grateful. I tell him I'd like that -- not out of courtesy either, I really did enjoy our time in the dreamspace -- but that right now I have to concentrate on graduating. But I haven't decided on whether I want to go to Uni or not, nor which one, so who knows.
Lucas sees us to the door and waves his enthusiastic goodbyes, and then we leave.
We stop to eat quick before heading to the hotel to get our luggage and then we're off to the transportation centre. That experience is very similar to when we came over, although customs tries to stop us because of Flame. Cecil flashes them some kind of NALMC badge and they let us go pretty easily though.
We emerge from the centre into the cool spring air. It's drizzling lightly and Flame burrows herself into my bag so get away from the rain with a grumble. A loud honk carries across the small parking lot and we both look over to see Tony standing by mum's car, trying to shield himself from the rain and wave to us at the same time. I turn to Cecil. There's a pause when I don't know what to say.
"Thank you," I settle on. "For the trip. It was fun."
"No, thank you for coming," Cecil hurries to say. "I was very glad you accepted my invitation! And thank you for enduring Lucas's... Well, Lucas. He's a bit eccentric, sometimes."
I laugh. "It's fine, really." Another pause.
There's two honks more, shorter this time. I shoot a glare at Tony, who's gesturing for me to get a move on. I sigh.
"I guess I should get going," I say, only a little disappointed. "Do you... do you want a lift somewhere?"
"No need, thank you," he says. "Rachel is on her way to pick me up."
"Oh."
Another honk. I take a deep breath. Fuck it all.
I grab Cecil by the coat lapel and pull him down the 5 centimeter distance in our heights. He exhales in surprise and it is warm on my face. My eyes are screwed shut so I can't see him, but he is soft, so soft. A moment passes.
I let go and step back. I stare at him, frozen in place. He's flushed, his mouth slightly open, and he blinks, slowly.
"OkaycoolthiswasfunIgottagonowbye!" I shout and just hoof it. I spin on my heel and sprint to the car.
I pull open the door and throw in my luggage and Tony is just laughing, he's howling with laughter and my face is burning.
"Oh my god, just shut up and drive!" I hiss at him and he calms down enough to start the car. He's still giggling as he shifts it into reverse and backs away from the parking spot.
"You are hilarious," he says as he starts to drive away from the centre. "Welcome home."
I stare at Cecil in the rear view mirror. He's still standing exactly where he was. He lifts his hand to his face and touches his fingers to his lips and I sink a bit in my seat.
I can't believe I just kissed him.
_____________________________________________________________
WHAT THE FUCK OH MY GOD WHAT EVEN HAPPENED DAMN I KNOW I'M THE ONE WRITING THIS BUT LIKE ????????
Sorry, I'm just writing self-indulgent fluff hahahaha I don't know what happens next though? Can MC ever face Cecil after this?? Will I ever write more??? Maybe! I might if people wanna read and I find myself without a topic one day. BUT I won't be continuing this anytime soon, probably. I dunno, if I get inspiration from somewhere.
Anyway. Did you know that a group of butterflies is called a kaleidoscope? How awesome is that?? :DD
I, uh. I really don't have much to add at this point. I kinda wanna turn Carol into like, a comic or sth, but I have so much on my plate right now with Sorcerer and everything I don't really have time to start drawing a comic lol. But yeah, I've entertained the idea, because as I was rereading it, it had a lot of very visual scenes and stuff. I'd have to design Main Character though, and I'm not sure I'm ready for that, I like that they're super vague.
But yeah, that's that for now, sorry for leaving this on maybe a bigger cliffhanger than the last one but... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I liked your turtles (and tortoises). Bye now!
Pie out.
Friday, March 16, 2018
Day 9 - Meadow
eyyy
_____________________________________________________________
A hush falls over the hall as the lights dim out. Cecil cuts off mid-sentence, his mouth still hanging a bit open as he turns to look up. I blink, taken slightly aback by the sudden change in atmosphere and look over to Leea. But she's already looking up, and so I turn as well. The glass wall is facing North, but the ceiling gives us a good view in all directions. I'm not entirely sure which way I should be looking though, and at this point I'm too scared to ask. Everyone else is so focused and the hall is so silent.
Slowly, a light starts to appear in the Northern horizon. At first I think I'm imagining it, but it keeps getting clearer and clearer until I don't have to strain my eyes to see it. It's a light streak of green across the dark, dark sky.
There's some hushed murmurs and a few gasps. The light grows brighter and shifts to a pale blue, then to white. I've seen northern lights a few times before, and as Cecil told me earlier, these are quite reminiscent of those, if clearly stronger and brighter. Speaking of Cecil, I can feel him next to me, almost vibrating with excitement in his seat. I smile. It's endearing how enthusiastic he gets about stuff like this.
I make the mistake of glancing over.
