Goodbye Estonian Kroon

The kroon WAS the currency of ESTONIA ,
which was replaced by the euro on 1st January 2011.

For me kroon will always remain, as an icon of freedom, youth and progress.

THE KROON IS DEAD. LONG LIVE THE KROON!

Lusja otsib kodu

Varjupaiga töötajad räägivad, et Lusja on arg. Mina pole seda kunagi tähele pannud ja ta on mulle algusest saadik hea sõber olnud. Ta oli väga sõnakuulmatu, aga nüüd on võimalik teda juba pisut kontrollitavamaks muuta. Suudab istuda ja mitte väga pöörane olla enne kui jalutusrihm kaela klõpsatab. Kui enamus varjupaiga koeri ei pööra jalutajale mingit tähelepanu, siis Lusja teeb seda küll ja eriti aktiivseks muutub ta siis, kui talle teha mõned teistsugused liigutused või pisut hüpata. Siis on maru lahti. Mul juhtus see nädal nii, et kukkusin tema tuuritamise ajal lumehange pepuli. Samal ajal jooksis Lusja pika rihma otsas paremale ja vasakule mööda sisse sammutud rada, püüdsin ennast jalule saada. Ta käis ta paar korda minu juures jauramas, ning siis ma kuulsin liigutamise ajal raginat ja dressipükste pealmine riie rebenes puusast-põlveni lõhki. Suva nendest pükstest, naljakas oli ja koeral oli ka hea meel. Väga huvitav koer on ja vajab tegelejat peremeest.

Loe Lusja kohta lähemalt SIIT.

Uuest aastast loodan, et vähemad koerad peavad endale uut kodu otsima.

Santa Clauses

In my age you don't think much about seeing or meeting Santa Clause. It would be nice of course, but these things just don't happen like that. On second advent I decided to go to the town hall square to see the Christmas event with music and joy. During that week meeting of Santa Clauses took place and on that Sunday, 5th of December they finished their meeting, gave some speeches and were marching. There were two main Santa's. One is natural and one a bit, eee, artificial. Anyway for my great surprise I found myself suddenly in the arms of one Santa and heard him talking: "This little girl have been really good girl and I know she is taking the best photos, as she has a nice camera. She deserves a candy." Then he took a candy from his pocket and gave me, the second Santa didn't want to be less generous and did the same. So I got two hugs and two candies from Santa Clauses!!! Mmm wow! This event is definitely something stunning for me and I am glad to take something as nice with me from lovely 2010.

Granö Center - Villa Tammekann in Tartu

This is my favorite house in Tartu. I have never made it inside, but who knows maybe next year I will...

Situated in Tartu, the Granö Centre of the universities of Turku and Tartu was opened in April 2000. The Granö Centre is located in a house designed by Alvar Aalto in 1932 as the residence of Professor August Tammekann and his family. The Turku University Foundation purchased the building from the children of the family in 1998 and the Villa Tammekann was repaired following Alvar Aalto's original designs as closely as possible. The centre has been named after J. G. Granö, former rector of the University of Turku and professor of geography of the University of Tartu. J. G. Granö was one of six Finnish professors invited to Tartu in the early 1920's and he contributed greatly to further Finnish-Estonian university cooperation, founding, for example, the Finnish-Estonian school of geographical thought. His son, Fellow of the Academy of Finland, Olavi Granö was the initiator for establishing the cooperative centre for the universities of Turku and Tartu. (Granokeskus)
Read more from the link given above.

Across the street, through the park, from wonderful Villa Tammekann, there is something else which looks wonderful to eye.

Spice up your life

/...When you're feeling sad and low
We will take you where you gotta go
Smiling, dancing, everything is free
All you need is positivity

Colours of the world
Spice up your life
Every boy and every girl
Spice up your life
People of the world
Spice up your life
Aaahh!!!.../

"Spice up your life" Spice Girls

Ja eestlastele eesti keeles:

/...Kõik, mis sa teed,
teed kõik endale.
Su ees on miljon teed,
vaid mõtle iseendale.

Kõik, mis sa teed,
teed kõik endale.
Su sees on vastused,
su enda küsimustele.../

"Iseendale" Ines

Paul, kui nüüd järele mõelda, siis Inesega teeks ka fotostamist :)

Hands speak

While I was looking at these photos, they reminded me of a scene in a movie, where people who didn't belong to Italy realized that one should speak more with their hands. Actually I think instead it was the local guy who recommended them to use more their hands while talking. It was followed by a funny and really illustrative scene where they saw locals hand speaking in different situations. It was so much fun. So I tried to figure out what movie it was, after a minute, I realized it was "Eat, pray, love" with Julia Roberts' in the leading role. It was one of the most enjoyable parts in this movie. Whatever you think, but Estonians can also talk with their hands :P

Domus

Kõige ilusam ja kaunima karvaga koer varjupaigas. Kujult ja suuruselt täpselt paras hullamiseks, kallistamiseks ja mõnusaks kaaslaseks, tõesti ärgas ja sõbralik loom. Aga pidavat olema suhteliselt domineeriv, seega peaks omanikul olema iseloomu ja soovi ümberkasvatusega tegeleda. Pai ootab alati, aga parema meelega tahaks ikkagi uude koju.


Loe lisa SIIT.

Christmas Eve

I don't know about the rest of the world, but for the whole day it was snowing in Tartu and in the evening the storm grew stronger, so for those who had to drive, it was all pain. I happened to experience it as well and though it is hard to believe, I am cautious and expect the others to be also, as what I have learned that you can't fight with nature, as it always wins. It's the (unwritten?) law. Taxi drivers are another race and this is not their law, in my opinion for many reasons, which I am not going to point out now, but anyway one of them tried to act against the nature and happened to end his ride in a nice pile of snow. It seemed to me that the car was flying, like a huge butterfly in the snow. He was okay, but he had to take his time to get himself out from there or wait for the help, so he lost time and money, but because of what. He smiled at me and was a bit bewildered, but he knew he acted wrongly.
This story is so full of moral, oh my. BUT ALL IN ALL, dinner was excellent and more to come for Teele on one fine day :)

Dones lliures per una vida digna

There is a big trouble in our world with gender violence. In Spain for example, every day news let people know about another bloody crime, another horror story. Spain is a pretty violent country if to consider home violence for example, it is easy to get beaten at home. In every social class, even in different ethnic origins one can see how some couples are solving their discussions in the most drastic way. There are some education and protection plans by the Spanish government, also private organizations such as NGO's or TV Channels. Sometimes people just can't take it anymore and they take it to the streets, and hope for our attention standing against the violence, like in beautiful Barcelona, saying: "NO MORE, WE'RE NOT AFRAID."

Gaz-13

Chaika production consisted of two generations. The mark 1 Chaika, the GAZ M13, was produced from 1959 to 1981, and is the more famous and more numerous with more than 3,100 examples built during the 22 year production run. The Chaika GAZ M13 was visually a near-clone of the 1955 Packard Patrician and Mercury, with typical chrome-bedecked 1950s styling. The M13 was powered by a 195 horsepower (145 kW) 5.5L V8 and driven through a push-button automatic transmission of a similar design to the Chrysler Torque Flite unit. As a limousine-class car, Chaikas were available only to the Soviet government, and could not be purchased by the average citizens. Chaikas were one step down from the more prestigious ZIL limousines, and were issued to top professionals, party officials, scientists, academics, and other VIPs. For their larger size and more powerful V8, Chaikas were also ordered in some quantity by the KGB. Nikita Khrushchev, although entitled to a ZIL, was known to prefer Chaikas, and kept an M13 at his summer dacha. Top speed was 99 mph (158 km/h). Although most Chaikas were sedans, both generations were also produced in 4-door convertible form, primarily for parade use. (Wikipedia.org)

Jay-Z & Outkast

Jay-Z on Decoded

When you're famous and say you're writing a book, people assume that it's an autobiography--I was born here, raised there, suffered this, loved that, lost it all, got it back, the end. But that's not what this is. I've never been a linear thinker, which is something you can see in my rhymes. They follow the jumpy logic of poetry and emotion, not the straight line of careful prose. My book is like that, too.

Decoded is first and foremost, a book of rhymes, which is ironic because I don't actually write my rhymes--they come to me in my head and I record them. The book is packed with the stories from my life that are the foundation of my lyrics--stories about coming up in the streets of Brooklyn in the 80's and 90's, stories about becoming an artist and entrepreneur and discovering worlds that I never dreamed existed when I was a kid. But it always comes back to the rhymes. There's poetry in hip-hop lyrics--not just mine, but in the work of all the great hip-hop artists, from KRS-One and Rakim to Biggie and Pac to a hundred emcees on a hundred corners all over the world that you've never heard of. The magic of rap is in the way it can take the most specific experience, from individual lives in unlikely places, and turn them into art that can be embraced by the whole world. Decoded is a book about one of those specific lives--mine--and will show you how the things I've experienced and observed have made their way into the art I've created. It's also about how my work is sometimes not about my life at all, but about pushing the boundaries of what I can express through the poetry of rap--trying to use words to find fresh angles into emotions that we all share, which is the hidden mission in even the hardest hip-hop. Decoded is a book about some of my favorite songs--songs that I unpack and explain and surround with narratives about what inspired them--but behind the rhymes is the truest story of my life. (Amazon.com)

doomsdayer520 on Big Boi & Dre Present Outkast

In an interview for Spin magazine earlier this year, OutKast's Dre3000 said that hip-hoppers, funkers, and rockers can all dig OutKast. He concluded by saying "Aliens dig us too." Well, he was right about that. I'm a heavy rocker by nature, with a real sickness for classic funk, and I'm attracted to acts that can bend the boundaries between different genres. I'm also interested in rappers who put a lot of effort into creating the musical aspect of their sound, like Dr. Dre or Public Enemy. For all these reasons, I just love OutKast. These guys aren't the best rappers in the world, but they are meticulous with their musical constructions and their lyrics are very clever and often insightful. For their entire four-album career, OutKast has successfully married basic hip-hop to Southern soul and classic funk (mostly the George Clinton variety, of which their knowledge is exhaustive), and this has given them a distinct and impressive sound. This musical expertise and creativity is OutKast's true strength. If you don't have all their original albums, this collection is a great representative sample, although fans may wonder why there is only one song form the 1996 album *ATLiens* (curiously, the liner notes incorrectly state that there are two). The three brand new tracks here are not too impressive either, and are basically experiments in P-Funksmanship. But other than those few weaknesses, you get the cream of the OutKast crop, with classics such as "Ms. Jackson," "Rosa Parks," "Player's Ball," and a good selection of their best album cuts. (Amazon.com)


Some days just are better than the others. Thank you for the music.

Kene Vernik

Just thinking out loud, that it would be nice if Kene would agree with a short photography session with me. I think she is a bit underrated artist and after Eesti Laul has been out of the orbit. Or maybe I have been out of the orbit. Maybe she has been working hard on her album...but what I found out that she will participate in next year's Eesti Laul also, so whatever the future brings.

Human and environment

Although I find the survey's about human and environment very interesting, I am not going to write about it with my own words, but instead quote from "Man, Space and Environment. Concepts in Contemporary Human Geography." by Paul Ward English and Robert C. Mayfield: "Environmental perception stresses human's "images" of their surroundings as a key to unraveling the nature of man-land transactions."

Also quoting: "Geography, Perception, and the Behavioral Environment" by Joseph Sonnenfeld: "The behavioral environment can be defined as that part of the environment of which the individual is aware which also elicits a behavioral response or toward which a behavior is directed, such as results in a conscious utilization or transformation of environment."


Hopefully more to come in the future.

Tiitus otsib kodu

Tiitus ongi sõbralik ja lustakas nagu kirjelduses seisab. Tahab väga jalutada ja pai ning kammida. Jalutada oskab ja oma suuruse tõttu on väga mõnus kaaslane. Hetkel on karvavahetusaeg ja seetõttu näeb ta natuke armetu välja. Üks muhuke on tal ka pea peal, vasema kõrva lähedal, mis tõsist loomasõpra ilmselt ei hirmuta.

Loe lähemalt SIIT.

Järgmisel laupäeval uus koer.

Silence is golden

/...Silence is golden, but my eyes still see
Silence is golden, golden, but my eyes still see

Talking is cheap people follow like sheep
Even though there is no where to go
How could she tell he deceived her so well
Pity she'll be the last one to know.../

Frankie Valli "Silence is golden"

Red Iceland?

Now some months after leaving Iceland I somehow started to think about the colors of clothing, which were worn there. I realized that the country was quite modest in colors as it is modest by the number of the inhabitants. Blue, gray, white, black, green and all in dark ways...but not much red, yellow, orange. I never thought about it before, as I was wearing the same dark colors, yet I used a red FjällRäven jacket left there by a South Korean girl. But what I like is that no matter to my memories, red happened and the people who were wearing it were people from Pakistan, Estonia, The Netherlands and of course from Iceland....Free your mind.

Eat porridge!

Porridge with lots of butter....mmmmm!

In the countryside

I think most of the people have or know somebody in the countryside. A place we could call our own, when we were little and spending our summer holiday's at the grandparents'. People grow up and people die, but the meaning of the place remains the same, of course it gets old too, as trees fall down, grass grows higher, wood rots, which makes houses collapse... Even if there are no more houses, trees etc to see, then there are probably photographs to remind us these places.
Photography is unique.
Use your camera.

Smoothie

I don't think that this is only proper during the summer, but also in winter. We do not have to cool ourselves down now with the burst of a coldish liquid, but we need the vitamin's from it. The drink gives us a burst of energy through what we need - fresh fruits. Mix couple of bananas, few pears, add an orange and half glass of pineapple juice and half glass of milk, to get the smoothness, and it's ready. Smoothie.