20 år

Good old photobooth to celebrate my birthday; topshop petite cut-out dress (that makes me look like a real housewife of beverly hills) and che guevara's old vest

I turned twenty today. I had a high fever yesterday night, but today the sun is shining as coyly but beautifully as it does in Helsinki in Spring.

A bracelet and a ski-trip to the Alps. I'm quietly happy.

I've already achieved two marks off my bucket list (Feel accomplished, buy a white blazer) and I've still got three months left. I'm well on my way. Better than ever.

I feel like going out tonight, because when you get those rare moments when you beam, you need to share them with others. People who shine, even for a brief moment, subconsciously give it forward to others. It reflects so easily.

Now, some champagne and entertaining a few guests with stories (ranging from exciting to awkward to horrible) from London.

Well I learned to drink, and I learned to smoke and I learned to tell a dirty joke. If that's all there is then there's no point for me.

It's been a rollercoaster. I left early Sunday morning, woke up in the previous night's clothes, the taste of white wine still in my mouth. The airport in Helsinki was empty, but Heathrow was wide awake when the plane landed.

I stayed in Kensington and the streets were awake 24/7. The white houses formed a pretty backdrop for everything that goes on. And by everything, I mean everything.

During the flash visit I encountered London as I've never encountered it before. Only when someone congratulated me for choosing the right path I realized that this really is it. It really is real. From September onwards, I won't be one of those embarrassingly slow tourists who get baffled and confused when their Oyster cards won't work. I'm going to have a proper home there, things to call my own, a corner pub and a favourite club. I'm going to meet lovely people, inspiring people and people to fall in love with (just so you know, I'm talking about those handsome and clever curly-haired guys who were hanging around the campus...). I'm so excited I could die!

For the first time ever, in the airplane on the way to London, I had a flash of fearful thought: what if something happened and we crashed right now? I guess one tends to fear, when there's something to lose.

On great finds and on being yourself, whoever that might be

Leftover pictures from the years 2010-2011

"Be yourself is about the worst advice you can give to some people. However, what I've seen of you, I think it suits you perfectly. You're a beautiful person. You think about life: yourself, people around you, what's going on in the world.

You take time to examine who you really are. Although you might not have found the place for yourself, you keep searching. You have the guts to say: I will never fit in here, even if I try my hardest. Do not stop. I think you are well on your way to being your wonderful self, finding where you fit, where you are wanted and most importantly where you want to be. The road there is probably long and bumpy, but take the most out of it. . . .

Take chances, you'll grow."

This and a few parts that I left out of the quote were sent to me on the 30th of July, 2010. It's been a year and seven months since.

I found the whole thing hand-written in my diary, or one of those diaries I tried to keep and failed miserably. I still have no idea who wrote it.

If you are reading this, I want you to know that I found your text at the most crucial time ever. Thank you.

Just to let you know, I haven't stopped searching, and I might've found at least one place where I fit and where I am wanted. And, like you said, most importantly, where I want to be. I'm eager to find out if London is the next one.

The road has been long but I've taken chances, I've grown. Sometimes probably in the wrong direction and a perhaps a tiny bit crooked but just fine.

I no longer worry that much about being the one that quickly passes through other people's lives. I have found that not all the people I meet and get to know are ones I myself am willing to pull back and I don't expect everyone to do so with me anymore. I guess it's just plain old life. I'm afraid of slipping into the mentality of letting go of everyone too easily and deducing that it's only fair, though. I'm hoping to find a balance in that as well as in everything. That's called growing up, right?

I'm grateful that you sent what you'd written. I think messages like that should be sent to everyone, since I'm definitely not the only one worthy of encouragement. The most beautiful, talented and wonderful people struggle with the same things. And I'll tell you, it's a hell of a struggle.

PS: Look what yours truly got in the mail today; "The Globalization of World Politics - An introduction to international relations". This is what I'll be concentrating on until I leave for Copenhagen, where I will concentrate on things that you concentrate on when you're young and pretty and alive and free and all those clichéd things.

That's alright, that's okay, I'm alive

You know when there's that certain kind of wind or that certain kind of sky that makes you remember things? Tonight it was the deep blue sky and the traffic lights that made me think of Copenhagen and airports and wide streets and things to come.

I received my first subscription issue of the International Herald Tribune and some books for LSE and Houghton Street. It's almost spot-on six months until my home city is London. I feel like smiling like an idiot. Nothing dramatically positive has happened, it all just somehow feels right. Everything's going to be alright.

For a few hours everything has been in its right place. Time has been frozen for a while, right now I refuse to worry about London or fret about the job situation in Copenhagen.

I'm going to see Helsinki-Vantaa again sooner than I thought. I'm leaving early Sunday morning to make a flash visit to London, see where I'll be spending the next three years, try to fall in love with the place, try to see myself on a morning run in Hyde Park or staggering home tipsy with someone wonderful. I feel like it's going to go well.

Tomorrow things might be different but right now I feel sweet and strong and capable and lovely. I have achieved something already. And it feels overwhelming. Now it's time to take it further.

I started to write a real paper diary again, because it finally feels like this life is something worth writing about.

Vi skulle nog ha hamnat här ändå

Top to bottom: the sea and Louisiana, Micke and Toby and me and Roosa's place on Ingerslevsgade, Louisiana and tiny Roosa, new shoes from naked, drinks bartended by me in Vesterbro, making a white russian with Carl, Kastellet

I'd love to write it all down but det er ikke let. What I can say is that I haven't felt this free and beautiful and charming and loveable in a long time. When you feel free the words don't come easy. Genuine happiness isn't supposed to be written down.

