Gift of time

"Sometimes giving your time to someone or something can be the biggest gift you can ever make."

This was one of the sentences from my MCP speech 2 weeks ago. Time is endless, yet it seams that we never have it enough. By giving the time, we usually get something back, though - a thought, an idea, information, a new perspective, emotion, a friend.

If a person has put 5,5 years of time into an organization like AIESEC then it gets difficult to say what she has got out of it. The list seams to be endless. And knowing that you get something good out of it, makes you to put even more of your time into it. That's what happened to me. And I was granted with the opportunity to be in AIESEC in Finland for 1 more year - this time as Member Committee President.

Please meet my team - Team Spirit - that I start working on 1st June.

Anja - a German girl, who has strong personality and opinions, has put a lot of effort into AIESEC in Finland's ER and projects.
Heli - a Finnish girl, who seams to be quiet, but has a lot of strength hidden inside and is passionate about branding.
MacDonald - a Nigerian dude, who is as energetic, as most of the Nigerians that I have met and brings smile to every person, who is working with him.

Meet the Team Spirit - Anja, MacDonald, Heli and me

A perfect team of 4 people from 4 different countries. For me it's another great experience, especially due to the fact that I have been living in all of the countries, where my team mates are coming from. It's like recapturing all the experiences that I have got when working in those countries...

By the way, I have loads of time! And I know exactly what I want to do with it - I want to enjoy every second of it, not telling "I don't have time" and appreciating other people's time that they have put into me and this organization. Thank you!

Pieces getting together

7,5 months have passed. Seams to be pretty serious, huh? Yeap, working in AIESEC in Finland is fairly challenging and fun thing to do. I just wonder when was the time when I actually forgot that I have a blog somewhere...

Some highlights from the past 6 months....

We organized Scandinavian Leadership Development Seminar (simply put ScaLDS) in Finland at the beginning of August. Being conference manager for this seminar and having it as one of the first "big things" to do, I felt quite well after seeing that people actually enjoyed it and had loads of fun. I've heard that they still talk about the conference in some other international seminars several months later. We must have done something good, eh?

ScaLDS 2007 facilitator team :)

And just couple of weeks after ScaLDS we landed in over heated Istanbul for enjoying the biggest conference of the year - International Congress 2007. 2 weeks of sessions, networking and partying might seam pretty tough and you're right - it was quite tough! Still we managed to enjoy almost every minute of it, as not every day you get into some square kilometers with 700 young people from 100 countries. And I was wearing Finnish national costume, which is another remarkable fact from the conference! :P Finnish role-call was awesome (thanks to Ari, our rockstar), WENA party even more awesome (thanks to Salmiakki, the Finnish rockstar) and eventually we got also back in one piece.

Yes, we looked quite pretty with the Finnish national clothes!

And we looked even prettier at the official dinner ;-)

Fall has gone pretty much with speed of light. Recruitment, coaching visits in Jyväskylä, Tampere and Oulu, preparations for national conference ACCESS, functional weekend with my great HR/D team... It was quite stretching time and yet really enjoyable, as I probably crossed more limits during this time than I have done it during the last year at any point.

Team Kick Ass in Tampere for HR/D meeting, September 2007

ACCESS 2007 was my baby, as our lovely chair Jarda said. It was pretty awesome experience! Having "Running up that hill" as the conference theme, having 18 facilitators from 9 countries, around 150 people present... Yeah, I was pretty much running around all the time, but in the end was nice to hear that people were actually having good time there and learning a lot as well. Mission accomplished, I guess :-P

ACCESS 2007 faci team running to the conference

After the conference I have probably had the lowest motivation during my term. Recovering from the conference, clearing the head a little bit, trying to relax and find new beginnings was pretty much my priority and proved to be quite successful. Now I've got some more energy into my work again and decided to give more new beginnings to myself. So I decided to apply for MCP of AIESEC in Finland! Elections are at NatConf 2008 on 18.-20. January in Tampere, so cross your fingers for me ;-)

Yep, I continue going up! ;-)

So now I'm giving my very best to finish the stuff at the office, head for mid-term evaluation next week and then feel happy and proud to take a ferry to Tallinn and enjoy some Christmas spirit with my family. Don't worry, will be back for New Year's Evening for sending the year off with the people here, who have made this year awesome for me. If you're somewhere around Helsinki or thinking of coming here then give me a call, will surely welcome you in our humble MC flat at Kantsu ;-)

Sunrise

Well well well... summer is here, the bright nights also... there's lots of work and rarely time to enjoy the sun in the middle of the night, but if there happens to be time for that then these are one of the nicest moments...

