Mane The Mean or Ville Vallgren by A.
Edelfelt

I am slightly dyslexic. Please, try to tolerate some misspellings.
The order of notes is from newer to older. Within a note, the order is the opposite.

See the the index.

Manen elämää/The life of Mane a.k.a Matti Kinnunen

One month to go until Christmas. We already had 33 cm of snow here in Helsinki. I have many gifts, including the one of writing nonsense. Today was the second and last day of the systemic thinking course. I will miss the free breakfast, but not the course. The subject matter was more or less interesting, but the course material and its presentation was not what I had expected. I still cannot really get excited about system design process standards . First of all, I do not really believe in pre-defined process, even if they are tailorable. Second, I find the results of standards, or any comittee work, dubious. When doing state-of-the-art system design, one cannot start by making compromises. One must make enough compromises later on anyway. Furthermore, if someone does not respects the professional skills of somebody else, referring to set of standards does not make any difference. I do believe only in professional skills and passionate attitude towards systems architecting. Nothing less is enough.

Otherwise the day was, well, ordinary, but I have realized that ordinary days, not doing revolutions etc, are sometimes quite necessary. I have understood that I do have some limits, that my energy does exhaust after too much whatever. But I still think that my old motto "be always and in everything totally unreasonable" is good. When one tries to do too much everything, the result is more or less good balance. Or something like that.

Tomorrow I will leave for Venice for 6 days and will most likely be off-line.

Tuesday, 2004-11-23

Updates in the travel pages. Thanks to Lavonardo for the link to the map generator.

I have been extremely tired during the last few days. It seems that getting older takes its toll (the other explanation is that I just keep on going faster, not learning from past at all). Life has been quite normal (ordinary days ...), but still fun. Yesterday, after rather normal, uneventfull, day at work, we (me and S) had dinner in the Stockmann's Kitchen. They serve decent woks with noodles there and the portions are big enough for two. We bought some lamps and small stuff, but I refused to go to the food department. The problem with it is the extreme amount of diverse delicacies they sell and I cannot leave the place without having spent some 50 euros. So, I avoid it and shop in Siwa or other safe places. I also applied and got a new passport, which is valid only until 31st of December. I need this temporary passport because I will visit Italy (the yearly Venice-trip) and my ordinary passport is in the US-embassy. It is much easier to get two passports than to get the US-embassy to make any exceptions to its processes. Funny. Political comments in clothing. Also funny.

Systemic thinking

It is time for the yearly systems engineering course in the office. This time the course is about systemic thinking (the fifth discipline etc). Nothing special, rather slow pace and quite trivial issues, but not the worst way of killing time. The best thing today was one note an Indian guy made. He told that in India, as part of his (religious) upbringing he as a small kid learned to think about whole issues, to see the "big picture". Later, in school, as part of science studies he was then taught to split problems in parts. He said that splitting to parts was for him much harder. This experience is quite opposite to my experiences as child. Could it be that there is really a cultural/religious propensity to systemic thinking in India? If it is so, I think I will move to India after MIT! If nothing prevents me.

New books

Part of the course:

The Fifth discipline by Peter Senge
The fifth discipline revisited by Robert Flood
The fifth discipline fieldbook by Senge and others

which I have not had time or energy to read. But I am sure they will be useful in MIT. Savings.

Einstein was stealing from Poincaré?

S pointed out this story, which claims that Einstein did not invent special relativity by himself. I do not know, and did not read the story to carefully, but do me favour by reading it and telling me what you think. I will then discuss it more. I will check what the book "Einstein in Berlin" has to say about this. I should have read it long ago already.

MIT preparations

I have now got my email address at MIT. It is kinnunen@mit.edu. Other issues proceed too. I have some proposals for my new place to live, I have decided to buy an Apple laptop (but not the model, though). Next things are to buy flight tickets, go the interview in the embassy, and pack.

Nodding index

I have developed an empirical way of determining how well women know each other: the nodding index. It works as follows. The more women nod add each other, the worse they know each other. If they are nodding after every speech act, they have just met. This method works always. But now I have a task for you: what is the corresponding index for men? Send your ideas by email and I will publish them (if you grant me permission to do so).

Sunday, 2004-11-21

Been busy an off-line. On Friday, after not-so-productive day at the office, we had nice Talent SIG in several pubs in the centre. On Saturday, having a cup of coffee with S in some nice café, then travelling to Tampere to meet my brother and mother. Brother went to have drinks with his mates, mother went to theather, I watched TV. Easy, bit lonely, but I was too tired to do anything at it. Today, just idling at my mother's place, my aunt Maija came over with her spouse Eero. Later, I finally filled in all the forms for the US-visa application. More tomorrow. Time to retire to the bed now.

Thursday, 2004-11-18

Not so ordinary day today. Still, of course there was the normal commuting etc, but my efforts to be productive were for once succesfull - what a great feeling. So, I managed to write something at work! In the evening, Petri G and Tuula V paid a visit. We had some antipasti and risotto, and lively discussion to go with. Not a bad way to spend evening at all. Nowadays, one meets friends too seldom.

Comment on Powell

Check this story about Powell in Guardian. Here is a short quote:

A system of bureaucratic fear and one-party allegiance is being created in this strange soviet Washington. Only loyalists are rewarded. Rice stands as the model. One can never be too loyal. And the loyalists compete to outdo each other. Dissonant information is seen as motivated to injure the president, disloyalty bordering on treason. Success is defined as support for the political line; failure perceived as departure from the line. An atmosphere of personal vendetta and an incentive system for suppressing realities prevails. This is not an administration; it does not administer - it is a regime.

It is really a worrying development. I will follow it and try to come up with some original analysis. Stay tuned!

A (conspiracy) theory

The facts are these. USA uses more oil than it produces. China uses more oil it produces. Russia uses less oil than it produces. USA uses more money it produces. China uses less money than it produces. China lends the rest of money to USA. Now, the theory goes as follows. USA must secure its dominance on Middle-East oil, but not to secure enough oil for itself - the Middle-East countries would sell enough oil to USA anyway (this far I have copied this from one article in Le Monde Diplomatiqu published before the current war in Iraq). The real reason for USA to secure domination of Middle-East oil is to have something with which to prevent China from using its financial dominance to blackmail USA. This is the only and true reason for the current war. The only problem is that Russia might start selling some of its oil to China, but as we know Russia has decided to build the oil pipe via its own territory to the Pacific, not via China (which would have been shorter way). This would also, maybe, explain why C. Rice is more suitable state secretary than Powell was. She is an expert in Russian affairs.

If my theory is true, then the role of Europe in this new Great Game is bit fuzzy at the moment. I think that some clever, peacefull but strong diplomacy would be necessary. There must be some space for negotiation in this great geopolitical game. Anyway, by developing alternative source of energy and more efficient ways of using energy Europe could secure an advantage after this great game. The oil will run out someday...

Another thing is, that at least I see the current US and Chinese administrations getting closer to each other all the time. The values their actions express are so close to each other. I would not be at all surprised if their relations would get significantly warmer in the near future (despite the facade of the routine arguing about "human rights" and Taiwan, which are just smoke screen).

But this all is just another (conspiracy) theory...

Wednesday, 2004-11-17

Again another rather ordinary day, second in a row. I am getting bored already. I need more stimulation. But now it was just: commuting, trying to be productive, failing miserably, commuting, spending the evening at home with S. The last thing is never ordinary, actually, nor boring, but quite often really full of surprises.

In the evening I filled in the US-visa application, which is quite a tricky set of forms to fill in. They want to know at this what address I will stay in US. But I do not know that at the moment. Maybe I will use the address of Mirja, but giving the name of Milton. Another form asks me to list all countries I have entered during the last 10 years and even give the years per each country. The form provides some 3 square centimeters for this information. Filling in all my 25-30 countries in that space will require some microfilm-type scripting. Then I have to name two persons who can confirm that all I have written is the truth, etc. Next thing is to find some photoshop, which is able to take passport photos of correct size. The machines at the railwaystation are not suitable.

How to avoid jetlag

I have now invented a way to avoid jetlag. It is simple: just travel long enough and do not sleep while travelling. Or, if you cannot travel for days, just do not sleep for the last few days before travelling. This way you do not have any symptoms of jetlag. There is one small drawback, though: you may be rather tired. At least, you will not have any problems sleeping.

On security and neuroticism

Consider the following examples. At the Sao Paolo airport, at each counter, behind the cashier, there was another persons making a copy of the transaction to a PDA. In JFK-airport bus, the busdriver does not sell tickets. Instead, at each stop there is a dedicated person selling tickets with a portable computer terminal. At the last stop, before leaving the airport area for the city, another conductor enters the bus, checks that every passanger has an appropriate ticket and (manually, with pen on paper) signs a paper, which presumably states the number of passangers and that each of them has tickets. The driver keeps this paper.

Of course, there may be other other reasons for these things, but I would interprete them as symptoms of lacking trust. The airport cafeteria does not trust the cashier. The bus company does not trust the busdriver nor the ticket sellers.

