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Andra halvan av terminen har rivstartat. Jag har redan lämnat in tre uppsatser och det är bara torsdag. Jag kan konstatera att fem kurser är lite i mesta laget samtidigt.

Här har jag spenderat större delen av dagen idag. Någonting som jag verkligen uppskattar med Aaltos campus är alla okonventionella arbetsplatser. För en liten stund sen var det en annan student som tog en tupplur bredvid mig. Det lät jättemysigt när han snusade i sömnen.

A small shower next to the toilet, no toiletpaper, wet toilet floor and sometimes even wet walls caused discussions among my friends when we were travelling around in Malaysia in December." How does their toilet routine look like? If there is water everywhere inside the toilet booth would not the people also get wet everywhere?" We never dared to ask anyone. 

 

I would like to annonce that the small shower next to the toilet is a part of the Finnish bathroom standard also. First when I found the one in my bathroom, next to the sink, I though that it would be useful if I just wanted to wash my hair sometimes without the rest of myself wet. Then I discovered them everywhere, at school and also at the gym, cafés etc. However there is not water everywhere and there is toilet paper also. One Finnish friend explained it as "It comes in handy sometimes". Another friend refered to it as "The lady shower", especially usefull once a month.

Unwanted sightseeing: Yesterday I spent four hours on busses and trains. Half of the time going in the wrong direction.  I am so ready to buy myself some internet for my phone! Need GPS and the journey planner app!!

 

Voluntary sightseeing: It really fells like fall now. The past week has been very grey. Something that lit up Helsinki last weekend was the Linnanmäki (amusement park) light festival. For the season finally they filled the park with different light installations and a had free entrence. I took a powerwalk there (love living in the city center and being able to walk most places) inbetween studying to check it out.

 

Today I am studying for my exam in Introduction to Wood Properties and Wood Products. Since wood is a somewhat alive material it feels like there is a lot of emotions built in to it. I feel like I have another relationship to wood than what I have with other materials, and after this course a deeper understanding.

 

 A huge part of the course has been focused on the relationship between wood and water. I do not remember being particulary found of my old course Thermodynamics, but it is always fun when you get to use previous material and feel like you actually have learned something useful.

 

Wood properties are highly dependent on the wood moisture content, hence the relative humidity of its surrounding. I like the idea that it might be possible to use walls made out of wood for climate control in a room. Right now I am repeating wood properties in different dimentions and how stress concentrations can lead to cracks. I still have some material to cover before tomorrow but I have reserved the rest of the day for it.

 

I hope that the exam tomorrow will go as smoothly as the one I had Monday. Unless you were supposed to develop the exam questions a whole lot I should have done really well. Reflecting back it might have been the case since I was one of the first people to leave the room. I felt finished at least. And thought of Vickie who always is super quick. I am usually the one who is quite slow and use the full exam time.

 

What did not go so smooth though, was that the exam was written in a huge lecture hall and I chose a place far from an isle. I felt like a rookie when I had to excuse myself and disturb the others in order to leave my seat and turn in the exam.  I know what seat I m not picking tomorrow!

Today I have my first exam at Aalto University. I am equally afraid of finding the location of the exam as for the exam content itself. Also, what should I bring? Student ID and a pen off course but can I bring coffee? Where do I put my coat, keys, wallet? It is probably for the best to bring as little as possible. Hm.. I just realized that I might have been handed an exam guide during the orientation week. Lets see if I can find it.

The exam I have today is in Knowledge and Competence Management. It is about how we store and share knowledge with each other, within and between organizations. It is quite interesting. Most of the course material seems pretty straight forward, so to some extent it feels like one is over analyzing the obvious. At the same time by mapping how information is transfered you are aware of where obstacles might occur, and thereby able to avoid them.

Right now I am doing some last minute studying about social presence. Due to how we human are biologically design we are most susceptible to face-to-face communication. In such a situation we can interpret co-location, syncronity, body language, facial expressions and speech. Therefore it is useful to endeavor social presence. Social presence does not have to mean physical presence, the importance lies in the feeling of the other person being present. There are different levels of social presence. In the bottom of the scale are for example flyers or bulletins. A video conference gives a high social presence, a phone call or a letter an intermediate one.

 

As an exchange student I am grateful for the high social presence I experience during a Skype call. Studying abrod would have been a much tougher decision without knowing that I would be able to maintain a high level of social precence with family and friends.

