About death by excel and coping with death by excel

Omg it’s been a long break again. Almost two months I reckon. Two weeks ago on Sunday I was talking with a dear friend and she was wondering if lack of blog posts is a good sign or a bad sign and hoping for the first. I laughed and said it’s kind of both, I am doing well but the thing called work is destroying my plans to update the blog evening after evening...and for the sake of people around me (and promises made over new years) I am not ready to steal time by not eating, sleeping, jogging, meditating or doing yoga. All important parts of my daily work stress survival strategy. So to disappoint you guys, I have been working mainly. Frigging adult life. Buu.

Let’s start with the boring stuff to get it sorted with. Last 9 weeks have been absolutely crazy. Crazy in terms of workload, moving parts, re-work and stressed managers who constantly make things bigger as they really are and want to cover all corners although we are very much on top things. It was very much expected that from end of January onwards our team would be in the spotlight, what wasn’t expected was the tools that we need to use to complete our main deliverables for the period. When you hear a word “tool” within massive global rollouts you’d think that it is something that makes your life easier...we are using good old excel sheets that make our lives fairly frustrating. Monster excel sheets, tens of them, closer to 35 on my table but who counts. Death by excel. Death by version control. Death by scrolling. Death by dropdowns. Death by horizontal sorting. Death by vertical sorting. Death by copy paste. Death by random template changes that don’t get communicated and you need to go through every single workbook to find out what has changed. Death by twisting neck to be able to make sense out of it. Death by “refreshes” that destroy all the formula you have built in. Death by managing excels by excels. Death by managing the managing-excels with yet another excel. Death by the ultimate excel that summarizes all the managing of the managing excels. Who is responsible for inventing excel? Names please.

On top of this, only after two weeks of madness I got a tennis elbow to the right hand of all the sorting and needed to start using mouse with my left hand (which kind of has been the most challenging part of my work lately, excel templates don’t need much brain effort) which is on the same path towards uselessness. This is also one reason why I have been sluggish with writing, during weekends I try to avoid using pc as much as possible for the sake of proper tennis elbow rehab. So in addition that I am THIS fed up with work (hand over head) I have a physical damage that might take months to recover, or might never recover if this goes on too long. Seriously, during the darkest moments I have thought about starting to make babies to have a break and way out. That bad. I am not pregnant, no, but the idea has brought me hope. Hope is needed during dark moments. Maybe one day there is light at the end of the tunnel. I’d make a good mom. Better mom than excel updater I reckon. My colleagues agree.

In my project we are also not allowed to have any holidays, which is kind of funny as people are eligible for their holiday within a year. Everyone is THAT important  ALL the time (with my excels I at least don’t feel like it). I do wonder what happens if someone gets sick? Oh yes, in our project people don’t get sick. In diplomatic terms I call this bad project management, in not so diplomatic term it’s *ucking ridiculous. Yeah. On top of this we are not allowed to participate to any company internal events to make sure we aren’t away from our desks. This means I am cannot participate to our Australia wide once-a-year event where people have a chance to meet colleagues from other offices. In diplomatic terms this is *ucking ridiculous. And on top of this we have no official budget for any of our team milestone celebrations. Just to clarify, we are over 5 months from go-live, our project is well scoped in terms of resources, we are tracking according to our plans, and I am not working for a non-profit organisation but for a huge and extremely profitable company that made record high results in FY11. OMG. Key word, PANIC. I still don’t understand why.

But not all bad with something good also. I have absolutely fantastic colleagues with awesome sense of humour which makes this all a lot more bearable. Black humour is a life saving thing for social workers AND consultants suffering from excel fatigue and as we know, it’s not the easy life that ties people together, it’s the long hours, tiredness, frustration and stress where you see what people are made of. And my closest team mates and peers are made of gold. Gold from US, gold from Australia, gold from Denmark...a super international dream team. We share the pain for excels, frustration for micro management, I teach them to swear in Finnish because it is a brilliant code language (it feels awesome to say “voi *ittu” without anyone giving you a bad eye or rising and eyebrow), make jokes, help each other out (thanks for Charles I am vlookuping, hlookuping, concencanating and conditional formatting like there was no tomorrow), exchange looks at team meetings knowing we are sharing the exact same thought of “WTF is this???”, backing up each other and always standing on the same line and the list goes on. We have some conflicts too, but that’s part of the joy of bunch of professionals from different backgrounds working on the same thing. Which is excels *haha* *not funny* Good stuff. Looking back I have been extremely lucky with the teams I’ve been part of. Starting from 2005 with Eepi and Arto, .mobi, .com and now this...hard work, lots of fun and lifelong friendships and people who leave a stamp on you.

So all remaining time I have off work goes to maintaining some level of mental sanity and doing things that bring me more happiness than work does. I think I have pretty robust system in place with meditation, yoga, running and opening up to my nearest and dearest. Meditation came to the picture kind of by good luck. I spotted a facebook add promoting a Mindfulness meditation study by University of Helsinki and signed-up immediately. Being part of the study group I need to meditate 20 minutes daily for 2 months, keep diary on my practise time and fill out a survey at the end of February and March. This meditation has nothing spiritual in it. It is very simple exercise of bringing your awareness to the sensations you are experiencing and deepening the awareness level by level. At first I was doing the meditation with the recording we received as part of the study (a deep male voice guiding you through the practise) but the last month I’ve done my practise without guidance, having just a recoding with timed signs to move to the next phase. I didn’t have much expectations when I signed up, just curious to see if it makes a difference, especially during busy times. I feel the difference, it’s actually amazing how much 20 minutes of conscious focusing on present does for you state of mind. I feel I am better able to control the busy mind that is always somewhere else than in the moment. I feel my level of awareness has deepened and condensed, not only during my practise but in general. I feel I have more control on things happening around, well it’s not really control but the awareness that puts things in context and make you see better which part of the buzz is caused by the busy mind or stress factors around you and which part of it is actually something you can influence and act on. I think I am less of a basket case with work because of meditation. I think my nearest and dearest agree. The 2 months study ended yesterday but I will continue my daily practise. I am slowly turning to be a bit of a hippy here. Or maybe it is just West End.

Then there is yoga, the dearest of my free time activities. Don’t remember if I told you last time, but I found a yoga studio in West End, The Yoga Den that hit home with my first visit in early January.  My teacher (Dan) is extremely dedicated to his task of assisting people on their yoga practise and has very nurturing, accepting and heart-opening style. He’s all about feeling what is right for you and we spend a lot of time exploring different asana, or more so exploring what is happening with the mind when you are in a yoga posture. He’s a man of details when it comes to body awareness, never ever have I paid attention to how my kidneys feel when I am twisting the spine and it is fascinating. At the age of almost 32 I am aware of my kidneys :) So far it has been an exciting journey to myself, realise the difficulty of exploring how something f-e-e-l-s when with figure skating I have grown to treat my body has the tool to achieve something very goal oriented with very little respect or attention to listen how it feels or what it wants to do or needs to be well.  I also noticed that at starters I was cheating myself to think I am “feeling” but in reality experiencing what my ego was expecting me to experience and feel. With Dan I have realised my body awareness isn’t really body awareness...I had the ego that is very used to “doing things right and as much as possible” on driver’s seat, setting a lot of expectations on my doing. I treated yoga as an exercise to build strength and openness, I was trying a lot with it. Thanks to Dan he opened up my eyes about trying. Trying a lot means you are not willing to accept what is. And at his class “what is” is the most important thing. Same goes to accepting you as you are rather than comparing yourself to others or someone you used to be or wanted to be. He jokes that “being as bendy as the person next to you does not bring you closer to enlightenment”. Fully agree. So I have started from the very basics, firstly by letting go of the expectations of being something, like bendy, flexible, balanced, right or strong as possible. I am learning to be open to explore every posture like it was the first time I am doing that, not expecting it to feel the same as it did the last time... it is a different week, day, moment after all. And it is once again great to realise how our brains are built to trust on previous experience and how easily they kind of turn mute to the moment of now and rather re-play stuff that has happened or race ahead in future plans. Mind is a funny thing. A bit twisted really. The joint effort of my yoga and meditation practise is to break that habit of being all the time somewhere else but never in the now. Being aware of what is happening around and in me and being fine with it. To fall down 2 times and get up 3 times. I find myself having a lot of challenge with balancing postures although throughout my life, I have had fairly good balance. I have started from scratch in exploring what is good grounding, wondering how on earth it can be difficult to stand still with two feet on the ground and have equal balance on the soles of your feet. Tricky for someone who has always taken balance for granted, never really paying any attention to it, not even thinking about respecting it! Maybe someday my tree-pose is steady instead of waving from side to side like in the middle of hurricane or something. There I admit I have a target with yoga, less windy tree-pose. So slowly but surely yoga has ceased being just a physical exercise but become kind of a home in the “spiritual” sense. Respect and acceptance for everything you are and everything you are not. Respect and acceptance towards other people as they are. And staying calm and grounded, not matter what life brings on your way. For example a process and SAP roll-out for a mining company ;) Lol, living in the extremes!

