Posted by jukkahoo
The dryck du jour is Amalias Äppel-limonad aka. Apple lemonade and what a delightfully apply drink it is, too.
Sari is not fond of apples (allergy plays a major role here), but Jukka is very much a big fan of the fruit. Mostly the more red varieties, less so with white or green, although the green apple is very much the taste I find most prevalent with apple drinks. Not with this one, though.
This is, again, very much an apple juice with some added carbos. Some sugar, probably as little as with other Amalias lemonades, but as the local apples are pretty fruity, the drink is sweeter than most of the other ones. I'm not complaining, me likes things sweet.
Still, gonna be buying more of the apple juice the islands produce. than this lemonade. That is the real deal and well worth the extra euro and change per litre to mainland beverages.
Now follows an important public service notification. Hear ye! Hear ye!
As someone who has benefited from a fan fund, not only once but twice (2016 as a GUFFer and way back when dinosaurs rules, 2002 as a NOFFer), I fully support all and every possible fan fund function fandom has. And one of the more prestigious, if not the very one (some say that Mid-Atlantic Fan Fund is the real clincher, but I digress...) is TAFF, the Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund.
Which brings, depending where you live, fen across the Atlantic Ocean, usually to Worldcon or Eastercon, since fandom has so far been very much a Anglo-American affair. The next TAFF race will be westbound to Worldcon 80 or as the natives call it, Chicon 8, meaning from Europe to the US of A.
And by gum, do we have some smashing candidates! Anders Holmström (Sweden), Mikołaj Kowalewski (Poland), Julie Faith McMurray (UK) and one Fia Karlsson from Schwindon!, my god-daughter in fandom, so cut me some slack on how much of a bias I might show here. A teeny-weeny smidgen of, but still. No local talent among these good people, but as Fia is adoptedly Finnish and isn't Piitime/Piteå really Finnish as well? Let's claim it so, all right?
Who is Fia? Not your regular Karlsson på taket -kinda gal for sure.
Now, I first met this whirlwind of a Northener in 2011, at Eurocon in the fair city of Stockholm, where the local fandom had managed together one banger of a con with some pretty decent Guests. Anyhoo, I had a few program items, and then some, one being the (once run) Geekest Link, a funtastic little quiz which I hosted as the kosmik Anne Robinson, sans red hair.
After the show, I was quite spent, and nearly ready to bed, when this blond Swedish teenager came and told me that she was my number One Fan. Fia, for it was she, having next to no critical faculties, kept explaining my superlativeness to me and other GoH, Ian McDonald, so much so that we went to the Ukrainian Eurocon bid party and were treated far too much vodka and other imbibements.
Not the smartest move, since I was unduly scheduled to give my GoH speech next morning. Less said of that, the better, methinks. Luckily SoMe and decent filming apparatuses were not as prevalent ten years ago as they are now. If you have any material, please keep that for yourself, thanks.
This started my adventure with La Fia, who has been often a willing participant in various quizzes I've come up with, helped run some, been my SoMe Czar at Worldcon 75, and been a friend for the past decade. Not only is she fun to hang around with, she is also bright, smart, funny and knows far too much about things most mere mortals dare not think of, like C-drama or konmari. She also grows oaks at her apartment and probably plants them around Schweden when trekking the mighty forests and mountains of that nation.
The Swedish chips industry is gearing up their support for this endeavour and are ready to bring dillchips to US markets, if and when the TAFF-race will have suitable outcome. Whole of Skåne is already planting more potatoes in order to satisfy the coming demand for more raw material.
https://www.taff.org.uk/ is the place to go and have a looksee what TAFF is. The voting will commence on this Wednesday, December 15, 2021 and close on April 18, 2022. Information about the race and candidates and especially the way one can vote will be on the TAFF website. Vote early, vote often!
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