The problem here is that when the level of trust in a society goes down, the level of checking must go up. This of course makes the society both less efficient and less fun place to live in. Furthermore, once trust (= belief that others are honest) disappears to a certain degree, it becomes natural to cheat. Namely, if one knows, that most others are not honest, then (at least in business) it is rational behaviour not to be honest. This is simply because being honest is more expensive than cheating and thus detrimental to competitiveness. Of course, wide-spread dishonesty is not good and it is for this simple reason that non-trusting societies start to become neurotic. As they cannot trust in one check, they must implement several. If you do not believe this, go to e.g. China, Brazil, or USA, and check how many times they will check your passport and boarding pass before letting you in the airliner. Sometimes they check all your document every 20 meters, even in closed corridors.

Of course, this analysis is not new. It is basicly what Woody Allen has been explaining for decades. Or what you can find in some textbooks of sociology. But for me this was a new line of thought, and I am rather proud of it, be it justified or not.

Another note: do you remember the Stanford prison experiment, in which one group of students played prisoners and the other guards. Things got nasty very soon: the guards got rather sadistic and prisoners suffered. Anyway, it seems that this behaviour is really built-in humans. Look closely, and you can see it almost anywhere. Definitely, you see it in some custom officers, who are harsher than justified and certainly enjoying excercising their, fortunately, limited powers. But also you can see it in museum guards, who take the greatest joy in keeping the lines queuing people in certain places even when the location of the line does not make any difference. When this tendency combines with the neuroticism (explained above), the results are first funny and then worrisome. I think this more or less explains some actions taking place in wars, where one cannot have comprehensive checks in place. Thus, torture, shooting prisoners etc take place. Sad, but all too human. Send comments by email, especially if you think I am just plain wrong and confused and a pathetic armchair sociologist. By the way, Gray has similar arguments in Straw dogs.

Tuesday, 2004-11-16

Back online and at home in Helsinki. It feels strange to be here in the dark, cold, and windy Helsinki. Not as bad as I was lead to expect by someone somewhere: I saw some smiling commuters in the metro on my way to the office in the morning. But the office is still close to the midpoint of nowhere, and, unfortunately, here and there I see nowheres. And it is indeed simply wonderful to be at home with S. Even though I did, to my great surprise, find travelling alone quite pleasant and not too lonely, I must admit, that I am no hermit.

The day was quite ordinary: commuting, working (mainly reading some emails, talking to workmates, sitting in a meeting, which I would like to comment, but NDA still binds, commuting, having dinner with wine, and then reading and writing. Nothing wrong with this. In Suomen Kuvalehti 46/2004 Kalle Kultala worries that we Finns only document our festive occasions. I will prove him wrong, even on the expense of slight inconvenience for my readers. So, bear with me, please.

New books

I have got some new books.

Wassily Kandinsky's "Concerning the sprititual in art". The pioneering work in the free art movement from 1911. I have only read the first half of it, but it seems quite interesting in addition to its historical importance. I bought the book in the store of the Guggenheim museum, in New York. I was about to buy several others, especially a great, large book about the history of conceptual art, my special interest, but then I though of carrying it around NYC for the rest of the day and decided not to.
Three books by Joseph Brodsky: "Watermark" - an essay on Venice, "Less than one" - a collection of earlier essays "On grief and reason" - another collection of essays, more recent. Brodsky is my all-time favourite essayist and poet. His command of language, especially the English he uses in his essays, is really exceptional. I try to save "Watermark" for my coming trip to Venice with my brother. It would be nice to read at least part of it there. A quote from "On grief and reason"
Nor does one become any younger by reading one [book]. Since this is so, our natural preference should be for good books.
And this is how "Watermark" opens:
Many moons ago the dollar was 870 lire and I was thirty-two. The globe, too, was lighter by two billion souls, and the bar at the stazione where I'd arrived was empty. I was standing there waiting for the only person I knew in that city to meet me. She was quite late.
Wouldn't you like to read the rest of it ? The books is yours for just $12, go the Amazon.
Work and study related book "Lean software development by Poppendieck. I have just browsed this book, but it seems to contain some interesting ideas on how to apply lean ideas to SW development. If nothing more interesting turns up, I will write my thesis in MIT on how to make large scale computer system development lean, which would include quite a bit of leaning the old-fashioned V-model crap etc. Let's see.

Read books

Some books I read during my vacation

"Stray dogs" by John Gray. The backcover boast that " this is one of the most important books of the year, and will prove to be one the whole century". Normally, I scorn these praises, but time it turned out to be true. The book is full of interesting ideas and arguments, but the main point is that humans are not different from other animals, but they are governed by the same evolutionary laws. Gray also argues quite convincingly, that since the fall of Christian faith and the great utopian political movements of 1900's, we tend to turn to science in our search of progress. But, even though there is clearly unreversable progress in science, exemplified by the continuing techinical development, there is no progress in politics, or in ethics. What is gained in one generation, may well be lost in the next one. (the happenings in USA, Brazil, Russia, and many other parts of the world seem to prove this claim.). Gray traces the development of the idea of progress to the Christian faith and claims that (most of) the current scientists, not to speak of others, are making the cardinal error of Christianity: thinking that humans are in charge of history and that there is a purpose of history, and that history has any meaning. I will come back to Gray's ideas later, I need to clarify some ideas. Meanwhile, get the book, read it, think, and your life will change forever. It is simply one of the best books I have ever read. See also advertisement in Granta.
"Lean thinking" by Womack and Jones. This is a continuation to their "Machine that changed the world, and contains more detailed ideas and advice (supported by a range of case histories across different industries) on how to make any industry, or service for that matter, lean. Essential reading for anyone working in any industry. Or in health services: it seems that by applying lean principles we could solve all the problems plaguing our health services, maybe almost for good. This is another topic which I would like to explore in MIT. Furthermore, if we could here in Finland make our health services really lean, we could then import this knowledge and ultimately turn it in really profitable industry. Let's see what I can come up with.
"Rough guide to Brazil". The difference between Rough Guides and Lonely Planets is that RGs contain more about culture, architecture and similar, whereas LPs contain more practical information about accomodation, food etc. I have used LPs up to now, but I could manage with RG this time. Ideally, one could carry both, but they are too heavy. I run out of reading matter during my trip (after reading the "Straw Dogs" twice), so I did end up reading most of the RG. Now I know a lot of many place in Brazil. Maybe I need to return there sometime.
"Healthy travel: Central and South America" by Lonely Planet. This book consoles one when the body or mind gets tricky, Montezuma takes his revenge, or one just gets an acute attach of hypochondria. I always carry this book (or its sister dealing with Asia) with me on my travels. It makes me feel better, quite simply.

Paying for a pint of beer

One would think that selling beer, delivering it to to customer at the table, and charging the bill would be simple and that there would not be so many ways to go about with it. Well, my extensive experience as customer of this business tells otherwise. Here are some examples, from simple to complex, I have experienced:

The simpliest way is to give beer for free. For obvious reasons, this does not happen so often. So, I consider the Czech methods the simpliest possible: the drinkers sit at tables, one man pours the pints, the waiters carry them to the drinkers, and add one line to a piece of paper per each pint. In the end, the customer pays to waiter according to the number or lines/pints. One could, perhaps, make this simpler by charging everyone based on the long term avarage consumption per drinker. Since people tend to think they drink more, this might even be profitable. The Brazilians use the same method, but instead of the line on paper, they simply pile the empty bottles in the sand next to the table (but only in beach bars, see later for other examples).
The Finnish way: one gets and pays the drinks one by one at the counter. No credit. Basicly, the customer does the work of the waiter. Boring, I like to be served, and sit down, not run about in bars.
The "normal" way: the customer orders, the waiter delivers, someone keeps the bill somewhere and at the end of the night one pays the bill. There are, of course, several ways to keep track of the bill, some of them not so simple.
The Italian or east European way: one pays at one counter, takes the receipt to another one and gets the drinks. Quite common in railway statios etc, where centralizing the handling of money to one place makes some sense.
Brazilian way, simple. More or less the Finnish way, except that sometimes one must not pay every pint at once, only at the end.
Brazilian way, more complex: one sits at the table. The waiter delivers the drinks, and give a token with a number. At the end, one takes the tokes to the cashier, pays and gets another token. Outside, at the street, there is one guard, who takes the latter token. One must not sneak out without paying.
Brazilian way, excessively complex. This happened in the modern microbrewery in Belem. One sits at the table, the waiter comes. One orders, the waiter keys the order into a wireless terminal, which then transmits the order to the counter. After a while, another waiter delivers the pint. This waiter also makes a note in a slip of paper (like the the Czech way). Paying is also complex: one asks for the bill, the first waiter uses his terminal, and after a while still another waiter comes with the bill. If one does not have exact change, the waited must go the the cashier. Can you figure anything more complex way to do this? And can you tell me what value did the wireless terminal add in this example?

