I'm a master student at the University of Tampere, in the second
largest city of Finland, and doing management studies as my major. I
was born in a tiny village called Sumiainen, in 1982, and spent my
childhood and teenage years there in the middle of our lakes and
forests. Of wildlife they were mainly elks, bears and wolves that were
present but our coexistence was always peaceful. And although I may
have been transformed to a somewhat urban citizen by now, I'm very much
convinced of that the most characteristic places in any given country
are usually found in the deep countryside. So far so correct; the most
enjoyable places I have ever visited have been in the rural parts of
Albania, Romania and Italian Mezzogiorno.
My relation to the
blogsphere, at least if regarding the projects like Global Economy
Matters and Demography Matters, could be described precisely by the
words of Claus: a dry sponge in a pool of water. I found it really
fascinating how blogging is blurring boundaries of knowledge;
challenging first the old offline media, and now - as we believe - also
some conventional forms of research and education. It's a learning
process that doesn't recognise hierarchy, privilege or geography. It
makes things fairer.
It is mostly organisations and public
policies that I study, but the first thing I have learnt from these two
projects is that you simply can't say "Nah, that's not my field" to
anything. Issues are interrelated and they're many, and I hope I'm
gonna grasp at least a bit of them. My personal attempt at a weblog is Aapotsikko; I couldn't make up a decent title and "otsikko" is Finnish for "title".
Of
things non-societal, I have a great passion for Italian food and Finnish
sauna. And since the uses of the word "sauna" - at least in some
European countries, I have noted - simply verge on blasphemy by their
context, and always invoking the Euroskeptic within myself, let me
finally get that thing straight. Sauna is not a brothel!
aapomarkkanen
Aapo Markkanen