Mask and moustache

Just a quick recap of what’s been up. Last Thursday brought a bit of glamour to my life, for monsieur Lee celebrated his birthday in Venetian masquerade style. Mask, boa, gloves up to my shoulders, little black dress and red shoes completed my look. The party was really glam, with a band and magician and ballroom dancing. Waiting for new interesting surprises next year. The pics are here.

Last Saturday it was the Borat day. With bunch of my friends we got to go to the pre-screening of the film. High fiiive! I laughed so much that I got a headache. After seeing the movie I don’t understand what is Kazakhstan whining about. The movie makes U, S and A look bad, with all their false puritanism and bigotry, not Kazakhstan. Who hasn’t heard about Borat must have been living under a stone, but if you’re really lost, let me know and I’ll give you some explanatory links. For the ones who know him and are wondering about how he could make the film happen, here’s some info about how the people were talked into consenting to interviews.

Rudebox

Today’s the day – Robbie Williams’s new album Rudebox is out. I must say it has surprised me in the most positive way. Not that I don’t have faith in Mr. Williams, course I do, he’s my main man. But…I mean, the album comes out less than a year after the last one and the man’s been on world tour for half of the time. Yet, the album is splendid. Better than the last one. I guess having all the great producers like for instance William Orbit and Mark Ronson aboard, helps a little. The album is very honest. In the song’s 80’s and 90’s you can pretty much listen to his whole life story and if you know a bit more about him from his book or interviews, several other songs can also be recognised as autobiographic. From all his albums, I think this one has most number of loans from other artists and genres. There’s a bit of Manu Chao, Pet Shop Boys and even Enya, the styles range from country to 80’s electro. And still, it’s got Robbie Williams written all over it and the whole bunch of eclecticism forms a tasty collection.

My top favourite songs are Louise, She’s Madonna, Actor, 80’s, Lovelight. Louise probably wins in lyrics and She’s Madonna in the tune department, even though you’d have to twist my arms to actually make me choose between the two:) Now, as I said, the album’s out, so go and buy it from your closest music store. But just to get you started, here’s one for you to listen. I only chose this one of the 2 because of all the publicity the lyrics have received.

Edit: I know a lot of the songs are covers of other artists, that does not bother me, they're still served in thick RW sauce. However, finding out that Louise was also a cover made me just a bit sad:(

Robbie Williams
She’s Madonna (just download it from here, i can't seem to get the listening thingy working)

Red shoes

So I bought those impractical but absolutely adorable red shoes. For 2 weeks I kept going back to the store to check if they were still there and I finally had the reason, motivation and finances to buy them. But believe me, if they bring about compliments like “the world’s sexiest shoes”, they are worth every penny and discomfort.

I know I must sound like a superficial babe but show me any woman, be she the-world-saving-philanthropist type or the-giving-all-her-money-to-the-poor type, who is not thrilled to treat herself once in a while with something really nice and girly, especially when it comes to shoes.

Being the star of the soap opera that my life is, i need to look amazing, don't i:)?

For R

Honey, I know you're going through hard times and that you're hurting and i promise it'll be alright...someday. Good things will start happening to you...for sure!

This song is for you:

Reamonn
Alright (link to live performance)

Wipe those tears away from your eyes
Just take my hand you don't have to cry
It'll be alright
I'll make it alright
Don't let the world get you down
Reach for the love that's all around
It'll be alright baby we'll make it alright

My newly found fame

So it turns out my stage appearance with Bobby Farrell and Boney M made it to the evening news. That means, approximately 156 000 people might have seen me on TV, ca 6000 of them belong to my favourite target group (men, 24-35, urban:) My name and company was mentioned twice during the short section, that means a lot of publicity (thank god I didn’t do anything stupid;). Anyway, it has yielded interesting results. I myself was not at home and did not see my TV premiere but a moment after it was on air my phone started ringing and people told me about it. Later my parents told me that several of family friends and relatives phoned to confirm if that really was me on the news. The next day, an old flame contacted me, and now we’re probably going out for a drink. Also, the next day, I got an email from someone I danced with at that party, asking me if we could meet up again for a bit of dancing. Hmmm…I think we just might. Lots is happening. I liiike! I guess that really was just a bit of good publicity.

