Finland. Third instalment. (Not one for vegetarians.)

I ended my last entry, as I was being called for dinner.  That was a very interesting experience.  I had tried reindeer meat (to the disdain of some readers; I know and apologise) for the first time here in Tampere and saw it again on the menu for dinner that evening.  I recalled that the presentation and taste were exceptional and did not mind at all having some more of this gravadlax-pastrami hybrid.

It turned out to be nothing of the sort!  I was presented with a brick of unseasoned, potentially reconstituted and perhaps falsely-labelled meat (protein) on a bed of partially mashed yet as equally unseasoned potato (carbohydrates)… the representatives from the vegetable family that normally make an appearance in the form of fresh vegetables had their understudy gherkins fill in for the occasion.

Needless to say I politely played with my food and left the vast majority for the pigs.

On a better note, yesterday’s conference sessions were great.  I attended sessions on employees’ psychological contracts and the experiences of a select population of doctoral students and supervisors.  Their experiences were real eye-openers - from admissions of having made life-long friends (between supervisor and supervised) to stories of never-ending conversations based on exchanging and enriching ideas… quite inspiring really, especially having heard it said with such sincerity and joviality.

Last night saw the last of the social events scheduled in as part of the conference, where the party of (after a few in the hotel bar!) particularly merry researchers took a boat to nearby Viking Island in the Pyhäjärvi (poo-ai-yahr-vee) for dinner and socialising.  …and I can assure you this time, with filet of a record-breaker salmon and fresh vegetables on the menu, that the cuisine was certainly up to scratch!

Tomorrow, after another day in Helsinki, we’ll be on our way home and should arrive back in blighty before dinner time.

: )

Day of the until-now-dreaded presentation!

Since I was a very young age, I have always been first on any alphabetical list (except when I was in the Fourth Form at school – about 9 or 10 years old - when ’Abrahams’ knocked me [Adrien-Kirby] off my perch) and this year’s IABS conference was no exception.  I was down to present first at 8.30am this morning (6.30am GMT). 

Although there were moments in the past few days when my nerves had taken a more disabling grip on me, the hours/minutes leading up to my ‘time’ were filled with calm and cheerful banter with my colleagues.  Good sign.

The presentation went smoothly (I promise that I had every intention of putting a video of it up on here for you to see but I had cunningly left my camera on the plane, to give myself an alibi!!) and the criticism afterwards was constructive and well-founded.  That, coupled with conversations with some awe-inspiring academics afterwards, fuelled my research in this area… it’s always good to be well-received!

I spent the rest of today attending various other presentations and symposia looking at further developments of the academic research in this area and, in other words, ‘where knowledge building (and distribution!) should go next’!  Very interesting it was to hear that the academic guru (the I one I was star-struck by yesterday) supporting collaboration with the Arts, in order to gain further insight into the anthropological and historical contributions that could be made to the field of Business and Society.  I’ll be sure to revisit that seed in a few months now it’s been planted in the back of my mind!

Right, I’ve been summoned for dinner!  Hope you’re all well and thanks again for reading!

Finland… first instalment

Hey everybody!

Ok, so, I’m finally here in Finland, the land of bridges and almost uninterrupted daylight!  So far, it has been a great experience.  The flight brought a very interesting conversation with my allotted ‘random’ person to sit next to me.  His name was Michael and he was an Executive Coach, whose capabilities to help top level managers improve their performance (by unlocking the potential from within their mind) are worth, his current contract as an example, 12,000 pounds for eight one-hour sessions!  Why on Earth didn’t I do psychology!  I travelled with my officemate, Stefan, who has a fear of flying and Michael said that we should have told him this before the pilot started his landing sequence, as he could have indeed dome something about it… ho hum…

Last night was fairly uneventful except for my staying on the phone with Helsinki Airport representatives and various officials of British Airways in my attempt to retrieve my digital camera that I had so skilfully left on my seat in the aircraft and only realising once I had sat in the taxi on the way to the hotel!  …anyhoo, it was my first experience of ‘night’ being more of a late evening before the sun started to rise again and that was pretty cool!

Stefan and I woke up fairly early to see the sights of Helsinki including the largest Orthodox church in Eastern Europe: the Uspenski.  Very grand.  The receptionist of the hotel also felt the need to send us to four other churches, but we onlt managed two before taking the short boat journey to Suomilinna Fortress.

No sooner had we arrived back on the mainland was it time to begin the 90-minute journey north-west up to Tampere, where Stefan and I (along with various other academics) will be presenting our research…  We arrived safely in Tampere and discovered that not only was our hotel literally across the road but also that once again we had landed on our feet with regard to the quality of hotel – superb.  If anyone is taking a trip to Helsinki and/or Tampere, I’ll gladly give you the details, just ask!

It was funny (but quite sad) earlier at the drinks reception.  There was a very emminent and established Professor who popularised the term ’stakeholder’ in the early 1980’s… every Ph.D. student has read his seminal papers and book… I actually found myself starstruck!  Certainly not a trait I thought I personally would exhibit!