Sometimes, I find excessive use of computers quite irritating. I go the some place, try to order or buy something, and the salesperson uses more time typing with the computer than to talking to me. It is strange, that this happens so often. It seems that most of the user interfaces are simply broken: it usually takes too many keystrokes and mousemoves and clicks to complete the simple transaction. Consider e.g. buying tickets to a museum. The traditional way is to have a bunch of tickets (or maybe several bunches, if there are reductions, group tickets, or similar), give a ticket to the customer together with the change. This takes about less than 10 seconds per customer. Nowadays, for example in the Guggenheim-museum, the salesperson must enter something to the computer, with quite many moves/clicks, and then the computer prints out the ticket. It easily takes 30 seconds or more. Keep your eyes open, you will find similar examples where the use of computers yields just more manual work. In addition, these systems sometime collect unnecessary information about the customers. I believe that quite soon they start asking for ID and entering names to computer systems when going to museums. ( the excuse being deterring e.g. terrorists )

Sunday, 2004-11-14

Paranoia

Strange, totally automated and anonymous internet-cafe in 42nd street in New York, near Times Square. They say that this city never sleeps, but I did not find it really awake when I arrived in Grand Central Station at 6.45 am today. No cafe was open at the station. Well, there must be an open cafe somewhere, these people must get their drink-on-the-go cafes from somewhere. Otherwise they will get desperate. So, I thought of checking in my backback, 15kg, to the cloakroom at the station. But there is none! Since the infamous 9/11 there is none in the whole city! Totally paranoid. The only thing I can note is that the French did even better in 1980's: they removed all wastebins from the whole country, since one of them had been dynamited by some local terrorists. After some months of total chaos, they came to their senses. So, there is still at least one level of paranoia for American to explore.

Speaking of paranoia, I may as well add a note on the "Department of Homeland security", which claims to keep USA open and safe. Fair enough, but I do think that they could prevent much more damage and loss of life, if they instead of devoting countless resources on airports, would fix the gun laws, health system, and social security. More intelligent drug-laws would not hurt, too. Also, promoting contraception instead abstience would do no harm. Only puritan utopians can dream of a world without sex. For others, it is a nightmare.

Security games in Bogota

In Bogota, Colombia, the security checking was just a comedy, or should I say tragi-comedy. There, one must pass metal detector and place luggage in X-ray-machine before getting to the waiting rooms by the gates. There one can stay totally in peace for several hours, until suddenly they order everyone out and drag their detectors and machines to the door of the gate area. And they check everyone again. So, they must assume that the first time was not enough, that somehow someone got some guns or explosives through to the gate area. But if this is the case, why do they not check the gate area at all? If one is clever enough to get guns through x-ray and metal detector, one should be clever enough to hide them in the gate area. I do not mind security measures as such, but I do mind wasting security resources for nothing.

Bogota

Bogota lies in a valley, at 2600 meters above sea-level, surrounded by forested mountains, which rise up to additional 700 meters from the valley. The location is beautiful, the eqvatorial sun shines nicely in the afternoon and the occasional thundercoulds are, well, formidable. I met my driver and guide, Sandra Nunez, at the airport. She does not speak any English and my Spanish is next to non-existent. But somehow we managed. She tried to use the most simple Spanish and I tried to pick up the meaning and reply by using the odd words of Italian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese I could remember. It worked rather well. I got to know something about the historical buildings in the centre, and even something about the society (like that half of the students drink too much, that private universities are good and expensive, and that there are too many criminals). One can figure out the prevelance of crime easily, since the whole centre is full of policemen and soldiers toting their machine guns. I am sure they have live ammo! And one must walk on the opposide of the presidential palace. Just like in Maputo! But the city is nice, there are interesting museums ( I visited a museum exhibiting Indian clothes, jewelly, canoes etc. I also visited a museum of Botero, whose collection is respectable). We also visited the Teatro Colum, the local Fenice. I could even visit backstage, see the stage mechanisms etc.

Later, dinner at a local Italian restauranta. They served decent Risotto di Fungi Porchini. It was actually surprisingly good.

Friday, 2004-11-12

I am now about to start my long trip back to Helsinki. Today, I fly to Sao Paolo via Manaus, stay in Harmonia Residencia and may meet some friends. Tomorrow, I will fly to Bogota, where the local Finnish consulate has arranged a taxi for me for the whole afternoon and evening (rather good and unusual service, I would say). Then, after a short flight to New York, I have 10 hours to spend there. I think I will visit the Guggenheim-museum (how does one spell it?). I will be back in Helsinki on Monday. Have a nice weekend!

Wednesday, 2004-11-10

It is 10pm, and I have been out and about without a siesta since 9 am . In short, I am tired. So, just a brief summary of a lazy day. In the morning, after taking a swim and having breakfast, I went for a short walk. First, I crossed the short stream to the island, getting wet upto my waist. After continuing walking on the beach for 30 minutes, I found that the only way to survive the heat was to get totally wet, so I made sure that there were no stingrays around ( I could see the places they had been sleeping, though), took a swim with clothes on, continued walking, all alone, with just some vultures, and finally decided to return back to the shore and to the village. It was time to get the first caipirinja of the day, write a few postcards and relax, and to try to get dry in the slight breeze there was. In the afternoon, brief visit to Santarem with appropriate refreshments, after which I went with Mika to the best and only sauna in the whole Amazonas: excellent one, hot, with cold shower. Stingrays prevented swimming, though. Later, some fish and drinks, now too tired to write more. Still, I want to let you know, that I have some ready thoughts about the meaning of life, using IT-systems in bars and internet cafes, and about Brazilian food. But I have to get some sleep before sharing my ideas with you, dear, anonymous, and totally silent readers of mine. Good night!

Tuesday, 2004-11-09

In late evening

As I have told you earlier, maybe repeatedly, life is not too bad here. Today, after Mika came, we went for a few beers on the beach. We were there idling, sipping beer, sitting on chairs, in knee-deep water, 30C water, 35C air, when the local bar owner appeared from somewhere with two beautiful tucunari-fish (in Finnish "viherahven"): nice two-kilogram predators, with white flesh, large bones, smooth taste. At once, I wanted to have one of them for dinner. We agreed on the price (8 euros) and time, 7pm. Later, at 7pm, we were back on the beach after having taken care of certain other practical issues and the man had grilled the fish. So, there we were: me, Mika, Ruby, and Jorge, on the beach, eating really delicious fish, with a dedicated waiter, and having the whole beach of several kilometers just for ourselves. Normally, you have this kind of paradise situation only in the movies (e.g. "Once upon the time in America", but skipping the nasty aftermath), but today we had it in reality.

But there is a snake in the paradise and he is stealing e.g. portable boat-engines. The Puxirum-project has for this reason agreed with the police that a pair of policeman will make regular rounds around the area even during the night. In return, the project pays some gasoline for the policecar, which, by the way, does not have the start engine. But the snake has retreated, at least for a while.

At noon

Mika is coming back from Finland today, which is great.

One needs some exercise, so I went for a walk. I thought that by going out early, I would find the heat just tolerable, but I was wrong. I walked from 1 hour by the river, on the seemingly endless white beach. It was quiet, nobody else there, and I had the beach all by myself. The sun was getting higher and higher, reaching more or less zenith by 9.30, making me suffer and sweat puoring and turning my nose into a leaking faucet. But it was nice. There are not so many places in the world as beautiful as this one, or as quiet. Of course, the peace is temporary, broken by motorboat, small aircrafts, waterjets, and all too many loadspeakers blasting some really monotonous Brazilian music, on late Saturdays and whole Sundays. By late Sunday, the peace resumes. In addition, in the morning, I was reading Gray´s book for the second time - it is getting better by second reading, visited (with Ruby) a preschool established by one woman from Sao Paolo, and just tried to survive the heat. A good way is to take a shower with clothes on...

Alter de Chao is, as I have written, a beuatiful place. The river Tapojos has a lakelike appendix here, and during this dry season, the lakes sandy shores become beaches, and one can walk to an island in the middle of the lake. The island has 7 small restaurants, one of which arranges a feast of peixe e caipirinja tonight. I was sold a ticket to this feast by somebody in the main square of the village for 10 reais (3 euros). I think I will visit the feast, after all they are serving what I long for. Dry season is now nearing its end, and water is more or less 4 meters below the level of rainy season. There has to be some serious rain upriver to fill up these huge areas (remember, the river is 15 km wide here, and drains to the Amazonas, which is much bigger river still).

Brazil is rather christian country. Every small village, and even many smaller communities, has its own church. Some communities have several: Maripa, the community I visited in the extractive reserve, had one protestant and one catholic church, which, they claim, creates some tension within the community. Alter de Chao has one church, a simple one in the main square. Santarem has at least 2 bigger ones. Sao Paolo had a nice chuch in the Prace de Se, in the centre. In Rio I did not visit any church.

Wildlife

One would assume, after seeing all too many documentaries about Amazonas and jungle, that one would see all kinds of animals just by looking out of the window here. Not so. It is, indeed, rather hard to see any wildlife here. There are some birds, of course (mainly urubus). Bats are everywhere, one is sleeping right here, on the wall of the balcony. In the extractive reserve, during our 3-hour walk through the forest, we saw only a few birds, and heard voices of several types of monkeys, but did not see any of them. There are also quite many pink river dolphins, but one has to take boat and sail some 20 minutes to see them. We will do that maybe tomorrow, or day after tomorrow. I have also seen one water snake, a few monkeys from the window of the car, and lots of small fish. So, if one really wants to see wildlife, one has to join some group going to the forest proper and walk around for several days. Or, one can visit some zoo...

Monday, 2004-11-08

It is getting earlier by the day, which is actually good in this fiery climate (here, one should wake up at 5 am, work until noon, rest a few hours, do some more work, an hour or so, and then indulge in caipirinja or something else "sinfull"). We were in Santarem before 8.45am, Ruby in order to make a few interviews with some local NGO people for her master´s thesis, me just for having a look at the town and, unevitable, having a few entertaining drinks.

