Finland

My chemistry family

If you want research to go well you must have a good working atmosphere. The best situation is your research group being your second family.

I joined Extended Molecular Systems (EMS) research group in 2014 and I’m happy to be a part of it. We all study different things, but weak interactions – is the thing that connects our research. And, of course, our group leader. So let me tell you about EMS research group.

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Group leader. When I first met Matti Haukka I was charmed of his manner of speaking. He spoke clearly, picking right words to explain difficult things easily. And I saw a sparkle in his eyes when he was talking about science. He did not only new things he was talking about, he was very enthusiastic about them. What more than inspiration and experience would you need from your research group?

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Group members. We are a small, but proud group. We are so proud we’ve got our own instagram to show the world how cool we are. XD Our group now consists of 1 professor, 1 university teacher, and 7 PhD students;6 male and 3 female researchers; 5 Finns, 1 Indian, 3 Russians. What a diversity! What I personally like about our group is the support and kind advice we get from each other. We are all more experience in certain areas, but we like to share that experience. We teach each other new techniques, we share latest scientific news and we drink coffee together.

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Group meetings. Every two weeks our group has a group meeting, where half of the group presents current results or an interesting paper. And we have tea with candies and cookies, what a paradise! That’s very helpful, because sugar helps brain to proceed better. =) At the presentations we are helping each other by commenting what might have been improved or modified. We’re saying something supportive, if experiment doesn’t work. And then we eat more candies and cookies, because they help to become happier too!

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Group events. 3 years already our group plans a trip to Saint Petersburg. It never will happen I guess, because everyone has such a different schedule. But we do have bbq parties every year, and birthday cakes for every group member.

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The best situation is when for a scientist research group is a second family. So I am lucky to say it is so for me.

New begining

Sometimes there are really magical things happening in life. Bit by bit one little thing leads to other, and you end up facing something significant and beautiful. Something helping you to realize important things, so simple you’ve missed them.

Once I was inspired by a girl who made a short movie called “Procastinator”. The movie was charming and profound, even though every single person involved in its production was a hobbyist. Roxana, the girl who came up with the idea told me an interesting and simple thing: “I always wanted to make the movies, but never did. And then I realized that to make this dream real I HAVE TO TRY. That’s it. Bit by bit I was thinking about main idea, found enthusiasts to help me with the movie and finally – we’ve made it!”.

I loved that! What a simple wisdom!

So here is my beginning. I’ve always wanted to discover and describe new places and activities in Jyväskylä. I wanted to tell people what’s a foreigner life in this country. What’s great and what’s difficult. So here I am, telling the world with a friend of mine about this plan becoming real thing. We are starting our YouTube channel!

We are Finland Inspired Narratives (FIN) and we’ll tell you curious things. So sit back, relax, watch our video, subscribe and… STAY TUNED!

 

Photoshop: before and after

I’ve been photographing for several years already and I never could imagine myself without Photoshop. This program is powerful and complicated, but thanks to youtubers it is possible to learn photoshopping checking out many-many manual videos.

That’s what I’ve been doing for several years and I think I have some progress. But there is always something new to learn there. For example, how to make freckles.

I had to photoshop some skin areas of the model, and some of her own freckles were gone. So I decided to paint her new ones, but I had to learn how to. I got the idea from this channel.  And look at the result!

Before:

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After:

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What do you think?

Breathtaking adventure at Laajavuori

The more I live in Jyvaskyla the more I feel it is a perfect city for me to live in.

I can always find something new and exciting about it. For example, last weekend me and my hubby decided to try amazing Laajavuori adventure rope park.

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First of all, I’ll talk about price. Finland is pretty expensive country to live in, but price at the adventure park is relatively good. It is 25 euros as participation fee and 3 euros for special gloves.

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After you pay a fee and get “dressed”, an instructor will tell you what to do (and not to do) at the rope park. Instructor speaks English, so there will be no problems in understanding for foreigners. And after the instruction we were allowed to try the real adventure park.

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And it was SOOOOOO cool!

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The park is full of different tracks with different difficulty levels, so it will be fun for everyone. In our case we spend 2 hours to try 4 different tracks. And we totally enjoyed it.

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So if you want to try something extreme in Jyvaskyla – this park is a great place to visit!

I hate fights, but sometimes I’m fighting to death

No, no, no. It’s not what you’ve thought. I’m not a member of unofficial fight club in Jyvaskyla, but I’m a player of Magic The Gathering (MTG) card fights.

This game was introduced to me by a friend of mine – Joona. Joona is a big fan of board games, so once he suggested to play MTG, and a month afterwards I was awaken at MTG Prerelease tournament. And I want to show you a bit of the MTG gamers world.

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