College
It’s been nearly two months since my first day as a freshman at Clark University and a lot has happened in my life since. College is awesome! When I moved into my dorm in August I felt uncomfortable and homesick for a while, but after a week or so I began to appreciate everything about living here. Aside from my summers in Finland, college has been the most free environment I’ve ever lived in, so being the autonomous person that I am, I love it. I love looking at my weekly calendar and being reminded of the fact that the vast amounts of time surrounding my 6 class blocks are for me to use however I want. I love being able to wake up at noon on weekdays, go to the cafeteria when I feel like it, and walk around the city or campus at a whim, all while getting my work done and almost never having to feel sleep deprived. The freedom and spare time I have here is unbelievable and not even comparable to how my life was at home during high school.
My dorm: Can you feel the fifties!
As for social matters, I’ve come to really enjoy living close to friends while still having control over my life. When I first began to meet people I made it clear to them that despite our proximity to each other, I valued independence and wasn’t of the type that liked to be in constant contact with others. My choice of honesty over conformity worked out and I’ve become good friends with some girls that I can relate to and be myself around. We’re all very like-minded and have already shared many wonderful experiences and conversations together. My roommate and I are perfect living partners, as we’re not friends but are comfortable around each other and can have a nice conversation after a long silence without even a hint of awkwardness. I haven’t been to any school events, joined any clubs or gone to any parties, and I don’t plan too, as I don’t want any commitments beyond my classes and I like being able to spend time with friends in environments of our choice. Despite not being involved in any official activities, I feel like I’m at the right school, surrounded by my kind of people and a community that I can feel apart of.
My desk in the dorm, everything fits very nicely!
This semester, which started at the beginning of the school year and goes until December 18th, I’m taking three courses: “American Cities and Suburbs”, “Privacy Protection in Law and Ethics, and “Introduction to Graphic Design”. The first of these is a large, seminar-style class, and although I’ve been interested in most of what we’ve studied, I haven’t enjoyed the course overall and am now certain that I won’t be going for a Geography major at Clark because of the extensive economics and statistics courses that it entails. Privacy Protection is a course that I originally hesitated taking but have now come to really enjoy. Uncommon for college, the class is small (about 15 people) and discussion based, so I’ve been able to get to know the professor well and actually interact with her in class. We’ve primarily studied historic legal cases and talked about there role in the evolution of law and the connections they hold to other legal issues and matters of the present. My third course, Intro to Graphic Design, has been my favorite and extremely insightful. Although I’ve been practicing graphic design for years, having designed many websites and mock corporate identities all through high school, I’ve learned a ton in these last two months. Most of the course work has typography-related and produced by hand, using materials like tracing paper and gray matte, with tools like an exacto blade and ruler – the way that graphic design has been practiced for centuries. This has all be new to me, as I’ve always designed digitally, primarily with Adobe Illustrator, but having now designed by hand I’ve developed a much greater appreciation and understand of typography and layout. A few weeks ago I rewatched the film Helvetica and couldn’t believe how much more I enjoyed and understood it knowing what I’d learned in class.
All in all, college couldn’t be going better, and I’m already thinking about my courses for next semester. I’m also looking forward to winter break when I’ll be heading back to Finland for a month. I’m very close with my grandma but only now in college have I made it a habit to call her regularly from the USA (thanks to Google Voice!), so I’m especially excited to be able to share and philosophize with her in person when we’re finally together again in Finland. Surprisingly, during my time in college I feel like I’ve also become much closer with a few of my friends from high school, both current students and graduates, having had long, deep conversations with them online about ourselves, life, and the world at large.
Here are a few more photos I’ve taken at Clark:
Knitting with friends! It’s been years since I last knit but it all came back to me!
Our Library, an architectural marvel in my opinion, and one of the only successful examples of brutalism:
One side of my room:
The other side of my room:
Rail in the USA: Everyone Loses
Why I Care About This Stuff
During the 9 months of each year that I reside in the US I’ve lived in Newton, a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts, yet I’ve always considered myself a Bostonian. This is because I’ve been lucky enough to live right next to a railway station, giving me the freedom to get to the city and most places around it whenever I want, on my own. Boston’s rapid transit system, called the MBTA or simply the “T” by locals, has played a significant role in my life since I was very young, empowering me to do things and go places that were totally out of reach of most kids I knew. During High School (to and from which I took the T every day) I became very interested in rail transportation systems, the infrastructure that makes them work and the way they effect the people and communities they serve. The more I learned about rail systems and the politics that surround them, the more I began to understand how dramatically different the US was from the rest of the world. Today, after years of studying and regularly using rail systems in both the US and Finland, as well as experiencing those in a number of other European countries, I think I can explain with full understanding my feelings on the current state of rail transit in America and how it compares to the rest of the world.
