Repetition: Helsinki, Sickness, Math, Photos

With my time here in Finland quickly coming to an end, I travelled once more this week to Helsinki for the Joint Centers of Excellence Seminar. There were lots of famous mathematicians there, but the talks were mostly by young people, including me! I talked about the work that Pekka and I have been doing, which has recently decided to somewhat miraculously solve itself (Hölder's inequality is a panacea if applied cleverly enough). However, the talks were only 30 minutes long, so I had to rush a bit and came off sounding a little hoity-toity (ie I just had to pretend that the audience knew what capacity and modulus were). Anyway, it's over, and I have only one more talk left to give before Poland, this time to in the Grad Student Seminar at Helsinki. My title is "What's a quasi-schmasi?" (apologies to John Lott).

Unfortunately, I've also gotten sick again. Suck! Nyt, mulla on vähän kipea kurkku ~ Now, I have a bit of a sore throat (kurkku = cucumber = throat = I love finnish).

The past few weeks have seen a variety of events, including but not limited to: the melting of the ice on Jyväsjärvi, Vapu (labor day), and lots of finnish speaking.

Vapu was really neat. Basically, it's on the weekend of May 1st, and though it is traditionally about labor, it is now more about students and student life. It's starts on Friday with huge parties attended by university students wearing brightly colored coveralls. The different colors represent different majors, and the students studying the same thing party together, in general. As far as I can tell, the main practical purpose of the coveralls is to keep your clothes clean during a night of falling down and puking. Anyway, on sunday evening there is a ceremony in which a "student cap" is placed on a statue of a famous Finn (in Jyväskylä, it was Minna Canth). The student caps are worn on Vapu by everyone who has graduated from highschool - and people really do wear them. It's a really neat tradition - can you imagine if everyone in the US wore their mortar caps once a year?! On monday, everyone goes to Harju for a picnic, and picnic we did, repeatedly.

So, here are my plans for the next few weeks.

• Do math like crazy so that I can finish the project with Pekka
  
• Buy souvenirs
  
• Go to Turku and Stockholm
  
• Visit Karoline's mökki (summer cottage)
  
• Write my dissertation
  
• Get to Poznan by June 18th
  

Don't forget to check Flickr for more photos! Bonus photo: