Finland Laurita

Helsinki Fun

2007-08-31T15:02:00.000-07:00

Mom is motivating me to embrace my final time in Finland. We had some tourist time in Helsinki. I've been to Helsinki millions of times, but there were many many tourist attractions that I had still not visited. This is the church in the rock, an architecture specialty.

Sennatori Finnish church:
Berries berries berries:

Mom in front of the lady statues in the Esplanadi:
Jump for joy in from of Sibelius's monument:
Thanks for a fun visit mom!!

World Water Week in Stockholm

2007-08-18T14:32:00.000-07:00

World Water Week is held every August in Stockholm. NGOs, government ministers, and people in water and development fields get together and listen to each other speak, hold interactive seminars, panel discussions, and provide a venue for organizations to meet.

The conference had a strong focus on global warming this year, which was certainly appropriate with our numerous catastrophic disasters in recent years. Some of the messages that I brought home from Stockholm were:

The poor will/have been suffering disproportionately from global warming induced natural disasters. Developed/wealthy countries have the responsibility to provide aid when disasters occur and resources to encourage development in a sustainable way. We developed inappropriately and now the entire world (developed, and less developed even more so) is suffering because of our mistakes. It’s time for us to pay, educate, and work together with the less developed world to find a solution where everyone’s goals are met.
Communication communication communication! The water sectors, the health sectors, government, and private donors must work together, give each other feedback, and ask for help if they need it. This will make the reduction of diarrheal diseases more efficient, reduce overlapping work and responsibilities, and perhaps reduce conflicts in the management of water and development projects. This is especially important for me as a potential future NGO worker. NGOs are often funded to address a single issue (water treatment, HIV, TB, etc.), but these issues are quite complicated. NGOs are an important part of the picture, but communication is vital!
Communication, communication, communication! I already said this one, but I’m saying it twice. Communication between different fields is also crucial in addressing water issues efficiently. At one of the workshops that I attended, we were discussing communication between policy people and scientists, and the lack thereof. The speaker asked all policy people to raise their hands. There was one! There were over 50 scientists present. Conferences are a good place to start with interdisciplinary communication.
Sanitation needs more attention! We study sanitation a lot and we do not address it enough. Sanitation should be incorporated into water treatment installations and projects.
Transboundary issues are important in water management! Transboundary issues can easily get a room full of people excited. We, uh, need to settle those issues because it’s a shame to see people die of preventable diarrheal diseases while we’re too busy fighting with each other to help them. Of course it’s complicated and I didn’t come up with any solutions to address transboundary water issues. International conflict is terrible!
www.gapminder.org! This website has useful charts of world distribution of wealth and time dependent trends and predictions. Check them out and use them if you need them!
www.gemstat.org! This website has compiled water quality data from countries all over the world. It links various databases together and returns a quick visually pleasing display of a variety of water quality parameters. It’s fun to flip through.
What bothers me most about U.S. global warming policy is that we are not even trying. We have NOT even assessed the available resources, come up with a solution, tried it, and then failed. We haven’t even tried. We’re too busy fighting (again) over whether we should try or not. In the meantime people are dying in catastrophic disasters. The U.S. was criticized by various people at World Water Week, particularly in the area of global warming policy. I believe that the poorest people of the poorest nations are suffering the most from our lack of political cooperation. Let’s get ourselves together and be responsible world citizens!

I assisted in this conference with about 20 other young professionals and students. I was impressed with the other assistants' experience in the field as well as their interest. It was a fun group. The picture above is of Hannah and me. She's 19 years old and she's already worked on a project in India and is attending water conferences!
Highschool-aged students from around the world were invited to represent their countries and present water related projects. The team from Mexico was congratulated by Sweden's crown princess and awarded the 2007 Stockholm Junior Water Prize. Their project used eggshells to remove lead from water.

The conference organized a host of cultural events and entertainment. It was a huge success and a wonderful learning experience for me!

Copenhagen

2007-08-10T15:24:00.000-07:00

I saw both Bobby and mom on this trip! Both sort of random encounters and both very fun!!!If you like bikes, you should go to Copenhagen!
Of course, I had to take a picture of classic Copenhagen! Here it is as we always see it in the pictures:
We visited some old grain silos that had been converted into very expensive and fancy apartment buildings. We were eventually asked to leave, but got some photos first! Rebecca and Libby are architects from the UW, so I got to pick up bits and pieces of architecture trivia (in exchange for diarrheal disease trivia, of course)

Libby and Todd just bought this beauty to ride around Copenhagen in the Fall. They have two dogs back home that will definitely benefit (and look cool) chillin out in the passenger basket! These bikes were pretty common on the streets of Copenhagen. I even saw an entire family riding in one!
windmills windmills windmills!
Ain't it pretty? Copenhagen was a beautiful city! I want to go back! Thanks for the wonderful hospitality Libby and Emma!

Vapriikki- VELOMANIA!!!

2007-08-05T08:10:00.000-07:00

It wasn't just a good bicycle history exhibit, with lots of cools bikes that ranged from the running machine to modern day miniature tandems, but it put cycling right in the middle of Tampere's history. The museum, Vaprikki, is housed in one of Tampere's many re-used industrial buildings that line the Tampere rapids.
Cycling was transformed from a hobby for the wealthy to a practical form of transportation. At one point, next to skiing, it was the most important form of transportation for the Finnish army.

Bike registration was related to wars, economy, and industry. Since Tampere has been an important industrial center in Finland, perhaps the bicycle played a role in its success! At least that's what I think. There was even bicycle powered logging equipment, used in the paper industry.

There was a bit of a queue to ride this bike. Too bad I couldn't take it outside and ride it around the streets of Tampere!

Dad's Visit: Helsinki and Tallinn

2007-08-05T07:24:00.000-07:00

Back in June, Dad dropped by Tampere. That was way back during field sampling. It was nice to see dad's calming face between intensive periods in the lab (that occurred due to a scheduling glitch on my end:-). He was a good sport about it. We spent several mornings walking around Tampere, but we also had some GREAT trips to Tallinn (Estonia) and Helsinki! I had a great time, but will look forward to future trips with dad when I don't have to run off to the lab almost every day! Here are a few photos of our adventures.

Helsinki:

Tallinn:

I was impressed by Tallinn's graffiti!

Lone Lukonmakian

2007-08-02T11:16:00.000-07:00

My flatmate went back to Slovakia on Tuesday.
Since she was almost the last one, except for me, it's pretty quiet around Lukonmaki. Lukonmaki is not a wild neighborhood, even in March or April. We have one grocery store within walking distance. In the winter time we have the famous ski hill, but its days are in remission. There are some nice little hikes, but that's it. If I wake up in the morning and I realize that I don't have any cash or any food, I have to hope I have some credit on my bus pass to make it seven kilometers into town. Four gentlemen recently moved into an apartment upstairs. They spend their free time getting so drunk that they can't walk and then stumbling around my (locked) apartment door. One of them invited me to one of their parties: No thanks! Please don't slobber on my door. I need some housing allies.Anyway, I was thinking about all of the fun times around Lukonmaki and all of the people who I wish were here. I suspect (and hope) the new students will move in any minute, and I'm only here for another month and a half (a substantial portion of which time I will be attending conferences in other countries). I appreciate the old Lukonmaki crew with the greatest respect and admiration! We had a lot of fun in Lukonmaki, with pretty much just ourselves (I'm realizing)!Especially right there. That's FUN that they're having! Especially Emnet.

I'm heading out to Stockholm (on my favorite ferry) next week. I'm planning to attend World Water Week, a conference that focuses on policy and scientific water issues with a goal of reducing poverty around the world. It's huge and it lasts all week long. A few weeks ago I thought I was going to Stockholm by myself. Then I found out about Ryan and Megan, some ex-Vallers who stayed in Stockholm for an extra year. I was super glad because it's nice to know people when going to relatively new places. They know special secrets and it's always fun to see other Americans since I hardly ever see any in Tampere. And then I randomly found out last night that my friend Bobby happens to be passing through Scandinavia (from California) during World Water Week. I haven't seen him in a year! That's going to be so much fun! And then, I'm embarrassed about this one, but I just realized today that MY MOM is actually going to be in Stockholm for the first two days of the conference. I can't believe I didn't realize that one a long time ago. She's flying in directly from Oxnard. It's going to be a huge U.S.-fest gathering in the evenings, after the conference festivities. I love Stockholm (even without all of my friends and relatives), it's going to be a great conference and fun times!

Biking in the Ǻland Islands

2007-08-01T12:39:00.000-07:00

200 kilometers of extreme beauty is what we saw. Everything was beautiful in Ǻland, even the weather. Get ready for a whole lot of pictures because I couldn't stop taking them! Ǻland is an Autonomous State, over which Finland has sovereignty. Most residents are Swedish speakers. Their ethnicity is a touchy subject, which I've heard described as ethnic Swedes or Swedish-speaking Finns.
Hannele, a colleague from the lab, and I biked and camped through the islands, ferries and bridges. There were a few other cyclists around to keep us intermittent company, but we were mostly on our own. Some of the ferries were easy to catch. We just waited where the cyclists were gathered and a boat would come. Most of the other tourists were Swedish.
We piled all of the bikes on there and off we went!This is a Huvudfastet fort, which was built to defend the islands.
One of the islands has Kastelholm Castle. We stayed just long enough to learn how to say Kastelholm.

This was our our portable five star palace. It was nice and cozy, light, and easy to pack up every day!

Alot of the houses had old mills, or something like that. They looked cool but didn't appear to be in use anymore.

I almost fell into the water after this shot, but not quite!
We arrived to this dock, which was completely vacant. Actually the road ended into this dock. What are we supposed to do? We wondered. Trafficsomething? It looks like a schedule, but "it's" not open for very long. Oh wait. Look at that sign. Is that a button? I pressed it to see what would happen. Nothing happened, so I pressed it five or six more times. I felt like we were on Mars.
About five minutes later we could see a ferry coming from across the water. "Hey! It worked! We called ferry with the magic button. " If they were mad at me for pushing the button so many times, they didn't show it. The cemetery on Mariehamn had graves that dated back to the 1800s and were quite elaborate and well kept. Actually, everything was quite elaborate and well kept. Many people were living abroad when they died and came back to Aland to be buried.

We dropped by the church in Mariehamn, just before hopping on the ferry back home.
This is the monstrously huge ferry that takes me to Sweden and Aland. It's comfortable and cheap, especially for daytime cruises. It turns into drunken mayhem at night.

Arctic Circle!

2007-07-31T12:17:00.000-07:00

My face was pressed firmly against the floor as I examined the control dials beneath the sauna. “There are two controls! One goes from one to six, the other from one to 30!” I was shouting to my sister from the ground as we tried to figure out how to turn on the sauna. For some reason the temperature control was installed very close to the floor. We were certainly doing something wrong. The pressure was on because this was the first time that I was responsible for running the sauna. If I’ve learned one thing in Finland, it should be how to operate a sauna. It sort of comes naturally to those Finns, who had always taken the lead in my other sauna experiences. After a series of trials and errors, we finally got it going… just like real Finnish people.

Right after she landed in Helsinki, Robin and I hopped on an overnight train up north to a town called Äkäslompolo, not far from Ylläs in the Arctic Circle. The Arctic Circle is the area of the earth that has at least one day with 24 hours of sun, and at least one day of complete darkness each year. The Arctic Circle locals seemed pretty relaxed. Several people stopped to talk to us or offered us rides, even though we were obviously outsiders. While the towns are small, life seemed to be pretty “normal.” The weather was lovely and there was lots of electricity, running water, a couple of restaurants, and grocery stores. There were some mosquitoes, but not nearly as many as the folks in Tampere prepared me for.

This picture was taken at midnight!

Ylläsjarvi is where we saw the first reindeer… just after eating reindeer for dinner. Reindeer with mashed potatoes and lingonberry sauce is a common dish in the area. The reindeer roam free, but they are tagged and owned by a reindeer farmer who harvests them when the time is right. While I had reindeer nightmares (believe it or not) before coming to Finland, it tastes delightful. Aaaand it’s good for you! Robin didn’t like it as much as I did. Maybe it takes a few months of living in Finland. First you learn to operate a sauna, and then you can enjoy the taste of reindeer! ‘Course, Robin kinda learned to operate the sauna already.