Europe’s expansive, unified rail network, click to view the original, high resolution PDF on the InterRail website, which includes northern and eastern Europe as well:
My Experiences in Finland:
This summer I spent a bit over two months in Finland and among other things, traveled more than I ever had before by rail. A few times each week I would travel hundreds of kilometers going between my grandmother’s house in Loimaa, my summer home in Loppi, and many other places across Finland to see family and just to travel for fun. I also spent a lot of time studying rail infrastructure first hand and talking to people about what they thought about rail in their own country and worldwide. I didn’t experience or hear anything that I hadn’t in previous years, but thinking about what I was experiencing in a new, comparative way, taught me a lot.
First off, the rail system in Finland, along with the roads and other public infrastructure, is owned and operated by the government, as is the case in all of Europe and most of Asia. Rail infrastructure in Finland is well maintained to say the least. The system exclusively employs continuously welded track, prefabricated concrete cross ties, GSM based signaling and is almost completely electrified at 25 kilovolts AC. Nearly every time I looked at a component of the system it always looked brand new, and the very few times that I saw something in disrepair, it was being fixed or replaced by workers. As for the trains themselves, they’re fast (160 to 220 km/h), spacious and always immaculate inside and out. This is all very impressive at first, but what really impressed me was the coverage of the system. There’s a little over 450 stations across Finland, laid out according to population density and designed to, in combination with municipal public bus services, ensure that every single citizen is never more than a short walk or bike ride away from a railway station. With this kind of dedication to the public good, I wasn’t surprised that Finnish rail tickets were also very cheap. For the longest trips I took (~400 km) I paid around 25 euros, and for the more common, shorter trips (~120 km) I paid around 8 euros, all of which was at full price since I didn’t yet have a college ID, which would have gotten me half price on everything.
In talking to citizens of all ages in Finland, I learned how and why this amazing network had been put in place. The attitude of everyone I talked too, and thereby logically the government as well, was that rail is a vital primary mode of transportation, and that it’s accessibility to all is of utmost importance. What I really took note of, though, was that regardless of socioeconomic status (and I talked to people spanning the whole range), everyone valued rail services as a critical aspect of their society. Rail wasn’t politics to them, it was a necessity that simply had to work for everyone without question. One person told me quite eloquently in Finnish that “The system must not only work well, but also look nice at all times, since its not just important functionally for us, but it’s the first thing that tourists see – its a reflection of our society, our values and quality of life.”
Finland’s Railway System, click for full sized PDF:
Back to The USA
My 19th summer in Finland came to an end on August third when I boarded a train to Helsinki-Vantaa International Airport and took off on a 6500 kilometer flight back to Boston. Coming back has always been a little awkward at first, but this year would be very different.
When I walked out of the main entrance to Logan International Airport’s Terminal E, I was met with a gust of humid, smog filled air and the sight of a huge line of idling taxies. I remembered that although I lived only 15 kilometers away, taking Boston’s inefficient public transit system would take over an hour and require 2 subway transfers. Unlike Europe’s airports, Boston’s has no rail connection, only a single, slow bus service called the Silver Line. Because of this, hardly anyone bothers to take the bus and taxies are the norm. My family and I took a taxi home and promptly went to sleep. The next day I began to think about buying things to take with me to college, so of course I walked across the street to the T station to head downtown. The station hadn’t changed while I was gone, but I had, and it felt very different.
The station felt abandoned. Weeds grew in-between and right through the rotting, wooden track ties, many of which had partially disintegrated due to exposure from lack of surrounding ballast. The platforms, which were on the outer sides of the double-tracked station, were simply cracked slabs of asphalt, poured without any forms right up to the outer rail on each side, making a track tie replacement impossible without braking up a large section of a platform. The overhead contact wires were supported by pairs of I-beams stuck vertically into concrete filled oil drums beside the tracks, with a third I-beam running between them from which the wires hung. Everything was rusted to such an extent that physical holes and erosions could be seen in many of the I-beam arrangements. I was appalled that this was actually a functioning station on America’s most heavily used light rail system, but things got much worse.
