Thursday, May 31

 

 

Today started with a bang, as I woke up realising the consequences of not bringing any leads home with me last night. I raced to Arcada to fix this, to print out two thesis evaluation reports, and to have a brief but important talk with Nathalie.

I then leapt back on a tram and headed for the conference centre that forms part of the Scandic Grand Marina hotel. It took me some time to find the actual conference centre, that lay across the road from the hotel. I arrived ten minutes late for the day, but that only meant in practice that I missed the first round of coffee.

We stop at 12:30 for a buffet lunch and shortly before we return to the room I wander onto the balcony with my coffee and take a photo of Christa taking a photograph of me. The view from the window of our room has proved the best I have seen from a conference centre. We look right out at the harbour and we can see the ferries from Sweden arriving and tying up. I notice the reflections that cover Christa and the wall behind her, and photograph those instead.

In the afternoon we will spend several hours planning what Eija will decide to call the A Team. This team, which I will apparently lead, will take responsibility for maintaining and developing the e-course after Nobanet finishes in September. We will have one more meeting as Nobanet at which we will decide how exactly this will work, and who will pay for us to do whatever needs doing.

We will end the day at 17:00 and Christa, Hafdis, Micke, Vera and I will walk down to Allas, where we will stop to sample the most expensive bottles of Lapin Kulta available in Helsinki. I will wonder aloud whether the airport might possiblly offer even more expensive bottles, but people will doubt it. 33cl of standard Lapin Kulta will cost me 6.90€, which will work out at 10.35€ for a normal half litre. By way of comparison, half a litre of Lapin Kulta costs about 2.50€ in Prisma.

At 18:00 we will meet everyone else at the harbour and get a JT Lines boat to the far side of Suomenlinna where we will disembark and eat at Ravintola Walhalla. On the way Micke will explain that Hartwall invented lonkero in 1952 for the Olympics as an answer to the question “What can we serve tourists that we can mix and pour quickly and easily?”

The food will prove very tasty, and at 21:30 we will all take the once-an-hour boat home. I will catch the metro from Kaisaniemi, cycle from Puotila and arrive home to go to bed at my normal time.