Mane

Birthday I like to be celebrated, I am an arm-chair celebrity. So, today was an excellent day again as today is my birthday. I am not going to say how old am I now, since it is classified information. However, yesterday my age was a product of 3 prime numbers, taday it is only product of two prime numbers. The first one to guess right (former classmates, childhood friends, and kin may not participate) will earn a pint of beer in a bar of my choice. Celebration is not an abstract term, and thus I and S went to Espresso Royal for some coffee, bagels, cakes, and of course New York Times. It is a pity that one cannot smoke cigars in American cafes - a celebration without a cigar is lacking. But it was fun: she also took some great pictures of me. Beware when I publish them. They are R-rated. Later, she left for library, and I continued celebration by doing the second funniest thing I know: riding the T (metro) from one terminal to another. First I took the green line to the Boston Coll...

The importance of laws (sueing) and processes in USA I have been wondering why life is so much more regulated by laws, processes, and regulations here in USA than in Europe. It is really irritating. Today, while walking idly, I finally got it. It is because multi-cultural nature of the society: one cannot know how people would behave without the processes, regulations, and fear of getting sued. In Finland, we have a very homogenous population, with very much shared values and ethical standards: there is no need for external guidance/threats - we all know how to behave anyway. (this is not to say that there would not be laws or that we would not respect them. On the contrary, Finns can be very legalistic sometimes. But we do not fear getting sued, nor do we leave our brains at home when going to work, we can even take own initiative even in normal service occupations). On military papers in the SE course Even though I do not really like the amount of military influence in MIT, I ha...

Excessive militarism in MIT Our Systems Engineering course has a final project. There are two alternatives to choose from. The first one is to do some design with jet engines. The second one is to do something with military command systems. I am not really thrilled about these alternatives. The first one has too much mechanical engineering involved for my taste and experience. The second one is again one more example how the excessive militarism rampant in USA is wasting our time and efforts. It is as if there would not be enough significant, and really important problems to ponder in the world. Investing a single second for making killing innocents easier is life time wasted. Why do not we do something with energy systems, health care systems, urban transport systems, water management? All of these would be both more important and harder than making killing more efficient? Or, what about doing some systems engineering related to preventing terrorism? I think the amount of effort dev...

Lean studying Lean studying work best, when one arranges for apparent, but of course not real, lack of time. Or, maybe it is just me. For the last 3 days studying has been fun again. I have had enough things to do until late evening. Today, I would not have had, but I decided to take morning of, sleeping late, having lunch in some Indian place near the Harvard Square with S , and then just spend one hours surfing the net. Then we had the most entertaining accounting lecture. It was fun. Later, after 5pm, I wrote an outline for my thesis, had pictures taken of me, finished the Systems Engineering HW#3, and even filled in the reading quiz. Now, it is time to drink some wine. Today may have been the last really warm day in Boston. It was 36C, and very humid. I was about to go cycling, but then decided not to. I am getting sissy. A puzzle Why is it criminal to plot bombing some innocent people in New York, when it is not criminal to plot nuking Iran's capital, if the first plot r...

Sunday in NYC On Sunday, S took me to Shiller's for a late breakfast. It is a nice place, very much like some places I have visited in Paris: lots of mirrors, noisy, busy, with good coffee and excellent omelets. I do not usually mind noisy places, but this time the sheer volume and high pitch of a group of American women in the adjacent table was way too much. I just do not understand, which their voices are at least one octave higher than European women's. It is actually terrible, not sensual at all. Hurts my ears. Luckily I do not have to date in America. Otherwise I would have to buy very discrete ear plugs. We tried to visit some art galleries and museums, but the heat took the edge out of us and I became cranky. Not good. So, we decided to go for lunch to the Grand Sichuan. Good as always. Any ideas why there are next to no public toilets in NYC? It is very hard to find a toilet, which one could use without paying for a beer or coffee etc. I assume this again has some...