My breath is caught in my throat. He is smiling widely, his eyes sparkling with wonder as he looks up into the shifting sky. The light show above us colours his face with soft hues of green, of red, of blue. He is so beautiful, and I can feel my heart melt my chest as I look at him, completely engrossed with the sky, completely unaware of how stunning he is, of how he makes me feel.
"It's beautiful," he whispers.
"Yeah," I breathe out, and smile.
Flame pokes my chin and purrs softly. I look down at her in my lap, let out a small breathy laugh, and look back up again, where the colours have picked up, engulfing the whole sky in their display.
~x~
It is past three before we get back to our hotel and I am more than ready to just fall face first into bed. I open the door as Cecil chatters excitedly behind me and walk in, only to stop dead in my tracks. Cecil nearly walks into me.
"What's wrong?" he asks. Flame in his hands lets out a sleepy chirp before falling asleep again.
"I..." I pause and swallow. My face is burning up. How did I not notice this during the day?? "There's only one bed."
"Uh," says Cecil, stepping around me into the room proper. He looks between me and the bed. No wonder it was so big. "Yeah? Did... did you not notice earlier?"
"I... guess I didn't," I say.
"Is it a problem?"
"No!"
My voice is very loud in the quiet hotel and I cringe. I hope I didn't wake any of the other patrons up.
"I mean," I try again, at a much more appropriate volume. "No, it's not a problem. Why, why would it be?" I laugh, a lot forced. I finally start to move again and make my way quickly towards the bathroom.
"I'm sorry I didn't ask you beforehand," Cecil says. I don't look back at him. "Personal space is important, of course."
"Nah, man, it's fine," I say, waving my hand and pull the bathroom door open a bit more forcefully than it needs. "I'm just gonna wash up real quick!"
I don't hear his response as I slam the door closed.
Shit.
I stare at my reflection in the mirror for a moment. My face it beet red.
Shit.
There's nothing I can do about this, I tell myself. It's a big bed, I can manage two nights next to him. I'll be fine.
Ah, shit.
I wash my face with cold water to calm myself. Then I brush my teeth and slowly exit the bathroom.
Cecil has already changed into his pajama, and is in the process of hanging his suit up when he hears me open the door. He smiles and my heart does a somersault. I try not to let it show on my face though and just walk over to my suitcase, pulling out my own pajama as he walks to the bathroom. I change quickly and hang my own garment bag next to his.
I trail my fingers down them before shaking myself out of my thoughts and climb into bed.
I'm curled on my side facing the wall when Cecil comes out. I hear him shuffling around with his stuff for a moment, before he turns off the light and then. Then the mattress dips and I feel him climb into the bed next to me. There's a silence. I'm pretty sure my heartbeat is audible in the next room.
"Good night," he says softly.
"G'night," I say. There's another dip in the mattress, closer to me this time and my heart jumps out of my throat before I realise it's Flame, climbing over Cecil to cuddle me. I let out a soft laugh, mentally thanking the little elemental for being there. She curls into a ball next to me and I focus on her familiar heat instead of the one behind me.
Or the one growing in the pit of my stomach.
~x~
I am standing in the middle of a vast meadow, one spanning away and away further than my eyes can see. This is a dream space, I recognize the feeling now, but it's not the one we created. Maybe it's just a regular lucid dream? I don't know. It doesn't really matter either.
I start to walk. A wind blows through the knee high grass, sending little seeds and flower petals in the air where they start to dance. It's quite a beautiful place. A peaceful one.
I continue to walk. The direction doesn't matter, there is nothing in any direction, just the meadow, but I like walking and so I walk. The wind keeps humming in my ears, bringing with it soft music, the sound of laughter, of singing. I pause for a moment to listen, and then continue. I start to sing with it.
I sing softly at first. I start with the songs we're working on in choir at the moment, songs about spring, and then I move on to my favourite songs. I'm singing louder now and the world is singing with me. I sing the carol of the elementals. I sing about nothing at all. I sing about everything.
I'm just singing now, not any specific song, just singing, making it up as I go. I sing about my thoughts, my feelings. I sing about my friends, of Flame. Of Cecil.
I sing long of Cecil and the world sings with me.
Another voice. Flame.
She is here, somewhere, which doesn't surprise me at this point, but it does give me a direction. I turn a bit to the left and continue that way, singing as I walk. I see her finally, singing as she sits there and we sing together for a moment as I walk to her.
She stops her singing when I get to her and looks up. I follow her gaze up and the words die on my lips.
"Oh," I say as Cecil smiles to me.
~x~
I wake up slowly. The bed is cold.
I blink my eyes open, sit up and stretch and yawn. Flame jumps into my lap and I am immediately much warmer. I scratch her behind the ear.
"Good morning," says Cecil and I look up at him. He's already dressed and reading a paper at the small table in the corner of our room.
"Morning," I say and smile. "What time is it?"
He checks his pocket watch. My pocket watch. "Five to noon."
"Huh, so it is still morning," I say. He laughs a little.
