Friday, November 24

 

 

Irma had lost her voice almost completely this morning so she wrote me a couple of little notes to convey information. I smiled and left into a dry morning in which the snow on the paths had all evaporated.

Arcada felt empty when I arrived. Fred arrived and then Monica, and much later Mats and Liisa. Everyone else worked from home or stayed in bed.

I spent the morning writing up some material and proposing some new ventures for Convivial Mechanics. I had received an unexpected email asking for our annual receipts and I had assumed the “year” ended at the end of March, since the funding always arrives in April. This kicked me into action and I put down on paper some of the ideas that I had had swirling around my head.

I timetabled the rest of the Buddyschool project, and arranged with Irma for the Three from IT to upload the final, multi-lingual site the week we return from Kerala.

Liisa is going to attend Slush Music so we tried to see if we would overlap or bump into each other at side sessions or parties. We couldn’t work this out but it spurred Liisa to ask Monica if we would have an Arcada Christmas Party this year, and this caused Monica to find out, and announce that the invitation had appeared online. We all booked, so something got done.

In the afternoon I updated my website in order to test some css and then spent some time with two CMS students explaining what I had just tested, and how it solved the problems that they thought they had. I accidentally met the IT Three and told them everything that I had intended to email them. We also discussed the category system they have created and I signed off on it.

At 15:40 I set off to take three cds back to the library. To my surprise the library closes on Fridays at 16:00, even though it closes at 20:00 every other day. I discovered this when I arrived at 16:04, so I turned around and got the number 8 tram to the centre.

At Arcada a number of bowlers got on, with the result that I ended up having a pre-meal drink at Bar 99. At 16:50 we put down our glasses, left, turned right, and walked up Runeberginkatu until we found Rune’s restaurant, wherew met others from Arcada, and I enjoyed an Angus steak burger with a glass of “a local craft beer” that Tore insisted that I shouled try.

At 18:50 we walked the fifty metres to the bowling alley, where the annual Arcada Bowling Championship began. I shared a lane with Matt and Maria from Human Resources. I got 130 which placed me third in the men’s and fourth overall. Mirko won with 177, and Maria came second in the women’s cup with 126.

At 20:30 we all stop and the others decide to go to Linko for more beer. I decide to go home.

As I walk towards Mannerheimintie I look at the lightshow on the opera house. Naa and I saw it when we got the tram on Wednesday evening , but now I pause and photograph it. I have no idea whether it celebrates something specific, or whether it simply represents Finnish valotaide in general.

Who can say?