Processed beats.

Before I say a thing, I must apologize for the horrible, horrible picture quality - there was no way for me to drag my huge sized SLR to the other side of Finland just for a) other drunken people to steal it or b) it to break into 1000 pieces. So instead I brought my Canon Ixus along - it's basically a 4-year-old piece of shit and refused to work most of the time but at least I wouldn't have even shed a tear in case something had happened to it. The good thing is that I did get pictures of some kind at least - and, thadadada, video clips! Hurray for shitty pocket cameras!

However, before I get into the amazing weekend of Provinssi Rock, I just gotta show you this:

Guess who got to see Metallica with Maija on monday! Ha! Ha! Ha! Frankly speaking, I had to squeeze all of my remaining energy and voice together in order to not get a heart attack and stay alive throughout the concert since I hadn't slept in the past 4 days or so - but somehow I managed to survive, the gig was unbelievably great and definitely got the blood flowing again inside of my veins. Just as good as what it was in 2007. Superrr.

As for Provinssi Rock Fest in Seinäjoki - yes, I did make it there after all, for the love for pain killers - what can I say? 4 days filled with nothing but non-stop music, booze, sun (+ occasional rain that was, in fact, refreshing) and great, great, GREAT people. Made new friends, hung out with some old ones, stayed awake until 6am partying, slept until noon, woke up, drank beer for breakfast, drank beer for lunch, drank beer just for the heck of it. Anything better than that? Don't think so. It was my third Provinssi Rock and sixth festival in total - and definitely not the last one!

Here's the list of the gigs that I managed to see over the weekend:

Placebo

the Ting Tings

Volbeat

Baddies

VETO

Supergrass

Editors

the Crash

Emiliana Torrini

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds

I'd waited 5 years to see Placebo live - all worth it. Couldn't help but burst in tears as they played Special K, Bitter End and Follow the Cops Back Home. Sure there were songs that I'd been waiting for them to play but in the end they didn't, such as Twenty Years, but still, the gig left me breathless. Quite literally.

Also VETO, Editors, Baddies and the Ting Tings gave me chills - I just let the music and the rhythm take control of me. Such great gigs, all of the ones that I saw, actually. I danced and sang so much that my throat and feet are still sore, really. 

"THAT'S NOT MY NAME! THAT'S NOT MY NAME!"

On sunday night, after Nick Cave's performance, it was time for us to pack things up and head back home to Helsinki. The fact that we didn't have a car to get us home turned out to be a slight problem since the trains were fully booked and Jade had run out of money - in the end she managed to get a ride all the way to the south and, as for myself, I got to squeeze into a train car filled with hundreds of tired yet happy people. Didn't get home until 3am and goshhhhI can't even describe the feeling of how good it felt to get to sleep in my very own bed after 3 nights spent inside of a leaking tent. 4 days was just long enough time for me to start missing home. Still, the journey was worth every single bruise and every single minute.

Day 1:

Day 2:

Rock'n'roll train, smoker car & drunken karaoke:

Tomorrow evening after work it'll be time for me to pack up my stuff again and drive all the way to Tuomas's summer cottage for the weekend with a group of awesome friends to celebrate mid summer. I haven't even recovered yet from the previous weekend but the following one should be a lot of fun as well and I can't wait. In case you don't hear from me within a couple of weeks I've probably died from either alcohol poisoning or lack of sleep.

Like eating glass.

I hate hate hate being sick. Especially now that it had to happen only a couple of days before Provinssi Rock festival which I've been waiting for all spring long. Had to cancel the only few work shifts I would've had this week and right now I'm feeling mostly desperation towards the upcoming weekend - having problems with the weather, accommodation, money and transportation. Seems almost as if I shouldn't go. However, the ticket cost me 95 euros, the band list is pretty rad, the people going there are awesome and, most importantly, I'm really in need of some fun after such a slow-paced start of the summer. Not saying it's been bad, it's been all good and fun, but I just haven't had a chance to do a lot besides work, chilling and occasional clubbing. I need some variety for a change. As for the weather, what can I say, it's been cold, rainy and unnecessarily typical for the most part, I heard it was even snowing somewhere in Finland the other day. Where did the summer go?!

