Kevin in QuasiLand

New website! http://users.jyu.fi/~kewildri/

2008-05-06T23:11:00.000-07:00

Hi folks. This post is really just a pathetic attempt to get google to recognize my JYU homepage. The address of the homepage is http://users.jyu.fi/~kewildri/

Feel free to stop by. I've updated the citations for my papers (we-ooh that's exciting). Also, any tips on how to get my current homepage to pop up first under a google search for my name would be very welcome.

Home Soon!

2006-07-13T16:20:00.000-07:00

Hi Folks! Well, since last writing, I've been in Poland, New York, and Alaska. I now sit in the Anchorage airport (free wireless!), and though I don't really have the time/energy to give a full update, let me just say this. Alaska is big. And amazing. I've been doing a lot of hiking and eating salmon. I haven't been able to get as much work done as I wanted too, but I still have about a gazillion hours on a plane to work.

Anyway, check the photos as well!

Kevin not in quasiland :(

2006-06-24T10:41:00.000-07:00

Well folks, this is probably my last post from abroad. I haven't decided yet if I will continue using this blog, but perhaps! Anyway, I'm now in Warsaw, Poland, having just returned from the Bojarski Conference. It was great! The organizers did a fantastic job. I really felt like a king - literally. There was a castle and everything. The math was really amazing too. I learned a lot, including two interesting open problems which are related to my research. My talk seemed to go pretty well, despite the fact that I spelled an important researcher's name wrong (that's twice, dammit!). Anyway, I had a lot of fun hanging with the crowd from Michigan, which has become quite identical to the crowd from Finland. And it seems that soon there will be many Polish mathematicians who are also dubbed "quasifinns".

The next few days will be spent doing math, probably. I have a lot of writing to do for Pekka and also for my dissertation, and I feel very close to a solution to another problem. I must say that about a week ago I really wanted to go home. Right now I'm eager to go home, but I really miss finland. I could use a sauna and a dip in the sea....

More photos are available, as always... here's a bonus:

Busy busy!

2006-06-12T01:33:00.000-07:00

Things have been pretty crazy over the past two weeks! I've been to Turku (one of the larger cities in Finland), Porvoo (a small town in Finland), an island (twice), Stockholm (sweden), and now I'm in Helsinki (again). In the meantime, I've been working like crazy on a paper from my research this semester as well as preparing for the Bojarski conference (only one week away!) and trying to find time to work on my dissertation as well. So, rather than give you a blow-by-blow of the past few weeks, I'll let the photos do the talking. Here are a few samples:

Oh Lordi

2006-05-22T13:12:00.000-07:00

Some of you asked me about Eurovision and the Finnish reaction to winning the contest. So here's the deal in brief. (You could also check out this nice explaination from Slate Magazine).

The Eurovision Song Contest has been around for about 50 years. Basically, each country in Europe (this is broadly interpreted - and happens to include Russia and Israel) sends a song and a performer/group and the winner is determined by phone-voting. The contest is broadcast on tv and is widely viewed despite the fact that the performaces are often terrible and most established musical groups shun participation like a trip to the proctologist. The music is often called "schlager" and is either bubble-gum pop or cheesy ballad (one song this year included the lyric "Why do angels cry? Why do babies have to die?"). However, some widely admired music has come out of Eurovision, including some of ABBA's greatest hits. You get the idea.

So some of you have asAnyway, Finland usually tanks badly in the contest, and this year to shake things up a heavy metal bad, Lordi, was entered. This met great consternation in Finland, as the band is basically a Kiss-meets-Freddy Cruger latex-costume band with pseudosatanic rhetoric. They insist that the whole thing is in good fun and that their music is just entertainment. That's not to say the music, or even the concept of the band, is any good. By the way, the title "Arockolypse" reminds me of the classic Mel Gibson flick Mad Max 2: Road Warrior, where the bad guy is introduced as the "ayatolla of rock and rolla". But I digress - some people were pissed.

The contest was two night ago, and before hand the general concensus was accurately summed up by the Finnish TV host when he said, "We'll find life on Mars before Finland wins Eurovision." Sure enough, Finland won, and in fact set a new record for the highest score. Reaction of Finns ranged from "It was just a fluke. Don't worry, we won't win next year" to "This is as important to Finland as peace and happiness in Iraq is to America." My personal favorie reaction was "Lordi is the next Beatles, only uglier and with less talent." Lordi is getting a hero's welcome in Helsinki and will probably not be forgotten by Finns for many years. Their mark on the rest of the world remains to be seen.

By the way, I took more pictures. You can see them on Flickr. Here is a sneak preview:

Repetition: Helsinki, Sickness, Math, Photos

2006-05-16T10:58:00.000-07:00

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:

More Helsinki, Bum Knee, Speak Finish

2006-04-22T12:12:00.000-07:00

So my mother visited for easter, and that was great. We spent a few days bumming around Jyväskylä, seeing the sites, going for bike rides, listening to choral concerts, and drinking beer. We had pretty decent weather, so that was nice. Then we headed to Helsinki for the weekend, and did a lot of sight-seeing. The best part was a visit Suomenlinna, a old military fortress on an island just off of Helsinki. The day was really warm but SUPER foggy, so being on the island seemed other-worldly, with lots of chunks of ice floating by and the city seeming centuries away. Unfortunately, I left my camera in Jyväskylä, so you'll have to wait until my mother sends me some of the photos to see what I'm talking about.

Since then, I've just been working alot. Pekka has another project for me to think about, and there are still some things to work out on the first project we had, and of course there's my dissertation to think about (oh yeah...THAT.) The weather has been really fantanstic...finally kevät tulee (spring is coming). Unfortunately, while walking in Helsinki I managed to really screw up my knee - I think that I've irritated the tendonitis I developed after the Chicago marathon a few years ago. The down side is that it is really hard to do ANYTHING in Jyväskylä without biking or walking a few miles. The up side is that I don't have to worry about running out of ice to put on my knee. Thanks for the bottle of Ibuprofen, Jess! It's been a life saver! For those of you unfamiliar with Finlanomics, a package of 10 pills of ibuprofen costs a little less than $6.

I've started attending a Finnish conversation course. It meets twice a week for 3 hours at a time, which means ALOT of speaking in Finnish. Which is good, but I find that I'm really exhausted after our course meetings. Especially since many of the people in the course have been in finland for a lot longer than I have. No niin...(yeah, well...) I'm trying.

Ok, I'm going to break the cardinal rule of blogging - don't ever say anything negative about anyone - just this once because I'm so fed up. The resident of the third room in my flat recently returned from a semester abroad in Brazil. He's a Finn. He's also the WORST FLAT MATE EVER. Loud, filthy, inconsiderate, ~~unfriendly~~ down right rude, and steals my food and beer. Also blatantly ignores requests to modify his behavior. What the hell? Why can't I live with any of the nice finns I've met?

Sorry. I won't let that happen again. Don't forget to check out my photo stream for some new photos, like this one!

Back in the JKL

2006-04-12T07:15:00.000-07:00

So wow, it's been a while. Where to start? Well, after I wrote the last entry, I went straight to my birthday party. It was great. There were about 10 people there, and ALL were finnish except for Midori and I. However, Midori speaks fluent Finnish, so she gets special honorary Finnish status. I invited lots of other foreigners, but they didn't show. Anyway, the party kicked and Maria and Sanna baked a super-nami chocolate cake, and I got lots of beautiful hand-made cards. The only down side was that the party lasted until 4 am.

"Why is that a down side?", you ask? Well, because I had to be on a bus to Lapland at 9 am the next morning. That day was really rough. I wasn't exactly hungover - it was more of a lack-of-sleep issue. Anyway, we arrived in Oulu and went to a Children's Science Center, Tietomaa. It was sweet - I felt like a little kid again. Sleeping that night was in a church retreat center. We had a great sauna - one of the best I've had in finland, with lots of rolling in the snow in between. The next day we set off for Kemi and a Snow Castle. That was pretty impressive. It even included a hotel, and a bar that could fit 250 people. All of it was made only of snow and ice. Yeah, that's a finnish tourist trap... but cool anyway. Then it was back on the bus to Rovaniemi. We stopped at the Arktikum, a museum of arctic history and science. Sweet architecture. Next was a game of snow football, Jyväskylä vs. Rovaniemi. Unfortunately, our team was dreadfully outmatched - the other team appeared to actually care about the outcome, and not just about falling down in the snow and trying to confuse the other team by fashioning fake soccer balls from snow on the sideline. We had a moral victory with a final score of Rovaniemi 14, Jyväskylä 1. The next day was, filled with a trip to a reindeer farm, a tour of the university of Lapland, and cross country skiing. I went 10km and had a great time. The weather was fantastic and the surroundings were beautiful. The final day was just the bus...

After that, I had one day in Jyväskylä, and then set off for Helsinki. I had such a warm welcome from the math dept there - they set me up in a beautiful flat (way nicer than I could ever afford), and Saara, a student of Kari Astala's, was my host for the first few days. She is working on some really interesting math and is now in Ann Arbor with Juha and Co! Her boyfriend took me to a public sauna which was a really neat experience - mostly old men, and REALLY HOT (~105 C according to the thermometer). I also got to talk math with Stefen Rhode, Kari Astala, Ilkka Holopainen, and David Drasin. I also misspelled Seppo Rickman's name in front of him when I gave a talk (Rickman, not Rickmann). Oops. Luckily, he thought it was funny. Anyway, the 9 days I spent in Helsinki were really productive and I learned a lot of math. I'll go back there in May to give a talk at a small conference they are having.

Since then, I've been preparing for my mother's visit (she arrives in about 1 hour), and taking my finnish final exam. I think I rocked it. Anyway, I don't know exactly what my ma will want to do here, but I'm sure we'll figure something out, and we go to Helsinki on Saturday, so at least there will be something interesting happening there.

Don't forget to check the Photo Stream for tons more photos!

Miss you all!

Birthday, Lapland, Helsinki, Zorn

2006-03-24T09:40:00.000-08:00

So tomorrow is my birthday. As JessRo (a friend from Michigan) pointed out, this is the only time in my life that I'll be 24 on the 24th and 25 on the 25th. I guess that makes me old enough to snore loudly on trains with out feeling embarassed.

I'm throwing a little shindig to celebrate - just a few friends and some chocolate. You know the drill. Show up at 8 and watch the calorie count grow..."Dude, I am SOOOO buzzed right now, pass the 70% cocoa!"

Tomorrow I'm going to Lapland for a few days with 49 other international students. Of these 44 are women. It's going to be interesting. Plans: see the northern lights, go inside a building made entirely of ice, spend alot of time in the sauna, and try not to say anything even remotely misogynist.

I return on Tuesday night. Wednesday will be lots of math, and then Thursday is off to Helsinki to do more math. Steffen Rhode (from Seattle) will be there until Friday, and I'll get to talk with Kari Astala and his student Saara. Should be great! I'll be in Helsinki for about a week. The U of Helsinki folks have been SUPER nice to me in getting this set up. KIITOS!

Ok, I have to go or i'll be late for my party. Maybe I'll write more afterwards and include some photos!