How to spend Fridays

It all started Friday morning. I had just dropped off my sister at the bus station and was driving to work, when “Boogie wonderland” started playing on the radio and pfff…there he was, Mr Friday, on the backseat of my car. So, the whole day I felt that dance was in me, trying to get out. At the end of the workday we were already dancing at the office to Justin Timberlake “Sexy Back”. And it was only the beginning.

In the evening, after finding all the necessary accessories for N and myself, we made ourselves up and headed to the birthday party of an Estonia’s TV channel. The welcome drink was the deadliest alcoholic mix ever made – champagne with Vana Tallinn (do not try this at home!). After a little bit of small talking and a little bit of eating and drinking I pretty much focused on letting the dance out of me. So, at some point in the evening, the surprise band came on, which was…Boney M…the real and original one. So, after a while of dancing in front of the stage I was suddenly ON the stage, dancing with Boney M…hmmm…N later told me she was not surprised, for I had told her earlier that soon I’ll be dancing on stage. Go figure! I guess there goes my chance of ever becoming the president:) All-in-all, i got the dance out of me and it was a good night.

Welcome home!

Today’s the day! The day when our dearly beloved N finally returns from her 3-month Ecuador adventure. I’ve managed to survive the time, with seemingly no permanent damage (if not take into account that my hair is falling out and a couple of more stress-related bodily reactions). During those 3 months lots and lots has happened – there was the amazing Estonian summer, the Robbie concert, the Swede, the 2 of my personal small-scale crisis, the workload, the new clients, the one-week holiday, the numerous parties and events and so on and so forth. And N expects me to fill her in on all of that during one night…pfff….

Kalispera

Kalispera, my friends! I’ve been away but now I’m back in business. A bit more tanned, a bit more relaxed and richer by some moments and experiences.

Last week took me to the beautiful Greek island Crete. When we first got there, I must say I was not taken aback by the beauty, but hey, all the tourist resorts are supposed to look rather ugly, aren’t they. The sea and the mountains on the background, however, left some room for hope. And it really was only getting better.

First and foremost, I can never get enough of the beauties of Mediterranean Sea. If you take the bright blue (or sometimes bright green) water, add to that white sand (or sometimes pink sand, as seen at Elafonissi) the blue of the sky and the grey, green, brown or yellow of the mountains, you get numerous picture perfect moments. The best of these kinds of moments was on the last day when we rented a car and drove off to the most north-western peninsula. The distance from our hotel was not really long but the last leg of our drive was on a mountain road where we could literally go only ca 10 km per hour and it took us approximately 50 minutes to get through the 7 kilometers when the road ended and we had to walk across the mountain by foot. The view that presented to us when we reached the other side was breathtaking – bright blue lagoon, white sand, huge rocks in the water and perfectly blue sky.
Another location with picture perfect sights is the Santorini island, located north from Crete. To get there we had to get up at 4 am (and this on my holiday!!), take a bus for an hour or so and a boat for 5 hours just to spend half a day on a small island, where the little towns are filled with tourists, like Venice in August. However, as it was almost the end of tourist season, it was not so bad for us, and when staying away from the main streets, it was possible to wander around all alone and photograph the gorgeous white houses with their blue doors and the mountains and the sea and the lazy cats and dogs lying in the sun.
The most tiresome (but yet so rewarding) part of our trip was the 16 km walk through the Samaria Gorge (kuru) (supposedly the longest mountain gorge in Europe). For Samaria, we had to get up at 5 am (and this on my holiday!), in order to start earlier and get through the gorge before the hottest time of the day. The next evening after the “walk”, when I was putting on my dancing shoes, my calves were protesting rather loudly but I still won the argument, beauty demands sacrifice (and pain:)
When speaking about dancing, I have no idea how I always happen to get into the middle of “situations”. One evening there was a cabaret group performing in our hotel. 3 girls and a guy, and they were rather good I might add, doing all the different dances from belly dancing to salsa and classical ball-room dancing. At some point the guy asked a woman to dance from the audience and that was a sad sight, for she had no rhythm whatsoever. I was just sitting there, minding my own business, keeping a low profile, for I had just eaten, had not showered after a long day and I was not wearing my dancing shoes, when all of a sudden the guy was in front of me, grabbing me by the hand. Do I ever say no to dancing? Of course not! So, off went the flip-flops and there I was, dancing with the star of the evening, in front of all those people. He was so relieved to have a better dancer than the previous woman that he didn’t wanna let me go. Now, these situations make nice memories but it’s better if they were just memories, this time however, one of our group members filmed every last bit of my “performance”….i sure hope my micro mini skirt managed to cover my ass during all the twisting and turning.

