University of Helsinki
Break week between periods 1 and 2.
I listened the podcast episode part 2. This episode continued the same theme than first part did. At the beginning they told that you need to hear part 1. before continuing this part. So it was more arguing about the drying Southwest, how it will affect to the farming, natural conditions, cities and humans. As a geographer it makes all sense and it was, well not interesting, but still interesting to hear. It was a reminder how important water and water systems are for the states (in this context) and community.
I wrote the last writing task for our support group on Monday because this week our meeting was on Wednesday. I did choose the academic version and after I got the idea what to do I start writing. I needed some fact sources, so it took me an hour to finish my text.
Of course we did have the support group meeting and it was the last one. There were not so many participants, so we had enough time to talk about everyone’s texts. I got some good feedback and able to chat with another geographer about our studies and very different texts about the same task. Over all I did like this support group. First I thought it would contain a bit more feedback and tips from the teacher, but it was still fruitful. Thanks for that!
We did meet another time with “coffee group”. This week was gap week between first and second period so we did managed to plan meeting with Victoria, Eevi and Sanni this time. Unfortunately, me and Victoria had missed the starting time, so we were an hour too early in Tripla. We decided to do shopping while waiting. It was surprisingly hard speaking English in that context. I mean what is villakangastakki in English? After spending some time, we did meet in café with our friends. Both have done ALMS before, so they were happy to help and spend about two hours with us while speaking English.
This week I did read some news on four days. Because I wasn’t at the campus at all I read news while drinking my morning coffee, 15min per day. News was talking about Israels situation. It is not funny to read but I still think it is good to keep on aboard. The other news I read talked about how Finns don’t feel that safe anymore. Feeling unsafe were felt mostly in cities and it includes walking on the streets, especially dark time. I can underwrite this. I have studied city planning and urban area studies and the model Finland, or mostly big cities like Helsinki, Vantaa and Tampere are doing so wrong city building. We are building high towers close each other’s and narrow roads crisscross. It brings unsafe feeling while walking by at nighttime or even early mornings. The article I read was about ministry survey finds. A lot more articles about Finnish president elections and candidates and articles talking about apartment price drop. And rest in peace for Aira Samulin!
I did watch my series, Task Master UK more, about 5 episodes but I marked as 2h because I would continue doing this after this course too. I did watch one movie from HBO and it’s called “The wizard of lies”. I watched it without subtitles but I needed to google some facts about the scenario. The movie talked about the biggest Ponzi-Scheme in the USA history. It was a pyramid scheme where Madoff led finance company for investments and market making. It was a bit tragic to watch because Madoffs sons were working in his dad’s company but did not know anything about this case, neither his wife. The movie was at the beginning very weird and hard to follow but after while it started make sense. Very sad and unbelievable movie! Bernie Madoff was sentenced to life imprisonment while his older son made suicide and youngers cancer recured because of stress. He died to the cancer. His wife became hated, poor and lonely after loosing her husband. Very good movie and terrific at the same time.
At the and of the week I did hear second podcast episode. It did last for two hours divided into two parts. The theme was very interesting by the title; What if there were no international borders?. What came into my mind as a geographer before listening was that it could offer freedom but a lot of problems touching culture, exile, trading and criminality. The podcasters were on the same field. Because the podcasters are Americans, they took examples from there: smoking week could be legal some state and in another you can be taken to jail. With out those borders everything would be free but mad. By the borders countries or states can affect what kind of people or markets or innovations are heading in and out. “It illustrates that there is different things happening there based on the laws or the regulations of these different countries”, like Hunter Shobe said. Once you can control those borders you can control the area, that is basically the message this podcast episode was telling.
Here is my timetable:
