Happy Hands

I wanted to tell you guys about something that happened today. I'm currently taking it easy and resting from the busy times. Conveniently now it's also Erkki's vacation so it's an excellent time to spend some family time. Siiri hasn't even seen her babysitter for a week and she absolutely loves spending time with her parents. Suddenly she's so attached to both me and Erkki. When she wakes up and Erkki goes to pick her up, she asks for mommy. When I go there, she asks for daddy. She shows me hew primitive drawings and she even lets me fix her hair. She also loves playing with my hair or combing it or just patting my head.

So it wasn't very surprising today when Siiri walked up to me and rubbed the tips of my hair between her hands. I was playing with Xbox and Siiri was running from one room to another. The rooms are as baby-safe as necessary with Siiri. There are places where she could harm herself if she got creative, and trust me, kids are very creative in that respect. However, she rarely ever harms herself in our home. When she does, it's mostly just by accident and it's things that could have been avoided if we kept Siiri safe in a locked padded room with no tables to hit her head and no corners to run into. Well, me and Erkki sure have a LONG-LOOONG way to go toward keeping Siiri "safe". I mean, we actually let her open and close drawers by herself and we have not taped up any cupboards. Heavy DANGEROUS books are at hands reach, and since we didn't have any bright ideas where else to keep our cutlery, Siiri also has access to table knives (which are sharper than some people's "real" knives). Well, if Siiri tried any funny business, we'd have it differently, but Siiri's just too bright to be kept locked in a padded room. She reaches cutlery easily and takes out spoons and sometimes forks to "feed" her dolls and stuffed animals. She never takes the knives. The first time she opened that drawer I explained why knives are bad. Now sometimes she very carefully touches a knife and says with a serious expression, "OW!" .

She's also super-fast. When I try to tell her, "Hey, Siiri, it's bedtime. It's time to put on your night clothing." and I reach the word, "beeedd...." PAT-PAT-PAT-PAT-pat-pat, and she's already in the other end of the apartment. I wait one second, she runs back to a safe viewing distance. I finish my word "..bedtime", she laughs maniacally (in a cute kid way) and off she goes to the other end of the apartment. She usually does this 4 or 5 times before she's in her night clothing. Unless I put her in chains, there's no way I can keep her from doing what kids normally do - run around and have fun doing it. This gives a whole new perspective to the typical slogan, "you have to keep an eye on your toddler AT ALL TIMES". I think that's just what childless people say. Of course I keep her close when we're outside and I keep household chemicals as far from her as possible because she can't read labels and can't sense the dangers involved but looking at her at all times is just ridiculous. At home, I let her run free until I get suspicious that she might be up to something. I'm talking about minutes here and I check on her immediately when she gets too quiet.

I'm getting awfully side-tracked, like I always do when I'm telling a story. But that all stuff was necessary to create the setting.

I was playing with Xbox and Siiri was free-roaming around the apartment. She drew a little bit, then took a toy from one room to another, then took a quick look if I've added anything fun to any of my drawers, closing them with a slam. All familiar sounds. Next she went to the master bedroom - the safest room in our apartment - and spent some time there. Then she came and rubbed and patted my hair. Then she ran off again. Cute! I kept playing and a moment later she was back. Again she came and rubbed her hands in my hair with great care, patted me and left. Mhh? I tried to make some dialog but she was too busy to notice. Then she did the same a third and a fourth time and ran back to the master bedroom. This time I put down the Xbox remote and followed her. She ran through the door straight to the closet. But in stead of playing with the clothes in the closet, she headed straight for the 2-inch/5cm crack between the closet and the wall. It's full of spider webs and dust. I never clean it because I'm arachnophobic and I won't even go near those spider webs. Siiri's not arachnophobic. She squeezed her hand into the dusty dirty crack, ("Siiri, no don't!") pulled it out and then rubbed her hands together to clean away all that dust. It wasn't very effective so she came to me and signaled me to get closer so she could reach my hair so she could rub her hands clean of all that dust and spiderwebs.

I should have known. Just a few weeks ago Siiri was eating (more like warming it up) some cheese and just wasn't happy with how greasy her hands felt. I gave her a paper towel. She rubbed her hands in it, put it aside and carefully looked at her hands. Then suddenly she demanded that I sit next to her RIGHT NOW. It seemed an odd request but I couldn't really ask her for any explanation so I sat with great curiosity. Siiri stepped up to me and patted me firmly from the top of the head to my shoulders, "Paaaaat!" (Estonian "Paaaaaai!", or "Aiiii" as she says it). Then she took another look at her hands, smiled, and hurried back to her toys.