 

Here is a post from the PDP course facebook page -->

 

 

 

 

Kisma is the Helsinki Contemporary art museum. It is located in the city center in between  the railway station and the bus station where I take the bus to campus.The first Friday every month they have a free entrence. So I was there last Friday and I will definitely take advantage of those free Fridays again.  Kisma is a really cool place. I can really  reccomend it! The way I understood it, they swap out their exhibitions quite often. So you will probably see different things each time. Here are pictures of some of my favorite present  installations.

After a busy week is is nice to just stay home.

..or how I entertained myself after missing the bus last night.

 

Normally there are quite a few busses between Espoo and Helsinki, but not on weekday nights.

 

 

Maten var ingen höjdare. Banan i fördrinken, till förrätt, huvudrätt och efterrätt blev lite för mycket. Men annars var det väldigt trevligt.

 

Now I have both a team and a project for the PDP course. My group consists of 11 students, 6 nationalities and a mixture of different engineers, design students and a business guy. We ended up with a project that I think suits our group very well. We are going to design modular temporary housing for a global social and commercial application with the Finnish company Kapseli Oy. I hope to find out more this afternoon when we get to meet our sponsor again.

Last Wednesday I wanted to do nice gesture and bring a cake for my team mates in PDP. It was our first official team meating. Today it is up to someone else. I secretly hope that I started a tradition ;)

Today I teamed up with my Swedish speaking Finnish friend Monica and went to an evend called World Dinner. We called us Nordic Duo. Haha :P Everyone was supposed to prepare something and then we mingled around and tried each others dishes. .  I did a misstake though, after filling my plate once I sat down. And while I was sitting a lot of exciting dishes were finished. I still got more than plenty though. It was a nice event.

 

Monica and I decided to bring two kinds of pancakes because the last time we met we started talking about pancakes. I told her that it was strange to me to have a thick pancake together with  the Thursday pea soup, and we both reaslised that we have different definitions of the Swedish word Pannkaka. What I call pannkaka she calls plättar. So I ended up cooking what I call plättar. I guess that she calls that plättar too?

 

 

Now I have some more information regarding the slot machines I see everywhere (read my previous post here). 

 

I have asked around among the other exchange students if they also have noticed the amount of slot machines. Their reaction and main concern was that the slot machines here take credit cards (!)

 

Wednesday I got the chance to talk to talk to some people from Ray, a Finnish gambling company. Even though they say that healty gambling is important to them I think that it feels strange that they are a part of a student project. Ray are one of the sponsors in my Product Development Project course. Some students in my course are going to help them increase gambling in Finland.

Talking to the company representatives them I learned that Ray do not just own some slot machines, they own all of them becauce they have a monopoly. The representives said that about 40 % of the Finnish population plays, and for them that it is not enough. They said that they wanted to increase the number of people playing and make gambling something that you do not have to be ashamed of. According to them they had not noticed any major differences connected to making it possible to pay with credit cards.

 

The view from my window right now. It is so pretty outside!

This is one Finnish word written twice. A Finnish friend had to write it two times to make sure that she got it right :) I was asked for the longest Swedish word that I knew. TANDBORSTNINGSINSTRUKTIONER was the best I could come up with :/

I have been to Sibelius park quite a few times already but yesterday was the first time with a camera. The park contains different sculptures and attracts a lot of tourists. Normally I go there because it is close and there are dirt roads that I can run on instead of asphalt.

 

Our actual goal was a café but we took the bus one stop too far and ended up with a stroll in the park. One of the girls had been at the café before and said that we had to go there. When we arrived I realised that it was the same café as I have been reccomended in "Places to visit in Helsinki" in a Magazine for Swedish speaking students (some how they got my address and know that I speak Swedish). I also realized that I have passed by the café several times without realizing that it is a café. Anyway, the café was great. I will definitely come back! You can sit outside with a blanket right by the water, buy sausage and cook it courself over an open fire, they had new baked cinnamon buns and for some reason they give you 5 cents back when you ask for a refill of coffee :)

 

I have known how to count until three in Finnish for as long as I remember becauce I used to have a Finnish Swedish preschool teacher. Then I think Lauri taught me up to ten or twelve a few years ago but I forgot it again. I feel like I should try harder to pick up some Finnish. .After the Tyttösitsit Friday I am up to six again at least, because that is how many contestants there were in an all mens talent show. They were named Mr.1-6 and the girls got to vote who they wanted to win. I think that Mr.Neljä (four) won. He was playing the piano and did a pretty good job singing a love song.