Miss you all!

Ski-Jumping (not me, don't worry), and more hiking, math, and finnish.

2006-03-16T11:16:00.001-08:00

The weather is really starting to change here. There are nearly twelve hours of daylight, and today the temperature was 32F for the first time in weeks. The most startling difference is that it is both very sunny and very warm - usually we only had one or the other. I haven't tried ice-skating on the ice track yet, but I better soon or the ice will disappear!

The past week and a half have been really interesting. I went to Kuopio, a town about 120km north of here, to see a World Cup Ski-Jumping event. It was really, really cold. I was traveling with Gabi, and Austrian who speaks Hungarian, Anja, a half-German half-Finnish woman, and Emmi, a Polish polymath with a disdain for table manners. We arrived in Kuopio around 4pm and were outside in -15F weather for about 4 hours. There were cheerleaders. The ski-jumping was really neat, but I didn't really understand enough about the technical aspects of the sport to make it super fascinating. Mostly, I thought to myself, "Wow. That guy just flew 400ft through the air on skis. I'm really cold. Wow. That guy just did the same thing. I'm really cold." Repeat 80 times. The biggest problem was the feet, because we were standing on snow. And the snow was actually colder than the air. And we standing on it. Around 7pm, we met a friend of mine, Kati, who is a student at U of Jyväskylä who happened to be visiting her family, who lives in Kuopio. She was nice enough to take us on a little tour of Kuopio after the Ski-Jumping, including a visit to an observation tower. After that, we went to a bar where there was a live band - consisting entirely of Finnish ski-jumpers. The music was terrible. But there's something you have to understand here - in Finland, ski-jumpers are superstars. People love them hardcore. And they party hard. These guys were seriously anorexic, and pounding the champagne straight from the giant trophy. It was hard to call them althletes after this - seeing them up close made me realized that they fail the first test for being a "real althlete": if I can beat you up, then you are not an athlete. After that, we crashed at Kati's place, since the only train back to Jyväskylä didn't get back until 4am. Thanks Kati! It was really wonderful to be in a real home after months in my flat with still-blank walls. We ate oatmeal with wild berries for breakfast - normal people, including non-hippies, pick tons of berries in the wild during the summer and freeze them for the rest of the year. Note to self: do this if possible.

Finnish Fact: Everyman's Rights. Why can't America be this awesome?

HIking this weekend was great because of super wonderful weather. We went to Tourovouri, about 5km north of downtown. In attendence were the usual suspects: Maria, Karoline, and Tatiana. It was sweet. We were almost killed by cross-country skiers, but that's better than almost being killed by SUV's, like in Ann Arbor.

I've been working VERY hard on math lately and not getting, well, really anywhere. The problem we're working on is quite hard, I think, and technically a nightmare. I met with Pekka today, and he suggested that I give up and move on to the next portion of the problem and hope that something happens subconsciously in the meantime. I hope this doesn't reflect poorly on me. I just can't solve it. I tried. A lot. I'm just not smart enough. Sigh. Math is hard. Somebody call Barbie - I need someone to commiserate with!

Maybe this will help: I've finally found a decent coffee shop.

I've also become more comfortable speaking Finnish. I now know about as much finnish as I did french after two years of study. I guess that's the benefit of immersion. My goal is to be able to have a real conversation in finnish before I leave at the end of may.

Other big news: I'm going to alaska to visit with family after I return from Poland. Seriously, my internal clock is going to be set to "cuckoo".

Check out my photostream for lots more photos.

I'm not dead yet!

2006-03-05T06:58:00.000-08:00

Hi Everyone! Sorry it's been so long since my last post. For some reason, I just haven't been in the blogging mood. But now I am!

So I've been doing a ton of fun stuff lately - and I'll tell you all about it later. First, I'd like to write a little about what I've learned about Finnish culture lately.

The Finns have two words for the english word "friend": kaveri and ystävä. There is an important difference between them. Most Finnish people have only one or two ystävää; an ystävä is a very close friend, one who will probably be your friend for life. There is really strong trust between ystävä - you don't ever have to worry that your ystävä will betray you. Kaveri is more like what we Americans think of as "normal" friends. Most often, a university student will have kaveri that are studying the same thing, or involved in the same hobby. It seems quite rare for people to have "all sorts" of kaveri - and indeed, some Finns tell me that this can be both really nice and really miserable. What's interesting to me is how this friendship structure is related to the "shyness" of Finns. Many people say that Finns are hard to get to know - what I think is just that Finns have a higher threshold for a close friendship. There are probably many reasons for this: Finland is small country so people can stay in touch even if they don't live in the same city, people don't move quite as often, high school lasts until students are about 19 rather than 17, etc.

I have met a TON of people since I've been in Finland, and one of the things that's been difficult is that although you meet lots of cool people, you have only known them for a few days or weeks, and so there is not such a strong feeling of trust and closeness. It has really made me value the friendships that I had back in the US that I perhaps take for granted.

But what has really impressed me in the past couple weeks is that I have met a bunch (>5) Finnish people who have treated me so kindly and honestly that I am now forced to think that all this business of Finns "having a higher threshold for friendship" is just a myth. I am constantly amazed by the hospitality and warmth that I've received from people I barely even know.

On a related (somehow?) note, I was reading an article in the NYTimes about how there are more millionaires in the US per capita than ever before, and how the gap between rich and poor is growing. Many of the Finns that have shown me great hospitality are not particularly wealthy. Despite this, I've felt as if I live a life of real luxury here. There are many things here which are REALLY pleasurable and REALLY affordable. The funny thing is that these same things are available in the US! The people here seem to appreciate the simple joys of life much more than I am used to. Example: Yesterday, I spent the morning going on a run (about 10K - my first in a LONG time, don't worry, my knee is ok) with a friend, then we had a simple lunch of fish, potatoes, salad, and homemade pulla (cinnamon buns). After that, I went to the sauna, did some math, and hit the hay early. It was one of the best days of my life. Who needs a yacht? Why should we feel the need to get rich? Why aren't we satisfied with a moderate lifestyle?

Sometimes Finland is very Zen. I bet Finnish poetry is really good.

Ok, so here's the rundown on the major fun events of the past few weeks.

Choral concert: My friend Maria sings in one of the 30+ choirs here in Jyväskylä. Along with a bunch of friends, I went to the concert celebrating the release of their new album. It was FANTASTIC. Now I don't know much about choral music, but they were really professional, and their music gave me goosebumps. They sang mostly in Finnish, and performed a number of songs composed especially for their group. Afterwards Maria was kind enough to invite me to the after-party, which consisted of lots of food, singing (including a finnish version of "she'll be coming 'round the mountain"), guitar playing, and sauna. Awesome. Also, my finnish teacher was in the choir, so we got to hang a little outside of class. Luckily there is not such a taboo against this as in the US.

I also attended a poetry reading at Vakiopaine, the "bohemian" bar in town - reminded me a bit of Ambrosia. It was pretty cool - almost all in Finnish. I could really only understand a few words here and there, not enough to understand the meaning. But it was nice anyway. After the readings, we engaged in an orange carving contest. Yes, I am still obsessed with oranges. Also that night I met some cool people from Mexico and Spain, but promptly offended them. I decided it would be a good time for me to spend about twenty minutes making fun of "new age" spirituality, including jokes about "vortices" and David Lynch. Not surprisingly, my new friends were going to spend the entire next day at a meditation workshop. I did not anticipate this.

The most bizarre thing I've seen since being in Finland was a concert last week. The band was called "Eläkeläiset", or "The Retirees". They play music in a style called "Humppa", which defies description. My best shot is "polka-punk". It was drums, guitar, accordian, and organ. They also had a table just for their alcohol (which was substantial). Here's the kicker - they played all covers of modern pop music. How did they come up with this? "Hey guys, let's have a band where we play polka-punk covers of Madonna's 'Like a Virgin', Guns'n'roses 'Sweet Child of Mine', and Weezer's 'Buddy Holly'!...What do you mean you don't think it's going to work?" Anyway, I couldn't decide which was funnier, the band or the fans. People REALLY loved it. I had a great time. Also I had a beer poured all over me by a guy dressed up as the "General of the Humppa Army". That's PUNK ROCK!

As a bonus for reading all of this, here is a photo of a calendar that was sent to all of the residents of my housing complex. The theme of the calendar is environmental living. It is really very funny. There are more photos of the calendar in my photo stream. Warning: the calendar contains nudity. But it is funny nudity. Not yucky nudity.

Bikers are Awesome! The NYPD eats it's words, and donuts!

2006-02-17T10:04:00.000-08:00

I am so happy to link to this article. Bikes are the best! Boo to the NYPD for sucking really hard. Basically, the deal is that the NYPD hates bikers and especially the Critical Mass rides, which are times at which bikers all over the world take a bike ride. The rides are not parades - there are no organizers, there are no leaders, there are no floats and no prizes. It is simply a time when bikers get out on the street to remind motorists that bikes are traffic too, and that we have a right to safely use the streets. The NYPD has repeatedly arrested people for biking lawfully during these times and has even resorted to calling bikers terrorists and employing undercover police officers to "infiltrate" the biking community.

Since the article will expire soon, here is an exerpt.

"The city had demanded that they [crit mass riders] be barred from assembling in Union Square Park, the customary gathering point before each month's ride, unless someone obtained a permit. The judge said that made little sense because anyone could turn up in the park and no permit was required for "casual use."

As a practical matter, Justice Stallman wrote, the city did not explain how it could tell the difference between people who were gathering for the Critical Mass rides from anyone else who happened to be in the park. The city's assumption that anyone with a bicycle could be barred "is simply guilt by association," he wrote.

The judge said the city had wrongly argued that the Critical Mass rides were a form of parade or procession that required a permit because the riders "travel en masse." Following the city's reasoning, the judge wrote, "New Yorkers commuting over the Brooklyn Bridge on bicycles during a transit strike could be considered as 'bicycling en masse.' " Such a restriction, he said, raised constitutional concerns.

"Riding a bicycle on city streets is lawful conduct, as long as one observes the applicable traffic laws and rules," he wrote.

See also here, here, and here for "biased" accounts.

Here is a link to an AWESOME group who is helping the poor bikers who got arrested. Kudos!

Hiking, the Lineup, and Really Pointy Shoes

2006-02-17T00:07:00.000-08:00

Hi Folks! Sorry for the long break. I've actually been trying NOT to write in the blog for a week - mostly so that I can feel a little more ingrained in Finland, if you know what I mean. It's not that writing in the blog is bad, it's just that I found myself relying on it a little too much. However, I still miss you all and want to keep in touch. I've also been alot busier this week and have missed talking to lots of people on Skype! Sorry! I hope to catch you all soon

Thanks SO MUCH to everyone who sent me a package (Mom, Toby, Hannah, and ??? - I have one to pick up at the posti today). It is so wonderful to have such great friends and family. It's really appreciated (esp. the adapter and the socks).

Thanks to Toby, I can now post more pictures! Check the Flickr stream for them. I'll put a few more here.

I went hiking this weekend with a few people. We went to Kanavouri, or "Chicken Mountain", about 10k from Jyväskylä. It was really nice. The weather was not too cold and there was alot of snow to play with.

This is Maria. She laughs alot. Here she is being shocked at the aliens which were descending onto Kanavouri (they changed their minds at the last second). She is quite nice.
This is Tatiana. She is from Belgium. She is small but surprisingly stong. Also she makes a mean pasta sauce, and is quite nice.
This is Karoline. She is a Finnish woman whose parents speak Swedish. She is also new to Jyväskylä. She is also quite nice.
I have no idea what this is. The Finns are really strange sometimes with their artwork/public address systems. It, however, is quite nice.

On Friday, Pekka invited me to his house for a sauna and dinner. We had a good time and talked alot of math. We also drank alot. I admit it, my drinking skills are totally subpar. After dinner he showed me one the one of the best movies of all time.

I have finally have some idea about the problem I'm working on. That's good news. Speaking of math, I better get going!

Types of Snow: The sticky wet kind, the really dry cold powdery kind, the hardend ice-ball kind, the frozen and packed down pavement kind.

Race, Identity, Nationalism...You know, small talk.

2006-02-08T06:31:00.000-08:00

In the past few days I've met a lot of Finns. My "source" was CafÃ© Lingua, a night organized by the international center where people can get together and practice various languages. I sat at the English table, because that's where are the Finns were (they're devious that way). Anyway, we had a really nice conversation and I got to practice suomea (finnish) as well. Afterwards, we went to a bar and I got introduced all around. Jackpot!

The people I met were a little older than most of the other international students, and so I seemed to get along better with them (how many undergrads do you know that would enjoy a conversation with me?). We talked alot about politics, and in particular about nationalism, identity, and race. It seems many finns identify with the problems faced by Muslim immigrants to Scandinavia - I have met a lot of finns with one (or two) non-native parent(s). Does this make them less "Finnish"? What impact does this have on their daily life? Is it easier to be "accepted" if you look "finnish" than if you do not? Interesting questions. As the anthropologists would say, "It's more complicated than you would expect, and everything is important."

I was outside this weekend for a while too. I went on a hike with a couple buddies. It was -28 C. That equals COLD F. Despite that it was REALLY beautiful. It is a strange sensation to stand in the middle of a huge lake. We have plans to go to a national park this sunday. It will be warmer this time, I hope!

I've been doing a lot of talking in seminars lately. Last week was a 2 hour study seminar, monday was another 2 hour study seminar, and today was a 2 hour research seminar. Hopefully 6 hours of speaking in 2 weeks is enough for the whole semester. I can't tell if the talks were well received or not, because the finns don't really express emotion about that kind of thing. So I'll just assume that it was the best talk they ever heard, and that they were just struck speechless by my incredible eloquence.

Tonight is a Finnish movie night with my "buddy group". Hopefully it'll be fun, but it's always wierd to watch movies with people you don't know that well because you can't really talk to each other. Despite huge popular concensus to the contrary, I don't think movies are a very social activity.

Ok, time for more math. By the way Toby recently resurrected the Love/Peeve tradition from my old blog (please don't link to my archive in a comment, folks, let the poor thing RIP). In the spirit of "sharing", I'm going to take an idea from her. At the end of each post from here on out, I'll list a category and give three things in the category. For example, Toby wrote

Tea Types: ginger, lemon, green (decaf), white, peppermint

Feel free to comment with your own additions

Here is todays category:

Mug Decorations: collegiate, floral, joke about being over the hill.

2006-02-02T17:31:00.000-08:00

Hi Everyone! Sorry for the late post. This week has been pretty busy. I've been doing a ton of math, but I'm not sure how productive it's been. I finally had an idea for the problem I'm working on, but the constants keeping going to infinity (math geeks will know how annoying that is). Anyway, lets see what has happened this week.

Well, for one thing, it's been snowing ALOT. There's about a foot on the ground now and it's supposed to continue snowing until sunday, when it will be -25C and therefore too cold to snow. I'm quite proud of my biking skills. My bike, which I've dubbed "The Dingo" is not at all suited to deep snow. It has road tires and metal fenders. You might ask, what difference do metal fenders make? A big one. Today, after leaving my bike outside for a few hours, I found that the wheels were completely immovable. At first I thought the cassette or freewheel had broken, but they appeared ok. Finally I realized that snow had been caught between the tires and the fenders, and since the fenders are metal, the snow had frozen into ice, which had frozen to the tires. Thus, the bike would not move an inch. At the time, I was outside a coffee shop in the city center. Around the corner was the pedestrian mall, which has a heated street (yet another awesome thing about finland). So I lay the bike on its side on the sidewalk, and went to have another coffee. My bike was not stolen for two reasons. A) Nobody steals bikes in Jyväskylä (welfare state + university = no poor people = no bike theft) and B) there is a lock built into my bike which immobilizes the rear wheel. Anyway, after the extra coffee everything had melted nicely and I was off again.

I had dinner with the italians tonight. I thought, "wow, I better impress them with my food skills," so I baked a loaf of focaccia bread this morning (using only a water glass and soup spoon for measuring!) and bought a nice bottle of Chianti. So I was a little disappointed to find them using bottled generic pasta sauce! It was not so yummy. My bread was good though, and they were impressed.

My "buddy program" on tuesday went well. We were supposed to have 4 Finns and 4 Foreigners, but it ended up being 2 Finns and 4 Foreigners. Alas. We went for pizza after the meeting. I should say here, in Finland every pizzeria is more than just a pizzeria. It is also a kebab joint and mexican place. That is to say, no restaurant here (except Soppa Baari) seems to sell just one kind of food. They all feel the need to branch out in strange directions. And the name and atmosphere DON'T always indicate the best food. For example, the pizza at Pizza Maria is pretty terrible, but the kebab is good. However, at Sabor Latino, you don't want to get a burritto without a side of Pepto, but the pizza is decent. I think I'll stick to cooking my own meals.

I am a Patriot

2006-01-30T13:23:00.000-08:00

Not much to report today except that it was a really beautiful day. Maybe 30F and really sunny from 9am to 3:30pm. I woke up at 9 but didn't get to shower before my 10am talk due to a massively badly timed hour-long shower by my flatmate. So I'm a little dirty today. The talk went pretty well, but my jokes were not that well received (are they ever?). I thought for sure John Lott's "what's a quasi-schmasi?" joke would kill'em, but evidently "schmasi" is not a common word in Finland. Who knew?

After that I had lunch with Anna and Haari, two other Ph.D. students. They are really cool and I hope that maybe one day we will become actual friends and not just work friends. But they are both engaged and have "real people" lives, so it's unlikely that they'll have a lot of time to hang. Funny, grad students are more like real people here than at UM, where we basically act like freshmen in college only we drink kegs full of coffee instead of beer, and we dress poorly because "it's ironic" and not "what...this looks good...loser..."

Did you know that I have to delete the word "Anyway" from the beginning of every paragraph (except the first) of every post I write? Well I do. I even had to do it from this one.

I'm hoping to have "American-style" potluck soon. Everybody has been picking on me for being American. Not, mind you, because of our ridiculed foreign policy, ambivalent attitude towards torture, and questionable domestic civil rights policies, but because our food is widely regarded to suck .

So I'm thinking that I'll be able to get a few people singing "America the Beautiful" (ok I don't really want this) by offering a yummy but traditional menu of

Roasted Chicken á la Simon and Garfunkle - a deliciously basted roast with a delicate rub of parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.
Not Limp Bizkits - purely southern biscuits without the slightest hint of urban flavor.
Lemon and Dillweed Infused Green Beans - because dillweed makes everything...yummier?

I don't know if I'll be able to find all the right ingredients, and I certainly am not going to attempt a pumpkin pie (it might look like a pumpkin, but if it is anywhere in Europe, it will not taste like a pumpkin).

My Finnish quiz went ice-swimmingly; we played the fun "grade your neighbor's quiz" game (why don't I do this with my students? mmmm nevermind I remember). I got 39.5/42. Hyvää! (Good!)

Tomorrow is busy, with
a) laundry apointment at 9am (you have to make an appointment to use the washing machine)
b) lunch at noon with a visiting Russian prospective grad student of Pekka (there has to be a better way to phrase that)
c) coffee at 2:30 with the chair of the "Academic Affairs" committee of the student union (I think he has the rough equivalent of my position in GEO)
d) Finnish class at 4pm
e) the "buddy" program at 6pm (where I get paired up with a real live Finnish person who will hopefully become my buddy).
f) do math
g) sleep

Hockey and the Day of Reckoning

2006-01-29T10:51:00.000-08:00

Hi folks. Again, this post will not have any pictures, but not because I didn't take them. My camera batteries finally gave out (after nearly 150 pictures!), and because the charger has a plug with one prong slightly bigger than the other, it doesn't fit my home-made adapter. I'm looking to get another soon - only $4 on amazon dot com. However, something tells me the shipping will be 3 arms and 4 legs. So, no photos for a while.

So what did I do this weekend? Well, friday night was just working. Math, math, math. I met with Pekka on thursday, friday, and saturday! I guess we're making up for lost time. Anyway, I'm a little behind him when it comes to the technical aspects of the problem we're working on. This is to be expected; he is after all one of the most respected mathematicians in this field and total baller. So, I'm trying really hard to get up to speed. So saturday I spent most of the morning doing math, then met with Pekka at 3, and then went to a hockey game with Illka at 5. It was really cool - this one was the top Finnish league, and the match was between Jyväskylä's home team JYP and the first place team Kärpät. JYP got their butts kicked, losing 4-1. BUT there were CHEERLEADERS! At a hockey game! Lest you think that the Finns have completely lost their collective soul and have gone over to the Dark Side, these cheerleaders were not exactly typical american cheerleaders. For one thing, their outfits were not very revealing. But the really telling difference was that there were a couple of fat cheerleaders. GASP! Maybe the purpose of cheerleaders in Finland is not to be eye-candy, but instead to actually lead cheers?! Well, not exactly (there was a fan cheering section with drums and horns for that), but it was a little closer to that than in the states.

So, tomorrow is the day of reckoning. I've got a 2 hour study seminar to give at 10am (I'll be talking about Nagata Dimension again, for those in the know - the study seminar basically the same as the AnSS at michigan, so I figure I might as well recycle talks as well. Maybe I can get it right this time!). Then at 4pm I've got my first Finnish test. We'll see. In the meantime, Pekka has a prospective Ph.D. student coming to visit from Russia, but he can't be around, so I'm going to be playing host a little bit too. Should be fun, but maybe a little stressful.

Finnish phrase of the day: Kuinka vanha sun paras kaveri on? = How old is your best friend?

Physics Lesson

2006-01-27T11:08:00.000-08:00

Usually, when riding a bike uphill, one gets up off of the saddle and leans forward over the handlebars. This is a powerful position which leads to increased efficiency and an easier, faster climb.

This does not work on snow. Mostly because a bike is a "rear wheel drive" vehicle. Removing the weight from the rear wheel causes a marked decrease in traction.

