Finland

I was in Finland at the beginning of this month. I was presenting a paper at the SWDMNSS workshop, as part of SAINT 2008. I meant to write some things about that, but never got round to it. In my defence, I have been completely snowed under with work recently. My supervisor has been pushing for some software to be completed in the labs, and I am developing a web site that is to be launched next week (but more of that in a future post).

I recently got my hands on some photos of Finland from some of the people I met there, so I'm going to post a few of them here. I will probably follow this with a post or two about my experiences. So if you really don't care about Finland or computing research conferences, I would advise tuning out the next few posts!

I was in Turku, which has a mediaeval castle from which Finland was governed for centuries. The conference banquet was a mediaeval banquet in said castle.

I went to the conference by myself, but I was fortunate enough to make some friends when I got there. A lot of people are alone and so people are quite receptive. I ended up hanging out with the people in this photo most nights.

Because it was a mediaeval banquet, we used a slice of flat bread, instead of a plate, and we didn't use forks, because they hadn't been introduced in Finland yet! We ate with our fingers instead. It was a lot of fun.

Our hosts for the evening were Duke John and his wife, Catherine of Poland (whom we had to address in Latin, the lingua franca - Vivant Iohannes et Caterina!!). They were played by some talented actors. They greeted us and entertained us with songs, and explained the customs of the period to us. It was probably the best dinner entertainment I've ever seen.

After a couple of different courses, Catherine of Poland introduced us all to a new, modern implement - the fork. After Duke John implored us all to be very careful with these dangerous new devices, the servants came out with huge trays of roast chicken and vegetables and we all received forks. Ironically, the chicken was in drumstick form and most people used their hands!

After the banquet ended, we went looking for something else to do. We came to a bar on the main square and drank until they closed at 3am. We then went next door to a late bar (!) and we were eventually joined by the waitress from next door, who I suspect was coming onto one of us, but she was too strange to tell! We eventually went back to our hotels at about 5am, in full daylight (Finnish summers are pretty great).

Needless to say, I didn't show up to the conference the following morning!



(The next installment of the Finland saga will feature, among other things, an experimental method for killing Finns using traffic lights)

(Also, I am using these photos without permission. I believe they belong to Shanti and Sam (with maybe one or two of Pieter's) so if any of you guys are reading this and have a problem with these photos being here, let me know!)