School is out

I'm over my first year at Helsinki University of Technology. I'm going to have to modify my behaviour with respect to classes conducted in Finnish - forgetting about them until the deadlines loom is not very healthy, or conducive to good grades. While it's a special challenge to try to cram an entire course over a weekend, it kind of misses the point - one of the perks of the college system here is the flexibility - I usually end up regretful that I didn't put more time in, since the subjects are interesting.

I've enjoyed exams that ask essay style questions that allow you to explain what you've learned. I've been prone to swallowing books whole, and then regurgitation the tasty bits to others (usually unsolicited) since I was very tiny, so having courses that follow that pattern, rather than demanding explanation via abstract maths, has me wondering if I'm in the right field. Of course, in engineering, being able to string a couple of words together grammatically is considered impressive - I guess if I was doing something more bookish I'd be tinkering with scripting languages wondering if I shouldn't be programming. The greener grass.

Summer is here

Hello hello, it's been a while. I have excuses - I've been travelling, I've had exams, but mostly tools that encourage microblogging, like Twitter, and lately Jaiku have been slowly draining away my blogging mojo.

I'm going to plug Jaiku - it can assimilate your twitter stream, Borg like, but has threaded conversations, supports anything with RSS, and... oh just give it a whirl if you're so inclined.

Spring, St Patrick's Day

It's been officially Spring for 3 days, according to my esteemed Far Side Gallery. That's normally a bit of a cruel joke up here, but this winter has been terrificly mild, so there's a certain unWinterishness, even if there's not a speck of green anywhere yet.


St Patrick's day saw Helsinki's first ever parade - I half marched, half ran up and down snapping pictures like an eejit, with my camera wrapped in a bandana to keep it dry. Not only was it raining, it was sleeting - big, cold, wet clumps of ice. In spite of that the craic was good - everyone singing (not necessarily the same song, or in the same key), and there were a bunch of dancers there who must have been sodden, who not only danced their way around the route, but put on a show in front of the Cathedral afterwards. Fair play to them. The whole thing seemed to be rather confusing for the locals, who might have thought it had something to do with the parliamentary elections in progress at the time.

Now I'm off to take a nap or something - I stayed up really late, then got up really early to have some documents ready, and now it feels like someone is drying my eyes out from inside my head.

Out of synch

My heartfelt empathy to US residents (especially those with longhair and beards in Austin).  I know the rational behind daylight savings, it's sound, but that doesn't prevent me from getting caught out by it every year.  Twice every a year!

Appropriately I'm feeling out of synch myself - my body and mind are in totally different places.  My body has had a bit of a cycle, feels rested and fed, and demands to go to bed.  It's giving lots of hints - droopy eyelids, yawns, the whole repertoire.  The mind is trying to ignore all this baseness and work through a course that has to be passed this week.  Very interesting stuff.  It's got a couple of tricks too - it's bouncing away to  the lively electronica it tricked the hand into setting playing, and it's reading the lecture slides from the computer - it's had many the succesful defense against sleep demands in front of the screen, oh yes, this is it's home turf.

I'm trying to figure out why 12-2AM seems to be some kind of golden zone for me focus wise.  If I could mimic that throughout the day, I'd be set.

Anybody else experiencing this?

technorati tags:Feckless, Finland, time, focus

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It hurts

Feet extensions
Originally uploaded by delta_avi_delta.

Went for the first cross-country ski of the year today. Ow. I went to Paloheinä, a center about 40 minutes by foot and bus from the flat. I'd never been there before (I'd confused it with another center) - hired my skis and set forth.

There was an easy 3.9km route I decided would be a good break-in. I spent most of the first couple of km looking at my feet, trying to to fall over - and so missed the signposts. After what seemed like a good distance without turning around, after a grueling uphill bit I faceplanted on, there was a signpost. Pointing back along a straighter road the way I came. "Paloheinä: 3km". Hmm.

The straight road proved useless - not enough snow cover and too many pine needles, so I crossed back across to the windy route, and shuffled back. I'd only been going about an hour and twenty minutes by the time I handed my skis back in, and hobbled to the bus, but I was done, cooked, finished.

And after that jolly introduction, is anyone up for coming along next week?

Good coffee

Good coffee
Originally uploaded by delta_avi_delta.

My (short)list of (slight) greviences with this great land has shrunk by one: I've found some ground coffee roasted outside of the country.

There's a very distinctive bitterness to nationally roasted coffee - it is to other coffees as hops-y beer is to wheatbeer - it's got a tang. If you like it, I'm sure nothing else will do. I don't.

I tried this with low hopes, but it's great. Now if only some non-has-beens would come play a gig. My Chemical Romance does not count.

Ystävänpäivä

Valentine's day, or Ystävänpäivä, is a minty fresh import to Finland, as recent as 5 years apparantly. Talking over lunch, there were complaints that recieving a card from someone was so awkward, because then you had to rush out and reciprocate. I guess the concepts of secret admirer, and anonymity will catch on a little later.

After seeing this first thing today, and after last year's chocolate fondue experience in Amsterdam, there was no question as to Ystävänpäivä dessert chez nous.

Luckily, chocolate fondue is foolproof, as certified by this certifiable fool.

The internets suggested

3x 100g Toblerones
half cup of cream
2xtablespoons kirsch

Personally that was too much cream, and not enough kirsch, but put them all in a pot, over very low heat, stir a bit, and voila! Rig a candle underneath the pot, pile some chopped fruit and cookies on a plate, keep a little bowl of chopped hazlenuts handy and there you have it - chocolate fondue.

Incidentally, isn't the "l" in Google missing? Guess cupid took it for an arrow.

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Edited to correct spelling of Ystävänpäivä - yes, I'm an idiot :)
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