After waiting for 10 minutes or so, a train pulled into the station. It was a two unit train with one older “Type 7” vehicle coupled to a newer “Type 8” vehicle, a typical sight on the MBTA’s light rail lines, which use Electrical Multiple Unit vehicles. The Type 8 was looking pretty tired, with soot covering its front end and sides, and what looked like a garbage can’s worth of trash scattered around the floor inside, but the Type 7 was looking truly pathetic. Huge patches of its outer surface were bear, rusted steel, with years of layered paint chipped off all over the rest of the vehicle. This was something I’d become accustomed to in my 4 years of taking the T to school, but only now did I realize just how badly maintained the vehicles were. I boarded the Type 7 unit of the train and took a seat by a window to observe the surroundings as my trip downtown began.
Rusted, partially collapsed fences lined the edges of the right-of-way, with vines and trees encroaching and laying on the overhead electrical support structures. Trash was everywhere along the sides of the rail bed, along with abandoned maintenance equipment and construction materials. At many stations along the way, leftover asphalt from station work had been piled on top of loose tie spikes, seemingly in a feeble attempt to avoid dealing with the problem of rotting wooden ties. The thick cables that fed the overhead contact wires were strung lazily along one side of the overhead support beams, and at many times were lying on the ground or entangled in tree branches. When the train finally submerged into the subway after Fenway station, things continued to get worse. The underground stations, most of which are more than 100 years old, have had very little maintenance done during their decades of service, and it shows. Fragmented concrete makes up the walls and ceilings of the stations, with rusted steel rebar exposed in many places. Drainage pans hang from the ceilings of most stations to catch water that leaks in from the streets above through the crumbling concrete. By the time I had arrived at my stop, Park Street, I felt like I was living in a third world country.
I’ve now taken 9 roundtrips on the MBTA since returning to Boston and each time I notice to a greater extent the failure, neglect and carelessness that makes up a rail system used by 1.3 million people each day.
Amtrak’s network, click to view the full sized PDF on their website:
A Reflection of The People
About a week ago I was thinking about taking a trip down to New York City to see a friend, so naturally, I checked to see what a train ticket would cost from America’s own government-owned railroad corporation, Amtrak. I was surprised when I saw the ridiculous prices, which started at around $80 for an economy class ticket on a slow, local train. I later looked at Amtrak’s national map, which I hadn’t seen in a long time, and was shocked at the pathetic coverage, the routes and stops having clearly not changed at all since the era of exclusively private railroads. In the states that Amtrak did have lines in, there were only a few stops in each state and with extremely infrequent, slow service on long distance routes, the expensive, inaccessible network was clearly useless to the vast majority of citizens.
In talking to Americans about the total lack of practical intercity rail in the US, as well as the decaying state of the MBTA and other regional rail networks, the realizations I had made in Finland were confirmed. The condition and nature of a nation’s rail services did indeed reflect the values and beliefs of its citizens. When I talked with people in Boston – again, of all ages and socioeconomic statuses – I received one message clearly from everyone: “if you have a car or don’t have to use public transportation, why would you”? Many middle aged and older Americans even admitted to me that they would be embarrassed if they ran into one of there friends or professional contacts while using public transportation. This is the American attitude toward rail. When considering this, it makes perfect sense that national highways are cared for and funded aggressively by the government while national railways slowly rot away under regressive management and a mere trickle of funding. It becomes clear why Local governments, like the state of Massachusetts, consider there public transportation systems so low priority that they’ve been allowed to fall into sever states of disrepair.
We Are Not Alone
The United States is the only country on earth where people can and do live normal, productive lives without ever caring or knowing anything about other cultures or countries. For centuries, we have been told from cradle to grave that things in our country are the best in the world, and although that has certainly been true at times, today it is an outright lie. In order to improve rail transportation in America, we need to accept the fact that we are grossly inferior to most other developed nations in the respect, and we must eliminate the imbedded ideas of generations past from our society. The strictly American attitude of “only poor people take trains” is simply not sustainable in a world of instantaneous, free flowing information. This is indeed part of a larger evolutionary matter. America will become irrelevant in the global scope of innovation if it’s citizens remain isolated in thought. Smart people will leave and the old engine of America will, quite literally, idle until it’s fuel runs out.
