Vacuum Store Mafia

I'm convinced that there is a vacuum store mafia here in Ann Arbor. I've seen at least two vacuum stores and heard rumours of a third one north of town. Both of the stores I've seen are actually located on the same street. Admittedly, Packard is quite a long street.

Here's the proof:

































I just googled “vacuum Ann Arbor”. Apparently there are two Arbor Vacuums (1226 Packard and 2990 Carpenter Road – but they are actually both on Packard), Ann Arbor Vacuum Warehouse (5237 Jackson Road) and the Vacuumstore (2380 Dexter Avenue). And once you've got all your four vacuums you'll undoubtedly be also in need of the services of Dick Sampier Vacuum Cleaner (2165 West Stadium Boulevard).

Penguins

For some reason there has been quite a lot of references to graduate studies in Viivi ja Wagner lately. Maybe to humour me?

This is yesterdays strip. This time I think I can attempt a translation again:

Viivi: You should study! Don't you have any ambition?

Wagner: Animals don't. Or are you telling me that penguins write dissertations?

the penguin: Hi Wagner! Will you come to my karonkka?
Wagner: You've got to be kidding...

Karonkka is the party you have after your defence in Finland. The defence is a great ordeal with tail-coats, interrogation and protocol. The party is held in honour of the opponent with full-length menu, tosts and ceremony.

As opposed to the tradition here where you give a short talk in your jeans and sweater and afterwards go to a pizza and beer party...

The Truth

I suppose the locals were right.

My Thanks to MGO!

Here's an account of what happened last weekend. The short version is that we were here. A longer version follows.






















Here you can see the Michigan delegation – excluding me, but stricktly speaking I might in fact belong to the Finnish delegation – walking towards the campus. That is not the math building, though. It is the art building. But the campus was really beautiful, at least what we saw of it. And here I am gracefully forgetting the chemistry and engineering buildings of course.

The fact that the campus was located on a small hill somehow made all the difference, it gave a feeling of exitement, air and great views. Or maybe I'm just sick of the omnipresent flatness here in Michigan.

The math building had the warm warn atmosphere of an old library building – which it really was – with the pompous cold stones and cosy warm woods.




I think that a yearly math grad conference is an amazingly great idea. I had problems understanding why everybody wasn't there. Imagine: All the fun of a conference and the possibility of actually understanding some of the talks. Also if you really want to be a mathematician, these are the people you'll want to be working with in the future. The current big guys will actually be dead when we are older.

We should definitely have a math grad conference in Finland! Do you suppose one could apply some eu-money for it? Also a math grad student organization is a great idea, but we already do have one of those in Helsinki. Their organization sounds a bit more lively than ours does yet, though... How is our organization holding up, buy the way?

The only fault with the conference was that it was really short. Such a shy finn as me won't have enough time to meet new people in just two days. Also we were really tired during the reception on Friday. Maybe if we had stayed longer and had more wine also meeting new people might have been easier. That just proves my principle of always to arrive in the conference place the day before the conference starts.



I gave a talk on doubling measures. The proof can be seen in the picture here. Do you like my title slide? The talk went well and Tomasz praised my slides so I'm very proud.




I also listened to Kevin's, Marie's, Tomasz' and Derek's talks. That ment that I was able to hear only one talk by a grad student I didn't already know before.

But we did meet some new friends including Saara from Rice and Marie from Michigan. The proof of their existence can be seen in this picture.

















We also got acquainted with the us airline practices, learned something about prime numbers (at least I did), discussed taking pictures of buildings, drank lots of vodka, learned about the Finnish mafia in the Syracuse math departement and of course – met uncle Tadeusz, as he is warmly called amongst the Helsinki analysis grad students.

To conclude I have to say I'd go to any conference Tomasz is organizing, he took such a good care of us.

Also huge thanks to all of the people at MGO: the conference was simply great!






















Here is Tomasz. Some other friends can be seen through the mirror in the background. Also go and check out a bunch of other pics from the trip on my Flickr page including “Too Much Math Makes You Yellow?” and “Live long and prosper”.

Graduate Student Appreciation Day

It is today. So are all other days faculty appreciation days? What about the undergrads? Are they ever appreciated?

Anyway, it's nice to appreciated!

Spring and Syracuse

This time I have a good excuse for not posting for a while. Last week was very busy because during the weekend we were visiting Syracuse for their math grad conferense. We had lots of fun and I'll post a story with pictures soon.

While we were in Syracuse the Spring finally arrived in Ann Arbor. How do I know? Any local would tell you that it'll still snow in April. But the flowers are always right. They came last weekend. This morning on my way to work I found at least five different colours:

I Wouldn't Be Who I Am Without Yhtenäiskoulu

They are planning to close down my old school!

I cannot fathom how they can even propose such a thing? They tried to do it while I was in elementary school, but they couldn't do it, the school was too strong. I can still feel an unreasonable hatred towards Arja Alho for representing the desicion to close our school down. And I can still remember the misery of falling ill right when there was going to be a night demonstration in the school yard. How I wanted to stand there with a candle in my hand!

A Hesari article on the plans of closing down schools in Helsinki with a picture from my school yard with the current math teacher (he did't teach me).

And about my school in particular in Hesari.

And the website of my school, Yhtenäiskoulu. There is also something in english there in case any non Finnish speaker (any bizarrely weird non Finnish speaker, that is) is interested.