Queluz Palace Part II

Took this pic a while back and somehow it feels appropriate when you think about the events in Nice and Munich and elsewhere in the world. So many lost lives in so many ways. I wish light for everyone walking in the darkness. 

Nazare, the surfing paradise

Mais Sintra..

3 X

While living in Lisboa I’ve been reading this blog called ”Visual Diary” written by Finnish woman living in Lisboa. She writes about design, finnish and international but most of all life in Lisboa. She has nice pics and good point of views, tips about the city. And since I’m lacking inspiration and activity here copied this 3 x idea from one of her posts.

3x HAPPINESS

1.       My job.

2.       New WORKING bank account

3.       New friend(s)

I’ve been rolling in this cicle of negativity lately so here come the positive topics! Nevermind how depressive and hit down I get at the end of the day I’m always happy that I do what I do. It ain’t perfect and it has its down sides but I like the things that I work with and people I work with. Besides I have a new bank account, it’s portuguese and it works! No more need to transfer my money to my finnish account to have access to my funds. I’m also slowly starting to feel like having friends here. People who know this takes time. Good friends. Nice friends.

3x FEARS

1.       My parents dying

2.       Failure

3.       Addiction

And we move on straight to the other end. These are top 3 fears. The number one is obviously inevitable and realistic one. They are my only family and reason why I’d even go home in these days. And they have been good for me, been there for me when I’ve needed. Number two has clearly happened multiple times but still it’s one of the things I keep avoiding and fearing the most. Awful every time. Aaaaand I’ve had my share of alcohol and nicotine used by other people in my life so I hope never to be in a situation controlled by substances.

3X ARTISTS

1.       Laura Pausini

2.       Melanie C

3.       Gianna Nannini / Céline Dion

Gianna Nannini - Fenomenale 2017. 

I love music! I don’t know how to play it or sing it or anything else but boy do I love to listen. These are my favourites, some I’ve mentioned before here in my blog. Discover them if you already haven’t and don’t let prejudices control your mind too much.

3X LISBOA LOVES

1.       Colours/details

2.       Coffee shops everywhere

3.       Glasses and fanny bags

It would take a lifetime to discover all the details that are all over in this city… in the walls of the buildings inside and out. The windows, door and balconies. Equally interesting are the people who live here. Everything is rich in colours and shapes. Never have I ever seen a city filled with so many coffee shops. Besides of actual cafeterias – almost every book store and even car repair shop have a coffee maker and table for you to enjoy your afternoon espresso!

3X EXPERIENCES

1.       Montréal

2.       Meeting LP

3.       Spain

When I was kid I used to go through the geography books at the local library and read every sentence they said about the French speaking Canada. Château Frontenac was a sanctuary and I was a pilgrim making my way to Québec. Even after three years after my MTL experience I think of it as my proudest moment, biggest achievement and happiest time of my life to have been living there. Meeting Laura Pausini, was not part of the plan. I used to listen to her songs, over and over again. But she was distant, it took me years to have courage enough join her official Fan Club and even longer to attend her concert. Now after 23 years of being a fan I’ve met three times, who knew! Spain was unexpected factor also where I ended by a sudden, impulsive, random chain of events. Twice. In the most distinctive areas of the country that gave me life long friends and experiences.

Montréal, the best place on earth. 

3X FINLAND LOVES

1.       Ice cream

2.       Lakes

3.       Sauna

Here are the things that I adore in my country and that I always miss when I’m abroad. The most important obviosly there at number one. Finland is so under estimated as an ice cream destination. We do consume it almost the most in the world, you know! And coffee! Finland is obviously a summer destination with lakes and sauna on the list even though they’re great in the winter time also. But nothing is better than swimming in a finnish lake. The best sauna is at my god parents summer place.

Lahti, my hometown and lake Vesijärvi. 

3X HOBBIES

1.       Music

2.       Photography

3.       Gym

Music subject has been covered up there so let’s move to the photography. I’m not an arty person but I’m fascinated by the world through the lense. You can capture the big scene or focus on the small part of it. Afterwards change colours or bring out the shades to process what I’ve seen and maybe help people to see the beauty in ordinary things around us. Physical exercise is often seen quite shallow thing to do but for me it’s almost the same thing as sitting at a therapist couch. You go through things. You challenge yourself. And most of the times you return lighter home. Emotionally lighter for sure. 

Laura Pausini.

