Wednesday 30 March 2011

Sometimes we have moments of genuine existence. Those are when you fear you're not doing right by your life. And you vow to do something about it. You don't.

You don't really listen until you're about to die. But then you live and forget it all.

We pray in desperation and when granted wishes we thank the lord who made us desperate.

We kiss the hand that feeds us, the hand that wipes its own ass with our food.

They've told me if you wake up, if you walk down the street, if you meet someone, if you buy something, if you hear something, if you eat something,
if you live,
you have to do it with your heart and mind open.
And all the happiness of the world will fall in you.

Guess it's kind of a gradient.

Gabi is fucking awesome.

Monday 28 March 2011

Tips for IB students


I know a lot of kids all over the world doing the IB (International Baccalaureate), and as any normal IB kid, 40% of my conversations are about the IB and the exams.
Here are some tips from teachers, current students and past students:

  • Do not complete over 150 hours of CAS. It is unnecessary and not required, and you will not get any extra points but will only waste your time (unless it will benefit you in the exams).
  • Do your extended essay over the summer, everyone will tell you this. If not, good luck tearing your hair out.
  • No one understands TOK, so you don't have to either. Make sure to quote philosophers or experts in an area, relate personal experiences as well as use all Ways of Knowing and at least three Areas of Knowledge in your essay.
  • In your TOK presentation, make sure you understand the marking criteria because it is extremely easy to misunderstand them. If you are unsure, ask your teacher.
  • For your English unseen commentary, prose is usually easier to do since it is harder to misunderstand. Approach the text from as many angles as possible, and explain each one. You should discuss the setting, narrative, tone, writing style, chronology, plot and imagery (in an order similar to that one) perhaps dedicating a paragraph or two to each.
  • For your Biology exams, know your definitions. Sometimes you can fish a point or two simply by defining necessary terms even though you do not know the answer. For example: Describe homeostasis in relation to blood glucose concentration in humans. This question is worth 6 points, and although it does not ask to define homeostasis, you can get at least one point simply for defining homeostasis.
  • For History- know your dates and order of events. Also, for essay type questions make sure to write a very good introduction- 90% of examiners say they have already decided how good the essay will be based on the introduction!
  • Mathematics, memorise the formula booklet and some extra formulas. This is important as you will understand the formulas better than just recognising them, and you won't waste time looking for them in the booklet.
  • When answering a math question, write down all the formulas you think you might use in answering it. If you do not know how to answer the question, identify as many variables as possible because sometimes you get a point simply for stating the variables or plugging them into an equation!
  • Do not leave any question blank! However leave the ones you cannot answer to the end, where you have gotten the easy points out of the way.
  • Do not answer unnecessary questions!
  • For Visual Arts, your talking counts for a major part of your grade. Make sure you are extremely good at bullshitting and speaking with confidence.

Sunday 27 March 2011

The radio staggers against the backspace!

That Saturday began at 10am, when I woke up to hear my lovely mother, or something to that sort, screaming at my brother to get the fuck out of the shower, there's 5 other people in this house! Groggy and groaning, I lay in bed until I heard them all leave the house, my little brother had football practise or a basketball game or some drug deal he had to attend to that all my family except I, wished to see. Who knows. A shower where I stand for 15 minutes, 10 minutes past the allowed limit until my skin is burning pink from the heat, and then quickly dress myself and dash outside for a quick cigarette. With my book, I had a book. It's called Love Medicine and talks a lot about alcohol, sex and Indians. I love that book.

I saw some students on the school roof, some were reading and some were just sitting there. They had clothes on that I would not wear in my dreams, but then again I'm sure they wouldn't wear mine either. The bell went and they left, and they left and left a guitar behind. Some people are quite careless.

Then of course my family came back, after my reading of some alcoholic Indian sex, a cup of coffee and creation of cancer. When they come back it's like Charlie Sheen- you have one gear: "GO." Clean, cook, call bank, transfer money, clean, cook, check dishwasher, wash clothes, clean, forget something, eat, clean, empty dishwasher, finish laundry, breathe... and then realise you have to leave to town in 20 minutes and your hair's a mess and you're wearing sweatpants. Whisk on some clothes and slap on some slap and you're good to go, girl.

