Wednesday, January 5

Nice guys Finnish last


there are some friendships that make you feel so happy for having maintained. sometimes they are with the most unlikely people.

like my finnish friend miikka. i can't believe we've been friends (long distance, email friends but friends nonetheless) for nearly four years now, without ever having seen each other since. we met four years ago at a competition in marktoberdorf, germany, which was without a doubt one of the best times OF MY LIFE. (right sir jojo? HAHA CAUGHT YOU, BLOG LURKER!!!!)

there are a lot of things that i really like about our friendship.

first, i think, is the kind of person that he is. miikka is the kind of guy who takes violin lessons, reads poetry and attempts to read dante in italian. where on earth will you find even semi-hot guys who do this? (answer: europe, apparently.) miikka is also the kind of guy who likes to (as he says) "...have a cup of coffee in a small cafe in helsinki (capital of finland) and laugh at the people who run by with a rush without realizing how relaxing it would be to sit down for a while and enjoy the moment."

awww.


i wonder if it has occurred to any of these finnish girls that this nice, quiet, unsuspecting reluctant engineering student is somekindofa renaissance man. lesson to all of us women: never ever discount the quiet guy.

second, is that in him i have found an unlikely support system for my dream. and more or less i know i am the same for him--he once printed something encouraging (or "couraging", as he puts it) and stuck it on his wall. i am inspired by our numerous email exchanges about pursuing music, by his resiliency and his quiet wisdom--phrased in his own quirky finnish-english, which he always pokes fun at.

(from his shortest email to me ever):

hi,
i got eliminated in the first stage of the audition. i feel shit.
miikka

haha! i saved this to give him a laugh when he's a famous singer. but seriously, his good sense amazes me sometimes. maybe there's something to being as quiet as the finns are.

Thank you for the couraging words. It seems to me that it has been quite often that I have needed those words and it probably will be so in the future. Someone has said that professional singing means having 10 failed auditions per each successful one. And so it seems to be! Sorry for not being very couraging now :) But I don't think I'll ever stop dreaming. And neither should you!

And also I can't think of any great artist who would have had very easy path to go. Maybe it is also that you must have suffered enough to have something to say, to be able to touch others with your music. I don't know.


Take care and keep dreaming, but do not think that you will be happier if your dream comes true. Enjoying each step towards the goal is as important as enjoying the goal itself.

third, is that i've learned quite a number of things about the finnish culture from him (or from independent study, for reasons that i will talk about later on). or about people in general. and how sometimes, they just pleasantly surprise you.

fourth, is that he's funny in his own quiet way.

Congratulations for having a boyfriend. It must have been a difficult task to find someone worth you! I hope the guy understands what he's got.

I still have no girlfriend. I don't quite understand where are they all hiding.


fifth, and perhaps most meaningful of all, is that our friendship has come to mean so much more than i first wanted it to. i'm glad that i finally gave up on trying to entrap him into some kind of weird relationship. (suddenly i remember this joke about nokia's tagline really being "nokia: making finns talk") and i'm so glad the friendship outlasted the infatuation.

besides, if i had still been gaga over miikka, i wouldn't have even noticed marlon. and what a disaster that would have been. :)

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