Little Autumnal Shopping Tour ♥

Autumn has more than already arrived here, and though we still have ~15°C on some days, on others we don't have more than 5°C, especially in the morning when I have to go to work.

So I decided to go on a small shopping trip to the city center, and look out for some new, autumnal clothes. Not that I didn't bring any warm clothes with me when I came here, but it's nice to have some more variation in your wardrobe, isn't it? Okay, I have to admit, primary incentive to go shopping was my desire for a chiffon blouse. I'm not somebody who follows every trend that arises, but this is a particular one that I came to like :D

So I ended up with this stuff...

As you can see, I was not too successful in my quest for warm clothes. But that shirt is quite long so I can wear it underneath another shirt, and the black hat is super warm! The white one I rather bought for style reasons :'D And stylish socks with a leopard pattern with skulls! I really love socks with patterns X3

So, about the chiffon blouse that I bought...

I'm a hairetic

(Deutsche Version des Textes weiter unten!)

I want to address a "hairy" topic today - after all the seriousness of last weeks' blogposts, let's go back to the superficial stuff!

I wanted to blog about this topic for a while know, since - as some of you might know - my hair and its care are rather important to me, and I'm really proud and happy that I was able to grow it so long. This is a rather personal (though not that kind of personal, rather in a personal-hygiene-kind-of-way) topic and I got some rather contradicting feedback on the matter so far, so now I'm really interested in YOUR opinion ^^

How often do you wash your hair?

I was really thinking about this, since my hair is quite long by now and it costs quite some time to take proper care of it. The strands near my neck keep entangling themselves so quickly I could brush my hair every 15 minutes. Washing it takes some time too, and drying it takes what feels like forever XD However, overall I am quite happy with the health of my hair and the fact that it is still (though slowly) growing. But anyway, I always try to find the best way to treat my hair well, so of course the question above is also of importance to me.

Now on to a little quiz game. Just guess, how long has it been, since I washed my hair (on that photo)?

blond roots of doom inc.

It's sad but it's true...

Haha, why the hell do I constantly have this song on my mind, although it's not even about a woman turning 22 but in her late twenties? Still it feels kinda depressing because the song is so sad *sigh*

Well anyway, I think nothing in the world could have improved this day for me, and I think I'm back to my old routine of disliking (I will refrain from using the word "hate" in this context, it just sounds too harsh) my birthday(s).

Anyhow, today was just a normal day after all, I went to work, and on my way home I considered dressing up in my new clothes just for fun, but with me not even wearing contacts right now because I have to wear my glasses for work, I don't really feel like putting on make-up and styling myself etc. So I'm just sitting around, watching Bleach, maybe playing some GW2 later.... a really lonely birthday, but I just decided to neglect the fact that some people consider this to be a special day or something. For me, it's just another regular Monday. So it's nothing out of the ordinary.

It's actually a little bit crazy, because I feel like people expect me to be all-happy, partying and what-not, but I really don't feel like living up to anyone's expectations :'D So... the only thing that made this day special somehow, is the numerous wishes for a Happy Birthday I got via facebook and also twitter.
Don't get me wrong - I thank you very much for that, and it makes me happy to see that others are thinking of me :) So yeah, this kinda made my day, because everything else was just... plainly ordinary.

Maybe I should show you some of the stuff that I "gave myself as a birthday gift". I got some money from my family at my farewell party. Most of them didn't give it to me with the comment to use it for Finland. Most people literally told me to "buy something nice for myself that makes me happy". So, I really did that, and bought some things that I had been lusting after for a while now, hehe ♥ I also earned some money with my summer job in July, though it's not much, and so I didn't have a bad conscious for spending some of it, for once.

Anyway, here's some pictures.

Week 3: What the hell is happening?

(German translation - this post haz it! Just scroll down ;D )

Long time no see, eh?
I really don't feel like blogging so much at the moment, I don't know why.
I wish I had interesting stuff to tell you about, but right now I spend Monday to Friday at work and since last week end I'm actually ill, so I really don't fell like going out and doing anything, i just want to lie in bad, read, or watch anime, and mostly just sleep, sleep, sleep.
It got better over the course of the week, but got worse again on Friday, so I didn't even go to a ballgame I was invited to, because a friend was playing there. I feel really bad about not going but then again, if I can't even sit or stand for more than 20min without getting a headache, I really don't want to go out.

Basic everyday look = now the same as basic "off to bed" look.

I think I'm also a bit demotivated to go out because I feel that I look really bad at the moment ^^" (well I'm sick for some time now, so....)

Nerdrage

(German translation farther below!)

So... I promised to tell you about the project I'm working on during my stay here in Finland. Well, the thing is, I'm not actually very happy about the whole situation right now, but let's start from the beginning.

