F**K IT MILES, GIVE ME SOME PRIVACY

The last challenge this month is so smoothly moving onto my next month's challenge. The goals I have for March are already quite clearly listed in my head. As mentioned earlier, I'm going to be taking on a challenge called "flat abs". I'm also trying to incorporate my water drinking challenge from January back into the game, because as much as I understood some of the benefits of drinking enough water daily, I wasn't able to keep it up as much during February as I had hoped. Because the exercise time for abs is only a few minutes a day and drinking water won't add any thrill, either, I was also planning to set myself a step goal. Usually I reach 10 000 steps quite effortlessly, which is why I'll move my goal to 13 000 steps a day. I sometimes reach this amount without extra efforts, but because I don't reach these numbers every day, means I do need to do something extra to get there most days. I was planning to first set the goal to 15 000 steps,...

Lately I have been looking for ambient background noises for meditating. My favorites are rain on a tin roof and rain sounds, ocean waves and distant thunder noises. Today I noticed YouTube is really going at it with me, because it started to recommend all different sleeps sounds. I was offered Starship sleeping quarters white noise and a 10-hour-long video with the sound of a fan . Of course this only got me more curious and I wanted to see what were the strangest ambient white noise sound clouds I could find on YouTube. All of these videos had people who liked them, so apparently they do work on some people and that's great. Here's my TOP 10 strangest findings: 10. Antarctic Winds for 10 hours. Because nothing's as relaxing as -40C blizzard! However, listening to a howling wind is sort of relaxing, because you feel like a baby under your safe, warm blanket. 9. Hot Tub sounds . There must be a story behind why someone feels they needs to play the sound of a ...

Today's assignment is to write down five things that make me laugh out loud. It's a hard subject, because once you familiarize with something enough, it's not so funny anymore and you need something else, so I'll be making a generalized list instead. 1. Good (fresh) memes, pictures and GIFs. 2. Seth MacFarlane. I'm not a huge Family Guy fan, but I laughed so hard I cried through his movie "A million ways to die in the west". I really enjoy brutally horrible jokes for some reason. I was looking for a trailer for it and you have been warned! The trailer underneath is gruesome , so it's not a good idea to watch even the trailer in front of the kids. Actually, now seeing this trailer I'm questioning my own sense of humor. I know I enjoyed this movie so incredibly much though. 3. Good stand up comedy. Such as this one: 4. Just the right sitcom , situation comedy. Some of the people in my life, like my husband, are excellent at find...

Let's see. I can do mawashi-geri or I can do ura-mawashi. Both are karate terms and excellent for kicking ass. To be honest, I wrote a long piece during which I cried for not coming up with anything plausible, other than kicking ass at finding the bottom of my laundry basket this week and that just made me more emotional than necessary. In the end it was relieving to write it all down and get to delete the entire text as well. So, I guess I could say I kick ass at dealing with my issues by addressing them in a text just to get them out of my system. My excuses I ditched the meat and potatoes of the subject. Sometimes you just need a more literal interpretation to avoid spilling your guts out for the entire world to see.

There are plenty of areas in my life I'd like to improve: I'd love to improve or acquire new skills in many areas, such as programming, writing, language (I'd like to get better in all the languages I know and I'd love to learn a few more). I'd love to learn to play an instrument properly, maybe pick up with acting. I'd like to learn more maths, physics, maybe throw in some chemistry as well. I'd love to spend more time studying quantum mechanics, AI, the Universe and Buddhism, to name a few. I'd love to improve my knitting skills, as they are nearly non-existing. I know I would benefit a lot if I picked up public speaking, but first things first, I need to improve physically even a little bit and that's what my next monthly challenge is for. In March I'll take upon a 30-day "flat abs" challenge just to step over my comfort zone a little. This will be the biggest challenge this year so far, because as much as I have abs, they are hi...

