Jo over at Dreamwidth put together a list of daily questions for 2023 again  🙂 Here’s my answers to February 1-16  questions.

1 – Serpent Day: How do you feel about snakes? Would you ever keep a snake as a pet?

They freak me out. No, never ever. I also wouldn’t be able to live with someone who did have them as pets – I’d never be able to sleep or relax because I’d be sure the snake(s) has escaped it’s containment.

2 – Optimist Day: Do you consider yourself to be an optimist or a pessimist?

I used to be an optimist but unemployment and particulally ever since getting chronically ill I’ve become more pessimist (or a realist) as far as my own life goes. I still have hope for society and people in general though, just not much for my own personal circumstances.

3 – Take a Cruise Day: Have you ever been on a cruise? If not, would you want to? Cruise ships cause major environmental damage: a large cruise ship can have a carbon footprint greater than 12,000 cars, while passengers on an Antarctic cruise can produce as much CO2 emissions on a seven-day voyage as the average European in an entire year. The industry is a major producer of waste, with the total amount of rubbish produced by a large cruise ship exceeding a ton per day. And let us not forget that they are also essentially floating germ/virus labs (even before Covid). So do you still want to take a cruise?

I’m not interested in cruises – the entertainment on them is not something I ame interested in (getting drunk, dancing, loud music, big crowds). In fact about the only thing worse than a cruise for me is a beach holiday.

The only cruises I’ve been on are the 24 hour ones from my home town to Stockholm – these we made when I was a kid. We used to do a day cruise to Marienhamnor a 24 hour cruise to Stockholm every year during some school holiday with my family and sometimes my best friend would come with us too. That’s really common type cruise here – from Turku or Helsinki to Stockholm and back. Takes about 24 hours.

As an adult the only cruise I’ve gone one on was one that included a visit to Visby for the day in the summer and then a ship back. This was I think night on the ship + day in Visby + night back on the ship. That was a really great trip and Visby was absolutely beautiful!

The only cruise I’d be interested in is on my own/someone rich’s private, huge yacht. I’d be able to spend the time as I wish, instead being forced to endure crowds of hundreds/housands of people in a tight space and just like read in my own peace in a lounge or listen to music I like.

4 – Ice cream For Breakfast Day: Have you ever eaten ice cream for breakfast (or for any other meal)?

I don’t think I’ve had ice cream for breakfast! Sometimes for dinner yes, particularly if it’s a heat wavy summer day. Usually I’d make a shake of it: ice cream, a banana or strawberries, chocolate sauce or vanilla sauce, and milk.

5 – World Nutella Day: Do you like Nutella? How often to you eat Nutella?

It’s okay. I don’t really like it because it’s so sweet. I buy maybe one bottle every two or more years? One bottle lasts me a year or so. Usually I buy a bottle because I need it for baking and then eat the remainders over the next several months.

6 – Chopsticks Day: Can you eat with chopsticks? If yes, how often do you use them?

Nope and never.

7 – World Ballet Day: Have you ever been to a ballet performance? If not, is this something that might interest you? Have you ever had ballet lessons?

As a kid we went with school – it was (is?) part of the general study program about culture. And as an adult, I think I was once in my very early 20s when my Mom wanted to see… Swan Lake? but didn’t want to go alone. I don’t care for ballet – I only enjoy the Dance of the Cygnets dance from Swan Lake, everything else bores me.

8 – World Opera Day: Are you an opera buff?

There are one or two pieces that I like such as E lucevan le stelle from Tosca as performed by Roberto Alagna, but no, I’m not. I do like a lot of classical music, but prefer to have no singing.

9 – Read in the Bathtub Day: Do you read in the bath? Have you ever been reading in the bath and dropped your book into the water?

I haven’t had a bathtub since I moved into my own home 20+ years ago, but we had one in my childhood home. I used to read for hours in the bath! It was one of my favorite things to do! My Mom or Dad usually had to tell me enough already after like three hours LOL I never dropped a book in the water. I read library books so I was really careful with them! It almost happened a few times, a book slipping from my hand but luckily I always caught it in time.

10 – Umbrella Day: Umbrella or raincoat? Do you carry an umbrella or raincoat “just in case” if the weather looks doubtful, or do you take your chances? What types of umbrellas do you like? Do you keep umbrellas in different places, e.g. one at work, one in your car (if you have a car), to avoid being caught by unexpected rain?

