in jallu's words: Gefeliciteerd, you're always 21

I don't need to worry about having a supervisor on a Swedish boat cruise anymore, but probably I will not be winning free cruises now.

I can get in a bar in the US, but most likely I will not be visiting that place anytime soon. Unless I go to Canada and cross the boarder.

Anyways, country number four to celebrate my birthday. The Philippines, Finland, Sweden and now The Netherlands. Hope to spend it next year in a new country, if that happens, then something had gone right. Well, soon we will see, since it feels like yesterday, when I pretended to be a juggling bartender in bar Shakers.

pro

Birthday a day, when people give presents to comfort the celebrant for aging. December first, "world AIDS day" and this time "hug a Finn day" too. I did hug a Finn a day before and after, but on the actual day they fled to the forest.

Beginning of the end of the year started with watching Pan's labyrinth with my flat mate Judit. In the middle of the film, after midnight my other flat mates came in the room and started singing; a good mood to go to sleep in. Not too glad to spend half of the day at school, but I maintained the good mood by listening to Ace of Base and reading people's b-day wishes on Facebook. It was also time to change my ringtone into the Coca-Cola one.

I did a small test on Facebook by not letting people post on my wall. The result was that this time there were less wishes; maybe some people have realized that it is more or less fake to wish a half stranger happy birthday or a thing called "inbox" is unfamiliar. That leads to a theory of people posting something in someone's wall to just draw attention. Just talking in general, don't you dear reader get offended. Most of the wishes were written in one of my posts, then in my pictures and inbox. One actually tagged me in a post, which I thought was creative, congrats! Social media, an interesting thing, isn't it? Perhaps I should focus my thesis on it.

After school it was time to go home. A present was waiting for me on my pillow; Alice had bought me something, firstly I was happy, because it made my day better, then worried when I noticed it was a CD (over a 100 CDs back home and having a similar music taste with Alice made the chances of owning the CD already), but in the end relieved, when it happened to be a 2CD album of Radiohead's greatest hits. AAAAA.

grazie alice <3

Instead of having Indian dinner and going bowling, I decided to grant myself with a day of relaxation. Didn't turn out to be a success, since school work for the next day were slapping me in the face. However, doing groceries with flat mates in the new Jumbo close to our house was believe it or not, nice X 100. Thinking about what food to buy, keeps your thoughts somewhere else.

Already riding our bikes there was a lot of fun. All of them yelling how cold it was and only because of me they had to suffer now. Take that as a compliment XX. And yes there is usually snow during my b-day, was amazed of that happening in a country of rain, how lucky.

the weather followed from finland

One way to lure them there was the free food what we were about to get, but not really. Only tea and coffee what you can normally get in some of the grocery stores. However, when paying our groceries we did get an apple pie! Guess, the Dutch are not that cheap as they say.

party in jumbo

Rest of the evening I spent with articles to be read for the next day and practising our pitch, but at the same time enjoying the delicious apple cake and Franziskaner brought straight from Germany! People wishing earlier have a nice birthday in Jumbo, well I did.


mmm

mmm

The next day school from 9-17; our film idea got a green light and the last hours I slept in the editing room, trying to recharge batteries for the evening. With Troy we bought snacks and drinks for our combined b-day party, in which we expected to have about 30-40 people. Stress, stress, stress.

With the help of Judit and Nuria the walls got some life. They also made tasty brownies, thanks mmm. People were late, as always, (more food for us). Also Troy was late, eventhough I told him three times not to be late for his own party. There you have it; reminding people more than once makes them forget.

gracias judit & nuria

Cool indie music list with Spanish music. Janne bringing a special box of world of beers. Dutch people giving lovely presents. Dancing with woolen socks in a cottage. Offering self-made Fisu (eww.) Quiz with random questions e.g. what did Jaleh do during a school trip to Helsinki? Throw up several times, because of a small unknown gift from Spain! Yup people had fun.