We headed back down south through Sweden. Our final stop was in Stockholm, a city that is intertwined with its surrounding bodies of both salt and fresh water. I was excited to go to Sweden because of the Vikings. They’re famous for conquering much of the northern world, and maybe even parts of Canada and the States. I was however, quite distraught when I found out that those Viking hats with two horns: they’re fake. The experts don’t think the Vikings actually wore hats like that. And I got the impression that the locals don’t think the hats are as cool as I think they are. It seemed like some people think they’re an annoying tourist gimmick. Oh well. My Viking hat visions were shattered. Robin and I had a wonderful time. I look forward to going back for World Water Week next month.

You can borrow bikes like these in Stockholm (as well as many European cities), if you need a quick way to get around.

This is an exhibit in the Nordic Museum of every day items used in Swedish and Nordic history.

These are a few shots from the ferry trip from Stockholm to Turku (Finland). We went through the Swedish and the Finnish archepelagos, with a brief stoppover on one of the Aland Islands.

Juhannus: Life is Good

2007-07-01T04:41:00.000-07:00

Life is good. I'm happy. I feel great. I have lots of energy. Maybe I'll go for a run. It's four o'clock the morning. Maybe I should go to sleep. I can't decide: sleep or run? I'm hungry.

We just celebrated Midsummer (or Juhannus), which was convenient for us Seattleites because it closely aligns with the Summer Solstice celebrations down south. My biological clock told me that I was supposed to be celebrating. To me, Juhannus was a celebration of surviving the winter and welcoming the summer into my life. It also has religious significance. Most people vacate the cities and go out to their summer cottages in the countryside for Juhannus.

I did not do as the Finns do. I went to Helsinki for Juhannus, which is actually the biggest city in Finland. There aren’t many summer cottages in Helsinki proper. Everyone warned me "don't do it!" or "Helsinki is boring during Juhannus." I was planning to be in Helsinki anyway because my sister and I were meeting there before launching into the Arctic Circle, coincidentally the day after Juhannus.

Eric told me there was a bonfire celebration on Seurasaari, an island that you can drive to from Helsinki. Sounds exciting! Katherine, Rebecca, Eric and I hopped on the bus and off we were. We briefly had a conversation about eating kangaroo meat on the way there (not traditional Finnish cuisine, but a solid conversation topic, nonetheless). An Australian woman who seemed to be planted next to us (and our kangaroo conversation) revealed herself and confirmed Katherine’s prognosis: eating kangaroo meat is, in fact, not a good idea. So, on to the bonfires! We were excited because bonfires are always fun! There’s a primordial party instinct that comes out during bonfires… at least that’s what I thought.

It’s apparently an American party instinct. My favorite quote of the evening was from a five or six year old American (or maybe Canadian, but I think American) girl who looked around at the thousands of people blankly waiting for bonfire to start and then looked up at her dad and asked “Daddy, are these people excited for the bonfires?” I was wondering the same thing. We all show our excitement in different ways, I suppose.

Seurasaari has an open air museum of cottages from all over Finland that have been deconstructed, restored, transplanted, and reconstructed for our convenient viewing pleasure, right where Finland’s heart beats. They represent rural countryside life from the 18^th to 20^th century. There was a Finnish drama production about the Aland Islands, which was difficult to understand, with my limited Finnish. Since I had so much trouble with the dialogue, I was a little shocked when the lead grabbed the villain (maybe… it was hard to tell if he was good or bad) by his wrap-around trousers and untwirrled him down to his bare buns. Still no response from the crowd. However, it was an unexpected twist for me in what I thought was a production about Finnish history. But then it reminded me of the naked cyclist parade that was probably happening simultaneously in Seattle. Cool.

We spend at least 40 minutes watching a beautiful family of swans. I got some really good photos, but was perhaps too entertained by the swans when I was supposed to be partying it up at the bonfire. Anyway, I found Juhannus entertaining in a different way than I was expecting. It seems to happen a lot in the Finnish territory.

No semi-wild celebration is complete without a visit to the Alvar Aalto- designed Stockmann Bookstore. It sounds a little nerdy, but it's actually quite pleasant to hang out and people watch, plan your next trip, or find the best reindeer-blood recipe (if you're into that sort of thing). Aaaaaand If you're Rebecca's height, you have a perfect sized chin-rest to accommodate you during your people-watching endeavors.

IWHA 2007- Women in Science!

2007-06-16T09:31:00.000-07:00

It’s been amazing here! The sun shines almost twenty hours per day now. It has shined throughout our intensive water sampling period, the complementary midnight lab analyses, a visit from my father, and the annual IWHA conference, which all happened almost simultaneously. There’s been lots of work and lots of fun… and not much sleeping.

The IWHA conference was titled The History and Futures of Water. I gave a presentation on the history and future of chlorine disinfection. I talked about some broader issues pertaining to the study of household drinking water treatment. I feel that our scientific results are quite a bit different than what actually happens in the real world, making some of the literature perhaps misleading. So I gave my talk, and answered a few questions. The chair person, who introduced each of the five presenters, pointed out that pH has a substantial effect on the efficacy of chlorine, and I didn’t mention that in my presentation.

I agree that pH is a very important chemical property of water. I measured pH when I was doing my field work in Ecuador. I also measured free and total chlorine concentration, turbidity, and took field surveys, among other things. However, my presentation at the IWHA conference was not about pH, so of course I didn’t mention it. I only had 15 minutes. It was not really about chlorine efficacy either, though I did mention that. It was about the use of chlorine in rural households. I made an argument in my presentation that most current chlorine studies are quite different that actual, real-world (visit-a-village-and-see-how-it’s-used) chlorine use. For example, most chlorine studies educate their participants (and subjects) in some way before or during their sampling period. In the real world, however, education is not necessarily part of household chlorine use. Maybe this is important. That’s why I gave my presentation.

I do appreciate comments. But it was hard not to notice that I was at least 20 years younger than the other four presenters and I was the only woman presenting in this session. AND everyone else got a complement from the chairperson about how good their presentations were, regardless of how good their presentations were. At the time, I thought “whoops, I really need to work on a better way to communicate this idea. It’s very difficult to understand. I think chairperson missed the main idea of my presentation.” It was not good news, but it was my fault. You can’t win ‘um all.

Later on, I was helping out with the equipment in another session where my session’s chairperson was giving his presentation. He had some technical problems with his presentation. When we opened up his PowerPoint file, some of his photos were missing. Yikes! Murphy’s Law was giving him a run for his money.

“Well, we’ve got ten minutes,” I said. “Do you want to download your pictures again and put them back in presentation?” One of his colleagues/another presenter came over to see what the commotion was.

The colleague/other presenter gave me a series of unnecessary commands (the kind that you get from elderly men who don’t know that they aren’t the only smart ones around), not realizing that he was almost entirely redundant. “Click on pictures. Type this keyword. Click that picture. Copy. Paste.” Etc. etc. etc. We replaced one of chairperson’s pictures. Actually, I replaced one of chairperson’s pictures, and I thought of solving the problem in the first place.

Chairperson was so impressed. So what did he say, you ask? He said “Wow colleague/other presenter, you’re a real technical whiz! I can’t believe you fixed my problem so quickly!”

OK gentlemen, I do things that are much more amazing than downloading pictures... every day. But I would like to point out that this is an example of men undeservingly getting most of the credit in a scientific environment. It starts in the educational process, in our scientific discussions, and in our presentations. Women have to work much harder and have their sources in order to get people to listen (and believe) what they have to say.

I challenge you all, men and women alike. If you’re about to discount a smart woman, think about why you don’t believe what she has to say. Do you have a real reason, or is it cultural? Do you understand what she’s talking about? Then ask her, instead of assuming she made a mistake (and forgot to mention pH, for example). Maybe she can teach you something that will benefit the scientific community. Did she give you an idea? Give her credit for it. Let her know. If she has something to contribute, include her in your papers, in your lab, and in your research.

Tampere's Water!

2007-05-22T12:09:00.000-07:00

I was inspired by the architecture Valle (the scholarship program that’s funding me) students’ abilities to connect their work to the non-architects. So I’m giving it a try with my own work in Tampere. While my project in the lab is involves molecular biology, nucleotides, polymerase, statistical significance, and sampling plans, it also involves water. Civilizations are formed around convenient water supplies. We all swim, wash, transport ourselves and our things, and most of all, we drink water. The architects have the fancy interiors, exteriors, and photographically artistic presentation, but I have the substance that makes up more than half of your body and 70% of your planet’s surface. Tampere has its history, present, and future which, in order for it to survive, has been centered around water.

Tampere’s Water System

Tampere is geographically sandwiched between two large lakes, Näsijärvi (the largest lake in the Tampere area**, 257 km²) and Pyhäjärvi. The city was originally established on the Pispala ridge, around the Tammerkoski Rapids. These rapids run from north to south, out of Näsijärvi and into Pyhäjärvi. Since there is an elevation difference of 18 meters between the two lakes, the rapids can produce energy. Power plants from Finlayson, Tampella and Liljeroos were able to use the rapids as Tampere’s sole energy source until 1916. If you look down the Tampere Rapids today, the view is dominated by historical industrial buildings that were once used to produce cotton, wood, shoes and textiles. In spite of the drive for industrial development, Koskipuisto Park was deliberately left undeveloped for the public to enjoy. Tampere is the largest inland Nordic city and the third largest city in Finland, currently with 200,000 residents.

Tampere’s Water History

From 1835 to 1921, just after the industrial revolution, Tampere grew from approximately 1,600 to over 40,000 residents. At the beginning of this period, the major objective of a water system was to provide fire-fighting protection, but simultaneously led to improved hygienic conditions. Throughout history, Tampere’s water has been provided by both ground and surface water sources. The first municipal pumping station was installed in 1835 and was used to fill buckets for household distribution. Free-flowing ditches were later used to direct wastewater into lake Pyhäjärvi. In 1866 a municipal committee was formed to control drainage, as a measure to address the Typhoid problem that was worst in the least drained areas of Tampere (Germ Theory and microbes had not yet been discovered). This committee proposed a sewer network to separate sewage from drinking water. In 1876, the sewer construction began. The city’s first health official, A. Ahlberg- a civil engineer (like me!)- proposed the first modern drinking water distribution and sewage system in Tampere. He recommended charging for water by the household. He also suggested constructing a robust and sustainable system, rather than quickly solving the short-term water shortage problems. The city constructed the first waterworks in 1882, without using Ahlberg’s recommendations. Unfortunately, the system lacked the pressure necessary to provide water to everyone, did not resolve water quality issues, and did not meter water usage to equitably charge consumers. The sewer system was completed in various parts of the city between 1883 and 1894. A second drinking water system was constructed in 1898 with higher pressure, but still no water treatment. There was a serious Typhoid problem that was said to have spread along the water pipe network.

In the early 1900s, Lake Näsijärvi was considered polluted and Typhoid outbreaks were common. It wasn’t until 1917, when Tampere began to chlorinate its drinking water, that the Typhoid problem was contained. There have been no Typhoid epidemics since this time. To address taste and turbidity problems, the city opened a new treatment plant in Kaupinoja, which used both chlorination and sand filters to treat the Lake Näsijärvi’s water. A second plant was built in 1931 in Mältinranta to serve the western part of the city. In 1972 the water source was changed to Lake Roinejärvi, which currently provides 70% of Tampere’s water, while the other 30% comes from various groundwater sources. In comparison, Finland receives about 50% of its water from surface sources and 50% from groundwater sources.

It seems like Tampere is unusual with such a water centered history, but you'd be surprised. Do you know where your water comes from? Do you know why your city was founded where it is?

Warning: the following section contains more science than usual!

Artificial Groundwater Recharge (AGR)

Reija, one of my collegues at the lab, is focusing on AGR for her PhD work. The main idea of AGR is to load up aquifers with untreated water. The natural microbial processes in groundwater are capable of removing certain contaminants that are currently removed at the treatment plant. Her results may help the City of Tampere decide on its best future water treatment option.

She has two sets of reactors installed at the local water treatment plant. She varies temperature and oxygen with time in one set. Some people worry that the CO₃^2- in the system will turn to organic matter instead of CO₂ and cause the AGR system to clog and shut down. She has some smaller fluidized bed reactors that provide a small, but perfectly porous material to simulate ideal aquifer conditions. In the fluidized bed reactors, Reija studies the effects of varying the hydraulic retention time, fluidization rate, temperature, and phosphorus and nitrogen concentrations on the microbial communities. She’s currently using stable carbon isotopes to measure the biodegradation rate. She’s getting approximately 30 to 50% biodegredation, based on the ¹²C:¹³C ratio.

Tampere’s Water Treatment Plant

The present-day treatment plant was built in the end of the 1970s and is located in Rusko, approximately 2 km from the Tampere University of Technology (TUT). It’s time for a renovation, but there is a hot political debate over whether to switch to artificial groundwater recharge (AGR) that is holding up plans for renovation. AGR is (not coincidentally) also a hot research topic in our lab at TUT. The city doesn’t want to renovate or build a new treatment plant if it is going to switch to AGR, which requires much less water treatment. AGR consists of pumping surface (or whatever type of) water into the ground and letting the microbes in the soil do the treatment. It would still require chlorination, but almost entirely eliminates the need for a water treatment plant. However, we need some science to tell us if it’s a viable option for Tampere.

The current treatment plant consists of 720 km of pipelines and five steps of treatment, with a flow rate of 1800 to 2200 m³/hr. These are the five treatment steps:

Calcium carbonate addition. This prevents corrosion
Hypochlorite addition. This prevents biofilm from forming on the sand filters.

It may also unfortunately cause disinfection byproducts to form, which cause cancer in lab animals at high doses

Rapid sand filtration. There is a one meter deep sand bed that is backwashed once per day. This process removes natural organic matter and iron. Some people think the rapid sand filtration should go before the hypochlorite addition to reduce the formation of disinfection byproducts.
Air flotation. This treatment process is considered advanced and efficient. Ferric sulfide sticks to the organic matter and forms flocs. These flocs adhere to bubbles that are diffused through the water column, bringing the organic matter to surface where it can be scraped off.
Activated carbon filtration. Water is filtered, the pH is raised to 8.5, and the final chlorination takes place before the treated water is stored in one of Tampere’s five water towers.

So wow! Before I drink that water, it sure goes through a lot! It's pretty nice that we don't get Typhoid here anymore. That's not the case everywhere!

By the way, there’s a new policy to keep the door shut at the water treatment plant in Rusko. Since you need an appointment to get into our water treatment plants in Seattle, and you have to go drive past intimidating signage that makes you think you have to go to prison if you make a wrong turn, I really noticed the cultural difference.

**Näsijärvi is nowhere near the largest lake in Finland, that was a mistake (see Sannamari's comment)!

Eurovision My-o-vision

2007-05-16T14:09:00.000-07:00

Eurovision 2007 made me love Helsinki!

The Eurovision Song Contest is a tradition that started way back in 1956. Some say it was one of the traditions that lead to the formation of the EU, by bringing the war torn European community together. Each country submits a song that is performed by a corresponding singer. Each country selects its own performer, sometimes selected by voting… I think. The overall winner of the Eurovision Song Contest is selected by international cell phone voting. You can’t vote for your own country’s performer, but you can vote for your neighbors. There is obviously some politicking, especially considering some of the winners. It’s not entirely based on talent. Or maybe not at all based on talent. Last year,

Finland

won. In accordance with the tradition, this means that it also hosted this year’s contest in Helsinki. This is also the first time

Finland

has ever hosted because they had never ever won before.

If you really want to understand the contest, check out Lordi’s winning performance from last year. He and his band dressed up like monsters and played a hard rock/metal song called Hard Rock Hallelujah. The funny part of the story is, those monster outfits are the only way that the Finnish public knows Lordi and his band. That’s right; they’ve never made a public appearance without the masks. Aaaaand, the even funnier part of the story is that Lordi was invited to the Annual National Ball at the President’s house on Independence Day last year. He didn’t show up because masks were not allowed at the event (due to security concerns). There was lots of national suspense: would Lordi uncover his appearance and go to the National Ball? We were all left in disappointing wonder when he still hadn’t shown up by the end of the evening. What does his bright, shiny, death metal face look like? Still don’t know. The Finnish territory is covered with Lordi goods and paraphernalia that range from soda to action figures.

Here's their 2006 winning performance:

Most of the performances at Eurovision are very similar sounding pop songs. Lordy was different. Occasionally the winner makes it big. Some examples are ABBA, Olivia Newton John, and Celine Dion. You might notice from these examples that the nationality of the performer doesn’t have to correspond to the country that they are representing… if any of you non-Europeans want to give it a try. Most of the time, nothing becomes of the winner. It’s generally pretty awful music, but it’s incredibly entertaining to know about.

We were not able to get tickets to the actual Eurovision performance in Helsinki because they sold out faster than I could dial the number on my Nokia. However, we went to Helsinki to witness the mayhem anyway. It was nothing less than awesome! There were performers in the street, break-dancers, people displaying their national Eurovision pride by wearing their country’s flags, and free concerts. A whole lot of Europe actually came to Finland. Finland doesn’t get a lot of attention, so it was fun to witness. We also took a trip over to Suomenlinna, Finland’s island fortress, for a relaxing lunch. In Helsinki you can find both mayhem and relaxation on any given day! This weekend, made me LOVE Helsinki!

Vappu Wappu!

2007-05-05T12:55:00.000-07:00

Vappu was huge. It was wild, it was crazy! The festivities start on the night of April 30th and continue (straight through for some) through May 1. Vappu is Finland's student and labor holiday. In Tampere, it seemed to be skewed toward the student celebrations, though there was a worker parade.

Vappu traditions vary from city to city in Finland. In Tampere, the tradition is to dip the first-year technical students into the very cold Tampere Rapids (why only technical students and not all first-year students? I don't know and I couldn't find anyone else who did) . There were two large metal baskets that held about ten engineers each. They very efficiently loaded one with students while dipping the other with a huge industrial crane. The students strip down into their undies and then climb in to the basket. Many of them bring champagne bottles with them, which they dramatically pop open after dunk #1. It's kind of a hazing thing, except a lot the students actually think it's fun to get dipped. One first year student on my soccer team told me that the crane dunked her batch of architecture students six times! I wonder if you can still walk after six dips.

At midnight, on April 30, the students cleaned and crowned this statue with a traditional student hat. Only after the crowning, are the students allowed to wear their own hats. They receive their's at the end of the high school equivalent (lukio). The technical students get a tassel during university. Many cities in Finland publish a joke magazine packaged in some sort of industrial container. This year, Tampere rolled the magazines into a caulking cartridge (you know, to be loaded into a caulking gun, to seal the bathtub to the wall). I couldn't really understand the jokes. When I asked people if they would translate one for me, they would say "OK let me find a funny one." And then they would flip through for a while, a long while, not laughing. I got the impression, it wasn't that funny.

In addition to celebrating students and workers, Vappu signifies the beginning of Spring. Thank goodness the weather was impeccable and the bicycles were everywhere. There is a big carnival with the typical carnival stuff and lots of salmiaki (black licorice flavored, sort of) candy. The kids all have large mylar balloons and lots of people go out to lunch on Vappu. So hyvaa Vappua to everyone! and congratulations to the first year students who are now official! It's spring time!These are some students waiting for the first-year student parade. They're sporting their student overalls that color code them by department.

My Oxnardian Culture

2007-05-04T07:40:00.000-07:00

In response some recent misconceptions of American culture, I’m going to tell you about my culture. My culture includes the ideas and influences that shape my values and every day decisions. Similar to the stereotypes that aren’t always true, I can’t guarantee that my culture describes anyone else besides myself, definitely not the average American. I would say that there is no average American culture. We’re all pretty different. Even within the U.S., there are misconceptions on California’s culture. While my city, Oxnard, is turning into a suburb of Los Angeles and some of the California stereotypes do hold true, Oxnard has an interesting history, it is a unique Southern Californian city, and it is at the root of my cultural values.

In 1974, after four generations of living in San Bernardino County, CA, my parents moved two hours northwest, to the City of Oxnard. It was a much different place back then. They lived in an apartment on the beach, which was considered a dodgy area at that time. Their groceries would get stolen if they didn’t lock the car while carrying grocery bags inside. My dad was just starting a new job as a reference librarian at the Oxnard Public Library, so they didn’t have enough money to buy a house yet. Today, beachfront property is highly coveted and very expensive. They’re old apartment was certainly taken down and replaced with a multi-million dollar home. My parents eventually bought a house, just outside of El Rio, in a neighborhood that was surrounded by farmland. There were orange trees and avocado groves, but mostly strawberries strawberries strawberries.

When I was in high school, a Wal-Mart shopping center was built about a mile from my house. In some ways, I liked it because it meant there were restaurants and things to do my neighborhood. It also made it easier to describe where I lived. Many people don’t really know where El Rio is, and the only other landmarks were fields of strawberries. “Are there houses out there?” people would ask when I tried to give them directions to my house, even though Oxnard isn’t that geographically complex. However, I was also a cross country runner in high school. I had a hard time with the new traffic problems that Wal-Mart brought with it. Where I used to run for miles without stopping is now covered with traffic signals on almost every corner. There are good sidewalks if you’re running east to west, but they aren’t so continuous in the north-south directions. Prior to the Wal-Mart shopping center, this area was occupied by strawberry fields. The strawberry fields sometimes made the neighborhood smell delightful, but it sometimes smelled like fertilizer. Where I went to middle school, in El Rio, was much worse, aroma wise. Sometimes it would smell so strongly of fertilizer that my clothes would still stink when I got home!

Oxnard is located on the Southern coast of California. The average daily high temperature is 23 degrees C (73 degrees F), and the average low temperature is 11 degrees C (51 degrees), with 37.5 cm (14.75 inches of average annual rainfall. As of 2006, the California department of Finance measured the annual median household income to be $48,600. Males had a median income of just over $30,500 versus approximately $25,000 for females. According to the 2005 American Community Survey, Oxnard is approximately 70% "Latino or Hispanic." There is really good Mexican food in Oxnard and many Spanish speakers. As a bilingual public librarian, my father often helped both English and Spanish speakers find information for school work, public services, or even obtaining citizenship. My mother teaches at the high school Adult Education Center. She teaches a variety of courses to adults who dropped out of high school and are now trying to earn their high school diplomas. She also teaches ESL (English as a Second Language) to people who are learning to speak English. My parents were pretty involved in the Hispanic community in Oxnard, which may be one reason why my sister and I also learned to speak Spanish later on.

Wikipedia has a long list of famous people from Oxnard, but I didn't recognize most of them, probably because I don't watch very much TV. The most notable was Cesar Chavez, a farm worker, political activist and union leader. He lived in the La Colonia Barrio of Oxnard during part of his childhood, and later organized boycotts and marches of farm workers and laborers to protest the lack of jobs for local Oxnardian residents (1950s). Colonia is the heart of Oxnard’s good Mexican food, which I miss a lot in Finland. I wish I could a gordita right now.

After high school I moved to California’s Bay Area for University, and later on to Seattle, but those cities are very different from Oxnard. Each time I’ve moved to a new city, it’s taken a little while to adjust to the culture. For example, in Seattle, people are very friendly on the street… but there’s not very good Mexican food. In the Bay Area, I was constantly accosted by homeless people, and it seemed very interactive, yet unfriendly at a glance. However, I formed many friendships in random places in the Bay Area, like on the bus or walking home from work.

Anyway, my city is full of culture. In spite of growing up in the States, I didn't turn out rich, spoiled, or stupid. And I don't own a gun or a car. American culture can mean many different things, most of which you just can't find in the movies!

Reality in TV?

2007-05-03T08:17:00.000-07:00

I’m very comfortable with the fact that my country is imperfect. I may even be the one to point out its deficiencies. I feel a responsibility to do what I can to make the United States a better place, but I’m not embarrassed that we have our faults. While it’s not my favorite conversation topic with people from Europe these days, I am capable of having a factual discussion on problems in my country.

For some reason, however, I get quite irritated when people tell me about what I do in my culture, especially if they’re wrong. When the discussion starts with “you know how you guys do blank,” or “in the States, blankety blank happens,” there is a very good chance that I am going to have to spend the rest of the discussion defending myself and pointing out that all Americans (many times myself included) don’t do blankety blank. First of all, my country is big. Even within California, there are social differences between the north, south, east, and west. San Francisco, for example, has a much different feel, food, and culture than Fresno. I even feel a little bit uncomfortable making a cultural generalization about the people from Fresno because Fresno’s culture is not my culture. But I know, just from passing through, that it’s different than San Francisco’s culture.

So if you visited your brother while he was studying abroad in Virginia, or if you watch American TV shows, you still might not have as good of an understanding of my culture as you think.

I got into a discussion last night with a guy who told me that U.S. worker salaries are much higher than salaries in the EU. He thought it was really great because everything is also so much cheaper in the States. There’s a high quality of life and everyone’s rich, he told me. I’m not an economist, and income of Americans vs. EU nationals is not a topic that I’ve ever been particularly passionate about, but he was totally wrong. I wondered where in God’s name he got that idea. In Finland, I haven’t seen a lot of poverty or gangs, which were important parts of my culture back in the States. I know people who do not have healthcare, or who don’t have an income back home. I don’t have experience all over the European Union, but in Finland there’s food, shelter, and medical care for everyone. I would say there’s a whole lot more wealth here.

My conversation partner gave me an example of a salary in my country that is higher than a European salary. “OK,” he told me. “If you go to school for law, you can make $200,000 per year, right after graduating.”

I tried to explain that lawyers aren’t exactly average Americans. And, if you’re one of the 27% of the people who graduate from university, only then are you eligible to apply to spend another three years (and tens of thousands of dollars) going to law school. It’s competitive and not many people can make it through law school. “OK, I have another example: doctors,” he was very matter of fact. “They make a lot of money in the States.” I was nearly exasperated. I couldn’t believe I was participating in a) such a boring conversation topic, and b) a conversation that required me to defend our state of poverty. We're not that poor, but we're certainly not all doctors and lawyers. I think it was his complete confidence added to his complete ignorance that kept me going. The number of Americans who are doctors and lawyers in my country is practically insignificant, when compared to the Wal-Mart checkers, fast food workers, and engineers, etc.

Where did this young man get his information, you ask? He got it from the television, my friends. That is what he told me. This is not the first time this has come up. There are many people that feel that Sex and the City is a documentary on American culture, not a fictional and logistically impossible story that was created to make money. Hollywood was not created to depict American culture and values in Europe.

In my culture, I was taught that television is not real. Some of the major differences between what you may find on the average television show and real American life are:

We age (unlike Bart Simpson).
We’re not all rich. We have a distribution of wealth, just like European countries. We have poverty, homelessness, as well as wealthy people.
We work an awful lot (unlike the characters in Lost and Friends). If we don’t work, it’s quite hard to find food and shelter. Work is not always dramatic fun (like in West Wing), though I usually like my work (I may be a minority).
We’re not 99% white. There is ethnic diversity in the States that is not portrayed on TV.
We’re not necessarily stupid (unlike our Reality TV counterparts), though I occasionally have my “not so swift” days.
We have pimples, wrinkles and other physical imperfections. You know how we’re one of the most overweight countries? Well, it’s true, and it’s not portrayed on TV.
We’re not almost all 25 to 40 years old. We have a distribution of ages.
The portion of the day spent in high-speed car chases, shooting each other, and having sex, is actually quite small compared to that of our TV/movie counterparts.
Most importantly, the U.S. is a real country. TV is fictional; it’s an industry that makes money in a capitalist society because people enjoy watching it, not because it resembles something that is possible in the real world.

It’s just too ironic that I have to convince people that I’m not stupid by demonstrating that television is not real. If you feel like it’s a good idea to share with me how stupid, fat, rich, or spoiled my culture is, please get your information from somewhere besides the television.

The Afterlaugh!

2007-04-22T08:13:00.000-07:00

There’s no real reason for this change of perspective that you are going to hear about… except maybe a sequence of events, that included a long winter, and a recent visit from Sarah and Kevin. When Sarah and Kevin were in Finland, we laughed a lot.

Sometimes we laughed because things were funny. For example, the time that Kevin musically accompanied the cyclist who was ringing her bike bell (at us) as she rode down the sidewalk. “Brrrring, brrrrring,” he said. It seemed like there was some scene going on in his head and he briefly forgot that he was in the real world (where it’s not very common to get “brrrringed” at). Almost in the same breath, he said “Oh yeah, they can hear me, I always forget that when everyone’s speaking Finnish.” And then he turned a little reddish and all three of us nearly fell over into the streets of Tampere because we were laughing so hard. He had just rung an imaginary bell at a real cyclist. It didn’t even cross my mind that we were laughing at Kevin. I was too busy trying to keep my balance and get enough oxygen.

But sometimes we just laughed because we wanted to laugh. We laughed out loud at things that were not funny. It was as though we (as a group) wanted to laugh first, and then we (as a group) came up with something to laugh about second, regardless of whether it was funny. It didn’t matter. My point is-- laughter: very important.

In combination with the things that I absolutely love about Finland, like the honesty, the genuine conversations, and wonderful hospitality, there are also challenges that I have to face. Some of these challenges are actually quite difficult for me. But don’t worry, today, after seven months in Finland, I have figured out how to handle them. All I need to do is laugh. And honestly, it’s easy to make me laugh, I’ve just never actively tried before.

So, if you fall down and I dramatically rush over to help, and you get embarrassed and refuse my help; I’m going to laugh at myself. I’m going to laugh because that’s not how it works here. If I ask you about your research interests with genuine curiosity, and you get visibly irritated at my numerous questions; I am going to laugh. If you plow into me with your shopping cart while I’m kneeling down to compare the prices of light bulbs; I’m going to laugh. I am going to laugh if I get to the student housing office at 3:31 after leaving work early, only to find that it closed at 3:30 and no one is in sight. I’m going to laugh because I did it again. If the buses are going to run on time, somewhere in the local system of logic, it says that the housing office also must close on time. And finally, if you are drunk to the stars and you can see the polar lights, and you feel that you need to sit next to me on the train; I’m not going to get scared. I'm not going to get angry. I’m not going to feel sorry for you. I’m going to laugh.

I’m going to laugh at myself and at my own confusion. I’m going to laugh at whatever it is that I do that invites acutely drunk people into my personal space. I’m going to laugh at the times that I’ve been clueless and didn’t realize the things that were obvious to everyone else. I’m going to laugh and have fun with our cultural differences. I’m going to laugh that some Finnish words require ten or 20 English words, simply to explain their meaning. I’m going to laugh that I get so caught up in the process and the journey that I occasionally forget about the end goal. I’m going to laugh that I, Laura McLaughlin, one of the guiltiest causes of the awkward silence, is the one who won’t stop talking. I’m going to laugh when I can tell by your response that I just said something inappropriate, but I have no idea what it was. I’m going to laugh at the KKK Supermarket. And I’m going to laugh even more at the Ass Market (written S, but pronounced Ass!). I’m going to laugh even if I am laughing and no one else is laughing! In fact, I'm going to laugh because I'm the only one laughing.

So if you’re looking for me, I’ll be the one in Tampere enjoying the daylight and LAUGHING!

Turku and Rauma, rolled into one!

2007-04-22T07:11:00.000-07:00

Minna and Mika, some friends that I met through the microbiology channels, took all of us around Turku and Rauma. We visited not only the old downtown (Vanha Rauma), but Sammallahdenmäki, another UNESCO site that was home to... someone during the Bronze Age. Most of the remains consist of rock burial grounds. But there's also a nice little hike that was complemented with some unbeatable spring weather. My camera unfortunately ran out of batteries midway through the trip, but I'll show photos from the first part of it. The initiator of this trip was the Jr. World Championships in hockey, which were being played in Rauma. We ironically saw the U.S.-Canada game. It was my first hockey game ever, and I was impressed by the quantity of physical contact. Those guys really beat the heck out of each other! While I would be more hesitant to start playing hockey, I really enjoyed watching it.

These pictures are from the nuclear power museum in Eurajoki (right next to Rauma). It's super fancy with interactive science exhibits that appeal to a wide variety of ages. There's also a nice view out back of the area where the cooling water is extracted and expelled back into the sea. I suppose the museum was constructed along with Nuclear Power Plant Number Three in this area, to keep the community happy. The construction is huge and will bring international workers to Eurajoki for the next few years. It is projected to provide twice the power of either of the existing nuclear power plants. They will use enormous concrete-lined copper pipes that weigh something like three tons each to store the spent waste in the bottom of the sea.

On to Turku:
We went on a short walk along River Aurajoki (not to be confused with the similar sounding town that Minna and Mika live in-- Eurajoki), ate ice cream, and gave the Turku Castle a good solid run for its money.

Thanks for the wonderful hospitality Minna and Mika!!

Back in Tampere, Sarah and Kevin were remarkably eager to put their vegetarianism on hold while they tried things like Tampere's blood sausage specialty. Good job guys!

Easter in Estonia!

2007-04-20T08:36:00.000-07:00

I just parted ways with Sarah and Kevin after they motivated me to do some Scandinavian/Baltic traveling with them. I was sad to say good-bye to my first American visitors this year, but glad that we had so much fun! I went with them to Tallinn (Estonia), Helsinki, Turku, and Rauma (to visit Minna and Mika, some Finnish friends). They also came to Tampere for a couple of days. Most spectacularly, they got engaged when they went to Jyvaskyla (I wasn't there, but got to hear about it later), which will undoubtedly lead to generations of pronunciation difficulties, but also sounds really cool: We got engaged in Jyvaskyla. Congrats to Sarah and Kevin!

Here's the Tallin movie:

Voi Että!

2007-04-18T07:39:00.000-07:00

Maybe it’s always been like this and it’s only in very recent times that I’ve gotten around to noticing. But it seems like the world is starting to spiral out of control around us and we’re about to be left somewhere in outer space between Pluto (whether it’s a planet or not!) and Neptune. I’m not talking about astronomy. I’m not even talking about science.

I was talking to Sarah and Kevin about this and they kept saying words like profit margin, worker productivity, and cost effectiveness. I’m not an economist, but I think we agreed with one another.

While the EU is a super nice place and has always had its beauty, life has not always been as easy as it currently is (at least in some parts). Many countries have free or very cheap (by American standards) university tuition. Many Finnish students even get paid to attend college. The medical and social security systems are typically quite a bit more available than those in the States. There’s very little homelessness. Old people who didn’t start saving when they were 20 years old don’t have to end their lives in poverty. At least four weeks of paid annual vacation is common. Mothers typically get nine months of paid maternity leave. It’s nice.

I think Finland completely deserves this high quality of life because of its weather and its darkness. They earn it and we should all pay them because they survive their winters (at least most of them do). They also earn it because they learn to speak Finnish fluently, which I’m finding impossible. My friend Sannamari has a four year old son, and even he can speak fluent Finnish in the present, past, and future tenses. He can use the prepositions and postpositions flawlessly. He deserves a free university education. And the rest of Europe deserves it as well. Shoot, we all do.

BUT, some very familiar problems are poking their way through the berry bushes in Finland. Finland’s traffic congestion is on the rise. Europe is starting to rival the States’ consumerism. To complicate things, the birth/immigration rate is lower than the death rate in some EU countries, such as Germany and Finland. The young people are going to have to start working really hard to support the older folks who used to have more children. Will the quality of life get tangled up in the economy? Is the European Union as stable and we think it is? The EU is only 15 years old. The Euro is only eight years old (in terms of physical circulation of actual paper money).

While we’re talking about stability, is the US as stable as we think it is? The National Debt is at 4.9 trillion dollars. If we didn’t have the military, why would anybody want to accept the US dollar as anything other than a little rectangular piece of paper that can survive the laundry?

Basically, this is what I’m thinking about: the developing world is about to take us over. It’ll take about 50 years. First we have to forget how to do manual labor and take care of our basic needs with our own hands. Eventually India and China will realize that not only are they producing valuable goods that everyone is buying all over the world, but no one else is capable of producing those goods because we’re all too busy analyzing our profit margins and worker productivity with our mathematical models (on computers that they mass produced in a matter of minutes, of course). Then, India will say “hey China, Mexico, and all of you guys making cheap, yet valuable, goods, I think there’s a high demand for this crap. We should really charge more for it.” And then they’ll all realize that, in fact, they’re special and have the infrastructure and technical knowledge to control the cost of the world’s valuable goods. The price of shoes will skyrocket. Then my jeans will cost a month’s salary, like they currently do in Bolivia. One thing will lead to another and someone besides newly poverty stricken Europe or the destitute States will take over the world military responsibilities to keep us all safe. They’ll probably do a much better job at it too.

