Tuesday, April 11
Itäväylä, 17:27
I woke again to the sound of full-scale activity on the roof. The big red and yellow truck waited just round the corner.
Naa wanted to come to Arcada to revise for her Metropolia entrance exam today. She had already arrived when I got there. She had a long conversation with Nathalie, then settled into the empty space next to Jutta, put her headphones on, and started reading.
At 9:15 I started the Introduction to Interactive Storytelling course. I explained the difference between narrative and story, and while I did this I began to wonder who had invented this definition. Me perhaps.
The second half of the morning involved the students pairing up to create their own stories and then share them with the whole group.
At 12:30 Jutta, Naa and I went to China Flavor for a buffet. We seemed to have picked exactly the right time to go: we found a booth at once, got our food at once with no queue, and chatted and ate until we all felt full.
In the afternoon I filled in an exciting new form from Human Resources, designed to help Nathalie and I to navigate the treacherous waters of my annual progress meeting. The form took a long time to fill in, and seemed likely to create confusion. I felt I had three choices, including not filling it in. I could spend the rest of the day thinking through my answers to the questions (”What are your weaknesses? Explain.”), worrying about their ramifications, or I could treat it like a Rorschach test, and answer with the first thing that came into my mind. I chose the latter course.
After a short break to recover from this ordeal, during which Naa left for home, I prepared some slides for tomorrow’s class. I realised that I had rearranged the first week, and added more content, and I needed two slideshows for the new content. I made them at breakneck speed: one on the hero’s journey and one on John Truby’s 22 steps to story heaven.
I journeyed home in bright sunlight. Having got off the 97 bus I stand in Itäväylä looking at the fence designed to keep the noise of the road from the houses on the other side. I look at the grille which the designers intended to hold vines. It does, after a fashion, but year by year less vines manage to hold on. I will look again in a few months and see if the grill is completely hidden by flowers and leaves.
Or not.