Now, I certainly haven’t given up on playing a part in improving things, but fighting is tough when I know there’s a whole lot of people across the ocean with the right attitude, making more progress in a day then we make in a decade. I already decided a long time ago that I’m certainly not going to pursue my career in architecture here in the US, so its only a matter of time before I’ll be installing myself permanently somewhere in the EU. Hopefully by then there’ll be a larger group of people here for me to hand the torch off too.
A New Era Begins: The N97
The Journey:
I’ve been using my new Nokia N97 as my only mobile device for about 3 weeks now. My overall experience so far has been great I have a lot to report. On launch day, which was July 2nd here in Finland, I woke up early and road my bike to the Loimaa railway station, just barely making the morning express train to Helsinki. The train pulled into Helsinki Central about 10 minutes before the Aleksanterinkatu Nokia flagship store opened, and by the time I had walked to the store it had already been open for a few minutes. There was no line trailing out the door but the store was pretty packed inside, with about 15 people lined up at the register and at least 40 sprawled out around the numerous demo unit tables. I got in line and prepared my cash and EU passport for a quick transaction (In the EU, you generally need to show ID when buying something over €100). When it was my turn I specified that I wanted the black model and the sales person quickly fetched a box from underneath the counter. He then told me that since I had reserved an N97 the previous week, I could chose either an external, rechargeable battery back or a bluetooth headset as a free addition – both Nokia-made accessories which would normally have cost €120 each! I chose the battery pack and completed my purchase, after which another Nokia employee encouraged me to open the box and power up the phone right there to make sure everything worked ok. I did this and the phone worked just fine, greeting me with the classic “Connecting People” handshake animation, which had visually evolved a great deal since I’d last powered up a Nokia smartphone. After briefly testing the phone I packed everything back into the box, left the store and headed back to the railway station. At Central I bought a ticket and boarded a Tampere bound train with a Loimaa connection at Toijala, due to leave in 15 minutes. As soon as the doors shut and the train began to move I pulled down my tray table and opened up the box again. I took my Elisa SIM card out of my old Nokia 3650, which I’d been using in Finland thus far, and popped it into the N97. After that I spent the rest of the one and a half hour train ride exploring the phone. From then on up to the present I’ve used and experimented with nearly all of the phone’s numerous functions.
First Impressions:
The first thing I noticed when using the N97 was the speed of the software. Apps launched instantaneously and felt extremely responsive, both when using physical controls and the touch screen. The N97’s hardware was also very nice, with all the physical controls having logical, convenient placement on the device, as well as being comfortable to use with effective feedback and key travel. The two unique sliding mechanisms of the N97, the main display and camera cover, both felt very sturdy and natural.
A True Freedom Phone:
As I used the N97 more, I rediscovered just how powerful the open-source Symbian S60 operating system is. After organizing the system to my liking on a file/folder level I began to search for apps online. There’re tons of websites hosting and selling S60 apps but I searched mostly on SymbianGear (which I remembered from way back when I used to get apps on their other site, PalmGear) and from the websites of independent developers. I downloaded a bunch of apps including Tweets60, ProfiMail, Shazam, and an awesome app called JoikuSpot that turns the phone into a hotspot, broadcasting its data connection over WiFi. I was impressed by the number and variety of S60 apps that were available, but was really amazed by the capabilities the apps had, thanks to the open-source platform. Installing apps and transferring files to and from the phone was fast and easy, as it shows up as a standard USB mass-storage device when plugged into a computer and apps are composed of single, executables files, much like simpler Mac OS apps. For music and media, the Nokia Multimedia Transfer app syncs my entire iTunes library with the phone whenever I plug it in. Really my only software related gripe about the N97 is that Nokia’s more powerful desktop sync app (which is needed to do firmware updates), the Ovi suite, is currently windows only, although they say they’re working on a Mac version.
Multimedia:
When I bought my N97 I thought I’d probably end up buying an iPod Nano to use for music, but after 3 weeks with this phone I wouldn’t even consider it. The N97’s music player is fantastic – it does everything any iPod does plus more! All the basic functions like shuffle, sorting by categories (artist, album, rating, etc.) and search, as well as advanced features like an audio equalizer and sound check are there! This, combined with seamless iTunes synchronization, gives me no reason to use any other device for media. As for video and still image capture, the N97 preforms fantastically, as with most N series devices. The main 5 megapixel camera is very versatile, with all the options of an advanced point and shoot, including exposure compensation, white balance and color correction. The images are very nice and measure 2,592 x 1,944 pixels. In video mode the main camera shoots at 30 frames per second with very crisp, fluid video, although the 640 x 352 pixel resolution (VGA in 16:9 aspect ratio) is quite disappointing (but to be fair, most smartphones are much lower, including the iPhone 3Gs, which is 4:3 VGA). In addition to the main 5 megapixel camera there is also a lower resolution front facing camera which is intended for video calling (a service that’s been in popular use in the EU since the early 2000s) but can also be used to take photos and video.