"For five more minutes, sure," he says and folds the paper and puts it on the table. He reaches down and picks up a paper bag from the floor. "Sadly, the hotel breakfast isn't open anymore, but I went out and got you this." He hands the bag to me.
"You didn't need to do that," I say as I open it, but I'm glad he did. I am starving. Inside is a delicious looking bagel. It looks like chicken caesar. "But thank you. I appreciate it a lot."
He smiles. "Once you're done, I was thinking we could look around Dublin for a bit, visit the Dublin Castle or some of the museums. A lot of them are free, like the National Museums." I hum, my mouth full of bagel, indicating for him to go on. He does. "We have the whole day today, I've arranged us to meet Lucas tomorrow."
"Lucas?" I ask around the bagel. A few crumbs and pieces of lettuce drop to my lap but Flame picks them up and eats them so that's fine.
"Yes, that colleague I mentioned," he explains. "The guy who for HUT."
"Right, the dream thing," I say, nodding. I'm not going to lie, I had almost forgotten that was the reason we'd come here. I lick some cream cheese from my fingers and then present them to Flame for thorough cleaning. "Well, I don't know much about Dublin, so I'm fine with whatever you think would be good."
"I... okay!" He smiles, excitement in his eyes again. My heart feels warm. "Well, get dressed, we have some sights to see!"
~x~
Cecil has devised a full on tourist tour for us, starting with the Dublin Castle. There's a circular lawn in the back, where the city got it's start, apparently. Cecil explained it in detail, but I didn't really get it properly. For some reason or another, there used to be a tidal pool there, known as the black pool or "Dubh Lind" which the city got its name from.
Next is the National Natural History Museum, which features taxidermied animals and a few mythical creatures. Needless to say, it is right up Cecil's alley. In fact, he gets so swept up that he forgets to watch the time and we only realize we've spent a couple of hours there when my stomach protests its lack of food. Cecil keeps apologizing as we set off to find a place for lunch (or rather, early dinner at this point) but I tell him it's fine. Which it is, I was so mesmerized by his explanation that I didn't realize anything either. He has a way of making anything sound interesting.
After managing to get food in us, we continue our tour. We visit a few more museums, a couple galleries and parks. We walk a lot, which is fine, I like walking, but it is also tiring. Especially after our long day yesterday. Cecil seems to sense my tiredness and suggest we call it in early today so we do. We pick up some take out on our way back to the hotel, where Flame greets us happily when we return. She had opted to not come with us when we left and had spent her day doing... something or other at the hotel room. Sleeping, probably.
We spend the rest of the day just chatting in the room and playing with Flame, and go to sleep early, so that we won't be tired when meeting Lucas tomorrow. I am equally looking forward and dreading what tomorrow brings, but Cecil assures me that Lucas is nice and that it will be great. I decide to believe him, and fall asleep much more easily than last night.
_____________________________________________________________
Hey hey hey! Sorry this is late, I totally forgot it was Friday lol!
But hey, here's a blast from the past! Who remembers Carol? Okay, now who remembers the little after-story I decided to write to it the following spring? Well, in case you need a refresher, I linked the first part of that in the beginning (the link to the first of Carol is in the right side with all the other stories if you wanna reread that too)
Yeah, so basically I was thinking, what should I write this week? And I remembered that I never finished this thing and since they're in Dublin and I was in Dublin... Now's as good a time as any to write it! I'll post the final part tomorrow as an apology for being late with this one (I was gonna write it next week but oh well)
This was really interesting to write tbh, because it's been literally 3 years since I wrote the first 8 parts, but as I started writing I got these... I mean not flashbacks, but like I had the things planned back then and as I wrote it kinda came back to me in pieces. Oh man when I remembered they only had one bed I was about ready to stop right there like holy shit that's some fanfic shit right there lol
But yeah, here's this, next one will be tomorrow and after next week, I'll probably move these back to be chronologically after the other parts and make a little bookmark post here to link to that. Anyway, see ya tomorrow!
Pie out.
_____________________________________________________________
A hush falls over the hall as the lights dim out. Cecil cuts off mid-sentence, his mouth still hanging a bit open as he turns to look up. I blink, taken slightly aback by the sudden change in atmosphere and look over to Leea. But she's already looking up, and so I turn as well. The glass wall is facing North, but the ceiling gives us a good view in all directions. I'm not entirely sure which way I should be looking though, and at this point I'm too scared to ask. Everyone else is so focused and the hall is so silent.
Slowly, a light starts to appear in the Northern horizon. At first I think I'm imagining it, but it keeps getting clearer and clearer until I don't have to strain my eyes to see it. It's a light streak of green across the dark, dark sky.
There's some hushed murmurs and a few gasps. The light grows brighter and shifts to a pale blue, then to white. I've seen northern lights a few times before, and as Cecil told me earlier, these are quite reminiscent of those, if clearly stronger and brighter. Speaking of Cecil, I can feel him next to me, almost vibrating with excitement in his seat. I smile. It's endearing how enthusiastic he gets about stuff like this.
I make the mistake of glancing over.
