Vengeance (spoilers)

Read Vengeance by George Jonas. That's the story of Israel's operation Wrath of God - revenge on the terrorists who massacred Israeli athletes during the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. This is the book that the movie Munich was based on, and quite a bit more interesting than the movie. More details, some of the such that I would consider them unrealistic if I ran into them in a role-playing game.

A note to self:

If I ever choose the retain the services of an assassin, even a reasonably decent and upstanding assassin, I shall not:

1. Try to force him or her to work after he or she decides to resign,
2. Steal his or her back pay,
3. Threaten his or her child.

I find it incredible someone would do all that to an assassin. In fact I can't imagine doing all that even to a gardener.

Yes, I realize that the book was written based on the personal account of Avner (the assassination team leader), and by the time it was written he was pretty disgruntled, but if I had an assassination team of my own, I would certainly make sure that the leader and the rest of the team are pretty damn well gruntled.

My mom, the nature lover

"I don't think there is a lot of birch pollen here. Might be linden or maple or whatever. Are you allergic to them?"

"Like I know what they are..."

"You must know maple. It has leaves like that."

"Wow, that looks sort of like the Canadian flag, doesn't it?"

"Look at the exotic bird! Wow, look at the tail! It's long and kind of bluish!"

"It's a magpie."

"So that's what they look like! Haven't I seen one before?"

"Yeah, last year in China."

"Look, look! That dog stretches, just like a human! I didn't know they could do that!"

For those who don't know: she has lived all her life in places that had both maples and magpies. And dogs, too.

What do the following organizations have in common, once again?

The previous one is here.

The list is as follows: Arabikansojen ystävyysseura, Aseistakieltäytyjäliitto, Helsingin Sadankomitea, Helsingin yliopiston Sitoutumaton vasemmisto, Irakilaisten pakolaisten kv-federaation Suomen osasto, Irakin naisten yhdistys Suomessa, Irakin ja Iranin työväen kommunistisen puolueen Suomen osasto, Kommunistinen nuorisoliitto, Loviisan rauhanfoorumi, Lääkärin sosiaalinen vastuu, Maan ystävät, Naiset rauhan puolesta, Naisten kansainvälinen rauhan ja vapauden liitto - Suomen osasto, Pand - Taiteilijat rauhan puolesta, SKP, Sosialidemokraattiset nuoret, Sosialistiliitto, Suomen demokraattiset lakimiehet - DEMLA, Suomen kristillinen rauhanliike, Suomen rauhanliitto - YK-yhdistys ry, Suomen rauhanpuolustajat, Vasemmistonuoret, Vihreät nuoret ja opiskelijat.

These are the groups that have organized the big demonstration against the war in Iraq in Helsinki on 15.2.2003.

Now I decided to find out how they feel about the current carnage in Syria. Judging from their web pages, they don't give a flying fuck, except for Arabikansojen ystävyysseura who at least mentioned it. Not that really I blame them, I don't either, and I don't see what the Green party or the people who are against the conscription have to do with foreign wars anyway.

Back from Germany

Been on a much-needed vacation (you know you really need a vacation when you passport picture starts crying after looking at you). Berlin and Cologne, primarily, but also Potsdam, Dresden, Lübeck, Hamburg, Aachen, Düsseldorf, Koblenz and a bit of Rhine valley on day trips.


Sorry about not visiting any of my German friends, and not-German friends living in Germany. It was just not possible with my parents on a mission to see all Germany in two weeks.

Germany is still very pretty. Rhine valley especially so.

Berlin is not pretty at all, ugly as hell in fact, but a very pleasant place to be in, pretty much the only place in Germany where I just want to hang out and not look at the historical monuments. German architectural neo-Classicism sucks ass. OK, let's face it: everyone's architectural neo-Classicism sucks ass. There is just too damn much of it in Berlin. Still loved the city, though. Especially Prenzlauer Berg and Hackescher Markt. Gonna visit there again.

Potsdam was pretty but blah. Dresden was much lovelier than its pictures. Lübeck was just as lovely as the pictures of it. Whatever I saw of Hamburg was nuce, but I didn't see much. Cologne has the loveliest cathedral ever, and really nice romanesque churches, and a small but very pretty old town. They also have a philarmonic hall build underground by some morons, and people telling other people not to walk on top of it during concerts - I am not kidding. Aachen was great, Düsseldorf old town nice, and Koblenz good too. The Rhine valley was wet, and so, I suppose, was the Rhine.