French kissing in Copenhagen turned into hanging out at the bar after hours and talking about music in the only bar that was open in Nørrebro. Talking about music in Nørrebro quickly became drinking white wine on Nørrebrogade. The moment I wished the minutes would slow down was the moment I knew I had momentarily fallen in love with it all.

Vesterbro, Nørrebro, Christianshavn, Kastellet, Nordhavn.

The wind of change blew hard but soft in København.

Me 5 months ago, a day before graduation / Me 50 minutes ago, a day after getting an interview for the world's best university

Shoddy webcam pictures, but oh god.

Me then: confused, young, lost, disoriented, happy because of the graduation.

Me now: confused, young, lost, disoriented, fitter, thinner, happier.

Helsinki-Vantaa-LHR on the 5th, interview on the 7th, back to Helsinki on the 9th. I'm ecstatic but afraid that by writing this down I'll magically diminish my chances of making it.

Dear Cambridge, you've already taught me what it's like to cry out of sheer happiness, I'm in shock and I like you a lot.

Tonight: some wine and a good time.

I'm so happy I can't breathe.

Snart kommer vågorna, snart kommer Atlanten

I fought my way home at 5am, after eating mud cake, drinking a sangria-ish white wine mix and visiting the tiki bar. This city showed its friendly face, again.

I learned that P&K is a finnish-swedish abbreviation of puss och kram (from my tuesday night-acquaintance who I never thought I'd hear from again). Tuesday's nightly acquaintance almost convinced us to switch to a newly-opened horrible club with his charming but clumsy messages, but we stayed put, dancing and having conversations that ended with Have a good time in Indonesia and sometimes a bit of excessively friendly behavior.

Everything that's temporary feels fine. I can easily exchange a few smiles and laughs and talks when I know that the take-off is soon.

Things seem easy. Time to breathe, time to be. It seems like I'm learning something new every weekend, it seems like every change, even as little as cutting off hair is linked to something better. I think the cushioned playground- mentality is working fine.

It doesn't correlate

probably about a month before the summer trip - should've known that the t-shirt was some kind of a forecast...

"Si jamais tu viens à Paris..." a simple 20-minute conversation and an even simpler invite. I already feel like changing my plans all over again. A place to sleep in the 16ème; someone I only met once near the beach boulevards of Nice, suddenly willing to show me the parks and the fancy buildings of the neighborhood.

And for the first time in my life I felt a surrealistic, fleeting minute during which I wanted to phone someone whose last name I don't know, whose face I've almost forgotten and whose digits I definitely do not have, but with whom I briefly shared so much: alongside other things an encounter with this Parisian boy who lives in the 16ème.

I wanted so achingly to gush guesswhoinitiatedaconversationwithmejustnow to that half-stranger, like you do to your best friend when that annoyingly good-looking but brattish boy from that horrible bar last night calls you.

For a moment it felt like he would be the only one who would understand the thing completely and remember the oddly wonderful encounter in the nuit niçoise - the only one who would be able to laugh at it wholeheartedly for a moment and then look back on everything with fondness. And the feeling was true and right: he is the only one who would understand it as precisely as it deserves to be understood.

I quite obviously cannot phone him and it irrationally makes me want to cry.

The whole situation is nearly impossible to explain and translate into comprehensible and coherent text, but I just wanted to make a note-to-self to remind myself of this bizarrely wonderful moment when I realized a half-stranger on the other side of the world has a few memories that are replicas of mine.

It just feels surreal that one could be able to share such memories with a stranger.

And ladies and gentlemen, see - this is what traveling does to you: it does your head in, it spins you around, it plays games with your feelings, it confuses you.

And it gives you new friends who seem to stick by through months of not exchanging a word and who hold a hand out for you when you need it. And the other kind of friends, too, with whom you'll never shake hands again, but who stay with you, corkscrewed in your memories firm and tight, as to not get lost along the way.

(It's 1:36am now. Good night, sleep tight, try to stay loved and warm)

EBV infectious mononucleosis, Pfeiffer's disease, Filatov's disease or simple and sweet; kissing disease

Today's reading and lovely surprise guests: (beheaded) Kristiina and Roosa

I'm on sick leave, quite bedridden with mononucleosis, or kissing disease; kissing disease is such a tasteless name for it.

I guess love really kills then. Or at least makes you ill.

A Saturday and "The Road To Creativity"

Nine-to-five is no fun. Being inexplicably ill is no fun. Booking appointments to the doctor is no fun. Endless planning is fun, friends are fun, the adorable boy from your work is fun (although you know nothing about him except that he's got the same glasses as Allen Ginsberg, that he works down the corridor and that he happens to pass you every once in a while).

This Autumn has sent some of my most beloved friends away from where we used to share everything. Whether it be 173, 165 or 1937 kilometers and whether they're on their ambitious ways towards becoming journalists, photographers or beautiful people in general, they're way away.

Once in a while everyone seems to come back to be giddy about plans and prospects and the reality they're living right now and right here. Last Saturday afternoon that was slowly but surely turning into a breathtaking evening was one of these golden moments. "I like you all so much right now." and somehow it was the purest thing to say in that exact moment.

Still a few more struggles to go before my departure; still four paydays, forms, essays, ideas to toss around, Christmas, New Year's and birthdays. I guess I'll manage quite alright.