Take Five

A dear friend of mine is celebrating her five years of blogging by having an amazing giveaway (or a raffle, more like it), professional blogger stylie, and challenging people to list, quite appropriately, five important things in their lives. Here's my contribution. It's been a while since I last did one of these meme(-ish) things, feeling rusty.

1. Family and friends. This is a no-brainer, really, although in the end I don't think I let the affection show all that much, especially when it comes to my friends. I am a bit of loner in some respects and can go days or even weeks without any noticeable social life, which can easily be interpreted as not giving a toss. This is a shame, really, because I do enjoy the company of my friends and feel happy when I hear from them, and they are important to me no matter how detached I sometimes may appear.

2. Pertaining to what I just wrote, I need my peace and quiet. Actually, I often make jokes about this, for example, to my Argentinian friend. Knowing him as someone who's always looking for action and excitement, I often ask him to visit me in my neighbourhood and mingle among the grannies and mummies with me. The truth is I can't stand any continuous buzzing around me. I need my sleep, I need my quiet time, or I go from slightly testy to greatly irritated and on to incredibly vexed and frustrated quite fast. The fact that many people might find this hard to believe just goes to show how good I am at finding my zen.

3. Music and things aesthetic (since we seem to be listing things in pairs.) This one includes but is not limited to music, literature, visual arts and gardening as well as all cooking. Right at the moment, it feels like I don't have a lot of beauty in my life, but I plan to change that once this bloody thesis is finally finished.

4. Computer and the internet. I decided I shouldn't be too holier-than-thou with this list, which is why I wanted to add at least one material commodity on the list, too. I think I could live without a phone, I don't use it all that much, but honestly, I can't begin to imagine a life without my netbook (or some computer) and an internet connection. Nowadays, I plan most of my social life online, I send emails daily, I read the news online and take care of most of my everyday stuff (excluding shopping for food, although if I lived in Britain I might do that as well, who knows) on the information highway.

5. Black coffee and cherry yoghurt in the morning. One of the unknown ingredients of happiness, I assure you. How will I ever manage next June, when I'm back in Turku again and not even Lidl sells cherry yoghurt anymore? I will have to make do with just half the happiness then.
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This bloody G-whizz is driving me bonkers. It's all over the place, it has no focus, it's hopelessly overly ambitious and my attitude towards it is not helping the writing process one bit. 6,000 words to go, which is not that much to be honest, since I still have to write the actual analysis part (plus discussion/conclusion), but it feels like spending an eternity in hell.

I should try to concentrate on the bright side of life, really. Like the fact that my Cheltenham supervisor is coming to Berlin for the Berlinale and I'm meeting with her and an ex-GBZer/Cheltenham volunteer on Monday. And the best part: she's supplying me with Double Deckers, those delicious devil-spawn chocolaty goodies. Can't wait to get my fix.