Friday, March 2

 

 

The day started with extreme cold again. Either I missed the 97V or it failed to turn up. I suspected the latter as I stood waiting for the 93. I did, however, decide that walking down to the gas station had proved the correct decision because I stood waiting under a bus shelter, out of the wind.

I caught the 73 at Sörnäinen rather than wait for a tram and met Sandra on it, who regaled me with another set of interesting albeit lengthy stories from her apparently endless store cupboard.

My laptop completely crashed and that took the first hour and a half of the morning. I could have fixed it sooner but I had suspected for some time that the way applications had frozen from time to time had a common cause. I therefore took it down to IT where Dane had a look at it. He suggested completely reinstalling everything and I suggested that, in the past, that had increased the problems rather than fixed them. In the end we stripped all the Adobe applications off and he gave me a package to reinstall and update them all. I decided to do that next week.

I had a meeting with Jessica and Jolanda to make sure that they had felt happy with yesterday’s meeting and knew what they would do next. They did and they do.

I exchanged a flurry of emails about this afternoon’s presentation and received the latest versions of Irma’s presentation and movie, and the girls’ pecha kucha. At 13:15 I went downstairs and installed them. Irma and Kipa arrived and everyone got ready. The Buddyschool launch went well, despite the fact that the crowd would have needed to double in size before we could justifiably call it a crowd. Fortunately the people who needed to come had actually arrived: we had photographers and writers from both Arcada and the City, and some people who wanted to meet each other.

As I had predicted the audience numbered just over twenty.

Now we have finished the wine and snacks, or eaten and drunk as much as we politely can. Kipa and Sami have left. Irma, Jutta and I have gone upstairs and Irma has decided to turn some of the remaining buckets into a sculpture. I photograph it (and her) while she sits and watches.

We will drive to the British Embassy for the approximately-monthly Well in the Park where we will talk with Tom and his wife, and meet Shawn, the cultural attache from the American Embassy. I spoke with his Scottish wife Carol at the Christmas party and now they will appear from nowhere and we will chat for twenty minutes.

Irma will feel very tired from a long week and so we will not stay very long. We will stop at Prisma on the way home and relax in front of the television until we fall asleep.