COLLECTIVE EMAILS (7/2004)

(Subject: Travel stories II: Edinburgh... (the quite bearable lightness of being))


Dear you,

last time I wrote I rudely neglected those of my friends who don't speak a word Finnish (or, well, the truth is that probably each and every one of my non-Finnish friends actually speaks at least a word or two...), so this time I'll use English. Hope that's ok.

Well well well... what should I say? My fourth week in Edinburgh began yesterday, so I've already been here longer than I spent in the lovely Spain. And yet it feels like I had only come to Edinburgh some days ago, after spending at least two (confusing but wonderful) months travelling in Spain. Don't come to talk to me about time. I just don't get it.

So, the essential news is this (parts I-IX):

I)I arrived more than three weeks ago without a job and without knowing where I could stay for the summer. Both of those things organised themselves quite nicely in the end, though. Tiina, a friend of mine who just gratuated from the University of Edinburgh and whom I had met last year, let me stay in her room with her for this month, and when she leaves in two weeks for the Shetlands to work there, I'll get to stay in the room all by myself. (Actually I'll be all alone in the whole flat, as Tiina's flatmate, Luke, has gone away for the summer or at least for July. Anyone there wishing to spend some time in Edinburgh, eh...?) The rent is awfully expensive, but then again, so is everything here.

II)I found and almost lost a job. The most important thing for me after my arrival was to find work, so I spent hours---days---weeks---months (well, that's how it felt anyway) wandering around the streets, looking for cafes, tourist shops, fast food restaurants etc that might need me (even if they didn't know it themselves yet). I was almost about to give up hope as nobody seemed to want me, when a nice South African fellow, who happened to be the manager of a pie shop called the Pie Maker, told me I could start the next day. So on my eighth day in Edinburgh, I was already busy selling, baking and stocking pies.

III)I've started to hate pies. And I can't say I love the Pie Maker, either. The boss of the company - all the managing people are white South Africans - is a guy in his sixties who, how am I to put it...enjoys the company of young girls and women. Slightly too much. In other words, when he talks to me, he stands so close that our noses almost touch each other (thank God people have noses), and to emphasize what he's saying, he pats and strokes me. At the beginning I thought I would just ignore it; I found it more pitiful than annoying, and I didn't have to stand him for more than ten minutes or so a day anyway. I didn't want to make fuss about it. But he doesn't seem to know any limits. I used to be very friendly with him, always smiling and asking how he was. Now I just don't feel like doing that anymore.

IV)I guess you could say there are also some advantages in working at the Pie Maker. I get to learn to recognise between different pies by their markings - in fact, I could now make the distinction between Mexican Veg and Thai Mushroom&Pepper, which are confusingly similar, even if I was woken up in the middle of the night to watch flashing images of pies. Useful, eh? Not to mention that I also get to learn all the lyrics to the new hits by The Rasmus and Avril Lavigne, as well as to the older ones, in case I didn't know them already. (Some day soon I'm gonna smash up the radio.) And of course I get to eat pies - or I would if I only could. I also get paid, but it's not much; they pay us the minimum they legally have to, and they keep deducting money out of mine and my workmates' wages because of ridiculous reasons. (I dream of my bosses drowning in vast cauldrons of pastry dough.) And as if that wasn't enough, people have now started fooling us with fake notes; I just accepted one a few days ago, and of course those 20 pounds will be taken off my wages. Apparently we will be getting loads of fake money in the next six weeks when the festival is on, the city is full of tourists and it's really busy at out shop - naturally that's the best time to spread fake notes around. But next time they come, ha, next time I'll be ready.

V)The only good thing I can really say about the Pie Maker these days is that they've got a pretty cool logo.

VI)Apart from all that, life's good; I've fallen in love. With a musical instrument, that is. He, or perhaps she, or both, is an Ugandan xylophone, sometimes called amadinda (sounds like a she, doesn't it?), a grand instrument made of Ugandan xylophone wood (there is a special tree in Uganda that they use for making the xylophones, as well as a tree that's used for making the sticks used in playing the xylophone...) with one of the most beautiful sounds, if not the most beautiful, that I've ever heard one single instrument can make (excluding the cello, or course ;). And what's very special in it is that you can't play it on your own; it requires two people. This guy at the Forest, Kim, is teaching me to play it, and we've had some wonderful jamming sessions.

VII)I've also fallen ill.(I had started writing this letter before my illness, so you're getting it a bit late...) The virus I carry carries the complicated name of mononucleosis - in Finnish we call it more simply, and embarrassingly, "kissing disease". (But besides kissing, one must be able to catch it some other way as well, or then it has quite a long incubation period.) I save you from the boring details - I think it's quite enough just to tell you to avoid mononucleosis as long as you possibly can, because it's pure hell. It made me lie in bed for a week, unable to eat, drink or do anything because of the pain in my throat. The antibiotics or the overdoses of strong pain killers were of no use. I'm over the worst now, but according to the doctor (she was Finnish, by the way!), this disease might take up to five weeks to cure properly. There's no medicine to mononucleosis, and the most comforting thing to know is that once I've got the virus, it'll never leave me. But it might, and probably will, reactivate itself sometimes later in my life. Man, I've been blessed.

VIII)The kissing disease almost cost me my job. Christo, my boss - not the groping one - was very understanding at the beginning about my being unable to work for a couple of days, but then on the fifth day he sent me an sms saying that "if you don't call me before 12 noon I'll assume you're not coming back to the Pie Maker and I'll start looking for new staff". It was already one o'clock when I got the message. I started panicking.

IX)I assure you, sometimes the best thing you can do to your mobile is to drop it in a glass of water. That's what I did, and at first I thought that was the end of my phone. (And my career at the PM.) I managed to contact Christo by using a friend's phone, but my mobile stayed dead and silent. For two days - and then, suddenly, miraculously, it came back to life, and I couldn't believe my ears when I heard it ringing. For it hadn't been working properly for weeks - it didn't ring when somebody called me. Now it was better than new. I was amazed.


Parts X-XV will follow. Till then, and thenceforth: be well, enjoy the summer sunshine and the summer rain, take care and I'll see you again some day soon -

-love,
Tui,
Tuulia,
Kitta.