I've never been much of a material girl, I'll tell you that much. But when I walked in there and saw the sparkly floors and soft light, the people in suits and skirts, I understood why people like money. Of course you need to swat away a few of the 44 year old perverts and sweet talk the barmaid on your birthday to get some rosy drinks cause you're a rosy cheeked birthday girl.
In the end I wasted 90 euros, because I don't care much for money.

It's always a little surprising, or shocking, or gut-wrenching, to bump into someone you used to know. Then you feel a bit giddy and happy and you get those little crawling bugs in the pit of your stomach because let's face it, you're a tiny bit tipsy and all your insecurities sort of disappear, and you feel whatever you want to feel. And I felt happy. Until I realised it was a bit awkward. So then I became sad.

My taxi driver was an Indian-South African called Farid or Faarid or something. He has lived here in Holland for 16 years. He didn't speak much English, but he told me I was a good girl, going home on time like that and with about as much as a glass of wine in my system. He said I was pretty too. I said I lived in Johannesburg. He said it was a very bad place to live.

And then it was silent.



Tuesday 22 March 2011

Hi, I'm Bald.

I don't really care when people make fun of me. When it's about my hair though, there's a whole different story.
Once in a blue moon I receive a comment to the tune of "Oh my fucking god, you're bald" or "You have a bald spot, did you know that?"
No, I never noticed. Thank you.



It's not one of those things you can just laugh away and say, Oh yeah, I've had it since birth! Must be a defect!
It's not one of those things you can tell your friends during lunch amidst conversations about cute puppies and Gala dresses. It's not a horrendous accident when I was 3 years old that left me with second degree burns.
It's a fragile topic.

I know most of my friends are too nice to ask. I don't want to be the "careful or you'll end up bald like Kristiina"- line.
So I'll tell you, friend. So you don't wonder.

At the back/top of my head, there is a small patch of hair (I'll call it the Ghandara region, because I was just reading on architecture from there), and in the Ghandara region there is less hair than the rest of my head. Sometimes my hair parts at the edge or in the middle, leaving a line, and you can clearly tell my hair is more sparse there.
That's when you think "Oh my jolly roger, she's bald!"

Let's rewind to when I was 8. I had a stepmother called Baby, she was half Swedish and half Finnish. She had 14 dogs, she wore long skirts and never wore a bra, she had a short red bob and she weighed about 120kg. She also had a short temper, sometimes she would pick up our dogs and throw them across the room.
It's illegal to lay a hand on a child. The law says nothing of sticks, boomerangs, frying pans, being chased by dogs or of pulling hair.

You know what the worst part is?
When you can hear all the hair being ripped out of your head. You hear it inside your head. You can't even feel it anymore.
Most effective way is to grab some hair, her favourite was the Ghandara region, and then twist it until it's so tight that it all comes off. With time, your child will have no feeling in that spot. Nor will she have much hair.

It's all fine now, I don't really care any more. Life goes on, hair is hair and so on.

Oh baby baby baby, oh.


Tuesday 15 March 2011

Australia

You ever feel like when you meet someone and you really care for them they kind of steal away a piece of you? Then when you lose them, whether they move away, die, stop talking to you, or you stop talking to them, you lose that little piece. You look for anything to bring it back.

I've always been fairly honest. If I'm not comfortable around you, I don't talk to you and I don't really...care. If I am, I'll be honest. I say stuff to my friends like "yeah you're annoying" and "you're being an idiot" and "you're a dickhead." Which is why I don't understand when someone needs to pull a "Gossip Girl" and post their opinions anonymously. Or backstabbers. I love when liars get caught in their own lies. It's lovely watching as they slowly crumble down into a miserable pile of debris. Eat that, bitch.