The task for today is to think of any word. The moment I read this sentence, I thought about "ananas", which is pineapple in so many other languages besides English. Then I'm supposed to do an image search on Google, choose the 11th image and write about it. The 11th picture is a picture of a pineapple wearing sunglasses. Because it's not a royalty free image, I cannot just upload it here, but you can check out the picture of this cool as a cucumber pineapple right here . In the end I decided to draw a similar picture just so I have a photo to use in this post. Yo to my pears. I'm Bartolomeo Pineapplebatch, the rightful Heir to Pine Trees and the Guardian of Apple Trees, the slow yielding Fruit of the Fields, the Breaker of Bags, the prophesied King of the Pineapple Hair-dos, the Green Crown holder of the Southern Hemisphere, the Emperor of Prickly Hats and the Duke of Fruit Jokes. But my buddies mostly call me Bart, which I find very appeeling. My pops w...

I have been blogging since 2005. I started as a joke by writing down the stuff I did with my roommate back then. Mostly it was about us going to bars and talking crap. When I moved to the Netherlands in 2007, I started my first proper blog. Back then I would write about anything: what we did that day, how it was to be pregnant in the Netherlands, later how it was to have a kid in the Netherlands, but most of all I wrote about society and politics. Soon enough I realized this was turning out to be a hard lesson for me. I have always been open to foreign cultures and really curious about them as well. I think there is good in every culture and in every human being. This means I have always been with open arms what comes to people seeking refuge and migrating to the country where I reside. Writing about this though, lead a lot of people come to my blog and tell me some pretty horrible things. Unfortunately those weren't just some minor things, but those were seriously disgusting t...

Today's blogging task is to write a letter to someone, anyone. I have thought about this since last night and today decided I'm going to write a letter to younger self about the things I wish I knew sooner. A sort of a Baz Luhrmann's Sunscreen personalized. Dear younger me, I want to tell you something. You're enough as you are. You don't need to change who you are to meet others' expectations of yourself. Stand your frigging ground, even when your legs tremble. Don't hold grudges or anger. You'll feel a lot better when you let that shit go. Always trust your gut. It is based on a million subtle lessons you have subconsciously absorbed and therefore it's if not always, often, spot on. No one else is "ready", either. You shouldn't keep on waiting for the perfect moment to start working on that dream. Perfect moments are always this moment. A year from now you'll wish you started yesterday. Whenever an opportunity presents i...

Because I don't have a proper playlist these days, but instead a bunch of small playlists here and there, on Spotify and YouTube, in the end I decided to use my zillion Spotify lists and let the shuffle choose one from each playlist until I got to ten shuffled songs as the assignment goes. 1. My Soundtrack for 2017 - This is a playlist I have created and these are songs I have liked this year. Not all of them are brand new, but most are. OneRepublic - Let's Hurt Tonight As usual, I like the music OneRepublic makes these days. Fun fact though: the lead singer of this band, Ryan Tedder, has produced and written songs for other artists as well. For example Leona Lewis' "Bleeding Love" and Beyoncé's "Halo" are his. 2. Viv's Playlist - yes, my daughter's playlist JVG - Tarkenee How do you know you're old? When you don't get the music your kids listen to. I like Finnish rap music, but I just think in the recent years I haven...

1.  Be grateful I have talked quite a lot about gratitude in this blog so far, and hence it’s not surprising it’s also one of the things I wish to pass on to my children as part of my way of preparing them for life. My boys are still a tad too young to embrace the concept fully, but my daughter is old enough to get it. She actually understood me so well that for example last night before going to bed, when she already had her head on the pillow and eyes closed, she all of a sudden said: "Mom, I'm so grateful I have such a good mom. I love you." Out of the blue this might sound like a really strange thing for a child to say, but then again I have been telling my kids for a long time now every once in a while the following words: "You are an amazing child and I'm so grateful I get to be your mother. I love you."  It makes their faces shine. They love to hear it and I love to say it. It made me very happy to notice my daughter has really understood my words....

This weekend I read a very informative article about English as a lingua franca. The article explained how non-native English speakers especially among each other use English differently, and it predicted some of the developments of the language in the future based on their studies. Just as the article says, "To some, our proposal may seem to be a recipe for "permissiveness" and a decline in "standards"," I can see this to be the case for some native speakers. I do understand and fully agree that there is a level of fluency to be kept, but the message going across is always more important than the full accuracy of the language. Besides, a language needs standards to survive, so compromises can be made only to a certain extent. When comparing natives with non-natives, sometimes the non-natives ace the grammar and spelling even better than those who learned it as a first language. A non-native speaker has the advantage of memorizing things based on...