Anyhows, I've had a few chances to enjoy some decent heat as well. Yesterday, after spending a lazy yet fun weekend with no proper sleep (which is probably one of the reasons for why these stupid symptoms of this stupid flu had to occur), I felt like a zombie all day long so some friends came over to cheer me up. We prepared some Italian lunch, dragged my kitchen table out to the balcony and spent a few hours eating, laughing at some old photo albums and kicking back.

Right now I don't think I could feel any more frustrated than what I do.

I just want to get better for thursday and get things taken care of in order to be able to enjoy next weekend to the very fullest.

Start of something new.

Graduation last week, what can I say. Worth the wait, everything went great, I was happy. Even the weather was perfect which rarely happens here in Finland and made the day even more special. I really couldn't get any sleep the night before, I was too excited to even close my eyes for a moment - and yet I was all awake already an hour before I had to get up.

The official graduation part itself went all good, I didn't end up falling or making a fool of myself as I'd been afraid of. I even got a freaking diploma for getting such high scores at Swedish marticulation exam - yeah, I know, I definitely wasn't the only one being all "WHAT"?! I guess I hadn't done that badly at school after all.

After the official part - or whatever you want to call it - we rushed to the place that our personal party for family and close friends was held at. The Casino was at the perfect spot on the coast, close to where we used to live at and my parents had had their wedding dinner at the very same place 20 years back - so it was kinda natural for us to end up renting that specific restaurant. And the choice couldn't have been better. 60 or so guests, some of whom I hadn't seen in years, everybody had a great time and enjoyed the day for sure.

All the pictures are taken by Sakari Röyskö.

Later on, after all that all day long lasting well-behaving, I was craving for a party - so we met up with some friends at a park, had a few drinks at Bar Colorado and ended up going to Redrum and partying till the dawn - a prefect end for the day. The feeling I had was indescribable, even strangers came to me on the streets to congratulate me for wearing the hat and finishing school. Made me feel unbelievably happy about everything. Thank you so much to all of you who were involved in any way that day, it really meant a lot to me.

Now that I officially have the white graduation hat on my head, it's finally starting to get to me that I'm really done with all the responsibilities for now. For just as long as I wish, I'll be able to do whatever I want with my life. That also means that the day I'll leave to travel around the world is drawing closer - less than two months to go! Wow. But before starting the final countdown, though, there will be whole a lot of things for me to do, including enjoying my summer in Finland - and being wonderfully carefree for once in my life. No worries, no stress, just the sweet taste of freedom, starting with ProvinssiRock festival next thursday. To put it simply, life is pretty damn awesome.

Bounce low, bounce high.

Before hitting the bed to get my badly needed beauty sleep for graduation tomorrow (I'll have to wake up at 6:00am sharp) I just have to say a few words about these past few days that have been filled with nothing but live music, cheap beer, awesome people and mighty fun time.

Wednesday:

Sixgun Republic at Bar Loose.

Anna's boyfriend is the drummer so we went to their place first to get started with the party mood and after that headed to the gig. To be honest, I was expecting a screamo band with a bunch of guys jumping around and screaming their lungs out - instead, I got a Volbeat-like rockabilly band with quite awesome sounding tones. Such a positive surprise.

Thursday:

MSTRKRFT @ Virgin Oil Co with Jade and Jannika.

After all these months of waiting, what can I say. One of the best nights by far this year, no doubt about that.

How do you recognize a good DJ? You simply can't stop dancing before they turn on the lights and kick you out of the place. Remixes of Daft Punk, The Killers, even Queen - I was about to get a heart attack, that's how good it was. It was awesome, perfect, orgasmic.

