March 25, 2006
U-turn or not?
I saw Kaj going off to Hanoi in Vietnam last Thursday. From what I hear it seems to be a very interesting place: its quite chilly in there (+20C) at night (Kaj says that it feels COLD! I wonder how Europe feels then.. :) and the old quarters seem to be very beautiful. I couldn't go, unfortunately... We went to Margaritas, the coolest Mexican restaurant in Leijonakaupunki, with all 3 Giulianos before Kaj left. Their Kitchen Sink (I hope that's metaphorical, not literal name of the dish..:) didn't fail us this time again...
Otherwise I don't feel like writing right now. In few days I may feel like writing again.To cut a long story short, I had an phone interview for a job in New Zealand a week ago. The outcome is not clear yet. I'm still waiting for the answer, while time is dragging slowly. Based on what I'll hear sometime next week, we may have to make a U-turn and reshuffle all our plans, or then just continue with what we planned. I really hate being in limbo, and we really had a lot of that lately... Please, time, pass faster!
The picture on the left is not doctored in Photoshop, no! No Studying in the Canteen! We sometimes go to the airport staff canteen for lunch and I just had to take a picture of this! Some background explanation: this notice is trying to tackle the problem of students sitting at the canteen tables and preparing for their exams. The problem with study spaces is quite acute in here. The most obvious place for studying would be the Library. But as far as I understand, people loitering in public libraries are undesirable. At least this is what I gathered from the public library design. There's no comfy seats, neither good tables for reading and writing in the libraries that I visited. They're also very overcrowded and noisy: children running around, maids listening to records, teenagers chatting loudly (not even talking about the official noisy events organised in the libraries!). Its more like a place where you drop by, pick up your books quickly and leave as fast as you can. Our school library is, of course, very different. A lot of students study there during the day, but its closed at night. As the exams are drawing near, many students study up to 18 hrs a day. Studying at home is apparently too lonely for many of them and, of course, there's the aircon issue - you'd run a high electricity bill if you'd keep the aircon on throughout the day (otherwise its too hot to concentrate!), plus you may have a construction site next door that makes hell of a noise. All sorts of air conditioned cafeterias, coffeeshops, foodcourts and, of course, of course, McDonnalds is the place of choice for studying for the Leijonakaupunki youngsters. The canteens take different approaches. Obviously, the airport canteen consider their main business to be serving food, while McDonnalds opens their door widely: you may see teenagers deep in their books and study conversations at 11-12pm (luckily McDonnalds is open 24hrs a day!) Maybe at some point McDonnalds is going to get a medal for some kind of altruistic enlightenment activities in Leijonakaupunki (it was also the first to offer wireless Internet in all their Leijonakaupunki outlets for free)?
And here's some more leftover pictures from Bali. I felt like experimenting and got my hair dyed in the same place that dyed it orange last time. Surprise surprise, I encountered a baffled German tourist with orange hair that tried to get her looks back.. :) Life is mere existence without adventures! This time my hair turned out ok! :)
