It is over ;(

The captain leaves the sinking ship as last. Ok, maybe I'm not the captain, but in the end I also have to leave Lappeenranta for good.

Tomorrow on 31st of December I will go to Helsinki to celebrate the New year there with my friends and also Roman has some friends there who are joining us.

I don't know if and when I have a possibility to write the next entry, so in the worst case I can write it on 5.1, because then I'm back in Austria. On 2.1 we will go by ferry to Travemünde, which we will reach on 3.1 and on 4.1 we will go by train to Vienna.

I will not write my Finland summary now, so be patient. I really need time to write one and I'm not ready at the moment to accept that I have to leave.

See you soon, and if there is no possibility to write an entry before,
HAPPY NEW YEAR 2008 !!!!

Austrians and Gigglin

A new wave of Austrian friends (Maxx, Roli) arrived at 27.12. I fetched them from the airport in Helsinki. The rest of the first day we spent with changing news from home, initial shopping and a welcome beer.

Next "morning" we went to the city center to do the sightseeing program, as usual, and go for coffee and shopping. Actually the original plan was to go to Savonlinna to make a tour through the castle. The bad thing is, that it is closed from 15 - 31.12.

Maxx and Roland at the harbor:


And relaxing at the fortress cafeteria:

Of course if it comes to the night program, on Fridays, guess what, Gigglin Marlin *gg*
We missed the bus at 23, even with spontaneous sporting afford by me, we missed it :)
(Perkele !!)

Ok, back to the flat and taking the next bus. Finally we arrive in Gigglin and the party started. It was really funny and we enjoyed it a lot. Drinking and a lot of dancing and even more fun.


more impressions ? :) ( the time on the photos is Austrian time, so one hour more to calculate)


We met a lot of nice girls and we left the Gigglin after it closed, but finished the night in my flat with some breakfast at 530. And yes, we slept long ;)

One last photo, because I like it a lot, Maxx coming straight from hell *g*:


The rest of the photos is in my Webalbum.

Christmas Eve

Finally Christmas eve arrived and we spent it with a lot of cooking and baking. I already mentioned the menu plans before, so I will show you here how it looked like in the end ;)

I already started my preparations in the morning, because the dough for the Apfelstrudel has to be made earlier to rest a bit. After that Martin and I cooked the potatoes and eggs for the (Slovakian) potato salad.

At 1330 we started cooking and begin with cutting all the ingredients for the onion soup and the potato salad. No, nobody was hurt in the end. The onion soup was Romans responsibility. After finishing the soup we put it in the oven to bake it with bread and cheese and in the end the first meal of the day looked like this:

Meanwhile Martin was already finishing his (Slovakian) potato salad.


We made "Wiener Schnitzel" to the salad. The strange thing when it comes to breadcrumbs in Finland is, that they don't have them the way we do at home. The breadcrumbs here are flavored, so you have to choose between breadcrumbs for meat or for sweets.

We were already nearly full after the soup, but of course we also had to eat the main meal. And it was also very delicious, like the soup.

As dessert I planned a Apfelstrudel. Directly after lunch I started to make it. After putting the ingredients for the first of two Apfelstrudels on the dough, Roman read what was written on the description for the breadcrumbs, which should be for sweets. One of the ingredients in the breadcrumbs was Paprika !! LOOoOOL
Ok, a bit nervous now, because I already put it in, I just put more cinnamon and sugar on it :) In the end there was no difference and it was very good.

The skin was a bit too crusty, because I left it too long in the oven, but for next time I know a trick to solve this problem.

So we were finally finished with all the eating, we made a small break and after this break I started to bake some cookies for the party in the evening.

First of all I wanted to bake some "Vanillekipferl" (vanilla rolls) and secondly I baked some "Nußhäufchen" (nut something).

Me rolling the vanilla rolls:

So at the end when we were nearly finished, it looked like this:

Yeah, I know, we are damn good ;)

So finally the Christmas party took place at Evi's flat. There have been surprisingly less people, so that we have to start with 6 people, but later on fortunately we were 10 people. Actually I thought that all the Chinese will come, but they did their own party with only Chinese people allowed ;(

Nevertheless, it was a very nice evening even when we were a bit tired sometimes because of that much work, but my conclusion is, that it was a good Christmas evening worth to spend. Luca also brought some self made Tiramisu and Jose brought some Finnish pulla both have been also very delicious .

The party ended at 230. Thanks all for coming and sharing Christmas with me/us.

All the photos are online in my Web album as usual, have fun!!

Christmas plans

After another good bye evening yesterday, we planned our Christmas day/evening.
The actual plan is, that we (Martin, Roman, Jose and I) will start cooking at 13o'clock at my place. We bought everything today at Prisma, which took us about 2h15.

Our Christmas lunch will be:

1. onion soup (with bread and cheese baked)
   
2. wiener schnitzel with potato salad
3. apfelstrudel

We never made this things on our own, so I think it will be a very interesting experience *gg*.

Afterwards we will bake some cookies for the Christmas party, which should take place at Evi's place. Wish us luck with the cookies also *g*
There should be a lot people there, hopefully!

For all my people at home and friends all over the country:

Frohe Weihnachten !!
Merry Christmas !!!
Hyvää joulua !!

Enjoy the day and enjoy the life ;) (even when I'm not near :)

Bad start in a weekend

Staying longer in Finland than it would be necessary is normally a good thing. The bad thing is, that you are the last man standing and that you have to manage a lot of good bye's.

After a heavily celebrated Farewell Party in Gigglin Marlin the first huge wave left on Thursday, continued yesterday when I brought Chris and Arno to the train station and still continued today when more then 10 people left Lappeenranta for good.

Before Gigglin we met at Chris and Martin's place to talk and make a pre-farewell-party, nice as usual. Where we also continued to decorate their Christmas tree.



Let me give you some impressions from the last Gigglin Marlin (you will find more photos online soon):





On Friday some of us met for the last time in the nice cafeteria at the fortress. At the start we planned four persons and in the end we were about 14. It was also very nice last "Kaffeeklatsch".

It was "funny" to see how all people especially the girls tried to not cry at the train station. I think if they would play "Time to say good bye" through the speakers everyone would let it go ;)
Ok, maybe even I would loose that fight then *g*

I am sad, but I know that I can and will stay in contact and hopefully some day we meet again, somewhere in the world.
So for all that already left and of course for my dearest friends, thanks for everything it was an honor to meet you and share an Erasmus semester with you.

Good Bye's and the last Uni stuff

The last few days the first people already left Lappeenranta to go back to their home countries. In the next few days a lot more people are following and also leaving Lappeenranta for good.

This means, beginning with Saturday we are all alone ;(
Ok, not so alone, because there are still people left, but not much and nearly all people I hung around have left then. Therefore today will be the last real party in Gigglin Marlin, maybe a smaller one also on Friday.

The stuff for the university is nearly done. There is still the documentation for project02 in parallel computing to write, a paper for Finish-German Tandem and last but not least the Finnish For Foreigners exam on Friday. But I think that I maybe will not make the exam, I'm thinking about it. Because I have a lot more points that I need for Erasmus so it would be not necessary and I could focus on the other stuff including my project work for my home university. But I will decide on a short term, so we will see. (needed ECTS 15 - at the moment I have 19 without FFF2 exam)

I already mentioned my project for the home university, where still a lot of work is to do. I will focus on that for the rest of the time I stay here or at least until my next visitors come from Austria on 27.12.

Nothing more to say for today, this will maybe change after the party tonight and the farewell evening with our Tutor Tuija tomorrow.

Nähdään!

A week in the cottage and around Finland

I haven't written for quite some time now, but there is a good reason for that behavior. I had some visitors from Austria, what I already mentioned in the blog entry before. I will describe you the week and apologize before hand, if it is a lot to read ;)

Before I started my week with my friends, I had to finish the Parallel Computing Take Home exam first. We got it on Tuesday and I nearly spent 10 hours a day from Wednesday to Saturday to finish it as early as possible.