A couple of more things in a nutshell – Greek cuisine is good and fresh, the wines are tasty, though rather unknown in the world, the people are friendly and the nature is stunning. The weather was pleasant and I think I managed to recharge my solar batteries for a while being.

Fragile

Have you ever wondered about how fragile is a human life. You stick a blade of a knife into the right place and a person dies. A tiny piece of metal, entering the body with high velocity can kill us. So can a reckless driver who hits us on the street. How can it be that in the evolution process we were formed so brilliantly that we have this whole elaborate system of bloodstream and muscles and nerves and digestion and so on, but our protection system is unbelievably weak. I think we definitely need some pimping in that department. Just think about it, we have a thin layer of skin covering all this intricate system. It’s even worse with the innate protection system and how badly we actually know what is going on inside of us. What we notice outside, are the small things, like when we gain or lose some weight, or we get a pimple or our skin colour changes after sun tanning – the mostly unimportant stuff. However, there’s often no way of knowing if there’s something really wrong with us. There could be a tumour a size of tennis ball somewhere inside us and we would have no way of knowing. For heaven’s sake, for a while we wouldn’t even know if there were a whole new life growing inside of us, before some obvious signs would give that away.

Have you ever felt that you want to LOOK inside of yourself, to see, what you have there or find out what is causing some pain so you would know what to do about it? I know doctors can actually do that but they usually do it if you already know, that you have some problem, which needs to be checked. They’d never give you a whole body scan without any reason, just for checkup. I know this topic is way too serious but when you hear that a young and seemingly perfectly healthy man dies in 2 months after finding out cancer has taken over his entire body and several other stories, it just makes you think. I’ve never been much of a fan of hypochondriacs and never will be but reasonable doubt is definitely wise when it comes to your own body and health. This is all we have here, one body and one life. Take care of it.

On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star like tears from a star
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are how fragile we are

Sting - Fragile (live performance video here)

The Mating Game

It's almost weekend. Let the games begin! (If you wanna listen to the song, the link is under the song name)

Bitter:sweet
The mating Game

Dance with me across the ocean floor
Sail away to heaven's open door
Step right up you're the next contestant
In this sweet charade
Take a number, wait while I twist your fate

On the mating game
Mating game

Hold me close enough to drink my rose
The devil in my pocket turned to gold
Sorry to warn you, you're in a daze
Tonight I'll love you, but tomorrow go away
Step right up who's the next contestant
In this sweet charade?
Take a number, wait while I tease you sane

On the mating game
Mating game

Could you be...

Yesterday a boy told me i was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. (Well,I guess he hadn’t seen the latest pics of Scarlett Johannson…) I tried to convince him that it’s a well known side effect of alcohol that girls start to look more beautiful but he was rather persistent and wowed he’d be saying the same thing when he was sober too. Later on he also told me that in addition to me being beautiful I was also really cool and nice person. And later he also told me he really would like to get to know me better. All the perfect things to say, right!? All the regular lines of sweet-talking, right? Or was he being sincere? (Once in my life I’ve come upon such an instant admiration and he really was being sincere. He was just the type who didn’t really think before saying and spoke his first emotions.) Anyway, today I found out his age…hmm...he really still has years and years ahead of meeting beautiful girls. Maybe even more beautiful than me:) But what the hell is this about, year after year I start attracting younger guys? I know I don’t look my age but this is ridiculous. I will not go on and break the age record again, once a year is rather enough…

"Could you be the most beautiful girl in the world?
It's plain to see, you're the reason that god made a girl
When the day turns into the last day of all time
I can say i hope you are in these arms of mine"

Prince

The Swedes have left the country

Yep, it’s official, the legendary Mr. Acorn and Mr. Punisher have left Estonia. Last Saturday we packed their little “Ferrari” with all their stuff and sent them off to Sweden.

