School's starting...

Yep, so school's starting once again and the new batch of freshmen will be arriving sometime this week (Wednesday?) and officially the semester will be beginning in two weeks or so. This autumn appears to have the potential to become a rather interesting one. My original contract at N was until the end of September, so I'll have to work slightly longer days so that I can catch at least a couple of hours of lectures each week. And even then I guess I have to play a bit of catch-up.

I've met tons of interesting people at work this summer, too. Many other trainees. And I have to say that right now my motivation to continue my studies is higher than it has been in quite a while. I've been in the incredibly lucky position to witness what it's like in The Real World this summer and gotten more insight on what exactly it is that I want to do when I "grow up". As a result I have a bunch of courses from the Dept. of Industrial Engineering & Management this autumn, and this might prove to be a fairly good and interesting thing in at least two ways. Firstly, it'll offer something slightly different from the Comp. Sci. & Engineering courses I've been doing for the past two-three years and will hopefully provide further motivation. And secondly the structure of the courses is different from the courses of last year in the sense that they focus more on exams based on books and an occasional exercise here and there instead of having endless hours of lectures and exercises. Oh, and that's a good thing since it might allow me to think about the possibility of a part-time job...

A puny attempt at articulating some thoughts...

For as long as I can remember, I've had problems with a certain group of people. Finland has a fairly nice welfare system and a general policy of "not leaving anyone behind." That's swell. Finland also has the highest taxes around. That's not so swell. The aforementioned group is that of the idealists who like the welfare system, want to make it better, want more money and at the same time bitch and moan about the mindsets of the people who pick up the bill. I mean, come on, that holier-than-thou routine is getting old. And fast.

Ever since childhood, everyone is out to instill the "aim for success and work 'til you drop" mindset. That's justified with models and books and research which show that overall things are better if everyone strives for their own/the community's collective success. I won't comment on that. Many people more intelligent than me will most likely know better. But what I do know is that my patience is running out in regards to the welfare system and what it's costing for me. I pay taxes, I have my goals set, I work, I study, etc. And when I go to a bar with some friends, I have various welfare cases harass our table, culminating in some drunkard aiming a punch right in the face of a friend of mine. That's unacceptable.

What's even more interesting is that Kela most likely pays the drunkard more than it pays me. And I'm a student. Investing in me would create more goodwill between me and the government and would perhaps even entice me to stay in Finland after my studies. But right now the situation is that the support I get from Kela doesn't even allow me to stay alive. I work during my vacations from school to raise money so I can study more. But they've also capped the amount I can earn before they'll start cutting the money they pay me. And that's ok. I can deal with that if those are the rules. And then I have some idealists pounce on me and lecture me on how my views of the world are distorted and I have a twisted view on money and how to use it. This coming from people who think sitting around with drug addicts and watching movies all day long constitutes as real work. Nature doesn't have a welfare system; it's the survival of the fittest and the ones who can adapt the quickest. Dragging along extra weight is not worth the effort. What should be done instead is provide everyone a level ground to jump up from (i.e. to ensure that everyone has the chance to the same primary schools, etc.). And then if some people fall or don't jump high enough, that's their problem. Better luck next life.

But under no circumstance am I interested in listening to the hypocritical bitching and moaning and the associated sniping based on stereotypes that these idealists who also lack a real understanding of why evolution works and why driving people out of countries with draconian taxation doesn't. Or otherwise transfer the money that I've paid for the welfare of others back to me; then you can say whatever you want and albeit still lacking weight, it's more credible than what I've had to put up with thus far.

And finally, a note: this was most likely a provoked response to a shitty day, tiredness, etc. Most likely I won't sign the above verbatim in the morning, but...

Breakfast

I usually don't have the time or the energy to eat or make breakfast; I just eat a large lunch at around eleven to make up for the lost energy. That said, I've recently rediscovered the joys of breakfast and how to pamper yourself by outsourcing the breakfast making to an external entity. In this case a cafe. And today I checked out the offerings of the Tintin-inspired Cafe Tin Tin Tango in Töölö. And I have to say that I instantly felt at home there and will be frequenting it from now on. It's not exactly the chic and trendy, ultra modern cafe, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's the same reason as why I'd take a Morgan Roadster over some soulless German; it has something incredibly cool about it. You can't really say what, but it's the sum of all small things.

Oh, and supposedly I look a bit like Richard Branson. I guess I have to get hold of the pictures that a friend of mine took today and do a survey or something before I completely swallow that. But hey! I wouldn't mind being Mr. Branson...

Scratch that, then...