Saw our local relatives. They have changed a bit, especially the one who was 2 hen I last saw him, and is now 26. Was nice to get reacquainted.

In Germany trains rarely ran on time, and waiters forgot to bring stuff all the time. I am surprised - it didn't use to be like that. Also, they are somewhat short on internet, very few free public hotspots. A local SIM card helped a bit.

Been to a wine festival in Cologne. Lots of nice sweet wines, dry wines didn't impress me. Neither did the beer. OTOH, all the weird shandy-type drinks in Berlin were a really pleasant surprise.

Gonna have some shandy now.

Toulouse shootings

I wanted to write something not-too-cynical on the Toulouse shootings, and I totally failed. But not writing anything at all feels pretty bad too.

 When I was much younger I wondered why so many Jewish people grow so cynical when they grow older. Nowadays I use the word "experienced".

 Last September I wondered if there still is a temple somewhere where you don't have to go through a metal detector, and whether it would be nice to visit one. I guess I got my answer.

 Also reminded me of a Mark Steyn's post where he says that almost every time any terrorism-like trouble is going on, somebody named Mohammed is involved. Although, to be fair, I do recall some trouble last summer where the only person invovled was named Anders.

Hey, check this out

Bäckman has published my translation, without any attribution of course. Rimma's original capitalization disappeared though.

Rimma Salonen's appeal to the Russian people

This is a translation of Rimma Salonen's appeal to the Russian people. The original is here (SAFKA's blog), in Russian, text and video, posted by Johan Bäckman (people should know their heroes). The capitalization is Salonen's, and so is, obviously, the content and the degree of sanity.

Rimma Salonen and Johan Bäckman were both running for Eduskunta in 2011 (Suomen Työväenpuolue STP), getting 16 an 36 votes, respectively.


I would like to ask for help from Russia, and in particular from the "Young Guard", because the situation with my child in Finland has not improved for three years, but quite the contrary - the child is still being isolated from the mother, and I am being openly blackmailed by limiting my contact with my son, Anton. Convinced of the bias of the Finnish justice, I have no illusions about my possibilities of resolving the issue through legal channels in Finland. The President of Russia has repeatedly emphasized that Russia will protect its citizens, wherever they are. Anton and I are citizens of Russia, trapped in a hopeless situation, my son was smuggled away from Russian, depriving the child of its mother and a happy childhood. I am asking the Young Guard to help me to restore justice. I am very grateful to the activists of the Young Guard for their support, and I hope that together we can defend the rights of Russian citizens and legal right of Russian mothers and children to family life.

On April 12 it will be exactly three years since the tragedy of my Russian family. This day was like the first ring of a bell. With the theft of Anton a terrible process started all over the West. They started to steal Russian children in all the countries.

Today the Russian mothers from Germany, Norway, New Zealand, France, and many, many countries turn to me. Anton became a kind of symbol - the tragedy of the Russian families in the West.
3 years ago the third world Hunt for Russian children started.

Russia's strong and clear position on this issueis necessary for the salvation of Russia's future - our children. First of all, in order to stop this wanton outrage of the western child services, under cover of which the worldwide battle for the healthy Russian genes is being waged.

For 3 years I've been in mourning. For 3 years I've been struggling. 3 years ago was a tragic day for the whole of Russia. If today Russia does not wake up, then the tomorrow they'll steal your child, and yours, many children, every child. Who among Russian children will be next - that's the question.

The process of stealing Russian children under any pretext is gaining momentum in Finland. No one is wondering WHY anymore, but everyone is afraid that their own son or daughter will be next. This is the PLAGUE of third millennium. This is a disaster. It is not enough just to talk. One should scream!

We, the Russian mothers, are being kept on a leash in the West. The child services of all the countries are spying on us. Guards and child wardens are following us. Why? Because the demographics of western countries are falling. And putting one Russian child in prison automatically attaches a lot of relatives to that country. Today the West is using Russian children to even out the demographic collapse.

Vladimir Putin has recently said that Russia is one of the few countries in the world that has managed to stop the demographic decline, even out the situation, and there has even been some growth. But this does not mean that Russia should throw away its wealth - our new generation, our Russian children who are being stolen in the West.

As a Russian mother, I appeal to the President of Russia and the Russian people - to turn their faces towards the children born in mixed marriages, to protect them from the ALIENATION from Russia. To see in our stolen children the golden gene pool of the nation, to intergrate them into the Russian people.

Today we have a chance to rally Russia to protect the Russian children who are languishing in the dungeons of the western child services, practically the juvenile prisons of the West. The West is doing everything today to make the Russian children forget the Russian language, the religion of their ancestors, the great Russian culture.

My Russian Anton is a symbol of Russian children imprisoned in the trunk of the juvenile system of the West. A Finnish trunk is showing Russia today what the West has in mind for the Russian children - a prison with no windows and doors. A mobile box for the demographic material.

Our children born in the West are talented and unique, unlike the robots and sex dolls, mass manufactured on an assembly line in the West. That is why Russian children are taken from Russian motherstoday: to erase the the Russian individuality, Russian originality and Russian progressiveness.

The West only wants the demographic material - units in the cells of the demographic tables. All that the states want is to get one more line, head, or being at any price. The battle for the demographic unit is killing the souls of Russian children. Being the mother of Anton, I want to testify - to tell about the terrible Argameddone - the global battle between good and evil, which you are witnessing today. This is the battle for the souls of our Russian children.

The whole "civilized" world is against Russia today. Almost all countries in the world are hunting for Russian girls and boys. This Armageddon is the battlefield for the future of mankind.

Stealing Anton from Russia showed the world that the West is not only not ashamed to steal our children, but that the West has turned the theft of Russian children into PLANNED alienation of Russian biomaterial.

According to the media there is a state plan in Norway, according to which every year 3,000 children have to be TAKEN AWAY and ALIENATED from immigrants without a trial. Extremely. Just because there is the plan. Communes and municipalities in the west are competing with each other, who will take the most children away from the Russian mothers.

And the leaders of the countries call the mayors on the carpet, to reproach them for taking away too FEW children last month or last year. This is what I ran into here in the West.

The theft of Russian children in the West is covered by the veil of SUPER SECRECY. If the mother turns to the media for help, she will be crucified, all contact with the child will be forbidden.

This secrecy and alleged privacy of the FAMILY have been invented in the West in order to conceal the crime. There are no family issues - there is the international HUNT and THEFT of Russian children.

I believe that I will live to see the day when this HUNT will be called a CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY. That there will be a new Nuremberg trial. And the people who stole my son will stand the trial and will receive punishment.

But right now my goal is to be heard. I am pick up a BELL. I want to warn Russia of the trouble that is coming from the WEST, about the PLAGUE OF THE THIRD MILLENNIUM, which is coming from the north and from the south. And the name of the plague is HUNT for RUSSIAN CHILDREN.

Today I want to testify - MY BELL TOLLS FOR THEE. For every Russian. Because now any Russian child can become the second Anton Salonen! There is only one cure for this plague - join our hands together.

Dear Russians! Dear President of Russia! Dear Russian mothers and fathers! Dear Russian people! I, Rimma Salonen, am asking you today to JOIN OUR HANDS for our children, for the most precious thing we have.

Russian people are a great power. The goal of the West is to divide us and to sow discord. But we have a cement which unites us, we have a treasure that we are destined to protect. That is our Russian children.

Today, the West started a battle for the Russian children. And only we - Russian mothers and fathers - can protect them. Our strength lies in Unity. Our strength is that we have joined hands and stood in a circle, defending our children with their bodies and souls.

The Third World HUNT on our children has already begun. And it began with the theft of my Anton. But Russia will withstand it. Hand in hand we are invincible.

I guess this qualifies as an outdoor sport...

My grandma always used to say "everyone else is a normal person, but something always happens to you!"

I remembered her words on a number of occasions, most recently fifteen minutes ago, when I was running around my roof underdressed, barefoot and with a fishing rod.

It's not my fault, really. The upstairs' neighbor dropped his towel on my roof, I promised to get it, and the fishing rod that my Israeli relatives left in my place last summer came in very handy (also for self-defensive anti-bird violence), but why do those things always happen to me?