Nicaragua or Bolivia will start offering red-cross health workshops for all of the carpal-tunnel-syndromed, heart-attacked Americans that are now also poor. All of the current American and European-owned companies will quickly be bought out by the rapidly developing- developing countries. In our cities that are considered stable, such as Westwood and Manhattan, they’ll answer our desperate pleas to construct sweatshops so we can have some form of income to feed our starving children. We’ll all try to sneak across the border to work in factories in Mexico. They’ll pay us extra low wages and then they’ll construct a wall to control the illegal immigration.

Just a thought. Anyway, gotta get back to my DNA replication and the statistical analysis of my data.

Russia Round

2007-04-10T12:07:00.000-07:00

It was Friday evening when we hopped on our third train for that day. We were off to Russia in the first of two overnight trains for the six day trip. In theory, sight-seeing during the day and traveling at night sounded very efficient. In practice, I wound up getting sick. I actually had hives by the time we got to St. Petersburg. It wasn't just the ground we covered, but Russia's history has been racing through time through extreme wealth balanced out by poverty. Czars, dictators, communism, capitalism, the mysteriously absent poverty, and the KGB are all mixed together in some sort of Eurasian soup.

The Lenin statues are up. The Stalin statues are down. The streets of Moscow were full of fancy business men and women in high-class suits and stiletto high heels that would break my ankles in an instant. It wasn't until St. Petersburg, outside of the cemetery where Tchaikovsky was buried, that I saw my first homeless people in Russia. They were confined to a special area, out of sight of the main flow of traffic (which, by the way, is bad and getting worse-- we spent two hours driving to Catherine's Palace, and only a half driving back).

What I saw was Russia's wealth, though I realize there was a lot that I didn't see. I saw the elaborate cathedrals, art museums, palaces, and historical monuments. It made me wonder what I didn't see.

Here's my Moscow Movie (Moscow-- in no particular order):

After putting together the Moscow Movie, I realized that Leasa also made some GREAT movies and captured some good shots and some good times. Here's her St. Petersburg Movie: Leasa's St. P blog

It was a great trip and boy am I glad that I got to go. The four of us from Lukonmaki had a rockin time with the students from Jyvaskyla and Oulu. Especially with the Dutch guy named Bob who actually got slapped by his cab driver after a disagreement about his cab fare.

Wild Cards!

2007-03-17T17:09:00.000-07:00

Everyone plays cards... and everyone shuffles them differently. Leasa hosted an American style potluck dinner that included a fierce game of spoons, a game where winning doesn't matter but losing is punished...

The proof is in the pie.

Ice Swimming in an Orderly Fashion

2007-03-04T14:01:00.000-08:00

Ice swimming is one of those things that you may feel like you just have to do if you go to Finland because everyone asks if you've done it. That's not why I did it. I didn't do it for six months. It was kind of fun to be so rebellious, but then I started to wonder what all of the hype was about. The vast majority of people who talk about it love it. Today, I gave it a try.

There is a public sauna located on the shore of Nasijarvi, the same lake that I ice skated on. It's a wood burning sauna, which is even better than an electric sauna. There were at least four levels that I could sit on, depending on how scaldingly hot (almost literally) I wanted to be. I tried them all, but preferred level two, about a meter off the ground. The person sitting in the hottest part of the sauna earned the distinguished position (at least I thought it was a distinguished position) of throwing the water on the hot rocks. This person also has some control of the temperature, lots of water throwing = hotter sauna.

There were about 30 people in the sauna at any particular time, though there were many more present at the facility. People were constantly coming and going as I looked for a place to squeeze into on level two. I came up with some good guesses, but never asked anyone about the peculiar sauna outfits. To me, the most notable items of clothing in the sauna were the ski caps that several folks wore, and the socks that I saw one guy wearing. So far, almost everything has had a purpose in Finland. I have no doubt that the sauna hats and socks are no exception. I went ice swimming with a group of international students, organized by Leasa (the expert ice swimmer among us). Something that I love about the international student community is that we're all ready to be mobilized. At any given moment, you can always find 10 or 12 folks to... do whatever you want. We hiked over the frozen lake to the sauna facility.
The reason people were constantly coming and going from the sauna is because they were swimming in a hole cut out of the frozen lake. There are even aerator machines in the water that keep it flowing so it doesn't re-freeze. It's that cold. Here is the sequence of events for ice swimming:

go in the sauna and stay there until you're uncomfortably hot
walk outside
hold on to the railing, and go down the steps without thinking very much about what you're doing
keep walking until you're body is completely submerged (keep you're head above water so that you don't die)
follow the railing until it ends
walk back up on the other side of the railing
go back to the sauna and repeat

This process is important. I'm not quite sure why, but I know it's important. I got reprimanded by a fellow sauna patron when I tried to walk up the wrong side of the railing to avoid a bottle-neck in the cold water. I think there might be safety issues that aren't obvious to my sunny Southern California brain. These are the steps and the railing down into the icy water.

Ice swimming was great! I'll do it again. I felt the same way that I imagine I would feel after running a marathon. I was very relaxed, but very exhausted. I swam three times in the icy water. I was a little nauseous after swim number three. One or two times is really enough for me.
Look at all of these bright, shiny, and very relaxed faces!
I have had many interesting, fun, frustrating, happy, sad, and exciting experiences in Tampere. Throughout all of them, Lake Nasijarvi has always been beautiful. Tonight was no exception. I'm glad I can count on it.

Next time I get molested on the bus…

2007-02-26T11:54:00.000-08:00

There are many drunken Finnish men in this country. In fact, alcohol-related deaths were the leading number of deaths of Finnish men in 2005. They beat out heart attacks and composed 17.1% of males who died between the age of 15 and 64. Alcohol-related deaths made up 10.6% of female deaths. It’s a major problem, perhaps a national crisis.

Maybe this is a little morbid, but most people who die alcohol-related deaths have to drink an awful lot for an awfully long time before they die. These are the people who I’m talking about. They are magnetically attracted to me on the bus and on the train. They stumble onto the bus and inevitably right over to the empty seat next to me. They sit closer than any other Finnish demographic would deem appropriate, and then they talk to me. They not only speak loudly, but they exhale their horrific, vodka-laden breath right into my facial space bubble. It’s always men and they’re always drunk.

I don’t normally like to generalize but I will not put up with one more disgusting, drooling, perverted, drunk man sitting next to me on the bus. I’m sure there are many honorable, disgusting drunk men in this world, but they are no longer welcome to sit next to me on the bus. “This seat is now taken, and don’t mess with me because I will take your drunk ass down if you even try to sit here! One of your disgusting, drunk brothers ruined it for all of you. No more Ms. Nice Guy."

A drunk man grabbed my ass on the bus today. This particular disgusting, drunk man had me cornered as he kept asking me something in Finnish over and over with his vodka breath. I was trapped. I was publicly uncomfortable.

It was a little irritating that no one helped me in this potentially dangerous situation. No one said “oh that’s weird. Someone’s talking loudly. And that woman looks like she’s struggling. I don’t believe in letting men molest women so I’ll ask if she needs help.” I was on my own.

After what seemed like an eternity, my stop came. Thank God! I was dying to get away from this smelly, slobbery, drunk man. I dramatically pushed the “stop” button to indicate that he needed to scoot over so I could get out. The man didn’t appear to speak English. He was having trouble with Finnish as well.

As I got up to leave, he grabbed my ass! I turned around and I screamed at him. “Don’t touch me!” While it was quite noticeable on that bus, it wasn’t harsh enough. As it turns out, I’m not very quick-witted after being molested on the bus. However, I’ve never heard anyone scream on the bus before. In fact, I haven’t heard anyone scream in public anywhere in Tampere. Even though he was drunk, his jaw dropped. He gasped.

And then I realized that I had hit the stop button too early. Darn! I got off anyway and walked to my destination.

Here’s what I should have done: I should have stayed on the bus and yelled at the drunk man for the next few blocks until we got to my stop. I should have said “Don’t grab my ass. This is my ass and I don’t want you to touch it!” I should have kept yelling loudly in his face about how cowardly and perverted he was. And then I should have gotten off the bus and left him to drunkenly deal with the situation. How many women have had to put up with this man grabbing their ass? Probably a lot, and he’s probably never had to face a single one of them. I hate ass grabbers.

If you want to die an alcohol-related death, you’re in the right country to do it. Your country will provide you with food, shelter and medical care until you kick the bucket. But don’t sit next to me on the bus. Don’t talk to me, and don’t grab my ass!

Ice Skating at Night

2007-02-24T14:44:00.000-08:00

There may be many more ice skating entries and short films to come. I'm hooked. You can see why: it's beautiful to go out and watch the sun set on the ice.Magda and Dasa tear it up. They're from the Czech and Slovak Republics (respectively). They both started ice skating shortly after learning to walk and can hold their own and their balance on skates!

Those Finns really have ice skating down to an art. There are public, heated changing rooms with a bathroom and a shower. You are welcome to use them to change into your skates or to find refuge and warm up after your little feetsies freeze. You can also get a touch of Finnish graffiti art from this photo.
It was Carnival last week. While we didn't celebrate carnival in Finland, my German neighbor teaches at a Finnish-German elementary school. He tried out his bumble-bee costume on Dasa and me before heading off to school. Holland also has a pretty serious sounding Carnival celebration that I did not know about. According to my Dutch neighbor, it's most crazy south of the River, but his village is one of the few that celebrates in the north. So it gets pretty wild there too. They wear these special jerseys that group people together by shirt color and prevent them from getting lost... or unidentified. The third neighbor in this picture is from Italy. Of course there's a big Carnival celebration there too.

Ice Skating

2007-02-18T11:51:00.000-08:00

Nasijarvi, one of the two lakes that defines the geography of the Tampere region, is finally frozen. A tractor-like vehicle drives out and clears the snow so that we can all skate upon it. Some years they even construct a coffee shop out in the middle, but this year the coffee shop is on the side, just to be safe. It froze unseasonably late so things are a little different this year.
If you want to see some ice skating in action, check out this short video of my friend Leasa and me on the ice! Click here for ice skating video

On an unrelated but similarly cold topic, Chinese New Year was this weekend. Click here for Chinese New Year video

Frozen Snot

2007-02-15T10:19:00.000-08:00

If you want to know how cold it’s been, I can describe the extent of the coldness to you. This is how you can experience the wintry feeling of Tampere:

First, go to the Meschke-Shin lab at the UW. Look around for the -20ºC freezer. Push aside the PCR reagents and Nalidixic Acid stock solutions. Climb right in there and close the door. After your body equilibrates to the temperature, try to imagine walking around in a place that is 10ºC colder than the -20ºC freezer.

I have clothes that are quite a bit warmer than anything I would ever wear in Seattle, so most of the time I’m pretty comfortable. Just below -20ºC, however, is when my snot freezes. No matter what I’m wearing, frozen snot creates a very uncomfortable situation. And there’s nothing I can do about it either. Shallow breaths or deep breaths, my snot is still frozen.

The coldest I’ve experienced is -32ºC (-25ºF). Most of the time it’s a much more manageable -5 and -20ºC. I just got some ice skates and I hear the skate tracks in Nasijarvi are open!

Note: Don’t try this freezer thing at home (even though your freezer is probably -20ºC). I was just kidding, but it really is that cold.

Frost Bitten

2007-02-08T13:38:00.000-08:00

I moved off of Engineer Street. No, really. My old street was called Engineer Street. I’m sure it sounded neat to whoever chose the name, but putting all of the engineers on Engineer Street made me feel… labeled. And besides, how am I supposed to be cool if I live on Engineer Street? Now I live on Herb Street. I moved to a new flat in Lukonmaki, another suburb of Tampere. I’m quite happy here, though I sometimes still affectionately think about the death metal rocker that lived a nocturnal life in the flat above me on Engineer Street. I have friendly neighbors here, fun conversations, and even a common rec room. There’s quite a bit of opportunity for healthy human contact.

However, I got lost in the forest on the way to catch the bus the other day. I had to catch a slightly different bus because I had just moved and I needed to turn in my old key to the student housing organization. I wasn’t accustomed to this route.