I carry an umbrella pretty much year around in my backpack (which I take everywhere). Rain is very common in Finland all year round, and I use busses (I don’t own a car) so being stuck in rain waiting for a bus isn’t a rare occurrence. I use travel umbrellas because they’ll fit into whatever bag I’m carrying so they practical. But I’d really love to use one of those bigger, taller umbrellas with “J” handles sometimes. It’s just not practical because they don’t fit into any beg ever and are the most unpractical thing to carry around when you don’t know if you’ll need one or not.

11 – Make a Friend Day: How easy is it for you to make friends? Do you have many casual friends, or just one or two close friends?

It’s always been hard. I usually have just one or two close friends, and the rest are really acquitances interested in some thing that I am too.

12 – World Marriage Day: In your opinion, is marriage an outdated institution or has it stood the test of time? Should we seek to preserve it, or might there be a better alternative for committed couples?

I have no opinion on marriage. If I were in a relationship, I can’t imagine getting married would be important to me in and of itself. It’s my understanding if you have kids with your SO, then it might be better to get married because of some legal things with the kids and finances related to the kids if the other parent dies suddenly. Most of my friends aren’t married even if they’ve been together for maybe decades, and my Mom and her SO (both in their 80s) have been together and engaged for three decades now; they only got engaged because them not being married but living together really bothered by Grandma. So they got engaged as an compromise to appease my Grandma. And my Mom’s best friend has never always been single/never married, so I grew up with not-being-married being just as normal and un-remarked on by people as being-married so I never grew into the mindset that marriage is the default expectation.

13 – Clean Out Your Computer Day: When was the last time you cleaned out your fans and dusted off your motherboard? Have you looked at your graphics card to see if its cooling fan and fins are clean? For that matter, when did you last clean out or even opened the case? Or have you ever cleaned out your computer or had someone clean it out for you?

I only have a laptop, and most of that isn’t possible to do without special tools to open the back of the laptop so I’m guessing regular people aren’t supposed to do that. I do dust what bits I can open a couple of times a year as well as the fan outlet, and wipe the screen and keyboard weekly or more of then if needed. Back when I had desktops, I did open them up sometimes to dust things and install new cd-rom or hard drives and such.

14 – Organ Donor Day: Are you signed up/registered to be an organ donor? Do you regularly or occasionally donate blood?

I am a registered organ donor, although what with my illnesses, I’m not sure if they can use my organs because of the diseases I have. I’m unable to donate blood – I’m anemic and iron deficient even without doing it. Just for the hell of it, I’ve tried doing the “Can you donate blood” test which ask a lot of questions to determine if you can, and I can’t get past the second page without getting four reasons already to disqualify me.

15 – World Hippo Day: How much do you know about hippos? Have you seen one outside a zoo?

Not much/nothing! And nope – I’m not even sure I’ve seen them in zoos, I can’t remember. Whatever I learned about them in school, I’ve long since forgotten because it’s not information I’ve ever needed.

16 – Innovation Day: Are you the creative sort who can easily come up with new innovations, or are you better at following-up with developing other people’s ideas?

I don’t know! Physical stuff – I never had the chance to do anything of the sort at work (temp jobs) because if there were need to invent new things, it was the permanent employees who did that. And library work doesn’t really do that, anyway. And the permanent employees did the brain storming if it were a show or an exhibition or something. The closest I can think of is back when making internet pages was done with html from scratch. I thought myself html and css; I was usually able to cobble together what I wanted with research and trial & error.

I’ve sometimes wondered what the boys were taught back in school while the girls had dressmaking, knitting etc. lessons. The boys had woodworks, iron works like welding etc. I’ve many times thought that being taught how to drill holes in walls etc. and learning tools like drills would’ve been much more useful to me than knitting or making a blouse – I’ve never needed to do the latter, but have several times needed to ask my Mom’s SO to drill a whole in the wall. I don’t even own a drill because he loved to do all that stuff and is good at it but he’s getting old now. I guess in the 80s the society thought every woman would always have a husband/brother/father around to do stuff like that. I hope the schools teach girls these things too nowadays but I don’t know if they do.