I didn’t know where to start, when I’d loaded photos from my trip to The Philippines this summer. It wasn’t very good pictures for one thing and they where filled with mixed emotions. To get something posted I found myself picking out blue things from the crowd just like the bird, what’s it called, The Satin Bowerbird.

Here I’m stuck at a hippie pension. I’m told not to go out after 23 pm by myself, I took their word for it. Hell had already started outside. And at that point I was totally a nubie. I I’d just arrived in Manila, after staying in the less hectic part of the Island, in the far northwest visiting relatives. At my first journey reaching outside Europe and neighboring Russia.

Snake poison antidote research. On the picture you see dead poison’s snakes preserved in alcohol. I visited a reptile zoo on the Mindaro Island held by this German biologist. I’ve always been crazy about wild life science, a real National Geographic whore! This dudes life really amazed me; living in the jungle in this cool house, not very far from superb diving spots, having your own reptile farm and doing research. Man! Maybe I should change mu study subject…

This picture was taken cruising the sic sac roads up to the city of Baguio, high above the mountains dressed in rain forest. The driver kissed his crucifix and just stepped on it… My step family was sitting on the seat behind and I was in the middle seat(my legs were too long for the backseat), the mini bus was packed as usual and being the only white person around they figured it was appropriate to push me against the door. One could just hope the door would stay closed. Outside was a few inches of road and after that just a steep down to the infinite. When I think about it, I guess I let them discriminate me. Looking down the mountains you feel so small and almost ashamed of being a polar bear.

A dog I accidentally woke up from it’s siesta. I was hunting for waterfalls, walked over a rusty hanging bridge over a river. On Both sides of the bridge were small villages. The people that lived there didn’t have any watches, instead they had a special bird in a cage that would alarm every hour during the day. Practical hah?

Models: The playful Sohvi and Jerkku, thanks homies! ;]

When you force yourself out on the street, it’s so chilly your brain cells freeze up, surviving is everything the thinking-machine is capable to process(actually that’s so dull you rather die). When you get some warmth in to you mechanism, you instinctively start longing. Oh summer! you think. The funny thing is, all winter you’ve been so focused on not feeling too much, to survive, that when it finally is all sunny, the birds are singing and you don’t need to wear stretch tights anymore; you can’t really enjoy it. It’s the ultimate kind of déjà vu and when it happens you feel oppressed to savor it. This is what you have been longing for for god’s sake! But no, no way. Happiness is to risky business! It’s all going to vanish before your eyes anyway.

It’s new years day and I’m on the sea again. It’s 2009 this time, I’ve noticed… Reading about occult shit in some urban, Stockholm magazine. I’m trying to stay calm and happy, although I feel such antipathy towards the travelers that do this for fun. I find it very hard to say who’s a whore and who’s just horny… Of course it doesn’t matter; I should stop over analyzing all the time. ;]

     
Sure, you can try to read and use time wisely on the ship but they damn sure are going to empty your purse… That’s for sure! People usually feel like eating every day, that’s why they’ve come up with the brilliant idea to stretch out the voyage. Business hour is every hour, hurray!
What do we learn from this? Do your homework with style and hopefully you’ll have enough greens to fly when you’ll be a big girl. Aha, well what about pollution. Jesus Christ! Do we have to have this conversation again?! Knowledge is responsibility; and it’s constantly carving it self into your head and won’t stop singing aloud with it’s hands on it’s ears, before society have manage to turn you into a psychopath. Incidentally, the need of changing surroundings is great urge for many people, I believe it feeds the brain. Or maybe it’s just me being a hopeless escapist, dreaming of adventure. Where’s my jungle knife and my snow shoes?!?

     
New Years Eve was really nice. We headed to the suburbia of Stockholm; I believe the place was called Kallhäll. Names doesn’t say much, anyhow, it took a chat in a train and a chilly run over a bridge, and some zic zacking betweens icy asphalt and a march over a field to get there. It went from watching that James Bond movie, where the voodoo crocodiles get hungry for Roger More with one eye, to jamming to David Bowie on Sing Star… It seems to be pretty much a bunch of role-players, so we even got to enjoy this dude acting out a Russian folk tale for us. But no vampires or Star Wars suits around, which was a pity! 

     
Happy New Year!

     
//You rocket stunned sidekick

     
I’m drinking hot chocolate ala the ancient Maya’s. No milk today; it’s independence day, so the shops aren’t open. I’d forgot. Chili dreams, trying to cure the “writers block”(homework)… ;S

     
Talking to May on the phone and feeling rather happy climbing the ladder. I found some rusks, otherwise I’m pretty much out of everything. Total darkness outside. Obscure figures in the corner of Vesijärvenkatu. The hat shop still keep the lights on, showing off, even though they’re never open. May’s vandal cat, Pyry find a string to pull and stuff are now raining down from the kitchen table, she reports…

I had a glimpse at the Helsingin Sanomat newspaper, while I was digging into my spaghetti. Something caught my eye. “Stressed plants respire out aspirin”, I read. Gosh! I felt deeply moved as I just a few minutes ago used  the same, well-known substance myself.

The scientist suggested it’s purpose was to diminish stress and also to warn other plants from the causing danger(such as drought, frost or kids with scissors).  It was known to me that plants communicate and feel at some level. Still, I after that point felt even more respect for my pot plants.

“Grow up and blow away” they sang from my speakers. Ok very well; stop beeing sensitive and start drawing your home work for the love of god! OK.Ok.  I noticed that I was doing everything but what I was supposed to and outside the sun was already getting low…

left: shiny cargo on the deck. right: bier tour in kallio with the doc. people