#TerosTidbits, short autobiographical random notes:

In the high school in 1990s Finland I had three job practice jaunts, "introduction to working life" in Kurikka. I think we received some very nominal pay for it as well.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TET

The students were responsible for getting a trainee position in whatever company for a week, and then do it.

There was also a yearly "taksvärkki päivä", where students took one day off to work, typically by gathering berries in the forest, and selling those to the supermarkets, and contributing the pay to the charity. In the later years in senior high I refused to take part in that, and did it as a schoolday instead.

https://fi.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taksv%C3%A4rkki

Then there was also the day when we were selling "vappukukka" yellow plastic flower pins for Walpurgis day for whatever charitable reason from door to door for small change for a whole day.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majblomma

In any case, my first traineeship, not counting working in my father's car repair shop and my grandparents' farm, and mowing the lawns of the housing corporation, was picked randomly by me, from the shop closest by to the school.

It was working in a hardware store. I remember hauling endless heavy bags of cement from the delivery truck to the shop. First without gloves, then noticing why it says "irritable" in the packaging, then with protective gloves.

The last days were about repainting some metal wallpaper stands.

It might be that the following ones were "taksvärkkipäivä" things and not "introduction to the working life" things, can't remember so well.

The second time I made an effort to find something more white-collar, so went to work in the bank, Kurikan Osuuspankki. There I mainly copied papers, and folded them into envelopes.

And the third one was in the Kurikka city municipality, where I was doing data entry from people's water bills into the computer. So many numbers, I was very fast in that, but the numbers never ended. In the end I was becoming slightly "number mad" and every number started to look like 5. I complained and got something else to do, don't remember what.

I think that last one allowed me to take on small summer jobs later doing IT classes for kids, and coding web pages for Kurikan Ryhti, the municipal sports club and making a 3D rendered ad for them for the television.

When I finished high school in 2001, I immediately moved to Tampere to study information technology in the Tampere University of Technology.

#TerosTidbits, short autobiographical random notes:

When I was studying in Malaysia in 2007, it was weird how large a role race and religion played in that deeply divided society.

Every official form asked for my race and religion. Apparently they have a very detailed racial theory in use, which the locals know by heart but was never taught to me. What is my race? White? Caucasian? Nordic? Finnish? I wrote "Nordic" to all the forms.

The religion was similarly puzzling. In Malaysia they only recognized a couple of the largest religions like Islam, Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism. I am none of these. Should I write "none" or "atheist" or what? I wrote "atheist" to all the forms.

There were strict laws against "evangelization" to Muslims, so that Muslims aren't accidentally converted to other religions, which would be illegal.

In University Sains Malaysia a Muslim girl asked me: "What are you?"

I didn't understand the question. I said "human?"

She said, "no, I mean what are you, like a Christian or what?"

I said: "I'm an atheist."

She asked me: "What's an atheist? I have never heard?"

I told her it means I have no religion, after which she was a bit puzzled and left quickly. I possibly broke some laws.

They also kept their master's theses under a lock and key, apparently because of copying. These are public documents and people should be able to read them. However, I walked into the university library to browse the books and the guard immediately stopped me. "You can't come here. What book do you need?"

I told him I don't know yet, was just browsing. "No, you need to use this search terminal to search for the book you want and I will get it for you. Then you can read it for 45 minutes. You cannot use the phone or take notes. I will supervise you reading."

Ok, so I used the terminal and searched for a random thesis in my field to check the general quality.

He supervised me reading the thesis and finally took it back to the shelf. The thesis itself was a disappointment, it was about grid computing. There was no contribution to any knowledge there, it was basically a very bad and very hurried summary of what grid computing is.

In the university we were often given questionnaires to fill up. "Imagine you are a CEO of a large Malaysian tech corporation."

These were used as materials for research for the theses, paid for example by Intel in one case, to find out some cultural aspects of Malaysian companies. Students would get course credit for answering these questionnaires, masquerading as corporate CEOs.

