Giedre tyttö Ozista

And the winner is...

Guess, who won the 2nd prize in the TP Cross Country Women's Open race?

Yeeeaaah! Yeeeaaah! Its me! I was the 2nd!!! Of course, I shouldn't mention that there were only 4 women running in my category.. He he... But still, it was great to win, I really got adrenalin kicks as I was running, running much faster (and longer! 5.5km!!!) than I ever did before! Other 2 girls that won were Jacqueline and Susan, I met them while running around the reservoir and they became my "kind of" running mates. So its great that all 3 of us won the prizes!!! Jacqueline is really fast, no wonder that she came first. It was the first time that I participated in an event like that and definitely the first cup that I ever received from anywhere for anything!!! Our Design School was sluggish (or should I say "reserved"), as usual, when it comes to "participation", "volunteering", etc.. There were only 4 of us running. I guess, we're the most "opinionated", "individualist", "cool" of all the schools in TP. Here we all are:

Otherwise, Taku came and went to the new Zealand already. Kaj was so busy at work that we hardly had time to hang out together. Hopefully Taku will stay couple more days on her way back to Finland.

I hanged out with Taku on Thursday half a day. We went to this great Yogi organic vegetarian food place in Chinatown that Fity suggested few months ago and guess what?!? Fity herself came to have lunch in there too!!! This is surprising! Although Leijonakaupunki is quite small, for some reason, I don't often meet poeple that I know... Fity said that she discovered my blog googling for something about Desaru!! So now my fan circle is expanding in here too.. He he.. Oups, can't say anything bad about the guys anymore.. Unless in Finnish or Lithuanian :P

Taku studies Traditional Chinese Medicine (called TCM in here :) in Finland and she went super excited about all the herb shops in Chinatown. She's also cooking in a vegetarian restaurant in Helsinki, so at the end she whipped up this amazing salad for us with Kaj (would you like a recipe? I managed to capture and document it by now..:). Once again, it was so great to have someone visiting! Not only because of rye bread and lakritsi that people bring.. They also bring memories of life outside Leijonakaupunki, weird ways of thinking (he he.. because all our friends are hippies:) and it feels so refreshing...

Next weekend (the Easter weekend) we're going to Taman Negara nature reserve (in Malaysia) by "jungle train". I spent the whole day hunting for good deals and trips to anywhere and finally got tickets in Tanjong Pagar railway station. Funnily enough, this station, as well as the rails belong to Malaysia, although physically it is located in the Leijonakaupunki. There is some kind of unspoken/unwritten consensus about it between the countries, but it is a painful spot in their relations. Malaysia wants to upgrade it, but Leijonakaupunki takes the strategy of silent "non-coopearation".. Interesting..

Btw, yesterday we watched the "Ghandi" movie. I saw it many years ago with my mother (actually we were still in Soviet Union at that time, I think. It was shown in the movie theaters, because it depicted British colonialists as very evil + it was about the leader that was very close to the people. Few things that struck me then - how the British soldiers couldn't enter the crowd with their horses, because the horses wouldn't stump on the people, I remembered this so clearly for some reason (maybe because animals showed more "heart" than the humans?). Anyway, the movie struck me again, the power of the "non-violence" and the influence that one single man had on the masses, shielded just by overwhelming humanism of his heart. If you can, I would really recommend to watch that movie. It is healthy. Makes you a better person, I think.