Shopping

Now that the weather is warmer and it's lighter for longer I've noticed how late the shops stay open in Finland. Today Emmi and I were buying shoes for her wedding outfit, and I noticed it was 7.15pm! It's rare for shops in England to be open at that time, but very normal here. Gives you extra shopping time so it must be a good thing. It also gave me more time to lust over shoes, and create a mental wishlist for when I have a job, and that's probably not such a good thing.
It did make me wonder why Finland doesn't have 24 hour supermarkets or corner shops though. It's definitely something I've taken for granted in England, and here I realise how useful such places are. The K-Extra opposite my house is open until 11pm but I believe that's the latest in the center of Turku.
I also heard today about a Finnish Easter tradition of growing a little patch of grass. Emmi didn't explain it too much but she insisted I take the free packet of seeds offered in the coffee shop. She said it's mainly a thing for children. English children normally just eat their chocolate egg and are satisfied with that. Maybe I should grow my Easter grass. I'm not entirely sure what the point of it would be but Emmi was very keen that I should try.

Logomo

Today I went to Logomo for the Tom of Finland retrospective, and it was a really good day. Some of the images were quite explicit, and certainly not appropriate for children, but some of the work was more romantic. The technical drawing skill was stunning, and I came away from the exhibition with a lot of respect for Tom. Currently, most people don't find homosexuality shocking, and most people don't consider it to be wrong, or an illness, but he was making work about being gay at a time when it was illegal and very much frowned upon. I think he was very brave to put something like that out there and to be honest about who he was and what he was into at a time when the reaction would be very extreme. Work like this probably wouldn't be quite so controversial if it was done today, but in his time it was a risky thing to produce. I hope that the subject matter doesn't scare people away, because the drawings are very skillful and really do show talent. The exhibition is on all year as part of the capital of culture programme, and it's worth seeing.
The other exhibitions were also good. One of them was photography based and concentrated on models. There were a huge range of artists included, and this lead to a wide variety of models being shown. It was quite diverse, and as I normally work in portraiture it was of particular interest to me. I particularly liked a room full of pictures taken to resemble early photography, and they were quite convincing. In some cases it was almost impossible to tell that they were contemporary.
As a gallery space I thought Logomo was brilliant. It's an old industrial building, and paraphenalia such as fuse boxes have been kept in place, which provides an exciting contrast with the artwork. The setting isn't overly refined, which was appealing. It also has huge windows, giving a lot of natural light, and on a day like today - bright, sunny, and clear - it was really beneficial.
It's behind the train station, so a bit out of the way, but definitely worth a visit. It's more expensive than other galleries I've been to here, but I think you get a bit more for your money, and it has a much more contemporary feel. I definitely preferred it to the Taidemuseo, for example, which seems a bit old and dull in comparison. I hope the secondary exhibition changes at some point, because I'd really like to revisit Logomo.
When it comes to jobs I've had a few more ideas and suggestions. I've applied to some more things, and am developing a plan to sort something out. Hopefully it works, because I really don't want to leave Turku. This week I'm going to be concentrating on sorting these things out. I'm very determined to find something so I can carry on with things here, where I am happy. This is hanging over my head and ruining my otherwise perfect mood, so I want something to come up to solve the problem.

The beginning of the end

Kela won't help me. Unless I find a job in the next few weeks I think it's all over. I'll do any work, I don't care. The idea of going home is hell. It's the last thing I want. I have a nice place to live, I have good friends, and I like things just the way they are. Going back to live with my parents would be the biggest anti-climax I could imagine, it's so unpleasant to me that I can scarcely accept it. It's not them, it's the fact that I've been independent for almost four years and I hate the city they live in. I'd do anything to avoid it.
I've applied to the tourist place, and to a souvenir shop near to my house, other people are trying to come up with ideas for me, and I'm willing to do just about anything. I don't need the best paid job on the planet, just enough to pay my rent and keep me where I want to be. I'm in a constant state of panic right now. I'll take any bullshit cleaning job, looking after kids, wiping an incontinent old woman's arse - it really doesn't matter. Selling paintings doesn't make enough money; I get some extra cash out of it but I can't pay my rent with it. If anyone knows of any solid opportunities, please tell me. I'm pretty desperate right now. I can't cope with the idea of leaving.

Successful week so far

I've amazed myself with my own productivity in the past couple of days. I seem to have found a sudden spurt of energy and motivation. I've been a bit lethargic recently so maybe I'm getting over the hump.
I went to my appointment at the employment agency, and that all went fine. I've got a few more ideas of possible work options to look into, so I'm feeling more positive about that. Posti and Maistraati have also both confirmed my change of address, although apparently that's only been registered as a postal address, not a permanent address. I don't understand why, and don't quite understand how the hell you do get a permanent address, short of marrying a Finnish person. I suspect that this is the thing where I'm required to pay €47 at the police station, which I really didn't want to do, and still think is rather unfair. I'm a bit worried that's going to affect things with Kela, so perhaps tomorrow I need to find out what's going on with this. I really need the Kela thing to come through, otherwise I have a huge problem. I guess that paying that money isn't so terrible in the grand scheme of things if it means I'll get my rent paid and ensure me a stable place to live. It seems rather unjust, but if this is the difference between being safe and being homeless I'll have to do it.
I wish all this stuff had come to my attention months ago, or at least that I had been more efficient. I really think someone should compile a step by step guide to what an immigrant needs to do to get their stuff sorted here - I've been here for five months and it just gets more and more complicated. Although if I didn't need something from Kela I wouldn't be dealing with all of this at all, but I didn't even know I was required to apply to be covered by them until I went there for help.
Are things like this in every country? At least if I choose to come back to Finland in the future I'll be much better prepared.

