My last full day in Finland.  Tonight I stay over at the Hansens, and tomorrow morning I take the 10:20 bus to the long-distance busstation, the 11:20 bus to Helsinki, a 17:00 flight to Zurich, a 22:40 flight to Johannesburg, and a 13:00 flight to Cape Town.  My brother picks me up and I’ll probably be back in Kleinmond at 20:00.

I had wanted to make many more postings here while I visited Tampere, but the first six weeks were extremely busy and the last two weeks I completely relaxed.  So I’ll have to recount my adventures once I get back to the Replublic.

I’m not a big fan of Easter. The shops are either closed or open at random times. At the very least I would prefer it to be at a fixed date, instead of jumping around between March 22 and April 25. Even if the formula were just a little simpler…  Oh well.

I intend to work hard this weekend on two different papers. Tuesday was not my best day, and yesterday was also a little if-fy. But yesterday evening I went to Rauhaniemi sauna with Heikki and Susanna, and we did a little winter swimming. The ice is breaking up on Näsi-lake, and it is definitely not safe to walk on. But the water was about the same temperature as in the rest of winter and it was very refreshing. When I say “swim” I don’t mean for hours or even minutes. I usually go in about 2 or 3 meters, dip my head below water once, and then get the hell out as fast as possible. It helps not to think about it going in, but afterwards the feeling is great. This was my first time visiting Rauhaniemi, and I must admit that I prefer the Kaupinoja public sauna. But it was undeniably hot enough and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I think I shall go again next week!

I must admit that I made something of an error yesterday by attributing the slogan of the Christian Democrats to the Perussuomalaiset Party. Oops.  Oh well, they are quite far apart in election results, but probably share some of the sentiments of the slogan. Let’s not think about politics any more. It could have been worse, but there has been enough talk about it in the news.

Let me rather outline, but the benefit of those people who are absolutely bored, my daily routine. I wake up at about 7:30 and try to be at the office at 8:00, although this slips to 8:10 some days (like this morning). Sometimes I wake up much earlier and manage to get here at 7:00, but that is unusual. The cafeteria opens at 8:30, when I have coffee and a sandwich for breakfast. Usually with Henri, but sometimes on my own. Lunch is at 11:00, almost religiously, and most of the time I follow the group. They have dietary preferences that are stricter than my own: I just want to eat. There are four restaurants on campus, usually serving three dishes each. So that is a choice of 12. Wednesdays the group goes out for kebabs (Kebab Keskiviikko) and Fridays for pizza (Pizza Perjantai), but these customs are entirely local. Lunch can take anything from 30 minutes to 1.5 hours.

Either around 13:00 or 14:00 is the coffee break. In between I consume too much Coke, have a couple of smoke breaks (about once every two hours) and if I remember, some chewing gum. The rest of the time I either read papers, scribble in my “ideas book”, or stare at the screen and work on either writing or programming. This morning, for example, I have a chunk of low-level programming to finish. We plan to write a paper for the start of May and our experiments need to be finished by next week at the latest. (Yesterday Henri had a brilliant idea and now we are going to try it out in our new system.)

Most of the staff here leave at 16:00-18:00, but I usually try to push on to 20:00 or even later. Yesterday was an exception and I went home at 18:30, about the earliest I have ever left. The first week was a little exceptional, since I had to make a few trips to the bank, the store, and the housing agents, but now thing have settled down into this routine. Weekends are a little different but not much.

This must be the most boring paragraphs I have written in a long time. They are boring even to me. But the real point is that if I can keep up the pace, it should start to pay off with a couple of papers by the middle of May. And now I return to my work.

I have been very quiet, all because I promise myself that I shall write something tonight, tomorrow, the next day, and on and on the wheel turns. Well, only one major event has occurred in the last month: I am now in Finland an have been here for two weeks. I hope that I shall be able to fill in a few of the details of this momentous occurrence in the coming days, but let me just mention for the record that I have not been idle. I’m sure there have been many lazy moments, but overall I have been working hard for the last two months. And the details of that shall follow too.

But perhaps it is more appropriate to discuss something topical tonight. Today was Finland’s national elections and Henri and Jenni invited me to dinner and to watch the results come in. And another fact for the record: Jenni’s cooking is superb and the food was delicious. A sudden craving for a onion-ripping hot dog was squashed by delicious moose meatballs and carrot-and-onion soup. Followed by a jetski  — private joke.

The election outcome was shocking. The “Perussuomalaiset” won more eats than anyone expected. They are a somewhat nationalistic party (slogan: Koti, Uskonto, Isänmaa = Home, Religion, Fatherland), but more of a protest movement. Perhaps it is fair to call them the Tea Party of Finland. In the last numbers I saw they had the largest share of the popular vote but, in a complex system that I do not fully understand (or at least am too tired to explain), not the most seats. What this means is that they appealed to voters throughout the country and that their support was not concentrated in any particular region.

They seem to be a bit of  mixed bag, but the basic protest seems to be against immigrants and too much involvement in Europe. People are not really keen to send millions of Euros to Ireland, Greece, and Portugal. Is the counterargument that the other nations shall bail Finland out when it gets into trouble? For now it seems unlikely that Greece will send the millions of Euros back should such a situation arise, even in the medium term. Who knows what the long term may bring. But nobody here protests too much to send money to Lapland or Åland, remote corners of Finland with small populations. Why not? Perhaps they do, without telling me about it. But it is difficult to avoid the suspicion that the proximity of those places makes the sacrifices more palatable. After all, those people are Finns, and you may know someone from there.

Exactly what the Perussuomalaiset’ success at the polls will mean for the government and for Europe remains to be seen. But probably not by me, at least not from this distance. I go home in six weeks and have a ton of work I want to finish before I leave.