Nothing is nicer than to sit on the roof at 3-4 am and see the sun coming out from behind the trees and listen to the quietness before all the people start waking up. These are some of the rare moments from northern life that I enjoy, especially having a special person next to me...

And what is more - at these kind of moments I always remember how many things there are in my everyday life that are actually not important at all. And how good it is to remind myself all the truly important things that make me feel good in my life. I just want to be happy and I am - it's a matter of attitude anyway.

Sun rises every morning, if I want it or not, but if I see it - that's up to me.

Taking it over ;)

Last 2 days we have been celebrating the end of the last term and beginning of the new term in AIESEC in Finland. In short - we had 2 head-spinning take-over parties!

Actually everything started already on Friday morning, when the new MC team named Team Supreme was asked to sleep at the same place and was woken up at 06.35 by the old MC team - Team Possible. And then it began - the whole day of adventure and crazy tasks to do, all lead by Team Possible's sent messages on our mobile phones and our actions followed by "evil" eyes in the bushes. Hehe :)

So here's how our day looked liked:

1. We were directed to the roof of our MC flat where there was very nice breakfast waiting for us. Instead of coffee we enjoyed energizing beer and as a task we had to find a key, which was hidden to a blueberry soup package. You can just imagine, how we got the key out of it! Nummy :P

2. The key lead us to the central railway station's lockers, where there were 4 bags waiting for us in the locker number 42. From the bags we found our uniforms for the day - orange/red shirts with our names on it, orange horns to carry on our heads, balloons reminding some body parts of a man and a woman, some more stuff for our hair etc. Fully equipped, we were ready to have further instructions...

3. First of all we had to go to nice shopping place in the centre of Helsinki. where our task was to change Ari (our lovely hard-rock guy) into metrosexual guy, by choosing the best clothes for that, getting the right moves from him and then saving this with our digital cameras. Mission was accomplished - Ari looked wonderful in the pink summer shirt and shorts!

4. After changing Ari into metrosexual guy and giving him back his lovely team outfit after fulfilling the task, we got the new message from the Possibles. It said that we had to find our way to one specific area in Helsinki and find one specific kind of shop there for finding one specific kind of toy for me. Yeah, we had to go to a sex shop and buy a sex toy for me. So we ended up going through different kinds of vibrators, whips, sex costumes, ending up with (a small) vibrator that fitted into our budget, given by our commanders. The result was amazing - lots of satisfied people, as we demonstrated the toy later on during the party...

(Beer break in a place suggested by the manager of the sex shop)

5. Our next destination was the harbour, but instead of just going there, we had to become disabled - one of us couldn't walk, one of us couldn't talk, one of us couldn't use hands and one couldn't see anything. My role was to be blind, which meant, that I was lead through Helsinki by Jouni, who unfortunately couldn't use his hands. But despite to that we finished up alive in the harbour, from where we were supposed to continue our way to Suomenlinna.

6. Getting to Suomenlinna is not exactly sitting on a tram - it's actually sitting on a ferry, as it's an island. So we had a lovely sea trip to an island and after wondering around there a bit, we found a lovely picnic place waiting for us with whole lunch, 2 bottles of wine and lots of other nice stuff. It was really nice and gave us some more strength for the upcoming challenges.

7. After getting back to the mainland we had a new destination waiting for us - karaoke bar! Our cute hard-rock girl Aksu was supposed to sing Madonna's golden hit "I'm a virgin", which was apparently not her favourite song, but after adding up some drinks to all of us, we ended up singing Finnish song R-A-K-A-S :D

8. Feeling very dizzy and not being really sure how alive we are going to end up this night, we got a new message - we had to find our way to another part of Helsinki and continue the tradition of swimming naked. Haha, it was pretty funny, especially when some random guys were jogging by and couldn't help staring at some crazy people going naked to ice-cold water. We got some pictures too, if you're interested! ;)

9. Luckily swimming was our last big task. After that we had to go back with metro, where we found our new mascot Muumi waiting for us. After that we had to tie ourselves into a rope and under guidance of Jouni we found our way to pizza restorant to pick up a pizza, made especially for us. Again, mission accomplised and we were allowed to return to our flat, where lots of people from different parts of Finland were waiting for us to celebrate our upcoming year.

