Thursday, June 8
Pixelache, 17:00
I slept right through the night and woke up – bing! – at 7:20. I noticed that I could hear heavy rain. I looked out of the window and learned that my ears had told me the truth.
Sunshine insisted on going out and then failed to return. I got washed, had breakfast, got dressed, tidied up, and at the end of all this Sunshine had forgotten to return.
Looking at my diary I realised that I had set aside the morning for online research and reading; things I could do from home. So I did. By midday, when Sunshine strolled back in, I had done everything I had planned and more.
I took an umbrella and walked to the bus stop. I missed the bus by thirty seconds and noticed that I had a twenty five minute wait for the next one. I walked in the pouring rain to Alepa and missed the 95 bus by thirty seconds. I walked through the rain to Puotila, where I missed the metro by thirty seconds.
At Arcada, when I finally arrived, I carried on researching and had a long and interesting conversation with Nathalie.
I left at 15:20 and waited almost twenty minutes in the rain for a bus or tram. I got the 71 bus and Taneli turned up to get on as well. He retired from YLE in January and has had an action-packed time since. He spent two months in South Africa in a town with 70 inhabitants teaching children from a nearby town (with 4,000 inhabitants) to use tablets for recording movies. He then set up an exchange with a school in Fiskars where he lives part of the time. When he came back he interested a Kone foundation in this and, when I met him, he had a meeting planned in the centre to finalise the details of a month long trip to Bejing in October that the foundation will pay for. Once again he will teach children to use tablets as complete film-making and editing tools.
I got to Pixelache five minutes late, but earlier than almost everybody else. We had the board meeting and now Andrew sits happily waiting to chair the members’ meeting. We will have the rehearsal for the Pixelache picnic. I have brought cider. Steve has brought juices. We also have bread, salad and vegan snacks, but not enough. Money changes hands and someone sends out for vegetarian pizza.
At 19:40 I will leave through heavy rain and head home to greet the cat. I will spend the rest of the evening making plans, some of which will surprise some people. Oliver and my event at the Pixelache festival will get a name and a shape.
We will call it Feel the Smoothness: an open source toolkit for healthy and rejuvenated skin and it will take the form of a “three-hour workshop in which up to 20 people will explore different tools for decision making in practical terms – by working together to plan and create an invigorating and rejuvenating face-cream or mask, and communicate instructions for making it”.
Who could ask for more?