Dad isn’t the kind of guy to get flustered, or to admit that he’s upset. But I wish wish wish that I could be there to give him hugs and help.

I woke up about half an hour ago. My dad rang to let me know that Minnie, my grandmother and friend had died. I’m sad, but because she was so diminished by age, I am incredibly relieved.

Minnie was 99. But she used to be young.

As a people, the Finns aren’t exactly known for being that talkative and Finnish men are particularly reticent. Since arriving in Finland I’ve become much better at shutting up and just being. But as I am what is known in popular parlance as “a people person”, and working in a bar where we provide an alternative to the Finnish culture, I like to challenge the quiet locals by taking an interest in their lives.

Ordering a beer in Finland is usually pretty simple. A man walks into a bar and mumbles “Olut”. A glass of beer and money are exchanged. Transaction over.

When I’m working behind the bar, things often go a little differently. A man walks into a bar and mumbles “Olut”. I smile and say “Hi, how are you doing?”. Man mumbles “Good. Olut”. Then, as sweet as can be, I say, “I’m fine, thankyou for asking. So, you’d like a beer? That will be 4.50€ please.”

The majority of the time this conversation is followed by the (almost literal) sound of ice breaking as the customer realises that real Australians are working inside an antipodean themed bar.

[Oh Dear, that smalltalk concept they taught in high school English, now I have to put it into practice.]

Usually the young man in question will smile, apologise and actually thank me for the beer before asking why I’m in Finland. Other customers, regulars, often past victims of my stirring, will laugh and continue the conversations and human interaction they are having at the bar.

Sometimes, such as today, a customer actually knows no English and will blush. I then apologise anteeksi and continue the transaction traditionally using my limited Suomi vocabulary.

“Neljä euro, viisikymmentä.” “Kiitos”. “Ole hyvä”.

Most of the time, people don’t really tell you how they are feeling, they just respond with a stock standard answer:

I’m fine thanks.
Kittos, Hyvin.
Ça va.

The thing is, I am interested to find out how other people, even strangers, are feeling. Talking to people and finding out their stories was the best part of my charity telemarketing job. Interacting with customers, finding out about their lives and building a rapport is the most rewarding element of working in the bar. Making friends with someone and watching the story of their life take shape by keeping up to date with how they are is fascinating.

Every so often there are those moments when someone actually thinks about your question and responds with “I’m tired”, “It’s my birthday!” or “I’m having a bad day” and there’s a way in, a chance to talk to someone and explore a tiny piece of their life. Finding out about someone else’s life is a bonus that can take my day from a normal, “I’m fine” kind of day into a “Pretty cool actually, I met an interesting person today” kind of day.

Don’t get me wrong, in my book, asking how someone is and receiving a response is not always going to be interesting (that is, if I were to have written a book). At a base level the interaction is just essential. Beyond “hello”, asking how are you, is a gesture, a recognition that you are interacting with another person who exists within their own specific context.

So, if I ever ask How are you?, whether it be via email, this blog or in a real life, reach out and touch me conversation, just remember that I am interested in your answer, whether you be my best friend, a bar customer, an ex or a random blog passer-by.

How are you today?

I’ve wanted to believe that after more than 6 months of not being with him, that maybe, there wouldn’t be any more days when I woke up with the feeling that something is missing. It’s not to say that those mornings of missing are frequent, but when I do wake up to that feeling, it’s still incredibly overwhelming and disconcerting.

And I’ll lie in bed, trying to work out whether I can be missing anything else. Could it be, that sometime in the middle of the night I took my pants off? Did I twist around in bed and end up sleeping in the opposite direction? Did I miss the plane back to Australia? Should I be at work already? There’s something I know I should be doing with my life, what is it?

This morning I missed that person who lay next to me on so many mornings, the way he stroked my frown lines away, how he made me laugh by running in spinning circles over the lawn, the smell of his neck, the way he carried his market shopping on his bike, his technicolour eyes and the feeling that I could tell him anything even if it took me too long to work out how to say it. I just missed him.

Thank all that is good, that I don’t have that feeling that often any more. It tangles up in memories of places I want to see again whether they be Mongolia, Melbourne, a market in Shanghai or Adelaide. It makes doing anything difficult.

