Wednesday, March 11
Home, 19:00
Naa had her psychology exam today so up we got at 7:00, and off we went. The Finnish exam on Monday went very well, as far as she can tell, and this meant that she was in a good mood ahead of today’s ordeal, which will be considerably tougher.
I spent the whole day with the Social Gaming groups, although they neither needed nor wanted much help in the morning. I got a message from Liisa saying that she would not be able to judge the presentations today because she had been bitten by a dog and was now on sick leave. I was not sure whether to laugh or cry.
At midday Mats came in to say that there were free bottles of Froosh in the staff coffee lounge. Jutta asked me to get her one while she tried to work out some timetabling, and so I did. The table in the coffee lounge was piled high with cartons of chilled Froosh, so I took several, went downstairs, and then went back for a second several. A few minutes later, when I was talking with Jutta between mouthfuls, I said that this reminded me of the times when Auo and I used to try to get as many samples at Itäkeskus as we could.
Sometimes we would get there in the morning to find people handing out a new yogurt drink or snack bar, and we would walk past and take one, then go out the other entrance, walk back round and take another. Our record was five, at which point Auo was starting to get worried that we would be spotted. In fact, if I remember correctly, she stopped at four, and I went round once more to show that it could be done.
At 13:30 the three groups all made their presentations to 15 of Liisa’s cultural production students. I gave them pieces of paper and asked them to score each group, from one to five, for relevance to the brief, strength of idea, and power of presentation.
They were all better than I had thought they would be, or at least two of them were; and when the class ended I already had the material on which to base my assessments. I like peer assessment.
Now Naa and I are at home. Naa is not convinced that she did very well in today’s exam, but is convinced that she won’t fail.
Irma has had some visitors from Vienna looking round east Helsinki today, and she is taking them out in Kontula for a meal. I am looking at one corner of the kitchen table which, for the moment at least, has three photos of Auo and some flowers. I am looking at it closely because my conversation this afternoon brought Auo to the front of my thoughts.
It would be very nice to have her here now to share a Froosh with.