Something I wanted to show you... Some of you will think, What the heck? and some of you will nod with understanding. Here's my Oblivion character:

Have a happy New Year's celebration and a HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Different Holidays

I don't think I've ever had a Christmas season like this before. I spent time in the lab during some weekend days, including the third advent Sunday. I had experiments, a verbal exam, text editing, graph touch-ups. I gave a scientific presentation in front of 50 something people, which I totally botched because my presentation was the last of the entire conference and I had built up so much tension that I couldn't even think straight anymore. My advisor later said not to worry about it, although "the people here will be paying you salary one day." Geee, thanks. Eventually I turned in a really long essay on the 21st and I could finally not worry about stuff. Until the 25th when I just had to go to the lab to save my plants from horrible torturous death by drought.

I wish all problems could be solved with watering. My computer, however, really wishes I don't try this in practice. Recently my monitor died. It started flickering and turned itself off a couple of times. Until one time it didn't turn on anymore. Me and Erkki had matching monitors before and now we got new matching monitors. That's when things really got weird. Erkki's monitor works like a charm but my monitor likes to surprise me with special effects. There I am just browsing and minding my own business when my monitor suddenly produces a mysterious light blue shadow. It appears to the right of every line of text, every dark area of a menu. It appears in the browser, in the image processing software, on the desktop and even on the start menu. It's everywhere! Then I open another browser window and it disappears, then I open a new tab it's there again. Then I open a third tab and suddenly the new tab looks clear but the rest of the screen still looks weird. I didn't even know this sort of problems were possible. I have tried uninstalling and re-installing video card drivers and I tried some sort of ATI tweaking tool. Now it's not as bad as before but the image is still corrupt whenever it feels like it.

Speaking of corrupt, one very influential Estonian politician Edgar Savisaar got caught asking money (1.5 million euros) from Russian Railways President Vladimir Yakunin. Savisaar is the kind of man that has no morals and who is as undemocratic as his power allows him. As the mayor of Estonia's capital Tallinn he uses city funding to publish his own propaganda newspaper and a TV channel. Not only is it dishonest to the taxpayer, but it's also totally creepy that he's getting away with it. Estonia's counterintelligence declassified their findings of secret fundings and now he's in a big scandal which might just be the end of his career. I'm afraid he'll just buy his way out with money, favors and outright lies (e.g. he announced he was working WITH Estonia's counterintelligence all along). Whatever happens in the future, Savisaar is certainly in a pickle now and this is one guy who's misfortune gives me much joy. Actually it's not even misfortune since he was the one who was going to sell out his power in Estonia out of his own free will. It's karma!

Good karma, bad karma. For Estonians and also for me, that's just a saying. People rarely believe in resurrection. We mostly believe that people collect their karma dept during their lifetime. Bad things happen to bad people and good things happen to... well, Estonians believe that good things only happen to BAD people. Anyone with any sort of financial comfort is a "crook, liar and a thief". So I suppose everyone in Estonia are bad people. That doesn't sound quite right. Nearly everyone I know are such good people...

Karma is nice though. I think I could easily be a Buddhist if they weren't such pacifists. And if they didn't meditate so much and if they didn't worship Buddha statues and if they didn't believe that rocks have souls and if they ate MEAT! Or perhaps I could be a Hindu - everything is allowed there if you find the right religious group. Except, again, I don't really believe in universal resurrection and that's not so negotiable. This religion thing really is tough. A few days ago I went to the bookstore to buy a good theory book about Spiritualism. You know what I found out? Surprise-surprise: Spiritualism is the religion of the Dumb. Spiritualism books are mostly in large print. They contain "wisdom" not much worse from TV-shop commercials for energizing bracelets. There was a book about haunted places - probably all just hoax and publicity for "haunted hotels". There were books about reading minds (along with instructions), reading palms, interpreting tarot cards, doing white magic, black magic, dowsing, etc. Even the most promising books about the spirit world ended up containing stupid self-help sort of advice for a cleaner spirit and quick tips to unleash your supernatural side.