So what happened in the flat. Well, I guess I don't have to confirm that by that time we had consumed lots of alcohol, starting already 8 am in the morning during breakfast. But of course, more alcohol during the party was also not bad, so we continued with the process. Among other things we had to find our keys to the office from a cake, using only our mouths to do that. We were not looking very pretty after finding the keys, having whipped cream all over our faces, but we were happy, as from that moment on we were officially owners of our office!

Team Supreme having encouraging drink during the take-over day.

Suomi!

I'm in Finland. Not for shopping. Yeah, how did I get here...

I guess it's quite long since I've made any posting again here and last postings were from the period of time when I started loosing my mind already, because I had too much free time and no clue what would happen with my near future.

Well, now I know what will happen with my near future, because I'm elected for MC in Finland. It was somewhere in January, when I went through the rough selection process, had to stand in front of all the members of AIESEC in Finland and convince them why they should select me. And in the end I got some water on my head, which announced that I will be in MC as VP HR/D. Yeah, so here I am...


On this picture I've just got the water. I don't look so pretty here, but it was still a happy moment :)

It's May now, I've started with my transition. Since January I haven't done so many things, but mainly I guess I can say that I've been around conferences - facilitating at Baltic conference Synergy, delegate at EuroXPRO and then facilitating again at Finnish national conference Success. And then of course planning conference Input.

My new team. They are... interesting. And why everybody thinks that when I say "interesting", then I think something negative? It's actually the other way around. Interesting = something very good. I just say that they are Finnish and each one of them is very different and interesting person. That is why I'm also sure that our year is going to be really colourful. But yeah, I still need to get used to some Finnish understandings...

My HR/D team. They are... fascinating. I actually didn't expect so much power and excitement from them and thought that I would really need to push them a lot. But it's not like that at all. So far most of them (those with whom I have had a good chance to talk to so far) seam to do this with real passion and because they are interested in this area and really want to make things happen. It's really motivating for me to see that.

So Finnish. I guess most of us know how many stereotypes there are about Finnish. If I said that I didn't have any of those stereotypes then I would lie a lot. So yes, I do have stereotypes about Finnish people, but we will see how they will stay/disappear after I have lived here for some time. It's defenately beneficial for me that the rest of my team mates are Finnish and that I can learn the language as well with them.

Moving away from Estonia was weird. I didn't move too far, yet there was something that I didn't feel very good about. Maybe it was because I had to pack and leave on very last minute and I had to cancel many plans in Estonia when I found out that I have to go to Stockholm for a meeting before actually moving to Finland. Maybe it was also because I had really nice weekend in Estonia before moving. It doesn't matter anymore, though, because I feel almost good where I am right now and as long as I do what I like doing then everything is ok.

And by the way, I like what I do. So I continue being happy :)

I prefer half-empty glass to half-full glass

Everyone wants their glass to be full – it’s the best option. I want also my glass to be full and if it’s not then I prefer to say that my glass is half-empty, not that it’s half-full. And this doesn’t mean that I’m big pessimist, because people who know me can say that I’m not! But there’s another very good reason for that…

WHEN YOU’RE GLASS IS HALF-FULL then you feel the positivism about the half that you have, which is very good. But usually people become very comfortable in their positivism – they are happy about the half and just thinking how nice it is to drink that half.

WHEN YOU’RE GLASS IS HALF-EMPTY then you don’t feel so positive about it, but as you want to feel better, you start finding ways to be more positive, so you start looking for possibilities to fill up the rest of your glass! During this process you just have to remember that half-empty glass is still better than totally empty glass and you should be happy for that… but full glass is definitely better than half-empty glass, so you might want to do something about it…

So to my opinion people shouldn’t settle with half-full glass, but have half-empty glass instead and find ways how to fill it up!

Wonderland is there!

Continuing the last posting...

Sometimes it has striked me that maybe the world is not real, as there are so many mystical things in life that you just can't explain...

But... seeing is beleiving, or what? :)

With me there was one interesting thing about "seeing is beleiving". I studied tourism, had to learn all the world countries by heart, know so much about different cultures, their backrounds etc. I was so fascinated about all the places, about all the nice pictures and videos I saw of them. At some point of time I just thought - how do I know that these amazing places are really there? Because someone is telling me that they are there?

Well, then I decided that for beleing it I have to see it myself. I decided that I have to see, if there are all of these wonderful places, if people really live there like I was told etc. And I decided to go to Nigeria!!! And I promised myself that after I have come back from Nigeria, I will keep going around, until I beleive it all :P

Sounds crazy? Yeah, I know... but let there be a little bit crazyness in my head ;)