As a result, when climbing a hill in the snow, weight should be kept on the back wheel. The result is a very inefficient difficult climb which quikly tires the hamstrings, which are not usually worked when cylcing.

Learn something new everyday, huh?

Got to admit it's getting better, getting better all the time...

2006-01-26T13:42:00.000-08:00

So today was a good day! I woke up around 10. I had planned to get up at 8:30, but that didn't happen. I find that I'm really woozy in the morning. It's almost as though I'm sedated, and getting out of bed seems simply impossible until 10, even thought I went to sleep around midnight last night. Anyway, I got a call from Illke, my tutor, at 11 asking if I'd like to have lunch with him and his daughter, who is 4 years old (sä olet neljä vuotta vanha). Now, usually I think that little kids are noisy, smelly, and generally not good eating companions. But Emilia was really quite nice! She answered my pathetic attempts at asking her questions in Finnish and didn't yell, scream, or demand tons of attention. Plus, somehow a blond, blue-eyed little kid seems even more über-Nordic than a blond, blue-eyed grown-up, which is kind of interesting. I imagine her growing up to be some sort of Norse God :)

After that, I had some really productive conversations with Kai and Pekka. It's amazing how much better of a mood I'm in when math is going well. When I was playing a ton of trumpet, I had a similar phenomenon occuring: good trumpet day = happy kevin, bad trumpet day = sad kevin.

Here are some wonderful things about Finland
- grocery carts *actually work*. You can even turn them sideways on a dime, and there are never any weird unbalanced, off-kilter carts. And they are well-designed too, with a tall skinny compartment at one end for items that would otherwise fall over, like milk or cereal.
- one can purchase bicycle parts in the grocery store for cheap (a set of replacement brake pads = 1.50 €).
- cars stop at intersections for bikes and pedestrians, even when they don't have to.

I'm feeling much better health-wise today also. Hopefully the insurgency has been defeated...

The "Cold War" Continues!

2006-01-25T07:40:00.000-08:00

Germ Insurgency Grows in Response to Massive Immune Counter-Attack

JYVÄSKYLÄ, Finland, Jan. 25 - At noon today, Kevin's nasal cavity experienced a series of sudden and apparently uncoordinated instances of massive congestion. Several immigrant germ groups have denied resonsibility, but sources close to the germs have revealed anger at recent round-ups of active germ troops. Such protests have sparked fears in the Brain of a violent uprising by recently defeated Finnish germs.

Apparently taking it's cues from the current US administration, the Brain's first recation to the germ insurrgency was to do absolutely nothing while causing immense pain for other body systems in the form of a massive headache. Brain spokesperson H. Thalamus said "The headache is a necessary by-product of the brains ongoing effort to root-out possible germ terrorists." This viewpoint was not accepted by all body parts. The Left Hand said "We feel that this most recent headache is the latest in a string of attempts by the brain to exert dominance over all body parts through torture and coersion." The Stomach agreed, saying that "This headache is a warning: this administration fully intends to expel all foreign residents of the body. How far can this policy go? Look, it's one thing to prevent Finnish military germs from causing further damage, but they're talking about banning even yogurt. Everyone loves yogurt! Besides, the bacteria in yogurt do the jobs that most natural body elements scoff at. We need foriegn germs to survive."

Many body residents recall the disasterous policy banning all Japanese food from the body for years after Body War II. Only recently has the body issued an apology - sushi is now one of the most popular and sought-after foods in many regions of the mouth. The Left Hand, in particular, has been vocal with comparisons to Body War II. However, the Brain insists that current Finnish germs are "enemy combatants" and do not deserve assimilation into body systems.

It now seems that further violence and suffering are inevitible. These recent events have contributed to a growing sense of hopelessness amongst many body systems. According to the pancreas, a traditionally neutral organ, "When it comes to germ warfare, nobody wins."

BIkes, Babes, Booze.

2006-01-23T13:18:00.000-08:00

Ok, well, just bikes, actually.

So yesterday was quite uneventful. I woke up around noon, did a few hours of work, went to a coffee shop, did some more math (in the process found a flaw with some projects I thought would come together nicely - oh well). Came home, took a sauna, talked to my mom (hi mom), and went to bed. Ok, that's that.

This morning, I woke up and went to work to see if there would be a seminar today (there wasn't). I then sent a "Really, I can meet with you anytime" email to Pekka, and took off for town. First stop was the used bike store. I met Wahlid, the Sudanese owner. We had a nice conversation. After about 30 minutes, he said, "So, did you need something, or did you just come to introduce yourself?" It was quite funny. Most of the bikes were not in very good condition, and I finally settled on a Finnish brand bike from the 70s. It seemed sturdy at first, but I put it through some not very rigourous tests and managed to a) bust a brake cable and b) crack the rear skewer without even leaving the store. So I told Wahlid that I would buy the bike if we could fix these things. About an hour later I had a pretty sturdy bike for 60 €. The brakes make A TON of noise but the only thing one can really do about that is replace the pads and I felt bad enough making Wahlid do all that work as it was (it was only a 60 € used bike after all, in a country where the cheapest aside from departments store junk cost at least 600 €). So anyway I might get the brake pads replaced soon because I really do sound like a banchee coming down a hill. That said, it is VERY NICE to be back on a bike again.

A few things about the bike. A) Daphne is better. B) I am out of shape. C) Riding upright is WAY less efficient than all hunched over like on a road bike, but way more comfortable. D) I miss Daphne. E) Riding a bike is about 4GHz faster than walking.

Anyway, after that I did my errands in whirlwind fashion. What would have taken me all day only took about 1 hour! I first went to the post-office (to mail my paper ticket back to the states to get it changed so I can attend that conference in Poland) , but was scared away by a really long line. It was lunch time so I figured that had caused the problem, like in the states. So instead I went out to the Mac place to get my keyboard replaced. What was once an all-day affair took only half an hour on the bike! Yay! So I'm typing away on a fancy-schmancy nice new keyboard, with working space bar and all. Back to the post-office and the line was even longer! I waited for a while but then got suspicious - the line was REALLY long and nobody seemed to have packages, just little sheets of paper. So went up to the front of the line and asked the lady in charge of letting people in to the post office what the deal was. She said "Oh, this line is for voting! I had completely forgot that the runoff election for the Finnish presidency was today! Duh. Anyway, I could have gone right in to use the post office to actually send mail with out any wait at all. So I did, and it was uneventful. Then I went back to the math department, did a little work, ate lunch, and headed off to Finnish class, where I learned to say "Mä tykkään puhua suomea." (I like to speak Finnish) and other similar phrases ("Mä tykkään syödä" - I like to eat). After that, I met some friends for coffee and a little chat, which was nice. I talked a lot to the Polish woman who got me lost the other night and we had a neat conversation about authenticity in photography. I was a little out of my league seeing as how she wrote a master's thesis in anthropology of art.

Then home, eating a sandwhich (mmm cheese and "Meetwurst"), and typing in the blog. That's about it.

Health Status: 80%

Oh, yeah, yesterday was -18F. Today was +26F. Finland is weird.

Master of Freezy-ness

2006-01-21T12:09:00.000-08:00

Today I spent an hour and a quarter outside in -20F weather. And I wasn't even that cold! I woke up around 10 (when the sun came in my window - yay!) and after a leisurely breakfast headed out to town in search of a used bike store which was rumoured to be opening today. Well, after an hour of wandering without any luck, I met up with my French-Japanese friend Emilie for lunch at Soppa Baari. It was quite nice. I had a "Russion Fish Soup" which was tomato-based and contained pickles. A little weird, but really good. Emilie had a garlic-cream soup which was also really delicious. And only 6€ each! It sounds expensive by american standards, but it's quite cheap here. Anyway, we had what Emilie called a "Paris-style" lunch which lasted about 3 hours. It was clear that this was not a local tradition - the place cleared out three or four times while we there. The wait-staff didn't seem to mind though. The conversation was quite interesting - we discussed jazz, art, politics, her long distance relationship, and financial dependence on the 'rents. It was the first social contact I've had in a week! Mostly because I've been sick. Unfortunately, I'm not 100% better - I came home today with an aweful headache and still can't hear out of my left ear (it's been that way for 5 days now...). On the walk home I did end up seeing the bike store - but it wasn't actually open today anyway. 9:30 am on monday - I'll be their first customer.

The cold is actually really nice, I think, if you are properly dressed. I wore my boots today with relatively little pain, and was overall quite warm. It's kind of amusing to take off your coat and scarf and see a layer of ice on them from your breath. Emilie took the bus in to town and commented that there was ice on my eyelashes!

Dinner tonight was a really yummy chicken stir-fry with almost (but not) too much ginger. Since I haven't been able to take photos lately (I've been warned numerous times that digital cameras don't play happy with -20F weather), here is a photo of my dinner. For some reason the picture made the brocolli look really weird - I assure you it was a yummy stir-fry and not covered in strange whitish fungus goo.

From Weather.com...

2006-01-20T04:06:00.000-08:00

Current Temp: -18F
Feels Like: N/A

On the upswing, and Further Travels?

2006-01-19T11:30:00.000-08:00

I'm feeling a little better today - not a ton, but a little. I didn't get out of bed until 3pm, but that was mostly because I couldn't fall asleep last night. The cold medicine I took evidently contained 120mg of caffiene per dose (i should have checked the inactive ingredient list before taking the medicine). So it was a scramble to get to Finnish class at 4pm, because the class is a 30 minute walk away. And boy, it was cold! -25C, or -13F! Surprisingly, I think I walk slower when it's really cold, because it's harder to move with all those clothes on. This time I really wasn't that cold - I was well dressed, and I even wore my boots. My foot hurt a little bit, but I think it was worth not getting frostbite. Tomorrow is supposed to be even colder, and they say we'll have -30C (-22F) on the weekend.

So I'm feeling a little better, but not enough to go out to the "Stammtisch" tonight. I've learned my lesson - it's too bad, though, because I'm really curious to see what it is all about. Oh well. There will be other fun things.

Finnish phrase of the day: "Vesihiisi sihisi hississä." ~ "The sea-monster was hissing in the elevator."

In other news, I was invited to be a speaker at the Bojarski Conference in Poland in mid-June. Unfortunately, my flight home to NY is on June 5th. I've sent an email to my travel agent to see about getting things changed. I fear that there will be a big fee, but we'll have to see. Even if I end up having to shell out some bucks, I think it will be worth it to have a week in rural Poland and the opportunity to speak an international conference! Really, my main concern is the hassle that comes along with the travel stuff - I really hate dealing with tickets and fees and visas and all that crap.

Tonight I spent a good hour or so in the sauna. It's so good. SO GOOD! I should have been doing it each day that I've been sick - I don't know why I didn't. For those of you who aren't initiated, here's the deal. The sauna is a wood-paneled room with wooden benches at various heights. In one corner is a machine that heats some rocks to very high temperatures. One throws water on the rocks, producing super hot steam. The steam heats the room, but it is not a "steam room" - the steam quickly dissapates. This process can get the air in the room VERY HOT, above boiling even. It sounds unpleasant, but it is a very relaxing sensation and is quite enjoyable. After a while, one's body says "ok, I've had enough" and then one takes a cool shower in an adjacent room or goes for a dip in the lake. Then one has a cold beer, and repeats the whole process. I usually replace the beer part with water, since I'm always so dehydrated anyway. Clothes are not worn in the process, though it is customary to sit on a towel in the sauna. I'm going to miss the sauna...