A week or so ago I said I needed to fix things, and I decided to start..with my hair. Coward's way out I suppose. So my hair now is brown, which I like very much since I have green eyes. Thanks to a relatively mid-low self esteem though, all the "was better blonde" comments get to me. But then I figured, well it's done now, might as well enjoy it to the fullest.
Might get me laid.
But then again
no. No one I want.
Anymore.
I think.
Maybe.

When I turned 11 my dad took me to Perth, Australia. There I met my dad's cousin's daughter's stepson, who was 12. We went to a waterpark and made fun of older girls and their bikinis. I remember, "boobs are gross." Oh how I love tits now. We slid down and walked up millions of stairs, and didn't care about how many children pissed in the water and how many dirty girls on their period were there. We just drank our pink and purple slushies until I had an asthma attack.
My perfect day ended in the hospital.
It was nice there as well.
I remember a dog with one eye. I don't remember his name but I fed it chicken. It drooled all over me and I got an allergic reaction but it was the best day of my life. He was brown, I think it was a he, and his owner was a knockoff of Morticia Adams.
Those were the best days of my life.

Oh and Tom, HI!




Concerning the future... I'd rather be happy for a few years than do something boring and hard for the rest of my life.
That is all.

Friday 11 March 2011

Fuck you guys.

Hey, hi, I learnt a very valuable life lesson today.

Being nice gets you nowhere. 

If someone asks me for help and I'm capable of helping them and I have nothing against them, then I will, no questions asked. Since I can't handle awkward situations or disagreements I'll always try to fix them and be nice, "forgive and forget." Hi I'm Kristiina, I'm nice, unless I like you, then I make fun of you.
Worst one is, you may hurt me over and over and over but in the end I still give up, forget and make nice. You know what now?

Fuck you.

I might not be the brightest bulb in the lamp store, nor the prettiest, nor the funniest, nor the most entertaining, but I sure as fuck am not worth this. Always giving and giving and giving and doing and trying and making up and trying and trying and trying and getting slapped in the face.

Being nice gets you nowhere.
Being nice gets me nowhere.

So hey, break my heart, break it again, then one more time and I realise now why grown ups are so bitter and pessimistic. It's not "nice guys finish last" it's "nice people get used and abused." Sometimes you might even find someone to be nice, and then find out they're not. They turn out to be the most disrespectful, hurtful person you've ever met. A person who honestly doesn't care.
Well neither do I, but I did.

And then there's the friends, I like them too. The ones you talk to and smile with and laugh with, have dinner with sometimes. Help them with their work, because you can and you have nothing to lose. Why not? You're not bitter, because you don't expect anything in return.

But then you're not nice anymore, you're just stupid.

I've become stupid.




Tuesday 8 March 2011

Born Again Hooligan

I LO-

This "blog" as I dislike to call it, was created to be read by strangers, a few occasional close friends or perhaps another bored soul as bored as mine. Recently, as in, very recently, a few people from school found this "shit".

When things go wrong with me I generally hit the bottle so hard I smash it on my head and bleed to my toes, and I do shit I regret and I whisper fuckfuckfuck for a few days.


So at first I though oh well fuck, now I have to censor myself, I have to restrict what I say. I can't talk about sex and hate and love and the fucked up shit people do. 

I LO-

Sometimes I don't even know if I mean all the stuff I say, stringing words together like warts and wars and warlocks and wizards and whatever. This is not the inner workings of my mind, this is not. I'm like a rabbit on acid, hard horny and hella cute. No, not really.


I'm a girl, I want romance and I want sex but sometimes you can't have both. Sometimes you can't have either. But I love to talk of the twistedness of religion and about how fucked up it is how easy it is to convince people of the untruth.

But then I thought, this is the way I speak anyway. It's only different because now it's written down.

I mean I like white sheets and lace and roses and mirrors and soft light and tights and hotel rooms and tapestry, which I want more than just "a root." Yeah I'll do my best to pretend; I don't fit no gender roles fuck you guys, but sometimes I do.

When I was young I stole my stepmother's makeup. I waited for my parents to leave the house and snuck up to her bathroom. I loved the lipstick, just smothering it on, one colour on top of another. I then kissed the mirror, put the makeup back and left.

