Outside

Were you to wander past our building now, you'd see this. That is our office. It's 3:15am. We're going home.

Muffins, American Graffiti, and Matches

Yesterday was NRC day. The bigwigs descended, spoke, and awarded prizes for successful patent applications, and academic achievements such as getting your PhD, MSc, Etc. We, the underlings, sat in rows in front of large screens, televising the proceedings from the auditorium, in a scene that was disturbingly reminiscent of Apples iconic Big Brother ad, to me at least.

Alex was awarded a shiny watch for completing his masters - here's a massively grainy picture taken from the big-screen in the lobby.

This entailed Alex's being "on the inside" i.e., in the auditorium. He deserves a second award for opportunism, for as the formalities came to a cessation, he came away with two neglected muffins. These had been set aside for the principal speakers, the CEO & Chairman, and the Head of NRC. These were no ordinary tea-cakes. These were CEO grade buns. I can report that CEO grade muffins come with more nuts than proletariat muffins, and have an unexpected caramel centre; they are, in a word, tasty.

A few minutes later everyone left the building for the underground car-park, where the "American Graffiti" themed party was being held. Never having seen the movie, I can only assume it's an epic, set between the 50's and the late 70's, judging by the costumes. It was quite a cheesy affair, and in a gesture I found condescending but secretly delightful, they had a little r/c race-car track in the bottom corner - for the engineers...

The special guest turned out to be a "famous" Finnish Elvis impersonator, and the band were the house-band. They weren't bad, but it was just your average strangled covers. Myself, Agate and Alex pushed off early to go back to her place and watch DVDs and eat hot-buttered popcorn. Problems arose. Fearing the workforce, asymptotically approaching a state of pure inebriation, would come up with the brainwave of having an after-party in their office, or the sauna, The Powers That Be had blocked all access to the workspaces. This left my coat and myself estranged. Tonight that would mean slow, cold, death (it's about -6), but last night was a positively tropical +5 (cheers, God). All was good, and the journey home was uneventful, if chilly between the train station and my abode.

I'd always considered myself King of the Last Minuters, Prince of Procrastination. I humbly submit that this title belongs to another: Joonas. HUT have a policy of allowing students into an exam up to one hour after the commencement. Joonas studied for the exam during that hour, and that hour solely, entered the exam, and is satisfied with the outcome. Legend.

Finally, in a demonstration of "tis a small world", I now have the back of a pack of Cara matches, where it has the Seanfhocail as gaeilge and the english translation in my pocket. It was bequeathed to me by American Alex, who picked it up while at a marriage in Limerick a few weeks ago. Previously it became an object of wonderment when I read the inscription (haltingly) as gaeilge. Apparently my accent changed, and Irish sounds like Arabic, or just plain ugly, depending on whose opinion you seek. It's advice for life:

An té a luidheas
leis na madraidh,
éireochaidh sé leis
na dearnadaidh.

He that lies down
with the dogs
will rise up with
the fleas

Dimebag Darrell RIP

Mass media huh? Found out about this from the story "Ozzy beside himself with grief"... Talk about framing a story.

You probably won't know, but Darrell Abbott was the guitar hero from Pantera, who split to start his own band. Rumours of him being sober at any time are probably false, but he was an ace guitarist, and wrote some of the best riffs in heavy metal. He's gone up to the big bottle of Jack in the sky, after being gunned down on stage, along with a body guard, a fan and an employee of the club.

It pisses me off - here was a man of real talent, and his murder doesn't make a headline. Imagine if Britney Spears got shot on stage.

Edit:
Spookily, while this marks the first time a rock star has been killed on stage in the US, it occured on the anniversary of the murder of John Lennon.

It's a conspiracy

The night before last, I stayed at work quite late. Consequently, I was only starting to drop off at around four in the morning, when the room filled with strange, blue-white light. It's probably a measure of my tiredness that my first thoughts were not "Ahhh!! Aliens!! Not the probing! Why always the probing?! Nooo!" and were more like "Blue-white... text message? No. Outside? No. Well, if you eliminate the probable, whatever left, no matter how improbably, must be the cause... Wohoo! I have night-vision!" I looked up to test my new skills, and noticed that in the corner, the lamp on my bike and spontaneously turned itself on. A little spooked (and very disappointed), I turned it off, and went back to bed.

