About bad hair day, rye bread, new places and work stuff too

So last week was the final week at site and I was more than happy to pack my stuff early Friday morning and leave Dysart and later on Moranbah airport for a while. It also meant I am done with facilitating the training sessions, managed to repeat the same some 30 or so times. End of intermediate role and beginning of well deserved weekend. From the airport I headed almost immediately to Guggenheim for Hair to get my style updated and the girl who had done my hair well earlier wasn’t there and I was introduced to a new girl, a young one, with not that cool style and way too much make-up. I didn’t feel at ease at all *Please do not f*** up my hair*. And of course she did, at least according to my standards. She had absolutely no idea what to do. I’ll give you an example. She asked if I am having the part in the middle. Yes I am, please. Then she makes the part about 3 cm to the left. A: Excuse me but that’s not middle? Oh, uups, you’re right. Then she blow-dried my hair super puffy making me look like a US house wife (cookies and juice) and said she’ll cut it dry. I said I never dry my hair like this, so could she kindly cut it when it’s less puffy so that the cut is more normal and lasts longer. Ok, no worries. So she used the straightener to make it flat again and cut it way too short from the back and asked only afterwards if I would’ve wanted to keep it longer as it was earlier.  The final moment of horror was with the fringe…first time she got it skewed, second time she got it skewed and third time she got it too short as there were no options. Thanks, I think I am done now. So after 3.5 hours I left Guggenheim disappointed, stressed, feeling I look like a boy. I was told I do not look like a boy. I was told the style is more “spicy” than the earlier one. I was told there is not much difference between the earlier and this one (a comment from a guy, obviously) I was told hair has the tendency to grow a bit every day. But bye bye for the comfort zone of finding a good hairdresser. A peeled potato became a mashed potato. Buu.

So what to do after depressing hairdresser visit? Go out. Go eat. Go drink. Go and see new places. Go and celebrate the fact that you don’t need to be in Dysart or Moranbah next week. I went. The place for the night was a busy Mexican at Bulimba, a small and lively part of the city at “the other side of the river” opposite to Powerhouse and New Farm. Basically the heart of Bulimba is Oxford Street that has loads of restaurants and small shops, like Boundary Street here at West End. It’s very typical for different parts of the city to have THE one and only street where the life happens and rest of it is just suburb. After few glasses of Sangria and tasty Fajitas I had forgotten my bad hair day... Food and wine can also solve any problem outside office hours…at office I still stick to coffee and macaroons. For the sake of drug and alcohol policy.

Then the long waited moment of rye bread. Oh boy it happened on Saturday morning, sunny October 2^nd around 10.30 am after a good night sleep. I finally got a chance to end my rye bread celibacy after 3 months and one week, took a picture and everything. On purpose I saved the bread for a Saturday as it is my favourite morning of the week (unless Friday gets out of hand) and I am overly protective for getting to wake-up slowly and eat my breakfast in peace, with time and quality newspaper. I did miss the quality newspaper but had the latest Hesarin Kuukausiliite instead as I had asked mom to send one over.  Oh the joy. I had the bread with ham and cheese and a cup of good coffee, like my usual brekkie back in Finland, excluding the carrots as they are not that sweet here at the moment (since 1999 I have had the routine of eating a carrot with my morning coffee…a habit that came out of nowhere and stayed until coming here). I ate it in silence and smiled, it was a sweet reunion, tasted like home, like childhood too. What a great Finnish Breakfast Simulator :) What a way to start the weekend! I sign up for the cliché of Finns missing salmiakki and ruisleipa the most...try yourself to live without!

Later that day we had planned the already traditional Dress Up Wine-Dining evening with Marijke and her dear friend Marijke who is visiting Australia for few weeks. We agreed earlier that this will be a monthly happening but did not find a free weekend on September so need to do twice in October. Not a problem. Some people here are also attending Ocsober (a sober October that is a fundraising initiative) but I think it is a very foolish idea (to give up beautiful wines, not the good purpose and fundraising), it would ruin our wine-dining promise and decided to save my alcohol-free months “for later”. I can also report on behalf of Marijke that she’s not doing it either. Our chosen new restaurant was Tukka, a modern Australian restaurant at Boundary street that is supposed to belong to the fine dining category. Hopes up. We all of course went for the exotic discovery menu with matching wines…full glass...why would someone take only half a glass? The menu had lots of stuff I had never tasted before, like emu, kangaroo, crocodile and weird berries. Emu was like chewing gum and not that good to be honest – a no go. It tasted like it looks like; old, ugly, angry and dry bird that has been spent most of the life under the burning sun. Kangaroo was better but I had a bit of emotional dilemma as I think kangaroos are pretty cute animals (stems from Winnie The Pooh, who would ever like to eat Kanga or Roo?) and I could never tell to the little people I have been eating Kangaroo. Crocodile was the most exotic one, taste in between fish and game. We also learned that crocodile is categorized as seafood (which of course makes sense as they spend most of their time in water but I thought it would be meat) and has very little fat, less than 1% or so. The taste was very unique and strong, I think I didn’t like it, even with a bit of rocket salad and raspberries and good white wine. It tasted like danger if danger has a taste. Scared me a bit. Anyways we enjoyed the dinner, wine and good company and continued to Valley to Press Club to dance the night a way. Rest of the night is history, good booty shaking, good times, home late or early, depends how you look at it. Highly appreciated tradition we have here.