Dear Lord

Dear Lord,

You have a unique chance to make more believers, uphold the public order, relieve the burden on the French taxpayers and release a whole bunch of police officers home to their partners, children dinners and friends. Please arrange for Mohammed Merah to be raped and eaten by a herd of wild boars, preferably simultaneously, within the next hour.

While you are at it, could you also do to him the Unspeakable Thing that I read about yesterday, and the one I read about today, too.

Yeah, and thanks for the nice weather!

Traditional values

Liberia, where homosexuality is already illegal, is currently trying to increase the prison sentences for it. President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, last year's Nobel Peace Prize laureate, is very much against decriminalizing homosexuality. "We've got certain traditional values in our society that we would like to preserve. We're going to keep to our traditional values," she says.

That's funny. I thought Liberia's traditional values were civil war, rape and cannibalism, as well as its traditional place in the last ten countries as listed by Human Development Index.

A former president of this highly traditional country, Charles Taylor, is currently in Hague on trial for murder, rape, torture, mutilation and cannibalism.

Of the other fine politicians of Liberia, Prince Johnson is known for torture and dismemberment, Roosevelt Johnson is known for sponsoring Joshua Milton Blahyi (also known as General Butt Naked), Joshua Milton Blahyi is known for human sacrifice, eating children's hearts and playing soccer with people's detached heads (yeah, and being butt naked).

I understand that next to all these dignitaries Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who has never committed a violent crime or at least been caught doing so, totally deserves a Nobel Peace Prize.

Seriously though, there is some point in her Nobel Peace Prize. She managed to criminalize one traditional Liberian pastime: raping everything that moves, and a lot of things that don't move fast enough (like babies, for example). Yep, they banned rape in 2006. Before that it was kinda traditional.

Americans got a little taste of traditional Liberian values a couple of years ago, when a 8-year-old Liberian girl was raped by four boys aged 14, 13, 10 and 9 and was thereafter disowned by her parents, Hemie and Wedeh Dio (currently on trial in Arizona for 7 unrelated counts of child abuse).

But it's a good thing the president is standing up for the traditional values. I mean, Liberia is so fucked already, imagine how it would be if homosexuals were allowed to have sex!

Don't use fake email addresses, people

Before you use a fake email address, even one that sounds fake, such as foobar at somepopularprovider.com, stop for a moment and consider that that address might belong to a living, breathing, malicious person with a penchant for practical jokes.

I just go to the bars to have fun

Henry Laasanen's latest masterpiece where he, among other things, disapproves of women who go to bars just to have fun, gave me an idea:

There should be some visible badges for the men who disapprove of the whole idea that women go to bars without being interested in getting picked up. Most women won't give a shit anyway, but the polite ones like myself will immediately see that the man doesn't want to hear "no, thanks, I am not looking for anyone right now" and instead of that will say things like "I came here looking for someone to have sex with. No, sorry, you do not fit my requirements, so I'll continue looking for someone else now if you don't mind".

Twilight (spoilers)

Read the Twilight books recently (haven't seen any of the movies). Can't really understand the hype, neither the positive nor the negative one.

The books have some interesting premises (such as the vampire character having a fairly normal and supportive family), but are fairly badly written. The author appears to have learned something by book 3, and books 3 and 4 are considerably better than 1 and 2.

She has for example learned that in a romance story there should probably be some sex, or at least some thoughts about sex, at least if the romance story is written in the first person, and by the middle of the third book Bella actually starts thinking about having sex with Edward. That's about a year and a half into their relationship. Considering how attractive she finds him at the first glance, it would have taken me about what, 300 milliseconds or so to start having impure thoughts?

They don't get to have sex until book 4.

As fantasy the books are readable, as romance they suck. OK, I am not a very experienced romance reader, but I should get at least some idea why the protagonist likes the guy she likes.

That said, I don't quite understand all the critique based on the fact that Bella is not a fighter unlike Buffy's characters. How could she be a fighter in that world? Vampires in the Twilight series are a lot harder to destroy than in Buffy, and Bella does not have any supernatural skills.

And one thing that surprises me in all the vampire fiction: how come none of them ever work for the Red Cross?

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, everyone!

Will I ever get all the glitter out of my... well, everything?

The Great Infidel Holiday is upon us again

Merry Christmas!

The evil electricians, part X

Thursday: A guy from the construction company calls me and tells me that they are gonna come next week and Fix Everything - am I gonna be home? I ask him when. He says that they are gonna be at Tero's place Monday at 8 and gonna call me Monday morning and come sometime on Monday.

