Monday, September 07, 2009
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fon @ 5:18 PM link to post * *
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Not Hamsters in Born!
www.NotHamsters.com on Facebook
fon @ 2:41 PM link to post * *
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
The kind of man I'm engaged to
If Mikko's giving you instructions, he'll first explain A, briefly, then jump to E, without explaining any steps in between, then talk about dinosaurs and hobbits somewhere in between. Then he'll smile and nod, satisfied at his well rounded explanation.
He thinks about details before the big picture. When he planned to propose to me, he first went and bought the champagne, about a month and a half in advance, then hid it in the garage. After Midsummer, he discovered the champagne was missing. He searched frantically for it everywhere, and came to the conclusion that my dad must have found it and been delighted to find a bottle he'd forgotten about entirely in the garage, and probably drunk it on Midsummer.
Indeed, the night before my dad went back to Azerbaijan, we were placing a bottle of sparkling wine in the fridge, planning to have a few glasses with my dad. I noticed a bottle of champagne in there, and said to Mikko - who was sitting with my dad - "Oh - there's a bottle of champagne in here!" My dad said, happily, "That's MY bottle of champagne!"
Mikko said he found it highly amusing, and since he had already bought a new bottle anyhow, thought he'd let my dad bask in the champagne bottle induced happiness!
I told my mother the story last night, and we had a good laugh around the dinner table. The only mystery we couldn't solve was WHERE the wine bottle had been between the time it went missing and when it reappeared almost a month later...
Mikko is very forgetful - he'll run around searching for a roll of tape, and then you'll have to remind him that only half an hour ago, he put it in the drawer himself.
He's very sentimental. Once when I was rocking the baby to sleep, he started crying. He cries easily - more easily than me, and mostly of happiness. Although he says that he used to cry sad tears more often.
He's romantic. He likes to think of sweet surprises for me, like carving a heart out of pine wood and leaving it for me to find. It's too bad that when it comes to bigger surprises, he's terrible at keeping it to himself, but that's just part of the charm.
Mikko's very talkative. Many nights he'll talk so long that I finally have to interrupt him with "Hold that thought - I can't hold it any more, I need to pee!!"
He's spontaneous. This is exactly how our decision to have a baby went:
"Let's have a baby."
"Really? Ok."
So, all in all, I'm happy I said yes. :)
fon @ 2:53 PM link to post * *
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
The platonist
Poor poor platonist
The world is slipping away
The perfect manner for a person no longer applies
So no longer are there perfect people
As once there were in your youth
Poor poor platonist
The older the get
The more upset you become day by day
The world is no longer yours
The role models - ashes in the air
Oh my dear platonist
Ideals have served you so well
They are the inner courtyard to your villa
The stones crumble away
The courtyard decays
Can you, platonist, be happy?
Can you face change?
For there lies the key to your happiness
But what do I know?
I, who have never recognised
That perfect manner.
fon @ 3:46 PM link to post * *
Thursday, May 14, 2009
It wouldn't be my trip if...
It wouldn't be me traveling if there wasn't some major mishap. Which I survived, of course, sitting here as I am, in Finland, writing this blog.
Common sense will counsel that if one loses one's passport, one cannot travel. I lost my passport the night of my flight, two hours before we were due to leave, realising the missing travel document as Monn came out of his bath, crying and ready to be fed.
"Can you just feed the baby?" said Mikko, slightly irritated by the protesting bundle draped over his shoulder and pummeling his shoulders with its fists. "I'll look for your passport."
The baby fed, the room turned over by Mikko and P'Oad (who's aid had been enlisted on this occasion), and still no passport. "As long as I can get out of the country, it's fine - they can't deny my entry into Finland." I was pretty calm about it, having come from Australia to Thailand once without my Thai passport, and having once been told by the Thai immigration officers that what matters is that you exit the country on the same passport with which you entered. My non-dual-nationality family members, however, were not entirely convinced of this. They rarely check that you have a visa upon leaving the country. Really. It's your problem on the other end if you are not allowed into the country of destination. It still pays to be at the airport well in advance, just in case somebody raises an eyebrow, which in this case they did, since my mom immediately reported the strange situation to the check-in ladies. Still, I think the whole procedure would have been faster if we hadn't said anything about the passport's unknown whereabouts.
In any case, I do digress - So, now that the passport was definitely missing, and a state of general panic, and of irritation directed at me, there were some phonecalls to be made. The passport (in case you haven't already guessed, my Finnish one) wasn't at home. The last recollection I had of it was at the Spanish embassy (try explaining to officials - "My passport is at the Spanish embassy." "Are you Spanish?" "No, Finnish." "So why is your passport at the Spanish embassy?"). The Spaniards are insufferable bureaucrats who are incaple of reading university transcripts in English, and do not believe that all documents aren't somehow forged documents unless certified by a Spanish official.