Santarem is a town, if not a city, more or less midway from Belem to Manaus, at the point where Rio Tapajos meets Rio Amazonas. One can clearly see the meeting of rivers, since Tapajos is blue-green, clear river whereas Amazonas is silty, light brownish one. The waters flow side by side for quite a while, which is rather enticing thing to look at. I did look at it for quite a while today, since Santarem is really hot place to be and I, being one with easily burning skin, had to take cover in a bar. The bar I eventually found (not that there would be general shortage of bars, but I did not want to sit inside), was in front of the church (the first one I have ever seen having air conditioning and dozens of fans) and had a clientele of all types of down-and-out, including me. I got regular chatting company from the local drunkards, but the fat prostitutes did, luckily, judge me as a desperately monogamous, true guy. Or then hopelessly poor one, given that my white "Kenneth Cole"-shirt was clearly not too clean. Or something.

Oops, I got carried away from the subject of Santarem. So, Santarem is the only townlike place withing 400 kilometers, and there are quite a lot people living in the area. This means that Santarem is the main supply point for them, which makes it fun place to look at the hustle and bustle. There are tens of boats, of all sizes, docked by the riverside. People are coming and going from and to the boat carrying their things, some for a continuation journey towards Manaus or Belem, some for taking them home. There are shops selling everything commonly, and something not so commonly, needed by the riverfront. One shop specializes in fridges, which are rather necessary here, another in sandals, third in drugs, fourth in hammocks. I did buy one hammock, Ruby bought another one, and we got quite a nice deal buying together. But, as said several times now, Santarem is hot. There are not so many trees giving shade, the perpertual river breeze is not able to penetrate the dense network of narrow market street, and there are no covered sidewalks. All of this means that one ends in walking in full tropical sunshine on rather half-melted tarmac. Which is not something one would like to do. This is why I, after walking aroung for one hour, took cover in that down-and-out drinking place. Before Ruby was done with her interviews, I had managed to consume 3 large Cerva-beers. Fortunately, she came and after a 20-minutes of random driving we eventually found the Peixaria Piracatu-restaurant. They serve world-class fish-dishes. We had superb fishballs wiht mayonaise and delicious fishsoup. If you even end up in Santarem, head directly to Avenida Mandonca Furtado 174. You will walk away satisfied.

Back in Alter de Chao, I had a beer at the beach (but not in the water, which is also possible due to having tables and chairs half-submerged). It was so quiet, there were only a few other customers, some dogs, and quite many urubu-vultures, which keep the beach clean of anything eatable. They are about the size of large seagulls in Finland, rather formidable birds indeed. But Brazilian beer is not that good and one start to long for a decent caipirinja, which is a longing almost too easily satisfied here. So, I had one, and sipped it looking at a game of beach football. The game was played at an oval patch of recently dried beach, with audience and the extra player remaining soaking upto their necks in the lake. Could life be nicer?

On dress codes

I have been toying with an idea of classifying dress codes on the continual axis between implicit and explicit. On the implicit extreme, we have the conservative Islam-dress, which covers whole person and, futhermore, hides all hints of the shape of the person. On the extreme explicit side one has no clothes at all: nudism. Most cultures and people fall somewhere between these extremes. The problem, of course, is where one puts the neutral place, what is the neutral way to dress. I think it varies by time and cultures. Anyway, here in Brazil I have notices, that too explicit way of dressing kills of all imagination and, at the same time, most of, if not all, visual appeal. There is nothing left for imagination, the most erotic organ we have. On the other hand, too implicit dress codes lead to ridiculous situation like those of having Victorian people covering the legs of pianos just to be sure not to arouse anyone. Just thinking...

On flying

Since times immemorial, man has dreamt of being able to fly. Today, flying is quite commonplace and all too uneventfull. During my about 140 flight, I have had only a few exciting event. Once, flying from Frankfurt to Shanghai, someone went to a toilet for a cigarret. Unfortunately, he threw the burning cigarret in the waste basket causina a fire and some rather fast reactions by the crew. Here in Brazil, we took of from Belem for Santarem. After flying 10 minutes above the Amazonas, there was really loud "KLONK"-noise at the back of the plane. We turned immediately back and landed safely back in Belem after a few circles for letting extra fuel out. There was something wrong with the landing gear, and after two hours of trying to fix the plane, they gave up and ordered another plane from somewhere. This meant for me spending the whole day in the airport. Fortunately, there were a couple nice Dutch guys to have a few caipirinjas with. The replacement plane flew totally uneventfully to Santarem. The third occasion of something exiting was in Copenhages, where the captained announced that he is about to reboot the airplane. Which he did. Fortunately, we were still on ground.

On Copacabana

One evening, I was killing some time in Copacabana by having a couple you know what and people watching. On my right, two really skillfull teams were playing beach-football. It was nice to see how fast moves, passes, and shots they can do on soft sand. On my left, a black guy sporting a Halloween mask, some white paint all over his body and makeshift icehockey goalkeeper legprotectors was walking behing people and imitating their movements. It was really fun to look at, more than any hidden camera show ever. Further on the right, a lonely prostitute was selling her services to drivers of passing cars. For some reason, she could not make a deal. Or she did not want. What was more interesting was the fact that there were long interval without any cars stopping, but whenever one did stop, there was always another one queuing. Anyway, there was no deal and after 1.5 hours some beggars, other prostitutes and other down-and-out joined her and the market closed. Then a "auto escola" car stopped by and the teacher let out another prostitute. At this point, I was ready to go to another bar, in which I watched something else interesting.

Sunday, 2004-11-07

Early start today. I got up at 7pm, took shower (one sweats here rather much during nights (and days) and the need to take showers is rather dear). Nice breakfast with Ruby, my host, and off I went by an old Volkswagen Kleinbus driven by the funny driver, Leonicio, who kept on telling me stories about the places we saw in Portuguese. To my great surprise, I could sometimes understand what he meant. This is the natural method to learn any language: just like kids. Sometimes it would be embarassing, but today I had fun.

We intended to go tree-spotting, because Amazonas is one of the best places to see great trees. And here there are some great trees in the nearby Floresta Nacional do Tapajos. There is one 70 meter tall sumamura or something like this. But it turned out that the tree is 14 km away from the nearest road and that the forest is full of kobra periculosa and they did not let me to take the walk with shorts and sandals. Not that I would be insane enough.

There was still plenty to see. First, we saw the town of Belterra, which was build in the 1930s by the Ford Motor Company in its desperate effort to established a fully integrated vertical company (see e.g. "The machine that changed the world" for more information) by producing its own rubber in Amazonas. Belterra was the second trial: the first one, Fordlandia, failed even faster. Belterra is bizarre: it is rather exact copy of model American small town of that era and quite many of the buildings are still standing. Ford was not successful with this plantation eihter and abandoned it in 1945. Nowadays, Belterra has some soya-plantations, which in my opinion looked rather desperate. The Amazonian soil does not contain so much humus etc: everything (or atleast 99%) of necessary nutrition is in the plants itself. The soil is just sand and clay, and once the trees and plants are gone, there is nothing anymore.

This problem of poor soil combined with desperate need for economical growth has already now turned quite vast expanses of Amazonia into wasteland. Since this is, honestly, in nobody´s long-term interests, there has been several different proposals for both protecting the forest and getting some economical value out of it. First there are the national parks, but guarding them has turned out to be rather difficult. Another idea, invented by Chico Mendes, the assassinated leader of rubber tappers, and others in 80s, is to establish extractive reserves (later ER). The idea is that the best way to protect the forest is to have people living in the forest and getting their income in a sustainable manner from the forest. There are several sustainable things to try: rubber tapping, honey, plant oils, fruits, ecoturism. To cut the long story short. The reason why I am here is that my friend Mika is working for Projeto Puxirum, which is supporting one such ER here. The ER is called Reserva Extravista Tapajos-Arapiuns, located between the rives of Tapajos and Arapiuns. It has an area of about 700000 hectares and some 20000 people live there. The project is financed (partly) by the Foreign Ministry of Finland, which is why Mika works here. I visited the ER and will write more later. I visited already the project offices here in Alter de Chao, and will tell you more about them later, too.

Back to today. Since we could not visit the great trees, my drive took me to some small villages in the National Park. The roads are terrible: narrow dirt-road, with either hard-baked clay of soft sand. Not so fun to drive there, but we managed. Some other vehicles had got stuck in the sand. We visited the village of Maguary, where there is a rubber bag factory. They tap the rubber from the trees, turn the raw latex into sheet of rubber, and then make nice bags from the rubber. I bought one as a souvenir for S. I hope she likes it. They are also making a collection of the bags for some French shop. Nice ones. The other part of the village had solar-energy and even internet. Internet was a surpise, even though I know that by using microwawe links it is rather simple to extablish even remote sites. Still it was a surprise.

After getting back from my little journey, I had lunch with Ruby at the house of Juan-Carlos, who has been working for the Puxirum for long time. Juan-Carlos is from Chile and has with his wife two kids. I have met him in Sao Paolo and here is really funny man. Speaking of Chile, one meets immigrants (of several generation) here in Brazil. The family of Oswaldo, the rubberfactory manager, has come from Italy. Juan-Carlos is from Chile. In Belem, I talked to one guy, whose father was from Japan, and who could still speak Japan. In Santarem, one Jorge, of whom more later, is running a eco-turism agency: he is from Argentina. And so on. You cannot recognize a Brazilian, since there is no prototype Brazilian ( if one does not count the few remaining Indian as Brazilians).

