Louise's thoughts

Vacation?

I am trying this new concept, so-called 'vacation'. I haven't tried it in many years and I am sort of puzzled to what it will do to me. I have packed a bag with all kinds of hair products, only two pairs of shoes, an umbrella and sunglasses. I also have my laptop, my favorite book and a geek magazine. What worries me the most is that for the first week I will not only be offline, I will also be out of cell phone range. I am going to this remote island called Sejeroe and they only have connection at the outermost point of the island where the old lighthouse is (see picture). You will find me there once a day, desperately trying to check my email.

After Sejeroe I will be going to the cottage/beach house where I have cell phone connection but no Internet. That means that the best way to reach me is through SMS but as far as I have been informed 'vacation' means that you are away and don't talk to anyone besides your fellow vacationers. So I think I will try that. I will be back August 7th.

Portland SV

Today it finally went online, the application form for SV'ing in Portland. I hope to get a lot of interesting people to apply and of course, I hope we will have fun and not get too stressed out.

So if you have any kind of interest in HCI and want to meet other students in the same area sign up at the official address. I promise to make you work your ... off, feed you horrible American lunch boxes and arrange for you to stay at the shadiest hostel in greater Portland. In return Temo and I have decided to throw the best SV party ever.

I am actually pretty excited about it all, we have changed a couple of things this year. The time of application for example, is a factor on the waiting list as well (but there will still be a lottery) and we are planning to do the scheduling a little different with more overlap of duties. On my wish list I have fitted shirts for all the girls (and you know I will fight hard for that!) and little stewardess caps for the floor guides. We are also thinking about different prices for the SVs and to try and get the most fun out of a hectic situation. Any ideas are appreciated and we will try and make it the most memorable experience of your student career.

10 signs that you have worked too long hours lately

You are doing tab+alt to get to the physical paper that lies next to your computer

You wonder for several seconds why the page won't refresh until you realize that you don't have wireless in your apartment and you are on the couch, unplugged

You say hi to the girl who manages the coffee shop with wireless. ...In the grocery store

You worry more if you are out of milk in the office kitchen than in the home kitchen (which btw contains mainly ketchup and Campari)

You are really scared of going on vacation, contemplating what type of leisure things to bring (academic books, articles, writing assignments), even though it was suppose to be two weeks away from WORK

The highlight of the weekend is the Saturday night Columbo episode, which reminds you of lost times of the seventies and good evenings with your Dad who actually found it amusing.

You actually bring your laptop to the 'laundrymat' (also called parents' house) for a two hour stay instead of making this the social highlight of your weekend

You think chocolate can make it as dinner

You totally disregard the fact that other people might have been out the previous night and call up your brother Sunday at 11 am (sorry, did I wake you?)

You think that your blog is your best friend

Is it better to be happy?

Writing on chapter 5 today, I had a hard time arguing why exactly it is better to have users feel in control of the technology than not. It is hard to argue this with my data because my participants actually used the services anyway even though they reported they didn't feel in control of their interactive device. Perhaps they just felt deeply depressed inside with this sensor-based technology taking over their life and leaving them powerless? But still feeling compelled to use it. So is this good or bad? It is like arguing that it is better to have happy people. I mean, says who? Who says that it is better to have a world full of happy people, what if it's just as good if people are unhappy or just plain grumpy? What if it didn't matter if people felt in control of the technology, if we just had to deal with computers that do random things and not always react to our input? So what if my cell phone goes blank several times a day and tell me that I am located in Jutland rather than Copenhagen? So what if I had to live with notifications of McDonald's newest meals every time I passed by the one down the street despite not remembering the last time I sat foot in there? Would I toss my cell phone? Would I change subscription, would I stop using technology? Probably not. I would constantly feel a lack of control over my devices and perhaps even my life (oh, that’s right, I already do that...) but would it make me less happy? And why do I as a researcher and designer care about making people happy anyway?

Shoes

On popular demand here are my new shoes:

I put them on in the shop as the guy who had sold them to me still waited for the credit card (dankort) receipt to print. 'You can keep the box and the bag', I said while stuffing my other pumps into my gym bag. He looked a little puzzled but I don't believe he hadn't seen that before. As I walked out I realized that I now pretty much only have shoes from Scarpa (okay, at least half are bought on sale). Except for my sneakers and my Burberry boots (and they are real! I bought them when I got my very first paycheck after getting my PhD job) ,all my shoes are from Scarpa. Well, and then of course not the dotted pumps here in the side bar, they are from Zurich, where a friend of mine and I were shopping last September. We also tried to attend some conference but shopping definitely left the greatest impression in my memory.

Good day

Go to the gym in the morning, check
Go get really good coffe at Mojo while reading the latest draft of one of my thesis chapters, check
Go buy new shoes while noone is up and out yet giving me the sales assistant's full attention, gettting 200 kr discount because it is the last pair, check
Make plans for lunch with one of my best friends, check
Make plans for dinner tonight, still to do
Write the introduction for my thesis, still to do

All this means that it can hardly be anything but a really good day today.

Rude Danes or just people with bad social skills?