But not all mediation, yoga, carrots and hippy life, I have done also more normal Ansku things. Like exploring the dining scene of Brissie (nothing big to report). Weekend trips to Noosa, Mooloolaba, Sunshine coast and Bribie Island (booooring) to enjoy the sun (in the shade though) and ridiculously warm sea water. West End markets on Saturday with coffee under the fig tree and fresh fruits and veggies for the week. Morning sports in addition to yoga to make sure my heart gets to race too and I can keep up with long work days without losing attention (and to be able to eat ice cream during weekends and not gain weight, hehe). I bought a huge mirror to my living room and got it with fairly good deal. Sauna, swimming and saunamakkara at Kaija’s in addition to regular pizza nights. Went to see Lenny Kravitz to River Stage last weekend with my colleagues and had an excellent night out and terrible hangover the next day (it was literally the first big night out in 2012 as I had kind of forced and extended dry February for having multiple antibiotics on for a 6 weeks period, nothing serious though). Regular Sunday Skype sessions with little people, brother, mom and dad. Also, summer has kind of come to an end and weather is slowly cooling down a little. Today has been the coldest day so far and I kind of feel ashamed and spoiled for saying this, but 23 degrees can feel slightly cool. I am not complaining as this eternal summer feels a bit exhausting and I want to start wearing dresses with long sleeves and having less damp air to breathe. I want to wear my woollen socks and curl up to the corner of sofa and drink tea in a candle light, proper winter stuff.

Today I have been extremely domestic and focused on housekeeping, flu fighting, getting this post ready and soon Skyping with a dear friend whose voice I haven’t heard in 9 months! It is amazing how time flies, from new years to April just like that...nine months here already. Easter will be spent in Cairns relaxing, sleeping in and admiring The Great Barrier Reef hopefully under clear sky although my hairdresser Emma said that it rains in Cairns every Easter. It feels good to have a bit of a holiday and leave Brissie after hectic 3 months and see yet another new place in Australia and try my snorkelling skills (and most likely burn my bum). So next time I’ll report news from Cairns, promise I won’t take 2 months to get it done.

Pusmoi dear friends and take care!

//Ansku

About Road trip to Hunter Valley, closing 2011 and opening Twenty Twelve

Long time no see. Hope you all are ok? I am good at the moment, have been a lot of things the past four weeks or so and back from my blog break that was not intended but happened by pure accident, meaning lack of time and energy. Heaps of stuff to update again and don’t know where to start, from Christmas exactly but if feels like ages ago.

But anyways Christmas. Ho ho ho and so on? Not really, almost 30 degrees and like any other weekend on a loooooong holiday. Very hot, no snow, people getting excited about BBQ and prawns and drinking heaps of beer. That’s not Christmas. That is more of a Juhannus without the naked football part. Christmas comes feeling like it or not and we had planned to have a good dinner cooked by Dad. He promised to create a menu that doesn’t have even a hint of traditional Finnish stuff in it, goat cheese mushrooms and Thai prawns, apple crumble and cheese plate was the end result. Tarja had bought a tiny Christmas tree from IKEA with little led lights to light up our evening, not that we needed it because Christmas eve was sunny and pretty (I actually still have the tree on my bookshelf waiting for the battery of the lights to run flat...because I don't know how to turn the lights off *blond*) but it reminded us that the evening was somewhat special. Calls back home were emotional and I was even more grateful Dad was here, it’s been a while since I’ve had the chance to spend Christmas with him and loved the fact that I could share my first one here. Made me feel less homesick. To balance out the tears we of course had a lot of bubbly and good wines to match the food and at the end of the evening around 3.30 am came to a conclusion that a box of bubbly and 2 bottles of wines is JUST right for four people. Ugh. So when the Australians were waking up to Christmas day and starting their drinking I woke up with sore hair and couldn’t even think about starting the new tradition of bubbly Christmas Day brunch. And there we covered also Christmas Day, hangover and bit of a leftover picnic at Kangaroo point. Done. Ho ho ho.

Boxing Day was finally the start day of our much awaited road trip towards Hunter Valley wine country. First stop was Byron Bay, just perfect for a late morning beautiful sights, walking down from the light house and enjoying a tasty midday brekkie at Twisted Sista. Dad and Tarja loved Byron, no wonder, and it was a great kick start for our trip.  Next stop was Coffs Harbour, pretty much the only logical stopover place between Brissie and Hunter Valley to spend a night. When sharing our plans with few colleagues and asking what to do at Coffs Harbour I got an instant answer: Big Banana. Wot? Yes, visit the Big Banana. What is it? A big banana with lots of banana stuff on sale. Okie, sounds like a-must-see thing on East coast of Australia. So about 200km before hitting Coffs Harbour I was all excited about the Banana. What’s it like? How big is it? Is it vertical or horizontal banana? Can I take a picture of myself with it? What kind of Banana items they sell there? Banana shakes or splits maybe? Banana toys? Outfits even? Maybe something for the little people? So many questions with a single banana. To keep you from excess excitement the banana was a big banana, horizontal one, closed for Boxing Day and therefore quiet if one can say quiet of a big artificial fruit. We took our pics and I think Dad was ashamed of my excitement…but seriously, that was THE most exciting thing at Coffs Harbour. Well, we also had a big spider named Bob in our cottage but that was more scary than exciting. A bit of sleep before getting on the road again.

Tuesday 27th was the game day as we arrived to Hunter Valley after some 6 hours of driving. The scenery is totally different from anything I’ve seen so far in Australia. Wine yards after wine yards and tens of little signs wishing people welcome. With our wine lover hats on this definitely was a right place to be. The concept is following: a) name a dedicated driver if you are not planning to walk a bit tipsy tens and tens of kilometres, b) pick a winery and pop in c) see a list of wines on tasting that day and say “I’d like to taste THESE”, d) sip, enjoy and compare the wines and do not spit away if you are not the dedicated driver e) buy a bottle or two if you think the wine is worth 20 AUD (that was pretty much the common price for basic wines), f) pick another winery from the map and ask the dedicated driver kindly to take you there. Nice! So this is what we did for 1.5 days :) Our absolute favourite winery was Ernest Hill, recommended by dear Marijke. The atmosphere was more peaceful than in most of the places, we got our own Barrel and got to sit there and take as much time as we wanted and no one was pushing around or making any hassle. The owner and his son were actually running the tasting and telling a bit of history and stories around each quality and gave a nice extra layer and emotional stamp to the event. If I recall right we bought 7 bottles, a bit of each! Ernest Hill has 16 blocks of grapes and on average year they are harvesting 10 for their own use and sell the bad stuff for big wine houses like Tempus Two (yuck). Grapes are always handpicked which of course makes it more expensive to produce but comes out as a good quality. Ernest Hill makes approx 77 000 bottles per year, compared to the bigger wineries who make 50 000 per hour. There is a difference, a big one. I liked pretty much everything they offered (surprise surprise) but the winner was the ‘easy rose’ which is done “over 6 pints of beer” (meaning the grape skins are kept only 6 hours to give a nice light red colour and taste) and perfect for hot summer days (already imagined myself at my balcony drinking the rose all day and reading a book or something). Ernest got new friends, loyal too if only I could find their stuff online or at the local liquor store. Second prize went definitely for Peterson’s Champagne House and their nice brekkie...well, it isn’t champagne for obvious geographical reasons but their cuvee is very close to champagne and has good price quality ratio. Third prize goes to Lindemans Sparkling Shiraz, quite an exciting wine that at first feels very controversial to senses. We learned that Bubbly Shiraz is popular in Australia and growing fast with the sparkling boom and tendency to prefer cold drinks during hot summer. Hot or not, we loved it. Rest of the program at Hunter was mainly following the beautiful sunset at our balcony, testing the newly bought wines with good selection of cheese (extra portion of wine for the dedicated driver) and playing cards till late. And while at a wine country you don’t get any hangover either ;)