Waking up this morning with Jade at my place was hard enough but waking up tomorrow is going to be even tougher. I've been just running around pointlessly today between 50 different places, getting all the last minute shopping done, trying my best to memorize everything at the graduation rehearsal...

Tomorrow's the day I've been waiting for for the past 13 years of my life - it's crazy, doesn't even seem real.

I can't recall the last time I felt this happy.

A hard day's night.

Okay so I finally found a moment for updating this thing - it's 1am and yes, this in fact IS the only moment in 4 days that I found to just sit down and type on MacBook what's up with my life. Well, I'll tell you what's up. WORK, that's what's up. I had 12-hour shifts both today and yesterday, and I worked all Friday evening as well. Tomorrow I'll have a lighter day of only 6 hours but tuesday it's 12 hours again. But I can't complain, more hours is what I've been hoping for for the past month since they've been canceling almost half of my shifts so far and I need the money BAD right now in order to be able to pay my share of the around-the-world tickets by beginning of June. If it wasn't for that, I wouldn't spend my summer this way. The job itself is not that bad, the customers are fun for the most part and I always have some interesting conversations with some of them. It's just physically exhausting and boring at times when there are no customers around. On Friday Mr. Andy McCoy (the lead guitar player or Hanoi Rocks) came in for a beer, actually. I've met him once before a year ago or so, and that time he borrowed my eyeliner before their gig. One of the oddest people you'll ever meet, I swear.

But yeah, enough of work.

There's another thing (don't hate me for the webcam):

NOTICE ANYTHING DIFFERENT? YES? NO? YES? YES? MAYBE?

It didn't take that long to attach the extensions on my hair after all, 3 hours or so. And neither did getting used to them, which came as a surprise to me. It's funny, I've (more or less) always been "the shorter the better"-type of a girl when it comes to hair - but right now I actually think I prefer this length. Not super long, but just enough, there's no way I could deal with longer hair than this. I'm not feminine enough for that.

Oh! Oh! AND! Almost forgot.

Last tuesday Maija, Marianna and myself got together to finally make this photo shoot thing for Marianna's portfolio happen. Something that we'd been talking about for a while and finally the weather was perfect enough. Maija is posing (and being absolutely fabulous, don't you think?!), Marianna did the styling and the makeup and as for me, I was behind the camera and chose the locations. Say what you say, I think they turned out better than great.

No, this was not all, we took over 500 pictures in total. Thanks to Maija for being so beautiful and so GODDAMN photogenic, it took me and Marianna 3 hours to pick out the best ones. Mwuah, I love you.

I can't believe I'm really graduating this week. After all these years, I'll be officially out of school. Feels unbelievable. This has got to be the start of something new.

All these things that I've done.

In the past few days this is what my life has been mostly about.

Graduation invitations - meaning that we FINALLY got our final marticulation exam results last friday, after two long months of waiting. Not only did I pass but also my scores, believe it or not, exceeded all of my expectations. Since you may not be familiar with the Finnish grading system, the grade scale goes L, E, M, C, B, A, I - Laudatur being the best and Improbatur meaning "fail". I took my first exams already last spring since I didn't want to stress about all of them at once (which was one of the best decisions that I've ever made in my life), took five exams in total and this is what I got:

Swedish - L

English - E

Psychology - E

Finnish - M

Spanish - M

I couldn't help but literally scream in surprise when I saw my Swedish grade - I worked so hard on it though, and apparently it was worth it. In the beginning of the year I would've been completely happy with a C but I guess I improved quite a lot which made me so, so happy, even my teacher came to congratulate me for good job. And for once I was proud of myself.