They came to Estonia and to our lives about a year ago, they somehow managed to find their way to our friends’ circle and to our little hearts….and now they left…How could they do that to us!?!? Now we have to manage to cope without their adorable Swedish accent and their jokes and their parties (I’ve got loads and loads of good things to say about them but this post should not be about praising them but about dispraising them for leaving us:). At last Friday’s farewell party I was so melancholy that even alcohol was not working. So, all those cocktails didn’t manage to get me drunk but the next day i still had a massive hangover, how cruel is that!?

Anyhow, temporary melancholy mood aside, the summer 2006 was absolutely amazing and the Swedes were an integral part of it and I have a feeling this is not the end of it all and we’ll be seeing more of them soon enough. That’s just the feeling I have. And my instincts don’t usually lie;)

"Sometimes it's good to feel something."

Rare speciMEN

I remember one day I was walking around in old town when I noticed a beautiful house and I remember thinking: “Wtf, has this always been here?!” I don’t know much about my city, either. I don’t know which is the oldest house and I haven’t been at the top of the tallest tower and I haven’t even been to the new KUMU. I know more about nice cafes, good places to eat, best places for dancing or just chilling, good shopping venues – you know, all the useful information.

Sometimes it’s nice to have friends from abroad visiting your city. Then you can do your part and take them to the beach overlooking the city and watch the sunset together and have them wonder about the fact that “Omg, you have real sand, I thought your beaches are stony, but this is like back home.” And you can take them to see the monastery and make pictures of the cemetery in the fading daylight and look at the ships in the red sunset afterglow. And you will have a good time and they will like it.

There’s an interesting point my foreign friends raised. “We don’t see any Estonian guys around. There’s loads of girls, who are gorgeous by the way, but where are the guys!? They seem to be a rarity. We’d like to photograph them. We bet your girls, when they’ve snatched one, have chained them to the beds or kitchen tables or bathroom pipes in order to not let them get away.” We were sitting in a café and I took a look around and that seemed to be true. I saw Estonian girls and women but the few men who were around were not Estonian…what’s up with that?

L.I.P.S.T.I.C.K

Ralph Myerz & The Jack Herren Band
"L.I.P.S.T.I.C.K"

Ok, my dear friends, here's a challenge for you. Listen to the song (the link is under L.I.P.S.T.I.C.K ) and help me find the 2 missing lines for the lyrics. I just cannot understand them. And if you find them on the internet, i don't mind, i still haven't been able to do that either:) First to answer (seemingly) correctly gets a prize.

I've got tonic
you've got gin
i tell the end
if you begin

you seem lonely
surrounded by your friends
there's no order
just lose ends

stick around
i've got lipstick on
turn around turn around
you've got dark shades on

i've got cigarettes
you've got light
i'll let you go
if you spend the night

you are here
you're already gone
safety in numbers
there is only one

stick around
i've got lipstick on
turn around turn around
you've got dark shades on

Creativity enhanced

Who would have thought creativity can be taught… and that there actually are techniques to enhance creativity both individually and in a group. But it can and there are and I know them now and you have no idea how creative I am at this very moment:) I have just arrived from a very intensive 2-day creativity training. It seems I’ve been away for a week. 3 nights of party and 2 days of brainwork. I must say it has drained me of all the energy. At least it’s Friday and Mr. Friday does not care that this week he’s been outrun by Mr. Tuesday, Mr. Wednesday and Mr. Thursday, he’s already lurking around, whispering sweet nothings to my ear. It also seems this week Mr. Saturday has been alarmed and he’s already waiting with ice preparing in the freezer and as I have heard through the grape wine, another Mr…Mr. Saaremaa (Härra Saaremaa) has been invited…. I hope I get safe and sound through this week and weekend.

