I’m designing a book about Finland (called Coffee and Pulla), explored through family stories and comparisons to Canada. As a requirement, I need a mentor. Very little contact is expected by my instructor — 2 or 3 times over the semester, which ends in mid-April — so it may only require an hour or two of your time over the course of a couple months. Any time spared is appreciated.
So who can help me?
I’m looking for any combination of:
a) a Finn who immigrated to Canada (or at least lived here for some length of time) OR
b) a Canadian who immigrated to Finland (or at least lived there for some length of time)
c) a (graphic) designer, particularly if one of the above
d) a writer
e) a photographer
This is short notice because my to-do list lives at the back of my head, but I digress. I’m under the impression I need the information by February 5th (a week from today). HOWEVER, reponses after that, though they may not be “official” on the sheet, are still appreciated! The more mentors the merrier.
So what would I like from you?
a) responses to my questions about Finland, similarities to Canada
b) responses to any other questions
c) relevant personal experience, perhaps
d) design, art, writing feedback (criticism/praise)
e) anything else you feel is applicable to offer
My target audience is ages 25 to 30, Finns and Canadians, but this doesn’t apply to my mentors 🙂
Please reply either in comments here or to design [att] erikarathje [dott] ca.
Thank you / Kiitos!
A funny little coincidence, perhaps? A classmate from my social studies course on blogging posted about a particular talk at Northern Voice 2007. It’s called “Why do we blog?” Presenters are Darren Barefoot and Alex Waterhouse-Hayward, two Vancouver bloggers and professionals. The funny thing about it is that I visit Darren’s blog regularly, so a familiar name was a pleasant surprise. (I’ve had NetNewsWire closed more than open for the last month, however, to concentrate on my studies, so my activity everywhere has been more sparse lately.) Darren will talk, among other topics, about his research survey results. Please take his survey about blogging. You could win a prize! More information about the event(s) at the Northern Voice website. It’s missing a link to Darren’s blog.
UBC
Saturday, February 24th
3:00 – 4:00 pm
Room 2
Recycling men
5 o’ clock
5 o’ clock
two weeks in a row
the second week you somehow skip
three houses in a row
the next week my gate to the street is snowed shut
then next morning you come so early
that I am outta luck.
Normally I don’t feel like I need to tighten the belt on my eating habits post-Christmas. This year, however, with various predicaments that I attribute to excess sugar and irregular eating and sleeping patterns, I’m taking control of my mind and my stomach — or, perhaps, my taste buds.
Continue reading A yummy, guilt-free snack »
I’m stuck.
I’m stuck at home, watching the snow gracefully plummet from the sky and build up outside my window. I’m stuck at home unable to attend my class today. It’s about blogging, so as you can probably imagine, I wanted to be there.
I’m stuck at home, alone (for now), humming “I just don’t know what to do with myself. Just don’t know what to do with myself.” (The White Stripes version).
The buses that normally run by my house were getting stuck on the hill, so they were rerouted to a street at least 8 blocks away. As my class is in the afternoon (right now, actually), the buses are every half hour so that increases the risk. I also was not keen on either walking 8 blocks in the snow, or trying to see if I could catch another bus to take me that direction. A connection? Unlikely. What about getting home? Who knows what could happen. There was no snow yesterday, but because of high winds it took me over 2 hours to get home. What should have been a 5-minutes-or-less ride on a stretch of Fraser Hwy took 30 minutes(!!!) because of a power outage at 148 St. Four-way stops only work efficiently with small amounts of traffic. It was after 5:00 and that spot is normally hectic that time of night. There was a police car there with flashing lights. I’d seen more of those yesterday than any day, ever as there were incidents everywhere. Emergency showed up Monday evening at Science World, yesterday downtown and (police only) at Surrey Central, plus dotted here and there. Delays on the skytrain, delays downtown, delays in Surrey topped off by a lost glove, which fortunately showed up at lost & found today. Not that I can retrieve it, because I’m stuck. It’s just going to have to live there until Monday morning. Poor thing. I hope no one stepped on it.
Continue reading Snow Day »
Here we go again! My school started up again earlier than usual, and earlier than everyone else, which miffed some people, but we had a good turnout for our sociology class about blogging. I suspect they may have lengthened the semester by one week by starting early, but if I’m not paying more, well… still. An extra 6 days is a lot. Now I don’t know when I’ll take down the tree!
Pulla, a kind of Finnish baking. I ate it.
The big thing, of course, is grad project numero duo for those of us not doing a year-long project, like moi. I wanted to, but I knew I needed to do something totally different. I spent two semesters on social causes, and it’s tiring. I also spent two semesters on food-related websites, so I’m doing a print-based project. Honestly, food is a small factor, but it’ll be my delicious discussion about Finnish food. That brings me to the idea. While I want to focus more on design and improving my design skills, the topic I’m working through is about Finland. So far, it shall be a book about Finland’s culture, geography, and language (and social structures?), with comparisons to B.C. and Canada. I expect to also include a small travel diary with photos from my family’s trip in 2000. That castle really wasn’t as big as it looked on TV. In retrospect, I wish I’d actually kept a proper diary, but I did bring home much memorabilia.
Continue reading Coffee & Pulla »
