Monday, Monday!

It came and went, the first Monday of the school year, doing relatively little damage. Just over 12 hours of everything falling blissfully into place - the lesson timetables, my calendar, and, of course, the Helsinki bus schedule. Half a whole day of slowly drifting from place to place, picking the ripe fruit from the trees of knowledge and the school cafeteria. If this sounds too good to be true, I'm sorry to say it isn't true.

Because of problems concerning our school's computer intranet system, instead of starting a course of writing contemporary music, I found myself in renaissance analysis. Luckily, the teacher understood the problem, took matter into his own hands and declared we were going to do contemporary music, and us students (two altogether) worked on 12-tone writing for some time. Next time there will be more students, when people finally wake up to the fact that the holidays have long packed and gone.

I decided to drop by Stockmann to pick up my huge order of photos I ordered via the internet. This is when the phone started ringing and didn't stop until I put down my tray of food in Ruoholahti and switched it off, cursing for the thousandth time that I still haven't recorded a new answering machine message. Oh well, I suppose any callers were interested in hearing I was on a trip until the 22th of July. Callers ranged from baffled mothers of boys who are supposed to start their theory lessons with me tomorrow to chamber music teachers persuading me to be active once more in next year's "Musica Nova".

After my singing lesson, during which my teacher advised me to have myself checked at a doctor to see whether I have symptoms of asthma (my coughing always lasts for weeks after the cold has gone), I realised that, while finally having all those pictures to put in my album was great fun, I wasn't very keen on dragging a huge paper package with 510 pictures with me all day, and so I ran home to drop them off here.

I checked my email, but switched the computer off in shock after seeing I had about twenty new messages, again from clueless mothers and CM Swing, with what seemed like ten more performances for the next two months, requesting urgent replies. After reading the emails in peace now I realise that the matter was about only three performances. I can just about make it to one of them.

The course "musiikkipedagogiikka" took place in a stuffed classroom smelling of sweat. Perfect conditions for dozing off, if it weren't for the horrible quiet beeping of cell phones here and there. What is WRONG with people?? Is it so difficult to put the phone on silent altogether? It seems like half of the time we're having to endure bags which suddenly start causing an earthquake because of the vibrating phone or high-pitched beeping sounds here and there, "discreetly" announcing an incoming call.

With one hour to go before Dominante, I joined my friends at the cafeteria for a piece of the sinfully delicious and expensive Snickers-cake (2€!!!!!!!!!!!!). This made me miss my bus (102T) to Otaniemi, so in an act of desperation I hopped on the next bus (147) to Hanasaari, hoping to catch my bus there, and arrived there about two seconds too late. Hanasaari is a lousy bus stop to wait at because you can't even read a book for constantly having to keep your eyes wide open (very wide in my case) to see whether your bus is coming. Usually I make out the number of the bus alarmingly late. If you see your bus, the best thing to do is jump on to the middle of the road and wave your arms high up until the driver notices someone wants to get on the bus. The fancy displays showing how many minutes you have to wait for your bus are usually totally misleading - if the display tells you to wait 20 minutes it means the bus will come any minute; after displaying four minutes, the numbers turn into a cute little symbol of a bus approaching, which usually is a sign you have about ten more minutes to wait.

It felt nice to be able to produce some sound more substantial than a croak at the rehearsal for the first time in two weeks. But because the rehearsal lasted a little until after nine o'clock, us Helsinki-bound singers missed our bus and had to wait some ten minutes or so. Fortunately, the next bus was 194, which brings me very close to home.

And after that, I sat down for a relaxing hour or so to make the lists of my music theory students. This mainly consisted of looking up addresses, names and telephone numbers from about a hundred different papers and leaflets, all crammed in a folder for me to dig up "next day, next week". But now, less than 24 hours before my first lesson, I could no longer postpone this moment. I now realise that one of my two groups might consist of as many as almost thirty students, which is more than doubly more than anyone can stand under the conditions. If I REALLY find myself with that many boys tomorrow, I'll have to schedule a crisis meeting with the staff to see what to do, because I definitely do not have the time to divide the group in two and work two more hours every week.

And then I wrote this newest entry in my blog, which was actually quite much fun, because it's a sign that this really was more or less a normal Monday! But now I've had enough of it. Good night!
Oh, and the picture at the top was taken by Anna Toivakka at 01:17 on the 28th of August in Kilo's train station.