Now that the fever is gone and swallowing doesn't anymore feel like shoving a giant cactus down my throat, I feel it is time to ease the anxiety of my readers.
Here are some things I have done this week, while I have been ill at home with the rain pouring outside.

1. An Excel worksheet of all flights I have ever been on since 1996!! COOOL!!! Altogether 104 separate flights since 24.6.1996. The airports where I've flown the most to/from are Amsterdam Schiphol, Frankfurt and Vienna. Flights between Helsinki and Berlin are the most frequent (eight flights), with flights between Helsinki and Vienna and Damascus grabbing the second prize (Seven flights to or from Damascus via Vienna) along with Helsinki-Amsterdam.
The furthest airport where I have flown to is GPS (Baltra on the Galapagos Islands) and the longest flight without stops was in 1996 between Frankfurt and Bogotà (and from there to Quito).

2. Mixing different drinks, like boiled water with lemon! Boiled water with orange! Boiled water with orange AND lemon! And my favourite: cold water with lemon!! (for take-away - see number 3)

3. I was at a concert in Vanha Kirkko with Jarno - Christian Tetzlaff played all of Bach's partitas and sonatas for solo violin. The concert lasted almost four hours, we were sitting where we could hardly see the player and I was feeling horrible, but it was one of the best concerts where I've ever been, without a boring moment. I think everyone in the audience could not believe that all those voices and emotions were coming from one single violin.

4. I spent a good part of the day trying to rid my apartment of shards of glass of all sizes after my ceiling lamp went suicidal and smashed itself on my floor. Is there a name for fobia of sharp things? If there isn't, maybe it should be named after me.

5. I made an arrangement for Full House of the Chicago hit tune "All I care about".

6. I met two members of my Japanese host family at whose place I stayed in November 1997! Eiko and Shiho were visiting Helsinki and they came to our place for tea.

7. I learned how to dance traditional dances from West Africa on Monday at school and was blown away by it (That evening, my temperature rose to 38,6). The idea that there are whole communities in West Africa where people dance like that every evening for recreation, sport and entertainment is nothing short of fascinating. The dances are extremely healthy and pretty tough if you're a couch potato (lots of jumping involved) and full of such exuberance and joy of living that they make the Finnish katrilli look like a visit to the zoo to see the snail house.