(Small digression: Monn has just woken, and projectile vomited into my shirt, and fallen asleep again. See why, despite the mishaps that I incur, the baby himself is not difficult to travel with?)
My first degree was done in Australia, and my Masters was done in Spain, and thus I needed my transcripts and diploma translated and legalised at the Spanish Embassy (They also refuse to believe that Finland, another EU country, could have a birth-certificate free system, and thus my Spanish university was also, until two days ago when they decided they no longer require birth certificates, requiring a letter from ANY official, stating that it is in fact true that Finland does not issue birth certificates.). This is why I had reason to suspect that my passport had been forgotten at the Spanish embassy. How that came to happen is a short story of its own:
Having recently borrowed a baby sling/carrier - shaped like a money belt with straps to keep the baby against your chest (which is how Monn is currently asleep), I put my wallet, with my Thai ID, into the pouch. Upon arrival at the building housing the Spanish embassy, however, Mikko decided he would carry the baby, and so, the pouch was left in the car. At the entrance to the embassy, they needed our ID's and our phones, and of course, I was unable to produce mine. Luckily, however, I had my Finnish passport on me, should I need it for the document certification procedure. In the middle of waiting for our turn (Monn slept through all of this - he'd earlier been at the hospital for his check-up and second Hep B vaccination), we realised that in any case, we'd require cash to pay for the documents... and thus, my wallet was needed in any case.
So, out I went - the guard at the door saying there was no need for me to exchange my queue card for my things. "But I need my phone," I said, thereby sowing the seeds of eventuality. I got my phone, and ran downstairs to call the driver and ask him to bring me the black pouch. When I got back, I traded my phone back in... When we left, now that I think back, I don't recall receiving my passport back - only my phone. But at that stage, in the rush we were to leave, it wasn't noticed.
Anyhow, so on the evening of the flight, the Finnish embassy's emergency number was called. They said no, it would not be possible for me to travel to Finland on a Thai passport without a visa (Bollocks! Shows how much they know!) The Spanish embassy's emergency number was called, in case they had seen my passport, but they wouldn't check until Monday (it was Friday night that we were traveling).
So finally, we agreed that we'd just go to the airport and try our luck. And of course, my mom confessed my missing Finnish passport to the check-in ladies immediately, who had to then make a million phonecalls checking to see if this case was ok (they discovered it was). I guess we'll never know if they would have ever noticed if they hadn't been told. In any case, on their recommendation, I went to the tourist police to report the missing passport. My mom and I decided to report it as missing on that day (a public holiday, thus, embassies closed!) at the Emporium shopping mall (easier to explain than "Well, it's been missing for two weeks, and we just realised it tonight"). I wrote, on the form, "Spent the day at Emporium. At home, we couldn't find the passport." Technically, I didn't lie - I can't pull off lies convincingly - I just relied on human faith in causality (one sentence follows the other, therefore, one event must be the result of the previous reported event. People like to add "because of this" or "therefore" where there are none). I don't feel as bad about saying misleading things as I do about lieing.
The immigration official in Thailand didn't bat an eyelid, and stamped me through. Of course, now the baby was a problem. "How did he get here?" asked the immigration officials. Out of sheer luck, having run out of space in my suitcase, Monn's birth certificate was in my carry-on. He was leaving Thailand on his Finnish passport (his Thai one is yet to be obtained), and nobody had said anything about producing a birth certificate upon leaving the country!
All debacle's cleared, the flight was fairly uneventful. The Finnair staff may wonder why, from row 21, there was one pee'd on blanket, one poo'd on one, and a third vomited on, but perhaps Monn was being cheeky, giving them their dues for apalling 'don't look at me, this is just a job' service. I was waiting for them to start blowing bubble gum in the aisles. One of the air hostesses spilled a bit of orange juice on my arm and said 'Ooops!' and walked on.
On the Finnish side, the immigration official was a bit puzzled, pointing out that I didn't have a visa in my Thai passport, after he already said it was fine for us to pass... I think he realised this and changed to subject to going to report the passport as missing at the Porvoo police station ("There's one at the airport, too, but you have baby with you and it'll take a long time here.").
Well, that was that for that trip. The trip home was fairly uneventful... My alcoholic aunt claimed to not have gotten the message from my dad saying we didn't need a ride from her, as a Thai friend would come to get us. She explained this with breath that smelled of the last night's wine, though... Not difficult to choose who to believe on that one. To keep the peace, my mom went with her, and we went with the Thai friend. Not that that kept the peace... My aunt called me the next days with reports that my mother had cursed the entire family (she'd said she was bored of hearing her stories about the family).
