Feels like Autumn is upon us

May sound silly for me to say this, since August hasn't even started yet and August is typically the holiday month in most of Europe. Still, I'm getting a feeling that the Autumn is here soon. It's partly because typically the Finns' holiday month is July rather than August, so the latter already feels like "holidays over". But mostly it's because the schools start in mid-August, so in late July the stores begin advertising school clothes (trendy of course, no school uniforms here), backpacks (also trendy) and pens, rulers, erasers, pencil cases etc. (very often, like the backpacks, parts of the merchandise range of a big Hollywood movie or whatever is popular with kids at the moment. Harry Potter, Spiderman, Lego Star Wars, Pokemon, Bratz...).

Still, August might turn out to have stunning summer weathers so I must fight the "summer is over" feeling.

I did my little trip to Tallinn Estonia. The morning catamaran took 2,5 hours instead of the usual 1,5 due to a technical fault, so I had a little less time than I had hoped. Nevertheless, I enjoyed my day hugely. The forecasts of the previous evening had predicted rain, but it was sunny and warm throughout (although I feel sure that if I HADN'T taken an umbrella along, it WOULD have rained). Usually the most interesting things can be found outside the typical tourist tracks, so I did not go to the city center but headed out from the port towards northern Tallinn. I walked along the seaside and then in the city districts. These are places where traces of recent history, the Soviet time, are still visible. The city center is shiny and full of glass and stone palaces of commerce, but here you can see blocks of wood and stone buildings that on the outside look like nothing has been done to them since the 1950's. Probably it's true, at least as far as the exteriors are concerned, because the fact is not much was done in the Soviet era, and now there is so much to repair and renovate that it will take years and years. I find places like these fascinating.

I could've done with more time but then again it's easy to get to Tallinn again, and very cheap. I'll post pictures when I get them edited.

Travel plans and other assorted bits and pieces

Not very grandiose but will be a pleasant day all the same.

I have the catamaran tickets to Tallinn reserved for tomorrow. I'm leaving on the 10.30 am boat and returning on the 7 pm boat. That gives plenty of time in a fairly small city like Tallinn. Will be a very pleasant day and I of course plan to take lots of pictures. I did consider one of the cheap hotel + travel packages too, but the hotels included in them tend to be ones that are mainly used by Finnish booze tourists. So, not very nice - that was my sister's and her bf's experience when they visited Tallinn recently, anyway.

Yesterday I spent some time nannying my nephews. My younger nephew greeted me with a hug, then I spent most of the time playing with legos with him. Still very Star Wars themed. The little one also gave me what he calls a "super smooch": a very long and very wet smooch on the cheek. Of course it was very lovely seeing my elder nephew, my brother and sister-in-law too. :-)

The City Beneath Her

One of those lucky shots just today. Given that she's elderly, she probably lives in this part of the city. Perhaps she was born and has lived her entire life here, and this is one of her favourite places where she likes to rest on her walk and look down at the bustle of the street below. I like to think so anyway.

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I did a little excursion today: to the neighbouring town of Järvenpää (30 minutes on the regional train), to see Ainola, the home of the composer Jean Sibelius and his wife Aino, who lived there until their death, that of Jean Sibelius in the 1950's and of Aino in 1969. The home is now a museum, left as it was when Aino was living there in the 1960's. No pictures I'm afraid as photography was forbidden in the house, but here's a picture of the grave monument.


Click THIS LINK or the original orchestral work of Sibelius' Finlandia (short interview at the start, music starts at ca. 1:00).

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Now I'm actually tempted by another excursion, this time to Tallinn, Estonia. I could take the fast catamaran at 10 am, be in Tallin by midday, and come back on the 7 pm or 9 pm catamaran. Only a bit over 50 euros two ways.

Eat Shit

Don't look at me, that's what the sticker in the picture says (better view in larger size). I was amused by this very succinct message and also wondering what motivated it.

Urban romance, urban reality

The older trams have real urban romance: the klang of the wheels on the tracks, the screech of the brakes in the turns...

And then another kind of urban reality: two empty liquor bottles on the stone steps, a faint smell of vomit somewhere close by.

Then there's this too:

"A diploma to the Rikhard Street library. The library is the best. Without the library I could not live."

And this:

"Port Train Street", a street sign that tells of history: both the Port of Sörnäinen and the train track leading there are now gone.

...

I've had a FABULOUS photography trek in the eastern and northern districts of the old heart of the city. I've been lacking in inspiration of late - well, okay, part of it has been lazing at the beach! But if I just get around to going, I'm bound to find something interesting.

Hehe, here's the video

...of Brüno's song Dove of Peace with Bono, Sting, Elton John, Chris Martin, Snoop Dogg and Slash. :-)



I've been pretty quiet in blog land, the reason being that I've been hanging on Facebook. I was suspicious of it but I have to admit that it's rather fun!