After two nights at Hunter we decided to visit Sydney too, as we were only some 160 km away. There is something magical about Sydney, it has such a different vibe compared to Brissie. Sydney is a big city. We had nice lunch at a cosy Bossa Nova bistro after some 19h of dieting (the thing with Dad is that he’s never hungry and we somehow managed to skip brekkie with the driving and lunch with the checking in to our hotel ending up being extremely low on energy and blood sugar and extremely snappy too) To summarize the “conversation” from 17 to 19 hours without food: “Mikä fiilis?” A: No *ituttaa. Niin nälkä et *ituttaa. Period. *silence* After finishing our plates I was sorry for using the v-word and Tarja and I decided this is the last time we are skipping dinners. Hunger is a female thing, I know, but damn I was angry. All good we continued towards the Opera House and through the Botanic Gardens to the cbd to do some sale shopping and finally having a bit of burritos for dinner at Darling Harbor. Overall good ¾ of a day at Sydney, 2 meals too which is definitely better than just one (rest of the trip the definition of a good day was based on the number of meals we got). Next morning we started our journey back home to Brissie, some 900km ahead with a stopover at Coffs Harbor again. Arriving on new year’s eve with trunk full of good wines from Hunter we were happy and tired: 6 days, 1900 km, 4 new places, constantly changing scenery, heaps of wines and good food, sunsets and long evenings playing cards, sightseeing and sight seeing. Road trip rules. So no surprise the year turned in fairly easy going mood, dinner and wines, midnight fireworks and trying to call home (didn’t get through) and bottle of sparkling shiraz at my balcony before heading to bed. Thank you 2011 for the courage, welcome kind 2012 :)

2012 has started with no big hassle and zero resolutions, still it has turned out to be good to me, or I have put an emphasis to be good to me. I’ve done a lot of walking, some running, twice a week yoga at Den studio at West End and Pilates too. I have had less coffee (even coffee free days), a lot less alcohol (let’s not here talk about the amount of wines over holidays) eaten at home more often and pushed myself to bed early if feeling tired. Looking back 2011 was an exciting and exhausting year, a marathon really from starting the year with dear friends at Barcelona to ending the same with family and friends in Brisbane. Big opportunities, big decisions, variety of emotions, leaving behind, starting new, living day by day and making things happen, slowly finding a corner of so called comfort zone, new project and everything around it, new people, new life situations, new ways to communicate, learning, learning a bit more, and maybe the most about myself. No question New Year plays an important role in my life; it is an opportunity to reflect the past, make my summary around it, accept it and cherish it no matter how tricky stuff the year might hold and then turn a new page. New Year and new page isn’t escaping the past for the sake of better future, for me it is about seeing the bigger picture and my growth in it. No right or wrong either but life that unfolds exactly the way I have guided it. All that happens is for good at the end of the day, sometimes we just need more time and perspective to realize and accept it. Anyways on last day of 2011 I was happy to look back and realize how much life has unfolded and how much I have accomplished. It would’ve been a bit surreal without Dad and Tarja here, but they somehow reminded me of the distance being only a matter of having holidays and booking tickets and the thing between family ties staying the same whatever the continent or environment might be. I felt proud, content and happy...future looked bright, it still does. Marijke and I decided that Twenty twelve will be a year of goodness, letting the accomplishments of last year carry on and focus on quality of life rather than building up a life.  That’s a turning point. According to Dad there is also a big difference with the Ansku here compared to the Ansku back in Finland. Marijke asked him how he sees my life here and dad answered with tears in his eyes that it is great to see how all the tension from me is gone and I am so much more calm and peaceful and happy here. I was kind of surprised to hear that and especially from him but thinking closely it is true. Despite all the hard work and tiredness of starting fresh and missing nearest and dearest I am a lot more content here and the change is of course more obvious to people who can make the comparison between real life Ansku in Finland or in Australia....I cannot do the comparison clearly either, I am in the middle of living it. The weeks here together with Dad were fun and I feel I grew closer to him. I believe he left Australia with peaceful mind knowing I am ok and people around me will take care of me too.

So according to the goodness plan last weekend was dedicated for recovery. I was dead tired, I looked like sick people do, couldn’t think of anything better than wearing pyjama two days in a row with no commitments or plans. I hadn’t had a free weekend in 2.5 months, not that many free evenings either and that’s a lot for a girl who used to have heaps of me-time back in .fi. I seriously decided to do nothing, say no to any offers, do what I (capital I but that is capital already) want to do…be it laying on the sofa or sleeping whole day. I almost decided to update this blog too, but felt I needed to be fully on "now" rather than reflecting the past few weeks. So I slept, ate healthy food, read Riikka Pulkkinen’s Totta from front to cover (beautiful beautiful book, recommend it warmly), watched a movie, had naps, went to market to have coffee and pancakes under the fig tree, skyped with dear friends and crawled early to bed. No magic happened with winning the tiredness over a weekend but it was a good start, kick-start in a relaxing sense. You need to start somewhere, right? I’ve continued the routine of goodness this week too. Twice on a yoga class, three times on a long walk, yesterday Pilates over a lunch break, healthy food and less coffee, no commitments for evenings, 8 hours of sleep per night and feeling a lot better. I think Wednesday Yoga was a turning point, I left the class feeling calm and energized, woke up on Thursday with no tiredness on the back of my eyes and felt the world is smiling again. I felt I finally had control over my own life again and really managed stop on physical and mental level, managed to be. Just be.

My recovery continues over this weekend, done a lot of being and a will do the same tomorrow too. Part of the recovery contains ice cream on the sofa and Australian open from telly, with ice cream there is always an excuse :)

Love,

//Ansku

PS: Caramel, date, pecan ice cream..mums mums

About flat personal battery, project silver lining, departures and arrivals and XMAS plans

And another big delay. It seems Christmas season is busy this side of the globe also, have had about minus 40 hours of time for myself which has resulted in zero blog posts and flat personal battery. I realized this the hard way on Saturday; I was so tired I was hardly able to eat, all pale face and quiet and had no interest to do anything but to sit in quiet and cry. I think I reached the thing called Transfer-burnout that Marijke mentioned when a while ago I asked her if she ever run tired of all the fast forward life and new faces and I recall the answer was yes. You do run tired if you don’t realize to stop every now and then and take enough time for yourself. *Breathe* So on Saturday night at Punjabi Palace forcing my self to eat and thinking back the past months it wasn’t a surprise I felt exhausted as I hadn’t had a quiet night in 2 months or so and I am very much a person who cannot live by calendar and have every minute booked. I said out loud I needed more me-time, silent time, do what ever you like time, go for a long walk time, have overdose of coffee at balcony whilst reading Hesarin Kuukausiliite time, wearing pyjamas all day if feeling like it time, time stopping time, reflecting time, blog writing time, reading a book  in the middle of the day time, yoga time, selfish time only for myself I mean. Another Big Ahaa for the power of lost appetite and saying things out loud. So all determined the next morning I didn’t have alarm on, went for a long morning walk as I felt too tired to run and gave myself a permission to take it easy if my body says so, listened Jenni Vartiainen Seili and smiled and cried in turns, had a looooong brekkie at my balcony with good coffee and rye bread and saw the world already with brighter eyes. I like me. I like me time. Like like. But still at times it amazes me how darn difficult it is to recognise the early signs of running tired and act on it. How easily I am thinking that tiredness is caused by something like flu, antibiotics or one night bad sleep and not admitting it’s me I need to blame. How difficult it is to wind down and listen to yourself and respect what you hear. Respect the fact that building a life here and lack of comfort zone sucks the energy and needing a friend to spell it out to me and convince that I am not crazy or sick but burned out instead. How easily I forget the basic lesson of *Breathe* although I have it hanging in my necklace almost every day. How stupid it is to go as far as loosing my appetite which is a definite sign of things being not ok (excluding the feeling of being madly, crazy in love and willing to jump to a dwell for the sake of that some one…not good either in that crazy sense I have learned). Bang bang bang and the head is against the wall again and not meaning the bed board here. Phuuuh. Anyways I think the 6 month milestone I am about to reach soon is a proper point to stop running and start walking. Only kids around 3-6 years are capable of having ‘run’ as their default setting and still keep their energy up. Walking is not for old or weak people but perfectly fine method to go forward in life. I am not old or weak but 31 years old and tired. Flat battery cuts you out.  So to Santa’s wish list I could add a rainy weekend when you cannot go out but must spend the day in bed instead. But only one or two rainy weekends as the Queenslanders for sure remind you about the consequences of excessive rain. No floods thank you either.