I don't know how boring it would get if I actually started this list with Elon Musk, because he's seriously boring these days, so I'm gonna save him for last. 1. Ewan McGregor He is probably the longest celebrity crush I've had. He just doesn't "get old" and his accent isn't definitely hurting his case. To be honest, I always thought I'd end up marrying someone Scottish just because of the accent, haha. Aaaaand then I ended up marrying someone who speaks Dutch as his first language. Talk about life choices! 2. Emilia Clarke as Khaleesi Emilia Clarke is also known as the kickass mother of dragons, Khaleesi, Daenerys Tarjaryen Targaryen, or how this character introduces herself: "Daenerys Stormborn of the House Targaryen, First of her name, the Unburtn, Queen of the Andals and the First Men, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Breaker of Chains and Mother of Dragons." And I'm just watching her in awe. I understand why people say ab...

Do I really want to discuss my first love publicly? No, not really, but I can tell a completely random story about something that may or may not have anything to do with the topic. There was once a 14-year-old girl, who saw a boy in a school play. He had the leading role as a pessimistic troll of the forest, and the girl in the audience was having a celebrity crush moment. Quite the detective she was, she figured out his name. I guess it wasn't that difficult, considering it was printed in every pamphlet of the play and everyone knew who he was. Because he had such a rare both first and last name, she took out the good ol' telephone book — which in that time was still frequently used — and found out there were around fifteen phone numbers in the city with his last name. Because he was 16, his number was obviously under his parents' names. The girl would take the first number and call. Without hesitation, she asked the person who picked up the phone if "K" was ...

1. I almost always go to bed between 01 and 03 am. 2. All my three babies were born when I went to a hospital for a check-up. First one was born, because I felt weird and made an appointment with the doctor and the other two deliveries started DURING a scheduled check up. As if they knew it was the right time. 3. I haven't dyed my hair since 2004. 4. I used to have dark red, orange, black and dark brown hair during my teen years. 5. I love building IKEA furniture. 6. I attend a Buddhist Sangha on regular basis, although I'm not a Buddhist. 7. I have a monthly pass to the local cinema, which means I get to see as many movies I like. 8. On average I go to the movies 3-4 times a month. 9. I have lived in 11 different addresses, out of which three in Finland, three in Italy and whopping five in the Netherlands. 10. I know how to change a car tire, because my parents would pay me allowance to do that as a kid. (In Finland it's obligatory to change car tires according to...

My zodiac sign is a Sagittarius. I googled and chose the first search hit to read about being a Sagittarius. "Sagittariuses are generous, idealistic and have a great sense of humor." If I was a duck, I'd say this is quacking true. "Sagittariuses have a bad tendency of promising more than they can deliver (check) , they are very impatient (jokes on you, kids have taught me patience, but I still don't like waiting around for inefficiency) and they will say anything no matter how undiplomatic."  (I've been to this situation so many times I've lost count, which means these days I'm actually trying to control my mind and my mouth a bit more). So far so good. "Sagittariuses like freedom (now, who doesn't?) , traveling (now again, who doesn't like traveling other than maybe some crazy person in a movie who in the end will overcome their fear of traveling and thus also loves traveling?) , philosophy (how many times is i...

Sauna is something I miss almost every day. Growing up in Finland I have been taught to think about sauna more as a necessity, not as a luxury. In a country of 5,5 million people the amount of saunas is estimated to be somewhere between 1,3 and 1,6 million, which basically means you're more likely to walk into a Finnish home with a sauna than to one without one. For example my parents have two saunas: one in their home and one in their summer place, both of which my dad built from scratch, because he's cool like that. Besides Finnish homes and summer places you can find saunas in office buildings, work places and in some of the most unexpected locations, such as Burger King or the ice hockey stadium in Helsinki. Sauna car we saw in Turku, Finland, in the summer of 2011. In the past sauna was the place where babies were born, including my grandmother in 1923. It was dictated by practicality: sauna was warm, easy to sterilize, hot water was available and you could clean ...

