The Christmas of the Finnish technology students..

..is starting to show signs of life. The annual event of 1st of May is the grande finale for this. However, it is more a rule than an exception to start the festivities at least a week beforehand. The events are plentiful among our student guilds and the students themselves are active in party-having regard.

What can I say.. the Sun is (again) starting to warm us up and the snows have just melted, colours of the nature emerge and people start to smile. It's a good time to get the grill from the closet and invite your friends to have some good time in a weird place, e.g. a roof of a technology students' campus dorm. It is a perfect place to let the world know of your music (with the heavy-duty music machinery you brought along), your energy, inviting all the bypassers to join the fun. Or then we might have a mega-picnic in the backyard of our school's main building (the backyard is quite big and green :) ) - more than 1000 people having good time.

For me 1st of May festivities are still on hold partially. What I am glad about is the fact I probably will be able to do my master's thesis at work - little by little figuring out how it's going to be while at the same time dealing with the bureaucracies of this process. It is also relaxing to know the thesis subject is doable and will not be some boring thingy as it many times can be. I'm eager to kick it off (properly after festivities ;) ).

The last Thursday there was more than 2000 students in a student event, whose purpose is to collect stamps from various bars in certain locations (luckily the area was quite near to where I live) to earn their levels. There are four levels: appro, cum laude, laudatur and doctor. One has to do them in order and cannot be acquired before the lower level is obtained. So it takes at least four years to get the highest rank. I got it last year so this year I only hanged around, although the amount of alcohol consumed was not substantially different than in the last years. I got to work on Friday in a good shape though and was productive. I don't know why but it seems I am quite energetic on the day-after...

On Friday Silja was supposed to return from China. Unfortunately the fucking volcano erupted in Iceland thus trapping Silja to Moscow. She will miss today's student party, an annual student party for older technology students - drinking, singing, eating, bad humour and beautiful people. So that's what is going on today for me. Volcanos suck!

Tomorrow it is time to go for an annual trip to Estonia to fetch some cheap booze for the upcoming "trials". It will eat one day out of my work week but I was able to have it as unpaid leave. Which was nice.

I hope to hear from all of you still reading this blog :). That's not much I guess :P

Your Truly
Junnu (You Feng)