When this internship position was offered to me/us, we were told it would be a project in the area of tissue engineering and cell culturing. I was very excited about that topic, as I was thinking about doing a Master with focus on tissue engineering. I just thought it would be the perfect chance to find out if it's really what I want to do. I already had some opportunities to work in other fields of molecular biology or biotech or whatever you'd call all that in general: protein chemistry and analytics/genetics, so I was looking forward to working with some "living stuff".

But as it turns out, this project really isn't what we were told it would be. I'm still not sure how much I can tell because a part of it is confidential, but I was unable so far to find out which one, and also I'm not too keen on getting too many google search hits concerning that topic, but I'll give you the short story.

A picture says more than a thousand words

So....

Tracon & the Finnish World Cosplay Summit Preliminaries

So, as of you may already know from my constant ranting on twitter on Saturday, I attended Tracon in the city of Tampere!

Tracon is a rather large Roleplaying & Anime/Manga convention here in Finland, well, large compared to Austrian conventions at least :'D It said somewhere that around 7.000 people attend the convention, so that would make it about the size of Aninite.

I was there for one day only, and it was.... well.... kinda.... well let's just say I have mixed feelings about that day and what happened there :'D

Turku - Of good and bad surprises

Hello everybody!

So, as promised today I'm gonna talk a little bit about Turku, the city I'll be living in for the next ~6 months. I just realized I should really, really write down everything as soon as possible, or I'll forget about most of the more interesting stuff! .___.

Turku happens to be the 5th largest city of Finland, but don't tell anyone from Turku, because apparently they don't like to hear that, haha :D Actually, if you counted Espoo and Vantaa to Helsinki (which you can't cause they are cities on their own, but anyway XD) it would be the 3rd largest!

So anway, Turku is quite a nice city as far as I can tell, though smaller than Helsinki they still have everything you need. The town center is a kauppatori, a market place, where there are market stands every day. This is also the central bus station. Bus is the only mean of public transport in the city, but the buses go very frequently, there are a lot of stations all over town and so getting from A to B is working out quite well!

After I walked through town with my tutor and friend on Sunday, I actually had quite a good idea about the city layout and important points of interest. Fun fact: i have a really good sense of orientation - IF the sun is shining (because I seem to use it subconsciously to determine directions). If there is no sun, you could spin me around a few times and I couldn't tell where I came from afterwards :'D Well, at least that's true for new environments, like the city. So when there was some sun on the first day, I was actually quite happy because I could get a pretty good idea about what is where etc :D

I like Turku, especially the town center with the market square, though some corners of the city seem a little bit reminiscent of "Eastern bloc". A colleague from my school who also does her internship in Turku fell ill and had to go to the hospital and sty there over night, and we came to visit her... I was actually a little bit shocked by the sight of the room. Not that it was shabby or dirty, just... completely empty, except for her bed, a chair and, oddly enough, a flat screen TV. In Austrian hospitals you have drawers and shelves and usually the rooms have at least a tiny table and one or two chairs. (We also made fun of the situation to cheer her up a little bit, because they doctors at the hospital would we refuse to undertake a gastroscopy despite her heavy stomach ache, because they said she has to do a blood test for all kinds of diseases first. We were then joking around that we were all considered contaminated because we come from the "South" and we're probably infested with tons of parasites and diseases, haha XD This has developed into some kind of running gag by now ^^) 

I was also kinda shocked when I first saw the Aurajoki. I thought, well, even the Danube's water is clearer than that! o_O A little google research revealed that the reason for the turbid, apparently dirty water is mainly the area around the spring of the river, which is rich in clay, so a lot of particles flow within the river. But also, a lot of nutrients from fertilizing the fields around the river reach the river bed and pollute the water.... Wikipedia says that 95% of Turku's tap water (which is the water I drink....) comes from the river, but I can't really believe that. I think I would notice if I couldn't see through my bottle with water anymore XD 

Still alive

Sorry, no German translation of this post.... I'm too tired to think in German right now x__x

Yep, I'm still alive an breathing Finnish air!

The fligth was okay, especially from Vienna to Helsinki, as the seat next to me as free so the man and I sitting in that row basically were flying Business class :D

The connection flight to Turku was.... well.... weird, to say the least. The plane was super small and it was a model with propellers o_O I was sitting at the very front right next to the exit row. I was second row, but the first row was actually facing the back side of the the plane, so a girl who had her seat there was facing me *lol* And when I got off the plane I saw that they don't store the luggage in the "belly" of the plane but instead there's a kind of room between the passenger cabin and the pilot's cabin, where all the luggage was stored. But well, the flight ltook only 25 minutes (shortest flight I ever took!) and Turku Airport is rather small, so no wonder they had only a small plane.