That's not my kind of Spiritualism. My beliefs are pretty basic - there's a higher intelligence God, but it's not the sort of authority figure that in most religions. I mean, if God has ultimate power and ultimate wisdom, why would he micromanage everything people do. He already knows if those people are going to do the right thing and what would have to happen so that the right choices are guaranteed. The sort of micromanaging that organized religions enforce kind of defeat the purpose of free will. I also think people have souls and I think those souls persist even after the person dies. I don't know how long they persist, perhaps just a few hours before they become part of something else. I think there's a shared unconscious level where people communicate without words and I think it's even in places with no other people. That would explain why people get a vibe from other people as well as different places and also why people sometimes just know when they are being watched.

But maybe human mind is simply designed to imagine that there is something or someone out there that people can't explain. Someone who decides who's living a good life and who isn't, or who's naughty or nice. Someone who is all-knowing and remembers all the people individually. That sounds so familiar... Someone who is everywhere at the same time... Mhh... SANTA is god!!!!!! Someone should build the Church of Santa. Or is that what malls are for?

Candy in the Slipper

It's Christmas time and it is the time of glorious lies that parents tell their children. "Be a good kid and Santa will bring you nice gifts!". Not many parents really write down what their child does or doesn't do within an entire month. They mostly just use Santa as a tool of manipulation and then buy their children whatever presents they were going to buy anyway.

The same goes for elves - I mean Santa's Little Helpers, not Legolas and Arwen. In Estonia elves put candy in the slippers or stockings of good kids every night. In the morning children get up to go and see if they had been good kids. This is easier for the parents because they only need to judge behavior one day at a time.

Elves visit even Siiri's slipper. Every morning she finds one candy there. The first morning I was getting all enthusiastic, "Siiri-Siiri! Go see if elves brought you anything!". Siiri saw me pointing at the slipper but walked the other way. I followed her and took her back to the slipper. "What's inside here?". Siiri looked at me, looked at the slipper, felt that it really did have something inside and then got bored and walked the other way. Now the elves have consistently visited her slipper for over a week. Today, in the quiet haze of morning, I asked Siiri, "Siiri, go see if elves brought you anything." I had barely finished my question when Siiri ran to the slipper, pulled out the candy and started laughing maniacally as if she just struck gold. And -really cute- she took the candy, her most prized possession at that moment, and without hesitation handed it over to me so I could open it up and cut it into smaller pieces for her. So even if she does behave somewhat mischievously one day, how could I really have her find the slipper empty the following morning. She would be so sad and confused with her empty slipper. Conclusion: elves don't inspire cute kids to behave well.

I had another one of those religion themed seminars and at some point the lecturer said something like, "it is very hard for us Christians to find sense in some of the controversies in the Bible". I had two automatic thoughts about it. First, "it is very hard for you Christians indeed" and second, "well, if something proves time and time again to be full of controversies, then perhaps it's time to realize it's false.". I didn't comment anything about it but it seemed like a step forward. I did not feel any inner hesitation whispering that I belong with them. I have gotten used to the idea of not being a Christian. And I still believe in God, just not in church or the Bible.

By the way, you know you have spent too much time in a lab when 50 uL (that's an entire drop! )suddenly seems like a large amount of liquid. Or when, in the evening, you think about playing Oblivion but it seems too much strain on your hands after all that pipetting. I am still playing Oblivion. It's an old classic open world role-playing computer game that was adapted for Xbox. The game is kinda boring and tediously slow-paced, and leveling mechanism is a disaster. It is actually possible to level up into being much weaker than all the monsters. But there is a system: if you level up in the exact right way every time then it's possible to create a powerful Jack of all trades - master swordsman, master mage, master thief, master assassin - THE MASTER OF EVERYTHING in a stupid boring game.

When I heard how much effort some people go through to level up in this game, I thought it was totally pointless and I simply laughed at them. I myself started playing Oblivion only to get Xbox Achievement points and to pass some time. Pretty soon my game went very sour - my character was so weak and I started to understand the mechanism behind building an overpowered badass. I could not resist! I made a new character and I planned it right from the beginning. Now I'm over level 30 and I have 4 attributes maxed out. I constantly fall asleep while playing it and I'm not even all that interested in playing the game. I just want my character to be all-powerful. Soon (in Oblivion time) I will have 100 in all the attributes and then I will go get the achievements.

I'm gonna leave you with this: