Monday, May 29

 

 

The day started very cold and overcast and continued that way. I cycled to Puotila feeling that I should have a winter jacket on.

I spent the morning setting up this year’s summer course on Eliademy. I rewrote a lot of the introductory texts and set up all the modules to go online automatically. I wrote all the students an email officially launching the course at midday.

At 12:20 I had a fish lunch at Arcada. The staff had a herding day planned so one queue only took credit cards and lunch vouchers and the other queue only took cash. I rarely work out the point of these apparently random drills, but today I said nothing and paid with cash. I queued for 30 seconds. People paying with cards queued for five minutes.

At 13:00 I sat through a Team Meeting, and at 15:00 I played the role of The Examiner in a thesis presentation. I rushed out at 15:40 and wrote the report on the thesis before I forgot what I wanted to say.

Now, at 17:00 I stand opposite the road to Corona Bar, a place I have not visited for about ten years. Next to it stads Kino Andorra, where Irma, Päivi and I will sea A Plastic Ocean, a film by Craig Leeson that forms part of a UNRIC cinema season. UNRIC, for those not in the know, stands for United Nations Regional Information Centre, although you may already have guessed that.

Alma, Päivi’s sister, will turn up, having jogged to the centre from Lautasaari.

The film will explain a lot of things but will seem (to me at least) somewhat confusing by the end. The bad things people have done will seem clear, but the suggestions as to what we should do now will seem somewhat contradictory.