Now I am sipping some martini. Ruby is taking a nap: the heat is quite hard for her, since she is now 2 monts due to give birth. Which means, that (Mika being in Finland) I have had an opportunity to relax here. At least there has not been any pressure by the hosts on me to run around and drink too much alcohol. Enough anyway.

Manatee

A manatee is a relative of sea cows. One of the manatees live here in Amazonas, but there are not many left anymore. I first saw one in the Bosque Rodrigo Alves botanical garden in Belem. A manatee is quite a strange animal to see for the first time. It is like a giant seal, but it has really large tail flipper. It has almost no hair and it has a face resembling more an elephant than a seal. From the tail, it looks like a giant fish, but otherwise it looks like a mammal. Really excotic animal. The locals here call it peixe-boi. The Puxirum-project is taking care of several peixe-bois, and when I visited the project, I was shown a baby one. It was so cute! I cannot even describe how cute. Check for yourself by using Google.com. Many people here love peixe-boi, but I assume that many have been hunting them in the past.

Trip to the extractive reserve

I was lucky to arrive here on Wednesday, since on Thursday morning, Jorge, the travel-agency owner (an Argentinian photographer, who used to live and work in Grenada, Spain, but fell in love with Alter de Chao on a photo-trip 8 years ago, bought an island, on which he now lives with his wife, Alessandra, and their two small kids, without electricity), Frederico (Jorge´s childhood friend, who by accident came here and met Jorge, came again to stay for a few months and to help Jorge with his ecoturism initiatives), and Gil, the captain, hunter, fisher, guide, and all-around nice guy, were about to travel by Jorge´s boat to Mariba, a village in the extractive reserve. The purpose of the trip was to check some trekking paths, to meet local people, to discuss on the building of a house for accomodating ecotourist, and also just to have fun. So, we left Alter de Chao on Jorge's small boat (Mae Natureze or something). She can take 10 people and goes quite nicely with her 10 horsepower 2-stroke diesel engine. She is leaking quite a bit, but there is a handpump ready for emptying her. It took 1h15 minutes to cross the 15 kilometer wide river, Rio de Tapajos. Quite a river, with clear, drinkable they say, acid water, which means no mosqitos, she joins the light brown Amazonas near Santarem, a little downriver from here. Nice ride, quite a strong tailwind gave us exciting surf: the waves were about 1.5 meters, just like on ocean. It is the dry season now: the water is some 4 meters down, which means that there are endless white-sand beaches everywhere here. As they say in MIT: IHTFP. Check the net.

At first, we took it easy, just to make sure I would not turn into a boiled crab. Later, I found out that even the others find the sun too all-mighty during the early afternoon. At 4pm, Jorge left to meet some people in the community, we others walked 2 kilometers on the beach, reached a waterfall, swam for a while, took a canoa, Gil paddling and sailed (?) upstram to a lake. By the lake, we visited a place where the locals prepare farinja, which is their staple food. It is cassava or manioc, first soaked in the lake for one day, then ground fine with the mill, let dry in a large vat, pushed trough a coarse sieve, then through a finer sieve, and finally roasted. The resulting stuff is yellow, coarse pellets, about 1.5 mm diameter. It is hard work, and even eating farinja is quite hard. It is really hard, makes your teeth hurt, finally breaks them down ( almost everyone in ER, over 40 years, have no teeth left). Farinja is used in countless ways: eaten raw, sprinkled on top of any dish, baked into cookies, etc. The local people associate quite a lot of magical powers with farinja: by eating it one gains a lot of strength etc. In truth, it is just carbohydrate, without any vitamins etc, so not so healthy after all. But it is popular, grows in the poor soils and it is traditional. And if one is really into making money, one can produce farinja for sale. A man, at whose house we had dinner and lunch, prepares biweekly 150 kg of farinja and sell it for 80 reais, which is about 22 euros. 80 reias for two weeks hard work may not sound much, but by working in contructions the ER-people get some 5 reais per day (plus food), working for the Puxirum-project they get 10 reais per day, the local minimun salary here in Amazonas in 260 reais per month, and many people in ER do not have money at all: they live in subsistence economy. Anyway, farinja rules, and I have now had my share of it. No more for me, thank you.

Later in the evening, we had dinner with a local family (the family of the farinja-man). We had brought our own food, which they had cooked for us. Yes, we brought more than we ate. For dinner we had the quite normal selection: potatoes, spagetti, farinha, salad, rice, and chicken. Nothing special, but good anyway. One strange thing was that the mother of the family joined us in the table, joined the discussions (which I did not do due to my lacking skills in Portuguese), but did not eat anything. Since I have only eaten with this one family, I cannot say whether this is a common habit. Maybe she had eaten already when cooking. Anyway, one sees similar behaviour in Finland, too. At least in my family, it is common for the mother not to join the table, but sit separately (with the pretext of being able to serve the quests better), but this happens only during big festivals. It would be nice to know how things are here. I have to ask someone later.

It was nice to visit a local house. The local houses are simple: built of hardwood (the frame) and palmleaves (most of the walls, roofs, which by the way requires 1800 leaves, and you can get only one leaf from each palm. You need to find some palm every four years the roof lasts in the rain and sun). The houses have, usually, three parts: a kitchen, an open area with the dining table and living rooms, with hammocks, TV (in the richer houses, powered by car battery, which is recharged in Alter de Chao, since there is no electricity in the ER). In addition, most households have their own farinja-workshop and some storage buildings. The whole village takes part in building the houses: one day per week is devoted to community work, which is called puxirum. It is a system quite close to the traditional "talkoot" in Finland, even in the sense that there is some alcohol, dancing etc in the puxirum evening.

Families are quite large in the ER, or here in Amazonas in general. Our hosts had 3 daughters, all married and living in Alter de Chao, and 2 sons, still living at home and going to the community school (which seemed to operate only in the evenings, so that the kids can help at home in the morning). Jorge told me that it is quite common for girls to get pregnant really young, 15 years old or so, since there is no education about contraception or fertility. When a girl gets pregnant, the father-to-be may or may not take responsibility to take care of the child. If he decides not to, it is no problem. There will be another baby and father in few years time, and, besides, there are the grandparents anyway.

The night was windy, which made our sleeping in our hammocks in the not-so-ready ecotourism house (no walls) rather shallow. But the night was nice: sky full of stars, monkeys shouting, insects making great noise, and it was warm despite the strong wind. The next day, we took off quite early and had a 3-hour walk in the forest just to check the trek for bigger groups to come. The forest was really dry, and it was secondary forest, so no big trees. But it was a nice walk. I got to know some new plants and animals, got to see many cashew-trees, the acai-palm, of which one makes really good juice (like chocklate, but better), the tree from which one make antiroba (an oil for keeping insects away - there are some nasty insects, which want to climb all the way to men´s tecticles and cause terrible itching. Using antiroba oil on legs etc before going to the forest prevents this. We used it a lot and had no problems), some nice termitehills etc. We also visited several houses and families in the forest and drank coffee with them. Local coffee, selfmade and delicious. Later, we came back over the river, in head wind, with 1.5 meter wawes, fun. And had some beers at Jorge´s agency.

Hazards

In addition to drunken drivers, heat stroke and hangover, there are some natural hazards here. Before going any further, one must point out that there is no malaria, nor dengua, nor river blindness here. Which is great, since one can sleep without mosquitonets, swim in the rivers etc. Furthermore, piranjas are not that common either, and they say that one can even swim in lakes in which there are many piranjas. But stingrays are common, and they are nasty. During the night (and sometime also during the day) they come the the shallow water in the beaches, cover themselves in sand, and just stay there. If one steps on one, the stingray will whip its tail and cause a terrible pain and nasty wound, which gets infected very easily. The local wisdom says that making love, swimming, drinking alcohol or milk, running and tanning are bad after being whipped by a stingray. Rather funny list of issues, which increase the likelyhood of bad infection. Then there are also some snakes around. But in general, it is not that dangerous here.

Layman kills the cayman

The farinja-man had killed a 3-meter cayman a few years ago. He still had the skull and it was really a big one. The caymans, local alligators, are rather common here, but they do not attack humans. They eat fish, small mammals etc. One had stalked Jorge´s dog for a week, but the dog was clever enough not to go deep in the water and the cayman is slow in shallow water. The dog still lives.

Saturday, 2004-11-06

I am writing these notes in Alter de Chao (yes, without the small apostrophes or whatever) in the middle of Amazonas. I have time to write, since the sun shines all too punishingly here near eqvator. As my friend Frederico said yesterday when we were about to retire to our hammocks for a 3-hour siesta by the mighty river Tapajos: "Now sun is strong. Now sun commands our action". So, the sun commands me to write. Here we go...

The route so far and some scattered notes

This is just to give a summary of my trip so far. Later, I will write about many issues in more extensive manner. You can send your complaints and suggestions by email. Please, do that! Interactivity rules, I assume.

I left Finland on Tuesday the 19th of October via Frankfurt to Boston. The flights were OK, I was reading the "Lean Thinking"-books the whole time and managed to read the first 100-pages. It is a good book, full of practical examples about leaning different industries and services. I will write more about that later, leaning I mean. In Frankfurt, the always-so-humoristic German authorities had placed a large sing reading "The following security check is only due to the requests by American authorities" and some check there was. I am not sure what this security check really prevents except longer shopping session in the local tax-free.

