Sunday, September 30, 2012

#19 - Meditation

HAI GUISE! 

I feel like my last post was my best one yet, so I'm going to keep this short as there's no way I can top that, plus I'm feeling lazy ;) 

Yesterday's boxing got postponed again, so I ended up asking suggestions via Facebook. Meditation was among them and I felt it was perfect. This challenge has been quite hectic as I've been places almost every day, so taking a little break with relaxing meditation was chill. You can read more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditation

I read a couple of guides online and did three 15 minute meditation sessions, two sitting and one lying down. Long story short: it is difficult to keep your attention on your breathing, because your mind races all the time.

did I notice anything?

It didn't feel boring or useless, sitting still felt quite natural. Afterwards when I was riding a bus I noticed I was more mindful of my thoughts, as they were jumping from one to another.

Also, I think it's quite interesting that scientific studies have proven meditation to be beneficial to one's health. You can read more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditation#Scientific_studies

I also meditated for 15 minutes today. I think I might continue doing it, as it feels quite good to take a little break from everything.



Meditation through levitation

ps. Today I did nothing.. Scheduling next week has been a bummer and I dunno if I'm going to make it!

Friday, September 28, 2012

#18 - Patrick & Peetu: Our Daily Life on the Farm

Howdy y'all!

I'm writing this to give you city-cats a little look in to the farmers life. My name is Patrick and I live on my 5 acre farm with my horse Peetu, my two dogs drooly and droopy and a couple of ponies. I'm a little different than my neighbours, because I like Hip Hop culture so much. When my neighbours wear their rubber overalls to work, I just put on my baggy pants and rock Air Force 1's. Word up!

I've taken a couple of pictures to show you how my typical day goes by, so step on in, (or out lol) to the Patsui Farms.


I start my day at 5:00am with a hefty breakfast. After that it's time to start domestic work. I do all kinds of stuff, here I am getting Peetu's food ready.. Working alone can be a burden and I dream that I will find that special someone one day..



Sometimes I like to get really wild, so ladies, don't message me if you can't handle a little extra fun ;)


Seeing my horse Peetu aka Petit Peter Pan always makes my troubles go away. He is my best friend! Look how tall he is. I was pretty scared at his size when I first met him, but he's a playful and friendly horsie.



Me and Peetu both like working out with Kettle Bells. Here's Peetu's favourite kettle bell.



Peetu is from Germany. He did some mistakes in his youth, so he went to prison for a couple of years. That's where his prison number 'H33' tattoo comes from. But don't worry, it was just a small financial  crime and that's all. Peetu wouldn't hurt a fly!



After a hard days work, me and Peetu like to joke around. Sometimes I cite Hamlet to him...



.. And sometimes I say hello the German way. That's when Peetu is like "whoa, whoa, we don't do that stuff anymore!"..



.. But Peetu knows I'm just joking and we laugh it off..



Like I said, me and Peter Pan share a connection.. Bros 4 life.



Here you go Peetu, have some treats..



Oh.. Boy, what's wrong??



Ooops! You made a poopy.



Don't worry about it, pal. I'll clean it up!



While I was scooping Peetu's shit up, he took this self picture and uploaded it to Horsielove.com which is an online horse-on-horse dating site.. Oh you dawg!



All done, time to take this pile of shit and blast it with a cannon all over my neighbour's yard.




In my free time I like to ride with Peetu. We joke around with doing the real Gangnam Style Horse Dance!



and Peetu likes to try on my caps. Who's that woman you ask? Her name is Silja and she likes to come ride with Peetu. A hunky adonis from next door stole her heart before I could do anything.. That's why one of my hobbies is flinging shit to his yard..



Me and Peetu doing our thing, oh yeah!



While I went to the bathroom my neighbour showed up and wanted to ride Peetu. OMG What a sexy douche..


ok whatever, I'll screw up the pictures on purpose and blame the camera!



Oh well, look how happy they look together.. Maybe I'll find something like that one day..



Well the sun is about to set.. I hope you had fun at my farm, send me a letter or come visit me and Peetu any day! Peas Out!

- Patrick & Petit Peter Pan


Now for the real cliffnotes:  I fed, combed and rode on a horse today! The horse in question, Peetu, is Silja's own horse. I did some laps with and without Silja and I also steered Peetu. We did two speeds, normal and trot (käynti ja ravi). I almost fucking fell in the first trot as Silja FORGOT to tell me to hang on tight and use my legs to counter the bouncing up and down. So basically when I first sped up to trot, I was just bouncing on the horse like a rubber ball, but I managed to hang on. The next tries went smoother, phew!