#TerosTidbits, short autobiographical jabberings continue:

When we studied in Malaysia with Katja in 2007, we met a lot of new people. Mostly other exchange students but also locals. The climate was extremely hot and people mostly drove to places. We insisted on walking, although there weren't really good walking paths or even safe crossings over roads. Every day our walk to the university involved running over a very busy multi-lane road just in between when the traffic lights were switching.

The walking paths were cement plate covered rain water gutters. Some of those cement plates were broken and so there were holes you had to jump over, deep into the sewer. Locals threw all the trash to the gutters, and plastic trash was everywhere. There weren't any public trash bins.

It was impossible to walk even a short distance outside without sunblock, a sunshade and water. The USM campus was huge and there were water monitor lizards among other wildlife living in there.

All the malls and such were air conditioned to very cool temperatures, you practically had to put on more clothing inside them. When you stepped outside it was like stepping into a spa, with all the heat and moisture rushing you.

Rains and thunderstorms came every night at the same time, but even the rain was hot.

There were lots of night markets in different streets but the largest one was in Batu Ferenghi, which we always joked about to be all about Ferengi rules of acquisition: "Never give money back."

They sold a lot of pirated DVD movies in those, but the movies were almost never the ones they were labelled as, but something completely different. They were also often recorded with bad mobile phone cameras from movie theatres.

They sold overpriced stuff to tourists, like apparel "made of real seashells", when the beach 15 meters away was full of seashells. The prices they yelled always decreased when you walked away, "30 ringgit! 20 ringgit! 5 ringgit! 3 ringgit just for you!"

They always classified us as tourists even though we lived there.

The food was awesome, although the hygiene wasn't. One restaurant had rats running around the floor when we were there. Sometimes I had ants in my rice. Regardless, the food was awesome.

We didn't know what the foods were in the university cafeteria, selling mainly roti, which is bread, with different fillings. I ordered the most expensive one, which really cost nothing by Finnish standards, named something like "Roti California".

All the locals always ordered the cheapest rotis. Well, they made the rotis to order and I discovered my roti had all the meats in it, plus two bananas, plus whipped cream and lots of colorful sprinkles. The locals in the same table asked if I had a birthday. :)

#TerosTidbits, short autobiographical notes continuing:

Since we're in the topic of teachers, let's do a honorary mention to my primary school and high school teacher Matti Mäkynen or "Mäxä". He also worked as a radio announcer in the local radio station in Kurikka, Radio Paitapiiska. He was extremely knowledgeable about everything related to pop music and UK. He taught music in primary school and English in high school. In the radio he was called "the black-bearded man", "mustapartainen mies".

https://finnishradiostations.wordpress.com/2017/06/02/paikallisradiolahetysta-vuosien-takaa-radio-paitapiiska-1993/

In the primary school he had this huge wooden rod, about 3 cm in diameter, as long as a standard teacher's pointing stick. Apparently some past students had given it to him as a gift, made in the woodcraft class.

He used it liberally and menacingly, and he often hit it to a student's pulpit with a huge "BANG!" like a club that it was, which certainly woke everyone up. There were rumors that he had broken some kid's fingers with it, but those were probably untrue. He did break many pulpits though.

In the high school he had a habit of distributing candy for correct answers to obscure trivia in the English class, I got many of those.

In high school he asked me if I could program a database app for Radio Paitapiiska to keep all their records in order. I did that in Delphi, which is a GUI toolkit on top of Turbo Pascal. I don't think I ever got paid for it, but they did test it out. Probably didn't quite fulfill all their requirements, but they never got back to me about it.

I got many more gigs from here and there regardless, for example from the sports club Kurikan Ryhti for their web pages, and assorted other media like 3D rendered TV ads and print media. I also taught IT to kids, did occasional tutoring gigs, and did software development for one security company for their billing and accounting.

I played a lot of chess in #KurikanVisa, or #KurVi chess club. Some of the game results are still easy to find on the web by my name. Our best player who is internationally renowned was Sampsa Nyysti.

In gymnasium I founded a chess club and got a grant from the school for the boards and pieces, and most importantly the digital chess clock.