Conclusion:
I love this phone and am happy to report that I don’t have any regrets. I thought for sure when buying it that I’d be making a compromise between the usability of an iPhone and the freedom of a Nokia, but its now clear to me that there is no such compromise. I’ve also grown to really love Nokia’s global perspective and attitude toward their customers, best seen in their openness toward the public, the community websites they’ve established and the amazing, selfless innovation that is taking place at the company. The Nokia N97, or any S60 device at that, certainly isn’t for everyone, but for anyone who appreciates the limitless versatility of an open-source OS and the best hardware in the industry, this is the phone for you!
A few photos and a video I shot with the N97:
VR local train, hauled by an Sr1 locomotive, entering Loimaa station:
Click on the images to see them at full size (no cropping or modification has been done):
Taken in Tampere. In Finnish cities you can pay for parking with your GSM:
Some Sr2 locomotives chillin at Tampere station, pantographs raised and ready to go:
The Turku-Tikurilla track near Humppila:
The Mobile Decision
For most people, the purchase of a consumer electronics product is not a decision to be heavily contemplated. I’m not like most people. I could care less about the clothes I wear or the food I eat, but when I invest in any electronic device, wether it be a computer, mobile phone or home appliance, I think long and hard about my decision. In the world of technology I’m both very technically knowledgeable and very brand conscious, a combination which I recently realized can make certain decisions more difficult than others.
Since 2003 I’ve been using Apple computers. I love Apple computers. I love the design of their hardware, the reliability of their software and the creative community of people who use them. When Apple launched the iPhone in 2007, I was shocked. The phone and its operating system were amazing, but what shocked me the most was the approach Apple had taken in how they would sell the phone. The phone would be sold subsidized and locked to one GSM operator, AT&T, and would require subscription to specific AT&T services for as long as the phone was in use. This business model was alien to me and I was disappointed in Apple for not offering the device unlocked, but the iPhone’s software was so amazing that I decided to ditch my Nokia N90, switch operators and give up the freedom I had in order to buy one.
As the months rolled by the iPhone’s user base increased and it’s software evolved, but I began to have mixed feelings about my purchase. On my summer and winter trips to Finland, I had to unlock my iphone using a complex and risky software procedure, which was quickly broken by Apple’s software updates on many occasions, in which case I resorted to using a $20 bear-bones Nokia. It was disturbing to me that I had to hack my $600 phone for it to gain the capabilities of a $20 (unsubsidized) phone. I put up with the locked nature of my device though, as the iPhone’s software was just so amazing and always getting better. In 2008, after a long summer of repeated unlocking and SIM swapping in Finland, I was again seduced by Apple’s clever marketing and bought the new, impossibly cheap iPhone 3G.
Through the remainder of 2008 though, my bitter feelings towards Apple regarding the iPhone’s locked nature turned into mixed hatred. I was getting increasingly frustrated with the fact that Apple was controlling what I could do with the device that I owned. I hated Apple for not letting me use my device as I chose, but at the same time I love the iPhone’s abilities and didn’t want to give it up. The release of the iPhone 3GS a few weeks ago was the last straw for me, clearly showing Apple’s direction toward an increasingly unfair business model for the iPhone. I decided then that I could no longer put up with the iPhone and Apple’s attitude toward it’s users. I would no longer support the sale of a product which tricked people into giving up there fundamental rights as consumers. I would buy a new phone and never look back.
I still love my Apple computers and everything about them, but my iPhone will be replaced by a new Nokia N97 in a week or two (once they’re available here in Finland). I’ve made a tough decision, as I’ll be using an inferior operating system on a less advanced device, but I think its worth it. Once again I’ll be able to use my phone in the US and Finland without a problem, run Skype and tethering applications without anyone knowing, and have single digit phone bills. I’ll also no longer be a hypocrite in my campaign for mobile rights in America. I can’t wait to get my hands on the N97!
Mobile rights for all!!