"Hey look at me, I'm Finland! I get really cold!"

2006-01-18T09:41:00.000-08:00

That's nice, Finland. Thanks for sharing. I'm sure that the entire world needed to know that in fact, it is really quite cold sometimes in Finland. Like today. Today the temperature was -22C (-8F), without the windchill. Here is a list of what I wore when I had to go out to the math department.

cotton undershirt (the polypro one was dirty)
heavy wool sweater
REI softshell jacket
heavy down coat
boxers
long johns
wool pants
wind and waterproof pants
cotton socks
leather shoes
hat
gloves
scarf

My nose was runny and got a little frozen, as did my eyeballs. My feet were pretty numb - I really hope that I can start wearing my boots, because those little sneakers just aren't going to cut it.

Funny though, it *looked* like a beautiful day. Quite sunny. I didn't bring my camera though, because I knew that I wouldn't want to take off my gloves to take any pictures.

I am still quite sick. This is probably the worst cold I've ever had. I think it's complicated by the fact that it is really very dry in my flat. For example, my towel is bone dry about 15 minutes after my shower. I've taken to boiling a big pot of tea and then putting a towel over the pot and my head. This seems to help, but sleeping is a big problem - I wake up every 30 minutes or so all dried up; this morning I had a nosebleed and was coughing up a little blood (don't worry though - it's not a respiratory thing, it's just that my thoat was really dry). Ok, enough grossness.

I went to Finnish class on Monday and yesterday. Our teacher is a very young (26!) Finnish woman with an amazing command of american slang. "Tomorrow we're going to be in the ghetto classroom in building S, instead of this pimped-out room." MTV is BigBrother, evidently. Actually, she said her husband is from the states, so that's probably the source. So, now I'm slowly learning Finnish. It was difficult for me to learn yesterday though, because I couldn't hear out of my left ear (from being so stuffed up). Finnish seems like a really neat language, and I'm excited to get to learn it a little.

I haven't been doing so much math lately, because I'm finding it hard to get time with Pekka. He's quite busy - and I think I may have been spoiled by Mario, who is just amazingly generous with his time. Pekka had an idea early last week, and over the weekend I debunked it a little - now I'm kind of stuck as to how to proceed. Anyway, there's plenty of work I COULD be doing - I have no real excuse for not being super busy except that I'm pretty ill and I can't really think straight. I'm sure once the term gets going we'll have more chances to talk.

I hope I'll be on the upswing tomorrow. There is a "Stammtisch" tomorrow night for the international students - from what I gather its something the folks at the international center have been working on for a long time and I really wish I could go, but it seems next to impossible at this point (it doesn't start till 10pm). I'm just hoping to be ok for next week, when I might get another chance to talk to Pekka.

Anyway, I miss you all and thanks to all of you who sent get well notes.

Kevin's Immune System Surrenders!!!

2006-01-16T10:42:00.000-08:00

"Nous nous rendons!" says General Phage

JYVÄSKYLÄ, Finland, Jan. 16th - Kevin Wildrick's Immune system surrendered today at 8am in the face of an over-whelming Finnish-led germ force. Overall productivity has dropped to near zero, and energy levels are low. Several major body systems are now in germ control, and the carnage is devestating. One particularly hard hit area is the nose, though reports are scarce since the germs have instituted a policy of high-speed ejection of the press in what they call "sneezing."

In what can only be described as one of the stupidest military blunders of all time, four days ago Kevin's executive branch engaged in a spree of partying entailing consecutive rock concerts and repeated delay of sleep until 4am. This only compounded recent immune system funding cutbacks including a trans-atlantic flight at and a so called "austerity pillow". A source close to the brain said, "The Brain was trying to make good on campaign promises to 'Have a good time in Finland'. Stupid, in retrospect, but hey, at least we didn't elect Bush."

These latest developments came after yesterday's belated policy of appeasement. One immune system general said, "As zee gift to our new Finn-eesh germ friends, we pree-zent zem with zee Tonsils." Such gestures were clearly too little and too late, as 12 hours of rest and 3 liters of water consumption failed to prevent the germs from turning the tonsils in to a swollen, reddish wasteland.

Some sources are already mentioning possible immune-rights violations. One group went so far as to use the phrase "T-cell Genocide", siting photographs showing what appear to be mass graves near the lymph glands. Aid in the form of sudafed and asprin has been plentiful, though it has failed to turn the tide of the attack.

For some, not all hope is lost. There are scattered rumors of a resistance movement based in the stomach. Drawing strength from oranges, gouda, and chocolate consumed in the last 48 hours, several immune weapons labratories are said to be hard a work developing powerful anti-germ cells. However, germ forces have recently attacked the digestive system, and are hoping for repeated food-explusions. Only time will tell if, and when, these germs can be defeated.

My Rapid Descent into Orange Snobbery

2006-01-15T07:03:00.000-08:00

Before we start with the news, I'd just like to say that oranges here in Finland are really good. They either come from Spain or Morocco. And they are YUMMY. SUPER YUMMY. And cheap. I paid .68€ for six big navel oranges (appelsiini in Finnish), and a similar price for eight Klementinni (that's Finnish for clementines). I have become obsessed - maybe partly because I'm getting a cold and my body is demanding water, vitamin C, and sugar, in a conveniently wrapped package that tastes DELICIOUS.

So the past few days have been really quite good. Friday evening was shaping up to be really boring - I couldn't find anyone to go out with and everybody I called had some lame excuse about why they didn't want to hang with me ("Kevin, you're creepy...and I only hang out with people who aren't obsessed with oranges" - ok it wasn't actually like that but sometimes I imagine that's what they were thinking). Anyway, I decided to just pick some random event from a "cultural events" calendar put out by the city and go by myself. I picked an "Indie Rock Nite" at Iliokivi, the bar in the student union at the university. It said that it started at 9 and that there were four bands. So I showed up at 10 and the place was deserted. Since I had nothing else to do, I grabbed a beer and sat down and thought about math (it was a surprisingly productive environment). Eventually the music started up, and as I kind of expected, the bands were mostly students and mostly pretty bad. But I did have one brief conversation with a Finn so I consider the night a victory. Eventually some other foriegn students showed up, and around 2 am we left. Most people lived in Kortepohja (a big dorm complex near the bar), and only myself and one Polish woman were staying elsewhere. She didn't want to walk home by herself, so I walked with her - but she had a very poor sense of direction and we ended up getting quite lost. Around 4 am I finally got home and pass out exhausted. I will never leave the house without a map again.

Anyway, Saturday I went shopping (see above regarding my orange feeding frenzie) and then met Lara (an Italian woman from Milan) for coffee to help with her English. It was a lot of fun! "I drink espresso" "I drank espresso" "I was drinking espresso" "I had drunk espresso" "I will drink espresso" "I will have drank espresso" etc. The most interesting part was trying to explain the phrase "in the meantime". Lara asked "What is 'mean' in 'meantime'" which quickly dissolved into a ridiculous discussion of the meaning of the word "mean".

Dinner Saturday night was beef stirfry. It was a little disappointing because my yellow pepper from a week ago had gone bad so the stirfry was 75% beef and 25% otherstuff. Mmmm...beef (gross!). Lara told me that some people were meeting at 9pm in the center to do "something". So I showed, and it turned out that we were going to a "indie-pop" concert. I was a little skeptical due to the night before's performance. However, this was a much bigger venue and a much better band - they were called Liekki which is "Flame" in English. They were *really* good, despite the fact that I had no idea what they were saying. It was really fun, but there was one disturbing element. Nobody was dancing! It had happened on Friday too - but then I thought is was just because nobody liked the music. But here clearly people really liked the music, but they just didn't want to move or anything! They just stood there. Very strange to me.

I've had a recent photography problem - I'm too self-conscious about taking photos. I don't bring my camera with me most places because I don't like taking pictures in front of people. Strange, huh? I feel like I'm stealing something when I take a picture. Especially if I'm taking pictures with people I don't know in them, even at a distance. Any advice on how to get over that? The result of all this is that I don't have any photos to show you of the concerts :(

Anyway, here is one photo I have managed to take lately: a winter time rugby game.

A Few Lists

2006-01-14T10:15:00.000-08:00

Hi Everyone! Sorry I missed yesterday's post. Things were pretty busy. I've been working hard on math and I spent a long time cooking and talking to people on Skype! It was nice to talk to them, but I was computered out. Anyway, rather than give a detailed account of everything I did (which you are probably sick of already), this post will consist mainly of some lists.

Things about Finland you might not expect

The produce is exceptionally good
There are slot machines in grocery stores, bars, and restaurants
It is really really dry
Smoking is banned in most places but everyone ignores that
The clouds seem to move very fast

Things I brought that I wish I hadn't

My boots. They are awesome and sturdy but I can't put them on due to my injured foot.
My really heavy winter coat. I haven't worn it yet, because my REI groove jacket is super warm and wind and waterproof. A few layers under it will keep me toasty.
A dress shirt. No use for it here.

Things I didn't bring that I wish I had

My running shoes
My slippers
A good kitchen knife
A nice set of sheets
More long undershirts
More math books
More wool socks
A bookbag
A bike tool

I could continue, but I've got run now. I miss you folks!

A brief essay on the Friendly Finn

2006-01-11T07:06:00.000-08:00

The Finns have a reputation, evidently, for a few things:

-being "silent"
-being unfriendly
-drinking alot of alcohol
-drinking alot of coffee

Two of these four are completely unfounded, in my opinion. I have met several Finns who have talked to me for quite some time about how incredibly shy and quiet Finns are. The only shyness I have seen is from my roommate, who may just want some privacy, and the fact that people don't talk to strangers. Not so bad.

The other stereotype is that Finns aren't very friendly. I think this stems from the first. Let me tell you a little story about Friendly Finns. Yesterday was a sunny day.
This photo was taken around 10am (it will get better with time). I went to my office (which is quite nice) and did some work. I had lunch on my own, but had a nice conversation with Pekka (my advisor here in Finland) about our project afterwards. I also got notification that I would now have internet service at home. Hooray! That means I can be on skype with you folks on a more regular basis. Anyway, when I got home for dinner I tried out the internet, only to discover that I couldn't make it work. So to cheer myself up I went shopping and bought a ton of stuff - yummy food and most importantly a real pillow! Such luxury. Anyway, after dinner I went back to the math dept to see what I could see online - maybe I had configured things wrong. Well, I wanted to use my laptop and not the computer in my office so that I could see what settings I was using, etc., and the wireless network in the math dept is only available on the first floor. So I was in the first floor lobby, and the lights went out - they were motion activated and went out when I didn't move substantially for a while. Seeing no need to waste energy, I sat there in the dark. Eventually, a man came in and said something ominous in Finnish. I had used my key to get in to the building, and I guess he wanted to know what I was doing there on the floor with a computer. I said "I'm sorry, I don't understand." He said, "Oh, I see, you are hacking." Ooops! I explained why I was there, and it turns out that he was the head of IT for the university. We bonded over how much better Mac is than Windows, and he then spent about an hour working on my computer trying to figure out the problem. We eventually concluded that it was a hardware problem, because my computer wouldn't connect even with a machine that was designed for testing if your computer had a hardware problem. Anyway, he gave me a free cable (?) and told me to call his buddies at the *Certified Apple Repair Store in Jyväsklyä* Sweet! That was very nice of him. I thought the nearest would be in Helsinki. So I emailed them and they said to bring it on out and they would fix it under warranty. So today I walked out there (probably 9km each way!), and they were very very nice. They noticed my spacebar was messed up and offered to order a new one. Free. Also, they connected my computer up to the internet and it mysteriously worked. Very nice. I took it home, and VOILA, I am now writing this from home. Very nice. Basically, because Finns are nice, I was saved probably weeks of frustration trying to get internet at home, or at least a lot of walking to the math dept to use the computer. Anyway, would this kind of thing happen in the states? Maybe. But not very often. Finns are nice. You just have to take the first step and talk to them.

