Graduated

I was in Tampere for 12, 13 and 14 this week. My graduation ceremony was on 13th at 6 pm and it turned out to be pretty boring. I can't believe that I had to buy shoes for that occasion and it came out to be so boring. I had heard the same, but I went anyway thinking that graduation ceremonies happen only once.


It had speeches, some music playing and finished with wine serving. No, that is not wine that I am holding, it is apple juice, put there specially for those who do not drink wine. Out of my entire batch that came in 2005, only 3 of us guys graduated, including me. here are a few pictures of us.

After the ceremony, we were feeling hungry, so went to ate pizza with tayyab, shehzad, thanya (the thai girl in the picture) the thai guy, vera (the finnish girl not in the picture) and had a good time there. later, me, shehzad and tayyab went to see the incredible hulk in cinema. The movie was okayish, nothing great.

The picture in which I am standing alone and with my tie slightly to the side is the one we took after we came out of cinema. you can see that I look tired in that one.


Anyway, today after having lunch, I came back to Helsinki, went to get the keys for my new apartment. Stayed with Hanan for a while, discussed many things ranging from education to politics and then ran to catch the bus thus bringing the discussions to a close.

I will be doing the hard work of shifting tomorrow so that I can walk to my work place from the next day. yes the new apartment is at a walking distance to my new place, so it will give me the much needed exercise that I want these days.

Ok that is all that i have to say right now and you can tell with all the disjoint paras that I am not in a mood to write a good blog. I thought that i should pen something down before going to sleep and put some pictures up. I have a video for my graduation ceremony too, but it is in mp4 format and I do not know if youtube or blogspot supports that. if it does, I will upload it. till next time, bye!

Guess who is a research assistant?

As I had mentioned in my last post that I needed to give an interview for a research position, and so i did and so I got the position :D Yippee! This is the place where I will be working from 16th of June and you can see that the type of work they are doing is really awesome. I will be working on touch screen interfaces, computer graphics, OpenGl and other cool stuff. The sort of stuff every computer programmer wants to work in.

This solves few of my problems, the first being "not returning to Pakistan" and the second being, "getting a visa so I may not return to Pakistan". I am going to get my job letter tomorrow and then head straight from there to the police station, to apply for my visa. I hope that they give me a temporary work permit so that I may start asap.

With that said, there is one huge problem that has come up. It is finding a new apartment for myself and that too, possibly near the place I will be working. I am leaving the one I am currently at by the end of June. I will not even keep it if I wanted to because it is too far away. I live in one end of Helsinki and the job place is in another city right next to Helsinki, called Espoo. I checked the bus route for tomorrow's trip and this is what came up:


and if you look at the map it looks kind of like the map here. I live in Vuosaari and have to commute to Spektri in Espoo.

So, its 70 minutes of traveling if I manage not to miss a bus, which sometimes just happens. Anyway, who does not want to live in a place that is a walk away from your home? you can always work as long as you want and come when you want and it keeps things really simple.

now to celebrate my current emplyment, I brought Dr. Pepper and 6 cans of coke. I had never tried Dr. pepper before and my impressions are that, its just another drink, nothing extraordinary. I loved the coke cans though ... it has been a while since I drank any soft drink as I had been dieting (lost 5 kgs by eating only tuna sandwiches and boiled chicken). I might have regained 1 kg after that many cans of coke however.

I am also graduating on 13th and will be wearing a suite for the occassion. The main aim for which I came to Finland is going to be realised soon. I do hope that I get some pictures and a video for the occassion. Anyway, I had planned toclean up my room and put things in order over this weekend, so that is what i am going to do right now. No matter how many times I clean my place, it always ends up being a mess.

Tampere Visit

I am right now in Tampere as I wanted to get a few things done. First of all, getting my degree and transcripts, and secondly to get my printed thesis. I have already acquired my printed thesis and it looks great! For some reason, my degree is not ready yet, even though I had informed before hand to get it ready. There might have been some confusion regarding it, which, I am going to clarify in about 30 mins. Then, I need to go to my bank and discuss about the possibility of keeping my bank account even if I am abroad. then, I will head home and try to change my ticket for the way home.

I have an interview tomorrow for a research position in Espoo. Espoo is a city right next to Helsinki... it take about 20 minutes of bus ride to reach Helsinki. Apart from that, there is a good Pakistani student community over there which is a good thing if I plan to stay here longer. Lets hope that I am able to bag the that position as that will solve many of my problems, which also includes getting a visa and the inconvenience related to going back to Pakistan.

by the way, Zakariya is also coming to helsinki in September, thus it will be great if I get to stay here during that time. Zac was one of the TAs who worked with me during my GIKI days and we had a good time there. Let us hope that I get lucky in getting that research position which is also one of the things that I want. That's all for now!