PLANS 2: Summer Time!

This is what I plan to do this summer, how I plan to do it, that is the next step...

June 1st- 30th: Working as research assistant for my teachers in Jyväskylä.
  Almost everyone (other international students) I know leaves.  It is time
for me to start integrating with the real Finns.

June 14th-20th:  A visit to Frankfurt, Germany, where I will hook up with
good ol’ Eugene; bari-sax player extraordinaire, sometimes General Rudie
member, and for the last year, teacher in Saudi Arabia.  We will have tons
to talk about.

July 7th-15th:  Will be paid a visit from my parents.  We will tour Finland
in a car, ending up in Jyväskylä where they will witness how my life has
disintegrated into pure debauchery since moving here.  Then, I’ll take them
to a sauna.

July 20th-25th:  Summer school in Audio and Music Computing in Barcelona. 
Should be educational, but also I’ll be in Barcelona during late July.

July 25th-?:  This part is less planned.  I would like to take the train
back north across Europe towards Finland.  It is financial suicide, but who
knows when I will have another chance to do something this exciting.  I will
surely need places to stay.  If you will be anywhere in Europe, I really
want to hook up!

September 1st-10th:  ‘Summer’ school in Systematic Musicology in Ghent,
Belgium.  I get to skip school in Finland to attend another school in
Belgium.

PLANS

This time last year (2005), I already knew how I would be spending the next two years. Living in Finland. Now, I don’t know where I will be this time next year. I guess a job would be the best option seeing that I will end this degree over my head in debt. A sponsored PhD would equally be useful. I just don’t want to be ordinary. Mediocrity is my greatest fear. Plans will make it easer for my to shape my future.

Every passing moment is a new opportunity to change the course of your life forever. In perception, one moment lasts 5 seconds. That’s 12 opportunities per minute, 720 per hour, 17280 per day, 6 307 200 per year.

On June 1st, exactly one full year before my time in Finland will end, I will have approximately 6 307 200 opportunities to change my life forever. I plan to not waste any of them.

...although sadly, I'm sure I will...

Dear Old Stockholm

Argh! I've been planning to write about me trip to Stockholm since forever, but never had the chance. The pictures are pretty self-explanatory. The trip as a whole was pretty uneventful, yet very relaxing at times. Two ten hour boat trips in under 48-hours means a lot of down time. I didn't realize there would be SO much downtime.

While I was packing for the trip, I thought I might have a little time to read, so I packed the first thing I could find, which unfortunately for me, happened to my friend Nart's copy of Thomas S. Kuhn's 'The Structure of Scientific Revolutions'.

It made for some very intense reading sessions amoung the Finnish seniors on their annual cruise to Stockholm and the newly graduated drunk teenagers. In all, I read the first 50 pages. It seemed a little strange to read such a book on what should have been some sort of vacation, although I can't think of any other situation in which I would have actually gotten through those 50 pages!

So yes, here are some pictures featuring all the regular touristy things you would expect on a one-day trip to Stockholm. I really have to go back; one day was NOT at all enough for such a great city.


On the boat, around 3:30 AM



Inside a really cool diner, converted from what seemed to be a basement dungeon.



The Nobel museum. They didn't have my Prize ready yet.


It's a long road to a Nobel Prize...


Salla and Astrid hanging out for drinks.


My great buddy Dennis, his cuter than cute daughter Elsa and his wife, another Salla


Some Stockholm-y street. Once again, really was not there long enough.


Best buds: Spring 2006 (sorry, Phil, it appears that the paradigms are indeed shifting!)

Well, it's come to this...

Nine months of living in Europe and naked pictures of yourself are bound to show up somewhere on the Internet. That's what I learned last week.

An invitation to a harmless birthday/going away party. The activity for the evening was a dice game named, "Liar", also known as "Mexican". I'm not sure if the implication here is that these two words are synonyms, but I am leaning towards this being a coincidence, maybe.

Anyway, the rules of the game stated that if you lose a turn, you must take a piece of clothing off. I didn't really think much of this at first. Then I noticed that on the onset, I was already wearing less clothes than others in the room (curse my token 'shorts and sandals' summer attire).

Long story short, I was the first to lose all my clothes. As I reached to pull down my boxer-briefs, I thought to myself, 'is this really happening?'. Then I looked at everyone in the room and I could read all their faces, they were also wondering, 'is this really happening?'.

