Lilja

Volodja and Lilja

Yesterday, a Spanish friend of mine invited me to see Lilja, an Icelandic theatre play. The play was about a sixteen year-old Russian girl, Lilja, who is abandoned by her mother. She is trying to survive in poor conditions with her friends Natasha (16) and Volodja (12). Soon she ends up selling her ass for money until she meets a nice man offering a better future in Sweden. Naturally, the man was bullshitting. Lilja and Natasha were sold as prostitutes to a Swedish pimp. In the end, Natasha gets killed and Lilja commits a suicide. Meanwhile, Volodja dies of cold in Russia. All good guys died, awesome!

The play was spectacular. I didn't have any expectations, but if I have had them, they would have been highly exceeded. All six actors were really, really good. I especially liked the character and performance of Volodja. Obviously, I didn't fully understand the dialogs but actresses body language was sufficient enough to know what was going on.

Natasha

In addition to great actors, the special effects were outstanding. Many magnificent scenes were created with only lights and sound. The ending scene with Rammstein music and reflected pictures of human trafficking victims caused severe goose bumps for me.

Locals seemed to like Lilja as well. The play ended to staggering applause with three bowing encores. This was the 30th show and still it was sold out. I'm not surprised at all.

Pictures are stolen from Leikfélag Akureyrar.

Rest of my life

As long as I can remember, I've suffered from continuous waking while sleeping. It's completely normal for me to wake 5–10 times in a night. I have to be physically exhausted in order to sleep well. As time has passed by I've gotten used to the fact that I'm not able to be perky right out of the bed.

Somehow nothing above-mentioned applies here.

I have never slept as good as in Iceland. Usually I have 8–10 hours night's rest and don't mind even if a bomb would go off right next to me. I'm still gloriously snoring. On the other day, I had 14 hours night's rest and took a nap few hours later :) Other Gula Villains are amazed by my capabilities and surprised if I'm awake before noon.

I've been trying to figure out the reason for this. My way of life really hasn't changed so much. Maybe it's the decreased amount of coffee consumed, reduced stress or the environment. Who knows?

I'm happy about things as they are.

The art of life

Howdy. Sorry for not updating.

A week ago, a Finnish friend of mine came for a visit. He stayed for four days which we used effectively sleeping only 15–20 hours in between. We sure did not do any tourist stuff. We didn't step a foot outside Akureyri but familiarized ourselves with different liquids and restaurants :)

I ate whale for the first time in my life. I was bit confused when the waitress served the plates. The meat was red! (red meat, not rare). I was almost certain that they had a mix-up with the plates. I expected to get something fish-like but on a second though whale isn't a fish even it swims and looks like one.

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Early in the week I worked on my first big assignment 'Optimizing Quicksort' for Algorithms and Data Structures course. I encountered a number of problems while doing that. Maybe I'm stupid, blind or both but programming with Java really isn't for me. Thankfully, I completed the assignment on time and (partly by accident) did the bonus task as well.

Previous Monday was the last day off for me in a long time. On Tuesday, I started a new course called Writing and Critical Thinking. I expected it to be something exciting but it turned out to be a writing course for law students.

At the moment we're studying Oscola, The Oxford Standard of Citation of Legal Authorities, which is completely useless for any other than law students. Luckily, we don't need to write any law papers. The course is more about plagiarism, the correct way of referencing and arguing. We have 16 hours of lectures per week. That's more than all of my other classes together. The worst part is that from now on I have to transport my ass to the University from Monday to Thursday at 8 AM :(

I've realized one major difference between University of Akureyri and Metropolia: the level of the teachers. Here they are highly motivated professionals who prepare their classes and exercises carefully. Everything starting from PowerPoint slides are like a textbook example of how things should be taught. Not even once I've had the feeling that they don't fully understand what they are babbling about. I shared this feeling with few others and they seem to agree with me.

There is still good things about Metropolia. Today the principal lecturer contacted me and told that I've earned a scholarship for a project well done. I'll receive a small financial reward.

The project was a website which we started doing last February. It was done on Joomla content management system which is – fairly speaking – a good reason to turn into alcoholism. Yeah, I should get a reward for that.

P.S. My bank refunded the money I lost in the debit card scam. OP rules ass! (or how do they say)