I LO-



Sometimes I don't want to go to university. I don't want to finish my degree, find a place, pay my debts, find a boyfriend I will settle for then fall pregnant after 2 weeks and have to marry him to raise the child in relative economic stability, and well you know how the story unfolds after that. I always feel like planned living doesn't feel so much like living, but I suppose it must be.

I was caught because of that kiss, only to be king again.

I LOVE IT.

Monday 7 March 2011

Haleigh Halie A Lie

Charlie Sheen is hilariously smart.


No idea if these are good enough or not!

Friday 4 March 2011

Repair Man

I've felt like my life is a bit of a...shambles lately. I dart around from one side of the room to the other, frantic little beady eyes flashing like strobe lights, lids closing and lips twitching- like. One day I feel fine the other I want to jump off the edge of the world if the world were still flat. This happens because I have let it happen, and I am the cause of it myself, or not all of it, but I let it go on.

I am fixing things, all of what bothers me. My family is one, and I've already started with that, earning their trust and perhaps, hopefully, soon they will like me again. It starts off with little things like Khukhu said, sitting with them to watch a film and smiling when they crack a joke regardless of whether it is amusing or not, and keeping my mouth shut when I wish to say something sarcastic. So far it is working well, and I'm not too miserable faking.

Another one is I need to work to get what I want. There is a friend I have lost that I want to get back. There is a friend I wish to re-friend. And so I will. Sometimes, like Khukhu said, all you need to do to fix things is be yourself and it falls into place. Sometimes. Yes, he is probably right in this case, but perhaps I need to let it shine a little more. A little more sunshine into your life.

I can do this, because I am Kristiina. I can get into universities I want to get into, as long as it is realistic. If I got it once, I can get it again.
Everyone gets a second chance, except at life.
So I cannot just sit around waiting for them to fall in my lap.
I have to... nudge things along.

And so I will.

Wednesday 2 March 2011

Documentaries to Watch

I can't remember the last time I made a "Documentaries to Watch" list, so here's one. There's a range of my favourite documentaries so far now, so read the descriptions if you're not sure you'd like it.

THIN
This documentary is, as the name suggests, centred on thin people. It focuses on 4 different women suffering from anorexia nervosa in the US. You get to see the reasons for their illness, the ridiculous things they say to convince themselves to not get better, their relationships with everyone and most of all how they are physically affected by the illness. It's a very good documentary on what happens when dieting goes too far.
Watch it for free: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/thin/

ZERO: AN INVESTIGATION INTO 9/11
Yes, a conspiracy theory documentary. What I liked about this one is that it does explore more points of view than just the American government story and the American conspiracy theorist story. It's also looking from the point of view from foreign architects, engineers, investigators, etc. which gives it a bit more credibility. A very interesting documentary to watch if you don't quite swallow the official story of 9/11.
Watch it for free: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/zero-an-investigation-into-911/

THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL?
Ah, you knew these were coming. Of course I have to include a few on religion, you know me guys. In this documentary Richard Dawkins argues why the world would be better off without religion.
Watch it for free: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-root-of-all-evil/

THE MOST HATED FAMILY IN AMERICA
This documentary is either enfuriating, or entertaining, I haven't exactly decided yet. Either way, it's an interesting to watch to see the most hated family in America, the most ridiculous belief system etc. in the United States, probably. These are the people who make me want to gag, but this documentary kept me glued to the screen.
Watch it for free: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-most-hated-family-in-america/

JESUS CAMP
The description to this would be similar to the one above.
Watch it for free: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-most-hated-family-in-america/

ANCIENT ALIENS
A sci-fi documentary exploring ancient figures and drawings and symbols that are close to our idea of aliens as well as other magnificent ancient structures that are, allegedly, created by aliens or non-humans.
Watch it for free: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/ancient-aliens/

ENEMIES OF REASON
Where Richard Dawkins investigates superstition and rationality when it comes to communication with the dead, liberals, healthcare, etc.
Watch it for free: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/enemies-reason/