Today [10]

Congratulations Dwarf, always informative and funny posts

gregrocker said:

Must have been priceless - a shy Christmas card! Pics of the nieces and nephews in their Christmas plays always end up on my desktop for the holiday season, some of the ones I treasure most. Any evident self-consciousness makes it even more heartwarming.

I know it makes you feel so sorry for them though, especially when they had another showing of it this morning and one of his Mums friends went to that and said he was brilliant and sang to all his songs and there wasn't a tear in sight.

Baroness von Shush said:

Joan Archer said:

Went to my grandsons school Christmas play today, he's 4, he was a Christmas card, he doesn't enjoy this kind of thing he's a very shy child and doesn't have much confidence but he did do some singing. Now his brother who's just turned 3 will be starting school in January and we know he's going to be just the opposite.

Aww Joan how very sweet. What a way to spend the afternoon, I bet you were thrilled.

I was Angie, even though I didn't see much of him being further back in the audience and having people taller than me in front, I would have been OK if I'd been my earlier height.

Dwarf said:

Joan Archer said:

Went to my grandsons school Christmas play today, he's 4, he was a Christmas card, he doesn't enjoy this kind of thing he's a very shy child and doesn't have much confidence but he did do some singing. Now his brother who's just turned 3 will be starting school in January and we know he's going to be just the opposite.

Sounds like they're a bit like chalk and cheese.

x BlueRobot said:

The last nativity play I remember I was in I was a angel

Did the angel have a name? Lucifer, perhaps?

This post marks Dwarf's 10K.

Yes they are like chalk and cheese but they stick together and well done Guy on 10K posts it's always a pleasure to see you posting giving the help you do.

That nice lot of posts, well done and keep it up.

Reposting this every year:

Today, Thursday the 6th of December 2012 my warmly beloved and greatly missed Finland celebrates her 95th birthday. The Indepence Day is to us Finns very important, reminding us how close it came to lose our freedom. Two times, both in 1917 and 1939-45. The text below is an immigrants sentimental rant, you can stop reading now if that kind of stuff disturbs you.

Finland never was a sovereign country, per se. We were a part of Kingdom of Sweden until Sweden lost us to Russian Csar in 1809, in what is today called as Finnish War. From those days we still are officially a bilingual country, Swedish language having an official status beside Finnish. Finland became an autonomous Grand Duchy in impearilistic Russian Empire. When Lenin was causing major disturbance in Russia, the Csar had so much other things in his mind the Finnish nationalists decided the time was right to declare Finland independent. Surprisingly, Lenin won in St. Petersburg but he too had so much other things to worry he accidentally accepted the Finnish declaration of independence, as one of the first of his foreign policy decicions after the revolution. So, the independent and sovereign Republic of Finland was born on 6th of December 1917.

Living next to the Great Bear was not easy, especially considering Finland has almost thousand kilometers border with Russia. When World War II began, we had basically no alternatives; we allied with nazi Germany. Luckily our government very soon realized that whatever happens, we have to change our allies. The rest of the war we faught a comical war; allied with West, against nazis, but at the same time fighting against Soviet Union. As such, Finland is the only country that fought most of the war against nazis and (one of) allied forces. Reason is clear, Stalin could not accept that a west country had it's border only 50 kilometers from Leningrad. He demanded the eastern part of Finland as a buffer zone.

The war ended, we lost about 10% of our soil. We had to give Karelia and Petsamo, the eastern parts of our country to Stalin, to keep him on the "right side of the border". But: in the WWII, there were only three European capital cities of war participating countries never occupied by the enemy: London, Moscow and our Helsinki. Finland was the first country (and quite a long time the only one) who paid the war compensations to the last penny. Finland is the only country bordering Soviet Union who could keep the western, capitalistic system and didn't fall under the Soviet umbrella after the war.

Both my grandfathers fought against both Germans and Russians. I'm proud of our independence and my granfathers' part in that. We are only 5.3 million people, a half of that of New York City or Berlin. We are not very well known, normally people know only Nokia, Linus Torvalds, Jean Sibelius and some ice-hockey players or rally and Formula 1 drivers. What people seem not to know is that since 50's, Finnish troops have been an essential part of almost every UN peace keeping operation, or that our former presidents have had an essential role when negotiating peace in Northern Ireland, Kosovo, Namibia, Sumatra (former region of Indonesia) and other parts of this globe of ours.

Don't misunderstand me: I love my German wife and family very much and have chosen to live an immigrants life here, rather than in my Finland. I love my life and my home. It is my own choice, based on my bottomless love to my beautiful wife Angelika. My home is where Angie is, no question of that. But as in every home in Finland, or in every Finnish home abroad, tonight at exactly 6PM I light those traditional blue and white candles by every window at home. To remember how close it was some 60+ years ago, to thank the fathers of my mother and father for fighting for my, my childrens and my grandchildrens freedom, to show how proud I am when I can say "I am a Finn!", and to remember home is not a place, it is a state of mind. My home is hear in Germany, but part of my heart can not and will not forget my origins.

Kari



Google.fi today:



http://www.google.fi/

Jean Sibelius: Finlandia

That's an interesting read, Kari.

I'm at the community centre as usual to-day and I will look for some job vancancies whilst I'm here.

Good information and story. I read many books about history, and only knew part of that.