We played speed chess every break, the whole school came to watch our manic 3 minute + 3 minute games. I wonder if the #chess equipment is still there.

#TerosTidbits, short autobiographical notes continuing:

In Tampere University of Technology, which later changed its name to Tampere University as it combined with the other universities, both I and Katja studied advanced physics courses. Some of these courses were lectured by a very charismatic old gentleman with a huge beard, professor Matti Lindroos.

He had so many stories, I hope he one day writes a book of them.

Things about his colleagues thinking an X-ray beam for studying crystals was off and losing their fingers in the process.

One particular story stayed with me. He has this "joke" he does to new students that he gives them a geiger meter to go do measurements of the university campus. Without fail after they have gone around the campus for some hours they come back with fear in their eyes: "We found this one cabinet which seems to be very radioactive! What is in there?"

Prof. Lindroos laughs into his beard and explains: "It's not the cabinet which is radioactive, it's what's below it."

He explains that during the Soviet times Finland used to have a trade deal with the Soviet Union where Finland sends eggs and butter, and other farm produce to the Soviet Union and they send high technology back in 1980s.

https://yle.fi/aihe/artikkeli/2014/08/28/muna-ja-voivuoret-vaihtokaupalla-neuvostoliittoon

So, the Finnish government sent a circular to the universities, "what high technology you need?" So, in Tampere University they wanted to teach nuclear physics, so they wrote "a radiation source".

Well, months passed, eggs went to the Soviet Union, and then the University of Tampere received a package from the Soviet Union. Excitedly they had a geiger meter at hand and opened the package.

It was immeditately clear that they couldn't use this radiation source for teaching, it was way too radioactive! They had no choice but to get rid of it as fast as possible. It was dangerous to move, so they decided to dig a 6 meter deep hole in the campus and bury the new fancy radioactive source there.

Later they built some building extensions on that area, and that radiation source is still there, under that one cabinet, 6 meters under ground.

Continuing #TerosTidbits, short autobiographical notes:

When we studied in Universiti Sains Malaysia in 2007 with Katja, the Japanese teacher who was a Japanese lady told us about the academic culture there. Malay men were on the top, and there is a strict glass ceiling for others. It's all very authoritative.

She told us for example of a case that they were teaching Japanese incorrectly, I think it was about some word which wasn't used in Japan, and she knew that, being Japanese. She told that to her boss, the more senior Malay Japanese teacher, but he refused to acknowledge being wrong so they continued teaching it incorrectly, even in the face of a primary source who should know how Japanese is spoken.

She told us she really hoped to one day return to Japan, but that she didn't have money for it and it was impossible to save such money working in the university. She was in effect stuck there in a toxic workplace, dreaming about getting back to #Japan one day.

#TerosTidbits, autobiographical short notes.

When we lived in #Malaysia in Sunny Ville for half a year with Katja in the start of 2007, there were lots of interesting experiences.

For one, one day the ceramic tiling in our floor just exploded. Shards of ceramic tiles everywhere. It wasn't just one small place, but the whole floor. We weren't present when it happened, but the cats were, and it must have been quite a bang.

I still have the photos.

The landlord, a nice Chinese gentleman said "it happens all the time here!". Apparently the buildings expand and contract seasonally, and ceramic floor tilings aren't maybe the best material to choose in such places but oh well.

They replaced it shortly with new tilings.

Continuing #TerosTidbits, random autobiographical stories:

When we applied to do international exchange studies for the semester 2007-01-01 - 2007-06-01 in Universiti Sains Malaysia, Katja got selected on her first try, but I had to write a direct petition to the university to be selected along with her. It succeeded, the Universiti Sains Malaysia didn't have anything against hosting one more exchange student from Finland.

We flew there on an international long-haul flight with three cats, Nala, Luna and Bene. Nala was a siamese, Luna and Bene were oriental shorthairs. Bene's complete name was FIN*Nekori's Bene Gesserit, she was bred by us in our own short-lived cattery, FIN* Nekori's.