Security theater in NYC We got to play our part in the amusing security theater in NYC on Sunday. We (I and S ) entered the Metro-system in the lower east side. I got through without acting my part, since I had my shoulder bag. She had her backpack, so she had to act her part. It was quite easy: it was enough to open the zipper. The cop was a lousy actor: he did not even look inside of the bag. Not to mention looking under the layer of clothes. Two other actors were standing and idling nearby. They had NYPD uniforms on. I just wonder, how come the terrorist would so stupid, that they would not hide their bombs in suitcases or shoulder bags. But of course, changing the script or making it more complex might make the play too difficult to play. That must not happen, because it would reduce the level of feeling-safe among the innocent and ignorant population, which could affect the popularity polls of the directors of the play. Being good citizens of the world, we are happy to play our ...

Goodbye open society I am scare. The open societies I have so long cherished are now melting away. In UK, the police shot some random Asian man, because he was running away from the police. Even worse: they first caught the man, threw him on the ground and then shot him 5 times. Is this the way our societies are going to be in the future? That any police officer can sentence anyone (especially anyone non-white) to death and execute anyone just like that? If that is the case, the terrorist do not have to even bother anymore. We have capitulated. And it is not happening only in UK, it is happening in USA, too. Today, some moron came up with an idea to randomly search bags of passengers entering the NYC metro. Of course, the terrorist are stupid enough not to blow up the bag when searched. And, of course, they are not clever enough not to turn around and use the next entrance: the new rule says, that refusing to let the officers search the bag is quite Ok. Oh, why do we have to put up w...

On the amount homework and units MIT measures the size of a class in units. The formula for figuring out the likely time needed to complete the course in X-Y-W, where X is the number of hours of lectures, Y the number of hours of laboratory work, and W is the number of homework. For example, I am currently taking Systems engineering and Operation management classes. Both of the are 3-0-9. So, I would assume them to take about similar amount of time, but they are not. Systems Engineering is taking much longer, even more than it nominally should. It seems that the faculty has two ways of interpreting the amount o homework necessary in a given course. Some of them, like professor Simchi-Levi, think that it is enough to give enough homework to guarantee that we learn what we are supposed to learn. Others, like professor Frey, seems to feel forced to give enough homework to fill in the nominal hours, no matter that quite a big junk of the homework does not add anything to our learning. I ...

Lazy day Drinking beer and sleeping with air conditioning, which means sweating the whole night, is not good for dutiful studying. I woke up early, but could not really stay awake. And I was dreaming of taking a holiday somewhere, just reading, eating, using locally legal drugs and other nice things. But no mercy for poor students even though I decided not to attend the finance and accounting class. Instead, after having lunch at Kumar's, I went cycling for an hour. It was as nice as always, and the temperature, 33C, was very close to the ideal. It is a pity that this studying prevents cycling. Or then it is my laziness. In the evening I was doing the most stupid imaginable with Ashok, Krishna and Kumar . It was about doing some planned experiments on the length of flying times of paper helicopters. It was fun, but I think we do not really learn anything by flying paper helicopters. If I were not aiming for the PhD, I definitely would not do such things. Maybe I should not do t...

Au revoir in American "Au revoir" in Amarican is "Talk to you later". Sometimes I hear someone saying "See you later", but never anyone saying "Listen to you later". Still hot The weather was hot enough to prompt an official warning today: "If you have to venture outside, remember to drink a lot of water and and do not exert yourself". We (with S ) went to the Cambridge brewing company, but they did not serve water. What a pity. But the weather is still rather lenient here. In Hanzhou, where I lived a while ago, a taifun was doing its thing. See the picture. Studies are going steadily forward. Most of the things are easy, lectures rather trivial to grasp, and I have lots of free time. Not bad. Now, too tired to write more. Maybe tomorrow. Alun perin julkaistu kuukausikoosteessa "Blogs from July to September 2005".

Back to the original plan I have now reallized that my original plan is still the best possible. The plan is, just for record: complete the SDM-program in one year, get into the ESD PhD-program, start it in January and complete it in less than 3 years. If the are promising academic prospect, pursue them. Otherwise, get a job, work for a few years and go to one of the TOP-5 universities in the field of political science and complete at least master's degree in political science. This is the plan and I will not change it; I may have to get a job every now and then to finance my studies, but I assume that is the way life may well go. Wainwright is a safe bank I withdrew some money from my account today. It was the normal hassle of writing checks to myself, they calling the other branch for a signature sample and getting it by fax etc. What was new was the added security in the transaction. As is reasonable, they did not trust in my passport. It may be counterfeit after all. Nor d...