My breath is caught in my throat. He is smiling widely, his eyes sparkling with wonder as he looks up into the shifting sky. The light show above us colours his face with soft hues of green, of red, of blue. He is so beautiful, and I can feel my heart melt my chest as I look at him, completely engrossed with the sky, completely unaware of how stunning he is, of how he makes me feel.
"It's beautiful," he whispers.
"Yeah," I breathe out, and smile.
Flame pokes my chin and purrs softly. I look down at her in my lap, let out a small breathy laugh, and look back up again, where the colours have picked up, engulfing the whole sky in their display.
~x~
It is past three before we get back to our hotel and I am more than ready to just fall face first into bed. I open the door as Cecil chatters excitedly behind me and walk in, only to stop dead in my tracks. Cecil nearly walks into me.
"What's wrong?" he asks. Flame in his hands lets out a sleepy chirp before falling asleep again.
"I..." I pause and swallow. My face is burning up. How did I not notice this during the day?? "There's only one bed."
"Uh," says Cecil, stepping around me into the room proper. He looks between me and the bed. No wonder it was so big. "Yeah? Did... did you not notice earlier?"
"I... guess I didn't," I say.
"Is it a problem?"
"No!"
My voice is very loud in the quiet hotel and I cringe. I hope I didn't wake any of the other patrons up.
"I mean," I try again, at a much more appropriate volume. "No, it's not a problem. Why, why would it be?" I laugh, a lot forced. I finally start to move again and make my way quickly towards the bathroom.
"I'm sorry I didn't ask you beforehand," Cecil says. I don't look back at him. "Personal space is important, of course."
"Nah, man, it's fine," I say, waving my hand and pull the bathroom door open a bit more forcefully than it needs. "I'm just gonna wash up real quick!"
I don't hear his response as I slam the door closed.
Shit.
I stare at my reflection in the mirror for a moment. My face it beet red.
Shit.
There's nothing I can do about this, I tell myself. It's a big bed, I can manage two nights next to him. I'll be fine.
Ah, shit.
I wash my face with cold water to calm myself. Then I brush my teeth and slowly exit the bathroom.
Cecil has already changed into his pajama, and is in the process of hanging his suit up when he hears me open the door. He smiles and my heart does a somersault. I try not to let it show on my face though and just walk over to my suitcase, pulling out my own pajama as he walks to the bathroom. I change quickly and hang my own garment bag next to his.
I trail my fingers down them before shaking myself out of my thoughts and climb into bed.
I'm curled on my side facing the wall when Cecil comes out. I hear him shuffling around with his stuff for a moment, before he turns off the light and then. Then the mattress dips and I feel him climb into the bed next to me. There's a silence. I'm pretty sure my heartbeat is audible in the next room.
"Good night," he says softly.
"G'night," I say. There's another dip in the mattress, closer to me this time and my heart jumps out of my throat before I realise it's Flame, climbing over Cecil to cuddle me. I let out a soft laugh, mentally thanking the little elemental for being there. She curls into a ball next to me and I focus on her familiar heat instead of the one behind me.
Or the one growing in the pit of my stomach.
~x~
I am standing in the middle of a vast meadow, one spanning away and away further than my eyes can see. This is a dream space, I recognize the feeling now, but it's not the one we created. Maybe it's just a regular lucid dream? I don't know. It doesn't really matter either.
I start to walk. A wind blows through the knee high grass, sending little seeds and flower petals in the air where they start to dance. It's quite a beautiful place. A peaceful one.
I continue to walk. The direction doesn't matter, there is nothing in any direction, just the meadow, but I like walking and so I walk. The wind keeps humming in my ears, bringing with it soft music, the sound of laughter, of singing. I pause for a moment to listen, and then continue. I start to sing with it.
I sing softly at first. I start with the songs we're working on in choir at the moment, songs about spring, and then I move on to my favourite songs. I'm singing louder now and the world is singing with me. I sing the carol of the elementals. I sing about nothing at all. I sing about everything.
I'm just singing now, not any specific song, just singing, making it up as I go. I sing about my thoughts, my feelings. I sing about my friends, of Flame. Of Cecil.
I sing long of Cecil and the world sings with me.
Another voice. Flame.
She is here, somewhere, which doesn't surprise me at this point, but it does give me a direction. I turn a bit to the left and continue that way, singing as I walk. I see her finally, singing as she sits there and we sing together for a moment as I walk to her.
She stops her singing when I get to her and looks up. I follow her gaze up and the words die on my lips.
"Oh," I say as Cecil smiles to me.
~x~
I wake up slowly. The bed is cold.
I blink my eyes open, sit up and stretch and yawn. Flame jumps into my lap and I am immediately much warmer. I scratch her behind the ear.
"Good morning," says Cecil and I look up at him. He's already dressed and reading a paper at the small table in the corner of our room.
"Morning," I say and smile. "What time is it?"
He checks his pocket watch. My pocket watch. "Five to noon."
"Huh, so it is still morning," I say. He laughs a little.
"For five more minutes, sure," he says and folds the paper and puts it on the table. He reaches down and picks up a paper bag from the floor. "Sadly, the hotel breakfast isn't open anymore, but I went out and got you this." He hands the bag to me.
"You didn't need to do that," I say as I open it, but I'm glad he did. I am starving. Inside is a delicious looking bagel. It looks like chicken caesar. "But thank you. I appreciate it a lot."
He smiles. "Once you're done, I was thinking we could look around Dublin for a bit, visit the Dublin Castle or some of the museums. A lot of them are free, like the National Museums." I hum, my mouth full of bagel, indicating for him to go on. He does. "We have the whole day today, I've arranged us to meet Lucas tomorrow."
"Lucas?" I ask around the bagel. A few crumbs and pieces of lettuce drop to my lap but Flame picks them up and eats them so that's fine.
"Yes, that colleague I mentioned," he explains. "The guy who for HUT."
"Right, the dream thing," I say, nodding. I'm not going to lie, I had almost forgotten that was the reason we'd come here. I lick some cream cheese from my fingers and then present them to Flame for thorough cleaning. "Well, I don't know much about Dublin, so I'm fine with whatever you think would be good."
"I... okay!" He smiles, excitement in his eyes again. My heart feels warm. "Well, get dressed, we have some sights to see!"
~x~
Cecil has devised a full on tourist tour for us, starting with the Dublin Castle. There's a circular lawn in the back, where the city got it's start, apparently. Cecil explained it in detail, but I didn't really get it properly. For some reason or another, there used to be a tidal pool there, known as the black pool or "Dubh Lind" which the city got its name from.
Next is the National Natural History Museum, which features taxidermied animals and a few mythical creatures. Needless to say, it is right up Cecil's alley. In fact, he gets so swept up that he forgets to watch the time and we only realize we've spent a couple of hours there when my stomach protests its lack of food. Cecil keeps apologizing as we set off to find a place for lunch (or rather, early dinner at this point) but I tell him it's fine. Which it is, I was so mesmerized by his explanation that I didn't realize anything either. He has a way of making anything sound interesting.
After managing to get food in us, we continue our tour. We visit a few more museums, a couple galleries and parks. We walk a lot, which is fine, I like walking, but it is also tiring. Especially after our long day yesterday. Cecil seems to sense my tiredness and suggest we call it in early today so we do. We pick up some take out on our way back to the hotel, where Flame greets us happily when we return. She had opted to not come with us when we left and had spent her day doing... something or other at the hotel room. Sleeping, probably.
We spend the rest of the day just chatting in the room and playing with Flame, and go to sleep early, so that we won't be tired when meeting Lucas tomorrow. I am equally looking forward and dreading what tomorrow brings, but Cecil assures me that Lucas is nice and that it will be great. I decide to believe him, and fall asleep much more easily than last night.
_____________________________________________________________
Hey hey hey! Sorry this is late, I totally forgot it was Friday lol!
But hey, here's a blast from the past! Who remembers Carol? Okay, now who remembers the little after-story I decided to write to it the following spring? Well, in case you need a refresher, I linked the first part of that in the beginning (the link to the first of Carol is in the right side with all the other stories if you wanna reread that too)
Yeah, so basically I was thinking, what should I write this week? And I remembered that I never finished this thing and since they're in Dublin and I was in Dublin... Now's as good a time as any to write it! I'll post the final part tomorrow as an apology for being late with this one (I was gonna write it next week but oh well)
This was really interesting to write tbh, because it's been literally 3 years since I wrote the first 8 parts, but as I started writing I got these... I mean not flashbacks, but like I had the things planned back then and as I wrote it kinda came back to me in pieces. Oh man when I remembered they only had one bed I was about ready to stop right there like holy shit that's some fanfic shit right there lol
But yeah, here's this, next one will be tomorrow and after next week, I'll probably move these back to be chronologically after the other parts and make a little bookmark post here to link to that. Anyway, see ya tomorrow!
Pie out.
Tuesday, March 13, 2018
All the turtles
So, I said last week I haven't been doing much, and am trying to find myself something to do. Well, I did. After a lot of messages all over the place, I was answered from a group studying the turtles of Amazonia saying yeah, we can always find something to do with extra people. So I've spent some time hanging out with the turtle people.
Here, some pictures of some turtles.
So. We all know (or maybe we don't), that in English there are two words to describe the animals that in Finnish we simply call kilpikonna (or shield toad, if you don't speak Finnish and want a direct translation (well, to be exact toad is rupikonna in Finnish, in which the rupi translates to a scab, and the konna which is also in kilpikonna translates to a villain or a scoundrel. So I suppose technically kilpikonna translates to shield villain instead of shield toad, but I'm pretty sure the konna
there refers to a toad, and not to what ever it originally refers to in
the word for toad. Anyway. Moving on.))