And so yes, I, along with eventually three other dudes, sat in the buff for the better part of an hour. I spent the hour wondering, why the heck am I still playing if I've already lost?

The girls managed to never lose their clothes. I think this had more to do with the fact that they were wearing 20 pieces of clothing and less to do with their 'Liar' playing skills.

Anyway, the game ended very innocently. Everyone put their clothes back on and we ate the delicious birthday cake...in awkward silence.

Mother of a day!

School ends Tuesday. Final Exam is in Music Perception. Studying when the sun is up until 11 PM is quite hard, especially when most students are done and they are all having out-door cook-out parties. These cook-outs and the lofty evergreens have made my entire neighborhood smell like a camp-site. But somehow, I've been able to take time out of my busy procrastination scheduale to do some studying.

In fact, this morning, I went out to study outside on the path towards the lake outside my building. It was just like going to church. I read from the Gospel according to Perry R. Cook. Today's sermon focused on 'Memory for Musical Attributes' and 'Auditory Scene Analysis'. The eucharist took the shape of clean, morning air and instead of wine, I drank my coffee in my trusty travel stainless mug. I've drunk so much coffee in Finland, that I fear it will actually replace my blood. But as I always say, it could be worst, I could be addicted to crack.











And today, of course, is Mother's Day. I wasn't sure what I could offer my mother seeing as transatlanticism does not permit me to make her breakfast in bed or a beautiful finger painting, or even a macaroni necklace. So I recorded for her a Mother's Day song, Hail Holy Queen, in a slightly folky style and emailed it to her the .mp3 (eventually). I hope she likes it. I set up my audio digital interface and tried a few trial recordings. The first few takes were quite emotional but I was never satistfied with my voice and my PowerBook's fan, along with the air duct in my aparment, were causing what audio engineers call, negative re-enforcement!!

To solve this, I divised a little isolation booth underneath my desk, making a little 'dead room'. It was like a little fort! I finally got a good take, and voila...a beautiful Auditory Mother's Day Card for my beautiful maman! Je t'aime Maman!!

Hauskaa Vappua!!

Hope you've been checking out my kick-ass Africa blog. Well, i will keep updating it, but it's been tough with final projects due.

I spent much of this semester in limbo, completely unsatisfied with my program, procrastinating, bored yet strangely really happy. It's a very complicated mood to explain. I think it has something to do with 90% of my work load being due the last week of school, which means i spent the first 12 weeks pretty much doing nothing except learning Finnish and walking in the snow. Anyway, stuff has been due this week so i spent much of last week actually doing hardcore work. It felt awesome and motivating. I stayed late in the lab at school sometimes until 4 AM, typing away, drunk on coffee, adrenaline and sense of accomplishment.

It reminded me of my McGill days. Ah, sweet McGill. Back there, staying up in the lab or studio or piano practice room past midnight was the norm. I used to love getting the 12:25 AM train home, then waking up at 8 for class. Well, i didn't love it, but it always made me feel really hardcore. The library was open on Sundays and deadlines actually meant something. It seems the norm in my program is that no one ever hands anything in on time, partly because there is no consequence, partly because the teachers never hand any assignment back. Did I mention there were some kinks in my program?

Of course, it's not all bad. It's hardly bad at all. The subject is really interesting and the Professor quite brilliant, I just wish there was more work to do and that the company was slightly more competitive.

But summer is coming. My 1-month job working for my prof. Petri is secure and I've been expected to a Special Summer School in Spain. At the time I applied, I thought it would be super exclusive, but it turns out, they accepted over 30 people!

Spring is beautiful in Finland. I've been wearing shorts constantly even though it's just around 12 degrees. I don't know why but Finns don't seem to dig shorts. In the centre, even the Gypsies look at me funny. Being foreign is tons of fun...

This past weekend was Vappu, which is May Day. It was quite excellent. In a procrastination tour de force, my Sunday and Monday were morphed into one big day. Vappu is a big day in Finland. It's suppose to be a day of family, celebration and spring. But really, it's an excuse for Finns to wear funny hats, get really really really drunk, get in fights, and spend the last 20 minutes that a club is open looking for someone to sleep with. So for them, it's basically just like a Friday night, but on a Sunday afternoon.