- Waking up at 7:15, because youngest wakes up, feels cold and wants to warm up under my blanket. - It's Valentine's Day. My youngest one brings me a box of chocolates from his dad. Kids are excited to start the day with chocolate. I get one piece, haha. - Helping kids getting ready for the day. - Coffee and breakfast. - Shower. - Correcting my own blog piece and sharing it on social media. - Trying to write my bio for a project. - Getting happily distracted by a friend who asks us to go play with them (yes!). - Quickly before leaving putting laundry in the machine. - Emptying the dishwasher and loading it up again. - Cycling to the center. Coffee and company at Suikerbuik for about an hour. Kids happy to play there. - Cycling back home. - Cleaning up and preparing lunch. - Having lunch with family. - Folding laundry. - Youngest kid who's at home with me wants to bathe. - Hanging laundry to dry. Loading up the laundry machine (again). - Cleaning up two bedr...

I watch all sorts of movies, but I still have somewhat superficial taste what comes to them. I don't analyze them too much. I only look at my overall feeling after seeing the movie and go from there. This said, here are the movies I never get tired of watching. 1. Forest Gump I have seen it probably around 10 times by now. I used to watch it a lot more often when I was younger and last year I watched it after not having seen it in a decade. Although I remembered what happens after each scene, there was a level of information I had completely missed when I was watching it as a younger self. 2. All the Jurassic Park movies I just love watching movies and documentaries about dinosaurs and in these particular movies the animals are nicely visualized.  3. Harry Potter -series Currently my daughter is getting into Harry Potter and I've seen the first few movies a LOT lately. Yet I still might just stop and watch a scene I already know by heart. 4. The Matrix I...

I'm excited it snowed this weekend. We had lots of fun outdoors and indoors. I'm excited the days are already so long that it's not necessary to switch on the bike lights in the morning when bringing kids to school. I'm excited it's soon spring. I'm excited of all the plans we have for this year, and for the future in general. Every time I learn something new and interesting, I get excited of discovering something I didn't know. I'm excited to know there is an endless amount of information to be discovered. I'm excited to read a good book or watch a good movie. I'm excited about the upcoming week. It's rather busy, but I have missed it a lot, too, after being sick for so long. I'm excited about completing some things I've been working on. To be honest, I get excited very easily and just about anything. When I was younger, I was told I should narrow down my interests, but I never really could and during recent years I completely ...

My children are my biggest blessing. I was lucky to get pregnant easily and have relatively easy pregnancies and deliveries, but most of all I was lucky, blessed, to get to be a mother to three such amazing individuals. Every day they make me happy, proud, excited about life, question, learn and love. They also drive me nuts, don't get me wrong, but at the end of the day when I lie down next to them when tugging them to bed and talking, I just can't believe my luck. My husband is a blessing. Sometimes a blessing in disguise, haha. Over the years he has made me a mother, and he has helped me to figure out more of who I am. He challenges me every day, also often drives me nuts, but at the end of the day he supports me and my ideas. He is reliable, kind and funny. My health and the health of those around me is a big, big blessing. Health is important. When it goes wrong, a lot of other things stop mattering. Our home is a blessing. We have lived in four different rental ...

What if I had never stopped to read the bulletin board at school when I was 13 years old? There was an ad about exchange students looking for a home. I told my parents and they were surprisingly on board. A few months later an exchange student arrived from Brazil and lived with us for a full year. Her time in our home inspired me to apply in the same exchange student program. I wanted to go to New Zealand or Australia. What if I never sat in that music class when my teacher was showing us an Italian opera? I had the exchange program papers in my bag. I listened to Italian and realized I don't need to go to an English speaking country - I already knew English. The year abroad would be an opportunity for me to learn a completely new language. I took those papers out and wrote "1" next to Italy. What if my first host sister wasn't so lonely and didn't feel like she needed a catalogue friend? I would have been placed somewhere else in Italy. Now I was sent c...