So like I was saying, there are two words that refer to these animals in English. There are the turtles, which live in water, and the tortoises, which live on land, although according to wikipedia, at least in American English turtle can be used to refer to all of them collectively. In Portuguese, however, there are three words for these animals: there are the jabutis, which are terrestrial, the tartarugas, which are aquatic (marine or fresh water) and then there are the cádagos, which all live in fresh water and have long necks. And, according to wikipedia, legs with interdigital membranes and nails, but the turtle people at INPA only told me about the long necks. But yeah, they have a two different words for different kinds of turtles, and I'm unable to tell which group a turtle belongs to by looking at it.
So, what did I do at the turtle place?
I helped (well, I tagged along, mostly) to feed them. We chopped down some pumpkin, and some leaves (I need to figure out what that plant is. It's these big leaves, and humans eat them too, and I've both seen and eaten them many times during my time here, but I still can't remember what the plant is called), and also had some beans whole with the pod. And then we just gave them to all the turtles, throwing big pieces of the food in the tanks of the biggest turtles (tartaruga-da-amazônia), and just dropping the food (that was also chopped smaller) for the smaller ones in the smaller tanks.
And some of the turtles ate fish, instead of pumpkin and leaves. Which isn't surprising, since there were so many kinds of turtles. So many. I think I was told there are eighteen species of turtles in the Amazon area, although I was given a book about the turtles of Amazônia, and that only has sixteen. So I'm not entirely sure how many there are, or how many are included in each definition of a turtle. Because the book also includes a couple of species of jabutis that look like they live on land (as they should, if they're jabutis).
So yeah, there were a lot of different kinds of turtles. Some were weird, like this one, which is calles a mata-matá. I thought maybe this is the turtle that I had seen in some documentary, that has this thing attached to it's tongue that's pink and thin, and if it wiggles it just right it looks like a worm. So what it does is it just sits around with its mouth open on a river bottom, wiggling its tongue, and when a fish comes thinking it got an easy meal of this stupid worm that is so visibly squirming at the river bottom, the turtle snaps its jaws shut and the fish gets eaten instead. But no, that one is apparently the alligator snapping turtle and lives in the USA.
Also, there was a pink turtle. Which is not only a description of the turtle, but also the name of the species, which I think is cágado vermelho (=red). So this is one of those long-necked inter-digital-membraned ones, I suppose.
Did you know, that turtles make sounds? They vocalise. Yeah, me neither. But apparently they do. That's one of the things the people studying the turtles at INPA are studying. And making sounds might be kind of important, because apparently that is (at least partly) what allows all the baby turtles to hatch at once, so they can make their way to the water in the safety created by the crowd. They start vocalising already in the eggs, and somehow agree on when it's time to go. I don't know how that works (I'm not sure the people studying this know exactly how it works either), but I think it's amazing.
Speaking of baby turtles. They also had some of those.
BABY TURTLES!
The baby turtles get a bigger picture than the rest, because they're baby turtles.
Those are about a quarter of a size of a palm, not including the fingers.
I think this is probably a good place to stop.
Except one more thing! PBS Eons (is an excellent youtube channel) just yesterday put out a video on turtle evolution! So that's nice timing.
(I might have to get a tortoise when I get back home.)
(I probably won't though, to be completely honest. But I'll keep dreaming of having one.)
~matu
Here, some pictures of some turtles.
So like I was saying, there are two words that refer to these animals in English. There are the turtles, which live in water, and the tortoises, which live on land, although according to wikipedia, at least in American English turtle can be used to refer to all of them collectively. In Portuguese, however, there are three words for these animals: there are the jabutis, which are terrestrial, the tartarugas, which are aquatic (marine or fresh water) and then there are the cádagos, which all live in fresh water and have long necks. And, according to wikipedia, legs with interdigital membranes and nails, but the turtle people at INPA only told me about the long necks. But yeah, they have a two different words for different kinds of turtles, and I'm unable to tell which group a turtle belongs to by looking at it.So, what did I do at the turtle place?
And some of the turtles ate fish, instead of pumpkin and leaves. Which isn't surprising, since there were so many kinds of turtles. So many. I think I was told there are eighteen species of turtles in the Amazon area, although I was given a book about the turtles of Amazônia, and that only has sixteen. So I'm not entirely sure how many there are, or how many are included in each definition of a turtle. Because the book also includes a couple of species of jabutis that look like they live on land (as they should, if they're jabutis).
Did you know, that turtles make sounds? They vocalise. Yeah, me neither. But apparently they do. That's one of the things the people studying the turtles at INPA are studying. And making sounds might be kind of important, because apparently that is (at least partly) what allows all the baby turtles to hatch at once, so they can make their way to the water in the safety created by the crowd. They start vocalising already in the eggs, and somehow agree on when it's time to go. I don't know how that works (I'm not sure the people studying this know exactly how it works either), but I think it's amazing.
Speaking of baby turtles. They also had some of those.
BABY TURTLES!