To finish up, here are some pictures from my walk today. It was not nice weather - about 32F and raining. Warm, but windy and wet.

What's this all about, anyway?

2006-01-10T02:06:00.000-08:00

So I've gotten a few emails asking, "What the heck are you doing in Finland, anyway?"

So here's the background. I'm currently in my fourth year of a Ph.D. program in mathematics at the University of Michigan. Basically, I study notions of distance and how they relate to each other and our "natural" notion of distance in space. Because my advisor is really awesome and has made my work very enjoyable, I have already completed ~60% of my dissertation. As a result, I have a little bit of time before the end of my program to spend working on more projects. A top researcher in my field, Pekka Koskela, contacted my advisor asking if I would like to spend a semester working with him in Jyäskylä, Finland. This is not quite as random as it seems. There is a long tradition of mathematicians from the University of Michigan collaborating with Finnish mathematicians, going back to the late 50's/early 60's with Fred Gehring and Jussi Väisälä. In fact, the other member of my dissertation is from very close to Jyväskylä and my advisor spent a year here as a post-doc.

So this semester I will be working with Pekka Koskela doing mathematics research. We met to discuss research yesterday for about 15 minutes. He has a problem for me to work on which sounds very exciting - I'll describe it in more detail on my math blog www.quasifractals.blogspot.com. It deals with that ubiquitous mathematical beast, the Cantor set, which has some very mysterious properties.

Anyway, that's what I'm doing here. It's quite an opportunity. Pekka Koskela is widely respected - one person described him to me as "the most prolific mathematician that I know". He also seems like a very friendly guy, and I'm really lucky to get to work with him.

Awww! The First Day of School

2006-01-09T23:28:00.000-08:00

So today was the first day of school. Well, not really, since I didn't have any class or anything. I did get set up with an office, which is quite nice. I share it with another grad student, Maati, who studies probability type stuff. He seems quite nice. I talked to Pekka a little bit and he outlined the problem we're going to work on. See my math blog for details. I ate lunch, created this blog, and did some email. After that, I ran in to Tim and we went to get some food. On the way to the city center, we ran into one of the Finnish "tutors" who are employed by the international center to make sure we don't get kidnapped or something. Anyway, she suggested a place called "Soppa Baari" or soup bar. There were four items on the menu, each 6€: three soups and one pasta dish. I had fish soup, mostly because I would never have fish soup in a restaurant in Michigan. It was SO GOOD. It was like soup you would get in a fancy restaurant in the states. SO YUMMY. It was really creamy with parsely, lots of dill, and tons of lemon. I'm definitely going back there.

Afterwards, I headed back to the office and did some work for a while. Then home, some small dinner, and sleep. That was about it. Nothing exciting. It was really grey and cloudy today, so I didn't take any pictures. Sorry.

Still no substantial contact with Sammi (my roommate). Hmmm. I'm going to have to do something about that or else it's going to be a long, awkward semester.

A Day of Rest

2006-01-08T01:09:00.000-08:00

I woke up this morning at 11 feeling surprisingly OK. I had expected that I would be hung-over all day. It’s now 12:30 and the sky is blue! A blue sky! Miracle of Miracles! I’m going to get some lunch and then head outside for a walk and some pictures, maybe. I have no plans for today – maybe I should try to do some math.

So I spent about one and a half hours walking in to town – it’s usually only about 45 minutes, but the sun was beautiful and so I decided to take the long way and I often stopped along the way to take some photos; these are scenes from my daily commute!

I’m feeling a lot better about living here in Finland now. Amazing what a little sun will do. I think that the combined stress of meeting new people, setting up an official identity, and getting ready to do some serious math was just too much for me to handle. I guess I’m a weak person in that respect – I can’t imagine the difficulties that refugees face, especially in the States where I bet the red tape is even thicker. Anyway, once I got into town, I went to the coffee shop and ran into Chelsea, a Canadian from Alberta, and her Italian friend Lara. We sat for a while drinking coffee and teaching each other different languages. It was fun! I learned to conjugate “to eat” in Italian, but of course I’ve forgotten by now. Chelsea took a picture of the café, and some heavy looking Finnish metal-heads came up to her and demanded that she erase the photo, because it included them. She of course complied, but I thought it was kind of strange. I suppose that it’s perfectly understandable to not want your picture taken by a stranger, but I don’t think that would happen very often in the states. I wonder what the privacy laws are like here? I think that in the states if you go out in public, then anyone can legally take your photo. Not that it’s ok to take someone’s photo against their will just because it’s legal. Anyway, it was a strange event. After a while Lara and Chelsea left and did some math. I left around 5:30 and walked home. It was quite cold on the walk home – for the first time, I felt really cold. I think there was even a little wind, which hasn’t happened at all in the past week. It was a clear night and I could see a bunch of stars. No more northern lights, though. I wonder if I’ll see them again, or if it was a rare occurrence.

I made my first real meal since arriving in Finland. It was a simple stir-fry of onions, red pepper (which is cheaper than green here!), and broccoli. I didn’t have any measuring cups, so I had to eyeball the rice, which came out a little damp. Oh well. It was still really good, though I should have splurged for the 5€ bottle of Kikkoman – the Finnish version wasn’t quite the same, and I didn’t see any of the Dutch Ketjap that Hannah likes so much. Sammi still hasn’t come out of his room. I think that he is either very shy or angry with me about the cleaning stuff. I should buy him a bottle of wine or something as a good will gesture. Maybe that will loosen him up a bit. Anyway, I think I will work out downstairs for an hour or so and then do math for the rest of the evening.

I miss you all! I hope that you haven’t forgotten about me.

A Real Finnish Welcome

2006-01-07T01:08:00.000-08:00

So for continuity I’ll finish up about last night. I met Stephanie and Johannes for a drink at the bar “Hemingway’s” in the city center. Stephanie is a French woman and Johannes is an Austrian man. We talked for a long time about missing our friends from home (while drinking a very expensive beer). Of course, we started telling stories of the funny things that our friends have done. It’s interesting how similar practical jokes are across our cultures. We are all very frustrated with our inability to use the internet as well. However, only Stephanie did the sensible thing; she utilized that oh-so-obsolete method of actually writing a letter by hand and sending it via airmail. It’s funny how we so quickly become dependent on modern technology. When I traveled in Hungary, I had only sporadic access to the internet, but it was somehow expected and thus not such a big deal. I had imagined that the Finns, who are very tech-savvy, would probably have free broadband wi-fi everywhere in the city! I suppose they probably would, but it seems that the Finns are also a very cautious people, and are very wary of internet fraud, etc. The curious thing to me is that there seems to be practically no crime here. Everyone I’ve talked to has mentioned this, and my limited experience seems to bear this out. One guy left his book-bag on the bus with 300€, his passport, and all his credit cards. Someone found it, sent him an email, and returned it with everything intact. And the Finns are very trusting in some other ways. They leave their hats and coats in the foyer of every academic building, even though these buildings are open to the public and someone could very easily walk in and take a coat – and this is Finland, so coats are pretty valuable!

So around 11pm Stephanie and Johannes decided to head out, and I left with them. But on the way home I ran in to Sigrid, Bernhard, Alex, and Daniella (the Austrian crowd). They were coming from Sowhi, a bar which evidently has a happy hour 10-11pm every night with 2€ beers! This is quite a deal. I decided I would hang with them for a while. We ended up talking until 3am! I don’t quite know how this happened. Mostly we talked politics and culture. I felt bad – I was the only one in the group that didn’t speak German. However, they were very nice and often spoke in English. It really brought home that I have very poor language skills. I should have kept up with my French – then at least I could communicate in the home-tongue of some one! Anyway, I might try to take a German course while I’m here too – but only if there is one available with English as a helping language, which I kind of doubt. They do have a fairly active “Each One Teach One” program where people pair up to learn each other’s language. I’m sure that there are plenty of people willing to trade for Finnish or German.

So I woke up the next morning around 10, and around 11 Sigrid and I went to the a shopping center only 10 minutes walk from Ristonmaa, the neighborhood I live it. I didn’t even know it existed. This will make getting food much easier – no more worries about starving. We went to the Finnish version of Super Wal-Mart, “Prisma”. It really was just like a Wal-Mart, except the quality was much higher. I bought a few Spanish navel oranges that were possibly the best oranges I have ever eaten in my entire life. I also bought stuff for stir-fry. We’ll see how that turns out. After that Sigrid and I went towards the University to take some photos – while it was still mostly cloudy, there was a lot more sun than usual. I went on into town afterwards because I needed to check email for where to meet Pekka for the hockey game at 8pm. Unfortunately, the library was closed, so I had to go to the internet café, which I had been unable to find in the past. I asked a few older people, but no one I found knew until I started asking the Heavy-Metal Dudes, who were quite scary looking but actually quite polite and friendly. It’s quite an experience to be cordially welcomed to Jyväskylä by a 6’4’’ 250lb. monster with 12 piercings and lots of tattoos. Anyway, I eventually found it, and discovered that I was to meet Pekka at a bar near the hockey rink. He wrote, “I have long hair, a beard, and will wear a black winter coat. I will probably be drinking a beer.” We’re going to have a good time, I think.

After email, I tried to find out how to get phone service. Luckily, I ran into Lisa, the Dutch woman, on the street. She helped me get a “SIM-card” and set things up. I’m glad she was there because it would have taken me at least three days to figure out what to do. One actually inserts a tiny piece of plastic card (like a 1-cm chunk of a Kroger card) into a slot in the back of the phone. So now I have a phone! Unfortunately, it doesn’t accept calls from abroad, so you can’t call me on it. However, I can call other people here, meaning I won’t be isolated once the semester starts. On the walk home, I found a very, very beautiful sunset.