I’ve also seen few new places during the weekend, Redcliffe and Montville. Redcliffe is a small (and windy) beach very near Brisbane, only some 20km away and a good option if you get up late and have overly slow morning and still want to see a proper beach (all applied). Most of the people there where families with small kids and few fisher men too, zero surfers and therefore the place doesn’t make to my top 10 list.  I missed the sunscreen so our visit was pretty short, but had enough time to read few Finnish magazines, listen some music and get the weekly portion of Pacific Ocean watching (well, in reality the beach is on Moreton Bay but if you look far enough you see the endlessness too). It is funny how you easily lose perspective here, a beach like Redcliffe would be considered luxury in Finland, but after Moreton, Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast and Burleigh Heads it feels like a kids meal, tasty but leaves you hungry...and only three months ago I was more than proud of my “back yard” Hietsu :) When it comes to beaches and strawberries I am blinded by size here. The strawberries are huge too. I was not blinded by size when going to Montville. It is a beautiful little city about 100km from Bris and warmly recommended by my (already) ex colleague from South Africa. On our way there we spotted a little stand selling first mangoes of the season, got 4 for 10 dollars and asked the lady to pick the best ones. I was like a little kid who had just seen Santa Claus, I get to eat fresh mangoes soon!! Road to Montville was steep uphill again and the view very pretty the higher we got. Again we saw quite a few brave cyclists all going uphill and looking strong, respect. Montville turned out to be a small and cosy little town (as promised) about 430 meters above sea level with weird combination of speciality shops from chocolate to clocks to toys to astrology to palm reading. There are also few small wineries in the region that definitely deserve a go but didn’t get one as my Saturday night out wasn’t that dry. In general I would compare Montville to Porvoo, it’s very friendly and romantic and in a way an escape from the busy reality. We got coffee with a great view to Sunshine coast and candies from the Chocolate Country. It is difficult to find proper “irtarit” here, so if you see some you better get some. Montville was worth visiting for sure, I think I’ll come back too.

Monday was yet another first day at work. It was my official start date vol.3 and again I was wearing my traditional first day purple Tara Jarmon dress. Finally the real thing. Now we are talking business. We had a full day kick off with bunch of new colleagues and project team members joining the project too. Got heaps of new info, lots of new faces and names and a coffee and acronym overdose. This project has acronym for almost everything, just to give you an example, I am in the R3 CIT L&PS team working with WM. Try explaining that to your mom. I am still waiting for R2D2 and 3CPO to show up, I used to play Star Wars a lot with my brother and cousin Kalle when we were kids. I was also asked to give a presentation about my time on site and I shared pictures, told stories and my lessons learnt and people were green with envy for the tour I got at Goonyella Riverside and commented it’s unfair the blue-eyed Europeans get always VIP treatment with monster truck rides and locals need to settle with meetings in barrack buildings. Anyways I was very happy after that day, I learned a lot of new things, was impressed by the approach we are having and realized the people I will be working with are very nice, have lot of knowledge and are on a same wave length too...i.e not at all uptight but funny and a bit crazy instead. So I am also somewhat optimistic that there will be good parties with this team, though nothing beats my previous team and managers in terms of partying and budget. Good times. Rest of the days I’ve spent onboarding. I have read tons of different documents, asked hundreds of stupid questions and been relieved as my colleagues and project counter parts are super helpful, know the business extremely well and are always gladly and patiently explaining me the details. I’ve learned a lot more about mining, the end-to-end process and random stuff like monster truck maintenance and site shut downs. I do feel a bit dizzy at times...it is such a different world. And I have never even changed a tyre to a car.

My evenings this week have been super busy, I guess I am trying to take back the missed city life after spending three weeks in a row at site. Every evening I have been out (especially glad about Tuesday when I met a dear friend I haven’t seen in two years or so), reason why this blog post comes late too :) So it was definitely needed to clear the calendar and have even one easy going evening at home, eat something else than restaurant food and drink mint tea and wear woollen socks (the orange ones from Kurrela) too as it is pretty cold at the moment. I was close to beating my record of 21 days without woollen socks but lost the game today with the coldness. Got till 16 which is pretty decent try.

But now I better go to bed to make sure I make it to the office at 8am. Sweet dreams my friends,

//Ansku

PS: A lot of people keep asking what items I miss in addition to Ruisleipa and salmiakki. Well Fazerin sininen, drinkable tap water and Helsingin Sanomat. Also running out of Kanebo 38 as it is not sold here at all. And Lakkahillo too. To mention few