Part of the problem was that I was not yet familiar with Lukonmaki. I also took a short-cut through the beautiful, snowy forest. I felt that I couldn’t go wrong… as long as I headed north. So I was walking and walking… directly north. The snow was deep but there was a good path. I passed by the ski jump place, and a few people shoveling snow out of their driveways. I thought about asking for directions, but I didn’t know the name of the street I was headed toward. I also wasn’t lost. Heading north. I came to a fork in the road. Since neither branch headed directly north; I halted for a moment. I felt like Robert Frost in the forest on this crisp, sunny (well, as soon as the sun rose, it was sunny) morning. If that’s not a good reason to take the road less traveled, I don’t know one. Needless to say, the path got smaller. The turns and counter-forks got more abundant. Just before I started to worry about being lost, I heard a car roar by. I had done it! I had found my way through the forest. I felt smart. I felt like Robert Frost.

Wait a minute. This road doesn’t look busy enough to be the one that I was looking for (that I didn't know the name of). Hey, that grocery store looks just like my grocery store… right next to what appears to be quite a bit like my new apartment building! I was… I was… I was back where I had started from. I need to remember never to listen when I tell myself to take a shortcut.

Kyykkä

2007-02-06T11:00:00.000-08:00

Saturday were the World Kyykkä Championships. I didn't see anyone from outside of Finland but I hear they play kyykkä in other Scandinavian countries as well. From my experience on Saturday, the most important part of kyykkä seemed to be to have fun. There were over 250 teams from all over Finland, with varying degrees of skill and competitiveness. Kyykkä is a traditional Finnish sport that has become popular again in recent years, especially among college students. However, anyone who paid their entrance fee could form a team. In addition to the World Championships, you can find kyykkä tournaments within companies and between groups of friends, similar to softball in the States. There are some goofy traditions that start with drinking beer at 9:00 in the morning, and continue way beyond bribing the judges. I've heard people talk about the quality of their bribes for the judges with as much (or more) pride as they have in their kyykkä game.
All students at Finnish universities have these overalls that are worn during certain occasions. Kyykkä is one of these occasions. The color of the overalls correspond to a particular field of study. For example, environmental engineers have green overalls. My neighbor is from the Netherlands, they apparently have a similar technical student overall situation. In Holland you're only allowed to wash your overalls once per year! I don't know if that is the case in Finland.

These guys gave a high quality performance on the Kyykkä documentary below. They demonstrated the importance of drinking lots of beer while throwing things.
This is a short documentary that I made of Kyykkä Day. I interviewed a few folks and filmed the game in action. Check it out!

Saariselkä, Lapland!!

2007-01-04T12:58:00.000-08:00

While Lapland occupies almost the entire northern half of Finland, it only has about 20,000 inhabitants (the entire population of Finland is 5 million), some of which are the native Sami people. It's dark most of the time in the winter, and it gets pretty cold. However, the weather was beautiful when I was there, with a very pleasant (and unseasonably warm) temperature of -7°C.
While many people visit Lapland in the winter for fashionable ski vacations, I mostly hiked around, took pictures, did some snow shoeing. Oh yeah, and I had my first conversation entirely in (broken) Finnish. I met a woman in the sauna who didn't speak English and was willing to have a conversation with very few verbs or prepositions.
The sun rose at approximately 11:30 and set at about 2:00 pm. These pictures were taken at about 1:00 pm, at the brightest time I could find! I may have seen the Northern Lights on my last day there.
While Lapland is a pretty common winter vacation spot, my Lonely Planet guide completely ignores the possibility of traveling to the north during winter and sticks with guiding travelers through the summer solstice and backpacking trips. I guess the authors find it hard to believe that some of us go there in spite of the darkness.

I went on a snow shoeing trip with some people from the Netherlands who flew up to Lapland for vacation.
This is what I looked like most of the time in Lapland with my warmest coat. I haven't had to wear it in Tampere yet, since we're also having unseasonably warm weather in Tampere. My new look is modeled after my Skype icon. Actually, this is what everyone looks like, you can't really tell us apart, once we're all bundled up!

Sotkamo!

2007-01-04T12:07:00.000-08:00

My adviser, Tuula, grew up in Sotkamo. She invited me to join her family for their New Years festivities. We drove for about six hours through Kuopio, on some pretty rural roads. Matti, Tuula's husband, kept complaining about how lame it is to drive on roads with so little snow. "We dump so much salt all over the roads that it makes almost summer-like driving conditions. We can't have summer roads in the winter!" he complained. I personally was very glad that he was driving and not me.

There was one point when we came up on a car that was driving very very slowly down a rural road. "Any idea what's wrong here?" Matti asked.

"No snow tires?" I guessed based on previous experience in Tampere a few months before.

"Oh no," Matti and Tuula pointed out that it's against the law not to have snow tires on your car. "Everyone must have snow tires." Right. I sometimes forget how diligently people in Finland follow the rules, compared to Americans.

"This driver is probably drunk," Tuula told me, matter-of-factly. "We have to be careful way out here in the middle of nowhere." Hmmm, I always thought that drunk driving illegal.

It was quite interesting to hear everyone's opinions about their hometown and its history, especially in relationship to the fast changing EU policies. Her family used to have a small farm (on the order of five cows). With the new EU subsidies, small farms became very expensive and could no longer afford to exist, leaving only a much smaller number of larger farms in Finland. Of course large farms in Finland are much much smaller than large farms in the States. None the less, it's a bummer that Tuula's family had to stop farming.
The EU subsidies have allowed the community to build a community center, where Tuula and I enjoyed the brisk night air.

Tuula's mother still lives in the house that Tuula grew up in. Not only did Tuula grow up in it, but several generations before her also grew up in this very traditional Finnish house. There's a wood burning stove in the center of the house, as well as an old wood burning cooking stove, still used by her mother.

Since they live in such a rural town, they said that they have to rely on their neighbors for help (cleaning up after huge storms, hoisting tractors out of rivers, etc.). Matti said that he's glad that Tuula's father and grandfather were so helpful in the community because it's made the neighbors more willing the help him when he needs it. Can you believe it? Intergenerational neighborlyness?! The dads did most of the fireworks. As you can see, we were not hindered by limits on our explosive supply (by the truckload of fireworks depicted below). You're allowed to set off fireworks for one twelve hour period in Finland (6pm New Years Eve to 6 am on New Years Day). People really go crazy. Though, if you look closely you can see the kids were wearing safety goggles. Safety first!Tuula taught me how to make snow bonfires. OK OK, this little snow lantern is only 20 cm high, but with some trick photography looks much more impressive.
This is a moose hunting tower. A group of folks track and find the moose, somehow convince it to come back to this tower, and then get out of the way while the person in the tower shoots it. Hunting seems to involve much less shooting that it does in the US.
Behind the house the family stores all of this weird stuff in the "museum." There are old typewriters, skis, all kinds of good stuff. No electricity though, the open window provides the light!
Thanks Tuula and Matti!!

Germany

2007-01-04T10:22:00.000-08:00

I spent most of my time in Germany in Munich at Dita's house. In the summertime, Munich is known for not only its beer, but its beer gardens. You can bring your own food and drink really good beer outside in these gardens. They aren't very popular in the winter. On Christmas Eve we visited the cemetery, like you do in Germany on Christmas Eve. It was hopping with lots of people lighting candles and decorating the graves. "Is it making you sad to be at the cemetery?" Dita asked me. She's been to the States a lot and has hosted many Americans so she knows that many Americans don't like to talk about death and related topics. Ever since Dia de los Muertos in Mexico, I've become pretty interested in the cemetery as a cultural treasure chest. As Dita lit candles on her mother's grave site, I asked if it would be alright if I took a picture with her in it. "With me on it," she said as she looked up. "Not in it," she emphasized with a laugh, providing me with some cemetery humor.

I found it soothing that it was so easy it was to talk about our relatives who have passed away, as well as the logistics of having a cemetery in the middle of such a large city. I had a lot of questions, once I realized it was OK to talk about it. Dita told that bodies are usually buried for 30 or 40 years and then removed. "After all, we don't need to have a grave site to think about our loved ones. Thirty years is enough," she pointed out. At first it seemed foreignly practical, but then I realized that we probably do the exactly the same thing in the States. We just don't talk about graves, cemeteries, or dead people, so I have no idea how long bodies stay in a grave in the States.
The entire time in Munich was full of good food. Dita is amazing in the kitchen. "Do you feel like having a mocha machiato?" she would ask. And then a few minutes later she would come out of the kitchen with two mocha machiatos. Every meal was artfully crafted. I haven't eaten so well in my whole life. I think I gained 5 kilos! This was Christmas dinner in Munich. We had duck!
On my way back to Tampere, I stayed overnight in Frankfurt and enjoyed a few museums and lots of people watching. I heard a loud, American accent say "this is such a cute square, it looks like it was modeled after Disneyland!" Oh dear.

Austria

2007-01-04T09:15:00.000-08:00

A trip to Central Europe was just the thing. I got a good dose of culture, visited museums, and though I don't speak German, I appreciated its similarities to the English language. Some of the words are very similar. In addition, the rhythm and tones were much more like English than Finnish. If I started to zone out, I could trick myself into thinking that I understood. In fact, Dita took me to a philharmonic concert in Munich, with a very entertaining conductor that liked to tell jokes between pieces. I found myself laughing in the right places without even knowing what I was laughing at. I can't do that with Finnish. This is a picture of the Christmas Market near the philharmonic concert in Munich.
In Austria I visited Vienna and Salzburg, where my father studied abroad when he was 19 years old.
I met up with Clare, another traveller from New Zealand, to crash the opera in Vienna one night. There are standing-room-only tickets that are affordable for us budget folks. Standing-room-only was an experience in itself. First you go into the "standing room" and mark your spot. Then you're ushered out of the standing room until 15 minutes before the show. Some places were accidently double marked, leading to even more people cramming themselves into a designated "standing zone," than it was intended for. In some ways it reminded me of the mini-buses in Africa. A few people got sick before intermission and had to leave. The man behind me kept encroaching onto the very place on the floor upon which my feet were placed. In spite of the challenges, Clare and I were determined to see the whole show (Romeo and Juliet) performed in French. It's a beautiful opera house. When I started feeling faint, I would picture Beethoven and Strauss conducting their orchestras hundred of years ago.

Bikes are a big deal all over Europe, Austria is no exception. This photo was taken from the area of Vienna that is full of museums. I went to an interactive music museum that reminded me of high school physics class, but also had some nice exhibits on famous composers who were born or worked in Vienna. I saw a Picasso exhibit, along with Andy Warhol's polaroid reproductions of famous people, at the Albertina.

As a general rule, I spend a lot of my tourist time (and free time in general), walking around and soaking up the culture. These rent-a-bikes worked sort of like the lockers at the airport. They're a good idea and they have excellent baskets on their handlebars.

David recommended this place that serves the best schnitzel he's ever had. It was the best schnitzel I ever had too!

Before (not after)

2006-12-16T10:35:00.000-08:00

I generally write about places after I’ve seen them, which displays an entirely different image than I had before I left. It’s also a little boxed-up and formulaic for an entire year of adventures.

I’m going to Germany and Austria tomorrow. I’m expecting to see lots of Christmas Trees, Santa Clauses, Beer, and some sort of raw meat that my sister told me about. I’m visiting Dita (and hopefully some more of my German Family) for Christmas, in Munich. Dita is Uncle Gene’s niece; she is from my Dad’s generation. Dita is something like my second-cousin-once-removed-in-law. My dad studied abroad in Austria when he was in college, and knows the German Family pretty well. While neither Margie nor Gene is still with us, I always think of them around Christmas time. Since I can't be with my imediate family, I can't think of a better place to be on Christmas.

It will be cold, but not colder than Finland. I’m hoping for snow, but I might not get it. I’ll do some tourist activities, but I’m interested in the people who I’ll meet. Last week someone told me he tried to say “entschuldigung” to somebody in Germany. He was corrected with what he felt was a slightly irritated, guttural, throat-clearing, impossible-to-repeat pronunciation. While he was offended, I thought it was hilarious and I hope someone does that to me! I might have to spend some time in coffee shops speaking very bad German. I don’t speak any German right now, so I’ll have to memorize a few phrases before tomorrow.

