Huomenna häivyn Afrikkaan. Pienoinen haikeus hiipii mieleen, kun makailen pienellä patjalla likimain tyhjässä kämpässä ja mietin, miten tähän pisteeseen on saavuttu.
01:34

A few observations on Malta.

1. Because it's warm, doors are not necessary on the buses. People frequently jump on or off while the vehicle is moving at considerable speed.
   
2. There are almost no trees. On any little hilltop, you see a long way.
3. Malti is related to ancient Phoenician; in present-day terms, it's a strange mixture of 60% Arabic, 25% Italian and 15% English. Everyone speaks English.
   
4. Streets are narrow and traffic (on the British side of the road) horrible. 12 km by bus can take 1.5 hours.
   
5. There's excess supply of ancient ruins and such. At any given moment, there is a 5,000-year-old temple on the right and a famous old church on the left.
6. Nearly every building, old or new, is sandstone. You don't need a digital image to see in sepia.

Some more pictures.
15:49

In Malta, it looked like this. My stress level has multiplied since this photo was taken a few days ago. We only have a couple of days to deal with all the loose ends before departing for Uganda. 01:43

About half of our stuff - including the TV, the stereos, and the bed - just started its long journey towards our future abode in the heart of darkness ("The horror! The horror!"; let me not meet Kurtz there). We'll follow in a couple of weeks. The flat looks empty. It may take a month for us to lay our hands on this cargo again, which is why we're hoping and assuming that nothing we will absolutely need in the next several weeks went into the boxes (which were brought to the flat as thin sheets of cardboard). The tasks these men - the moving pros - perform every day are strangely fascinating: they calmly and efficiently pack people's lives in light brown boxes and ship them to the edges of the world.

We're off to Malta tomorrow. So far, I've barely given this trip half a thought. Perhaps the coming week will provide much needed time for some essential reading, such as Yi-Fu Tuan's Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. This man appears to be one of the true holists, the type of scholar I usually enjoy reading.
13:32

All the neoconservative nationalists and pedantic economaniacs of this country have another reason to celebrate. A few more poorly hidden smirks may be visible on the street tomorrow if you look closely enough at the people wearing something really expensive.
20:18

Things are now happening at an increasing speed regarding our departure to Uganda in two weeks. There are a number of bonds to sever. Symbolically, I continued uprooting myself this morning by taking several bagfuls of clothes and shoes out to be tossed or recycled. The sense of separation from what has been is intensified by things less related to the move. This afternoon, we're officially buying a lot for a future summer cottage, becoming real estate owners. A huge step in... a direction. Two hours ago, I had the first post-surgery control for my right eye which was operated a month ago for vision correction (see posts from 8.9. to 13.9.). With the doctor, we spent most of the 15 minutes talking about ethnocentrism and politics in Africa. Matters regarding a different type of vision.

I'm turning into a different person. In 2001, I had no personal experience of marriage, teacher's work, regular income, laptops, reactive infections, Asians, grad schools, digital photography, cars with an automatic gearbox, American universities, or blogging, among other things. A lot has changed already, but I'm anticipating a further acceleration of this process now that so many things will be concretely left behind. It seems there's no going back to the life of meditative running twice a day on dark, snowy roads.
13:34

Recent surveys have shown that among European countries, Finns have the most negative opinions of Russia. Even the Baltic states, which only 15 years ago were still under Soviet occupation, think much more positively of their big neighbour. Many are ready to explain this strange fact by the psychology of superiority: on the western side of the steepest welfare cliff in the world, it now seems very easy to openly dislike or make fun of the giant that previously always represented a major threat, explicitly or implicitly.

But it's not that simple. Opinion polls have proven that Finns are also among the most critical in Europe towards the USA, where, at least on purely economic criteria, average standard of living is (I believe) higher than here. While the hate of Russia gets its fuel from the distant past and USA-bashing from the present, I think there are more general forces at work. On the one hand, it seems that especially the big generations are slightly suspicious of foreigners in general (according to these polls, Finns do not have a particularly positive opinion on any nation). On the other, the results imply a fair amount of power-scepticism: nothing very big and powerful - whether it's a company or a country - is worth trusting. Ultimately, history warns us, the giant will always turn out selfish enough to ignore everyone else's needs but its own.
13:18

Tämä suo näyttää levinneen Pinseri-listalle asti. Hienoa. Nyt olisi kai ryhdyttävä suunnittelemaan epätoivoisia yleisönkosiskelutoimia, jotta lyhytjänteiset virtuaali-ihmiset innostuisivat uusintavierailuille. Näistä kävijöistähän voi, koira paratkoon, olla minulle hyötyä. Ja kun hyötyajatus on päästy esittelemään - ihan sama, kuinka assosiaatiopohjalta tai hypoteettisena se on syntynyt - sitä on lähes väkisin alettava tarkastella taloudellisesta näkökulmasta. Tällainen ajatteluhan on realiteettien mukaista. Miten siis voisin saada rahaa näiden ihmisten avulla? Ja mikä olennaisinta, kykenisinkö pohtimaan tätä kysymystä yli kaksi minuuttia alkamatta voida pahoin?

Mutta hetkinen. Juurihan edellisessä postituksessani kirjoitin pari lausetta samasta aiheesta kuin Nyt-liite ja Seiska taannoin. Pakkohan omaksumastani kaupallisesta linjasta on jotain konkreettista etua olla.
14:45

Finland - Armenia 3-1. Satisfying. It's gradually getting colder now under the North Star, and the stands at the stadium were shivering below us in +4 C: we clapped our hands and stomped our feet even when nothing particular was happening on the field. Luckily, though, the downpour only started after the final whistle. Afterwards, jogging towards my bike through the bushes to avoid the crowd, I felt that the nation I'm part of has a slightly less homogenous face every day. Our goals had just been scored by two Finns called Shefki Kuqi and Alexei Eremenko. The beauty of the latter's "Beckhamese Banana"... any true football lover will have to forgive a little mental immaturity or short temper for an occasional kick like that. We need a new Litmanen (who wouldn't?), and here's someone who may not quite have the mind but certainly the touch.
23:45

Last night, our time, the U.S. vice presidential candidates tried to put each other down in front of TV cameras in the gym I frequented last winter. Now that the place was filled with dark suits (allegedly containing bodies) instead of sweaty bodies with balls (and weights and rackets and flying feet and endorphine and an air of sportsmanship), I wish I'd been there in the audience with a few racquetballs in my pocket. Believe it or not, for an ex distance runner who does academic work, my throwing accuracy is generally phenomenal. I would have had several worthy targets.

One of the few notes I made in yesterday's seminar: "Self-consciousness destroys the possibility of aesthetic grace". This was the speaker's paraphrase of Paul de Man, who borrowed the idea from Schiller. I'm no longer certain of the analytical context, but it is a nice idea to generalise on and probably true especially as applied to human bodies in motion, even off the dance floor. At least male bodies.
11:52