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jukkahooThe Rules:
1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."
2. I will respond by asking you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will post the answers to the questions (and the questions themselves) on your blog.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post. (or a separate post, but not too long after. Be honest here, people!)
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.
Here is![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jophan
1. What food or drink did you miss the most when you lived in the US?
The first foodstuff that I remember to have started missing was decent chocolate. I seemed to have a general "problem" with American chocolates. There were tons of different sorts of the stuff, but somehow they all tasted wrong. When our friends and family started to send us some Good Old Karl Fazer Blue, my craving was satisfied. But when I found that our large grocery store had exhorbiantly expensive boxes of Fazer's chocolate sweets, this problem was solved.
However, The REAL answer to this question is ruisleipä. Americans are evidently completely unable to bake a decent rye bread. I'm not exactly what you'd call a ruisleipä-person, but after a while, the white stuff that was mostly fluff and sugar started to irritate me. I think that after returning back home to Finland, for the first month or so we ate mostly rye bread.
I don't think that there was any specific drink I missed. I'm a soft drink person and if something the good people of USofA are capable of manufacturing, it's soda.
And bheer.
2. Has your outlook on life changed after your serious illness last year? If yes, in what ways?
Yes.
Ah, a longer answer is deemed necessary.
I didn't have an epiphany or anything resembling a religious experience, but I did realise my own mortality a LOT more vividly than ever before. I think also that I have had this fear of dying all along, but after the big C-scare, I embraced life more fully than ever before.
Not that I have developed this great need to experience more and do all kinds of things one is supposed to do after this kind of a life-changing experience, no. I think that the whole shebang has just made me a lot more open and ready/willing to embrace new and different kind of things. It has solidified my notion that you can and should make fun of everything (but not necessarily everywhere). I don't think that I've become any "funnier", though. What I do think I have gained, is a greater sense of freedom of expressing myself.
3. Why don't you and Sari come and visit us sometime?
Money and cats.
Oh, perhaps not the answer you were looking for. We'd LOVE to come and visit you good people of Storvreta. I hope that we'd be able to accomplish something this year, see later entry.
As to the short version: money is scarce and you have them cats and I am really allergic to them. But I'm certain that I could cope with it for a period of time. So why don't we do something about this?
4. If you weren't restricted by lack of money, what five foreign cons would you attend this year?
Ah, money again... I think that the first two cons have already passed me this year. I'd love to go to Eastercons and hopefully some day I'm able to do so. I'd love to have been able to attend Eastercon or Lunacon or Boskone. I liked the atmosphere at Rye (Lunacon 2002) a lot and Boskone was on my short list of American cons when we lived there. The one American con I'd really like to go is Readercon. That and World Fantasy convention are two notable cons I will attend before this decade is over.
However, I hope to be able to attend three such cons that I'd like to go: Worldcon, Swecon and Snorfcon. We're both going to Glasgow, but as to Göteborg and Uppsala... it's a question of budget. Swecon is something I and Ben and Tero discussed about two weeks back, and the deal there would more or less have to include a nice local fan/fen who'd be willing to accommodate three amicable Finns. Or a very cheap lodging. Emphasis on "cheap". And same goes with Uppsala. You wouldn't be interested in accommodating a friendly Finn and his charming wife, who could thus be encouraged to attend this mysterious meeting, even though she thinks all this "smoffing" is extremely silly and unfunny? But she likes Uppsala and you people.
The bolded ones are the five cons I'd attend this year, if money would be no option. Three out of five doesn't sound too bad, I hope this happens.
5. What got you hooked on science fiction?
This is something I've had difficulty of explaining to some people, who obstinately think that since I read and talk quite a lot about fantasy, that I'm not "really" a sf-person now or originally. My first genre-books may have been fantastical: Narnia and Dragonmountain (as the original translation of The Hobbit was in Finnish), but when I realised that there were different categories of literature and not just the books I like or dislike, I discovered Science Fiction and realised that THAT was the thing that I want to read for the rest of my life.
But there was a small detour I took first. Because at first I thought that I wanted to be an astronomer or something of that ilk. I thought that it was the space exploration and telescopes and sun's corona and comets and meteoroids and moons of Jupiter, that I found interesting. I borrowed a fair amount of technical and engineer literature from libraries at an far too young an age; I went and saw a whole bunch of URSA's lectures and showings; I even learned all kinds of stuff about planets and moons etc I seem to have completely forgotten. Until I realised it was the setting and the adding of fiction to science, that interested me. And not the hard stuff: not Hoyle or Clement or Robert L. Forward with his Dragon's Egg. No, what I liked was the Unknown and the Unbelievable. Not the nuts and bolts, but the robots and spaceships, emotions and wanderlust. The intoxicating juice of Sense of Wonder!
1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."
2. I will respond by asking you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will post the answers to the questions (and the questions themselves) on your blog.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post. (or a separate post, but not too long after. Be honest here, people!)
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.
Here is
jophan1. What food or drink did you miss the most when you lived in the US?
The first foodstuff that I remember to have started missing was decent chocolate. I seemed to have a general "problem" with American chocolates. There were tons of different sorts of the stuff, but somehow they all tasted wrong. When our friends and family started to send us some Good Old Karl Fazer Blue, my craving was satisfied. But when I found that our large grocery store had exhorbiantly expensive boxes of Fazer's chocolate sweets, this problem was solved.
However, The REAL answer to this question is ruisleipä. Americans are evidently completely unable to bake a decent rye bread. I'm not exactly what you'd call a ruisleipä-person, but after a while, the white stuff that was mostly fluff and sugar started to irritate me. I think that after returning back home to Finland, for the first month or so we ate mostly rye bread.
