Last: July 2005
Next: September 2005
August 31, 2005
schengen
or, how Chris forgets his passport. Again.
The holiday was frought before it started. The day before, I realised I hadn't had a confirmation number for my hotel, and a quick email later, the hotel company decided I didn't have a booking. After staying in the Skt Petri in Copenhagen, I had decided to splurge on a rather chi-chi hotel in Venice, so I booked through design hotels, who also had an offer on making it almost within the realms of wallet possibility to stay. Their website gave me a booking completed screen, but no email was sent afterwards. In other words, design hotels suck. At least their website and confirmation process sucks. Also, whilst friendly in the email flow, I really don't think offering to book hotels in other cities is really what I wanted to hear.
So, anyway, I found a good deal on a pretty chi-chi hotel. I can really recommend the Palazzo Selvadego - incredible location, some very good deals, and a very decent room (it's a seperate extension to the Hotel Monaco, so there's no room service, but you do get to have breakfast in the main hotel with a rather splendid view).
After the hotel incident, I had a feeling it was a doomed holiday. I also got a taxi driver that wanted to talk (only the second in Finland that I have thankfully encountered. I didn't get given the phone number of this one though. A long story.) The holiday's doomedness increased many hundreds of percent with the (now feared) question "Can I see your passport?"
"Oh no." Cue blood draining from face, mouth dropping, and the thought that, once again, I am the stupidest person alive.
Like the other time this happened, the passport-forgetting was due to a combination of factors: etickets, and a rearragement of my living room. For about a year after I forgot my passport at Heathrow, I kept it in my rucksack, but it was starting to get a bit battered, so I took it out and put in in the canonical Passport Lives Here space in my living room. A memory space that disappeared due to having my windows replaced.
If I'd had 10 more minutes, I would have got in a cab, and done the round trip home. I only had 50 minutes until takeoff (normally an age in Helsinki airport terms), so that wasn't an option - the round trip from and to Heathrow took about 4 hours if I recall correctly.
The check in assistant added "or an ID card?". Hmmm. Shaking, due to the adrenelin rush, I got out my Finnish ID card. I showed it to him. He said that was fine. I flipped it over, and pointed at the NOT A VALID TRAVEL DOCUMENT line. He read it, and pointed at the line above saying THIS IS A VALID FINNISH IDENTITY CARD. He pressed buttons on his computer and showed me on screen that a passport or a valid identity card was required. "This is fine.", he repeated.
I live in a strange half-world of national identity. I am a permanent resident of Finland, but a UK national. The ID card proved I was who I said I was, maybe proved I had the right to reside in Finland, but didn't prove my nationality (the card has XXX as my nationality). This is probably quite a rare situation, falling through the cracks of Finnish and EU law.
When boarding the flight, the attendent gave me a grilling about the card. "You have your passport as well?" Apparently my ID card is a different colour than 'proper' Finnish national cards, to indicate my half-status. After a strange moment, he waved me on, muttering something about "the authorities will have a problem".
Let me say, what I did was probably illegal. Somewhere. Somehow. In many European countries, you have to be able to prove who you are. I have no idea if that extends to proving your nationality. So, it's a stupid idea to travel without a passport. Carry your passport.
Not that it mattered from there on in. Connecting in Germany, there's no need to produce ID when boarding a flight (Lufthansa even have self-service boarding, just by pushing your boarding pass through a turnstile gate). At the hotel, they happily accepted my ID card for all the paperwork. Coming back, again the ID card was fine. I guess I fell through a crack in the system.
UK subjects will probably wonder about passport control. Well, there isn't any - not within most of Europe. Schengen rocks. I just have to prove my identity to the carrier. No police or government passport control before boarding, or after landing, is allowed within the Schengen area (most of the time). I schengened. I thoroughly got my schengen on.
(A note about ID cards. In general, I am not against the cards themselves. I am against huge databases behind ID cards, police powers for random stop-and-show, and mandatory use for access to government-run services. In Finland, it doesn't work like that. You do, however, need to show some ID for any credit card purchase over 50 Euro - the other reason my passport was battered - and to be able to prove your identity when requested. I'm unsure if they can ask for that without good reason. Regardless, it's far easier to trust the Finnish government with the details of my life, weirdly, than the British one.)
After all that, I can get on to the purpose of the visit: the art biennale. More soon.
August 29, 2005
brain-shaped art
It was right around Canada that the art began to take hold.
Did the two main exhibitions in the Venice Biennale today - it took 6 hours, and I can mentally only take 5.