Day 1 - Helsinki / Arrival
Günther, Silvia and Claudia arrived last Saturday the 8.12, but I couldn't join so early because I had to finish my exam as I already mentioned.
So on Sunday at 830 in the morning, I drove to Helsinki to meet them. It took some time to find the hotel, because nobody told me that there are 1000000 hotels called Scandic something *g*. And it became more difficult, because Günther described me the way from their point of view when the arrived with the taxi. Unfortunately the taxi drove in the other direction *ggg*.
In the end I found it and I finally can greet my first Austrian visitors.



On the first day we walked around Helsinki to see some sights and enjoy the town. We were really lucky, because all days before it always rained the whole day, but on this day and the whole week we always had nice weather and even sunshine. You don't believe it, here is a picture (the rest of the pictures is already online):


We visited a lot of places and in the evening it was time to board the ferry to Tallinn. We decided to go to Tallinn with the last Ferry at 21:45 and stay the night on board in a cabin. The funny thing is, that it would have cost 218€ all together with 2 cabins + 4 persons to Tallinn and only 4 persons back, BUT with 2 cabins + 4 persons to Tallinn and 1 cabin + 4 persons back it cost us 66€ all together, LOOL. Don't ask me how this is possible, but it is!!
We had a rough sea and that's why Günther was most of the time of the cruise on the "sun"-deck to get fresh air and not vomiting. *gg*

Day 2 - Tallinn
At 7 in the morning we left the ferry to walk to the historic center of Tallinn, which is also on the UNESCO heritage list for it's historical value.
I can understand why it is on this list, it is a really nice town.
When we start walking through the center it was still dark and we got impressions like it would be already night. During I checked a picture I made the minute before and I saw some smoke in it. I asked my friends, who the hell blew smoke in my view.... actually nobody was smoking. In the end I recognized that something in the inside of my camera burned down, because I also had to reset it and initialized it again. The funny part is, it is still working. Here is the picture with the smoke:

We moved on to the center where we found a really cute cafeteria at the marketplace. It calls itself "Tallinn's best cafe" and I would believe it, it was really very nice with a lot of delicious cakes.
After again walking around, because still nothing has opened so far, we visited the christmas market, which is also situated on the marketplace. Of course I bought some presents for my parents. The market was nice, but Estonian didn't bargain, that was the bad part.
Of course we saw a lot of sights again, here we are on the "top" of Tallinn with probably the best view over the old town:


After lunch and again a lot of shopping and sightseeing, we went to our ferry with which we left Tallinn at 1645 to go back to Helsinki. We were very tired so we slept a bit in the cabin.

Back in Helsinki we drove up north to Lappeenranta directly to our cottage.

We rented a cottage near Lappeenranta (14km) in Mehrenlehti. It cost us 450€ from Monday to Sunday, not much for 4 persons in my opinion. The cottage and the sauna was already heated up when we arrive at 2345. The owners showed us everything and after that, Günther and I decided to have our first sauna turn at 2 in the morning. It was great, I don't know why I haven't visit Sauna earlier *gg*, yes, it was my first time in 4 month.

Day 3 - The cottage
In the morning we had the first chance to see our cottage at daylight and also the nice scenery, which welcomes us with mythic fog all over the lake. But have a look on your own:

The cottage (left), with sauna (middle) and grilling place (right):

The lake:

We went to Lappeenranta city center to do some walking, talking and shopping. But resting for the rest of the day.

On this day I brought my Take home exam to my professor, where he can have a look and tell me if a passed or not. The first thing he said was something like "..dare you, you wrote so much.." hahaha,.... yes, I had like 17 pages for 4 questions and for the first one 5 and the second one 4 pages. In the end I passed, thank god ;) But I didn't get the points so far, because he said he had to read it carefully, because I took a very different approach than anybody else. ;)

Day 4 - Lappeenranta
The plan was to see the sights of Lappeenranta. It has not much sights, so we weren't in a hurry *gg*. The morning started even better than the morning before, sunshine :)
You don't believe it, look at this picture I made in the harbor of Lappeenranta:

Ok, sunshine doesn't mean that it is warm *gg*. However, we spent a nice day walking through Lappeenranta. We visited the old cafe at the fortress of Lappeenranta, wow they had delicious cakes *gg*

We also visited the oldest orthodox church in Finland, which was the first time opened since I'm here to visit it. Ok, maybe we should have ask the group inside if they paid for the tour *g*

In the evening we went to the christmas party at Gigglin Marlin (after sauna), which was organized by the student union. A very funny night with a special appearance from a girls dance group. You maybe can guess why I really liked it *g*



Day 5 - Long sleep and Ylämaa

After a long night, we had a longer sleep, ok for some it wasn't even long enough *g*.
The program for this day was a visit in Ylämaa. It is a small town with a big mining history. Because in Ylämaa there is a rich deposit of spectrolite and other stones.

