2015 In Review

Past year's goals

• Jogging every day in January: passed. I bought new jogging shoes. Since jogging in the past has caused knee & back problems, this time I went to a proper sports clothes shop and asked for the salesman to recommend shoes. They were more expesive than the supermarket shoes, but it was worth it. I did short jogs in 6 out of 7 of days in January and didn' have any health problems.
• Writing something publishable every week: not passed as such. I didn't write any ad-funded site nor blog posts once a week. However, I did join the content marketing team in my workplace, when they searched for new authors to represent R&D. We had blogging training, and I wrote 3 marketing blog posts. This is my first contact to professional writing, with 10-page guidelines to comply with and several peer review rounds. One of my posts was even translated to Finnish. I've also written a private haircut diary almost daily. I wrote less than planned but wrote anyway.
• Dieting to 55kg (New Year's goal for 2011): passed.

Sports

I've participated in capoeira classes weekly. In addition, I've resumed pole dancing hobby this year. I've gone to a class about once every 2 week for half a year now and made progress to Level 2, where Level 1 is introductory class to which anyone can attend and no background is needed. Level 2 requires a stable invert (where you are head down on the pole, supporting your weight by pressing your legs against the pole), which is a common starting position for other moves.

Languages

This year, I've translated small part of daily, private haircut diary to a foreign language on about 1/3 of days. This is my new paradigm for maintaining language skill. I've also reviewed some languages, which I learned a little but had forgotten because of unuse, to a level where I can maintain them with this new maintenance routine.

I participated in Russian course in the spring, and now in the autumn I've participated in some Russian World of Warcraft raids, a new milestone in practical fluency.

Memorable events of 2015

Gymnaestrada

Gymnaestrada is an international rhytmic gymnastics event, which is organized once every 4 years, always in a different city. Professional and amateur gymnasts from all over the world come to perform and watch for a period of two week. Their age varies from preschool to pensioners, but "prime hobby age" people around 20 form the biggest block of participants.

To describe the atmosphere, Gymnaestrada is a superior alternative reality where everyone is more organized and active than normally. The infamous viharatikka 9, which often carries loud drunks and lowlife among its passangers, was for once clean when it was half full of people in their Gymnaestrada jump suits, which seamlessly combined national pride with international co-operation. While the Gymnaestrada area did have a beer stall, it was a minor sideshow unlike in rock festivals. The event also blurred the line between audience and performers. Each performance started and finished with the gymnasts and audience together performing playing the Official Choreography of the event, and when I talked to people next to me, more often than not they had participated in some performance of their own, even the over-50 ones. As Urho Kekkonen said, "All reasons not to exercise are excuses." In the Gymnaestrada alternative reality, even the elderly maintain their fitness with regular exercise and men and women can meet without excessive alcohol consumption (at the end of one perfomance a male gymnast proposed to a female gymnast.)

Sexhibition 2015

This porn festival feature a main stage, a side stage and lots of sales booths tangentially related to sex (from which I bought nothing.) Mr. Lothar's side stage had traditional striptease performances relying on nakedness. That was boring and I don't remember anything worth mentioning from it.

The main stage had well-scripted, intricately costumed striptease and burlesque performances. The most memorable was a pole dance performance by Zara & Tiina (the video is about the same Tiina in different show.) The cheesy script was about batgirl facing off supergirl, ending in nakedness in the end like a good striptease is supposed to. I was often the first one to clap at demanding pole tricks, as others didn't identify them as anything special.

This was also the first time I saw male striptease. A "South American exotic" dancer dressed in gladiator suit took a voluntary woman from the audience and performed various striptease moves. On the one hand he had sex role differences clearly thought out (performing a masculine "defender of the loved ones" role, and using calm, measured, self-confident movement language), on the other hand it surprised me how showing off her body and shaking ass in front of the female volunteer played such a big role. I thought that purely meat-based arousing only works when a female does it for a male, but apparently it also works the other way. The lessons learned might turn out useful if I ever reach a level of skill in seduction and pole dancing where I can invite a girlfriend candidate to watch a hot pole show in my apartment.

I lost my virginity at 33 after paying for it.

In August 2014 I finally put on my Playboy underpants bought from India and visited a prostitute as planned in 2012. Found her number from sexwork.net. She resided within 30-min walking distance from me.

The best adjectives to describe the experience are "awkward" and "embarrassing". The song above captures well the atmosphere of embarrassment combined with pride of reaching an evolutionary milestone (after all, we are sons and daughters of people who passed on their genes to the next generation.) After following instructions on the phone and opening a door to a flat, a thirty-something, tall, slender woman greeted me. I had ensured from reviews beforehand that she was a competent professional, so I would only have to deal with my own embarrassment and inexperience and not with criminality or willingness to ruse money without providing service in exchange. After I showered she guided the naked me to the bed and joined soon afterwards, naked herself. As is normal (based on escort reviews) she started with a hand & blowjob to make my organ ready for the intercourse, and then mounted on top of me. However, because of extreme nervousness I wasn't in sufficiently aroused state to finish inside her. It finished with me wanking while squeezing her and looking her to the eyes. Psychologically, it was a stronger experience than I expected - not only the extreme nervousness during the visit, but also for several days afterwards I didn't feel the normal arousal when walking in the street and spotting a particularly attractive female. Objectively speaking there wasn't anything to fear or be extremely nervous about, as it was all legal and hygienic.

When I was younger I had to try everything once, including visiting a strip bar. I didn't like it at all. The women behaved as if they were robots, which had been scripted to switch of all their natural instincts and replace them with money-optimized behaviour. In my head there is a subconscious model of how people to behave, and the robot-like behaviour of the strippers made it scream red alert, "people just don't behave this way!" Later in the pole dancing circles when I ran into people who had earned money by stripping, their behavour wasn't strange at all and fit well into normal variation of how people to behave, so it was the strip bar environment, which caused freaky behaviour.

By contrast, the prostitute behave like any professional working on customer's body would, showing also muted negative emotions like frustration and boredom that were natural reactions to the situation. Only the arrival to the scene, with extreme care not to reveal the exact address on phone beforehand, hinted that the apratment rental probably included something to hide. Otherwise she seemed to have everyhing together in psychological, hygienic and legal aspects of her work.

Note: I wouldn't write anything like this about possible future significant others or other identifiable persons. I'll respect their privacy.