Eurajoki

2006-12-10T13:40:00.000-08:00

Minna and Mika live in a little village just outside of Rauma. We all toured around the southern west coast of Finland, ate reindeer, and reviewed my lab protocols this weekend. Minna is serious about being a good adviser (we worked hard!). She and Mika are also serious about showing me the great things in Finland!

Old town Rauma's wooden buildings are filled with a quaint hustle and bustle of Christmas shoppers and coffee shops. It's known for its colorful wooden architecture. It's now a World Heritage Site and attracts visitors from far away places.

There's a new nuclear power plant being constructed in Eurajoki. The elaborate visitors' center had a number of hands-on energy and physics demonstrations, including a magic elevator that takes you down to the spent fuel storage wells (to store the spent uranium while its radioactivity decays for 2000 years). I mean, it was imaginary, but I still felt butterflies in my stomach as we pretended to descend hundreds of meters. Even though many of exhibits were geared toward children, Minna and I still learned a lot!

Turkish Night

2006-12-10T13:39:00.000-08:00

My housemate, Pinar, is Turkish. As it turns out the Turkish folks have really good food and are excellent dancers. She and a bunch of other Turkish organizers threw a Turkish gathering in Building B. There are four buildings, A, B, C, and D. Each building has approximately 12 stories of people inhabiting it. There is one social recreation room for all four buildings, which happens to be in Building B. None of us have living rooms. I guess whoever was responsible for the construction of this student space did not value social space as much as me, or the Turkish folks. On top of having only one social area, it's always locked. Pinar asked if we could open it last Friday night to have a cultural event because she was interested in making food, playing Turkish music, and spreading Turkish cheer throughout Mikontalo (the four building housing complex). The building manager said "NO!" There are still some things that I don't understand here.

In spite of being harshly rejected by the building manager, the Turks realized that, even though the actual rec room was closed, the corridor outside the rec room was completely available for Turkish Night festivities. And having the event in the corridor included people who would have otherwise had a Turkless evening on their way to do their laundry or play racquetball. I made an effort to recruit these passersby, partly in protest of the building manager's antisocial behavior, but partly because the corridor was kind of a fun place to have Turkish Night.

These are two of Pinar's close friends, as well as some of the main organizers and cooks for the event.

Independence Day

2006-12-10T13:22:00.000-08:00

Students march in the student parade, sporting hats that label them as particular majors at their universities.
These are a few shots of the Independence Day President's Ball. All of the famous people in Finland come and participate. I wasn't there, but my friend Audrey used my camera to take pictures of the television while we watched it on TV.

Pikkujoulu

2006-12-10T13:14:00.000-08:00

We are nearing the end of Pikkujoulu season. Pikkujoulu parties are preChristmas parties, often associated with an organization, like work or your soccer team. During Pikkujoulu season there are commonly very drunk people found in slightly unusual places, such as hopping onto the train in the middle of a Monday afternoon, or in the interpretation center of the nuclear power plant. "Oh, there must have been a Pikkujoulu that just finished," everyone says. And then we all act like it's normal to be drunk in these unusual places.These are the pictures of my lab's Pikkujoulu party. As you may have guessed by now, my lab is different than the rest of Finland. This is Sannamari, Sakari, and Tea presenting their new invention that they constructed from materials found in laboratories and offices around the building. I think it was a multiple input device, but I can't remember what it was inputting to. Anyway, we had a Pikkujoulu science project contest at our Pikkujoulu.
Jaakko (standing up in black) was stuck with playing Santa, an important and ubiquitously unwanted position at Pikkujoulu parties. Everyone brought a gift that was originally supposed to cost less than two euros. But then people complained that you can't actually purchase anything in Finland for less than two euros. I jokingly pointed out that you could buy a stick of gum. But someone else countered with "well, it better be a cheap stick of gum," which is almost true here. So we upped it to five euros. It was still kind of hard to get something that was not a potato or a bottle of coca-cola.But we had a lot of fun, that's for sure!

I'm a November Survivor

2006-12-10T10:08:00.000-08:00

It’s dark, the super reflective-snow-system has melted, and it gets way worse than this! That was the problem with November. I was dramatically confused as to whether I should stay awake or go to sleep. The darkness isn’t too much worse than Seattle’s darkness, but it is detectably worse than Seattle’s darkness. The shortest day of the year will be five hours and 20 minutes long. Until a certain point in November, every-day uncertainties in my research seemed like showstoppers. Homework assignments felt like they were taking over my life. But I survived. Here’s how:

After some very intense exercises on staying positive, lots of gmail chats and Skype sessions (Thanks to all of you who participated), November turned around. I had my first sampling day this month at a farm on the outskirts of Tampere. Outi (one of my colleagues at work) and I bravely faced the embarrassment that many scientists must face. We gathered feces to test our primers.

It was gross. Even the farmers laughed at us. We laughed too. But we got our first samples! We have millions of sampling days ahead of us, but the important thing is: we got started! If it’s possible in November, it’s possible anytime!

…and: I voted in November. Thanks to Yolanda, Dan, and a support team of Environmental Health alumni and graduate students, I received my ballot and did what I (and Yolanda and Dan) could in the election. The Finns are weary and still worry about Mr. Bush. Yes, he’s still there, but congress does have a lot of power, I try to explain. I think things will improve.

Other November accomplishments and happenings:

I’m now a regular at the Finnish salsa dancing school that Outi introduced me to. I’m learning a lot of words in Finnish like up, down, around, and left, two, three, four, right, two, three, four. And now with music...

Some of those same words also fit into my engineering vocabulary. Somewhat related to salsa, or at least dance, Outi and I saw the Estonian National Ballet perform Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. The performance was truly amazing. Apparently the plot of Swan Lake can change slightly from performing institution to performing institution. The director’s comments in the program emphasized the importance of allowing beauty to stand up against the wrong and the cruel, and that the past is not as important as the present. However, I thought it was a bummer that the young prince Siegfried was either dead or very morbidly distraught by his decision to escape from his real-world responsibilities and live in his beautiful, imaginary dream world, as the curtains fell and the show ended. Perhaps he could have benefited from a brief thought into either the past or the future. Oh well. It was a beautiful performance. May Prince Siegfried rest in peace… and beauty.

Audrey and Lea officially introduced me to Finnish summer cottage culture, also in November. The sauna was very very close to 100°C. For those of you who aren’t experts on the Celsius scale, that is the temperature at which water boils. In case any of you are thinking about coming to Finland, I wrote up a little sauna instruction list, so you can start out on the right foot in the Finnish sauna:

Go inside the very hot sauna

If you feel like you can’t breathe, cover your face with your hand—it’ll pass.

Stay there for 15-45 minutes chatting (through your hand if it’s over your face)

there are special conversations in the sauna that happen nowhere else

Leave the sauna and get cold

Option 1—sit outside
Option 2—jump in the icy lake (Summer cottages are often on lakes, so it shouldn’t be difficult to find a lake)
Option 3—dive into the snow (well, roll around in the snow until you’re freezing cold again. Don’t dive head first.)

Go back to 1 and repeat 1-3 until you’re almost unconscious (2-3 times)

I prefer to end on 2, but you can end on 3, if you’re into being cold.

Cook sausage
Eat sausage
Don’t re-enter sauna after eating: the order is important there
Drink beer throughout the process.

If you feel like bringing your beer inside the sauna, it’s allowed, but you’ll probably only do it once. 100°C beer isn’t good. In fact, if it’s in a can (often the case in Finland), the metal may actually burn you. Be careful.

Next week is a busy week of well water, farm, and septic sampling before heading off to Germany and Austria for the holidays. Have a wonderful break, and I’ll see you guys in the sauna!

Thankful in Helsinki

2006-11-29T08:45:00.000-08:00

I realized a few weeks ago that I hadn’t left Tampere since I got here. Tampere is a lovely place and there’s no reason to leave… except that I’m a bit of a traveler by nature. I’m in a country with affordable trains and busses that can get me anywhere. I can even get affordable airline tickets that make travel within Europe almost mandatory. And, I was brought here by a fellowship that actually wants its recipients to travel and learn about Scandinavia. I was frightened by my stationary realization. I promptly left.

Luckily Audrey and Lea brought me to Lea’s summer cottage in Mouhijärvi, right around then. It was enough out of Tampere to remind me of the outside world. There was lots of travel talk at the cottage since Lea takes pride in her travels to 70, count ‘um, 70 countries. I ate reindeer and we roasted sausage on the fireplace! This is the local polar bear (from back when we used to have snow).

Last weekend I was very thankful to be in Helsinki eating turkey and telling stories with a collection of Finns and Americans. There’s a group of Fulbrighters there that talk about things like the role of feminism in Finnish translated English literature, complicated by the fact that the Finnish language does not specify gender, other than by context. Someone had just gotten back from a conference in Morocco, which reminded me that life isn’t always easy, but made me want to go there. Paula and I talked a lot about her dissertation topic, which was very hard for me to understand. It will include the role of imagination in the architectural experience. I learned that architechture is much more difficult than engineering. It was fun (and educational) to hang out with an architect in such a designer city like Helsinki. The city glistens with very stylish and classic designs… of all types of things, from teacups to skyscrapers, that had originated from Finnish designers.

Proof that I'm here:

If we must have security cameras, this is the way to do it!

Science, Art, and Leisure

2006-11-11T12:19:00.000-08:00

I met with Minna on Wednesday to introduce her to my project and learn what she does in Rauma, in Western Finland (where the sea freezes and you can actually skate on it). Hopefully we'll work together. She'll probably do some advising with the microbial source tracking techniques. Minna introduced me to Audrey, another American... here in Tampere! We happened to have a lot in common, but even if we hadn't, we were both so excited to find another American that we still would have talked for at least four hours last night! Minna, Mika, Audrey and I visited the Art Museum, and many other tourist destinations around Tampere today.

These are views from the Space-Needle-equivalent in Tampere. There is also an equivalent non-enthusiasm among locals for going up Tampere's observation tower. I've heard several people brag that they've never been to top of the tower. I thought it was a nice view and it helped with my sense of direction challenges. I might have to go up again when the city is completely covered in snow. Unlike Seattle, Tampere changes quite a bit, depending on the season. The frozen lakes change into skiing and skating grounds. No more boats.

Just for the record: I never went up the Space Needle during the three years that I lived in Seattle.

Snowy November

2006-11-05T10:08:00.000-08:00

White… HALLOWEEN!

2006-11-01T10:01:00.000-08:00

Challenging.

IT was challenging.

Walking home from work, was challenging.

Through my eyes, it was snowing on Halloween. Nobody else saw it like that. Don’t even joke about that… orange and black, candy-eating holiday around here.

“You know, it originated from the pagan holiday to celebrate the dead, just like Día de los Muertos in Latin America. Except in the States, we don’t like to talk about dead people, so we dress up in costumes and eat candy instead.” I tried to explain, but it didn’t come out sounding very noble.

“We don’t celebrate Halloween in Finland. Some stores have decorations out, but it’s not a Finnish holiday.”

“Don’t you guys celebrate All Saints Day in Finland? It’s related.”

“Oh yeah, when is that again, was it last Saturday?”

No! It’s this coming Saturday. And I want to go to the cemetery and light candles and celebrate dead people, like a genuine Finnish person! My image of Finnish people parading themselves to the cemetary and partaking in ceremonial procedures on All Saint’s Day... was false.

In my Finnish class today, my instructor spent about 20 minutes telling us about the midsummer festival that happens in June. It sounded like a lot of fun. There are bonfires and music and everybody’s happy, and energetic. Though I realized this holiday of which she speaks is in June. We are in November. Alas, June is a long way off. I’m worried I might forget these new keskikesän juhla vocabulary words by June. I raise my hand (not necessarily culturally acceptable in Finland, in general we don’t ask questions in class).

“Isn't there another holiday coming up on Saturday? What happens on that holiday?” I was thinking I could learn some new vocabulary words that I could actually use. And maybe if I tried to bring it up in Finnish instead of in English, people would tell that they do something exciting on All Saints Day.

My Finnish instructor thinks for a moment and starts to say no, sorry, we do not have a holiday on Saturday. But then she remembers about All Saint’s Day. “Oh yeah, that holiday. We don’t really do anything. I think the stores are closed.” And then she moved on to practicing the numbers, sort of irritated that I disrupted the flow of things. §

Today is the day after Halloween and we are covered in snow. Even though I only live about three blocks from the University, I got lost on my way home yesterday. I got pretty cold, but I figured out where I was before my ears froze (that really happened to my friend Eija). Everything looks completely different when it’s covered in snow. And it’s not just covered, there’s at least a foot of snow! On Halloween!