The first impression was not very good, because everything was closed and the "town" was extremely small. After some time and questions we head back to the "stone city" and fortunately the before closed shop was open now. I bought me a ring for my thumb and the others also bought some stuff. The ring is made from bloodstone. It breaks very easy, as Günther recognized after 3 minutes. He unpacked the ring, dropped it, broken *ggg*, not even once weared *gg*. But the lady behind the desk was nice enough to give him a new one for free.

After some shopping and grilling in the evening we went to bed.

Day 6 - Very long sleep and shopping
Nothing special on day number 5, just more sleep and relaxing and do some shopping in the center of Lappeenranta.

Day 7 - Imatra and Ruokolahti
We went to Imatra to see the rapid canyon. Afterwards we went to the church hill in Ruokolahti, just to visit the wooden bell tower and the church there. Which looks like that (bell tower)

After the usual sightseeing we went back to the cottage to spend the last evening there. We also walked on the frozen lake.

Today I brought them back to Helsinki Airport, where they left at 16 o'clock.
Thank you three for the visit, it was really a very nice week with you and I enjoyed it a lot.

A lot of photos of this week are online in my gallery.

Holiday, Friends and take home exam

Terve!
Let's start with the heavy part of the topic, the take home exam.
At the moment it seems that I'm quite good in time. I worked the last days nearly around the clock to finish it as soon as possible. There is just one task I haven't done yet, the others should be solved or fine. My plan is to be finished tomorrow night, that I can start with my holiday.

And there is the second and third topic of my title. On Saturday my friends Günther, Silvia and Claudia arrive in Helsinki and on Sunday I will join them in Helsinki to spend a whole week with them. It is my first visit from Austria and I'm really looking forward to it.

I will give you a list of what we have planned:

• Sunday night, going with the ferry to Tallinn
• Monday, spending the day in Tallinn and going back in the late afternoon
• Arriving in Lappeenranta where we rent a very nice cottage on the saimaa lake
• On Tuesday we will have a look at Lappeenranta, and I also have to bring my take home exam on that day to university.
• The rest of the week we will visit: Savonlina, Mikkeli, Ruokolahti, Imatra, Ylämaa

As you can see, a lot to do for one week.
I'm very happy and looking forward to this week, hopefully everything is fine and we can enjoy a week with friends.

Nuku hyvin ja hyvää viikonlopua!

Take home exam and other stuff

Moi out there!
I haven't written for days and the main reason for that is, that I have a lot of work to do for the university. I have to mention this sometimes, so that you don't think I'm doing nothing ;)

On Monday we finished our project 01 for Parallel Computing, which was a program including PVM functions. The main job of the program was the multiplication of matrices. So the master process sends the values to the slaves, they calculate it and send the result back. (short version of the function) Of course we also had to write a documentation for it.

Today I had my final presentation in "Presenting in English". It was about traveling in Europe and I in my opinion my partner Mikko and I did quite well. The final task will be an analysis of our own presentation.

Ok, and last but not least we got our take home exam in Parallel Computing yesterday. Yes you read correctly, it is a exam which you can take home and fill it at home. Of course it is more difficult then a normal exam and believe me it takes a looooot of time. I hope I can finish it soon enough, because on Sunday I will meet Günther, Silvia and Claudia in Helsinki to spend the week with them. That means that two of my days for the exam are lost, therefore I have to do it faster, that means.. At the moment I do nothing else, except writing this blog entry, which by the way is part of my small break.