Still getting back to my senses I have been really worried about money during the last weeks. I was sure that I am about to run totally out of money and could not even buy a ticket back Finland. Or that if I took a loan, I would somehow not be able to pay it back and that it would become such a pain and shame. Thus, I was looking for extra financing here and there. Now it has become clear, that there is no real way to get money in MIT (as I cannot be an RA and I was told too late that I could be a TA - all positions are taken up already). And with my visa I can work only 20 hours outside MIT per week (starting from September). But, as I have written several times, I do not want to work. So, my current and final decision is to just to my two remaining courses and my thesis and just take it easy and enjoy my life. I will take a loan from my bank so that I will not have to worry about money too much. And I will only take the two mandatory classes I have left (plus maybe the class on ...

Exam coming Finance exams starts in 5 minutes. Quite fun. I should do reasonably well, but we will see. After the exam I will meet my thesis advisor; I have not done anything for my thesis yet. Let's see. Alun perin julkaistu kuukausikoosteessa "Blogs from July to September 2005".

Getting humbler I think I have to bite the bullet and start looking for a real job. After all, I will have only 2 courses in the fall; I could easily handle them and my thesis even with working full time. If I would get a full time jobs, say, in September or October, I could work for one full year before starting my PhD-studies properly. This would fill in my coffers so that I could survive the next 2-3 years with a PhD-salary. Or, if the job would be a good one: I might even stop dreaming about getting an PhD. Anyway, I need some money and the sooner, the better. I have no real intention to run too deeply in debt while in MIT. Alun perin julkaistu kuukausikoosteessa "Blogs from July to September 2005".

Rollercoaster It is hard to get used to decreasing income and bank balance. It makes my feelings go up and down. Now I am up again, I think I have enough money until January. Or almost. But I need to get some more from somewhere: but USA does not let me work outside MIT and MIT does not really let me work inside MIT. I could become a teaching assistant, but there are only a few positions available. I cannot become an research assistant, because I am an SDM student. Stupid. I only have 2 courses left in the fall - paying full tuition for them is insane. I need to take extra courses. Or something. But at the moment money is not the biggest concern. I have to start to study for the Finance exam on Wednesday. No real urge to do so, but maybe I can use one day on it. Weekend was OK, or nice actually. On Saturday, Biju invited me to AID-meeting. I was the only non-Indian there. AID seems to be very serious NGO doing good work: Indians in USA helping India. Not bad. In the evening, we (I...

Now back to great feelings I have got my motivation and working spirit and productivity back. It feels rather good. I just wrote almost 4 pages for our small summer project: I developed a model for modeling any warehouse with any distribution of racks and shelves, boxes, and RFID-readers. It was really fun. The next thing is to instantiate the model and implement it using some tools: it should be easily doable with Matlab, but since I am not an expert user, it may take me a couple of days. Anyway, doing this small project is much more intellectually challenging than most of our homework assignments. This is why I really prefer project-based courses. And why I detest and loath courses with exams: I am too old for taking exams. This morning, we had an excellent workshop on networking and interviewing skills. It was absolutely the most useful career related workshop I have attended in MIT. Those who did not attend really missed an excellent opportunity. Poor them. Now I know a bit bet...

Much better today I feel much better today. Yesterday, I was really down, could barely work, was totally lost. I had no idea what to do next in my life. And all this did really disturb me. So, I did the bear thing and slept most of the day. It helped, I am not desperate at all. I think, that the fact that I may have to get a job in less than a year is really bugging. I need to somehow start to stand this prospect - but anyway, following the advice "If you go corporate, do it only in short stints" will help me a lot. Maybe I could do something for a year or so. I would make enough money to take a year off by doing so. But most likely I will continue all the way to PhD here in MIT. It would postpone the job anxiety a few years. Would be fine. Systems engineering Somehow, I have to started to agree with Yoav on the quality of the Systems Engineering class. It has got really boring. I think, that the topics are important, but the professor does put too much stuff in one lec...

