A superficial description of a day

The alarm clock rings at 7 AM. I've been asleep for five and a half hours and the sun is slowly starting to shine in. I turn the alarm off of my Nokia E70, which I have been using for a while as my primary phone has been sent to be repaired and has been away for a week now. I check the time and acknowledge that I should get up, but fall asleep for another hour. When I finally do get up, I start panicking as I should've already left for work. I take a quick shower and decide to pick a slimly cut white two-fold poplin shirt with thin blue stripes and double cuffs but decide to ditch the tie. I had the shirt and a few others shipped from London a while back since it's just a real pain trying to get decent shirts with the extra couple of centimeters from Helsinki.

To go with the shirt I pick out a dark gray pinstriped and single breasted suit with two buttons. I'm still slightly annoyed at the back vent as I usually prefer side vents. It also has three cuff buttons instead of the more traditional four. Because of the lack of tie, I decide to also grab a sand colored slipover vest and a pair of dark brown leather shoes to add a slightly more casual appearance. I also marvel at my slim black overcoat that I decided would fit well with the rest of the outfit. I hope that a rigorous exercise routine will keep me tall and lean for years to come.

I get to the office and decide to start working on a project that I've been postponing for quite a while now and which actually had its deadline last week. Nobody's been asking about it for a while, so it's safe to assume that I can still get it decently done before it spawns any questions. I also notice that the guy from Ruoholahti who I was thinking of going to meet is actually at the HQ today and is proposing a meeting here, so I decide to check and reserve a decently sized meeting room. Small meeting rooms are always so dreadful and cause claustrophobia. So even though it's a waste, I decide to get a meeting room for 10. I also SMS the guy who's wallet I happened to find from near the coat rack and tell him to come fetch it if he feels he still needs it. He shows up in an hour and turns out to be the person who I am slightly annoyed of since he has better hair than me and the bone structure of his face resembles that of Jude Law.

Lunch is typical. Some folks from our unit and I head off to the closer restaurant at the office at 11 AM sharp; a sort of daily routine. I can't for the love of life remember what I had to eat. Probably something mediocre, but at least it'll keep me alive. My doctor had told me that I should put on more weight since it's very likely that after a surgery in a couple of months, I'll lose up to 10 kilos afterwards and that I should prepare for it. I cut the lunch short since I have to run to the campus to catch a lecture on international economics. The lectures are actually quite interesting so I for once get around to campus. The topic of the day is about the problems with Heckscher-Ohlin and about how it could be adjusted to make it perform as a better approximation of the world of international trade.

After the lecture I run into a friend of mine on campus and he's heading to have lunch and invites me along. I already had lunch but I quickly decide that I should have a second lunch, as per the doctor's orders. Now this time I actually remember what I had, as it was typical campus food and more or less horrible. Although I dare not revisit the memory of it, so I shall just skip forward...

After wondering around the campus for a while and noticing that one of my accounts has been closed since I have apparently forgotten to change the password in time I decide to head back to the office to actually read up on the topic of the meeting so as to not be entirely at a loss. The guy shows up a bit late we have a decent enough discussion. It turns out that I can actually use his expertise a bit in the project I'm currently running. Unlike a typical corporate person, he actually seemed very eager to help out. Strange. Well, the cynicism will hit him one day.

After the meeting I jump to the campus again as I'm already late for another meeting. We're supposed to rap up the second phase of a project for one course. I really couldn't give a damn about the course since I can't fit it into any meaningful place in my degree, but somehow I just ended up in the project. I sort of hang around for a while and then excuse myself back to work. It's already 9 PM and for a moment I wonder if I should head quickly downtown to find something to eat. But then I decide to actually come back to work and finish sending some emails I hadn't had time to reply during the day.

At 10 PM I decide that it's time to hit the gym again and run a bit on the treadmill. I'm still training for the marathon next summer even though the doctors suggested that due to the surgery I might not be fully up to speed by the marathon as the sick leave they're suggesting is somewhere around 4 to 6 weeks. Who has time for sick leaves these days, anyway? I decide to run for 60 minutes and try to keep my heart rate in check, but it starts slowly creeping up towards 150 and then after half an hour it's already near 160. At then stabilizes at around 165 and after the 60 minutes I decide to run a bit more. 15 more minutes and I decide that it's time for some vanity motivated exercises with the dumbbells.

At the shower I'm slightly annoyed that the sauna has already been switched off and instead I just quickly put my things up to dry and head back to fetch my coat and check my emails. There's one from a person in Turku and she's asking why I haven't replied to her prior email yet. I have no idea what email she's referring to and suggest that maybe there's been a glitch somewhere. She then admits that it's possible that the mail didn't leave in the first place. Who knows. I decide that it's time to head downtown to grab a late night snack and then head home to enjoy some greasy McDonald's meal as every decent place in town has already closed hours ago. I also make a mental note to myself to swing by Stockmann in the morning and get myself 10 new white t-shirts and enough new socks to last me the next year, as they have their bi/tri/whatever-annual sale starting tomorrow again. I'm already terrified of the dumb yellow bag they'll give me, so I guess I'll have to prepare and take my own plastic bag with me in the briefcase...