Horses are awesome, big and strong! It was pretty surreal to ride and steer a creature this big, I enjoyed it :) Big thanks to Silja for driving me there and setting the horse up, doing all the prep work and driving me back. She did a lot of work to make this happen, and I'm really thankful for that. Thanks to Jukka as well for constantly trying to dare me to put my hand in Peetu's mouth and other stupid stuff like that. He also took all the pictures!

Thursday, September 27, 2012

#17 - Waitress Picking My Meal & INSTAGRAM

(hahah, Last night's Conga drum video was epic, you should go check it out if you haven't seen it already. Big thanks to my roommate for her amazing moves in the kitchen!)

Oh man I'm so full. 

I just got back from Gringos Locos, a restaurant that serves Tex-Mex chow. It's located in the same building as Kisahalli, next to the National Opera. I owed my sister a birthday dinner and she decided we would eat at GL. My plan was to take advantage of this situation and let a waitress pick my entire 3-course meal. I normally like to eat burgers or steaks at restaurants, so gambling for my meal and getting something I would never normally order is something new and forces me to try new dishes. I also took a challenge on the side of taking INSTAGRAM pictures of all my meals. I've never used it before and it didn't seem that interesting to me, but since it's so popular, why wouldn't I give it a try?


My second Instagram picture: Picture of my first Instagram breakfast picture with a golden rose. PICINCEPTION! The hashtags in the bottom help users find pictures of what they like.


I entered the restaurant a little bit earlier than my sister and as I sat down, my waitress Laura asked me what I would like to drink. I replied: "You tell me." I explained to her that I was going to let her pick my drink and my meals for me today and she looked a bit confused at first, but then told me she'd be back with my drink soon.

My sister arrived after and I got my drink. It looked like cider with it's yellowish color and bubbles and I wasn't sure if Laura had remembered that I asked for a non-alcoholic beverage, since I don't drink at all. I took a sip and it tasted good, kinda like Pommac. I had no idea what it was, but it didn't matter. As my sister ordered her food I told Laura that she could pick anything for me on the list except the spicy stuff, since I don't really want to get sweaty & uncomfortable when I eat. She said she had already planned to pick the "Platter of Death", which is the spiciest food they have on the menu, but now she was going to have to change the dish.


My top secret drink


My appetizer arrived soon after. It was a small cup with three Nachos and a tomato sauce full of unknown bits and pieces. I think there was some avocado in there and I definitely identified shrimp. I've never eaten shrimp and my sister told me that if I was allergic to crusteans, my airways would soon be swollen shut. I freaked out a little, but since there were no ichy feels I continued to eat them. Oh yeah, the appetizer was cold. The taste was tomato. The tomato sauce was dominating all the other ingredients, so I would describe the taste as tomato sauce with unknown pieces thrown in, although it was a good choice, since I never eat shrimp.


Three nachos, a lime slice and tomato sauce.


As the food kept coming I kept Instagramming that stuff. I noticed People love taking photos of their food and sharing them to the world with Instagram filters, so I decided to do so as well. My hashtags needed a little work though..

Anyways my sister got her tortilla tray full of wonderful EATS and I got my main course. It was a steak of some sort! HALLELUJA! This was good because I FKN LOVE STEAK. For the challenge it wasn't that exciting, because I lucked out in the food roulette and didn't get something I wouldn't normally order. The steak had some kind of a black sauce on and under it. The garnishes included steamed veggies, potato slices and fried corn. I quickly tasted every steamed veggie to make sure I still didn't like steamed veggies. Check. The steak was good, but I didn't particularly care for the sauce. I enjoyed the buttery corn.



Dat meat



Join the tortilla side


I was quite full already, but we still had to enjoy dessert. My sister ate cheesecake and Laura brought me 3 balls of ice cream: Pineapple sorbet, Vanilla and Chocolate-chili. My favourite was the chocolate. We also ordered a Chili-chocolate milkshake out of curiosity, but the amount of chili in it was miniscule and didn't give us any burning sensation :(





Vader ready for cake


So after one hell of a meal I asked Laura to show me what I had eaten and explain why she picked them. She told me the drink was a Ginger Ale, something she likes to drink. I liked it as well!

My starter was king prawns marinated in lime and chili with tomato salsa, avocado and nachos. Three nachos to be exact, lol. She was contemplating on giving me snails, but decided to go with prawns as she thought everybody has eaten snails. Well, I haven't and that would have been even more exotic, but chili-lime prawns were a good choice nevertheless.. Too bad the tomato sauce kind of overtook the taste.

My main course was a Sirloin steak with chocolate-chili sauce, corn with chipotle butter, grilled vegetables and Creole potato wedges. The whole meal sounds pretty exotic, but I think the taste was quite the same as any other steak meal. I lucked out on this one, since there were a couple of vegetarian tofu meals on the list that I might not have enjoyed as much as steak.