Maybe I just need to properly feel and see the sun again.

Even though I’m fairly close to the North Pole and Santa’s alleged hangout, I just don’t feel very Christmas-like at the moment. I’ve made cards and bought presents, but it didn’t help. I’ve made the best cookies in the world, as in a previous Christmas overseas, baking had got me into the spirit. Even the traditional “buying myself presents while meant to be shopping for other people” didn’t really help either.

I will be seeing a three-year old tear wrapping paper apart on Sunday night, and that does help make this time of year a bit more exciting, but this whole event means less and less to me with each year. I have to admit though, I am intrigued to find out what Finnish Joula food is like, even thought the traditional snow won’t be around.

If anything, this year, the original pagan midwinter celebration holds more meaning for me, as today is the winter solstice (and a day to erm, “think about peace“) and the half year marking point of the burning of stuff I’d like to move on from.

Six months forward, and I feel a million times stronger and more sure of myself. I still don’t specifically know what I want to “do” or “be”, but I am able to deal with that now.

A while back I did behave in a way that lost me someone priceless, but I’ve realised that while those mistakes and the resulting loss of a friend are painful, I can’t help but be happy and proud of who I am right now. I don’t need presents or mince pies to celebrate that great feeling of actually being me.

Have a great time over the next couple of days, whatever you chose to celebrate or burn.

Just in time for seasonal panic attacks, comes the news that the bears aren’t sleeping, the bees are still buzzing and the birds aren’t flying south for winter. Oh Joy.

Those climate crippling international flights I’ve been taking are making me feel so so guilty.

This Christmas will mark three holiday seasons in a row away from Adelaide.

1. in Hanoi with Peter (2004)
2. in with Dan (2005)
3. in with Sid, Ninnu, Ronja and Pedro (2006)

I’ve been thinking a lot about what to do next and where to go. I’ve listened to my heart, my gut and my head.

While I was thinking about the next road to take, I read my list. I looked at some things I wrote in the aftermath of the breakup. I thought hard about what I’ve experienced and what I’m missing out on.

I need to go back home. I need to stay in Adelaide [for a while]. I need the smell of hot dry gumtrees and the markets and bad public transport and to just walk down the street and then see seven people I know. I need to make things and work in a cafe and just be. I need to ride my bike fast down Frome Road and to spend three days dancing, and eating cold rolls and sushi. I need to spend time with everyone and with no one.

The sky over the apartments opposite is tinged pink.

So, it was not with a bang, not with a vengeance, but with more of a certain indulgence of memory as she experienced and remembered the way it had felt against the back of her throat. Laughing, dancing, flirting and being like she was not really, not caring for much at all, they were secondary to the immediate physical feelings.

It numbed the back of her throat, her sinuses. Only just two occasions, of course, now it was a third.

A party on a street she eventually lived, in the heart of Adelaide, charcoal on the walls and in the carpet, the hopeful mention to them all that there would be a foursome. They all had looked at him with confusion, “Where on earth did that come from?”

Again, the feeling was there, a year or so later, in a club at New Years, somewhere in Germany. The backbeat of Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean had been appropriated, was heard again and again but frustratingly, it never came to fruition. What else she could remember was the apartment she was staying in once she got home, bright white walls, name brand logos, oh and how to say “yes”: Ja.

The next day on the ground, the cardboard from the firecrackers had melted, dissolved into the slush.

Today, her sense of home eludes her. Her heart sneaks between people and places. She doesn’t know which way to turn, who around her she could trust apart from herself. The seasonal food is wrong. Her head spins the wrong way. She wants the buzz of being herself, the fun of night swims, biking down hills, morning markets and midnight Chinese feasts.

Again, outside, four years later, half way around the world it was snowing. Commendably timely she thought. Up high, on the seventh floor, the snow flew across the window before it dropped spinning floating to the ground.

Marlaina’s YouTube video: .

It is rather belated, but here’s a very quick rundown of what happened during my brief trip to Amsterdam and Brussels a couple of weeks ago.

I learnt to love breakfast cake, brown cafes, Jonathon Safran Foer, potato war (mayonnaise, satay sauce and raw onion on frites) and drop (the Dutch version of salmiakki or salted liquorice).