It was a horror to get the cats there, there had to be all sorts of import regulations and quarantines arranged. Luckily the taxi driver we got from the airport doubled as a translator and a lawyer as we travelled with him all day to different governmental offices where he translated for us and explained the cat situation to all sorts of officials, got us the correct forms and adviced us how to fill them up as they were in Malay.

It took the whole day driving around and filling up forms with him. Finally we had the cats in the quarantine facility "animal hotel" for I think it was two weeks. We gave a big tip to the taxi driver/translator/lawyer.

We lived in Sunny Ville in Penang, in a huge condominum flat. There was a large common pool, a small kiosk downstairs, a Chinese restaurant and a 24/7 guard. The cats loved the heat.

We both took the Japanese course as we had already studied it a bit in Finland mostly inspired by watching a lot of anime. I took computer science associated courses such as genetic algorithms and e-commerce, Katja took physics.

We got to know many interesting people during that stay and we started using Facebook actively during that time as all the international students kept in touch over Facebook.

So many things happened during that half a year in Malaysia so I'll probably write separate tidbits of those.

Continuing short autobiographical dronings, #TerosTidbits

About relationships: My current girlfriend Katja was my first serious relationship, we met in 2003-01-01. I only had one night stands before that, one in Kurikka and two in vacations from the army in 2002.

When I was 15 or so on 1997 in Kurikka, lots of girls asked me to tutor them in mathematics and physics. Their parents would pay me some 20 marks per session as well. I didn't really do much except show how I work and help in some problems, but the girls generally were somehow very motivated in trying their best when I was simply present so they didn't really have anything I could help with. I suppose I missed many subtle hints at those times, like someone giving me aromatherapic samplers to smell, and stuff like that. I wasn't good at understanding flirting or subtle hints.

I suppose the parents were half-trying to pair me off with their daughters. I was never asked to tutor guys, although I was paid to do essays for two different classmates twice in high school. I was supposed to make them good enough to pass but not suspiciously good which I did.

I was forced to take part in the Christian confirmation camp which I think took two weeks in the middle of nowhere where boys and girls were basically imprisoned in close quarters while exposed to intensive Bible propaganda. I had one crush there which I didn't really act upon and after the camp I was so embarrassed about the whole thing that I decided to forget about it. What happens in Bible camp, stays in Bible camp.

Initially when I was with Katja, she applied to the university of Turku to study astronomy and moved there, so we had a long distance relationship for maybe a year or two. Eventually she decided she doesn't want to study astronomy and applied to study physics in Tampere University of Technology, one of the hardest and the most prestigious lines of study in Finland. She got in and moved to Hervanta with me. First we lived in a very small cell apartment of one room in a shared flat of three rooms and a kitchen in Mikontalo, the largest student apartment building in the Nordics. Very fast we moved to Kylmäsuonkatu next to what was Tapsantori supermarket at that time.

We discussed what we wanted of our relationship and I said people cannot be owned and I have no attraction to traditional relationship models. So we should have an open relationship and be together as long as we are happy, which should come out the best for everyone. At that time the assumption was that we would both be economically independent. That didn't actually happen as Katja had sleep apnea and I suppose our problem with alcohol didn't improve things either. She was too tired to study and dropped out at some point.

Regardless, before that we went to do an exchange study in University Sains Malaysia for half a year together.

We found polyamory. She was the first to have friends with benefits outside of our relationship which I didn't mind. We went to a local polyamory meet-up and met a lot of cool people. Over time I had many friends with benefits as well, most of them shared with Katja. Katja got into a longer relationship with another software engineer. I recommended him to the same company I was working in at the time, Cybercom, and we worked together in the same projects for a long time.

I think I had eight friends with benefits in parallel to our relationship with Katja during the time we lived in Tampere. Countless threesomes, orgies and parties.

At some point they broke up. Katja found another long term relationship shortly afterwards, Aleksi, and the three of us have lived together ever since.

Aleksi moved in with us to Kemiankatu, and that flat was too small for us, so I sent 95 job applications to western, southers and central Europe and took the best offer I got with a generous relocation package, so we moved to a larger house in Geroldswil, Zürich, Switzerland in 2018 with our three cats.