Upon returning home, I found that one of my roommates had returned. His name is Sammi (spelling?), and he seems quite shy but very nice. He is Finnish, from Vaanta near Helsinki. He apologized for the mess and had brought with him an extraordinary collection of cleaning supplies. We had a short conversation and then he headed out to do some shopping. I left for the hockey game before he returned. I think things will be ok. I’m sure it will take some time to get to know him, but this seems to be the pattern with the Finns. So I headed out to the hockey game around 7. When I got there at 7:30, a huge crowd of people was leaving the rink. Evidently, another match was just ending. I found the pub and met Pekka. He was quite friendly. I gave him the bottle of Jack Daniel’s that I had brought as a gift and he seemed amused. He insisted on buying me a drink and then also the ticket to the hockey game. He told me a lot about the teams and the strategy – it was neat to see. Hockey in person is a lot different from hockey on TV. For one thing, it’s a lot louder – and you can tell how painful it is. At the end of each period we would head back to the pub for another beer. We also tried marrakas (sp?), Finnish sausage, which was quite good. The game went to overtime, which was exciting, but in the end the team from Jyväskylä lost – their first of the season. Afterwards, we head to a bar that Pekka said was a real “neighborhood bar”. Sure enough there were no students there, and some very bad Finnish karaoke was going on. It was quite an atmosphere. So we started to talk a little math, and politics, and weight-lifting. It was fun, but after a while I was beginning to feel the beer. After about 5 I was pretty wasted, but Pekka kept bringing more despite my protestations. Finally, he switched to bringing me Salmiakki, which is a licorice-flavored liquor that you either hate or love. I really like it. Anyway, at the end of the evening, I was really wasted. Pekka had given me a real Finnish welcome – namely, he drank me under the table! I wasn’t sure if I could walk home ok, but the cold was helpful in keeping me alert and I made it back to my place in one piece. A few aspirin and a liter or two of water, and then I passed out at around 2.

Bet You Haven't Done This

2006-01-06T01:07:00.000-08:00

So today was a holiday. I woke up around 10 and discovered that my milk was totally frozen solid. Since I couldn’t go to the store yesterday, all I had to eat was spaghetti and now dry muesli. So I had a few spoonfuls and then went to look for the laundry. Outside I met Béla, a Hungary who has been studying sports education here for a number of years. He showed me that not only was there a laundry room in the basement (free!), but also a small weight room, a tv room, and a billiards room. Very nice.

Today was scheduled a trip to the Sauna at Laajavouri, which is a big outdoor sports center – a couple downhill slopes, many miles of cross-country trails, a lake, a ski-jump, and a big sauna house. I have a picture or two of the place during the summer from the last time I was here. Anyway, at 12:30 I picked up the Greek boys and showed them the way to Laajavouri. There were about 30 people in our group at the sauna.

It was quite nice – first a jump in the lake (they had cut a hole in the ice) and then in to the hot sauna, then back into the water, etc. After that, we roasted some sausages over a fire. Quite nice! The dip in the ice water was much easier the second time. Somehow, being in the sauna actually makes the water seem not so painful, though common sense would say that it should seem even colder when coming from a hot room. I think it’s because my core body temp was already kind of low after 45 minutes of walking – the sauna probably raised it back up. Anyway, it was really nice and very relaxing. So I just got home and will be meeting some folks for a drink tonight around 9 in the city center. In the meantime, I guess I should eat ANOTHER bowl of spaghetti – the milk has soured in the defrosting process. Tomorrow first thing I’ll go to the store.

Frustrations

2006-01-05T01:06:00.000-08:00

Today has been another very long day. I woke up this morning with a hangover, after only two beers last night! I think that I am not drinking enough water. It is very dry here, with the cold winter air and every room being heated. I am also loosing a lot of weight – I haven’t weighed my self, but I am thinner now (and with less upper body muscle) than I’ve been in a long time. I think this is because I’m having trouble getting enough to eat. I’ve been kept quite busy each day and the food stores are not open all the time like in the states – things usually close up in the early evening. The other problem is that my messenger bag is not really able to hold more than a day’s worth of groceries, given the other stuff I have to carry around (papers, etc). I had planned to do shopping this evening, but Illke invited me to his house and I couldn’t turn him down. I would have gone before then, but I had some unexpected problems. But I’ll get to that later.

So we started with the last day of orientation at 9am. Again, boring, and this time not even really important. After that, there was lunch and then I met with a Prof from the math department (Kuusulo?). He was very nice and offered to help me find a bike and also said he would call the bank if they gave me any problems. I filled out some forms for a key, and at 2pm headed off to do some errands. Namely a) fill out a form saying what was wrong with the apartment when I moved in so that I wouldn’t be charged for it when I move out, b) pay the rent, c) pick up my computer password (which was the result of about 4 different forms), d) buy a desk lamp, e) buy a cell phone, f) buy groceries, g) get to Illke’s by 5pm. So you might be wondering why I would try to do all of this in 3 hours. Well, tomorrow is a national holiday and most things will be closed. Then almost everything will be closed on the weekend, and anything I didn’t get done today will have to wait until Monday. The cell phone and the password were therefore very important, because with out them I will have no way of arranging any human contact for three days. And I’ve been starved for human contact for too long to let that happen. The groceries were just as important because I might actually physically starve without them (see above regarding losing weight). Anyway, I accomplished a) with flying colors. However, b) was a bit more difficult. Despite just having paid the student union fee yesterday, I couldn’t remember what the Finnish words on the machine meant and didn’t want to risk signing my soul away when attempting to pay the rent. So I went into the bank and tried asking again to be signed up for internet banking (I was told last time that I was ineligible). In standard bank fashion, they said “Yes, of course you can be signed up. I have no idea why you weren’t allowed yesterday.” So I then paid the rent using a computer in the lobby of the bank designed for only that purpose. That took about an hour total. So onto c), getting the computer password, which will allow me actually use a computer that is not one of the 5 ancient iMac’s in the lobby of the library (for which there is always a line). Getting it was no problem – I went to the international student office and picked it up, where it was waiting for me after a seemingly endless process of signing forms and paying fees. Then I went to the library to check my mail, etc – but on the way I ran into Tim and some other folks who were on their way to a thrift store. I thought “Oh good, I’ll go with them now and get the lamp.” Only there were no suitable lamps, and so I went back to the library. All the computers were full, so I had to wait. When I finally got to one, my password didn’t work. The time was 3:53. So I went back to the international office, but because tomorrow is a holiday, everyone had left early, and no one could help me. So the password was useless. This really disappointed me, because I really miss my friends, and I want more than just about anything right now to talk with them and share my experiences so far. It would be really nice to talk to people over skype, too. However, with out a computer password, I can’t use any computers except the slow crowded ones in the library (which is basically only open M-F 9-5), which aren’t really suitable for spending a few hours setting up my blogs, downloading skype, or sending emails. Not to mention that I can’t register for class with out the password, or pay my credit card bill (which will be coming due very soon). So anyway, I was very frustrated by this. So much so that I really was starting to hate it here! It seemed that despite the fact that everyone is very nice, people are so over-protective of the resources here (which are substantial) that it is nearly impossible to get anything done correctly. Really, I just felt helpless and powerless. I couldn’t seem to get anything right, and it seemed that even the simple things (like finding hangars for my closet or getting to the grocery store) were next to impossible.

Ok, so back to the list. It was now 4 pm or so, and I decided to go grocery shopping. I had figured that Illke was planning on feeding me, since he said to be at his house around 5pm. However, on the way to the store, I ran into Tim and Illke. I asked “What can I bring to add to dinner?” and he just looked at me blankly. Anyway, they were on the way to get some kebab (it’s all over the world) and so I figured I’d better join them or else I’d be starving. So the grocery store got scrapped. However, I ate really fast and there was a cell phone place next to the restaurant. I bought a used nokia for 15Euro. I tried to buy service too, but apparently that’s done at another place. So I have a phone but no service yet. At this point we had to head out to Illke’s place, which was about 7km outside of town. We took the bus (2.60 Euro!). Present were Tim, Illke, three Greeks, and myself. We didn’t really do anything at Illke’s except listen to him talk about his stuff, which he was very proud of. He also did quite an impressive juggling demonstration. It was fun, but I think I would rather have gotten groceries. So I took the bus back into town around 8:30 and was home by 9:30. I really wanted a bowl of cereal, but the milk had frozen in the fridge (it remains an ice-cube after an hour next to the warm stove) so I had to settle for spaghetti for the second night in a row, with the promise of spaghetti for lunch and dinner tomorrow as well.

Well, I feel as if I’m spending a lot of time complaining and not a lot of time talking about how beautiful it is here. It is very beautiful here. It was colder today than before, but still no lower than -7C (~18F). I’ve been walking a lot and would be taking a lot of pictures, but it is quite dark here except from 10-3, when it very gray and not that light. Despite this, the trees and the snow are really very nice. It is often eerily quiet. Anyway, the reason that I haven’t been talking about this so much is because I really haven’t had too much time to appreciate it. I thought that as a fairly experienced traveler, I would have an easier time of adjusting, but the combination of jetlag (which I am just now getting over), missing my friends and family, anxiety about performing well this semester, and the practical difficulties of getting set up here has left me pretty stressed and unhappy. I think that I’ll feel much better about things once I can talk to some people from home, get enough time and energy to do some real math (I’ve only been able to work very poorly since getting here), and get a little closer to some of the people here.

My foot is slowly starting to heal up. I tried on my boots today and they only hurt a little. I hope I’ll be able to wear them before it gets really cold. I’ve spent so much money here already! Everything is quite expensive. Example: a value meal at McDonalds = 7 Euro. Don’t worry folks, I didn’t eat at McDonalds. There are a lot of discounts for students here, but unfortunately I don’t qualify for any of them because I am a Ph.D. student and not an undergraduate. Oh well.

Ok, time for bed. I hope that I’m not upsetting you folks. Especially Juha. I really want to be having a good time, especially given all the hard work that so many people have done to get me here, and the incredible opportunity I have here. So few people in the world have what I have – I should learn to appreciate that.

Meet the Cast

2006-01-04T01:05:00.000-08:00

Wow! What a long day. I’m totally exhausted. We started the orientation this morning with presentations on “The Finnish Academic System” , “Language Instruction”, and “Computing”. Again, important but boring. I’ve become friends with a few people during the breaks, etc. Here’s the current cast of characters, complete with ridiculous first impressions that will almost certainly turn out to be false.

Illka: My “tutor”. Basically the guy who will show me around Jyväskylä and make sure I get all the paperwork done correctly. At first seemed a bit stuffy but now is very friendly and very funny. He has a fiancée and a four year old daughter (which is not uncommon in Finland evidently – I was told that often Finnish parents don’t marry until their first child goes to school). He is in his second year of undergraduate mathematics studies, but seems to be quite knowledgeable compared to what I knew at that point. He loves biking and is very proud of his long hair and tattoo, which he claims make him look “scary and intimidating”. He is quite thin. I like him a lot.

Tim: A gregarious American from UNC Chapel Hill. Swimmer, Diver, Mountain Climber. Serious All-American Good Looks. Very friendly, makes everyone laugh, and is interested in EVERYTHING. Seems quite genuine, perhaps a ladies man. Studies Environmental Science

Lisa: A very tall Dutch woman. Also very outgoing and friendly, laughs a lot, and makes silly jokes. Perhaps likes to party. Studies Psychology.