Something very old, something very new

I kind of find it fun how my line of research combines the very very old and the very very new. On one hand, the sources I use were inscribed in stone or written over two millenia ago. On the other, a pretty common image of Classical scholars is probably people sitting in libraries reading dusty manuscripts (not a word of archaeology here, it's a whole other pot of tea). Not so. Not any longer. For example, the majority of the inscription sources are available in a freely accessible online database (as transcribed Greek texts, the way they were published in text). And check this: the Greek and Latin dictionaries that I - and lots of other students and cholars of the field - use a lot are available as iPhone applications, costing a few euros a pop! That's about as new as it gets. Well done by Apple to authorize those apps!

Submission

Oh well, I relented and joined Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/maria.niku

Here it is!

I am of course talking about the wonderful charity single Dove of Peace that Brüno recorded with Bono, Sting, Elton John, Chris Martin, Snoop Dogg and Slash.

M - Everywhere

Though I'm saying so myself, I think this is a pretty good image of the modern ways of the world, in the sense of the consumerism, throwaway culture; the littering of our common environment (would you like to be one of the city employees responsible for cleaning out the parks? I wouldn't!); and yes, McDonalds and fast food being everywhere. In central Helsinki alone there are at least four McDonalds restaurants (not to mention all the other fast food chains), and it's not a big area.

Can't say that much has happened in the recent days. I bought a new terabyte size external hard drive, so at least I won't be running out of photo storage space soon. Very cheap these things these days, it's by Western Digital and cost 90 euros. The paper for the late-August conference is just about done, just have to checks certain things and read it aloud to make sure it fits within the allowed 20 minutes (and cut it if necessary). Today I went swimming. The water has cooled down to 18 C, but it's been warm today, so it was wonderfully invigorating. I also went to see the Brüno film on the weekend and enjoyed it tremendously. Also I didn't find it particularly outrageous though perhaps because I live in the fairly liberal northern Europe. It's much like Borat as a film, and if you like Sacha Baron Cohen's work (as I do), you'll like Brüno. If you have never liked his stuff, you'd probably best skip the film. As for those not familiar with Brüno, go to Youtube and search for "Bruno Rove", to find his interview on Rove, the Austrian talk show, hosted by Rove McManus.

Linux Geeks International membership

I surely must be well on my way to full membership of Linux Geeks International. A proper Linux geek tries out different distributions just for the fun of it - and I do. :-) I had a distro called OpenSUSE installed, and now I put in the latest version of Fedora (11), which is named Leonidas, on the side. Why? For fun and for a change, for wanting to see how it looks. Picture above - not as it's out of the box of course, I set up a different style and background picture. Another fabulous distro, easy to install and great support for my laptop specs. Super fast boot too. I only had to install a graphics driver but I expected that. Alright alright, I got some help from the Fedora forum as to getting the dual-boot to work. Wonderful places, the forums of the Linux distros. I've often received a response in under half an hour!

So, now I've tried quite a few of the popular Linux distros: Ubuntu (Gnome only, 8.10 and 9.04), Eeebuntu (a tweaked version of Ubuntu for the mini Eee PC:s, tried 2.0 and 3.0, base, standard and netbook remix versions), OpenSUSE 11.1 (Gnome and KDE), Fedora 10 and 11 (Gnome, KDE only slightly), Mandriva 2009.1, Sabayon 4, PC Linux OS, Puppy Linux. Think I'll stick to the ones I have installed now for a while: OpenSuse 11.1 KDE and Fedora 11 Gnome for the laptop, and Mandriva 2009.1 Gnome for the Eee PC. These are all distros with a graphical installer. There are several major ones that require text-based console installation and setting up from source code, but I don't think I'll go into them for quite a while. :-)

Now we're talking!

I bought one of these Baden-Baden chairs (I think that's their name) today, the sort that you can adjust to anything between sitting and reclining position. They're on summer sale in many places now, about 45 euros. Perfect for reading a book on the balcony, perhaps with a cold drink or a cup of coffee beside on the table! If only the summery weather returned now. It's raining and very windy this week so far.

Oh well, a good time to write that conference paper or to listen to my recently acquired CDs, like Two Suns by Bat For Lashes. Much hyped by just about every indie-conscious individual and their parrot but for once it seems to be worth all the hype.

Port pictures

Here's a set of pictures from the old port of Sompasaari. It took me a fair bit of time to get all of the pictures I took sorted out, mainly because last week had such a brilliant summer weather that I didn't feel like spending much time at the computer. Now the temperature has fallen below +20 C and it's semi-cloudy. Also, I always shoot in RAW, raw data produced by the camera, which allows editing with smaller loss of data/quality but also takes longer to go through the pictures as all have to be checked for necessary edits and saved in .jpg.

Strange occurrence

Last night, as usual, I slept with the balcony door open. At 2 or 3 am I was awakened to someone treading on me! I opened my eyes, and there was a cat standing on me and staring! I wasn't startled, but asked him (or her): 'Hello! How did you get in here??' at which he jumped off and went back to the balcony.

It was the neighbour's white cat. I guess the neighbour had accidentally removed the obstacle from the bit of balcony fence between his balcony and mine. Finding the road open, the cat had started off and, seeing my balcony door open, had crept in to investigate.

I closed the door, and I guess the cat eventually went home, as he wasn't in the balcony in the morning.