Monday:

9:30: An electricity inspector comes and inspects electricity. He thinks that all the wiring of all three ceiling lamps should be replaced and some wiring added in the kitchen.

10:00: Where are the electricians?

10:30: Where the fuck are the electricians?

11:00: Where the fuck are the electricians?

11:30: Where the fuck are the fucking electricians? Gonna rape them with a Cristmas tree if they show up.

12:00: The plan to rape them with a Christmas tree fails for two logistical reasons: 1) no electricians, and 2) no Christmas tree.

12:30: The plan to find them by phone also fails, for one logistical reason: no electricians.

13:00: The plan to find somebody by phone succeeds. Somebody (the same somebody who called me on Thursday) says they have been in the building. I say this doesn't help much. He says they are gonna be here the first thing Tuesday morning at 8.

13:07: I bugger off to work.

19:30: I am back from work with a vague feeling that I should move my stuff out of their way. The problem is that their way is pretty much everywhere.

Tuesday:

0:00: Bugger all. Gotta bugger off to bed. Didn't get any sleep last night.

1:00: Woke up to a nightmare about the electricians.

2:00: Woke up to another nightmare about the electricians.

7:30: Woke up to the alarm clock. Considered beating the electricians over the head with it.

8:00: Shower, pants and tea all located. Waiting for the electricians.

8:30: Where the hell are the electricians?

8:55: The doorbell! Hurrah!

A colorful character walks in and stares at my ceiling in a "what the fuck way".

Me: Are you an electrician?
Him: No, I am a painter.
Me: Huh? Öööö...
Him: Supposed to paint over their work...
Me: Can't paint the holes...
Him: That would take special skills... but where are they?
Me: Wondered about it myself...
Him: I'll call them.

With that the Picasso disappeared and was never heard from again.

9:20: Called the somebody again.

Me: They were supposed to be there at 8 and didn't show up!
Somebody: A painter was there.
Me: I know.
Somebody: Did he get the keys?
Me: No. Don't you have the keys?
Somebody: We sorta do...
Me: Gonna leave the security lock open.
Somebody: They are gonna be there eventually.

10:15: Finally at work.

10:17: The phone rings.

The electrician: We are here and we can't get in!
Me: Don't you have the keys?
The electrician: None of them work, the housing company doesn't have your keys.
Me (making a mental note to disembowel whoever lost my keys and make them pay for the lock replacement - not necessarily in this order): I can be there in half an hour.
The electrician: That's too late! I can't just wait for you! Can't we set up a time later in the afternoon?
Me: Sure, whatever, just tell me when.
The electrician: Sometime after 16?
Another electrician in the background: Are you talking to Vera?
The first electrician: Yes.
The other electrician in the background: Wrong apartment, she lives downstairs.
The first electrician (to me): Oops, forget it.

A girl who was interested in politics

Somebody just implied to me that there must have been something wrong with me if at 16 I was more interested in free elections than in a prince on a white horse. She did not know that this was also the case at 10. I was gonna tell her off, along the lines of "takes all kinds to make a world", and then started wondering whether the above was in fact a sign that something was wrong with the country.

(Yes, I know that something was wrong with the country. OK, make it "almost everything". I am just wondering whether my interest in politics was a symptom of that.)

I sort of know where the woman who thinks something was wrong with me is coming from. She is also from the Soviet Union, a few years older than me. During our childhood everything was full of politics. Newspapers were full of politics (much more so than in the West at any point that I remember), and so was the TV. We had all kinds of politics (just a figure of speech - it was just one kind of politics) shoved down our throats from morning till night, politics before class, politics during class, politics after class, etc. Everything we did was interpreted as political statement. Personal was very much political, whether one wanted it or not.

Under those circumstances quite a lot of people became very strongly apolitical, in a "just leave me in peace to live my sex life and wear whatever I want, I am not interested in politics". At the time I wondered whether the leaders realized that their attempt to make everyone interested in their politics had the result opposite of the intended; nowadays, older and even more cynical, I wonder whether this was in fact the intended effect.

Anyway, this reaction is barely comprehensible to me now, and was even less comprehensible at the time. My personal is usually not very political, but it is quite clear to me that if the powers that be have chosen to lecture me on the style of my shirt, the personal has become the political whether I want it or not.

