Summing up May 2015

 This May has been more or less like some Mays before it – naturally with some new ingredients.

The belly dance end of the  season –show was at a real concert hall with light technology instead of the ordinary gym hall. Our dance was the same as at the rest home. There were more room so we could do it with more speed. Some of us were very hesitating and thought they couldn’t make it before such a big audience. We tried to encourage them. The other thing to encourage was the audience, they helped us to achieve the right mood by clapping their hands wildly. The ladies who hesitated were so happy after the dance since everything went as well as it could ever go with that amount of practice. 

                                         

Here you can see the video of our performance:

Our coffee evenings have been rather popular – what comes to the media. We have been seen in a document made by the Finnish broadcasting company YLE.

                                           A video still from the YLE document

The other case was a magazine Kodin Kuvalehti which will publish its article in July. We told so much to the reporter that she seemed to be sort of overloaded with information. We hope she can manage to do a decent article. One thing to tell about was also Zarah visited Seta during the latter coffee evening.

                                                   Me with my new glasses and with awesome Zarah

                                                          

Hauho weekend was rather cold so I skipped swimming this time. The theme of the weekend was the middle ages. We had a scholar Tom Linkinen who told us about the crossdressing of the ancient and medieval era. He has made a puppet play about an English man who lived as a woman at the 14th century. We played and sang some medieval and renaissance music with Ines and my spouse. I had difficulties in playing guitar with my long nails but it somehow worked while it was just medieval music with only few strings at the same time. 

Tom Linkinen                        Me playing guitar - unfortunately I don't have a lute.

The other lecturers were a choreographer Tiina Lindfors and Arja Voipio, the head of the European trans organization TGEU. Her biggest issue was the brand new equality legislation which includes the new term "expressing the gender" and meaning us. So since the mid of June it's explicitly prohibited to discriminate a person who just happens to wear or act otherwise that is excepted on the basis of which her or his gender defined at birth. 

                       

       Tiina Lindfors                                                                        Arja Voipio

We decide to collect the stories about a crossdresser at work: How did it go and if it went well, what was the right way to solve problems. The Finnish employer organization wants such information - probably to avoid expensive sue cases. On the other hand we want to encourage us to be ourselves even at work.   


To end May I met Ines at the seashore restaurant in Kaivopuisto Park. We had some coffee and tea and Amaretto and nice chat. We also had a walk along the sunny seashore. The wind was still rather cold so I had to wear my trench coat. Hope the warm summer is coming soon :)