Sunday is mostly about hanging around and making myself available to people who want to talk. The only scheduled event is at 4: the Game Design Challenge. When I looked at my event list for the show and saw that item, I thought, “Cool. People will be designing games and I’ll be on the panel of judges.” But no! Turns out Emily Care Boss, local ( Read more... )

Lunch at a more than serviceable Chinese restaurant in the city’s central shopping mall. An emerging theme of my visit is the many parallels between Canada and Finland. So I can’t help seeing some very recognizable behavior, turned up to eleven, when we are led to a lovely side room and then apparently forgotten by our server. My three fabulous ( Read more... )

Before I talk about my day yesterday I have a cliffhanger to resolve: after finishing the previous blog post, I called down to the desk to discover that the clerk had passed the task of returning with a screwdriver to a colleague, who had for whatever reason chosen not to act on it. So an hour later the original guy comes back with a screwdriver, ( Read more... )

Right now would be a perfect time to get to bed, but I’m in the middle of the freakiest darn crisis. I was about to put the Do Not Disturb sign on the door and turn in for the night only to discover that I couldn’t unhook the chain. I don’t know whether I somehow got the thing in backwards or what, but it’s just about a quarter of an inch shy of ( Read more... )

Today’s exploration begins with the Ateneum, the Finnish national art collection. With a handful of token exceptions, it focuses entirely on Finnish artists from the 1750s to 1960s. The building itself is a welcoming three-story affair ornamented in high Victorian style. As I expected based on an earlier visit to Denmark’s counterpart institution, ( Read more... )

Staying in a foreign hotel room is like recovering from a stroke. You are surrounded by mostly familiar objects, but you no longer possess the ability to operate them. All the little tasks you normally perform automatically must now be relearned from scratch. The shower has two fixtures, but one controls the temperature and the other-well, I’m not ( Read more... )

Soon after getting into my car to the airport for my trip to Ropecon, I am confronted with the inadequacy of my homework regarding the fine nation of Finland. I figured, hey, I’m going there, I can learn about it first hand. When my driver hears that I am flying Finnair, he commences to quiz me on my Finland knowledge. Suddenly I regret not having ( Read more... )