So now that I can breathe in relief knowing that I'm done with high school for good and that I finally get to graduate in less than two weeks, I'm going to need to use all of my energy on the planning of the graduation party. It's definitely going to be the day to remember in my life and I still have a bunch of things to be taken care of, including the last 20 or so invitations that I've been working on for a week now. I've got 30 done, 20 more to go and the ones that I have left on my list, well, I'll just send them an invitation in the form of a text message and hope that they'll forgive me. Making 50+ invitation cards by hand was a bitch to do, and I know I can only blame myself for that since I wanted the cards to look good and elegant, instead of just typing something lame on computer and printing them out. Today, after 6 hours of sitting on my desk and paper clipping and glueing, my head was about to explode and I was craving for an easy way out so I just decided to leave them more or less plain anyhows. Well, I wasted two whole days and too much money on them so people better be happy and not just throw the cards straight into the trash bin.

Apart from the invitations, I've got most of the other things under control now. Dress? Check! Shoes? Check! Getting hair extensions in two days and I'm a little scared of how they will turn out. I have a clear picture in my mind of how I want them to look like, using The Kills singer Alison Mosshart as my main source of inspiration.

Someone told me I look like her - if I had to name a style icon whose wardrobe I'd love to own, it'd most definitely be her. I hope that I'll be able to pull that hair off.

So anyhows, as I told you I totally flipped over my final scores which made me kind of lose control of my use of money that day, rewarding myself of the work I'd done and I still think I deserved it. Jade and I spent the whole day strolling around Helsinki city and both of us managed to find some great pieces - I bought a bright hot pink hoodie, an Ed Hardy-style T-shirt and an accessory for my grad outfit.

Besides spending money on clothes, I also invested on getting hammered that night - and that investment turned out to be a great success! It was Jannika's 20th birthday so we first got started at her place in the outskirts of Helsinki and later found ourselves at this bar called Pacifico.

Eurovision song contest party on saturday was simply awesome as well - BBQ, drinking contest and the people were hot and the music was definitely not, just the way it was supposed to be. Let's face it, 4 hours of laughing our asses off at the artists' ridiculous outfits, dance moves and song lyrics... Eurovision has got to be the most entertaining show there is. At 2am, after watching Norway kicking everybody's ass with the hot violin guy and Finland failing miserably, I realized I'd forgotten my wallet home so I walked home, saw a car accident happening on my way over there and went straight to sleep.

Tomorrow we're going to have a photo shoot for Marianna's portfolio - I'll be placed behind the camera and Maija's going to be infront of it. Gonna be fun for sure. And I still have a pile of cards to be written on my desk so, adiós amigos for now!

Only happy when it rains.

On saturday it was time for me to get started with my late spring closet inventory - I decided to simply toss all of my clothes that I hadn't worn in a long time and, no matter how I was trying to deny it, never again would've. So I spent hours and hours going through my closet and ended up, surprisingly, packing up over half of my clothes in boxes, bags and suitcases and taking them to a flea market at 6am on Mothers' day with my friend Salla.

And who said that my car's too small to fit a thing in it?

Despite the fact that we didn't get as much sold in those 8 hours as we'd hoped, the day was quite fun nonetheless with lots of coffee and fun people around.

I didn't really care about the profit, I just wanted to get rid of my old things - I feel like starting all over again with some certain things in my life, including my wardrobe, apartment and lifestyle. My way to celebrate the fact that a new era's about to start in my life is to make some more or less major changes and just simply put things in order. Why? Because sometimes you just have to say goodbye to the past, cut out and let go on the things that just don't work anymore, no matter how well they did previously. Whether it's about a pair of shoes, a habit or a relationship.

Today I slept in after getting home late from my friend's video game night. Woke up around midday to realize that it was raining outside, my umbrella was missing, my boss had cancelled four out of my five shifts for this week, I was coughing my lungs out and that the day was simply gloomy in many ways. Getting coffee with a bunch of friends made it better though, as it always does.

Maybe it's just better for me to have a couple of days off right now, despite the fact that I'm in desperate need of money. There are 50 blank invitations on my desk waiting to be written and a pile of Australian working visa application forms in by bag to be filled out. Also, I haven't been to the gym in three days, my place is still a mess and I need to go shopping for some necessary graduation stuff. So I guess I should just get my ass up now, turn off my MacBook and start doing something with my horrible time management skills. And be proud of myself for once.