The funny thing was that pretty much everyone I knew understood that if a bully comes up to you in the street and expresses desire to punch you in the nose because he is offended by your makeup the thing to do was not to explain that the makeup was not intended as a personal offense to him - he knows it as well as you do - but to hit hard and/or run fast. But I felt fairly alone with the idea that the same is the case for the governments. Although, obviously, this was not the kind of thing I could easily discuss with my classmates, so I was pretty much limited to listening.

Yes, I also wished to be left in peace, I just realized that it was not gonna happen, or in any case not by leaving *them* in peace.

I remember the day that Brezhnev died. I was 11, and sat in class wondering whether the next guy was gonna be some new version of Stalin, and the possible implications of it. Nobody, including myself, ever mentioned this possibility out loud, but the general feeling that our lives depend on who the new guy will be was there. How can one not be interested in politics under those circumstances?

The great flood saga continues...

Friday, 18:00: Three wise men and a disgruntled Virgin Mary. OK, I would be even more disgruntled if I were a Middle Eastern girl with a newborn baby wondering how to explain to her family and friends that she is still a virgin in the face of rather overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

The three wise men totally look like movie characters. The builder (aka "wall-breaker") looks like a smaller and more comical version of Victor Le Nettoyeur, the plumber looks like a British gentleman, and the electrician looks so ancient that I keep wanting to ask him what he'd done for a living before the electricity was invented. He is incredibly grumpy, too.

18:30: The ill-tempered electrician informs me that the morning plumber is still in the hospital, that all such accidents are reported to the electric safety officials and that they would surely like to see me and my apartment.

The builder wonders what the fuck, and does that wire in front of his nose still have electricity in it? It sure does. They try to find out experimentally what each of the fuses and switches do in spite of the fact that I know pretty well what they do, and am trying to tell them. What the fuck?

18:45: After 15 minutes of trying they figure out what I kept telling them from the very beginning, namely that all the lights in the apartment are on one single fuse. What the fuck, wonders the builder. The electrician explains that the system is ancient, and look who is talking!

18:50: the electrician decided to rip the lamp switch out of the wall, and now it's his turn to ask what the fuck. Apparently I have illegal wiring in my wall. The good thing is that I have an alibi: it was put in before I was born, in the sixties, and was illegal back then, too. The electrician swears profusely about the fucking Estonians, and occasionally apologizes to the ladies present (which are, apparently, me, a least if you use the word "lady" loosely enough). I find it weird, because there wasn't a lot of Estonians here in the sixties, and besides the electrician should probably be apologizing to the builder, who appears to be an Estonian (fucking or otherwise).

19:00: The three wise men decided to break the ceiling.

19:30: Now there is a huge hole in what's left from the ceiling, and still no source of leakage uncovered. The three wise men want to get into Tero's apartment but don't have a key.

Negotiations ensue. I tell Tero that they want to get in. Tero tells me that he is out for the evening, and what the fuck, the superintendent and the humidity measuring guy told him that the leak is definitely not in his apartment. I tell the same to the three wise men. The three wise men are convinced that the leak is in Tero's apartment, and have a unanimous opinion as to where the humidity measuring guy can insert his humidity measuring device.

20:00: The three wise men decide to continue at 10 in the morning. They go home, and leave me some scary-looking tools. I run to the store for cleaning supplies. The apartment is a concrete-covered ruin.

21:00: One can actually walk in the apartment with a fear of a major foot injury. And I sort of have a toilet. Which doesn't flush.

21:10: Ville and Leena come over and take me outside to eat, which is nice.

Saturday, 03:00: Fuck, it's raining again!

03:30: Shit, I can't breathe! Gotta open the window.

07:00: Brr!

08:00: BRRRRR!!!!!!

09:00: Antihistamines, pseudoephedrine, salbutamol and a glass of calvados - the breakfast of a true lady. Hyvin menee...

10:00: No three wise men yet.

10:30: Where the fuck are the three wise men?

11:00: Judging from the horrible sounds, apparently they are upstairs.

11:30: The builder came to get his tools.

12:00: The horrible sounds continue, I keep expecting the builder to fall through my ceiling.

13:30: Hurrah! The hole in the pipe has been located, and it is in Tero's apartment.