Here’s the Visual Diary blog for any Finnish speaking people who’re interested: http://www.lily.fi/blogit/visual-diary

The #SportySpice has come a long way! #SportysFortysWebcast - LOVE HER MUSIC with or without the #SpiceGirls

UMK25 Song review: Nightmares

Uuden Musiikin Kilpailu (UMK) is back and stronger than ever! We have seven new artists ready to compete for the trophy and the ticket to Basel in May! The first song kicked off the UMK season with a banger!

Neea River - Nightmares

Neea River is a singer-songwriter who was discovered on Instagram (she sang Céline Dion's All By Myself) during her holidays in L.A. The singing sensation has since written songs for other artists (Bess, Laura Voutilainen, Blanka, K-Pop artists etc). So she has a full day job as a music professional and she's made a name for herself as one.

As a solo artist she's been pushed by her label to switch to Finnish but she's always found English as a more natural choice. Now days, she has own label. She loves dance pop genre, loud bangers and Eurovision. Her musical influencers are Britney Spears, Weekend and Rihanna.

Her UMK song Nightmares was inspired by traumatic experience and reminds the people that there's always an exit of the difficult experiences. She wrote it together with Ilkka Wirtanen and Petri Alanko. With Nightmares she wants to bring pure pop banger to Eurovision from Finland.

Nightmares is her first own song to be released as a solo artist. And so far it has been compared to Loreen (Sweden, 2023), Keiino (Norway 2019) and Saara Aalto (Finland, 2018). This defintely has a nordic sound!

The beginning starts with a dark, mysterious tone - some might be fooled to think we have a ballad in our hands. The song builds up strong to the first drop which reveals the EMD/ disco beat which is the core of the song. This could be easily taken from early 2000's house music scene.

The woman can sing even though many have been worried the layered edits on her voice during the track. Personally, I'm not one of those people. There's a debate going on whether the dancing she does in the music video is part how you do it in this type of music or if she's actually just not the best at it.

It's true that often EMD tracks it's difficult to get a real climax, a drop happening later in the song because the beat is so strong and in here the song tends to continue kind of predictably without further surprises. This bothers me a bit tbh.

A lot of people speak about "the eurovision sound" and how much this song has it. Yeah would be an easy fit to the contest and a big pleaser for a lot of people. But I don't see this pulling a lot points

However, this is an impressive defeat for someone producing her own music as independantly as Neea does and running her own label on top of it - I do hope all the best for Neea but I have a feeling this ain't our UMK25 winner.

What do you think of the first UMK25 track and what are the chances of Neea to advance to ESC? Talk to me in the comments below!

Random Lisboa when it was still summer and warm!

I keep..

Allô!

March has been so full of #mtlmoments that I don’t even know where to start!

The much praised La Nuit Blanche which was already a month ago was indeed one of the greatest events of my Mtl year. Ten well spent hours by doing free activities in the greatest company. The highlight of the event was definitely vinyl scratching just around the corner from the place I live. Other stuff included penguin watching, so called tramway ride, ice sculptures and several other different art performances all over the city. Some activities didn’t exactly match the original description but were still somewhat enjoyable. And they were all free so can’t complain.

(LNB, 2014)

Also the long anticipated Laura Pausini concert which was even more back and beyond than what I imagined first. In total 9h of travelling in a bus from Montréal to this small town of Orillia, in Ontario. Even my first apartment was bigger than the local bus station. But the people there were the friendliest I’ve ever met. It came handy at that point when we were checking out from the hotel (we stayed in the same one with the band and crew btw!) and there was only 30min to our bus’ departure to Toronto and we seriously thought that you could have a taxi in that time but noup. Our travel plans would have changed dramatically unless the hotel’s manager hadn’t driven us herself to the bus station. What a service!! http://www.daysinn.com/hotels/ontario/orillia/days-inn-orillia/hotel-overview

(You'll never find me in this one! pic by Mario Torre)

We were lucky enough to see Laura doing a tv interview before the concert and where we were literally 1m away from her. She saw my flag and signed some autographs, again I was super lucky to get one! Otherwise there were no more chances to meet or talk to her. But I don’t wanna complain cause I’ve been so lucky with her in the past in London and Madrid. I did give her the post I wrote about her here in my blog ( http://lageografiademicamino.tumblr.com/post/68130494682/she-uguale-a-lei ) through a staff member of a casino. Not sure if she's read it or checked out my blog or anything.