We had to send our pre-master project report for our home university yesterday. There is not really much movement in the project, mostly because there is just no time at the moment. But as far as I know, I am not the only one who has a slow start. I have to invest the whole January for it to catch up and of course the next semester for my master thesis. First of all I have to read a lot, I mean A LOT and that actually takes time. So, hopefully after the take home exam and my "holiday" week with my friends from Austria, I will find the time to really start through. There is "only" Finnish for Foreigners exam left on 21.12 and the second project for Parallel Computing until 23.12.

moi moi

Facebook Security Issues

Facebook is a broadly used and well known community site and I know that a lot of you people outside are using it. I am also a user and therefore I have some suggestions for you to make it more secure.

Lately Facebook made some bad news with tracking the surfing behavior of its users, even when you are not on Facebook.
Nate Weiner made a very nice blog entry, which describes the whole issue in detail. If your are interested in reading it, you will find this blog entry here.

To secure yourself it is not necessary to read the whole article, because I will give you a shortcut what to do right now.

1. First of all, to use this security tools, you have to use Firefox, because the following tool is a plug-in for it.
2. Install the BlockSite add-on / plugin
3. After restarting Firefox, which is necessary to activate it
4. Open the options of the add-on, you can find it in the list of add-ons
5. There you enter this URL to block: http://www.facebook.com/beacon/*
6. Confirm it with ok and be safe

For those people who are not so familiar with Security and FireFox plug-ins, I also would recommend you the following plug-ins, which I'm using and also suggested by the Network Security Blogwriter Martin McKeay:

• NoScript
• which is very good, it protects you from any kind of scripts and ads. It blocks them in default, and you can temporarily or permanent allow sites and scripts. Very useful!
• GreaseMonkey
• is for using user scripts, I would suggest it only for advanced users. It is used to activate some userscripts, for more information you should read the description. As I said, maybe better for advanced users.
  
• CustomizeGoogle
• also suggested by McKeay, and honestly I didn't know it before, but will also use it, sounds very nice.

I'm using some more add-ons, but they are not all just for security.
Use Firefox and use the add-ons from above and you will be much more safer !!

Middle of the Weekend Report

Why do I again report in the middle of the weekend? Easy, because I think nothing more interesting will happen, because today I'm just relaxing.

On Friday we went again to the swim hall, this time Martin and Florian joined us, before that I met with my Finnish partner to finalize our presentation. It will be held on Wednesday. In the evening there would have been the birthday party of Iris (Happy Birthday again!). Why "would have been"? Because I thought, having a Glühwein party before, would be a nice idea. Actually it was a nice idea, but it ended too late for me to join the birthday party, because they already left to the nightclub.

As I already mentioned, Roman, Martin, Florian, I and later on Martti had a Glühwein party and played some cards (president and asshole). Not much of them drank the alcohol, therefore Roman and I had to finish it. This was also the reason why Roman didn't join me when I went to the nightclub to meet the others ;)

Arrived in the nightclub at midnight, the rest of the birthday party was a bit drunken. Ok, let's say they were near the coma ?! ;) I will not comment the condition and behavior of some of those girls, I will just say "some girls shouldn't drink that much".

However, I joined the group with the guys from Nepal, Japanese, India,... . It was nice and I enjoyed to ask the Japanese guy some questions about Japan, which are reeeealy very important.... ok, for me *g*. You can maybe imagine ;) I hope I didn't bother him too much. By the way, Japanese names are sometimes not that easy to remember :)

After nightclubbing, I went home. When I walked to my place, I saw that there is still a party going on at Chris place. So I went there and joined them. Some of them were also a bit drunk, but the behavior is much more nicer and funnier then from some other people I already mentioned. For example running some rounds naked in the public *gg*
We also played some Rugby, or let's say just throw some rugby ball. After the final snowball fight I went to my room, kind of watched a movie and fell asleep.

The rest of the weekend I will relax and do some stuff for the university. There is still some stuff to do, because this week I have my final presentation in "Presenting in English" and I have to finish the document for Parallel Computing Project 1.
But the really worse thing is coming Tuesday or Wednesday, then we get our "Take Home" exam in Parallel Computing, for which we have one week time to finish. Don't think that this will be an easy task. More on this later.

Hyvää viikonlopua !!