Monday, January 18

I didn’t hear Naa leave this morning although I woke up automatically three minutes before my alarm was due to go off. My day began by noticing that my phone battery had drained itself during the night. I suspected that this was entirely due to the 27 apps that “are ready to be updated”. About 23 of these are built-in apps that I have never used and never will.

I began the day by resolving to root my phone sometime this week, in an effort to get everything off it that I don’t need. Sony Xperia Lounge? I don’t even have any interest in finding out what it is.

It was snowing gently when I just missed my bus, and continued snowing until I caught the next one eleven minutes later.

I spent the morning with Tomas with the second batch of Innovation students. They had all been working hard but two interesting points emerged. Many of them are (if they stop and think about it) trying to create new habits in people. Many of them posed the results of their research entirely negatively. “People should use their cars less. People should use less electricity.” I asked whether it would be possible to rethink some of these so that the new behaviour sounded like it might be enjoyable.

Now it is lunchtime and I am eating my eväs, and it is delicious: spicy chicken pasta with a Hot and Sour soup. I am looking out the window at the continuing snow. It has been snowing hard all morning and it still is. The view looks as though it has been desaturated. Only the occasional car or jacket adds colour to the scenery.

In the afternoon Tomas and I will continue with the Innovation class while the others will celebrate Liisa and Tiina’s fiftieth birthdays while pretending to have a meeting.

At 15:00 I will have a Skype meeting in Vilja, an MA student who is trying to do the course we are teaching from Berlin, while living in an apartment with dodgy wifi.