2001: A GEEK ODYSSEY

Sat, Dec 29

<19:23> "Where the fsck is my camera", this morning thought walking home from the bus station at the blue moment. Dressed up as the Ice Queen at -28 °C, Mother Nature is gorgeously cool. No camera with me, as I'd been to our annual IB class reunion in Kuopio, and it did not feel necessary because I don't like taking drunken portraits. Enough of chemically induced pardeying for this year and wishing a sane new year. "For medical and scientific purposes only", it said on the bottle of S.F. we consumed, and I still wonder which purpose it had been.

Fri, Dec 21

<01:04> Illuminated.

An amazing book. Very touching, personally - here is the most obvious of clues: on the 23rd of this September I turned 23. There were a number of other ideas, absorbing mainly because they reinforced my ego and its special position in this world. Amazorbing, or so I thought while reading it. But the ending - shit, I can't give my opinion of it because it would reveal something, and if you know it you might know what I think of it. Yet, after just seeing FotR (remember, no read book have I) The Illuminatus feels kind of hollow. Arguably it is a fancy model for today's society, but something's missing. The problem is, IMHO, that with that ingredient it would be impossible to forge such a deep conspiracy. In fact, while watching FotR I had to remind myself now and then, to forget the conspiracies I have read, watched, and lived in, because the world portrayed was 'the good old' with genuine honour, love and caring. Guess I have been converted ;-)

Wed, Dec 19

<05:25> It's pretty cool (around -15 Centigrade) here in Varkaus.FI but I felt like venturing out for some photos. And you guess it, I've booked 'one ticket to watch them all'.

<22:57> Seen it now. It's not like my cybical world has tumbled over or something. But certainly the best film I've seen in a long time. Forget the star notation - there are some technical reasons why I can't give five stars to FotR. I now imagine the book could certainly deserve those. I hate to analyze this further, so here's just a funny point (not a real quote): "Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson." ;-)

Wed, Dec 12

<01:36> The other Lysean, Mr Kajala is at Queens' for his interviews tomorrow morning. Turned out an interesting guy as well (what did you expect? :-). Initiated him to Eraina, Eagle and Pickerel - unfortunately Mr Liukkonen's lookalike bartender has a thicker beard now but he's still easily identified as our Finnish acquaintance. Now, I've got another, deeper story to tell but it takes a little induction...

Rumours tell that LOTR is already being shown in Cambridge - it's mentioned on the AdHoc website. The box office girl didn't know anything about this though.. so it must be a premature thing for critics and the like. Now why was I after this, not being a hc Tolkien fan? Firstly, it's kind of boring here @cam off the term and the race for special tickets might have been fun had the reward been there. Now the idea I'm trying to tell stems from the imaginary scene which I guess is inevitable to come: I'm discussing LOTR/FOTR with some friends, and they wonder why I haven't read the book - it should be just the typical thing for me, a bookworm and a geek. (Is it too much to ask, to differentiate between SF and fantasy bookgeeks?) In a way, that's enough reason for me - if it's expected or mainstream (in this case both), I'm not interested. Then I could go on asking if they're read The Illuminatus Trilogy - why not, everyone should read it, blah blah. Go a bit further to explain why that's more relevant to our lives than a piece of fantasy:

The Illuminatus is not purely a work of fiction. It is a collection of factual events of history, glued together by intervals of fiction to make an incredibly credible world of quasi-reality. Now this is what came to me on Monday night, when walking out in the mist, trying to shoot some gothic scenes with the hugely diffuse lighting. It made me think of gluons of particle physics, which turned out, I realized, a powerful analogy: in physics, gluons are fictitious characters put in to rationally explain the behaviour of quarks. They are there to complete a model of reality, from the fragmented picture provided by experimental observations. Similarly, The Illuminatus is a model of our political and social world, a feat which is only possible by the introduction of some fictional elements. Thus, I challenge you The Reader to convince me, why LOTR is more important / worth reading. :-)

Fri, Dec 7

<01:45> ID6. Sauna. After that at Eraina Taverna, three of us were Finns who'd just finished their interviews at Queens'. Only one was from Lyseo though... another one is coming next week. From simple statistics I'd expect one or two of the four Finns will get a place at Queens', but considering the general Finnitude, the fraction might be higher :-). The pizza at Eraina was excellent and fulfilling as ever, and I still can't believe how Eero claimed he's hungry later in the night.

Thu, Dec 6

<01:13> Mr. Palomäki from Lyseo is here at Queens' for his maths/physics interview. This was a good excuse to go out to Gandhi and Clowns, even though there's another feasty evening coming tonight. Also it was pretty cool to indulge in some creative maths over tea/coffee. Just like the old days at Sigma Café :-)

Sun, Dec 2

<03:54> Came, saw, missed - it happened after tonight's bop at Wolfson which wasn't too bad, but a bit on the cheesy side. So no clubbing, just a bop. When it finished around 2 am, Louis told us that there's another pardey at Clare Hall, it was freezing as we walked there, and it turned out that had finished too. We started to harass Louis as we'd promised to undertake him should the pardey turn out nonexistent, or a joke. However, we didn't get far applying our martial arts skills (Antti from a plethora of films and me from classes) as someone pointed out there was a halo in the sky.

It looked wonderful, a circle subtending about 45 degrees around the moon on a cloudless near-full-moon night. Atmospheric ice crystals at work. But that was it - once I got home to get my camera it was gone. So no hard evidence, but at least we're glad we saw it.

Sat, Dec 1

<07:54> Philosophy has been discussed sufficiently. It is time to get some sleep. Ardbeg 17 is nice, but of course it is not essential for a good debate. Now preparing for tonight's pardey at Wolfson. Kewl :-]