Seemingly seconds later, at 9am, horrible chirpy music fills the room. It's my phone, it's a phonecall. It stops ringing as soon as I pick it up. Evil. I don't know the number. Bastard. Now, you're probably not aware, but over here you can look peoples phone numbers up to find their address. So Timo Tuikka, of Vantaa, may a mangy dog hump your leg for your miss-dialing.

It seemed innocuous enough. I worked, I went in to town and bought the special edition How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb, had mexican with Joonas, and then went to Molly Malones for a while (which is twinned with the Brazen Head back home). I cycled back, and I would like to categorically state that it was stupifying tiredness, and not any other mitigating factors, including talking on the phone at the time, that caused me to mistake a concrete kerb for some low ice. It's not such a big mistake, in the dark, in a park I don't ususally cycle through, but it was significant enough to precipitate my body leaving the bike in favour of the asphalt. The phone conversation stoped for a few seconds, an old couple strolling waited to see if they should laugh heartily or call an ambulance, and something moaned a little. I think it was me. No real damage done, except to my one and only jacket, which now has a rip in the elbow.

Not so innocuous now... Timo Tuikka is out to get me, and has plotted so elaborately, that no-one could implicate him in my downfall. One quick poke at the electronics in my lamp, and one subtle phonecall, and let sleep deprevation take its toll...

So it seems I have a rival for Overlord of Helsinki... watch this space.

Allo allo

Well, as is usual with me and my software, when solid results are needed, things go the shape of the pear. In this case I'm certain that the pieces contributing to the fruit aesthetic are nothing to do with me, but this doesn't alleviate from the fact that it's my problem.

Anywhoo, I thought I'd take a break from being frustrated to tell you all about my great weekend.

I'm going to start on Thursday, when I went out with Alex, Joonas, and The South Helsinki Student Society (of which Joonas is a member). Met many cool people, and had a really good, if slightly late night.

Then on Friday, Annie flew in at about 11:30pm. We were both shattered, me from the previous night, and she from traveling, so we slipped and slid back to my place and had some rather lame rice-pies, chatted, watched family guy, and went to bed. And chatted. And went to sleep. It was -13 outside when we dropped off, so there was a good chance it might have snowed, unfortunately it wasn't to be.

The next morning was mostly spent hunting for shoes that believed less like errant ice-skates, I think we were successful. Then we went to many of my favourite (non-sightseeing) places - Café Espland, Corona Bar for some pool (I'm mighty peeved - I've been practicing for 4 months and she still bet me), the really nice Italian restaurant I've been to twice but can't name, and Torni Bar, 14th floor, best views of Helsinki at night. We then moved on to meet Alex at DTM where the music was mostly bad, but the people were interesting. Most Interesting Person award goes to the girl dressed as the world's most butch fairy. I also met Katie, I think her name is, a friend of Alex, who I previously knew only as a face covered in m&ms. Seriously. Anyway, Annie joins that elite group of people that have actually seen me dance. Well, dance, and then stop on the dance floor to answer text messages (I did this, oh, five times).

We didn't get to sleep till quite late, and by the time we got up and made it into town, there was really only enough time to grab some food and head to the airport. I really like Vantaa airport, it's so relaxed. Then the big metal bird took her back to London, leaving me with some really good rashers, sausages, handmade cookies, and other lesser, but still mighty, cookies!

Monday was a bank holiday which was really nice. I mostly slept and read, and web-chatted to Ian, who gave me a lesson in determining field-of-depth in photos (with a manual camera) across the net, without sound.

Tuesday felt like a Monday, and now I'm here today, about to go out into the cold - no - the shrivelling cold, once more, to get some data.

Things they don't tell you...

I found a really good blog entry from a Finn, directed at us foreigners, explaining why it's so damn hard to make "friends" with Finns. I particularly like "Hyvän päivän tuttu" - which translates as "Good-day acquaintance" :) But while it's good for semantics, it doesn't actually deal with the fact that they can be very hard to get to know. I was about to start using MOS transistors and the threshold voltage Vt as some kind of analogy (Seamas gets it), but realise how incredibly... unilluminating that would be to most, so I'll go home and get some sleep instead.

In a minute. I'm waiting for the phone to charge. I'm keen to try out my new handsfree kit whilst cycling.