You got my point, past few weeks have been fairly busy. Thinking back a LOT has happened: celebrating Marijke’s Bday at Ortiga (a beautiful modern fine-dining tapas restaurant with excellent service and cute waiter whose number M got with the bill, hih), Moms last weekend here with dinners, west end market and enjoying the city, sending mom back home, workshopping at Wollongong, Independence day (not anything specific happening here but I was of course thinking a lot about people and life back home) dad and Tarja arriving, eating out and showing them places, getting sick and spending early morning hours at hospital emergency (nothing serious but still something I wouldn’t like to experience again), antibiotics that kill anything smaller than a squirrel,  week of workshopping at Emerald and Dysart with 400 km of driving each day on top of full on work day and lots of little insects in my room and ugly frogs outside my room door resulting in poor sleep, Jazz concert at Kangaroo Point, project Christmas party, Accenture Christmas BBQ, friends BBQ, skyping with little people, catching up with friends and the list goes on and on and on. And I still wonder why I am a bit low on energy? *Superwoman* *Catwoman* *Princess Leia* *Ms HB* *and other female super heroes*

On the silver lining although I mostly dislike being on the road I’ve also enjoyed the part of bonding with my project team members and finding “my people” who are on the same page, fun and easy to get along with. The bonding happens easily in the middle of nowhere, you share flights, cars, dinners and breakfasts and therefore have heaps of time to catch up also on the personal note. I have missed it since I left my last project in Finland, the feeling of being at home at work, having people to talk to and mixing the line between work and personal life, which I tend to do where ever I am. I cannot live long in a small talk environment but need those trusted people who are interested about the real stuff…to whom I can say “this smile is fake, I’ve had a really fucked up morning and would need a large long black in good company” and they say ok let’s go. At the moment my key driver to stay with this project are the people…don’t care that much about massive world scale roll-outs but more so about the variety of talented people who I can look up to both professionally and personally. And I am especially liking the soft side of my colleagues as they are people who have the patience to explain complicated stuff that I don’t get, people who are positive no matter what happens, people who act as my living dictionary and make me laugh, people who wink an eye for me at a workshop to reassure I’ve done well and ticked the box, people who are so excited about mining and this project that I almost feel guilty for not doing so, people who cover all the corners before a workshop to make sure it runs like water downhill, people who can be relaxed even if half of the attendees of a workshop cancel on a last minute, people who seriously try to focus on work during project flow time (4 hours period twice a week dedicated to work on your deliverables and any calls, meetings or even replying to emails is forbidden) although everyone else around is just joking. So no matter how much I dislike in-the-middle-of-nowhere these people make it worthwhile, the project is getting under my skin  :)  Yet to be seen if it is enough to carry me in one piece to November 2012, seems like a commitment for life at the moment. How about wrapping up 2011 first?

Ok, back to the happenings of the past two weeks.  So I sent Mom home December 5^th after a great and eventful month. She had a beautiful and relaxing holiday, got up to speed with long walks (will be a challenge in Finnish sucky weather at the moment), healthy food and taking more time for herself, not to mention vitamin D from sun to last through the dark winter season. We got a good dose of quality mom-daughter time to make up for the past 5 months and upcoming few months too and she got to see with her own eyes that I am all good here and meet my people. I felt confident sending her back home, I could look her in the eye and say I will be ok and see you soon (which I really couldn’t say when leaving .fi as I wasn’t sure if I will get alive to Australia or be at all ok) Goodbyes at the airport weren’t all sad: I was happy to stay here, continue my life and get back on track with routines, I didn’t want to follow her or anyone else back to Finland. I wanted to stay because for now my place is here. So with my teary eyes I was glad to realize I wasn’t left with void, I had plenty of things to go back to from the airport. Things and people I enjoy and are important to me. The stuff called My Life (I tend to forget it at times, that no matter where I am, my life is happening there and I am responsible of living it and making the most out of it).

From the airport I just changed terminal and headed to do some more workshopping at Wollongong.  The Gong trip was rainy and short and I came back on December 6^th (Independence Day!) only few hours before Dad and Tarja arriving from Singapore. So basically in 48 hours I had said bye to mom, gone to Sydney, arrived back to Brissie and was at the International Arrivals waving the Finnish flag again (1.15am). The reunion was sweet as expected: hugs from Dad feel equally good as hugs from Mom. He didn’t look a day older, but fresh and tanned instead with a big smile to see each other again. Familiar. Great to see you both, Welcome to Australia and Brisbane. Dad had rented a place from Kangaroo point to make sure “you are not hosting old people two months in a row” (although I said it is perfectly fine for them to stay at my place and I certainly won’t mind) so they stayed only the first night at West End and moved on Wednesday to Kangaroo point. The apartment is super nice, clean, with a view and dining table so decided already back then that Christmas Eve will be spent at their place as I still don’t have a dining table. In three days I had showed them three of my favourite restaurants in West End: Punjabi Palace (Welcome to India), Hong Depot (Welcome to Korea, South Korea) and Little Greek (Welcome to Greece) and besides the tasty and reasonably priced food also the Bring Your Own concept has been highly appreciated by these two wine lovers. It is easy to eat well and drink well here. For the tourist office side we have been at Mt Coot-Tha lookout, Mt Glorious and Power House, West End markets and James Street and hopefully I can courage them to take a day off from golf and drive to Burleigh Heads or Surfers Paradise one day to have the first dose of beach life and Pacific Ocean. Both of them are fanatic golf players which in my opinion takes the focus away from travelling this far and believe after they leave I have an excessive list of golf courses in Brissie with ratings and stuff. Anyways in between Christmas and New years we will go for a road trip to Hunter Valley (a big wine region in New South Wales about 1000 km away) to enjoy a bit more wines and cheese in beautiful scenery and to broaden my knowledge of Australia outside Queensland.

Then the Christmas is approaching. We have had bunch of different Christmas parties or Functions as they are called here with BBQ food, bit of drinks and chitchatting with colleagues. Nothing special to report, very lame and tame parties in my opinion. Anyways only few days to go and my plans are almost locked down: go to the West End market to do our grocery shopping, dad will cook, I will bring wines, everyone will eat and drink, call back home to wish merry Christmas, open presents if Santa and Rudolf travel this far, stay up and talk up and just enjoy the night. I have also gained a bit of an urge to make rice porridge for brekkie – just because in our family I’ve usually been in charge of the rice porridge, love the taste and the excitement of catching the almond or not. So might be I’ll bring that tradition to Australia also. Otherwise our menu will be totally different from the Finnish cuisine: Thai prawns, mushrooms and salads, maybe a bit of starter soup and cheese platter for dessert. At the moment it is approx 35 degrees too warm to find a proper Christmas mood so better mix it all up and make it stand out of all traditions I’ve ever had.

I believe I am not posting again before Christmas so better wish you all well now: Merry Christmas dear Friends! Take care and enjoy winter, candle light, your special traditions and most importantly nearest and dearest around you!

Love you all,

//Ansku

Ps: Today my dear brother Antti is celebrating his 35^th Birthday. So after I get this one posted  I will raise a glass to the best big brother in the world – Love you and miss you bro <3

About End of Year Party, mine tour and good times with Mom

Aaargh, another delayed blog post due to work and spending quality time with Mom. I just haven’t had the time to sit down for an hour or two and focus on getting this done…seriously, we have had something to do every evening not to mention busy and out of routines days at work! Anyways, now I have the time, I made the time and have loads of things to report again. Rock and roll.

Starting from ACN end of year party that I was heading to just after publishing the previous post. The party was fun! I do remember and it was lot of fun. The venue was La Ruche, one of my (many) favorite drink bars in Brissie and the concept was “Soul” with free drinks and food until midnight (I think the theme was lame, how do you dress up as “soul”...It can be anything and everything...so I went for the short dress, high heels and big big ear rings). Everyone was allowed to bring a quest, so basically the place was mostly packed with strangers as I don’t know that many people from our office outside my project, and as my project has plenty of recent new joiners from around the world we all experienced the same feeling and hooked together. I was so busy talking to people and drinking that I totally forgot to eat, it rarely happens that I forget to eat. Around midnight I tried to migrate to the desk serving BBQ hamburgers but ended up to the dance floor instead. It happens. And to report the most interesting thing, Brissie office has the Tiger attitude too…I did witness some fooling around of people who really shouldn’t be fooling around and pretty blunt attempts from people who kind of forgot they are married.  I behaved, of course. So mostly the evening was all about drinking, not eating, catching up with colleagues and dancing our assess off. I think it was around midnight we decided to make a move to a big gay bar across the road  (gay bar because we wanted to dance, and gay people know how to dance) but couldn’t last long as the high heels kind of got to me and hit the pillow at 2am. My hair was pretty sore on Sunday but luckily Kaija had organized a Finnish lunch at their place so I needed to get up, dress up and got a lot of good food and apple crumble for dessert.  It was my first official party with our Brisbane office, I see a lot of potential (meaning parties, not opposite sex).

Work wise past few weeks have been amazingly busy with workshopping from Monday to Friday with a double booking last Tue and Wed and same continuing this week. I haven’t had time to do any work basically, or even to check my emails as here down under the wireless connections are most often worth nothing. Work still doesn’t make me scream out of excitement and the highlight was a biz trip to Emerald with 4 of my colleagues and straight to Peak Downs mine to get a mine tour explaining the end-to-end process of mining “production”. I rented a car from Emerald Airport (a bigger airport, not just a tent) and got a brand new big 4WD with only 32km in the meter. I was asked to drive it carefully and I promised to do so and told I have also attended a defensive driving course but think the guy at the counter wasn’t convinced. I also told him I promise to be gentle on the gear and he said “it’s automatic”. That’s nice. The drive went well and safe and we hit Peak Downs a bit after lunch, got our safety gear (including a pink hard hat) and headed to the “pit 42” to be picked up by our tour guide. This time our escort wasn’t a macho miner but a very very big guy John who can die any day for being so fat I think. Still he managed to give us very educating tour across Peak Downs and organized us to get a ride with the biggest Dragline on site. When approaching the dragline I asked my colleague Kurt would it be totally inappropriate to start singing Lady Gaga’s “Don’t be a drag, just be a queen” and he said yes, it would be totally inappropriate. I thought it would’ve been funny. Anyways Draglines are these huge monster earth removing machines that cost around 280M AUD each, are about 5 floors high and big as unit blocs and can move massive amount of dirt per time (still dirt, not exciting or sexy). Peak Downs has also one out of three biggest Draglines in the world but it wasn’t currently functioning. We still got pictures of us standing in the bucket and heard that with the floods one of competitors Draglines got severe damage as it is able to move 2m per step and can take only 72 steps before getting overheated and they didn’t have enough time to move it and it went swimming. He told that the mine site needs to inform the nearest power station when they are starting the dragline as it consumes so much power that they need to reserve one generator solely for the draglines use (I wonder if half of central Queensland loses electricity if they forget to inform them?) I also learned that Sweden is buying quite a lot of coal from Peak Downs (around 160 000 tons per year) and they “are a bit fussy” with their quality requirements. I asked for other big clients and they were “Korea and Europe”. Jep, Europe as in Europe without further detail (except the story about Sweden as the guy thought I am a blond from Sweden). I was happy to get a tour around the site and hear detail of the processes but still do not find mining as such very interesting. And I still struggle with the environmental impacts. And in simplistic terms I believe it takes a lot to screw up a business like Coal Mining as Australia has huge reserves of coal and they only need to dig it up, process a little, transport to ports and ship it to China and make ridiculous amount of profit. Well, I am maybe cutting a bit of corners but still ;) After our tour we headed back to Dysart to check-in to MAC mine camp we were supposed to stay overnight. I got a 2m x 3m size room, with no lights and damp toilet. I said *shitshitfuckfuck* out loud, multiple times. Good thing with no lights was that I didn’t see properly how terrible the room was…not really something I would call a silver lining. After dinner I forced myself to sleep, woke up at 4am to the noise from the car park right next to my pillow and counted minutes to 6am to get up and get out of there. The workshop went surprisingly well despite the lack of sleep, drove back to Emerald to find out our flight was late due to big thunder storm and got home 11.15pm so tired I only could cry. It was a blessing my mom was there waiting for me. It felt so good to get a hug from her, sit next to her on the sofa and just cry. I felt homesick. I wanted to go home. I missed the little people. I missed my friends and family. I missed sleeping in my own bed. I hated mine camps. I hated damp toilets. I hated sandwiches for lunch. I hated instant coffee. I hated the jargon I didn’t get. I hated in the middle of nowhere airports without lights because of thunder storm. I hated thunder storms. Hate is a strong word and I hated a lot of things and most of them related to mining and work. But I did get a hug from mom. I got some food although it was fairly late. I got sweet dreams in my own bed. I woke up feeling like a different person. These ups and downs come and go…so far I have managed to get through alive. But tough week with big emotions. Felt fragile.

Weekend was full of action again as it was the second last weekend here for my mom. On Friday we went to have dinner to a new Korean BBQ restaurant one block from my place and ended up having a long night as if everyone brings one bottle of wine (many restaurants in Brissie have the Bring Your Own BYO concept were customers can bring their own wine and they are only charging 3AUD per head for the glasses) with simple math everyone ends up drinking one bottle of wine or even more if you continue the evening to my balcony with some excellent Moscato. Hupsista. No "if"s, it just happened. I do love my balcony with capital L, it truly is my living room now and love spending time there. Mom got the furniture for me as a Christmas present as she wanted to give me something I can enjoy every day and I surely do. I told her she doesn’t need to do that and the best present I can ever imagine is my family flying over and visiting me here and getting a hug from a loved one…she said she knows it but wants to give it to me. So most of the evenings we sit at the balcony in candle light talking or reading magazines accompanied by two little geckos named Kekkonen and Kepponen, tiny little creatures who keep to mosquitoes and cockroaches away. On Saturday I also managed to buy a bookshelf (and thongs and a hat) despite the most terrible hangover in my Aussie life history. I did need a bit of push from Mom and big fat brekkie at Campos, but still I made another big decision again to increase the quality of my life. Finally I get the books out of the boxes (bought few favorite ones, and also the ones I got for a farewell present) and pictures of loved ones too. I have a place to put my life into :) Who would’ve thought life is in a bookshelf, well mine is.

We also visited Stradbroke on Sunday and managed to keep in shade and not to burn. It was my very first proper beach day, went swimming, and had a big burger and Corona for lunch and ice cream for dessert! And the beauty of it all is the fact that I can do it every weekend if I want to :) I also got more visitors on Monday as my friends Tomi and Jenny are travelling in Australia and New Zealand for 6 weeks and their first stop was at Brissie. They have heaps of plans and will most likely see more in 6 weeks than I’ll do in a year which makes me think people who transfer should have double amount of holidays: 30 days for visiting back home and 30 days exploring the new home country with an extra allowance to afford expensive flights to other side of the world and the less expensive here inside Australia. Why not?

Anyways now it is Thursday evening and soon the last weekend with my Mom as she’s leaving back home on Monday. I find it stressful, knowing the moment of “It was great to have you here, see you later, love you, and take care” will be emotional and hard. I find goodbyes difficult although these are not goodbyes but see-you-later instead.  I am slightly traumatized by the farewells in Helsinki, I definitely don’t want to go through the same again as it was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. I do think my mom needs a strategy to learn to deal with the missing and bye byes. It cannot be the case that the tears of missing start to hit a week before departure as it is just too much energy spend on negative thoughts rather than enjoying the time we have together. I need a strategy too, a strategy for not to be afraid of the bye bye’s as the sweetness of the reunions totally out rules the salty tears I cry at the time of separation. This is the first time that someone very close comes to visit my life here and then goes back there where I left…I don’t know yet how it feels, suppose it will leave a void. I need to be able to fill in that void quickly.  Still, I have another upside around the corner as my dad is arriving to Brissie late on Tuesday night. Can’t wait to see them, wave the Finnish flag, wish welcome and get a big warm hug.

Big warm hug,

//Ansku

PS: December 1st and little bunny behind the first window (have two calendars, picture and chocolate version). Thanks Inna for the great Christmas surprise...love it!

About buying stuff, Byron Bay and Wollongong

I think it is because of Mom that I managed to buy an extra mattress and balcony furniture within 6 hours last Saturday. She kind of got fed up to the situation of me sleeping on the sofa and her sleeping on my bed and us carrying back and forth the spare mattress that Marijke had kindly lent and eventually needed back as she had visitors also. Half way us carrying the mattress back to Marijke’s Mom said with extremely strong tone of voice: “this will NOT happened again and we WILL get you a spare bed THIS weekend”. With the emphasis on NOT, WILL and THIS I knew immediately that I had no options but to sort this out within 24 hours, or even sooner. So the first thing on Saturday morning we started to look for balcony furniture as she knew it was my first priority and finding one would take time and effort to browse around eBay (they sell a lot of new stuff in ebay here) and if I had the balcony stuff sorted out I would be more ready for the bed shopping too. For my big surprise I found an offer of 7 piece set with starting price of 699AUD (buy now price of 1500AUD) and bidding ending in 2.5 hours and decided to give it a try. I have never bought anything from eBay before and was super excited. I bid the starting price of 699 AUD an hour before the end (because I was so excited to know if there were other people interested of this piece also and opening the game is of course a way to find out) and started counting minutes and refreshing the page regularly. An hour is a long time, 60 minutes, 3600 seconds. Thousands of seconds. Not good for the immediately if not sooner girl. So I had breakfast and refreshed the page, I went to shower and refreshed the page, I dressed up and refreshed the page, I had more coffee and refreshed the page and the last 15 minutes I sat on my sofa sweating and refreshing the page. The end result? Nothing happened! I watched the seconds count down and got a “you have won this bid” note to my screen. That’s it? No fierce raise of bids and figuring out how far the competitors are willing to go? No panic? Just seconds vanishing one by one and a note on the screen? So I paid 699AUD for the set which is an extreeemely inexpensive price (especially during spring when the season is starting) and made few jumps and screams for being so happy. My Mom said I am a little “kukkuu” but agreed I made a good deal. Yay. After a visit to West End market and big mug of coffee it was time to face the reality with simple “now we will get you the bed, right?” It was more of an order than a question. That’s right Mom. Nose towards IKEA *sigh*. I didn’t feel more ready for getting a bed and felt hesitant making the decision and asked for a confirmation if she thinks I am making the right choice or not and she answered “it’s your bed, I cannot make a decision for you darling” which didn’t help me at all but made me feel worse (of course I knew that I was the one making the decision, but her being here kind of makes me want to share a bit of the “responsibility”…play less of an adult and still feel I am safe because she’s a mom and moms are the ones who take care of you). I stretched to make the decision and did lose my temper a bit for a stupid reason of her asking what kind of extra sheets I need.  My capacity to make any additional purchase decision was nil and I just wanted to “get outta here” and buying sheets felt like her asking me to figure out what do I want to do in life when I grow up. I DON’T KNOW. I really don’t know Mom. But we got the sheets, delivery for the mattress for next Monday and glögi and ginger bread too and I felt bad for being snappy with her. She meant good, I shouldn’t get upset about that. She’s visiting me at the other end of the world after all. And I have missed her.

Sunday was planned to be an adventure day and this time we headed to Byron Bay. I haven’t been to Byron before, have heard it is THE place to see/know/love if you happen to like laidback atmosphere, beautiful beaches, surfers and hippies of all sorts. Byron is approximately 160 km from Bris, so you need to kick-off early to make most out of it in a day. The very first impression is super relaxed and the people very homogeneous in their pursuit to be different. You see two types of girls; the ones with hot pants and loose top and the ones with maxi dress and thongs, hair on a loose pony tail, everyone having a tattoo or ten. Guys are surfers in their shorts and thongs, most likely without a shirt (which I generally dislike outside beach territory but secretly like as they are great to watch) and moustache of course for the sake of Movember (I think for the sake of Movember, I hope so). The traffic jam starts way before the Byron “city centre” and is slowly proceeding towards the beach and the light house…many people had bikes too, even saw a guy driving a bike with a surf board and still don’t get how he managed to do that (long arms???). With Mom we were in a tourist mode and decided to check the light house first. You get to the light house via lookout route, 700 meters of climbing up the stairs with a great view to the magnificent Pacific Ocean. It was cloudy when we arrived but the sun got out kind of without giving notice, so we managed to burn our skins a bit. Well, to be dead honest I did realize at some point that the sun is out there but was thinking that as we are only walking (and not laying in the beach as most of the people) it won’t catch us. Lessons learnt: sun will catch you even if you are walking. Check. The lighthouse was normal light house, but the view more than awesome and the ice cream cold enough to help you cool down after the climbing. On the way back down we went to check the beach and walk in the water. I also draw a bit of father’s day greetings in the sand, took a pic and send it over to .fi and saw at least three dolphins jumping next to the surfers nearby. Rest of the afternoon was extremely slow with a bit of late lunch and wine at Balcony (thanks Kaisa for the tip) and visits for few shops and heading back home half asleep. Back in Brissie I was dead tired, skin burned, nose too and called to dad to wish happy father’s day. He was touched by the pic, he’s super excited to come and visit me in few weeks. I am excited too!

This week has been very random. Mostly because I had a biz trip to a new site location and was expecting the delivery of the furniture but the company let me only know the date (Wednesday) but not the time and I was supposed to fly to Sydney on Wed afternoon and was afraid I will miss the delivery and they will leave the stuff on the street and someone steals it. I did send them an email asking for time confirmation or if they could even give me a 30 minutes heads-up but they never got back to me (and the company does not have phone number which of course made me a bit suspicious doubting if I will ever get what I paid for) so I needed to be on stand-by all Wednesday, which I hate more than anything, feeling a bit nausea too as my stomach doesn’t want me to be on stand-by either. During my lunch break I got a call “Hi, it’s Blaa Blaa Blaa, we are here at your door delivering the furniture”. A “Ouh, great, I am not there, I am in the CBD having lunch”. *crap* So I ran back home (15 minutes, luckily I didn’t wear high heels that day), carried the furniture up (wearing a silky dress, not a good combination with the dusty packages), run again to catch a bus and was only 4 minutes late from a meeting starting at 2.30. Pheeeeew. That was close. I heard it is very common in Australia for the carries not to tell you the time of delivery or even if they do it’s totally fine to be 2-3 hours late. I do see a market here, market for those who think they have better things to do than sit at home and wait for the doorbell to ring. Time is part of the “no worries” concept here and I find myself struggling with it. They try to get away with everything with the “no worries”. Well, waiting worries me like hell, as does unpredictability and not sticking with plans. Mur. And this event was the main reason why I feel my week has been random. Me control freak? Not at all.

So Wednesday afternoon I left to the airport feeling extremely relieved for having the furniture delivered and counting hours to get back home again to unpack and put it in place. I was travelling with my colleague Bec (the one who’s a star in football and super positive and bubbly) and enjoyed the Quantas platinum lounge service as the traffic jam to airport was less than we expected and she’s a platinum member. We arrived to rainy Sydney at 8pm, rented a car and drove to Wollongong…well she was driving, I was responsible for being the map (mistake, big mistake) and got lost only twice with total 4 turns we had to make from Sydney to Gong. The Novotel Hotel was super nice compared to the motels in Moranbah and Dysart, it actually had a big lounge, restaurant, several function rooms and hundreds of very drunken teens celebrating something. OMG the flashy dresses shaky steps with 14cm high heels and flirting with the boys. I felt very old in my business casual dress and ballerinas. The night was too short and the next day busy with workshopping from 7.30 to 4.30 and then driving back to Sydney airport and taking flight back to Brissie. It was a pity we didn’t have any free time as Wollongong has a very nice beach. The mine sites nearby have exceptionally low personnel turnover, I asked why and was told “because of the lifestyle”. In Wollongong you are an hour away from Sydney and can live in a proper city with beautiful beach and good surfing opportunities and still make shitload of money. And what do Moranbah and Dysart have? Nothing. Just the money. Anyways I hurried back home and the moment I stepped inside I dropped my carry-on luggage to the hallway and ran to balcony and attacked to unpack the furniture. In 45 minutes I had them in place, in 1 hour I had also take-away sushi and wine in place, in 1 hour and 5 minutes my quality of living had officially reached the next level: Welcome summer heat, welcome long evenings on the balcony, welcome friends. Good life.

Soon I am expecting Marijke to come and test my new balcony in terms of pre-party before the Accenture End of Year event in La ruche. The End of Year party is kind of Christmas party here with free drinks and food and people dressing up. I am excited to see how the Brisbane office behaves…you know, does they have the “Go on be a Tiger” attitude like Helsinki office has in the main events. I will definitely wear a short skirt and high heels according to the Soul theme and hope to keep “mopo” in order and behave as it is the first office wide party here. Ok, now I better go and figure out what to wear…decision decisions.

Pusss,

//Ansku

PS: After I get this post published….RAI RAI RAI!  

About failed bed hunting, Mom, amazing Emma and Life

Starting to write this blog I had to think twice what has happened lately. With the first try I freaked out that nothing has happened and my life is all boring adult stuff with work and grocery shopping. With second try I started to count the people I have met and the wines I’ve tasted and felt normal again, my life isn’t boring here yet.  Yet. Well, it is following some kind of routines from Monday to Sunday with less fuss and surprises than in the beginning but it still isn’t boring. I am not an adult. So starting from a good routine of Friday night being reserved for project drinks, I decided to go for a glass, enjoyed the bar and the company and was told by Marijke to be quite tipsy already at 8pm when she arrived. It happens. We were at Stanford Hotel inner court next to Moo Moo that is supposed to be the best steak restaurant in town (got to our list of course). It was a nice bar, lots of space and live music. Most of the people leave from the Friday drinks quite early, luckily I am not one of those people and continued to Exchange hotel in a group of five. Exchange was the second bar I visited after my arrival to Australia, during my second evening and meeting Marijke for the first time. My memories from Exchange were sweeter than the reality last Friday. Ummmmm, I am most likely 10 year older than average Exchange visitor, my hemline is average 40cm longer, and I am average 10 drinks behind. I have no share in the game, and I think I didn’t have a share 4 month earlier but was just so messed up and jet lagging that I didn’t realize it. Taxi > Bed > Sweet dreams > no alarm. Sweet. Friday, check.

