Tuesday, May 16

 

 

This morning started with another thesis. At 9:00 Liisa and I sat and adjudicated in a completely deserted room. The thesis didn’t fail, but it didn’t sparkle either.

At 10:00 I had a ninety minute thesis workshop. I followed this with a thirty minute Skype tutorial with a doctoral candidate in Tampere, who I agreed to help supervise last year.

After a bus and metro trip I stand outside Lemon Grass waiting for Aga. We met here in January, the first time I had eaten here, and now we will meet again. I arrived five early and Aga will arrive five minutes late. I look around and notice the reverse side of a traffic sign. I turn to photograph the restaurant and then remember that I did exactly that last time. I therefore photograph the sign instead.

We will find a seat straightaway and talk about Pixelache matters for an hour or so. She will tell me that she and Jana will develop a project around human coding in the summer, and I will tell her I know someone at Action Space in Sheffield who has worked on a similar idea for several years. I will promise to introduce her to Susanne Palzer, which I will do later in the afternoon via Facebook. Or at least I will kick the introductions off by messaging each of them about the other.

In the afternoon I will write up some notes from my session at the conference last Saturday. Some people asked questions and some of them raised issues that I need to think about. I will also start making notes for the thesis reports as well as reading a third thesis where I will play the role of the examiner.

I will get home early for the Post Box Fandango, and at 17:00 I will join Irma sitting in the sun in the garden watching out for the post van.

Posti has decided to save money by pretending everyone in the outskirts of Helsinki lives in the countryside, where people collect their mail from boxes at the end of the road. In Sundö all the mailboxes for everyone on the farm, and the road running through the farm, walks to the junction to check their mailbox. All the mailboxes hang in numerical order on the same long frame. In two weeks time Posti will pretend we live in the countryside and tonight a man will turn up with a stick which he will plant to show us where our frame should stand.

Posti will not provide the frame or the boxes. We will do that. Everyone in Rohdinkuja will have to agree on how to build the frame, and what sort of boxes the street should have, and then build it all within two weeks. After that Posti will refuse to deliver mail except to boxes situated where the man has place the stick.

I will go for several walks to try to locate the post van and eventually I will spot it. I will call Irma and Sakke, and Tommi and Minna, and the musician and his wife will join us for a street meeting with the man with the stick.

Eventually, after he has driven off, we will agree that we will build the frame at 18:00 on Monday, and that Sakke will draw up the plans. We will provide the wood, and someone will make a barbecue afterwards.

Minna will explain all this to the Albanian family who have just moved into number 4. Everyone else will find out from the Facebook group that Irma started. Thanks to Posti we now have an active street Facebook group!