The fun never ends... I could go on for a few more paragraphs about these mishaps... perhaps one day I will write an autobiography :S
fon @ 1:09 PM link to post * *
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Myths and theories about motherhood
My thoughts so far: None. The most common question I am asked nowadays is: "What's it like being a parent?"
I've been told several things - that having a child is a huge event that suddenly changes your life from day to night. I haven't actually noticed much of a difference. I'd say I've got a new, time-consuming hobby... but my life, changed? Nah. I think I'll have to agree with the quote below:
"Parenthood: That state of being better chaperoned than you were before marriage." ~Marcelene Cox
Some say they have less time. True. But it's not that drastic - after all, anyone who has noticed my facebook activity has probably noticed that if anything, I spend more time procrastinating than ever. I just have to learn to make use of all the 5-15 free minutes I have more constructively. I actually have hours of free-time a day... just not consecutive ones, that's all!
"Now the thing about having a baby - and I can't be the first person to have noticed this - is that thereafter you have it." ~Jean Kerr
Again, I'd like to reiterate that in my experience, there hasn't been fireworks, no sudden explosion of maternal instinct. I think being a parent grows on you, it's a learning process and whoever thinks that motherhood is somehow instinctive has been brainwashed by propaganda designed to keep men and women in their traditional roles. At best, the mother has more of a chance to learn, since babies spend so much time eating!
"Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children; now I have six children, and no theories." ~John Wilmot
"In spite of the six thousand manuals on child raising in the bookstores, child raising is still a dark continent and no one really knows anything. You just need a lot of love and luck - and, of course, courage." ~Bill Cosby, Fatherhood, 1986
Mikko and I have been bombarded with books and theories on childrearing. I guess that's a problem all parents face. And I think at the end of the day, the baby is my baby, not Gina Ford's or Miriam Stoppard's or Dr. Sear's or any other famous baby manual writers. Anything that can be reliably put down in those books can probably be just as easily figured out by the parents. I think the only thing I learned from reading those books is that there is nothing that you 'should' objectively do. There are only things that you do because you are you, and sooner or later, things will fall into place. You're three people who will learn to adapt to each other.
"Most of us become parents long before we have stopped being children." ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966
A close friend of mine once told me he thought having children might just be what he needs to become a responsible adult. At the time, I thought that with that attitude, he definitely shouldn't have kids. Surely, one should be responsible first, then have kids? If only I know how amazingly indoctrinated I was. I know somehow believe that maybe the one thing that stops a person from behaving like a kid is having them. And on the other hand, it also makes them act even more like kids. For example, just 2 months ago, I wouldn't have imagined not doing what I wanted when I wanted it. Now I still do what I want when I want, but I just don't want to do things like go to the movies or clubbing anymore. I suddenly want to sing silly kids songs and lullabies and make 'pfffrrrrr' sounds through my lips, which makes me act more like a kid than before.
So anyhow, I didn't notice any grand revalations - I was happy before, and I am happy now :) If I start being miserable, then I'll say that having a baby has changed my life... but until then...
fon @ 9:01 AM link to post * *
Sunday, March 08, 2009
The 'joys' of induction
Distractions are good at keeping pain at bay, so anyone reading this gets to share in on a little bit of induced labour.
Today, the idea was to ‘trick’ my body into going into labour by causing uterine contractions with the aid of an internal cream.
It seems that the body is not as easily tricked as modern medicine would like it to be. 3 doses and 11 hours later, my doctor was reporting contractions strong enough to cause a birth, but without any dilation of the cervix.
For those not in the know, the cervix, or the mouth of the uterus, needs to open 10 centimetres, at least. Mine barely made 1 centimetre in an entire day.
But of course, now I’m in a state of limbo. The medicine has after effects, which means that I’m still getting contractions that are painful enough to keep me awake, but still aren’t real labour contractions.
I don’t want a caesarean, so tomorrow will be a new attempt.
For now, I feel like there is a bowling ball resting in my pelvis.
All is not so bad – I managed to teach Mikko how to play rummy. My doctor jokingly asked if he could join in on a game, to which I responded only if he’s any good at it, since Mikko’s just learning and I’ve been playing for as long as I can remember!
Even with a triple handicap of being attached to a saline solution drip, bedridden and taking my turns between contractions, I managed to achieve a grand victory in cards, if not otherwise…
Well, here's to tomorrow's victory... be it in cards, or delivery...
fon @ 11:07 PM link to post * *