Milton was there to meet me at the airport. Nice guy, a carpenter, MIT-graduate, bicycle enthusiastic, and boyfriend of Mirja, who is a philosopher with whom I studied type theory etc some years ago. Visit to Boston was pleasant: I met most of my coming fellow students (all but 3 of them are male (out of 50)). There was the official open house meeting, the free beer, the bad, fat food, the nice presentations during the alumni conference, some house hunting in Back Bay, nice sushi dinner with Mirja and Milton in some faraway suburb of rich Kerry-voters, some more beer and then some, getting lost in metro system (by reading the "Lean Thinking" book all too intensively) etc. More later.

I left Boston for New York by bus on Saturday the 23rd of October. Buses are cheap in USA. This one cost $15 for the some 300 kilometers there are. There are nothing of special interest along the road down to NYC. We did, however, stop at one feeding place of fat people and I managed to spot some of them. One man was so fat, that his walking was rather difficult. When he started to walk, it took some time for the fat to start moving. Then, at each step, the fat seemed to follow the laws of physics and not the will of the man. So, he was more or less just making great effort but not moving that much. One should not laugh at unfortunate people, but I do wonder how someone can let him/herself get that fat. One does not wake up one morning with 100 kilos extra fat, does one?
The bus arrived via Harlem (no white people) via Central Park (only white people) to Port Authority (all kinds of people). My hotel was, accidentally, next to the bus station. The Carter Hotel is nothing special, cost $100 per night, rooms are small, there is no shampoo, prostitutes and pimps roam the lobby together with travellers from all over the world. In all, a nice place to spend one night. The location is good, one block from Times Square. In addition to the traditional neon signs, large display, shops and tourist, there is now a recruiting center of US Army/Navy etc in the middle of the Square. New cannon fodder, or should one say neo-conservative fodder, is souhgt after. There were no queues, maybe the neighborhood is too rich.There is also an exhibition on how the Department of War on Drugs has been protecting the American citizens from the evil drug trafficers from poor countries or something. I did not check the exhibition so closely. Anyway, I met Riitta and we had nice dinner (squid, fish and chips) next to the Grand Central Station. The station has been renovated and is definitely one of the nicest and most impressive ones in the whole world. Definitely worth visiting.

From New York I flew to the Bogota airport. I did not go out of the airport this time, I will tour Bogota on my way back. I kept on reading the "Lean Thinking"-book and I was also getting leaner by having to skip both lunch and dinner. It was a day of reading, but not really worth remembering.

Adventure resumed after a torturous 5-hour flight from Bogota to Sao Paolo, one of the biggest cities in the world and the biggest in South America. I got some taste what it means to come from a poor country to a richer one: there were nobody waiting for getting her passport checked, but everyone from our plane was herded in one corner. After 10 minutes of perplexed waiting, we found out passangers of Air Italia flight have strict priority over those of Avianca.

I spend 3.5 days in Sao Paolo (from Monday 25th to early Thursday 28th). I took it relatively easy, wandered around a little, had quite some pints (or chopps as they call them here) wiht Diego, a forest engineer about to move to Mozambique to do some work with cashew nuts (did you, by the way, know that cashew has a fruit from which the nut hangs? I did not before seeing them in Mariba much later) and Filippe, a layer turned into journalist in some nice bar in Vila Madalena. Also the football-player-poet spent some time by our table telling some stories about street soccer games in Sweder or something. I could not quite understand his poetic English. The other day, I met Mika and Juan-Carlos and some others with Osvaldo, rubber factory manager from Santarem, a great and funny guy. I will later visit his factory to check how lean it is or just for fun. Osvaldo offered me a nice sushi-dinner in Liberdade-barrio. There are quite some Japanese living in Sao Paolo. I also visited the 26th Sao Paolo biennale, which contained some really interesting video-art. Usually, I consider video-art a makeshift from of art, but now I have to admit that there may be something in it. But many works of art were not that good in the biennale, but there we so many of them. Then I visited Santos, the nearest port city some 70 kilometers from Sao Paolo. The road to Santos is worth the trip by itself: the plateau on which Sao Paolo is drops quite suddenly to the coastal area. Nice, really steep descend. Santos itself was nothing special, but I did have a nice lunch of fried fish and a bottle of wine there in one old restaurant. In Sao Paolo, I stay in Residencia Harmonia in Vila Madalena; I had a nice one bedroom apartment there. Great place, quiet, clean, safe, good breakfast.

The distance between Sao Paolo and Rio de Janeiro is about 400 km and it takes 5.5 hours by bus. And the busses they have here in Brazil are beyond imagination, so confortable: they have two decks, everyone gets pillows, quilts, juice etc. If one travel really long distance (and there are some 60 hours rides available here), one can book a leito, a fully reclining seat with quite enough space for even my legs. I do wonder why we do not have such busses in Eupope and why the busses in USA are so unconfortable. More about this later, I assume.

Rio de Janeiro itself was bit of a disappointment for me. I stayed in Hotel Astoria 3 in Copacabana, 3 blocks from the beach itself. Of course, after settling in my small room, I went to see the famous beach. Well, it was Thursday, about 4 pm, with strong wind, flying sand, and the beach was more or less empty. There were some gay man doing pushups etc, but that could not keep my attention for long. I did have a beer, walked all the way to the southern end of the beach and back. Nice walk, some nice buildings, some beautiful people, but 4 lanes full of cars and busses is not what one really calls nice beach atmosphere. Anyway, famous places, beaches and others, are worth visiting once. The other day, on Friday, I went to check the beach of Ipanema, which is the place for rich and (artifically) beautiful. It was too hot, I could not stay there for long. It was also too bright for my poor eyes, so I could not see who and how beautiful were present. I decided that I am not a beach person. So, I did something else. I took a ferry to Niteroi and tried to find the famous UFO-shaped art museum, but I got lost in some suburb. Nice walk, but not what I was looking for. I had also skipped lunch and got angry at myself and decided to call it a day and went back to the centre of Rio, which is ugly as any. Or uglier. It was Friday, so I was about to take the risk and check the bars in Lapa, but then I shied away. After all, going to bars alone and having to take taxi from one bar to another just to not get robbed is not what I consider fun. What I consider fun is visiting botanical gardens and on Saturday I did that. The botanical garden in Rio is a good place to see some tropical trees in their original environment. There are even some impressive sumaumas, the biggest trees there are in Amazon, in Rio. Being Saturday, I decided to give the Copacabana beach on last look and found out that the Brazilian do take their beach appearence seriously. I also noticed that being fat or old does not mean that one cannot sport very skimpy bikinis. Quite explicit, I would say. More about dress code later. I also did some long bus rides and saw some favelas from the bus window. More about bus rides later, too.

On Saturday, 30th of October, I flew from Rio to Belem. Belem is an old Portuguese settelement/town 100 km from the Atlantic by rio Tocantins. I arrived late, at 11 pm, and took taxi to Manaca Hotel. Now, there was one taxiride not the forget. Just absolute danger, no respect of speed limits, of traffic lights, of anything. I was lucky to be able to check-in safe and sound. The hotel was nice, a small one of 17 rooms. But it was seriously hot and my air conditioner was useless. So, I was sweating and not sleeping there too much. I managed to do quite much in Belem in 3 days. On Sunday, I walked to the centre, browsed a little in Ver-o-Peso market, took taxi to the botanical garden, which was quite OK. The rest of the day I spent by following the communal elections. In Belem, just like in all other cities in Brazil, there were mayor elections taking place and there were 2 candidates: the left-wing and the right-wing. Both sides had their supporters all around the cities singing, dancing, waving their flags, shouting slogans, setting of fireworks etc. It was a real carneval going on. The left-wing supporters were dressed in red, the right-wing supporters in yellow. I decided to find out how the party was going on in the suburbs and took a ramdom bus. The busdrivers and the conductor belonged to the yellow party and the route went through some really red areas. The red supporters were all the time shouting at the driver that he should support reds, not yellow. The driver just took another banderoll and hang it on the windshield. It was fun. At terminal, I insisted that I want to return back to the centre by the same bus, but I think that they realized that I was on the side of the reds and kicked me out of the bus. I took taxi, whose driver was also on the side of the yellow ones, but did not kick me out. The driver also supported Bush (a few days later, another taxi-driver was really upset about Bush winning again). Later, I was sampling some rather decent beer in the local microbrewery by the dockside when I realized that one boat was about to sail. I jumped aboard and took a 1.5-hour trip up and down the river, which is, by the way, about 4 km wide at that point.

More later. I have to go out and have a drink now.

October

Friday, 2004-10-29

Travelling still

Now in Rio De Janeiro. It is hot outside, cool here in internetcafe. I have now visited some of the most famous beaches in the world: Waikiki, Copacabana, and Ipanema. All are boring. Let's face it: beach life is not for me. Furthermore, it is too hot on the beach and the light is too bright for my eyes.

I have now visited Boston, New York, the Bogota airport, Sao Paolo, Santos, and Rio. It has been fun. More later, now I have to rush to see some modern Brazilian dance and one nice art museum. Culture, not beach it will be today.