I saw On A Tightrope, Nömadak Tx and Pasolini prossimo nostro at the International Documentary Film Festival and played “Spot the filmmaker, Spot the buyer”.

James briefly became addicted to Jim chocolate bars and explained what “Environmental Genomics” was.

I hoarded many cool pieces of paper.

I considered spending 12€ on a beautiful, but tiny, artist book about mussels.

I caught a train to Brussels and hung out with Simon, one of my dear travel companions from Turkey. Marie Julie, his girlfriend is beautiful and smart and funny, a match that Simon truly deserves. I drank beer and ate mussels, waffles and lovely chocolate.

Before heading back to Amsterdam and James’ hospitality, Simon and I checked out the Museum of Musical Instruments, one of the best museums I’ve ever seen.

In what I hope to be a tradition for every country I visit, most of the items I brought back with me were food related.

Time is flying, so surely that means I’ve been having fun?

What started as a survival technique 6 months ago (stop somewhere, recover, think, get a job for the summer) is now just everyday life.

I have: furniture; books; clothes; things I should be getting done; some ideas of what I might do with my life; the barest minimum of Finnish language skills; a few incredibly good friends who I would lay down my life for; a reputation (amongst some of my regular customers) as the best barmaid in Helsinki; an addiction to The Wire and a desire to go more places.

Lately a lot of my new music has been discovered via Library 10, mp3 blogs and mix CDs received from near and far. I’ve also started a regular regime of listening to the 13.3GB of undiscovered songs lurking in my ITunes collection from marathon downloading sessions and the 300 CDs I ripped before leaving Australia. As a result, I can highly recommend Dumas, Smoosh, Bishop Allen, The Doves, Rachel’s, Johnny Cash, Feist, Regina Spektor, Lovage, Sufjan Stevens, Peter Bjorn & John, Emiliana Torrini, Against Me!, Mason Jennings, Whiskey Smile, Le Man Avec Les Lunettes, Magyar Posse, Willy Mason, and Chikinki.

But I also spend most of my waking time at the bar which, as I don’t have a working MP3 player, usually limits my music listening to the never changing songs on the work computer. And it means that artists I’ve previously written off as “too commercial” or “too daggy” have been given careful, repeated listenings and I’ve grown to love them.

Songs by bands like Coldplay, Jet, Gnarls Barkley, The Beach Boys, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Crowded House, Men At Work, The Cardigans, Tom Jones, Jack Johnson, Icehouse, Kubb and Powderfinger had to be my breakup songs. Over the summer, those were the songs I listened to again and again, alongside the tracks by Jens Lekman, Fiona Apple and Spoon, which were stuck on my phone’s memory card for 3 months straight.

As a teenager I had a desire to “pre-know” things before they were cool. I wanted the songs I liked to be all mine and for them to fit a certain indie credibility. While I loved, loved, loved the songs for the music and words that they were, I did edit what I chose to listen to, based on what I felt to be appropriate for a weird kid such as myself.

Of course, if I was resistant to shaping a public identity using genre and popularity based musical signs, I wouldn’t be writing this post, displaying a Last.fm playlist or blogging a music meme.

Now though, more than ever, I am far more relaxed now about what music I let myself listen and relate to. I’m open to listening for the connection between any song and the moment that I’m experiencing.

Some of the connections and the meanings that can be drawn are just plain obvious and heartbreaking.

Today I let myself look at Dan’s blog for the first time since September. Following the recent loss of his camera, inevitable discussions about items left in storage at my parents’ houses had to be taken care of. That little bit of email contact meant that I felt relaxed and brave enough to have a peek, just enough to know where in the world he happened to be.

The track that shuffled into sound while I was reading? The Special Two by Missy Higgins, a song guaranteed to break my heart every time I listen to it.

:::…

[There's this moment in Neil Finn's She Will Have Her Way just before he sings "Still No End In Sight...". Those moments are in the final chords of Bad Girls Of The Bible's 88 Keys, in Soul Coughing's True Dreams Of Wichita and it's there as Buck 65 intones "'cause when it comes to rockin' something fierce, mmm do i" in 463. Those moments of tension are why I listen to music].