The more I look at people closely, the more I understand the uniting motivation behind all behavior: search for happiness. It's something I've been trying to understand for a while now and the more I pay attention to it, the more obvious it becomes. At first glance, it might seem strange to say something like that, because there is so much suffering in the world, but from an individual level it all of a sudden starts to make more sense. No one believes they are the bad guy, not even those we collectively label as bad. They all think they are doing something right either by others or by themselves and that narrative will give them satisfaction, a glimpse of happiness. The search for contentment is in every action. No idea who this lady is. I just found this photo from pixabay and thought it looked cool. I saw someone stating on Facebook last week that they think "positivism is a phenomenon of the time and it too shall pass". At first I was quite perplexed by t...

Muhammad Ali's most famous quote undoubtedly is "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee". As classic as it is, it never really spoke to me the same way his other quote did. "The  man  who  views  the  world  at  50  the  same  as  he  did  at  20  has  wasted  30 years of his life." Because hell yeah, you are suppose to grow, let go and explore. You are allowed to change. As a matter of fact, you should constantly review and edit your life as it was a masterpiece. It's never too late to become better. It's never too late to forgive, forget and start over. When I was a kid, I was a bully in the classroom. I never saw it as bullying though as much as sending forged love letters from one kid to another, but the teacher thought otherwise and confiscated my pile of written letters and plans. And of course I've done a lot of other things wrong in my life too, but I've come to realize it's okay to be ...

It wasn't easy picking a subject among the things I struggle with. At first I thought I should say I struggle with writing these short posts every day, haha. I do, it's true - it's great! Then I thought I might talk about struggling with time. Then I saw this quote: Although none of these above apparently were mothers, I realized I would have to talk about priorities instead, and it felt unnecessary considering I spent quite a few posts in January prioritizing things. I ended up writing a whole post about struggling with the lack of self confidence, because that's really my thing. I compare myself too much to others, even when I know I shouldn't. And because I didn't have the answer to my struggle, the post ended up being so sad that I had to ditch the whole thing. So a new one: I struggle with writing sad posts about what a loser I sometimes feel. Heck no I want to promote that feeling. It's hard enough as it is, so fuck that. Let's elevate a...

1. OneRepublic - Wherever I Go I never really paid attention to OneRepublic before the song "Counting Stars". After loving that, it was easy to love this one as well. Some people lie but they're looking for magic Others are quietly going insane I feel alive when I'm close to the madness No easy love could ever make me feel the same 2. Hans Zimmer - Time This song is from the movie Inception. I was impressed with it it when I first heard it and I continue to dig it to this day. I love the way it builds up. 3. Nat King Cole - Nature Boy I have loved this song as long as I can remember. I have been humming and singing it a lot during the last week. And then one day One magic day he passed my way And while we spoke of many things Fools and kings This he said to me The greatest thing you'll ever learn Is just to love and be loved in return 4. Lauryn Hill - Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You Can't take ...

Today's challenge is to list five places I'd like to visit. I thought about places like "space" and "the top 10 saunas in the world" at first, but in the end decided to go with five countries. 1)  Iceland.  Visiting Iceland is soon becoming a cliché, but nonetheless the green scenery, the different stages of water, the yin and yang that Iceland has to offer are insane. I love natural beauty and would choose an outdoorsy holiday over a city vacation any day. 2) Chile.  I have only met cool Chilean people in my life. And it's a country with huge variety of scenery. Besides I've always had a thing for South America. When I was 19, I was planning with a friend of mine to travel to anywhere in South America and find our own places there, but in the end life took both of us elsewhere. 3) Canada. I often think Canada is one the most ideal places to live or visit: it combines the climate and partly the culture of the Nordic countries, yet it's ...

There are a lot of people in my everyday life that inspire me, and then there are famous people who inspire me. My latest celebrity "crush" is Nick Bostrom,  a Swedish philosopher and an author, and before him it was  Stromae.  But ask anybody who truly knows me and they'll tell you no one comes even close to Elon Musk what comes to admiration from my part. Last year I read Musk's biography (by Ashlee Vance ) and not so surprisingly I came to understand his choices better than just reading a bunch of articles and watching interviews. When closing the last page, it was clear to me what I could learn from him. Here are the rules I learned from Musk: 1) Always have a goal in mind and do your best to work towards it. Even if you think it's crazy, do it anyway. Even if the probability of failure is grand, do it anyway. 2) Do not give into other people's opinions about you. Actually, don't give into your own opinions about your work. If you think it's...