Today I had one of my less good experiences at the university. I went to lunch with a bunch of guys from a different department that I don't see very often, but who I like to hang out with. I went to sit down next to them but as soon as I sat down I heard a loud 'oh no'. Another guy on the way over to the table looked at me and the first guy who was walking towards me from another side repeated himself: 'oh, that wasn't very good!'. I asked if I was not supposed to sit there and they said (still not very apologetic) 'well, we have sort of a lunch meeting'. Now other people had joined and everyone seemed totally lost because I had sat down across from this guy that they wanted to meet with. The guy next to me, on the other hand, was not participating in the meeting and he was one of the guys I had planned lunch with. I said to the 'oh no' guy in a sarcastic tone that I wouldn't mind participating in their meeting as well, with no meetings this week I suffered meeting withdrawal symptoms.

Since I wasn't about to move (that would have left me with an option of going to another table and sit by myself) they ended up moving the (one single) guy across from me to another table and held their meeting there. I could then keep sitting among the 4 people group that I had planned to have lunch with. The whole 30 second experience left me with a weird taste in my mouth and a sense of not feeling very welcome in any of the crowds.

One thing is good communication skills and blurting out 'oh no' probably belong in the 'not so good'-communication skills department. This absence could be explained by the Danish language's lack of the words 'excuse me' and when an action is encountered as a surprise, those words ('oh no') are often the only ones Danes can come up with. It is apparently not customary to consider any of the listeners' possible perception of the outburst.

Another thing is the standard social behavior that is to be carried out in sensitive situations such as lunch. I might be naive in thinking that it is plain rude to indicate that a person is not welcome to sit at a seat of his/her choice; it might only be rude to actually kick someone away from an already taken seat. In my world, however, any standard social behavior includes making people feel welcome in a crowd, unless that person clearly does not belong there. Examples of this include students at a faculty lunch, strangers joining a table of lively conversation and research assistants at an executive meeting. Most other situations than these require a bit of good manners and sense of the situation; it is not a common social standard to make people clearly aware that they are not welcome.

I might be too hard to judge people's lack of social and communication skills on the basis of such small experience. Many people, especially here in Denmark, are very straight forward and I have to admit that because of this 'fast-lane-communication' I was not deeply hurt. I was merely puzzled as to if this is standard behavior of two hyper active guys, who were focused on one thing: getting their meeting over with, or, if this is just standard behavior from guys with low social skills. In the end I guess it doesn't matter that much as long as I don't let it get to me and I don't think there is a great chance of this, I am too aware that not all people have the same sense of social conduct as I have (and by that I don't mean better or worse but simply that what some people consider proper conduct is not necessarily what I consider proper conduct).

Surveillance

After moving into the wonderful buildings with glass, glass and more glass (and a lot of concrete on the floor) I had an interesting, albeit positive experience today. My old office mate called me up on the local phone system (I could in fact see his name on the phone before picking up, so neat, so futuristic) to ask if I wanted to go to lunch. We went lunching with a bunch of other people too and I didn't give it much thought until later this afternoon.

My new office windows (2 by 4 meters, pretty much one of the four walls) faces the other side of the building, that is shaped like an H, with about 50 meters (about 125 feet) between. This makes my view equal at least 25% of the other offices at the university. I can see everybody, from first floor to fourth as well as four stories of frequently used hall way with two glass elevators. Especially towards afternoon where the sun disappears behind the building, I get a good view of people working. The downside of this is that apparently people can see me as well, which enabled my old officemate to see that I was back from the beach house and probably up for lunch. I now realize that I am under surveillance. I cannot lie down and sleep for twenty minutes (not that I ever do that...), I cannot sit and look bored for more than a few seconds and I cannot pick my nose or take off my clothes (I really never did that...). I have to sit and look like I am actually working and remind myself that my colleagues including the ones who make sure that I get money on my account each month and (even worse) the ones who grant me travel money can watch every single one of my moves.

My present office mate noted this as well and said that in two weeks we won't think of it anymore, we will go about our usual business and forget that people can watch us. I now realize that a webcam would not really put me in any other situation than this. I could at least chose who to give out the URL to. Fact is that I don't care that much about being surveyed. If you haven't done anything wrong, why worry that people would find out? I think/hope people have more interesting things to do than to keep an eye on me and if I get caught sleeping on the job (I actually did, two weeks ago, by my advisor, who can beat that?), I assume people are smart enough to realize that it is because I lie sleepless at night because of my thesis and job situation and not because I like to spend my days sleeping in my office. And if I look bored for more than five minutes it might be because I like thinking about things once in a while without writing it down. So I guess now I just have to put up a post-it note on my desk reminding myself not to undress in the office.

Yogaphone

Have you ever considered yoga for your mobile phone? A little exercise goes a long way. Your phone increases its flexibility, gets more energy and will be able to concentrate on things previously impossible. It will roam more flexibly, use less battery, and keep a more steady signal. This entry goes under the category 'things to do with two bored guys in a little house on the beach while it is raining'. We all compared which one of our phones could balance on most of its edges and as the picture shows, mine won! My brother's slick Siemens can say sounds mine would never be able to pronounce (shhhhhheeeeeeK) but my Nokia can in fact balance on each one of its six edges. What can your mobile phone do?

Working away

For the rest of the week I will be away from any kind of internet (except of course my email). I am going to our cottage in Northern Sealand where my brothers have promised to cook, clean and leave me alone except when I want to be social = play trivial persuit or play racket ball. I hope this will make my thesis writing a bit more intense at least for a few days. Of course the weather will be gorgeous so I can sit on the porch all day with my best friend (my Vaio). Wish me good work!