So, that’s about it so far apart from the usual eating and sleeping.  I’m now off to practise my presentation with Stefan in preparation for tomorrow.  I’m presenting at 08.30 (06.30 GMT), so, if you happen to be awake at that time, feel free to wish me luck!

Thanks for reading and I’ll tell you how it all goes soon!

Latin and Ballroom Dancing

Hey!  Just a short post to let you know that I’ve created another category: Latin and Ballroom Dancing (just click on it at the bottom of this page).  Here’s where I’ll let you all know about this other passion of mine (albeit a young one)!  I started this competitive sport back in October 2007 thanks to another Ph.D. student who works on the same floor as I do and I seemed to have really taken to it!  Certainly a previously undiscovered passion!

Rather than crowd this part of my blog with photos and descriptions of achievements from past competitions, I’ll save it for the coming season that starts in October 2008!  It’s going to be amazing!  I have a great dance partner (her name is Nafisa) and we’ve done some personal standard-setting this past year and hope to continue the hard work next year!

To give you a little flavour or what we do, here’s the moment we collected our third trophy (out of a possible four) for the beginners’ category at the national Inter-Varsity Dance Association’s competition 2008 in the world-famous Winter Gardens Ballroom in Blackpool…

I hope you’ll follow us next season!

Where I am

Hey hey… I had a thought this morning that there may not be much behind a set of posts, a few interests and vaguely witty, largely self-deprecating humour.  So here’s a short post to show you where I am and what I do.

Apart from research, I am what is called a Resident Tutor.  This means that one night per week and one weekend per month, my duty is to provide pastoral support and advice to students and ensure their welfare during their time in student halls.  Although this has its own set of challenges, it is definitely worth the effort.  The positive side of the job far outweighs its negative counterpart and includes most importantly the gratification of helping others.

This is definitely one of the aspects that drew me to do this not to mention the opportunity to really be engaged with the University (of Bath) at grassroots level, on the frontline as it were with the students, dealing with them as people not pieces of paper, application forms or cells of an Excel spreadsheet as they are represented in other departments.  Resident Tutors and in turn their support base provide real and direct support for every student that calls on us.  The particular residence I live in looks a bit like this:

 

…and tagged on the end is the accommodation for the national teams (below) that come to train on the University’s grounds… including the England Rugby Team!

All this is about a ten-minute walk from the centre of Bath and the same distance from the train and bus stations, which is really convenient to get to university (which is, if I miss the bus, only half-an-hour’s walk away…) 

…so, yeah, that’s a little bit of background for you and, don’t forget, if you are a postgraduate student at a university and want a more inclusive outlook, significantly developed communication skills and a generally ‘bigger’ life, become a resident tutor!

Trip to Finland

Hey everybody!  I’ve just created a new category, Academic Conferences, which you can click on at the foot of this page, and here’s where you can find out all about my trip to Finland, which is my first conference!  The run-up, preparation as well as vlogs etc. whilst we’re out there are/will be here.  It’s to a city north of Helsinki called Tampere for my first academic conference: IABS 2008 (you can also click here for the flyer).  Pretty nerve wracking experience, as I’m creating this page with exactly one week and six days to go and still have as yet… erm, nothing to say!  Such is the excitement (aka. pressure) of doctoral research!

If you’d like to find out more about the conference and what topics are under discussion, just click on ‘IABS 2008′ in the previous paragraph.

Thanks again for reading!

Just unique

Okay, so this might be a mixture of an excuse to create another post for today, the novelty of being able to communicate with others through blogging and my excitement of having been shown this unique way of using the human voice by my buddy Alex the other day… but regardless of the motivation I should hope that this oral tradition of ’throat singing’ fascinates you…

Tuvan throat singing comes from Tuva, an area in the central part of Russia near Mongolia… which, funnily enough and probably due to its remote location, took two years to hear about the Russian Revolution of 1917!

Let me know what you think! 

My Ph.D. so far… one for anyone who’s given it the slightest, the most brief of thoughts!

I was told at the beginning to expect ups and downs and golly they were right… some of the highlights have been smashing number-of-participant targets (currently 169, including some stunners that I shouldn’t really put up on here, as we’re trying to maintain confidentiality!), making contacts in the real world and experiencing the human side of this mammoth task… not to mention the group of amazing people I have got to know here… each studying completely different phenomena, which makes for great dinner conversation!

Those ups have been accompanied by a less-than-non-existent literature review (which is meant to serve as the basis of any future research), moments of spontaneous and unpredictable periods of daydreaming or even sleep!  More commonly, I have also experienced uncertainty, intellectual insecurity (probably arising from the lack of literature review!) and frustration.

I’m not far enough into it to say whether I would recommend it, but what I would say is that it has most definitely lived up to what people said it would do by way of personal development.  The necessity to improve oneself by surmounting obstacles rather than wilt with trepidation is so far for me unrivalled.