Visiting Naantali

Today Tero and I went to Naantali, and it was nice to go somewhere different. I've been to Naantali once before but I think we only stayed for about five minutes because the weather was so depressing at the time. Today was also cold, grey, and slightly rainy, but we wandered around for a while. It was a bit surreal because everything was quite bleak, but all the buildings in the Old Town are very brightly coloured and cheerful. That area made me feel like I was in another time; nothing about it seems modern.

We walked to the Muumimaailma theme park, which isn't open for business at this time of year, but we were still able to walk through it and see all the buildings, such as the Moomin house! That was very exciting, and it was so cute. It was completely empty, and a bit eerie. I'd definitely like to go there again when it is open during the summer.

We walked through the town, and it really is very different to Turku. It was extremely quiet, and pretty much deserted today, and seems to be very calm and peaceful. It probably is not the kind of place I would like to live in. I'd like to go there when the weather is better and there are more people around. It's one of the big tourist centres of Finland, so I expect it gets a lot busier at times. The buildings and harbour are pretty though, and I'm sure it looks a lot better during the summer.

I enjoyed going to a different place, and it was interesting to see somewhere so contrasting to Turku. It seems that every time I visit Naantali the weather fails me, but I'd certainly like to return there on a more pleasant day.

An excellent and surprising night

I was so bored and a bit lonely last night, I was worried about spending money. However, by 10pm I was talking to Emmi on Facebook, and we were both so bored and frustrated that we decided to just go out anyway. I was starting to think that, if I can't afford the rent anyway, another €40 on a good night out wasn't going to kill me. I'm so glad we didn't stay at home because I had a really good night, and now I'm in an excellent mood.
We met a lot of comedy characters last night. In Tinatuoppi various old men decided to make us to object of their affections, presumably because we were both the only women, and the only people under 50. I don't understand why Tinatuoppi has a lot of good looking, young customers during the day, and yet was filled with dodgy old men last night. We decided to leave fairly quickly. When we got outside, a very nice young man who had clearly ingested a lot of drugs invited us to go to Pori with him. Hmm. Perhaps not.
We moved on, and met two very nice ladies who love Stephen Fry. Excellent. I'm always very warm to people whose first words to me are "I like your piercing and you're really pretty." That's the kind of greeting I appreciate, as opposed to the kind of opening lines Finnish men use, such as "Beer is good" and "Are you German?" Those particular people also consider British people to have the best sense of humour in the world. The more I think about it, the more I realise that those women were definiely my kind of people.
Later we met Emmi's brother and his friends and went to Klubi. We went upstairs because the downstairs bar was so busy, and I was overjoyed to find it was EBM night! I've been wanting to find an EBM/goth club in Turku, but when I've asked others about that they haven't had any idea. I was starting to think that maybe that kind of thing would only be available in Helsinki. To be fair, this was a very small scale operation, but it was so nice to listen to that music and dance, just like I did a long time ago, before my life got a bit messed up and I was prevented from doing that kind of thing. I almost felt like I was back in Slimelight. It made me a bit sad, because I miss my friends and I miss those nights, but I think when I go back to London I'm definitely going to get back into dressing up and going out dancing like that. It used to be a pretty standard part of my social life, but I ended up losing it.
The best part is that Klubi has no entrance fee, so even if I'm completely broke I could just go there every Friday to dance! I had no idea they played that kind of music there, but I've only been there before on a Saturday, when they played quite normal indie stuff. I think there will be many return visits in store for me, and probably more dressing up. It's a shame I left most of my really nice "going out clothes" in England, as they seemed unnecessary, but I've still got some things. I'm really excited to have found this out, it was a very happy accident.
Now it's Saturday afternoon, I have an enormous blister on my heel and a bit of a headache, but I think that's a sign that things went very well last night.

Looking for a job

Yesterday I felt so ill that I didn't go to the employment agency, but I've been there now as I'm much better today. I have an appointment for Tuesday to get some help looking for work; their website is quite useless for me as the whole thing is available in English, except the job search. I'm a bit more optimistic now. I did have an alternative plan to get enough money to pay my rent, but that backfired. It probably would have caused more trouble though, so maybe that's a good thing. My landlady seems to be quite chilled out, so I hope that if I explain that I'm waiting to hear about benefits she'll be understanding.
The lady there also told me that when Kela have processed my application to be covered by them I can apply for unemployment benefits, which I hadn't thought of, I'd only considered the housing benefits. Technically that application should be acceptable, and I will hopefully get a letter about that next week. I wish I'd applied for all of this months ago, but as I said previously, no one tells you you need to do all this stuff, there's not enough information explaining what te necessary procedures are. Even Finnish people can't tell you that you should do all these things because they don't know either, none of this has ever applied to them so they've never had to find out.
Still a bit paranoid about what the outcome will be, hence why I'm looking for a job more actively than before. They were unable to help me in October because I didn't have a social security number at that stage, but as I do now it should be more successful. I wish I'd thought of going there before. I'd rather work than just live on benefits, but if that's how my rent will get paid I'll put up with it. I feel a bit calmer now, having done something to help my situation. I'm really worried about my rent, because all of these applications take time, but I hope that other people will be understanding. If all else fails I'll take advantage of the integration law, although, again, I'd prefer to have a job of some kind.