Applelane

Three nights to annual Finnish Elma Meeting. Time to begin to think it. It’s an event where many Elma players are gathered to meet, play and even talk. Most of us are coming from Finland but this year nine guys are coming from abroad aswell.

Jeppe will arrive to Oulu on Sunday. Then some sleep and in the Monday morning the Sorsa (my FEM car) will direct towards Kokkola or Ylivieska depending on whether we got room for Stini or not. Juzam lives in Kokkola and then our heavy loaded car turns to Jyväskylä and Leivonmäki where the cottage is.

I’m going to drop the guys and computers to the cottage and then drive back to Jyväskylä (about 50km from the cottage) to buy ‘a few’ beers and mirco pizzas. Seriously I will try to avoid eating micro food there. Must make a nutrition plan for the week.

In the meeting my main targets are: 1. Walking battle victory, 2. Beerbattle top3, 3. beat Tisk, Karlis, mr and skint0r in the 24h total time competition. Walking battle is a compo where we walk as long as we can and the winner is the one who walks for the longest trip. Five minutes per one hour is for rest. Beerbattle is about drinking beers and playing Elma. 24h total time competition is an Elma playing contest and it lasts .. 22 hours and 12 minutes.

Other goals are meeting my friends, make new friends, learn some English speaking and have lots of good time.

That’s what I expect for the meeting.

Circuit theory 1 done!

Blood donation is recommended action. I’m sure you know the facts so I don’t have to repeat them here. But think it. Don’t just skip without thinking “hm, maybe I could…”

I have done it once, two years ago. I was 20 years old and thereby been a bit over two years allowed to donate blood. By other words, 18 years is the limit in Finland. I was encouraged among the student activities. Every first year student is taking part to the competition (haa, competition!) where you try to collect points. And this blood donation simply gave a few points to me so I was in. In the end of the competition I placed to 10. if I recall correct. px was third I think. And totally there were about 130 participants.

I have an injektion phobia which is luckily tolerable. Quite good solution is just not to look at the injection when it’s done.

Then I went to army. Now it’s been a year after army. Today (or literally yesterday) a friend of mine, neighbour, I’m calling him Stypid (asked his permission to use this nick in my blog, Sathy) from now, asked me to go to donate again. I wasn’t really “yees finally, wheep, of course we will do that!” because the experience of the previous donation wasn’t the best.

Warning: don’t read the rest of the story if you have never donated blood. If you have guts for skipping reading, please throw a comment. I want to know if there is any.

The blood needle is quite wide compared to normal vaccine needle. Therefore it hurts more. The actual prick is not that painful but the thought about it inside you. They take 500ml blood out of you and that takes about 10 minutes. After it I was happy for good act but physically I felt weak and somehow sick. Before the donation I thought I wouldn’t notice anything. The weakness kind of ruined the joy of our great lunch which we were having with mother after the donation. Hopefully I don’t sound too selfish.

Anyway, today, we went again to donate. Filled the form: are you junkie .. no, do you have HIV .. no, are you gay .. no, have you lived in Great Britain for six months during 1986-1995 .. no, have you had random sex partner during last 3 months .. no and so on. I passed that. Then they measured my blood’s hemoglobin value. 170 is quite ok, I guess. I ski, run, swim so maybe that’s why it’s a bit high.

Then drank some juice and they requested me to choose a bed. Laid down. Right arm. Some relaxing talk, cleaning the arm and injection. Pain. Biting teeth. “Whoops” said the nurse and continued: “hm, seems like I made a mistake, it didn’t start to flow. The vein got broken, I’m sorry. Could you please turn so we can use the left hand?” and I was “Hm ok, sure.”

I didn’t really know what to think. How can she fail like that? Couldn’t she use some other spot in the same arm? Anyway she was already preparing for the new shot so I better to forgot the first attempt. I felt some nervousness around me and that wasn’t totally produced by me. The nurse was nervous too. Cleaning and injection. Silence. “Okey, it failed again.” Silence. “I’m very sorry, I failed, please welcome back after two weeks.” I was pretty confused: “Hm, so what happened? What’s the problem?” She honestly replied: “I failed, my mistake.”

So there I was. 30 mins waiting, three injections and two of them broke my vein. And no blood donated. I did my best, the failures weren’t because of me - at least that the nurse said. Strange and positive feeling. Surely I will donate again in the future.

skint0r, master of iv.

This is not the most interesting post but I have to announce that I just finalized reading the book Isoisää etsimässä by Arto Paasilinna. The 46th book ever read by me. The last 20 pages I read while waiting the Windows XP installing to get ready. I bought a new 200GB hard disk and decided to give a new start for the OS. Had some problems and didn’t get it ready, maybe tomorrow then.

After Tuesday’s physics exam I start to read Arto Paasilinna’s Ukkosenjumalan poika.

Pictures of our small meeting. Me and MP.