#TerosTidbits, short autobiographical random stories continuing:

Let's talk about alcohol. I hear my late father's father was an alcoholic and a gambler, which caused many problems. I didn't really know him very well. My parents, possibly affected by that background, almost never drank any alcohol. Mainly only in weddings and family events, and sometimes very rarely when they went to dance in Kaarihovi.

My father gave me beer when I was a kid to taste, and that was almost all of my experience with alcohol until I was 18 years old in the year 2000.

When I turned 18 it all changed. We drank ourselves totally unconscious with home-made wine in midsummer festivals, went to the local dance bar whenever there was some excuse, drank a lot in chess tournaments in different cities in Finland. There's almost always beer sold in chess tournaments.

I never had an aversion to alcohol as my family didn't have any alcohol problem. I saw many neighborhood kids whose parents did have that problem, but I never quite understood that it was the main cause for their less well maintained households, somehow even more severe poverty and hints of violence.

We lived in a poor neighborhood in Kurikka, so all the neighbors were roughly from the same social class. My schoolmates often lived in different neighborhoods and I always wondered how come they have much nicer houses and all the devices and things and we had almost nothing. Well, we had a microcar and later a farm car in the farm which I suppose those other kids didn't have, which I mentioned in one previous tidbit.

When I started the university, alcohol became a problem which I didn't notice at first as I was well able to get through my responsibilities. However, I drank a lot in student parties and similar events. I drank too much in my first Eurobot competition in Roboteam in France and was unable to contribute fully most of the time. I was responsible for machine vision and AI which formed most of the code in the autonomous mobile robots we built for the competition.

Of course we had done all the code already when we went there minus some quick last minute fixes, so basically we just did some set up and calibration there at location.

Rum was too cheap in France and I didn't understand alcohol well then. I think I became a bit of a burden to my team mates then.

Well, we did that for several years and student life was what student life is. There was a yearly student sauna event in the university, in the Mörrimöykky sauna in Hervanta, where people played Herwanta-game. It was a large board game with four players who had to drink a lot of alcohol based on where the pieces landed at every turn. The one who last stands wins. Some years people were hospitalized. Every year there was puke everywhere. I would hope they don't play that game anymore, it's a tradition that can well be forgotten, like multiple other toxic university student traditions in Finland.

In Roboteam we also built a robotic bartender out of an ABB industrial robot. I did most of the code to that in ABB Rabid programming language and C++ on the client kiosk, a long serial cable in between. I made a custom error correcting serial protocol because the cable was too long and the voltages too high and the error rate was extreme.

This also meant that we always had free alcohol laying around in our lab, which didn't improve my budding alcoholism.

I was tired all the time from all the drinking which didn't really affect my grades for some reason. Still, I was kind of living on the edge all the time.

When I started my career proper as a software engineer, in my first job they asked me if I drink alcohol. I said yes. They said: "Good, because I don't want to hire absolutists, if we have parties it's a nuisance."

In every software company I worked in there was alcohol everywhere all the time. Especially in employee refreshment events. We even branded our own company beer at one place.

I was rarely hung over, because I had learned to not drink too much, but I was always chronically tired.

I had a beer or two every day after getting home from work, and more in Fridays, weekends and events which were frequent. I think my liberal alcohol use was also copied by my girlfriend.

I think I noticed that I don't enjoy being tired all the time so I started reducing my drinking, first having rules that I can't drink much and not in successive days, replacing beer with sodas and such. Ultimately I just stopped habitual drinking completely. At first I missed it a bit and there were cravings, but I just told myself I don't want to feel tired all the time and I want to have a clear head.

I never decided to become a complete absolutist, but nowadays I tend to only get a beer or two, maybe a glass of wine with food occasionally, and I very rarely get drunk at all and I don't really want to be drunk. I never turn down a drink or two though especially in social contexts.

I feel like I have gotten back my clarity of thought and energy from the time when I wasn't drinking every day, and people around me have noticed that as well.

Our polyamorous family still struggles a bit with alcohol but it is slowly becoming better.

https://wiki.tite.fi/herwantapeli