Monday, 2004-10-18

Travelling

I will leave for USA and Brazil tomorrow morning. I got the flight tickets on Saturday and after some painstaking calculation I now know that I have 12 flights ahead. Their total duration is 53h45min, which means that I will have plenty of time to read some books, watch movies and, possibly, have one or two drinks. Most likely I will not be able to sleep too much in the planes. The trips is going to fun, but there will also be rather many interesting things to learn and nice people to meet. I will meet at least Mirja&Milton in Boston, Riitta in New York, Diego in Sao Paolo, Christina in Belem, and - finally, Mika&Ruby in Santarem. Great. And then I will meet most of my coming classmates in MIT. I try not to meet Mr. Robber and Mrs. Muggler. I try to be as invisible and poor-looking as possible.

I will try to write to this blog as often as I can, but it all depends on the availability of internet cafes etc. Stay tuned, but do not get bored.

My flights are

Helsinki - Franfurt: LH3107, 19.10, 0700
Frankfurt - Boston: LH422, 19.10, 1040, Boston - NYC by bus on 23.10
NYC JFK - Bogota: AV21, 24.10, 0905
Bogota - Sao Paolo: AV52, 24.10, 2100, Sao Paolo - Rio by bus on 28.10
Rio - Belem: JJ2250, 30.10, 1920
Belem - Santarem: JJ3890, 3.11, 1035
Santarem - Manaus: JJ2890, 12.11, 1115
Manaus - Sao Paolo: JJ3745, 12.11, 1300
Sao Paolo - Bogota: AV86, 13.11, 1125
Bogota - NYC JFK: AV20, 13.11, 23:55
NYC Newark - Stockholm: SK904, 14.11, 1720
Stockholm - Helsinki: SK700, 15.11, 0830

The total cost was 1591 euros, which means that one hour of flying costs some 30 euros. Not so expensive. Actually, if one thinks about the environmental cost of flying, this is way too cheap.

Finnish politics

Our dear, and oh-so-intelligent, prime minister M Vanhala has once again stated in an interview, that his "government" will only lower taxes if the companies in Finland do not raise salaries. I just cannot figure out any connection between the possibility to lower state taxes and the raise I get in my company. If we all were employed by the state, then this nonsense would make some sense, but we are not. This whole ranting holds true even if you think that the state must not lower taxes. I really wonder how long this "government" of us remains in power, for it is not competent nor worth the office.

Iraq

Now, some US marines/GIs have notices that waging a war is a dangerous thing to do. Some of them refused drive fuel-trucks through the "enemy" territory. Well, in a war one must take risks and if the risk materializes, too bad. Anyway, the whole war is unnecessary and illegal, so deciding not to wage it, is a good sign. Read also another articleabout the same incident.

Sunday, 2004-10-17

Politics

We walked like real bourgeois couple to the main post office and casted our votes to, well, it is still a sercet and still the same as last time. Now I can leave to Brazil and USA with clear conscience.

Daily crono

Sleeping, packing (one can take 64 kilos to USA), and cooking for the family of the sister of S: risotto with smoked salmon and goat cheese. Good. The kids were nice as always.

Saturday, 2004-10-16

Science

How can we replace paper based documents with electronic one in the international sale of goods? This gives rise to "Lex electronica" and is the topic of PhD thesis of Lauri Railas. I found the discussion really interesting and rather easy to follow (except for some abbreviations). It seems that there is rather lot philosophy behind the current ways of contracting etc and to replace them with electronic one may require some changes in the foundations. If I understood correctly, Lauri thinks that the ways do not need to much revisioning, but the trade laws should be global. I would like to read the dissertation, but its sheer lenght of 600 large pages with small print will prevent me from doing that.

Later in the evening, there was the karonkka, the Finnish-Russian traditional party. This time we were in restaurant Carousel (?) and had excellent food, good wine and even danced to the music by Oiling Boiling. I strictly obeyed "nemo saltat sobrium". Really fun.

Friday, 2004-10-15

Travelling

Finally all my tickets are ready and I can pick them up tomorrow. Great. I am really excited about the trip. but also more than a bit scared/worried about the security situation in Bogota and around Brazil. Anyway, better scared than shying away ("Parempi jännittää kuin jänistää").

Daily crono

We had Talent SIG (special interest group) in pub Janoinen Lohi - as we are so talented, but as we are getting older, we cannot have so many talenting drinks as earlier. Neither is there a need to have them too many anymore. Later, Aaro dropped in for a while and we have some more drinks. The rest of the day was quite easy and quiet. We were getting ready for the defense of a doctoral thesis of Lauri.

Thursday, 2004-10-14

On life

Life is like politics: when it is regular and predictable, everything seems to be OK. However, underneath the surface, surprises are festering complacency; one should be wary of too quiet, regular life. At least if one wants to be an academic-industrial mercenary. Or just wants to lead a life to its full enjoyability and purpose, whatever that may be.

I do think that the current business environment and management practices (in companies, government, etc) are not good for human beings and that we need to fight for a better world (even though we must not be utopians - there is no real progress, just small improvements). On individual level, we cannot wait for the world to change: we must live now, to the fullest. This means being rather opportunistic. For example, when the world is getting smaller, and companies are moving around the world, one must not be too stationary either. Or at least one must take one's voluntary stationarity into account when complaining about things caused partly by it.

More musings later, if I get the inspiration or get bored. Writing is one of the best ways of autotherapy! You are my therapist, like it or not.

Finland

Another study has ranked Finland as the most competitive country in the world. The funny thing is that the same business bosses, whose answers define the result of the study, are all the time complaining that Finland is too expensive, unions are too strong, it is too hard to fire employees, taxes are too high.

There is somehing missing from the picture. I think it is greed.

Daily crono and the obligatory rant

As I wrote above: steady and regular life, breakfast, metro, bus, ..., train, bus, back at home at 7pm. I did some writing at work today; I tend to worry about large scale things, on whole products and the future of the company, which - sorry to say - is exactly the wrong way to behave and proceed in career. Much better would be to just take one's own position in the chain-of-sending-powerpoint-shows-up-and-down, keep your mouth shut, ignore all problems, and be positive and just before the reality strikes at customers, flee for another part of whatever whole cubicle is part of, or to same other chain-of-sending-slides. And remember to hold low profile. This holds true in all companies, in all governments. And if you cannot flee, tell some lies! Too sad that the whole economy cannot function much longer like this: no level of growth is sustainable with these attitudes, no fun achievable. Boring. Then I came home, breathed deeply and read some newspapers. Later, Julle and Mammu will came over and have a few beers.

Flu

Today's (which actually means yesterday's) International Herald Tribune writes about avian flu. The danger of pandemic is far from over, and there are rather many mysteriesaround the flu: nobody knows how widely it has spread, why children are so much more likely to catch it and how it would respond to Tamiflu, the only antiwiral. Or something. And the one of the factories, who are making preliminary vaccines, somehow broke down. This is clearly a case, in which international co-operation is essential. It seems likely, that while the population in China and SE Asia still grows, and while they want to eat more poultry and pig, we will have new problems of this kind. We as human race should find better ways of inventing vaccines and medicins, and detecting this kind of problems in their early stages. I think leaving it all to the markets does not solve problems like this one.

Wednesday, 2004-10-13

Daily crono

Lazy day in the office: reading and writing about lean development. Nothing much happened, office was quiet, everyone hacking away in silence in their own cubiles. Lives wasted. I talk with Reijo on the phone: he was my workmate, but escaped to the academy/teacher position in Rovaniemi - it is always a pleasure to talk with him - after a day in office it feels like breathing fresh, clean air. A cup of coffee in Rytmi (habit forming), then planning my trip, a short visit to the gym, reading, etc.

Some interesting links/topics

The Linux kernel is worth of $612 million, which is rather much - actually surprisinly so. Amazonia seems to be a fascinating place. Let's see how it turns out to be in reality. I am really excited by the coming adventure.

High-tech warfare is likely to suffer from technical problems. What is funny is that some of the problems are similar to those I have been strugling with. Still, I will not volunteer to sort out the problems of Pentagon. Another article tells how US has already started to pull out of Iraq and that military is going to vote for Mr Kerry. This has made republicans rather worried, the article states.

Working life

The statistics in Siltala's book are quite alarming. Fusions, brain-dead organization changes, unnessary changes, unrelenting competition, short-term jobs etc. I have seen it, but not really experienced since I have worked 7 years in one and same company, actually even with one product. Quite exceptional. Anaway, I have already for quite many years thought that in current world one can only be succesful and lead pleasant life, if one behaves like a mercenary: always keeps the skills up-to-date, sells oneself to the highest bidder and does not harbor any loyalities to anything but own values, which (in addition on the pay) are the only ones to guide. That's the way! But unfortunately this attitude is in direct conflict with the normal engineer life of building houses, buying expensive cars etc. Too bad!

Oh, I read some 25 pages further. Around the page 173 Siltala presents an idea of nomads, which corresponds rather well to my idea of mercenaries. Hmm, I am not so original thinker. Or then Siltala has been reading my USENET-writings...

Tuesday, 2004-10-12

Daily crono

Morning: at work before 9am, some meetings. Rest of the workingday I spent by writing some proposals how to make things cheaper and faster, which is my favourite topic. After work: coffee and reading in Rytmi for some 2 hours. Really fun and urban. Much nicer than building a house, fixing cars, saving for retirement etc. Evening: cooking, eating, writing and reading. Normal stuff, but it seems that it would not be so much more expensive to buy ready meals from the local Thai- hole-in-the-wall eatery.