Sunnight

It's 0:15 at night, the room's lit only by the TV and candles, i'm dancing around in the room to Bob Dylan's "Things Have Changed", watching the titles at the end of "Wonder boys", smoking a cognac dipped cigarette and sipping fruit tea...
...the small things in life...

Blue assed fly

Photo: Steve Alkok
I am really-really busy lately. Or, paraphrasing my good friend’s boyfriend’s dad: “I’m running around like a blue-assed fly.” I know I should take an aspirin and just chill out:) but I can’t afford it - too much work. However, as it is already “little Friday”, and before we move on to another weekend I need to jot down some catchwords from the last one.

Last Friday’s main event was the Simply Red concert. It was brilliant. You might think that after seeing all those artists this year, like for instance Depeche Mode and of course – Robbie Williams – what could a middle-aged red-haired man have to offer, but you’d be surprised. First of all Mick Hucknall’s voice is amazing, and secondly, the way he communicated with the audience, with the looks, moves, words….he really had us eating from his palm. People were jamming all through the concert and after he’d finally done all the encore songs like “Stars” and “If You Don’t Know Me by Now”, I had a feeling everyone left the concert hall totally satisfied.

Last Saturday’s main event was Kiku’s birthday. Now, you know how everybody’s always looking for new and interesting ideas for celebrating various parties and how hard it is to come up with something nuevo. However, this time I was surprised. The whole birthday gang met up at the railway station at 9 pm. Then we were taken on a bus, which would take us to Tartu for a party. That meant 2,5 hours of joyriding – having some drinks, chatting, making stops at gas stations, getting gradually more and more tipsy – you know, the normal warm-up party. By the time we reached the club Illusion in Tartu we were all quite in the mood for party. All the fun continued in the club – the music was good and we danced a lot but parts of the evening are a blur to me. I remember at some point Kiku was splashing people with Moet and that some people were sleeping (not me!) and that a girl! was hitting on me etc. The party ended at around 4 but the bus was not to leave before 5, so the whole group poured all over Tartu center. There was some wrestling, running, some crying and some laughing… How we all managed to not get lost and still catch the bus is beyond me. Anyway…at 8 am we were back in Tallinn, at the railway station, in pouring rain, reluctant to go home, under the examining eyes of the “normal people” for whom the new day had already started. Some of the personal tragedies of that evening aside, it was a good party!

Overload

Seth: Why do people cry?
Maggie: What do you mean?
Seth: I mean...what happens physically?
Maggie: Well...umm...tear ducts operate on a normal basis to lubricate and protect the eye and when you have an emotion they overreact and create tears.
Seth: Why? Why do they overreact?
Maggie: [pause] I don't know.
Seth: Maybe...maybe emotion becomes so intense your body just can't contain it. Your mind and your feelings become too powerful.

"City of Angels"

Ever wondered about that? About crying...and emotions...? What i I think, is...whatever the case, whatever the outcome, having feelings and emotions, good or bad, is always better than having none at all. What i've also learned is that there's no point in fighting emotions and that even tears are good sometimes.

¿no hablan inglés?

If any of you feels you want to read my blog in Spanish, then this is how it looks like. I think this whole translate.google.com is pretty genial and the translation seems to be quite logical...though, translating Robbie Williams fans as "Robbie Williams ventilators" may not quite communicate the meaning.

I'm not tellin...

Whenever i have a bigger pause in blogging, it can be of various reasons. Either my life is too good, so that i don't have time to write, or it's bad and i don't feel like writing, or i'm away or i'm just too busy etc. So, there's really no way of telling which one of the reasons it is this time.

I am still not writing, so i will not tell you about last weeks events or how me and my bro and sis were making a present for our parents' anniversary and how it turned out or how i went to see Taarka in the very south of Estonia or how i slept for 15 hours or how i (again!) wished someone happy birthday in my dream and then forgot to do it in real life. Since i am not telling you about all of those things it's better that you ask about them from me.