Counterfeit no good! I was still quite down in the morning and decided to sleep in. I think missing one lecture is not a fire hazard or someting else bad and illegal. Then, at 1 pm, I decided to go for lunch and also for the Finance lecture. So, I left home wearing shorts, sandals, and my counterfeit North Face goretex raincoat. S left earlier with our only umbrella. After 5 minutes, my Chinese raincoat failed, and I was totally soaked (to my underwear). And I was still at least 15 minutes from MIT. There are no shops nearby to buy any new gear. And I could take a taxi, since I ran out of small banknotes last night. Not that here would be any free taxis to flag down either. So, I came back home and did some work here. For example, I read the appropriate chapters of the Finance textbook, so that I would not miss all the fun. The SDM BBQ has been cancelled. I would have liked a beer or two, and some seafood. Alun perin julkaistu kuukausikoosteessa "Blogs from July to September 2...

Not good I have a very bad culture shock right now. I miss Europe so much, I just cannot understand this country. I get so depressed with all these rules, the rigidity of everything, and the sigs telling about laws and fines. I am also disappointed by the racial clustering: black, latinos, and whites do not really mix, and opportunities are not evenly distributed. Oh, I am so tired. I cannot do anything sensible anymore today, I just want to read some good book, forget where I am, and hope that this culture shock goes away tomorrow. Nothing like this ever happened in China. Maybe European and Chinese cultures are closer each other than European and American cultures. I would say so right now, but I am definitely badly biased just now. If this feeling does not go away, I cannot stay here and do my PhD. It may well happen to be the case. Daily cronos Yesterday, parties at Sam's and Kumar's. Some alcohol. Today, classes, lunch with S in the Bengali restaurant, dinner with K...

Quotes In a mall, at the counter of a pretzel joint We cannot anymore accept bills bigger than $20 due to the dramatic increase of counterfeit ones. We apologize of any inconvenience. I assume this only a problem north of Boston. It seems that counterfeiters live there and are lazy enough to venture to Boston proper. More seriously, if there indeed are that many counterfeit bank notes, I would assume FBI (or the government as a whole) to do something: losing trust in bank notes is not good for the society (or community). A conservative in NPR this morning It is not wise to use tens of billions of dollars in preventing global warming, when millions of people die of poverty. Helping to reduce poverty is more urgent. Sure, but how about cutting US military budget from $500 billion to say $50 billion and using the savings for reducing poverty, combatting diseases (e.g AIDS, malaria, and getting ready to deal with the coming flu pandemic even in USA), and developing new energy syst...

Nunc est bibendum Clearly, I have not been drinking enough this year. Not drinking drains my energy and creativity. So, I will now (3pm) open a bottle of white wine. Then I will drink some wine, not just sip but drink, the way we do in Finland (but not like were drank when we were 16-19: two bottles, the first one in less than 10 minutes, then the second during the next hour). Now, it may take an hour. The first one. And just to let you know, I cycled 2 hours, and will do some writing for our Systems Engineering assignment. It is just the thing to do while drinking. Try it - you will be surprised. I have invented two of my patents while drinking. Teetotallers beware. I also do recommend Tramal for increasing creativity. But one cannot easily get in it in USA. In China, it was available over the counter in drugstores. Not bad. Cycling So, I cycled for 2 hours around southern Boston. Boston is a nice place to cycle: countless small roads, street and alleys to explore, no significant...

6 months in MIT And still going strong. Actually, stronger every day. Very good. Today, a lecture in the morning, during which we found out that we did our latest Operations management assignment absolutely correctly. I sense an "A" coming (it will go good to my 4.8 GPA from the first 93 units). Then, some food with S and a visit to the Kresge chapel. They did not marry us, nor did they wed us either. As a matter a fact, both priests were suspiciously absent. Maybe that was just OK. There was nobody in the big Kresge-auditorium either. It was time to have coffee. In the afternoon, 4 hours concentrated agonizing or fun with the accounting assingment (83% done) with Dave. Then, stealing the cake in the SDM-office. In some wineshop they tried to intoxinate us. We bought some bottles and were able to escape. But the conspiracy succeeded as you may notice. A sign in MIT: "MIT students do not pay tax. All others pay tax. We apologize for any inconvenience." Rather pol...