Sigrid: A soft-spoken Austrian woman from Graz (where I visited for two weeks when I was 13). Seems very bright and extremely articulate. Lives in the same housing area as I do. Studies Psychology.

The Austrian Boys: I can’t remember their names but they are a lot of fun. Always a joke. They all come from Inmsbrook and study psychology.

Marina, Tina, and Christie (The Italian girls from Milan): Friendly and very silly. They seem quite young, though I’m not sure. Seem to get a kick out of everything.

Anyway, there are many more, but I won’t write about everyone. Probably I’ll hardly ever see these people again once the orientation ends. I’m a little worried that I’ll have trouble making Finnish friends. The Finns really are a little hard to get to know, but it seems they open up a lot after some time.

So after the lectures we had lunch and a tour of the campus. I spent way too much time trying to figure out how to make a payment from a bank machine. Then I spent about two hours searching for a plug adapter. Finally, I got a tip to try an electrical store about two kilometers outside the city center. The clerk didn’t speak English, so I drew a picture. He didn’t have one, but I saw some pieces that I thought could be assembled to make one. Sure enough, half an hour and a couple screws and pliers later, we had created an adapter that seems to be working just great right now! I’m back up to 37% on the computer battery. The power unit for the computer is a little warm, but it’s rated to 220 volts so it should be fine. There’s no funny smell, so I think it’s ok.

After all this work, there was a Finnish movie playing, “Down-time”, about a rich couple who gets conned into taking a “vacation” as poor people. It was really strange – the movie was filled with ridiculous comedy that butted right up against very serious social issues like poverty and fidelity. I couldn’t decide if it trivialized these issues or was trying to bring them to light. I do think that the makers of the film had not experienced real poverty.

At some point today, I checked email at the library and found an email from Pekka inviting me to a hockey game with him on Saturday. Sounds fun! I’m in.
After the movie, a bunch of us went out for pizza and beer. It was a good time. As always, I talked too much in general and in particular too much about politics. I kept forgetting that I was with undergraduates from a different culture and not my GEO friends. I think that I may have come off as a serious buzz-kill. Oh well. I guess I’m getting old. It was also a long walk home (45minutes from the city center). I am now very tired.

More stuff at 9am tomorrow. Talk to you soon.

Let's Get Oriented

2006-01-03T01:03:00.000-08:00

I took a sleeping pill last night around 9 pm because I was really bored and exhausted but somehow my body wouldn’t shut off. Now I know why William Gibson calls jet lag a “soul hangover”. Anyway, I woke up and was completely alert at 2am, so I decided to scrub the kitchen floor. Who knows when (if?) the other people who live here will return? If I’m going to be here for a month, I might as well clean the kitchen. If I leave the mess for the people who made it, it probably won’t get cleaned as well as I would like it to be – why set myself up for disappointment and confrontation?

As I was doing this, I couldn’t help but feeling, well, really unwelcome. I know that is a ridiculous thing to feel, and that it probably has more to do with the fact that I’m tired but can’t sleep, dirty, and all alone in a country where I know only a handful of people. Furthermore, it’s not even clear that the people who made the mess knew I was coming – and even if they did, it’s unlikely that they intentionally didn’t clean up because they wanted me to know that I’m not welcome and my comfort and happiness are totally irrelevant to their lives. Still, I feel unwelcome anyway. I’m sure it’ll get better – everyone I’ve met so far has been really nice.

So I went to the orientation this morning. It was awkward at first (as always) but I met some interesting people. There are students from everywhere here! Korea to Canada. Pretty cool. I am the only mathematician, evidently, and apparently the only Ph.D. student as well. The orientation was not surprisingly very boring. Important, but boring.

At lunch I found Anna, who was a master’s student in math here when I was here a year and a half ago for the summer school. It was super good to see someone I knew. Despite having just heard “Finns don’t like to hug anyone except family and very close friends” I couldn’t help myself. It’s so funny how a few days with next to zero human contact will make you a little crazy. Anyway, Anna has now began her Ph.D. studies and gotten married to the chap she was dating when I first met her. She says hello to the Michigan Math crowd. Evidently, there will be two math Ph.D. level courses offered this semester “Fractal Geometry” and “Metric Analysis”. Well, they’re right up my alley.

Afterward the orientation, I went looking for a bike (the stores were closed) and opened a bank account. This was important because the Finns hate cash. All fees and deposits can only be made by bank transfer. This is next to impossible, at $25 per transfer from my bank in the states. Here bank transfers can be done at the “Otto” (atm) and only cost .40 euros. The teller only spoke broken English and my Finnish consists of “hello”, “thank you”, “sorry”, and “welcome”, and “pharmacy” (I don’t know why I can remember that and not something a little more useful). However, things went smoothly and now I have a Finnish Bank card.

After that I went grocery shopping and then came home. I ate a bowl of cereal in my room and then decided to tackle the kitchen. Four hours later, the place looks pretty good. It’s actually a really nice apartment under all that grime. I hope we can keep it clean. My hands feel really funny from all that scrubbing. And I discovered that the “mystery vats” in the bathroom that were giving off a smell like sweaty butt were actually a vastly misguided attempt a homebrew wine. I thought the #1 rule in homebrew was sanitation…

Anyway, after cleaning the kitchen and the bathroom, I feel a little bit better about living here this semester. Hopefully I can convince some of the people at the orientation tomorrow to go out for a drink or something tomorrow night. I’m human starved. Ok, I’m down to 22% battery on my computer, and still no leads on an adapter. I should probably head to bed anyway – stuff starts tomorrow at 9am.

Welcome to Jyväskylä

2006-01-02T19:30:00.000-08:00

I couldn’t sleep last night, so I stayed up eating chocolate and doing math. I took the train this morning to Jyväskylä, and didn’t sleep then either! I was met by Illke, my “tutor”, who took me to my apartment. It’s a nice place structurally, with a big window facing the woods. But it’s totally disgusting! Again! There are three locking bedrooms which share a kitchen, hall, and bathroom. The common areas are so gross that even I can’t do them justice with words. For example, there’s a half empty jar of pickle juice in the cupboard. Not the fridge, the cupboard. There’s a mop with brown slime all over it. There were a number of buckets filled with moldy piss smelling water. So gross. The only comparison is the house I shared with nine people my junior year of college – the one that hadn’t been cleaned out in nearly ten years.

So I walked my ass thirty minutes through the snow to the housing office, who said they would “write a letter” to the other tenants, and that I had to stay in that apartment until at least February. I don’t think that I can live with anyone who could let his living space get so filthy. It’s just not sanitary. I’m going to be here for five months. I hope this works out.

I stupidly asked for a “survival package” again. I should have learned my lesson from the last time I was here. The “sheet” is a piece of blue canvas that doesn’t even cover the bed, and the pillowcase has a whole in it. I think I’m going to have to splurge on a real pillow, a real blanket, and a real set of sheets. As for the cooking stuff, well, you be the judge of if the twenty euros is worth it.

I stopped by the library on the way back from the housing office to use the internet. Yay! Finally I can check my email. Thanks Mom, Jess, and Toby for sending me emails. I love you guys! I also stopped by Pekka Koskela’s office in the math department. He wasn’t there, but his “Ministry of Funny Walks” poster was! I think I’m going to like this guy.

I saw the northern lights when I was finally walking home. It was pretty dark (4pm), and to the north there was a blue glow extending maybe twenty degrees above the horizon. Beautiful! I would have taken a picture, but I’m sure it wouldn’t have come out.

After I came home, I had to pee, but it was too gross. So I cleaned the bathroom. Which was SO GROSS. I can’t emphasize enough how INCREDIBLY GROSS it was. It was REALLY, REALLY, GROSS. Now, I’m not an elitist snob (ok maybe I am), but I didn’t fly halfway across the world at the invitation of one of the worlds best mathematicians to clean up years of caked on shit from somebody I’ve never even met.

So that gets me up to the present. 7:30pm, Monday January 2, 2006. Lonely. Tired. Angry about the filthy apartment. Oh yeah, the power adapter I brought with me doesn’t fit! It is square, and all the outlets are recessed in to a cylinder. The prongs are right, but the voltage converter is shaped wrong, so the prongs never have a shot of making it in to the wholes. See illustration. So what I need is actually just the plug adapter, not a voltage converter. Stupidly, I think I have one of those somewhere, but I certainly didn’t bring it. Anyway, I hope I can find one, because I only have 40% left on the computer battery, and about 50% left on the camera. If not, maybe someone can send one to me? When I get a chance, I’ll look up what “type” plug Finland has. It’s D or F or something.

Flying and Sleeping

2006-01-01T00:56:00.000-08:00

I left New York around 8pm on Friday, December 29th. The flights really weren’t too bad. There was a young woman sitting next to me on the way to Munich at first. She was telling me that she had planned to be an au pair for a year, but it didn’t work out so she was leaving after 3 months. Then she said, “I really feel terrible, too.” I said, “Don’t feel bad about it, I’m sure it’s for the best.” She replied, “No, I mean I feel sick. I think I have a fever and I’ve been sneezing like crazy.” Luckily, there was a whole row empty across from us, and so she moved over there to stretch out. After that, I fell asleep just long enough to miss dinner, but luckily my mother had packed some delicious foodstuffs for me to take along. I tossed and turned for most of the night, not really sleeping despite a glass of red wine and a sleeping pill. The next morning, I had a short layover in Munich, and was off to Helsinki. When I told the passport control woman that my final destination was Helsinki, she said, “Funny, you don’t look crazy.” I guess most of the world is not interested enough in mathematics to brave a Finnish winter.

Ironically, it was about 30F when I arrived in Helsinki, but most of continental Europe was covered in massive amounts of snow from a huge storm a few days ago. By the time I got to my hostel, it was 4pm local time, and I fell asleep for a few hours. Around 8pm I went “exploring”, and the city was completely dead. Everything was closed, and it was eerily empty even on the main touristy streets. I saw a few interesting things.

So I went back to the hostel, fully intending to go back out around 11pm to find some sort of New Year’s Eve celebration. Unfortunately, I fell asleep and didn’t wake up till 3am. Sorry Mario! A few hours of math later came breakfast, a sauna, and half an hour with the high intensity lamp. Happily, I felt like a million bucks. I headed out to find a grocery store and see if there were any cafés open, particularly any with free internet. Found the food, but not the internet. It really was quite pleasant – snowing lightly and about 30F. Unfortunately, all the museums I wanted to see are closed for New Year’s Day. The only one I found open was the only one I didn’t like when I visited last summer. I decided not to buy a tram pass since it was so warm out, but I’ve somehow managed to screw up my left foot and all this walking is starting to be painful.

So at dinner on New Years day, I met Julio, an Argentine Jew who had moved to Finland for a girl, only to fall on her bad side soon after arriving (after three years of living together in Argentina – “She was a different person in the cold weather”). We went to a bar “Lost and Found” which was populated mainly by Finnish heavy metal wannabes. I must have looked quite out of place in my kind of preppy attire. At least they looked as ridiculous to me as I did to them.