I don't think that there was any specific drink I missed. I'm a soft drink person and if something the good people of USofA are capable of manufacturing, it's soda.
And bheer.
2. Has your outlook on life changed after your serious illness last year? If yes, in what ways?
Yes.
Ah, a longer answer is deemed necessary.
I didn't have an epiphany or anything resembling a religious experience, but I did realise my own mortality a LOT more vividly than ever before. I think also that I have had this fear of dying all along, but after the big C-scare, I embraced life more fully than ever before.
Not that I have developed this great need to experience more and do all kinds of things one is supposed to do after this kind of a life-changing experience, no. I think that the whole shebang has just made me a lot more open and ready/willing to embrace new and different kind of things. It has solidified my notion that you can and should make fun of everything (but not necessarily everywhere). I don't think that I've become any "funnier", though. What I do think I have gained, is a greater sense of freedom of expressing myself.
3. Why don't you and Sari come and visit us sometime?
Money and cats.
Oh, perhaps not the answer you were looking for. We'd LOVE to come and visit you good people of Storvreta. I hope that we'd be able to accomplish something this year, see later entry.
As to the short version: money is scarce and you have them cats and I am really allergic to them. But I'm certain that I could cope with it for a period of time. So why don't we do something about this?
4. If you weren't restricted by lack of money, what five foreign cons would you attend this year?
Ah, money again... I think that the first two cons have already passed me this year. I'd love to go to Eastercons and hopefully some day I'm able to do so. I'd love to have been able to attend Eastercon or Lunacon or Boskone. I liked the atmosphere at Rye (Lunacon 2002) a lot and Boskone was on my short list of American cons when we lived there. The one American con I'd really like to go is Readercon. That and World Fantasy convention are two notable cons I will attend before this decade is over.
However, I hope to be able to attend three such cons that I'd like to go: Worldcon, Swecon and Snorfcon. We're both going to Glasgow, but as to Göteborg and Uppsala... it's a question of budget. Swecon is something I and Ben and Tero discussed about two weeks back, and the deal there would more or less have to include a nice local fan/fen who'd be willing to accommodate three amicable Finns. Or a very cheap lodging. Emphasis on "cheap". And same goes with Uppsala. You wouldn't be interested in accommodating a friendly Finn and his charming wife, who could thus be encouraged to attend this mysterious meeting, even though she thinks all this "smoffing" is extremely silly and unfunny? But she likes Uppsala and you people.
The bolded ones are the five cons I'd attend this year, if money would be no option. Three out of five doesn't sound too bad, I hope this happens.
5. What got you hooked on science fiction?
This is something I've had difficulty of explaining to some people, who obstinately think that since I read and talk quite a lot about fantasy, that I'm not "really" a sf-person now or originally. My first genre-books may have been fantastical: Narnia and Dragonmountain (as the original translation of The Hobbit was in Finnish), but when I realised that there were different categories of literature and not just the books I like or dislike, I discovered Science Fiction and realised that THAT was the thing that I want to read for the rest of my life.
But there was a small detour I took first. Because at first I thought that I wanted to be an astronomer or something of that ilk. I thought that it was the space exploration and telescopes and sun's corona and comets and meteoroids and moons of Jupiter, that I found interesting. I borrowed a fair amount of technical and engineer literature from libraries at an far too young an age; I went and saw a whole bunch of URSA's lectures and showings; I even learned all kinds of stuff about planets and moons etc I seem to have completely forgotten. Until I realised it was the setting and the adding of fiction to science, that interested me. And not the hard stuff: not Hoyle or Clement or Robert L. Forward with his Dragon's Egg. No, what I liked was the Unknown and the Unbelievable. Not the nuts and bolts, but the robots and spaceships, emotions and wanderlust. The intoxicating juice of Sense of Wonder!
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no subject
Date: 2005-04-04 04:19 am (UTC)> wife, who could thus be encouraged to attend this mysterious meeting, even
> though she thinks all this "smoffing" is extremely silly and unfunny?
No, we would, we would!! I am not particularly likely to attend snorfcon in any case, unless Sari makes me, so bring your charming wife and come here!
We've had two different cat allergic people staying with us for a week or ten days, and both of them have returned here for new visits and seemed to cope fairly well with the cats. My sister who is also allergic to the critters tells me that ours are less sneeze-inducing than other specimens she's encountered. Doubtless cos they are so darn talented.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-06 06:05 am (UTC)"Vill du hellre våldgästa någon vänlig Göteborgsfan? Hör av dig till oss, så skall vi försöka förmedla kontakten."
-- http://web.comhem.se/~u31142612/hotell.htm
våldgästa = stay at a place by means of force, here used jokingly
no subject
Date: 2005-04-06 04:42 pm (UTC)Reading yes, writing no
Date: 2005-04-25 12:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-06 04:40 pm (UTC)We visited friends country house few years back and I slept in the shed/outbuilding (not outhouse though) and was a fairly ill for few days after that. Same thing with other friends summer cottage. Two cats in both cases and I spent relatively little time with the felines and quite a lot time outside. As said, I'm *very* allergic, but if you say your specimens are so darn talented, I'd be more than happy to accept the invitation and endure. And I think I speak for Sari, too.
The thing is more about money than cats, really. Worldcon is going to debilitate our budget completely, but a reasonably priced ferrytrip could possibly be within the realm of possibility in November. We will gove this a serious thought, as it'd very nice to see how you people live and spend a little quality time with our favourite Swedes.