Those are about a quarter of a size of a palm, not including the fingers.
I think this is probably a good place to stop.
Except one more thing! PBS Eons (is an excellent youtube channel) just yesterday put out a video on turtle evolution! So that's nice timing.
(I might have to get a tortoise when I get back home.)
(I probably won't though, to be completely honest. But I'll keep dreaming of having one.)
~matu
Friday, March 9, 2018
You walk past it three times only to find it's temporarily closed
So! I was in Dublin. As I said. And here's what happened! (This is gonna be really image heavy btw)
Day 1
We got up at 7:30. Outrageous, I know it was the earliest I've gotten up in like a year probably. The trip to the airport and at the airport were pretty painless (altho we were really confused for a moment when the info board told us to go to "border control" which sounded suuuper confusing but just meant passport check lol) and the flight was fine aside from the wi-fi not working so I had no spotify :(
Here's a pic I took outside the airport ✨
Also there were cats!!
and a market hall (?)
Then we bought some cake and came back.
We managed to spend a total of 200e today, tho 80 of that was for the bus passes. Also my Visa won't work properly??? Idk it worked at the McDonald's but nowhere else?? We do have some cash but it's still really inconvenient ://
There's a bookshelf at the hotel (it's not really a hotel? imma call it a hotel) that has a bunch of books in it that we assume are free game to read while we're here. So we picked one up, to read in the evenings. It's called "The Song of Achilles" and it's a book I actually own but haven't had time to read, so if we don't have time to finish it here we can finish it at home. So far it's okay, there's a bunch of Greek names I can't pronounce tho lol
Day 2
Since we went to bed so early yesterday, we got up around 8 this morning. Granted, that's 10 in Finland so it's not that early I guess but anyway. Today we had a museum day. A day of museums. Also we saw the cat again.
We started by taking a bus to the center again, this time something other than the trusty 9 we'd ridden all day yesterday. But yeah. The first museum was the National Gallery. It was a nice place, an art museum with European art from 1600-1900 I think. There was also a changing exhibition we didn't go see bc it cost money. Plus one section of it was closed for maintenance :( Well, here's some highlights;
Before we left there I called the bank about my card not working (after calling mom ofc). They weren't exactly sure what was wrong with it but they thought it might be a technical problem or something and idk. I did manage to pay our lunch with it so I guess they fixed it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Speaking of lunch, I ate a pie!
After that we walked around for a bit, checked out the National Natural History museum (ie, animals)
In the evening we visited the Dublin castle, saw a tiny rebel
Day 3
Today we had a bit of a shorter day. We got up and took a bus to IMMA (Irish Museum or Modern Art). We actually got there 10 minutes before they opened so we had to chill for a bit before getting in. It was cool, even tho I'm not big on modern art.
We then took a tram to Irelan
d's National Museum. We didn't actually go in yet at that point, but to lunch. We ate at this little cafe/restaurant called Wuff and I ate a "full Irish".
It was a pretty cool building. It was a square with a big courtyard in the middle, so it was just four long corridors going around and around. There were some cool things there, like this
Today we did get into the Chester Beatty Library, but turns out it wasn't a library at all! It was a museum! There were some real old scripture tho so that was cool at least. No pics from there bc photography wasn't allowed. We didn't stay there too long.
After leaving the non-library we stopped by a French café, run by actual French people, and then went off to find the Forbidden Planet (a big comic book/manga store). Turns out we'd literally walked past that yesterday as well. Or like, crossed the bridge to the other side right before it. Oh yeah, here's a picture or the Ha'penny Bridge!
We considered going to the George (a v famous gay bar) but then didn't really feel like it, so we just took a bus back to Rathmines (the place we stay) to go buy food. We missed our bus stop tho, because it has a different name in the app we use to navigate than what it actually has. So that was great... anyway, we got some subway and drinks and stuff and went back to the hotel. We saw our little cat friend this time! So far we've only seen it in the mornings.
Day 4
Final day. Well, final full day. We started the same as always, ate some breakfast, pet the cat outside our door, took the bus to the city. Today we started by going to St. Patrick's Cathedral. We'd driven past it several times by now, but we thought it'd be nice to at least look inside. There was a queue inside tho, which we didn't get why at first but then we realized there was an entrance fee. To a church!! I mean, what kind of church has an entrance fee? It was 7 euros no less! Like, I'd've payed maybe 2€ as like a voluntary offering but I'm not paying 7€ just to get into a church! So yeah, we were like fuck that, and didn't go in. Instead we went to the park next to it and took a few pics outside.
And then! Something dramatic happened. There was a dog.
There had been plenty of dogs before that of course, but this dog didn't have his human. He was just running around in the park and we were confused for a moment, but he did have a collar so he wasn't a street dog. He was an escapee! We followed the dog for a while, trying to get it to come to us, but it was probably super scared and clearly didn't know where it was going so we couldn't catch it. In the end it got too far from us and we had to stop. Oona did manage to get a few pics of it and put them on a lost dogs website, so hopefully someone finds him and takes him home.
