Greetings! January 2006

Dear Friends,

I hope you are all well and that this year has started very well for you.
This has been an interesting month for me, I knoe I always say this same thing but it is true. That seems to be how Life is.. it is very interesting and rich!
The year started with a great new-year's party. I made few new year's promises, almost the same promises as last year.

The University didn't start right away , so I managed to have quite a long holiday, which was very nice. My parents were came back from India in early January and brought me a beautiful indian shirt and many stories to tell. With my brother we had been taking care of our family dog, Napoleon, while they were away.

During the holidays I was pondering which subjects I'd like to keep studying at spring-semester. Philosophy will be a natural thing to do, as it is still my major here. I decided to keep going with psychology that I started last fall. I wanted to study some new language, preferably french, but the courses were full, so I ended up choosing some new subject. I decided to try economics. For those who know me this might strike as a surprising choice. However, I have been interested about the "down'to-earth" matters of society and our planet for awhile now and I have wanted to understand why things are the way they are here. This led me to study politics and this is also a major reason why I have now decided to sit in the economics-lectures. We shall see how long I will manage stay there!

In the beginning of January I had a 4-day fasting period, during which I drank only juices. After that I had couple of days where I ate only soup. I had never done a fast for a this long time and I wanted to see how it would be.
My experience was both negative and positive. On the one hand, the fast seemed to make me more weak and irritated, at least in the beginning. But on the other hand, it made me slow down my rhytm. To stop and just sit. Also I did experience more peace and calm during the latter part of the fast-period. And it was great to eat again after that! The food tasted so nice! It was also interesting to notice how much more time I seemed to gain when I did not have to worry about cooking and eating. All in all, I am glad I tried it, but don't expect me to do this every second month! Perhaps I will do it again next January!

During this month we had our presidential elections in Finland. I started from a clear table, I was not sure about the candidate I would support in the beginning. I fluctuated between Tarja Halonen, our current president and the green-candidate, Heidi Hautala. I decided to support Tarja. The election was not settled in the first round as was expected. 'Kokoomus' ( that's the name of the party )- candidate Sauli Niinisto did better than many would've expected. Kokoomus is more of a right-wing party where as Tarja Halonen was the candidate of Social Democrats and the Left-wing party in Finland.
I decided to join Tarja Halonen's election-team. We did campaign-work both in Jyväskylä and Helsinki. It became a very tight election. Niinistö gained many votes when many voters of our prime minister Matti Vanhanen, who also represented a right-wing party ( 'Keskusta'), decided to support Niinistö when their own candidate didn't make it to second round. Vanhanen said that he would support Niinistö.
Despite this, Tarja Halonen did won! The marginal was not big though. Less than four percent. I think this was a good thing for Finland. I think Halonen stands for good things, has done good work and she has good relations to many world-leaders.

I also kept going in January with my meditation and yoga-practice. This brings very good balance to University-life. Meditation and prayer bring peace and insight to my life. Yoga does this too, but in a different way. I find yoga quite challenging.

There was also a big mind-body-spirit-festival, MinäOlen-messut, in Helsinki last weekend. I decided to participate. I like the atmosphere at that festival. There were many interesting lectures there and inspiring musicians! There was an artist called Iasos, who did a concert there. I loved that concert! The music was very peaceful, beautiful and meditative. Iasos had also done some amazing visual-stuff to go with the music.

My good friend Olavi released two albums this month. One with Joona Toivanen Trio ( That's a Blue Note- album by the way!), the album is called 'Frost'. I got it and it's a very good album! The other album is Olavi's own band Oddarrang's debut-album. I recommend both of those albums!

This month I also had an experience that I hopefully won't be repeating: The dentist pulled out all my wisdom-teeth! All four of them! The operations, there were two sessions, went quite smoothly, without any complications that is. I am still recovering from the second session. I wanted them to give me my teeth with me, if they stayed in one piece. They did, so I still have them. Not in my mouth, but still with me.

The weather here in Finland has been mostly cold. There have been some very cold days when the temperature has been reaching -30 at night-time. On the other hand there have been days when it has been close to zero.
I missed last winter because of my aussie-trip, so now I have tried to enjoy it again! So far, I have managed to enjoy it, most of the time.
One just has to dress very warm. And The sunny winter-days are very beautiful!

I wish you all lots of love! I hope you will have a great month! Let's keep in touch! If you have Skype or Messenger, let me know so we can have a chat some day!

Lots of love,
Anssi