Everything

My oh my. It's been less than two weeks and once again, so much has happened. Seeing myself waste a lot of time at the computer and not have much to do, it sometimes makes me feel lousy, as if I have no life at all. But as a side effect, doing this blog has reassured me that my life isn't that boring afterall. If it was, I wouldn't be wondering where to start now. I guess I'll pick a random thing. And here it is.

In my high school, there's a tradition of speech contests. Everyone has to prepare a speech and speak in front of the class, the best from each class get chosen to compete against each other. This year, we had to choose the topic from among one of these:

• I'm delighted by...
• I'm gladdened by...
• I'm irritated by...
• I doubt...
• I'm comforted by...

I was delighted to see that as my chance to say something, and chose my topic to be: "I am irritated by the world's inefficiency in protecting its future." I got the most votes in my class and so I also had to compete against the whole high school. I don't remember the exact place where I ended, but I know that it was somewhere near the bottom, even though I felt that I did really well. I'm not saddened by that, because the topic I chose is very wide, perhaps a bit too much. Many people have since asked me to translate my speech and share it with them, well, here it is:

Dear fellow students and teachers. I've come here to talk about what irritates me. I'm a very happy person and very hard to irritate, but I'm very irritated by the world's inefficiency in protecting its future. It's a wide topic. It's visible that like this, our society isn't sustainable. I'm not talking about problems with reproduction. To make my point clear, I'll bring two examples.
First of all, the obvious: environmental problems. In the 21st century, people consume so much more than they really need to. There are 7 billion of us, and our planet, on which we depend and always will depend, cannot satisfy everyone's little whims. If this continues, it will become as friendly as, for example, our neighbor Venus, where the climate is so much warmer and it rains acid.
True, the green lifestyle is a rising trend and scientists are seeking for solutions every day, but at this rate, no major changes will be made in the next 25 years.
The second example would be the growth environment of children. Children learn very fast and they find their way to dangers that lurk around so much before us, the ones who can protect them. Most of the grown-up world either doesn't see or doesn't want to see that what's simple entertainment for them, can seriously damage a developing worldview.
Parents of these children have a major responsibility here. Children shouldn't be isolated, instead, they should be shown the world as it is, and explained every detail. It's extremely difficult and very few can do it, and there will always be people who just don't care. If we let the next generation grow up in illusions and wrong understandings, there will be even less people who would know what to do to lead our society to sustainability.
After analyzing both of these examples, we can see they both have the same core - people can't give up what they don't need, people can't get rid of old habits and become better towards themselves and everyone else.
How to solve that? We're near the dead end, where it's impossible to move on without major changes. That will probably show as a big global crisis, which has already started.
But I didn't come here to scare you. It's still possible to alleviate the problem. I came here to turn to all of you, dear listeners, including myself. The future is in our hands, and our duty is to make it worth living. We must educate ourselves, open our eyes, think and talk about it, and most importantly, make the good ideas happen. It's the best we can do to turn our development to the right way. And the more people at least think about it, the better. Thank you.

 Mmh, yeah, quite a pink bubble, I know. But I got my quack at it and I'm happy, even though, according to the speech, this should just be the start. But no one's perfect.

While I was preparing the speech, I thought I'd listen to some of the songs and artists that can be called mainstream. As some of you may know, I don't like most of it, but this experience just made it worse. I stumbled upon songs so much worse than any Rebecca Black or Justin Bieber. To be honest, I think those two are a bit underrated. No, I don't like them, but I don't understand all the hate they get, after hearing something like this: 

While listening to it, I was constantly thinking: "So, when does the music start?" and I was saddened by the song ending without answering that question. It's a comforting thought that this is probably the worst I could find, but still, I don't see how can people actually like this. I dare to say that the competition for title of the worst song I've ever heard is getting tougher. I'm not even sure if this Double Take song is still the leader, but I guess it is. 

For a moment there I even considered changing the speech topic to "I am extremely irritated by horrible music.", but I didn't because that topic nicely goes under the second example in my final speech.

But enough of speeches, I'll get to something that delights me instead. 

The first 7 week period of high school has come to an end. out of five subjects that were graded, I scored 5 in four of them, and in the fifth, geography, I scored 4. I'm not sure if I've explained the grading system yet, so I will - it's very simple. The grades go from 1 to 5, 5 being the best and 2 and 1 meaning failure. So, I guess I can consider myself a good student now, even though I'd like to become a straight 5 student, and that takes some hard work. In less than a week I'll be having my first Finnish lessons, and I'm starting to get really excited.

And now to the cake under the cherry. You'll never guess what happened!!!

I spoke about the high school freshmen's days in my last post. on Saturday the 13th, they were ended with an unofficial party. Me and my friend Kristiina didn't go, and now I'm so glad we didn't. At the same time I introduced Kristiina to my Finnish friend Arttu. They got along really well, and the same evening Arttu told me of his plan to come to Estonia for the first weekend of me and Kristiina's vacation. Not believing in it, I carelessly replied: "If you do, grab Samuli along please!"

At that time I wouldn't have thought that a couple of hours later I'll find myself helping them organize it, but that's exactly what happened. My last weekend was made by Samuli, Arttu and Kristiina.

The week before the visit was mostly spent making final efforts at school, organizing and Arttu and Kristiina got to know each other better. 

This time it turned out cheapest for them to come by catamaran instead of a regular big passenger ship. The catamaran is much faster, but it's also much more dependent on weather and thus gets cancelled quite often. The boys were supposed to arrive a little bit before the end of our final lesson, but instead I got a phone call from Samuli - the trip was cancelled, and they arrived several hours later, with the next departure. Luckily, I hadn't planned every hour of their stay, because this time it felt more right to leave room for spontaneous decisions. When me and Kristiina met the boys at the port, I first greeted them with the question: "Everything okay? Alive? Not seasick? Good." Then we walked to the center to meet Kristiina's mother and after that, straight to the hotel. The next day I spontaneously took them to see the Old Town of Tallinn, mostly just to see what we could do there. Yeah, the whole trip was quite spontaneous. Later on Kristiina had to go home for a bit and Arttu went with her, and while they were away, me and Samuli went for a long walk. While we were walking on the beach near our hotel, we saw thunder and stayed at the beach for a while to watch. In the meanwhile, the thunder got closer and closer and then it started raining so heavily that we were soaked in no time. Dripping wet, we got back to our hotel, played a few mandatory pranks on Arttu and Kristiina, who were there before us, and went to sleep. The next day, once again, I took them to the center to show them around some more, but soon enough the time was right to head back to the port. We said our goodbyes, Kristiina left and I watched the ship depart. The sweetest part of the whole trip (after the fact that I saw my dear Samuli again, of course) is the fact that Kristiina and Arttu became a couple. I'm sincerely happy for them, and I wish them best of luck. 

Here's some pictures from the weekend, of ourselves mixed with some lovely sights:

A lovely gate.

A must-do at the symbolic center of Tallinn

Our gang

View on the Town Hall square

Hiding little Samuli

Yet another nice, and quite diverse view

Samuli and his local buddy

Me and Samuli (Don't worry, it's coke.)

Kadriorg

Arttu and Kristiina, the cute couple

Me and Samuli in our everyday state.

So, now I'm even more loaded with great memories, doing nothing all day and looking forward to next week. Samuli gave me two more pictures and I'm thinking of getting them framed. I just can't shut up about how amazing he is, can I? :D