Then we weren't sure what to do. We'd wandered after the dog away from the church but we didn't really want to go back there anyway, so we weren't really sure what to do next. Eventually we decided that we'd go over to Parnell Square, because Dublin's Writers Museum was there. As we got there, we found out that there was going to be a... lecture? about Oscar Wilde's life in an hour and we were like heck yeah and bought tickets to that. This was the second place of the two we'd paid to get in.
We did have an hour before that started tho, so we went to the neighbouring Dublin City Gallery's (aka the Hugh Lane Gallery) cafe for lunch. I had a blaa. That's what it was called. A blaa. It's a type of breadroll, it was basically a hamburger but with a fancy bun. It was super good tho. We still had a bit of time after eating, so we perused the Gallery quickly. There was some cool art, and also the studio of Francis Bacon. Like, after his death his studio (the literal room he painted in) was donated to the Gallery and they like... moved it there. The whole room. It was pretty dope, but I didn't take any pics of it, unfortunately.
We went back to the Writers Museum at one o'clock. The lecturer was a bit late, but that was fine bc then we had some time to see what else was in the museum. She was a very good speaker by the way, I don't know if it's just something inherent to Irish people, but everyone was super nice and really attentive. She asked a lot of questions from the audience about how much they knew of Wilde beforehand and then when there were some more unusual words she made sure if we knew what they meant. That was nice. It was also very informative. I had read about Wilde's life some before, but she went into a lot more detail than I knew so it was fun.
Then we bought some donuts. We bought 7 donuts. Yes, just for the two of us. They were only 15€ tho, like that's like 2€ per donut! And they are big donuts.
Look at them! Yum. We still have five left as I'm writing this in the evening, I'm a bit worried about how we're going to manage to eat all these lol!
Well, after acquiring donuts, we walked around the city for a bit again. We found a mall and tried to find some souvenirs for people. We did find some. I also bought new shoes, because I've been meaning to do that for a while now. Then we went off in search of a place to eat dinner.
We ended up in a place called The Merchant's Arch. We'd walked past it twice by now, since it was right next to the Ha'penny Bridge. It was a pretty nice place, somewhat more of a pub than a restaurant, but they did have food. I ate an Irish stew which wasn't a stew at all, it was a soup. Like, legitimately. It was a meat soup. It was good tho, so eh.
There was also live music there. I had been a nit bummed about not going to the Piper's Corner, so that was a nice surprise. The musician's name was Sean Coffey and he had a really good voice. We sat there for a bit and then we decided to go back home early. We have to get up for our flight pretty early as well, and that was a nice ending to our trip, so we just called it a night.
We got back to the hotel, packed our stuff and went to bed.
Day 5
Fucking hell. Sorcerer was right, everything bad always happens on Fridays.
We got up as we did, finished packing our stuff and left. We had some leftover juice boxes and a small bottle of 7up which we left there that hopefully someone will get some use of. We still had three donuts left, which I packed into my bag.
We still hadn't mailed the postcards we'd bought on Tuesday (and written on Wednesday evening oops). We got on a bus and on the next stop Oona goes "MAILBOX!" and jumps out. So we get off the bus way earlier than we were meant to. That's fine tho, because the walk isn't that long to where the airlink express (airport bus) leaves and now we have a mailbox.
It was a fun mailbox. We continue walking and everything is fine, it's a nice weather and stuff, and we get to the bus stop with 7min to spare. We take the airlink and get to the airport, security check is fine (altho they did take my bag aside for a second? I don't know why though they didn't say and I didn't even see them search the bag) and we do some last minute shopping (candy and whiskey lol) and head over to a Burger King to eat lunch. They had a really weird system there btw, instead of giving people like a buzzer or w/e, people just hung around by the counter until their food was ready. Idk, I thought it was weird and a bit dumb.
But yeah, while we're eating Oona gets a message that our flight is delayed. By almost an hour. Which is just great, because we were there already super early. And then we wait around the plane is more and more delayed and then we move to the gate and it was cold there and we're still waiting and ughhhhhhhhh. We did eventually get into the plane two hours later than we were meant to but then we just... didn't take off for another 15mins? The plane just drove around the airport for a while, idk man. Once we finally took off it was pretty fine, I don't think we still had wi-fi, but I'd downloaded a few episodes of the Adventure Zone beforehand so I just listened to those and soon we were landing. Then we had to walk all the way through Helsinki-Vantaa and finally we got on the I Train and after stopping at a grocery store real quick we were finally home at 9PM.
And like, I dunno, I was super tired at that point, I just took a shower and unpacked and went to bed. I did try to finish this thing then, but as I said I was super tired and Blogger doesn't have a mobile version for some reason??? and adding pictures was a nightmare so I just stopped. Decided I'd do it today (it's Saturday now, hello!) on a computer. And I did! And it's done. And now I'm going to go because I still have a lot of things to do so bye.
Pie out.
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