Siltala's new book

I have now read 100 pages (out of 440) of Siltala's new book. It is not so easy: the argumentation is quite dense, sentences sometimes next to impossible to parse (let alone comprehend) and the number of references is daunting. Sometimes the argument disappears in the forest of references and quotations. I really wonder whether those 7000 persons who have bought the books will ever have the strenght and patience to really read it through. However, the book is not bad: some arguments are new and (after parsing etc) the historical narrative is informative.

Pensions

In UK, they have calculated that the state will not be able to pay our retirement. So, we should save ourselves. Check how things stand in UK from this table. I wonder how things stand in Finland. I have not saved any money for my coming retirement (in some 30 years), but if my father's and his father's fate is mine, I will not have many years of retirement to enjoy anyway. But if your kin is of longliving sort, take care of yourself!

Misc world politics

Mr Bush wants to demonstrate (or just field) the Star Wars-system even though it is not likely to work. Some say that even if it worked, it would be a questionable system. See the article. As a system architect I find the system technicly interesting but totally unnecessary. I will not work on that kind of weapons systems ever.

Some of Mr Bush's prisoners have started to disappear. Shall we see after 20 years Mr Bush in court like we see Mr Pinochet now? That would be too late: better would prevent prisoners from disappearing.

That's all for now. I have the read something.

Antiwar resources

More anti-war websites web-sites than you ever have time/energy/patience to browse through. For the other side of the coin, try e.g. the Fox News, or the pages of the White Hose.

Birds

I saw a few hundred bohemian waxwings in mountain ashes (sorbus aucuparia). One black woodpecker lives next to our office. Quite nice.

Finnish bul****t

Our dear prime minister Matti "lets-all-move-to-Nurmijärvi-and-build-our-own-homes" Vanhanen told in MTV3 TV-news that "we [Finns] must work hard and we must have positive attitude towards changes. I think that we are too often afraid of change". So talks the man, whose government does not dare to change anything real and who himself does not look like being ready for any change. God bless us, if such a beast exists!

Monday, 2004-10-11

Back in business after short break . I even feel that my overexposure to world politics has healed and I can start reading newspapers again. More later.

MIT

I sent the medical report to MIT today. It took 4 weeks, 5 doctor visits, 4 lab visits and some 70 euros plus some working hours. Now I know that I am quite healthy and there should be no health related reason for not letting my into US. Funny thing is that they recommend taking copies of all material sent to MIT medical. Do they usually lose some of the material?

SAS and email

SAS contact pages tell us that

Important notice The increasing amount of incoming e-mails has made it impossible at present time to give you the best service possible and has forced us to close the e-mail service. Instead please contact SAS Internet support by telephone on the numbers stated below.

That is how the internet/information-society develops. I have noticed already earlier, that many companies do not reply my emails. I wonder when others have the courage to do what SAS did.

On working attitudes / Siltala

In his book "The short history of deterioration of working life" (in Finnsh) Juha Siltala categorizes employees: workers, contract workers, deaconess, and realizers of self. For myself, the categories of "workers" and "realizers of self" are the most important ones. In short, "workers" try to do the minimal amount of work and spare their energy and initiative for after-work activities: they also go on strike when necessary to defend their hard-won territory in office/factory. "Realizers of self", on the contrary, see work as a way of developing themselves, as essential part of their life-line: they also cannot make so easily distinction between work and free-time and may also work for smaller compensation etc. Now, I have noticed that this is really true and reality at office. I also think that I belong to the category "realizers": I try to make things better, to make work more and more efficient and enjoyable. This causes some friction since most others are "workers" and my initiatives are not always so welcome: they would, in the beginning, suck the energy of "workers".

Consider how this compares to categories of "rule makers", "rule takers", and "rule breakers" (by Maunu). Are the realizers usually "breakers"?

Oil

In today's Economist: a book review of three new books on America and oil. Title: "Crude argument: the problem with oil is not its shortage, but rather its concentration". According to the books, the world is not going to run out of oil anytime soon. The real problem is that just 5 countries in the Gulf have 66% of all known oil, and Saudis alone have 25%. This is the problem, and this is why USA has promised to give its full military support to Saudis (already in 1945 when Roosevelt met the king of Saudis, King Ibn). So, what needs to happen is to make USA (and the rest of the world) less dependent on oil: this is how the price will go down, which in turn will force Saudis etc to modernize/democratize their countries. Now they are just too rich, they can bribe they way out of political reforms (even though this is getting harder since the population in Gulf is exploding, likely to double in the next 20 years or so; they also have dangerously many unemployed young men there, not a good situation in any county). One way to decrease dependency is to take steps towards hydrogen economy. This would also be a possibility for Finnish innovations, new Nokias so to say.

This argument is not new. Gray presents similar ideas in "Heresies".

Daily crono

Morning: visit to the doctor's, coffee with Flexi-friends (nice to meet you guys). Afternoon: sending snail-mail to MIT, working. Late afternoon: trying to have coffee at university and refresh memories (too late), coffee in Rytmi, discussing with S and disturbing her at her office, blogging and reading (IHT, Economist, Siltala) at home, drinking some alcohol, watching some bad movies in TV, surfing in the net.

Sunday, 2004-10-10

Lazy day followed one of the most enjoyable evening I have ever had. We visited S's sister and mother in suburbs. On the way we saw an old house with 200 pigeons on its roof. Rather strange sights in a suburb. The rest of the day I spend reading, watching TV and daydreaming. I managed to finish reading "Pussikaljaromaani", which was very good for the first 150 pages and rather boring for the other 150 pages. Worth reading but not buying maybe. Anyway, it is sometimes good to read some new novels by young Finnish authors.

Saturday, 2004-10-9

I hate to admit this, but I am getting old. Drinking 4 pints of beer and some vodka, then reading books until 2.30 am and getting up at 8.30am makes me tired. I intended to read the Pussikaljaromaani this morning, but I could not. Instead, I had to take a nap for 2 hours. So embarassing. I have to listen to Ministry so that I will definitely stay awake.

Fun awaits: at 6pm we will start eating mussels in restaurant Carelia. I can hardly wait for that.

Finland and competitiveness

I read a small article in some newspaper/magazine (I read Helsinginsanomat, Taloussanomat, Suomen kuvalehti, and Internation Herald Tribune (and it was not in IHT since I have it here at home)), that some study has again ranked Finland as the most competitive country in the world. USA was the second. This is in total contradiction with all the wailing and ranting by some right-wing politicians that I hear and read almost daily. It may be that Finland is still competitive because of the good education system we (used if I believe some scientist in the field of education) to have etc, but anyway this difference in opinions is interesting. I myself think, that we have some difficulties ahead, that we do have too many unemployed, and the popolation is growing older. This will be a problem. But I do detest the knee-jerk crisis mentality and neo-liberal recipies of making things right again. What we need is not copying the USA way of managing a country, but some social innovations, which enable us to have rather high standard of living but also reduce the strain on environment and ourselves. This must be possible, it would only require some bold actions and honest thinking; introducing simpler social security in from of negative income tax (or "kansalaispalkka") would be a good start. But our current bunch of leading politician is really sorry one of cowards and idiots. I do not expect them to figure out any ways to make things better or resolve possible crisis.

Even if we would have the money to keep the current social sector up indefinitely, we do not have the personnel. We need to get rid of all unnecessary duties so that we can concentrate in inventing something new. Otherwise so many of us will will be taking care of older people and managing the effort, that we do not have enough persons for other things. (Thanks to Maunu for pointing this out)

Evening

I am drunk. We (me, S, Marjo, Jarmo) had an excellent dinner at Carelia: mussles, wine, dessert, spirits, discussions, which continued at our home. Then my brotherreturned from Germany with a new car (Audi 100 S4, 1992, 230 bhp) and a car load of booze. I got some of the booze. Then we had a short trial drive. The car is marvellous. I wish I had a similar. Especially one with a driver and a backseat full of beer like this one. Excellent. Whatever. No politics, pure fuzzy whatsoever entertainment. Reading, but not remembering, remembering but not caring. Fun! Good night. The end is nigh. Chaotic Discord.

All opinions are mine and do not reflect opinions etc of my current or future employers as far as I am aware.

See the older entries.

Blogs November 2004

Manen elämää/The life of Mane a.k.a Matti Kinnunen

Systemic thinking

New books

Einstein was stealing from Poincaré?

MIT preparations

Nodding index

Comment on Powell

A (conspiracy) theory

How to avoid jetlag

On security and neuroticism

New books

Read books

Paying for a pint of beer

Paranoia

Security games in Bogota

Bogota

In late evening

At noon

Wildlife

On dress codes

On flying

On Copacabana

Manatee

Trip to the extractive reserve

Hazards

Layman kills the cayman

The route so far and some scattered notes

Travelling still

Travelling

Finnish politics

Iraq

Politics

Daily crono

Science

Travelling

Daily crono

On life

Finland

Daily crono and the obligatory rant

Flu

Daily crono

Some interesting links/topics

Working life

Daily crono

Siltala's new book

Pensions

Misc world politics

Antiwar resources

Birds

Finnish bul****t

MIT

SAS and email

Daily crono

Finland and competitiveness

Evening

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