Thursday, September 11
Arabia, 12:20
This was the second morning in a row that I left the house in thick mist. This time Naa was with me, and she was surprised as we went over the bridge to Kalasatama. There was nothing to see at all beyond the bridge: just thick rolling mist.
As I sat on the tram I remembered a dream that I had had last night; probably triggered by a conversation I had had yesterday evening. I was in a hotel bar with a group of people who may or may not have been from Nobanet. I was explaining about Auo’s death and then, to make sense of my reactions to it, I was explaining about my upbringing and the things that happened in my childhood. At some points I was getting confused about some of the details: did that happen when I was ten or eleven, and so on. At that point Auo was sitting at the table, filling in the gaps. “Actually it was when you were ten: you told me about this last year.” Then the people at the table were talking to Auo about how she died, to make sure that I had got it right, and Auo was explaining in an offhand kind of way. Nobody seemed to want to know why (or how) she was sitting at the table. They just wanted her to confirm what had happened in January, and she was happy to do so. At some point she got up, said “Bye, daddy”, and left. We carried on talking.
At 10:00 I missed a meeting because I was having continuing XAMPP problems. I was still having them at 11:30 when the meeting ended. I wrote everyone a mail telling them what I would have said if I had been there.
Now it it is just after midday and I have been to Aalto Student Services and emerged with a piece of paper that confirms that I am enrolled this academic year as an active student- This apparently is a necessary paper to hold before becoming a doctor. Outside the Arabia shop there are three gigantic Moomin cups, celebrating this year’s new designs.
In the afternoon I will finish Block 1 of the Advanced Web Apps course, with a blizzard of XAMPP failures. My guess is that the slowness of the computers combined with the intermittent slowness of the network will foil some people’s attempts to download plugins and themes to the (necessarily relatively slow) usb sticks. Some people manage to do it every time. Some people manage to do it some of the time. Some people download nothing. I will have no clearer explanation to offer. However, I will promise that we will switch to using sites on HostMonster earlier than planned. I was going to use HostMonster in Blocks 4 and 5, but we will now switch beofre we start Block 2.
Ho hum, say I.