The concert followed the same tracklist as the previous concerts in America and Europe. More or less. Some songs weren’t performed like Con la musica alla radio which I’ve been praising here in Tumblr too.. But I guess you can’t have it all. Laura seemed tired. But she’s now a mom of one-year-old and still touring around the world so who wouldn’t be tired in her place The problem with an artist like Laura is that she gives so much of her time to her fans and when she's acting normally and just doing her job it doesn't feel like enough.

But the concert was great overall. Her voice was in top condition as always. The majority of people were quite old, I felt super young among those canadian-italian grannies. That was one of the reasons why the concert seemed a bit slow compared to the concerts I attended in A'dam and London which were just full of energy. But I did love to see the show with my own eyes and hear the latest versions of the songs. Now all I’m looking forward to, is the live release. #pausini20th

The latest event which I’ve been to was St. Patrick's Day,  probably one of the rare Sunday afternoons in the winter time when it's totally okay to get wasted here. Totally new acquaintance as an event since we don't have it in Finland. Originally an Irish thing but celebrated widely in all over North America. Also in Mtl where almost half of its population has some sort of Irish background in the family (who knew?!).

It was fun, cold thou but fun. There was a parade of three hours long, more commercial apparently when compared to the real thing in Ireland. Or so I was told. But I did get to see some mounties, which I've been dying to see ever since I came here! Green was the theme colour of the day and the streets of centre-ville were packed of people wearing all sorts green clothes and accessories. Even the beer was green at the Irish pub where we later ended up with the bunch of couchsurfers.

(Moi, on St. Paddy's)

ALSO, I'm almost embarrased to tell you this but I did attend to a seminar of "Get the Guy" by Matthew Hussey. Apparently he's quite big in his field, wrote books and doing a world tour now with this seminar thingie. Definitely a #mtlmoment I never thought I'd do! It was just one post or two before where I was telling how I'm not looking for anyone or anything but.. yeah friend had a free ticket and I thought what the hell.

It was okay, he didn't tell anything that I wouldn't have known before but gotta admit that it was still pretty entertaining with his jokes and that gorgeous british accent. In the other hand, it did have a bit of a commercial taste cause it ended up lasting over five hours! When I left he was still talking.. not about pick up lines or how to get any guy but about himself and trying to sell his book, tour or whatever. Well now, I've been there and done that too! :)

Single ladies, interested or curious in the subject, this is for you :)  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnFUFy4GbdQ

But I have worked as well. Quite a lot actually recently. Just had my first days off for 11 days. I’m be working now only in the evening shifts since there’s not enough of physical space for all the employees to work during the day. And naturally the day shifts are more popular compared to the evening shifts which last until midnight. Like I said before, nothing against working in the evenings but I gotta admit non-stop working until midnight five times a week might get in the way of my social life. So in some point I’m thinking of cutting it down to four days a week kind of thing. But at least Babel is paying $12/evening shift more now!

Against what people might think about it, the job ain’t about the playing the game but to find all the things that might go wrong while playing the game. The employees are usually divided into different teams and we have different themes, areas etc, we need to work on. Still fun thou. People are still super friendly and there are worse jobs in the world. Haven’t done translating since there are now more finnish people but I enjoy the team I get to work with while doing the regular testing. 

It’s been pretty hectic at the flat as well. First one room mate from the flat downstairs got evicted after he started fighting about this rat issue at the building with our landlord. And now that room mate is suing our landlord. A bit more dramatic the disagreements here between landlords and tenants compared to Finland. Yeah but now he’s moved out. We also had a week of renovations being done in our kitchen and bathroom which was just pain for me cause it didn’t just fit into my daily routine at all. Cause I worked in the evenings when they were gone and then when I was at home so were they. But it’s over now and no more leaking taps etc. But now the toilet doesn’t work! I hope the landlord gets it fixed by my bday which is next weekend..when I’m just gonna do the traditional finnish thing: get drunk… with great friends of course to carry me home afterwards. #finnish #bday #justkidding

Weatherlike. It's been back and forth with spring and winter over here. There's been pretty gorgeous days with sun and warm temperatures over 0 but then there has been snowstorms too, the latest one today. But I'm still brave enough to say that I have indeed survived the famously cold canadian winter. #mtlmoments

Okay, now I stop! Thanks again for reading :)

J'arrive Québec!! in a few days :)

Random Portugal shots mostly from Porto