I don't have a high speed Internet connection, so most pictures will have to wait. Meanwhile, have this blurry picture of me, wearing electrodes, waiting to have a go in Mariko Mori's Wave UFO.
The electrodes had an Apple Firewire connector - either a glorious hack, or Apple have some crazy peripherals coming out soon.
August 17, 2005
books for kids
My summer reading has been dominated by kid's books. It started on my trip to Finnmark, when Fiona thrust a couple of books into my hands, and implored me to read the His Dark Materials trilogy, part of which is set in the Northern lands of Scandinavia. I had wanted to read them, but my aversion to fantasy is strong, and mentions of daemons on the back cover and first page made me loathe to start.
During one of my 3 hour bus trips, I caved in, and started the book, and I was enchanted. It's a great story, and I finished the first book in a couple of days. I regretted not bringing the second with me, and read that the night I got home, in about 4 hours flat. The next day, I went to the local bookstore, and got the third book, which was devoured with similar alacrity. The plot is great, especially in the first book, that I feel is a bit more focussed than the other two. The only time the writing falters is during the fight scenes: it's over very quickly, and re-reads are required to work out what has happened.
After these, I started on my Moomin book collection. I remember the moomin cartoon series on tv from when I was very young, but the books are something else. There's an air of Finnish sereneness, and calm no matter what the world brings. The books are a joy, wonderfully illustrated. The stories are a mix of the banal, even boring, life, mixed with the daring, the implausible, and the adventurous.
Some excerpts:
From the Hemulen Who Loved Silence (in Tales from Moominvalley):
'The Hemulen's job was to punch holes in tickets, so that people wouldn't have fun more than once, and such a job is quite enough to make anyone sad if you have to do it all your life.'
From Moominvalley in November:
'"It's neither a river nor a brook. It's a stream. But if the Moomin family all it a river, it's a river. I'm the only one who can see that it's a stream. Why do you want to make such a fuss about things that don't exist and things that haven't happened?"
"To make things more fun," Grandpa-Grumble replied.'
From Comet in Moominland:
'"But how do you know that the Observatory is on that peak especially?" asked Sniff...
"Well," answered Snufkin, "you only have to look at the ground just here. It's covered"' with cigarette ends which have obviously been thrown out of the windows by those absent-minded scientists up there.
There's one book that is available in the US, but not the current set of Puffin UK editions: Moominpappa at Sea. Thicker than the other books, at 220ish pages, it's really one of the hardest books to read. It's a tale of depression, need for change, hardship, and solitude; very much the Finnish quality of sisu. There are a few lighter moments, but they dissapear in a puff of smoke, and although the ending is warmer than the rest of the book, there's little resolution, with no idea of what happens next.
The extended players of Moominvalley reflect the best and worst of the human psyche. I am, unfortunately, part Hemulen, part Fillyjonk, with a good portion of Snufkin as well to balance. I would, however, like to be able to hibernate from November until April, as the Moomin family traditionally do.
My slight Moomin infatuation extends further than the books. After a recent trip to the Moomin exhibition at the Arabia pottery museum, I acquired a few Moomin mugs to drink tea out of. I'm a bit disappointed I'm not getting to Japan to see the Expo this year. I'll have to organise a trip to Moominvalley and Muumimaailma.
Now for my next children's book, Agile Web Development with Rails.
August 05, 2005
lift meme
There's an idea going around at the moment of a lift or elevator hack - press Door Close at the same time as the floor you want to go to, and the lift will go straight there, without picking up anyone else.
It's an idea that's been around for a long time, but has recently catapulted itself around the Internet due to this posting. Then, the typical blog echo chamber started, BoingBoing, Make, Engadget, Gizmodo, all amplifying the idea, without any fact checking, or even questioning. Technorati has about 100 mentions of the thedamnblog.com article, and delicious has 205 links, none of which question the authenticity or probability. Until now.
I love it because it's not true. Yet again, people are taking the stuff they see on the Internet at face value without any critical thought. Not only that, it's a clever myth, as it's hard to prove or disprove - after all, you might just be in the wrong kind of lift. Or the lift engineer might have turned it off. In reality, most lift journeys are uninterrupted, apart from skyscrapers. Did you get lucky or did it work?
It's about information hidden in plain sight, and gives the idea that you can rule over others in a typically mundane daily situation. Secret knowledge. People want to believe.
Of course, this hasn't stopped me from trying it in every lift.
What I am suprised at is that lift manuals don't appear to be easily available on the Internet. It should be expected these days that all information becomes public, if you look hard enough.