Saturday was all about bed hunting and world saving with dear M and good wine. So after getting up amazingly early on Saturday without any sign of hangover and having 2 cups of coffee and salty salmon bagel at Dandelion and Driftwood I was well prepared to spend the rest of the day in various furniture stores looking for a bed. I think I need a bed, at least a spare one for my quests but I could also be in a need for a new “master bed” to suit my tricky back better. My back complains a bit these days and I am not really sure if it is the running or the mattress or combination of both or something else. So for few weeks I have been playing with the idea of getting a new bed, swinging between cheap quest bed and super expensive quality bed depending on the day and mood and maybe coming to a conclusion that I am not mentally  and emotionally ready to buy a new bed. Too many “maybe” and “might” and “idea” factors and too little drive to get really something done....I think it shouldn’t be this tricky but realizing it is. Somehow buying a bed feels like the biggest decision of my life at the moment, well it pretty much is one, but shouldn’t I now be eligible enough to make the call as I have ended here by myself too? Or is the amount of decisions one can make in a year constant? And is a year a calendar year, or the FY I’ve been used to during the past 3.5 years?  And does a huge life changing decision eat out your capacity to decide what to have for dinner or whether to buy a new bed or not (certainly feels like it)? Meaning the Balance in the universe thingy? But anyways while looking for the right bed I got more inspired about pillows, laundry bags, outdoor furniture, book shelves, lamps, cups, mirrors and pictures, and with pillows meaning the decoration pillows and not the ones you sleep with, which could be a sign of not-being-ready. Pillows and laundry bags are more innocent, they do not consume your energy. So basically I don’t have a point here, I didn’t get a bed or pillows or anything else to my home but ended up to Marijke’s cosy balcony having a good girl talk with a bottle of red wine. The warm evenings are perfect for spending long nights at a balcony, in Bris balcony is your living room...it’s where the life happens. Bed is secondary. So I should get the balcony furniture first?

And then Mom. My mom arrived last Sunday, early around 7am. I left to the airport super excited. Excited to see a loved one, excited to hug a loved one and excited to see if she has changed a lot or gotten older. I took a Finnish flag with me, just to stand out from the crowd and after some 15 minutes of waiting I got to wave the flag. There she was, my mom, looking extremely fresh and happy and of course tears in her eyes as soon as she saw me. I cried too, no doubt, and it felt so good to hug her. Welcome to Brisbane Mom, welcome to Australia. This was the feeling I counted on when leaving Finland and saying “see you instead”, the sweet reunion. You believe when you see it, hope to have many more. For my relief she didn’t look a day older, she had new glasses and very her style black and white tunica and black sneakers. Same perfume too. Mom as I know her, familiar. We were back home already 7.30am and I felt more tired than she did after waking up 5.30am. “So, should we go out for a brekkie and then to explore the city?” Mom, you have travelled some 24 hours with hardly any sleep, you should be extremely tired and trying to sneak for a proper nap (I headed straight to bed from Airport and slept for some good 5 hours and woke up to Kaija calling from the reception and saying we were supposed to meet an hour ago. Oho). But no, my mom didn’t want to sleep or stay inside, she wanted to go out and DO STUFF *Superwoman* So we went to have brekkie at Gunshop coffee, ate outside, walked up and down Boundary Street and she kept saying it felt so unreal to be in Brisbane right now. It was unreal for me too. She will be here for a month and I think my cupboards will never be that organised and shiny as they are now as she has a tendency to clean. In addition to the cleaning service (no, my home isn’t messy...but sure there is some room for improvement and wiping) I get scrambled eggs and rye bread for breakfast and proper food for dinner too. During the days I am of course at work, so she has time to enjoy Brisbane, clean and hang out with Kaija. When I come home I spot another cleaned area and fridge filled with proper food. Heh, for the first time my fridge looks more like a fridge than a wine cooler, even my brother’s wife would be proud! Currently here in Brisbane there is an advertisement campaign going on about being prepared for natural disaster and having 3 days reserve for food and water to manage well and I realized I have a reserve for a damn good world saving weekend (includes wine and chocolate), but not much food as such. It takes a mom to change that and if you are prepared nothing happens, right? I am spoiled. My mom loves life here, Brisbane is friendly to all sorts of people and helpful too. We don’t have much plans, she wants to just enjoy and be. So most likely we’ll go to Moreton Island for a weekend, Kaija will take her to a road trip and rest of the time we go by the ear. It is also awesome she gets to meet my people and see what life here is all about. I believe it makes it easier for her to go back home...realize that my life has its flow and have more context to it. When she is home I can say I have spent a long evening again at Marijke’s. She knows the place and her. When I say I had brekkie at Gunshop she can imagine the big toast poached eggs and rocket salad. When I say I went for a run to the river side she knows the route and asks if there were other people running too as the riverside is a bit scary in the evening without any lights. All in all she has started to build a map now. We have still 3.5 weeks to go, hope all goes well.

Wednesday was a big night in terms of Maslow Hierarchy level 2, getting my hair cut updated. As I told, the last time at Fuckenheim for Hair was pretty traumatic and I was not at all satisfied for the quality of the cut I got and I decided to give another salon a try and got a recommendation from Marijke to call for Emma at AKA togninis. Her hair looks pretty, mine could look pretty too. Once again I went inside with mixed feelings, please do not *uck up my hair. Long story short (3h 15 minutes long story, jep I sat there for 205 minutes!!), Emma is amazing!! She looked at my hair and said the cut is all *ucked up. She said it has no shape and no volume either. She said it’s been cut with 1990’s style. She said the highlights are way too thin. She said it will take some 2 cuts to do the damage control and she has a plan for my next style (I indicated that I am pretty done with the fringe and asked her to come up with something). She also wants to be BIG in the business one day and participate to Milan and New York fashion weeks. She’s amazing and will make the dream. So 205 minutes later I was back in the game again and all smile and wanted to give her a hug. I didn’t, but reserved next appointment and thanked her for saving my day. All smile, situation calls for drinks. So I got drinks to an empty stomach and ended up being tipsy at 9pm and blaming for the big excitement and good looking damage control. Cheers for Emma. Lime rooftop is nice too.

Then few words about life. Life happens. I have realized it lately. During the past 4 months four of my good friends have became parents for the first time. Two of my friends have separated from their long time partner. One is considering a divorce. Two of my friends have fallen in love madly and ended up with a broken heart. Few are struggling with the busy life of working parents and small kids.  Some are waiting for the news if they get to keep a job or not. New jobs. Big things. Life changing things. Being this far you see things from a distance, literally and figuratively. I am excluded from the “noise” and just get the facts as they are, the emails, messages, Skype calls from Finland with get-to-the-point approach. I get the end result but not the processing part and it feels weird, as I am the type of person that has a need to “be there”, I’ve been used to being there. I feel I should be able to be in two places at the same time knowing it is impossible. I know every upside has a down side but I’m still fighting against. And maybe there is a bit of fear too, fear of missing something crucial and fundamental, like life would happen outside my territory? I should learn to be “grounded”. So what I try to do is to shape up my Skype and email routines to be more in touch. Even short calls or messages, just catch up and hear the latest news. To know where people stand between the big announcements and news, be part of the processing. And please do the same (many of you do already, thanks) to know what’s happening with my life…the stuff outside this blog, there is a lot of that too. A lot that isn’t public.

Love,

//Ansku

PS: Shhh, posting from work as my computer got stuck last night just before publishing. Don’t tell anyone. Thanks. And have a great weekend too!

About Melbourne, Melbourne, Melbourne and St Charles Simulator at Coolum

Oh dear, so much has happened during the past two weeks that I don’t know where to start. Well, I love Melbourne. I want to live in Melbourne one day. Love with capital L. Love at first sight love. Ah, missed this. Melbourne is very different from Brisbane, it has more culture, soul and edge, and it’s somehow more European, more exciting and diverse, more like a proper BIG City. Comparing to Melbourne Brisbane feels like the cousin from the country side, not that exciting or sophisticated and with sub-urban label (with no offence to cousins at country side). Anyways, my main reason for visiting Brisbane was of course the wedding of dear friends, a nice Thursday evening cocktail party with zero of the typical wedding formalities like must have games and speeches etc. Ceremony was simple and short and the bride and groom a beautiful couple very much in love with each other. The venue was a fancy old restaurant with superb service that didn’t let my glass empty even for once. Early in the evening I made a promise to have a glass of water “in between” drinks, but the “in between” did not happen and so didn’t the water drinking. I think it was around mid-night I threw my shoes away to feel more comfortable at the dance floor, danced like there was no tomorrow and around 1.30am left the venue bare-foot and took a taxi back to my hotel. I had sore feet from the dancing and sore hair from the drinking, managed to remove my make-up though. Friday morning was not good. The sun of Melbourne and the inner sun of Ansku did not shine…luckily it rained (as it very often does) and I didn’t need to get up early and start exploring the city. I got up around 11am, got out around 1pm, walked in the rain without umbrella looking pretty miserable, got a chicken salad and Bloody Mary (jep) for lunch around 3pm, got enough of being awake and headed back to the hotel for a nap around 5pm. Afterwards thinking I feel slightly ashamed. I was in Melbourne after all.

But I did manage to explore a lot of Melbourne after I survived the dread of day after. To start with, the restaurant and bar scene is great. No, it’s awesome. It is a pity than one can have only one dinner per day and only few drinks in an evening as there are hundreds of places to explore. Dinner wise my absolute favourite was Cookie, recommended by a colleague, tested on Saturday night and by far the best wine-dining experience in Australia, somehow very similar to Farang in Helsinki but lot less of the Asian atmosphere but more cartoon and fairytale style instead. The food was delicious Asian Fusion meant to be shared and price more than reasonable. I considered it to be cheap.  Finally I can believe that Australians do know how to run a restaurant!! Second best dinner was Il Bacaro, a cosy high profile Italian. The problem with Italian is that it rarely is surprising…good, but not mind-blowing. Like the restaurants in Brissie. Or maybe I am just too high maintenance? I got bunch of other recommendations too but as said didn’t have enough evenings to test more. My absolutely favourite Bar was The Melbourne Supper Club at Spring Street. You need to know what you are looking for and where to look for or you miss it. Luckily I was accompanied with Sami who has a very good nose for excellent bars and we found the entrance after walking pass twice. The atmosphere reminded me of few bars in Barcelona, cosy rooftop, great drinks, men smoking cigars and drinking whiskey and women drinking fancy cocktails. I got a fancy cocktail too, or two actually… Melbourne Supper Club is on THE list.

Melbourne is also about excellent shopping. I got a tip from a colleague to head to Chapel Street at Windsor and to start the shopping tour with brunch at YellowBird, order at least one Bloody Mary and only after that make a move to explore the shops around. I did exactly as told, enjoyed a big fat toast with a spicy Bloody Mary, didn’t even mind the rain (is it morning drinks that help people in Melbourne deal with the sucky rain?) and had no problems in spending way more money than planned, but bought strictly quality stuff that can be used both in business and party mode. I did most of my shopping with T. L Wood, an Australian designer with very “my style” collection. She had a good eye on what would suit me, a lot of the stuff did, and I left with a big bag saying I will be back. This is also something I had missed since leaving Finland, finding a brand or a boutique to be loyal to. Chapel Street is like Boundary but a lot bigger and better. It has loads of local designer shops, big international brands too, restaurants, coffee houses, variety of people and good buzz. One cannot get a hold of Chapel Street with one try, it leaves you hungry for more. The only shopping I did outside Chapel was Haigh’s dark chocolate scorched almonds, another “must try” tip from a colleague who loves chocolate even more than I do. Haigh’s had line-up every time I passed the store, the chocolate might help dealing with the rain too? It didn't rain on Sunday but still the situation called for a “pure sin” brekkie at Max Brenner before heading towards St Kilda. You don’t get proper food at Max, you get chocolate in many different forms. Seriously, no dish without chocolate. So I got a waffle with ice-cream, strawberries, bananas (still very expensive in .au, enjoy if you get one) and chocolate FOR brekkie, BECAUSE I am an adult and CAN decide of my daily menu by myself. I felt a bit sick afterwards and thought my Friday-Saturday Bloody Mary was way better choice nutrition wise (which reminds me of one particular mid-summer party where Aki made 10l of Bloody Mary for brekkie, oh dear). Anyways St Kilda is a small and lively beach city with one main street packed with restaurants, shops and coffee houses. The beach is a typical city beach: too many people, touristy and dirty. Beaches and weather, the cousin from the country side wins. The last few hours in Melbourne was spent at Botanical Gardens and enjoying afternoon sun and drinks by the riverside, then “bye bye city of Bloody Marys, chocolate and shopping! See you soon”. Very soon I hope.

Monday morning wake-up was a painfully early as I needed to head towards Sunshine Coast and Coolum already 6am to attend a week long Knowledge Transfer Workshop. I landed to Bris at 10pm, got less than 5 hours of sleep, cursed the iphone wake-up ringtone as I would’ve loved to stay in bed longer and continue living life in Melbourne time. Rise and shine. Up and Out to pick-up my colleague Bec.The Hyatt Regency Coolum was very nice and luxurious with big golf course, several pools, tennis courts, day spa and only 1km away from the beach...something I of course had no chance to enjoy with the tight schedule ahead.  At 8am I met some 200 colleagues from Australia, Singapore and Indonesia and felt like being at St Charles with Accenture Core training, wearing a necklace with a name tag, trying to resist conference candies available EVERYWHERE and having an overload on information, faces, names, coffee and delicious food. Coolum was a luxurious St Charles Simulator, an adult summer camp.

During the first day I realized that content wise the training should take a month, instead of a week and every single sentence and real-life example and scenario our faculty was telling was worth gold and I should’ve been able to speed write down EVERYTHING. There is so much I don’t know and understand. Stupid girl. I was told that most of the people attending have been working with the topic for years and that I shouldn’t panic for not being there, but I still did as I have a tendency to be the immediately if not sooner type of a girl and I hate the feeling of “just not getting it”. Back to the tennis court, starting from the basics, looking like an idiot missing the easy serves and realizing you need to practise hundreds of hours to get to the next level. Patience patience, there’s no shortcut to jump to the expert path, there’s no immediately if not sooner, so all I could do is pay attention, twist my brain to understand the concepts and terms and code language flying around and ask stupid questions during breaks. The sessions were from 8am to 6pm and I was completely exhausted at the end of the days. Evenings where luckily less busy than in St Charles...had a glass of wine and dinner with colleagues and headed back to our villa early for a hot chocolate and sleep, except for Wednesday which was THE party night with BBQ and free drinks.  I, once again, made a sort of promise to go just for the BBQ and hit home early but was convinced by my colleague Charles that this night will be spent on the floor dancing our asses off. Ok! Charles is quite a persona, very “intense” as Bec described and soooo funny that  he should be in entertainment business rather than working with the  letters S, P and A. So surprise surprise in no time I found myself at the only bar around the resort thinking sleeping is so overrated. The fun part of the evening was definitely the rough miners who after too many drinks thought they are a) extremely good dancers b) extremely attractive c) extremely funny approaching women with the weirdest moves and pick-up lines ever d) extremely persistent with their pursuit. For a second there I felt very homey, men get few drinks and “boom” their self confidence is 2km high. Anyways by the time one miner from my break-out group (older than my dad) was dancing without a shirt and opening up his zipper too I decided my eyes had seen too much and called it a night.  On the way back I saw a little baby kangaroo, the first living kangaroo spotted here in Australia which made me so excited I totally forgot the damage of half-naked miner dancing fiercely to the beat of Michael Jackson and got sweet dreams instead of nightmares. Two more days to go. Friday afternoon all the information was poured to our heads and it was time to start well deserved weekend. I felt dead tired, head spinning and somewhat out of place...too much information and too much happening within a week. Late afternoon we headed to Kaija and Ross for a dinner and was welcomed with a big hug and smell of Sauna. Yes, they have a proper Finnish sauna on their backyard and a pool next to it to cool down. It was just what I needed: sauna, pool, smoked salmon, excellent red wine and dear friends. I was normal again. Or at least “normal” with my terms. On Saturday I attended a hen party, on Sunday I had a Martha Stewart day and long long Skype session with little people. After Skype I cried. No drama, the normal story of missing the little people. Sometimes a good cry helps. Chocolate helps too.

This week has been incredibly normal. I go to work, I do work, I get home from work and enjoy life at home. I still have the flu, so no rage runs or yoga or anything else exciting until Saturday which is my internal deadline for being well again and kick-starting the sporty life. Last Thursday I hit the 4 months milestone and made a promise to start having more healthy routines in life...a promise that is worth saying out loud. A promise that is good for Ansku

4 months is 1/3 of a year. Not sure if it is a lot or not.

Love,

//Ansku

PS: In four nights my mom is also coming to Bris, she arrives on Sunday morning and stays over for a month. It will be weird to have “life from Finland” here with me...something that hasn’t been part of the setup since Eepi left. And obviously, can’t wait to get a big warm hug from a loved one. Four nights.