Ok, so the plan about getting a new phone will have to be scratched. Even though a new phone would be nice, my primary computer, an IBM ThinkPad T21, has just died, it seems. Very annoying but by no means that surprising or catastrophic. Luckily I just keep my important files all over the place on multiple computers. Even Murphy's Law can't destroy computers at three different locations (and additionally the backup mechanisms that are at place at the school) and simultaneously destroy all of the DVDs. I hope. *knock on wood*

So anyway, I don't think I can live without a computer and for the past couple of days I've been just surfing around and looking for a new laptop. All the machines I'm interested in start from roughly EUR 2 000, which is a bit too much for a student. I've also been following Apple and an interesting venue would be to get a MacBook for roughly EUR 1 100 and then selling it next spring and get something else. The hardware seems ok and I'm fairly interested in seeing the much hyped Mac OS X in action.

I need a new phone...

Yeah, that about sums it up. Right now I still have the communicator from work, but I'll have to return that along with all the other stuff at the end of September when my contract ends and I go back to school. My personal phone has been a Nokia 6210 for the past 6 years (yeah, the shock, the horror, some people can actually use the same phone for more than 6 months).

The problem in general has been that there really haven't been that many interesting phones from my point of view in the recent times. Right now I think I'd either be looking at a Nokia E50 or an E70 with the E50's price being roughly half of that of the E70. But the E70 has all the cool gizmos and features I just have to have... Add along the fact that I think that my personal laptop has been going through a long and painful death and it seems like the coming autumn may be a fairly expensive one...

URB

So, tonight was yet another show of URB06 at Kiasma and I was actually able to convince a couple of friends of mine from the uni to tag along. And they actually seemed to like the show quite a bit even though they were fairly skeptical at first. Apparently not everyone has an open mind by default when it comes to modern art.

Anyway, the repertoire was

• Mindman & Felix the Beatboxer
• Irven Lewis Dance Theatre
• Jussi "Focus" Sirviö
• HK 119

As previously mentioned, I'd actually gotten a glimpse of Felix earlier this year and he still continued to amaze me with the human beatboxing. Just amazing. Although it has to be said that I think he pulled of a better set the previous time I saw him. Now he was pretty much drowned by the DJ mixing his sounds. Or at least that's my opinion.

Irven Lewis & Co. were quite possibly the best act of tonight. Period. Jazz dancing, like jazz itself, may seem quite chaotic and appear to lack all structure, but it is immensely cool. And very difficult; I should know, I've tried it (well, ok, one or two lessons and I've never done aerobic before, so I was usually going the wrong way, etc.).

Jussi was also fairly good. I've not seen that many breakdancers before in real life and even though I don't listen to the music associated with the dancing that much, you still have to respect the guys who can break.

And finally HK 119. I had a slight idea of what was coming, but that didn't really prepare me for the real thing. To sum it up in a few words, Heidi Kilpeläinen's show was weird. I'm not really sure whether it was good weird or bad weird, but I'm starting to lean towards the former. I guess I'll have to keep my eyes open and see if I can go see her live again sometime and perhaps then I'll be able to form an actual opinion... But overall the show was great and considering that the tickets were cheaper than movie tickets these days, the value for money was outstanding. I think I should just stop going to movies altogether and start frequenting shows like this more.

Of sleeplessness

Yep, so now that we've discussed how nifty it would be to be able to sleep for just three hours a night we get to the topic of how unnifty it is to sleep for six hours a night. The last time I slept for more was last Sunday, when I slept for eight hours. Before that, I can't really remember.

Anyway, I guess I'll go off to read a bit and then hit the sack and try to clock my six hours worth. Going to go see another URB show tomorrow; they sold out the 7 PM show with HK 119, Irwen Lewis and Jussi Sirviö, but luckily they're arranging a second show at 9 PM with Felix the Beatboxer taking part too. I was actually lucky enough to see Felix do his stuff earlier this year in the Don Johnson Big Band's party for their new album and all I can say is that that guy rocks. Anyway, more on this on Thursday, hopefully.

Of sleep

Ok, this is going to be a cliche, but... Why do we sleep one third of our lives? I mean think what you could do if you'd cut your sleep to, say, 3 hours a night. A quick comparison will show that if you sleep for eight hours a night, work eight hours a day, commute an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening, that leaves you with six hours of handling chores, meeting friends, going out to see Ursula Rucker, and so on. Unless you phase in some overtime work. And the 8+ hours of continous work, at least for me, is pretty exhausting. Being a student, my attention span is roughly three hours. After that I have to do something else.

So consider a world where you slept for three hours. Say from 1 AM to 4 AM. You get up, commute and get to work at 5.30 AM. You work for four and a half hours and it's 10 AM. Go to a museum, catch up on reading, whatever. And eat. It's 2 PM. Go back to work, clock four more hours of work and by 6 PM you're out of work and not even nearly as tired as before, since you've had a nice four hour break from work in the middle of the day. So you can actually go meet friends and do something asides from crawling home and dying on the couch. And there's even 7 more hours until it's 1 AM and time to hit the sack. Ok, ok, this is just one scenario. Other people could plan their days differently, but the simple fact is that if your day went from 16 hours to 21 hours, you'd certainly notice the difference.

And now on an entirely different note: how do men in movies and on TV keep their just ironed shirts so crispy and wrinkle-free all day round? That's unpossible!