14:00: The wise men leave until Monday. I have a working toilet again, which is nice. Tero doesn't. My apartment is cold and the air is unpleasant.

Monday: The plumber(s) came and fixed the pipe. Now Tero can use his bathroom too and it's not raining in my place. Happy happy joy joy!

I still have huge holes in the wall and the ceiling, and no light in the hall. Tero has an even bigger hole in the floor. But hey, the new pipe!

Tuesday: Situation unchanged, gonna be fixed real soon now.

Disaster

22:40: Back home from nice beers with coworkers! Whee!

00:20: What the hell is that sound?

00:21: Shit, it's raining!

00:22: Shit, it's raining inside!

00:23: Shit, the rain is brown! Shit?

00:24: Gotta wake up Tero, the neighbor upstairs. Tero! TEEEROO! Open the door!

00:26: Shit, do I have a bucket? Do they sell buckets in 24-hour Alepa?

00:28: Bucket located and installed under the rain.

00:30: Calling Tero. Still no response. Left a message. Tero, Tero, why hast thou forsaken me and possibly a fair amount of water as well?

00:33: Calling the maintenance guy. He sounds as drunk as, well, me, and I can't really blame him. They are gonna be here in half an hour. Maybe.

00:37: Hurrah, Tero woke up and called me! No water anywhere in his apartment though.

00:40: Tero is here and looking pessimistic. We are wondering what the fuck.

00:45: Tero goes back home to sleep, asks to be awakened when the maintenance guy comes.

01:05: The maintenance guy (not the one who answered the phone but another, sober one) naturally comes right when I am in the toilet. Pulling the pants up and running to open the door. He stands for a while looking at the ceiling and wondering what the fuck.

01:10: The maintenance guys goes and gets Tero. They stand for a while looking at the ceiling and wondering what the fuck.

01:11: More water coming out of the ceiling lamp. We are wondering what the fuck.

01:12: The water comes out from the same hole as the lamp's cables. What the fuck?

01:13: I figure it might be a good idea to turn off the lamp.

01:14: The maintenance guy figures it might be a good idea to summon a real plumber.

01:15: Tero figures it might be a good idea to go to bed while he still can.

01:16: Shit! Now I have water coming out of two places, and only one bucket.

01:20: An Ikea bag does work as a bucket, and pretty well in fact.

01:40: The plumber arrives, looks at the ceiling and says "what the fuck?"

01:41: The plumber puts his hand in the lamp cable hole and says "ouch".

01:42: The plumber turns off all the electricity.

01:43: Being alone at night in total darkness with two plumbers is not nearly as much fun as porn movies say.

01:50: The plumbers wake up Tero again.

01:55: Much turning off and on the water and flushing ensues.

02:00: They dismantle parts of the ceiling, and keep wondering what the fuck.

02:10: The electricity is back on.

02:45: They are gone. They promise to come back in the morning and tell me that the rain will stop for the night. The whole staircase is out of water and toilets don't work. Nice surprise for everyone in the morning.

07-something: Someone is in the apartment. I wake up jump out of my room naked. A plumber screams "eek" and disappears.

08-something: There is a whole bunch of them, and they are all saying "what the fuck". I alternate between trying to sleep and trying to look decent, failing at both.

10:15: The superintendent calls and asks me to stay home, he'll be here in two hours.

11:00: Most plumbers ran away, one remains.

11:30: The plumber sticks his hand into the wel lamp cable hole, gets a shock and falls off the ladder, screaming. I say "what the fuck".

12:00: The plumber needs to go to a hospital, tells me he'll be back and not to piss in the toilet.

13:00: parts of the ceiling fall off.

14:00: The superintendent shows up and starts running around, waving his hands, screaming "what the fuck" and flushing everyone's toilets. He keeps at it for an hour. He finds that the right toilet belongs to the 4th floor neighbor, and now it really starts to rain. The plumber is still in the hospital.

16:00: The superintendent come back with a humidity measuring guy. The guy says that the whole wall between the hall and the toilet is fucked, what the fuck. They invite a wall-breaker. I have to empty a bookcase.

17:00: The wall-breaker arrives and starts breaking the wall. He totally looks like he'd escaped from some gangster movie.

To be continued...

Happy Independence Day, Finland!

Good thing we got out of Russia when we did. Russia sucks.