Dessert was ice cream, which is probably the safest choice for me. 3 scoops was quite much though, I'm usually content with one ball of chocolate :)

After the explanations we took a picture together with Laura and I gave her my blogs url. She gave us the milkshake for free. Thank you Laura for great service and agreeing to choose my dishes :) It was cool to hear what went through your head when you chose my meals.


Our lovely waitress & me.


As for the instagramming goes, I think I'm done with the experience. The app is really easy to use, the filters give a "nice" artistic touch to the pictures and getting likes from unknown people is cool, but I just don't see any point in having such a photo blog. As my last Instagram picture I took a snapshot of my water. It already has two likes... 'Nuff said.


One of the most expensive challenges



#16 - Conga Drum Extravaganza!

Ay Carambaa!

AY AY AYY, OR WHATEVER-THEY-SHOUT-WHEN-THEY-PLAY-TEH-CONGAAS!!

Today eso una Conga drum partyy. I've had Conga drums sitting in my apartment for a week now and I've been itching to play them. A friend of mine suggested I try banging (literally, not in the other way) his Conga drums for a day and he was kind enough to drop them off to my place last weekend. Now he couldn't really teach me anything but the basics, because it is a sad known fact that bald Caucasian males who have a Ph.D. in physics just can't play the Congas.. In his defense though, he's one of the "Original Gangstas" of Finland's Locking scene. That's right folks, I'm talking about the one and only Kai aka Locky Balboa from Will Funk for Food! Doctor of Philosophy & an Original Gangster, now that's bad ass.



A picture from one of Kai's lectures.


As you might have guessed, Conga drums are from the Congo. WRONG. We'll at least they're from Africa, right? WRONG. They actually originate from Norway, as the Vikings used to play drums whenever they were ready to attack & plunder a coastal village.. nope.  They are from Cuba.

ANYWAYS, I looked up some tutorials and after a couple of minutes I figured I was already a master at drumming and rhytyhyhym. You see, I have deep imaginary roots in Africa, so that's why the rhytythm runs in my blood. Wrythym. RYTHM. Rhytm. RHYTHM. YES!

Any-fucken-ways, without further ado, I present to you my Conga SOLO! (Don't mind my roommate constantly running in front of the camera, she didn't appreciate my playing AT ALL!!) 

ps. My outfit is a fusion of a locker/latin ballroom dancer/elevator guy, oh how faaaabulous! (no homo)





Tuesday, September 25, 2012

#14 - 15 Shopping at a Charity Shop & Parkour

Yo!

I almost quit this challenge yesterday. I wasn't feeling well after the funeral and I announced that I was quitting, but my friends managed to change my mind. Even the smallest gesture from a friend can help you keep moving forward and hearing how people enjoy reading about my adventure and telling me to just push through the feels-bad-man moment helped me to turn my decision around!

Thank you, my friends.

ANYWAYS, After my temporal insanity yesterday I decided to take out two birds with one stone today and go shopping in a thrift shop first and end the day with some awesome Parkouring! I need to catch up if I'm going to complete 30 challenges in 30 days, so why not do two challenges in one day. Today was all about bromance, as I had made plans with Niko to go shopping, and Jontte was going to teach me some basics of Parkouuuuuuur!

I met up with Niko aka Sharkie (which is his locking alter-ego) in the center and made our way to UFF. UFF is a shop that sells used clothes people give away to charity and today every piece of clothing cost 3 euros! My original challenge had me buying a full outfit from a thrift shop, but I decided less would suffice. I asked Niko to go with me because we're joining forces for a battle. That's right, we're going out to Estonia Twirls blazing next month to take part in a Locking 2vs2 dance battle! So we thought it would be cool to try find some fresh battle gear for our upcoming showdown.

Soon we found ourselves in the basement floor of an UFF, going through the clothing racks. The selection for men was quite bad, but we managed to find some amazing looking jackets from the ladies side..


Pimpin' a little too much? I only know a couple of stunning girls who are Badass enough to rock this kind of gear... ;)

After an hour of trying on dusty jackets, blazers and trousers we managed to find some new pants for our epic locking collaboration! We ended our mandate with some deliciously greasy noodle MÄTTÖ. Great Success!


Picture of our Naturally Funky Foot-Hype Clan pantalones!



After our meal it was time for me to go jump around with Jontte. We warmed up and got down to bidniz in a park in Hakaniemi. 

Parkour is a training discipline focused on overcoming obstacles, involving moving from point A to point B in the fastest and most efficient way possible. It combines a variety of movements like running, climbing, swinging, vaulting, leaping, and rolling.

As we began, Jontte explained and showed various moves to me, such as the Side Vault, the Monkey Vault and the Cat Leap, but during the exhibition all I could think of were moves like the Face-Plant, the Half Flip Neck Bang and my personal favourite the Land-on-Your-Balls-And-Say-Goodbye-to-Babies Leap!


My parkour specialties


I performed some of the leaps over a fence and I'm quite glad that I didn't crash during our session! Out of all the moves I tried, the Lazy Vault was my favourite one.. It really spoke to me on an emotional level and felt like my kind of a move..


How the pros do it.. SICK!


It was fun to learn some of the basic techniques behind Parkouring, I think I can confidently hop over a fence now and not faceplant..*knocks on wood* Parkouring reminded me of skateboarding, because there's a mental side in both of them, where you have to let go of your fear and just do it! All in all it was a fun day, and I can safely say:

I'm back in the Game, bitches!




The flying Lockness Monstah!



 Parkouuuuuuur!


Monday, September 24, 2012

#13 - Funeral, a day off & (not)ending the challenge

On Saturday we buried our beloved grampa, Reino Björn..

You can read an obituary about him here:
http://muistot.hs.fi/muistokirjoitus/5098/reino-bj%C3%B6rn

On Sunday I filmed a quick vid with my crew for a video competition. I didn't feel like doing any of the challenges..

Today I still feel like shit and all the challenges I have left don't appeal to me at all. I started this project to do something different, but aside from reinforcing my preconceived thoughts about myself , it didn't have the effect I was hoping for.. I'm not stopping because the challenges aren't fun, I'm stopping because they haven't helped me in a way I wished they would have.

I did enjoy writing and trying to entertain my tens and tens of readers, lol. I had fun and got to hung out with people I normally don't, so that was cool. I hope my stories have entertained and/or inspired some of you to get out there and do something new!

bye.

UPDATE:





HAHAHA GOTCHA!!! I fooled you again, didn't I? You think an AWESOME MANLY MAN with chest hair like mine would just quit a challenge?? Well think again!

... Some peeps didn't want me to quit so they sent me a couple of nice messages, which made me think it through.. Since I'm easily manipulated and have nothing better to do than sit here and write to my 1 follower, I have decided to CONTINUE my challenge, starting again tomorrow! Even the mayneliest of mayne's need a couple of days to cut some onions after the passing of his mom's pops.

Friday, September 21, 2012

#12 - Taking locking back to the Streets!

My back is aching from all the over-extending & my hands are sore from hitting the concrete all day, but all I can say is 

I LOVE LOCKING!

Today the weather was good so me and Energia-Elja from my dance crew (the Funky Footclan) took it to the streets with a plan to make that street money! We have danced outside with my crew, but never with a plan perform and entertain people. We were accompanied by Elja's GF Yvonne, who took all the epic photos in this blog post!



Me and Elja from FFC!


I was so full of enthusiasm and anticipation as I loaded batteries in to my Boombox. The butterflies in my stomach and the excitement from thinking alone was more intense than I had felt in any of my past challenges! I get such a good feeling from dancing I don't ever want to stop. I took the tram to the core of Helsinki and after making up a couple of eight-counts of choreography on the spot we were ready to KICK IT!



Random encounter with a couple of poppers and a B-Boy.


It was really exhausting to do a solo after a solo after a solo! We didn't get much rest during our performances as you only have the time it takes for your friend to freestyle to catch your breath, and then you have to get down again – locking requires a lot of stamina and endurance, but boy it was fun!



Here we go!


We performed in two places and met quite many dancers we know by accident! Our teacher Jenny "Silppuri" Silfver found us near Stockmann and she did a quick solo and we danced together for a while. You can see her on the video I posted below. She's kinda like Funky Footclan's sensei, since most of us danced in her locking classes when we started. Her nickname translates to "the Shredder" from the TMNT, and our crew's name came about from the thought that she was our master (The Shredder) and we were her funky minions (The Footclan) :)


OP, OP, OP-OP..


..OPPA GANGNAM STYLE! We did a couple of sets to Gangnam Style!


At Kamppi we bumped in to Skitsoflex's Funkyo & Tobyek. They're in the same crew as Jenny and their street dance discipline is Popping. They did a couple solos for us and we were having a good time! Also BBoy Ozone showed up and took over for a some epic bboying!



Let me just not-model here while you do all the work Elja!


In the end we made 62 euros in 2 hours, not bad at all! Of course we gave some of it to our lovely photographer/hype woman Yvonne. Big thanks to Elja my man and all the other people we met during our performances. I love dancing and this was my favourite experience yet! Check out the pictures and the video below!


Look at him go!



Mandatory butt shot!


Power Elja doing a move called the Alpha!

  
Locking it down!



Scoobot Kick!



Our funky kicks and the pile of STREET MANEYYY we made!



Vid with choreography and freestyle from our street session!