My cousin Abby, who was born shortly after I left for Finland decided to go with a lobster costume this Halloween. That's the spirit!

No matter what they say, HAPPY ALL SAINT’S DAY on Saturday!

Footnote:
§ We practiced the numbers in Finnish class by telling each other our age. I’m so old that my partner couldn’t count that high yet. I had to teach him how to say 30.

Tampere at Night

2006-10-28T04:09:00.000-07:00

Source Tracking is Hot!

2006-10-27T05:20:00.000-07:00

It must have been good enough, because it convinced them to scrape 2500 euros off of wherever they could scrape it from. “But we need some sexy language,” my adviser informs me. “For scientists, this is good, but non-scientists need to know why microbial source tracking is sexy.” Huh? Sexy?

I had a meeting with my advisers on Thursday where I presented the basics of microbial source tracking (MST) and my proposed study design. It was a good idea to have this meeting because I’ve been doing A LOT of learning, A LOT of literature reviewing, and A LOT of meeting with people who know more than me on such topics as MST and molecular tools. Molecular tools are beginning to govern the environmental engineering field. But the techniques are vast and the methods are complicated. For example, you can be an expert in environmental engineering and know very little about MST.

If you don’t want to read the long winded version, I’ll skip to the punch-line. MST is hot because:

It’s fast! It can prevent people from getting sick, or even dieing of waterborne diseases, by letting them know their water is contaminated much quicker than ever before.
It’s informative! In addition to finding out that the water is contaminated, we may be able to find out who is responsible and how big of a risk it is.
The technology is getting easier and quicker and will be automatable for long term monitoring in places like drinking water treatment plants or swimming beaches.
The same protocols may be applicable from Lilongwe to Santiago, that’s one of the things I’m testing (though not those two particular locations).

If you would like to learn some new cocktail party words and some science, keep on reading.

I may have read more papers during my first month in Tampere than I read for my entire thesis. There’s nothing to show it-- no data, no concrete scientific conclusions, no eloquently crafted proposals-- unless I present what I’ve learned to someone else. Thus the adviser meeting.

Tuula is right. Microbial Source Tracking is sexy. If our drinking or swimming water is contaminated, we’ve never been able to tell who is responsible, what type of animal the contamination came from, or where we need to focus our management efforts. With microbial source tracking, this is all possible. One of the biggest challenges of living with so many people on earth is keeping human and animal waste separate from drinking water. It’s an enormous industry for lucky people who have municipalities with drinking and wastewater infrastructure. However, it’s an enormous risk for many rural areas, particularly in less developed nations, that do not have this infrastructure.

Historically, we have monitored water contamination by growing indicator organisms (E. coli, fecal coliform, Enterococci, etc.) from drinking water samples. This tells us if the water is contaminated. It does not tell us what to do about it or where the contamination came from. The options have been either to guess where the contamination came from, or to post signs warning people not to swim if contaminant levels are high. Monitoring indicator organisms is relatively easy, but takes two days (of potentially exposing swimmers to waterborne pathogens) to get the results.

The basic concept of MST is to match microbes from a polluted site to their animal or human hosts. To understand MST, you have to know that microbes are everywhere, on your hands, in your mouth, in the air, on surfaces, and most importantly all over your digestive tract. Most of them don’t cause us problems, and many of them help us. MST capitalizes on microbes to trace contamination to its source. Matching genotypic or phenotypic microbial profiles suggests a link between the origin (septic tank) and contamination site (reservoir or swimming beach). It’s important in watershed management and risk assessment. Microbial source tracking has the potential to be fast. It can also be automated for utilities, once we work out the kinks. We’ll know within a few hours if our water is contaminated and if we should contain the septic tank across the street or the upstream factory farm.

In my study on Finnish well water, I’ll be looking for either cow or human fecal contamination (or both). I’ll use Bacteroides, a type of bacteria found in human and animal digestive systems. Bacteroides is a good MST indicator because:

it cannot grow in the presence of oxygen (it cannot grow in the environment, only in digestive systems)
it is abundant in human and animal digestive tracts
it only grows in rumen, digestive tracts, and body cavities (not on rocks, on bugs, in the soil, etc.—if it’s in the environment, it came from something with a digestive tract)
its DNA varies consistently, depending on the host (animal) in which it resides

I’m using PCR to test for the presence of a DNA sequence in Bacteroides. PCR is a way of amplifying DNA sequences to concentrations that are high enough to visualize using agarose gel electrophoresis. From reading papers on other MST projects, I’ve found some regions of Bacteroides DNA that are found only in humans, and some other regions that are found only in cows. These are the regions that I will amplify.

If the cow specific regions amplify, dairy farms are a likely source. If the human regions amplify, local septic tanks are a likely source. If nothing amplifies, either the well is not contaminated or there’s some other source besides cows or humans (I’ll pick wells that do not have any other likely sources, but nothing is ever 100% certain in science).

Proud to be Tamperelainen

2006-10-22T09:00:00.000-07:00

Guess what! I'm already tamperelainen! I was never Quiteňa, Borboneňa, or even Mexicana, after living there for months. I wasn't even always a Seattleite after living in Seattle for three years. Occasionally people in Seattle would get on my case for being a Californian and contaminating the Seattle area with my... Californianess. However, my Finnish professor told me that you become tamperelainen, immediately after you move to Tampere. For someone who's only ever truly been Californian, it's very liberating.

Chains!

2006-10-21T06:24:00.000-07:00

We were talking about traveling to different places in Finland. Kirsi, who’s teaching me everything I need to know about molecular techniques, and her husband are planning to head to her folks' house this weekend. Her parents live in a little village, 600 km north of Tampere.

“If we’re lucky, we’ll get there by midnight on Friday,” she said.

“Yeah, but it depends on the weather too,” Katariina chimed in. She was pointing out that it might take even longer. Apparently Kirsi’s village has already had one snow storm this year, even though it’s only the beginning of October.

So, I was thinking about Kirsi, and her trip through snowy terrain and… yikes! Driving in the snow? “So will you bring chains?” I asked. You know, then if it doesn’t snow, she wouldn’t have to put them on; if it does snow, she could just pull right over to the side of the road and put them on… piece a cake.

Katariina almost died laughing. “Chains! Can you imagine!” And then she laughed a whole lot more. “We’re covered in snow for at least five months per year.”

I realized I had said something wrong. But the Southern California part of my brain couldn’t figure out what it was.

“We don’t use chains in Finland, Laura. We use snow tires here.”

Oooooh yeah, I’ve heard of snow tires before. I’ve never used them, but my friends Patrick and Jenny talked about putting them on their car one winter.

Shoot, I’ve never even used chains before. Boy, it’s gonna be an interesting winter for me.

“Chains, ha!”

Sieni Mushrooms?

2006-10-21T06:21:00.000-07:00

It started with a conversation at lunch today. Several of us from my department eat lunch together. We talk about cultural differences, stuff that happens in Finland, UFOs, and sometimes they come up with things for me do. Anna asked if I liked orienteering... as if I were familiar with orienteering, had tried it a bunch, and then decided if I liked it or not. I do vaguely remember orienteering at Girl-scout camp when I was ten. I think it mostly involved practicing inside a lodge. Maybe the next day, after we got some experience, we were allowed to try it outdoors. It was all very slow: following directions, writing down coordinates. It was very boring.

"I've never tried it," I told her. It was almost the truth. There were six of us at the table. As it turned out, all five (other than me) had been on fairly extensive orienteering expeditions... in the actual forest. Most people didn't like it, or claimed to be bad at it.

"My sense of direction is so bad that I get lost even with a map and a compass." or "I used to like it, until I missed a whole lake and had to find my way home without it." Apparently, the Finns learn to orienteer as part of their upbringing. It seemed kind of like Americans learning to play soccer or softball. Some of us are good at it, some of us aren't, but we all know the basics.

Anna likes it. And she invited me to join her orienteering team. I didn't realize it was a competitive sport... with teams. "Do you like to run?" she asked. Run? While orienteering?

There were three of us on the 4km team (Anna, Ari, and me), and one person was her own one-man 3km team. We drove for about 30 minutes to the starting point. You see, orienteering courses have to be in a different location every week because those darn orienteerers learn their way around the forest quickly.

Ari lent me a compass. That was key. The other key was having Ari and Anna on my team. I actually have a poor sense of direction. When we first pulled into the parking lot (the starting point), I couldn't help but notice the outfits on the other competitors... oh the outfits! People really get into this. There was a variety of attire, but the hardest core people were wearing... superhero-like costumes: bright blue tights, a red shirt with a fluorescent green vest over it, and plastic leg warmers (apparently to keep their legs dry when crossing lakes!). They were dressed... like Night Captain, but brighter. We were often in the middle of the forest (away from all trails), looking at our compasses and maps, and then, out of nowhere, a brightly colored bundle of energy would come plowing through, leaping over tree stumps, flying through the air. We had to be careful to keep out of their way. The forest outside of Tampere is like the Olympic National Forest in some ways. There was about six inches of moss covering the ground and growing on trees. Running through it required agility. I only fell down once, but I had a few other close calls. Our team was of moderate competitiveness level, compared to the other teams. We ran, and we took it seriously, but once in a while someone would stop and say something like "oh hey, look at this mushroom. What kind of a mushroom is it? How to you say mushroom in English?" And then we'd start running again.

I was surprized how fun it was. You don't really notice that you're running because you're too busy looking for rocks, mounds, valleys, and other hints on the map. It was a good way to see the forest... as long we you didn't mind the periodic superheros leaping by. I heard that we had it easy this week. Sometime you have to climb trees and cross rivers!

We finished the 4km course in one hour, nine minutes, and 55 seconds. It was an all-time record for me! I'm totally doing it every week!

Tampere!

2006-10-21T06:20:00.001-07:00

This is International Student Housing, where I live. It's a fairly modular building (inside and out), and it's concrete blockish nature takes some adjusting at first. The pink stripes across the front crack me up! Finland is not afraid of the color pink!

Tampere! It's Finland's third largest city, and its 200,000 inhabitants feel that they live in the city (not a suburban town, but an honest city). People continually tell me about the cultural differences between Finnish cities and rural areas. Once I asked some co-workers how to say "excuse me," in Finnish. One of them asked if I wanted to say it in the country or in the city.

"In the country you can just bump into somebody and then keep on walking. You don't need to say excuse me." Then he chuckled, and everyone else argued with him.

"Why do you always say things like that? I always say excuse me if I bump into someone."

So it might be debatable, but most people tend to agree that city folk are more outgoing. Though it seems small to me, Tampere has a central downtown area with tall buildings, theatres, clubs, two universities, lots of shops, a soccer team, and a famous ice hockey hall. It even has a Fringe Festival in November, regularly scheduled Finnish music shows, and it's (ironically) a bit of an afro-cuban salsa dancing hub. Compared to my hometown (of 300,000 people that barely makes the U.S. map), there's a lot to do in Tampere.

I'm working on a well water contamination project at the Tampere University of Technology (TUT). My adviser and one other student have been characterizing the groundwater flow, and measuring chemical and microbial indicators of contamination from surrounding farms and septic tanks for the past year. I've officially joined the project, and I'm planning to use microbial source tracking methods to show the a link between the source of the contaminants and the wells. My adviser, the faculty in my institute, and the other students and researchers have been incredibly supportive both academically and in getting me moved in. People have lent me curtains, blankets, dishes, a bike, and much good advice on getting started as a student at TUT and one of the 200,000 residents of Tampere.

So, even though I accidentally erased my hard drive installing Windows XP last night, I feel pretty settled into my apartment with (post Windows XP installation) functioning Internet access, curtains, bed sheets, dishes... avocado green vinyl flooring-- everything I need.

This is the bike that one of my co-workers has let me borrow for the year. I can't wait to cruise around the endless bike trails between Tampere and Hervanta. There's only one gear working right now, but one gear is all I really need.

These are the bikes of the people that live in my building. I noticed the nice shelter to protect them from the weather, but what's even more noticeable is that many of these bikes have no locks!